The Red Sphinx

by Alexandre Dumas

  He knew something else, which the king did not know: that the troops were short on food, and the bad weather and condition of the roads prevented the commissaries from bringing more.

  He knew, moreover, that Casale was hard pressed by the Spanish. If the Duke of Savoy continued to resist them for another week or so, which wouldn’t be hard, considering their lack of munitions, then Casale—reduced to the last extremity despite the heroism of its commander, Gurron, and despite the devotion of its people, who had joined the garrison in defending the city—might be forced to open its gates to the Spaniards. The latest intelligence from Casale reported that they’d eaten their horses and were down to the dogs and cats, the last resort of famine.

  Thus, that evening, while Louis XIII was celebrating with his marshals, generals, and senior officers, Richelieu approached the king and asked if afterward, unless fatigue prevented it, His Majesty might spare a few moments.

  The king, who seemed nearly as jubilant as the day he’d had the Maréchal d’Ancre killed, replied, “Since every time Your Eminence desires to speak with me, it’s for the good of the state and the glory of the crown, I am and will always be willing to listen to you.”

  And indeed, when the soirée was over, the king, still glowing with praise, came to the cardinal. “And now, Your Eminence, it’s just us,” he said, sitting down and offering a chair to the cardinal.

  Once the king was seated, the cardinal obeyed and took a seat as well. “Speak. I’m listening,” said Louis XIII.

  “Sire,” said the cardinal, “I believe Your Majesty has now had satisfaction for the insult he suffered, and his desire for glory need not push him to continue a war that could immediately end in a glorious peace.”

  “My dear Cardinal,” said the king, “I hardly recognize you: you call for war, despite all opposition; and now that the campaign’s barely begun, you propose peace.”

  “Does it matter, Sire, whether peace comes sooner or later, so long as it brings us what we’d hoped?”

  “But what will Europe say of us? To make such threats and demands and then give up after just one fight. . . .”

  “Europe will say, Sire, and it will be the truth, that this one victory was so glorious and absolute that it decided the entire campaign.” “But still, to conclude the peace, we would have to present our demands.”

  “That is the grand prerogative of the victor.”

  “Do you think, Your Eminence, that we’re in position to make such demands?”

  “We’re certainly in a position to open the negotiations, Sire.” “How so?”

  “We can say it’s in consideration of the best interests of your sister, Princess Christine.”

  “True enough,” said the king, “she’s married to Victor-Amadeus. I always forget I have a family. It’s also true,” he added bitterly, “that it’s a family I prefer to forget. So you think . .?”

  “I think, Sire, that though war is at times a cruel necessity, we belong to a church that abhors bloodshed, and it’s our duty to curtail it when we can. That’s within your power, Sire, after such a glorious day, for the God of Hosts is also the God of Mercy.”

  “How would you present this matter to the King of Marmots?” said the king, using the nickname concocted by Henri IV after his conquest of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, and Gex.

  “That’s easily done, Sire. I’ll write in the name of Your Majesty to the Duke of Savoy that he can choose between peace or war: if he prefers war, we will continue to fight as we did today and as your august father did in the past; but if, instead, he chooses peace, we will negotiate with him on the same basis as before our victory. To be specific, he is to allow the passage of French troops, and to assist with the relief of Casale, providing us food and ammunition at a fair market price; and furthermore Savoy will allow us, in the future, passage for whatever troops and materiel might be necessary for the defense of Montferrat, in the event that Montferrat were attacked or we thought such an attack likely; and that to ensure these two contingencies, Sire, the Duke of Savoy cedes to us Fort Gélasse and the Pass of Susa, to be occupied by a Swiss garrison commanded by an officer of your appointment.”

  “But the Savoyard is going to want something in return for all that.”

  “If you wish, Sire, we can meet one of his demands. We can offer, on behalf of the Duke of Mantua, in compensation for the House of Savoy’s rights to Montferrat, to cede him the city of Trino, with its annual revenue of fifteen thousand crowns.”

  “We’d already offered him that, and he refused it.”

  “Sire, we were not then in possession of Susa.”

  “All thanks to you, and I’ll never forget it.”

  “What must not be forgotten, Sire, is the risks Your Majesty faced, the courage of your troops, and the virtues of their commanders.”

  “If I ever had the misfortune to forget it, Your Eminence would remind me.”

  “So my proposal is acceptable?”

  “Whom shall we send with it?”

  “Doesn’t it seem to Your Majesty that Marshal Bassompierre would be the best ambassador we could choose for this?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Then, Sire, he will leave tomorrow morning to present our treaty to the duke. As for the secret articles . . .”

  “There will be secret articles?”

  “Every treaty has secret articles. Those will be negotiated personally between me and the duke or his son.”

  “Then everything is on hold!”

  “Just for three days, Sire, until we arrange to receive a visit from the prince your brother, or your uncle the duke.”

  “That’s right,” said the king, “they are my family. But with one great virtue: they’re family I can publicly make war against. And now, good evening, Monsieur le Cardinal. You must be tired and in need of a good night’s sleep.”

  Three days later, in fact, as predicted by the cardinal, Victor-Amadeus came to Susa to negotiate with Richelieu, who obtained from him all the conditions he’d proposed to the king. As for the secret articles, they were granted as well, along with the public terms:

  The Duke of Savoy engages to provide Casale with four thousand bushels of corn and wheat and five hundred casks of wine. In return, once this obligation is met, it is agreed that the troops of France shall not advance beyond Buno-longa, the village between Susa and Turin, and His Majesty will allow the Prince of Piedmont time to persuade the Spanish to lift the siege of Casale.

  In addition, Charles-Emmanuel will be ceded the town of Trino by the Duke of Mantua, Alba, and Montcalvo.

  Eight days after this treaty was concluded, Don Gonzalès da Cordova personally raised the siege of Casale, thus preserving the honor of Spain.

  On March 31 and April 1, respectively, the treaty was ratified by the Duke of Savoy and King Louis XIII.

  However, the truth is that this treaty was regarded as no more binding than those made with the Duke of Lorraine. One day, when William III was telling Charles IV, Duc de Lorraine, that he’d signed a treaty in good faith, the duke said with a laugh, “So you’d rely on a treaty, then?”

  “But of course,” His Majesty naïvely replied.

  “Well,” replied Duke Charles, “whenever you like, I can show you a whole chest full of treaties that I’ve signed, none of which have been honored!”

  And though Charles-Emmanuel had nearly as many treaties in his chest, he was happy to add one more, though he had no more intention of honoring it than any of the others. Nonetheless, he expressed the desire to embrace his nephew Louis XIII, so a meeting was arranged.

  First came the Prince of Piedmont and the Cardinal of Savoy, who greeted the king when the treaty was signed; Victor-Amadeus brought his wife, Princess Christine, the king’s sister. Louis accorded his sister all proper honors and every sign of friendship, delighted to show that he loved best this sister who’d made open war upon him, unlike the Queen of England and the Queen of Spain, who were content to conspire against him secretly.

 
Finally came the Duke of Savoy, who was received with open arms by his nephew Louis XIII, who had resolved to steal a march on him and surprise him before he was ready; but Charles-Emmanuel was warned in time and rushed down the stairs in a hurry, to meet the king on his doorstep.

  “My dear Uncle,” said Louis XIII, embracing him, “I’d intended to surprise you in your chamber!”

  “You forgot, my dear Nephew,” said the duke, “that it’s not easy to move secretly when one is King of France.”

  The king climbed the stairs alongside the duke. But to reach the duke’s chambers, he had to pass a row of courtiers and senior officers standing on a trembling balcony that barely supported them.

  “Make haste, Uncle,” the king said. “I’m not sure how long this will hold us up.”

  “Alas, Sire!” the duke replied. “See how all the world trembles before the might of Your Majesty.”

  The king, radiant with this praise, turned to l’Angely. “Hey, fool: what do you think of my uncle’s compliments?”

  “Oh, I’m not the fool you should ask,” said l’Angely.

  “Who, then?”

  “Ask the two or three thousand fools who got killed to earn them!”

  LXV

  A Chapter of History

  L’Angely, in his response to the king, had summed up the situation admirably.

  After every war, no matter how long, even the Thirty Years War, a peace is signed, and, once signed, the kings who had made the war embrace each other, without a thought for the thousands of men sacrificed to the conflict, rotting on the battlefields, or the thousands of weeping widows, the thousands of mothers wringing their hands, or the thousands of children dressed in mourning.

  And given the past history of the “good faith” of Charles-Emmanuel, one could be sure that this new peace would be broken the first time the Duke of Savoy found it advantageous.

  A month or two passed in celebrations, during which the Duke of Savoy sent his emissaries to Vienna and Madrid.

  In Vienna, his envoy delivered the message that King Louis’s victory at Susa was not so much a humiliation of Savoy as it was of Emperor Ferdinand, as the Duke of Savoy had disputed the King of France’s passage in order to sustain the Empire’s rights in Italy. The aid France sent to the people of Casale was a clear attack on the emperor’s authority, insofar as the place had been besieged by the Spanish in order to compel the Duc de Nevers, a Frenchman who’d claimed an Imperial fief, to bend the knee to His Imperial Majesty.

  In Madrid, Savoy’s envoy was charged to convey to King Philip IV and the count-duke, his prime minister, that the affront to Spanish arms at Casale was intended to weaken His Catholic Majesty’s authority in Italy, an insult as yet unpunished. The King of France, goaded by Richelieu, planned to drive the Spaniards from Milan, and the Court of Madrid should expect that once they were forced from Milan, then Naples would soon follow.

  Philip IV and Ferdinand also exchanged emissaries.

  Here’s what they decided:

  The Holy Roman Emperor would ask the Swiss Cantons to allow his troops free passage. If the Grisons refused, Imperial troops would attack by surprise, cross the Alps, and march immediately on Mantua.

  The King of Spain recalled Don Gonzalès de Cordova and replaced him with the overall commander of the Spanish troops in Italy, the famous Ambrose Spinola, who was given orders to besiege and take Casale, while the Imperial troops besieged and took Mantua.

  The French campaign, successfully completed in a matter of days, had caused quite a stir: the affair redounded to King Louis’s credit across Europe, and he was acclaimed as the only sovereign, besides Gustavus Adolphus, willing to leave his palace to defend his realm, sword in hand.

  Ferdinand II and Philip IV, in contrast, waged their cruel wars from a distance, kneeling safely at their altars.

  If the king and his army had been able to stay in Piedmont, all their gains would have been preserved—but the cardinal was committed to suppressing the Protestants before summer. The Protestants had taken advantage of the absence of the king and cardinal to rally their forces, and fifteen thousand had gathered in Languedoc under the command of the Duc de Rohan.

  The king bade adieu to “his good uncle” the Duke of Savoy, disregarding the intrigues the duke was brewing under his very nose in Piedmont. On April 22, he returned to France by way of Briançon, Gap, and Chatillon, and marched on Privas.

  He avoided Lyon, from which the two queens had fled to escape the plague. As for Monsieur, still wallowing in his grievances, he’d left not only Paris, but France itself, accepting the hospitality of Duc Charles IV of Lorraine in his city of Nancy. By leaving France, he’d abandoned his claim to Princesse Marie de Gonzague, transferring his attentions to Princess Marguerite of Lorraine, the duke’s sister.

  Pursued by forty thousand troops led by three Marshals of France and by Montmorency, to whom Richelieu had promised to present the Sword of the Constable, Rohan, the leader of the Protestants, fell into the same mistake made in the previous century by the leaders of the rebellious Catholic League: in return for funds that were never paid, he signed a treaty with Spain, mortal enemy of both France and her Protestants.

  In the end, Privas, their greatest fortress, was taken. A third of its people were hanged, and the rest were stripped of all their property. On June 24, 1629, with a new Italian campaign pending, as the pot there was starting to boil, a final truce was signed, a peace whose primary condition was the demolition of the fortifications of every Protestant city.

  Even before Privas, it was known that Emperor Ferdinand intended to send troops into Italy; it was said Wallenstein himself would lead fifty thousand men over the Alps of the Grisons. On June 5, Ferdinand published a decree stating that his troops marched into Italy not to make war, but to preserve the peace, sustaining the legitimate authority of the emperor and defending the empire’s foreign fiefs from claims that infringed on his rights.

  In the same statement, the emperor requested His Serenity the King of Spain, who possessed the chief stronghold of the Empire in Italy, to provide the Imperial troops with whatever food and ammunition they needed.

  Everything France had done in Italy had to be done over again. Louis was willing, but couldn’t be ready to undertake another foreign war in less than five or six months. Lacking money after Privas, Richelieu had been forced to discharge thirty regiments.

  The envoy Monsieur de Sabran was sent to the Court of Vienna to discuss the emperor’s ultimatum. Meanwhile, Monsieur de Créqui was dispatched to Turin to ask the Duke of Savoy to explain, frankly, which side he was on in the event of war.

  The emperor replied:

  The King of France entered Italy with a powerful army, without any declaration of war on Spain or the Empire, and overcame, by arms or agreement, several localities under the jurisdiction of the Emperor. If the King of France will withdraw his troops from Italy, the Emperor will be satisfied to allow all issues to be settled by a court of law.

  The Duke of Savoy replied:

  The Imperial movement into the realm of the Grisons has nothing to do with the Treaty of Susa. But the King of Spain would like the French to leave Italy and give Susa back. If King Louis satisfies his brother-in-law Philip IV, the Duke of Savoy will persuade Emperor Ferdinand to withdraw his troops from the territory of the Grisons.

  Monsieur de Créqui sent this response to the king, who gave it to the cardinal and charged him with answering it. The cardinal replied:

  Tell the Duke of Savoy this isn’t a matter of what the King of Spain or the Emperor wants, it’s about whether His Highness intends to keep his word by joining his troops with those of France to maintain the Treaty of Susa.

  The king returned to Paris, so angry with his brother Monsieur that he was ready to confiscate all his domains. But the queen mother went to work and mended the division between the brothers: Monsieur, as usual, humbly begged the king’s pardon, presenting his conditions for returning, and instead of losing domains due
to his escapade was instead granted a new fief in the Duchy of Valois, increasing his income by a hundred thousand livres a year, as well as the governorships of Orléans, Blois, Vendôme, Chartres, and the Château d’Amboise, the command of the Army of Champagne, and, in the absence of the king, the office of lieutenant general in charge of Paris and the surrounding region.

  In addition, the accord included this curious clause: Though reconciling with the king, Monsieur does not agree to overlook Cardinal Richelieu’s many insults, affronts for which he will sooner or later be punished.

  The cardinal learned of this accord after it was too late to prevent it. He went to the king to see this agreement with his own eyes. Facing him, Louis bowed his head, aware of the weakness and deep ingratitude he’d shown in giving in to his brother’s demands. “If this is what Your Majesty grants to his enemies,” said the cardinal, “what is he willing to do for the man who has proven himself his best friend?”

  “Anything such a man asks, if that man is you.”

  And indeed, the king awarded Richelieu the title of Vicar General in Italy and made him generalissimo of all his armies.

  Upon learning of these concessions to her foe, Marie de Médicis accosted her son and, referring to the cardinal’s new commissions, demanded haughtily, “What about us, Sire? In light of this, what rights do you grant to us?”

  “The right of monarchs to cure scrofula,” said l’Angely, who was present at the dispute.

  By dint of incredible effort and by leveraging his new prestige, the cardinal found the wherewithal to mount another campaign. But a new enemy barred the path to Piedmont, an abyss that could swallow half an army. This enemy was the plague—that same plague which had forced the two queens to return to Paris and the king to withdraw through Briançon.