over-centralization; and depriving the people of the habit of criticizing governmental action, he taught them a fatal acquiescence in uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Like one of those physical forces which tend to reduce everything to a dead level, he battered down alike characters and fortresses; and in his endeavours to abolish faction, he killed that public spirit which, formed in the 16th century, had already produced the République of Bodin, de Thou’s History of his Times, La Boetie’s Contre un, the Satire Ménippée, and Sully’s Économies royales.
In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu created no new instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institution of the 16th century, namely “intendants” (q.v.), agents who were forerunners of the commissaries of the Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferior Methods employed by Richelieu. condition, hated by every one, and for that reason the more trustworthy. He also drew most of the members of his special commissions from the grand council, a supreme administrative tribunal which owed all its influence to him.
However, having accomplished all these great things, the treasury was left empty and the reforms were but ill-established; for Richelieu’s policy increased poverty, neglected the toiling and suffering peasants, deserted the cause of the workers in order to favour the privileged classes, The results. and left idle and useless that bourgeoisie whose intellectual activity, spirit of discipline, and civil and political culture would have yielded solid support to a monarchy all the stronger for being limited. Richelieu completed the work of Francis I.; he endowed France with the fatal tradition of autocracy. This priest by education and by turn of mind was indifferent to material interests, which were secondary in his eyes; he could organize neither finance, nor justice, nor an army, nor the colonies, but at the most a system of police. His method was not to reform, but to crush. He was great chiefly in negotiation, the art par excellence of ecclesiastics. His work was entirely abroad; there it had more continuity, more future, perhaps because only in his foreign policy was he unhampered in his designs. He sacrificed everything to it; but he ennobled it by the genius and audacity of his conceptions, by the energetic tension of all the muscles of the body politic.
The Thirty Years’ War in fact dominated all Richelieu’s
foreign policy; by it he made France and unmade Germany.
It was the support of Germany which Philip II. had
lacked in order to realize his Catholic empire; and the
election of the archduke Ferdinand II. of Styria as
External policy
of Richelieu.
emperor gave that support to his Spanish cousins
(1619). Thenceforward all the forces of the Habsburg monarchy
would be united, provided that communication could be maintained
in the north with the Netherlands and in the south with
the duchy of Milan, so that there should be no flaw in the iron
vice which locked France in on either side. It was therefore Of
the highest importance to France that she should dominate the
valleys of the Alps and Rhine. As soon as Richelieu became
minister in 1624 there was an end to cordial relations with Spain.
He resumed the policy of Henry IV., confining his military
operations to the region of the Alps, and contenting himself
at first with opposing the coalition of the Habsburgs with a
coalition of Venice, the Turks, Bethlen Gabor, king of Hungary,
and the Protestants of Germany and Denmark. But the revolts
of the French Protestants, the resentment of the nobles at his
dictatorial power, and the perpetual ferment of intrigues and
treason in the court, obliged him almost immediately to draw
back. During these eight years, however, Richelieu had pressed
on matters as fast as possible.
While James I. of England was trying to get a general on the
cheap in Denmark to defend his son-in-law, the elector palatine,
Richelieu was bargaining with the Spaniards in the
treaty of Monzon (March 1626); but as the strained
relations between France and England forced him
Temporizing policy, except in Italy,
1624–1630.
to conciliate Spain still further by the treaty of April
1627, the Spaniards profited by this to carry on an
intrigue with Rohan, and in concert with the duke
of Savoy, to occupy Montferrat when the death of Vicenzo II.
(December 26, 1627) left the succession of Mantua, under the
will of the late duke, to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, a
Frenchman by education and sympathy. But the taking of
La Rochelle allowed Louis to force the pass of Susa, to induce
the duke of Savoy to treat with him, and to isolate the Spaniards
in Italy by a great Italian league between Genoa, Venice and
the dukes of Savoy and Mantua (April 1629). Unlike the Valois,
Richelieu only desired to free Italy from Spain in order to
restore her independence.
The fact that the French Protestants in the Cévennes were again in arms enabled the Habsburgs and the Spaniards to make a fresh attack upon the Alpine passes; but after the peace of Alais Richelieu placed himself at the head of forty thousand men, and stirred up enemies everywhere against the emperor, victorious now over the king of Denmark as in 1621 over the elector palatine. He united Sweden, now reconciled with Poland, and the Catholic and Protestant electors, disquieted by the edict of Restitution and the omnipotence of Wallenstein; and he aroused the United Provinces. But the disaffection of the court and the more extreme Catholics made it impossible for him as yet to enter upon a struggle against both Austria and Spain; he was only able to regulate the affairs of Italy with much prudence. The intervention of Mazarin, despatched by the pope, who saw no other means of detaching Italy from Spain than by introducing France into the affair, brought about the signature of the armistice of Rivalte on the 4th of September 1630, soon developed into the peace of Cherasco, which re-established the agreement with the still fugitive duke of Savoy (June 1631). Under the harsh tyranny of Spain, Italy was now nothing but a lifeless corpse; young vigorous Germany was better worth saving. So Richelieu’s envoys, Brulart de Léon and Father Joseph, disarmed[1] the emperor at the diet of Regensburg, while at the same time Louis XIII. kept Casale and Pinerolo, the gates of the Alps. Lastly, by the treaty of Fontainebleau (May 30th, 1631), Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, engaged to defend the king of France against all his enemies, even Spain, with the exception of the emperor. Thus by the hand of Richelieu a union against Austrian imperialism was effected between the Bavarian Catholics and the Protestants who dominated in central and northern Germany.
Twice had Richelieu, by means of the purse and not by force of arms, succeeded in reopening the passes of the Alps and of the Rhine. The kingdom at peace and the Huguenot party ruined, he was now able to engage upon his policy of prudent acquisitions and apparently disinterested Richelieu and Gustavus Adolphus. alliances. But Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, called in by Richelieu and Venice to take the place of the played-out king of Denmark, brought danger to all parties. He would not be content merely to serve French interests in Germany, according to the terms of the secret treaty of Bärwalde (June 1631); but, once master of Germany and the rich valley of the Rhine, considered chiefly the interests of Protestantism and Sweden. Neither the prayers nor the threats of Richelieu, who wished indeed to destroy Spain but not Catholicism, nor the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen (1632), could repair the evils caused by this immoderate ambition. A violent Catholic reaction against the Protestants ensued; and the union of Spain and the Empire was consolidated just when that of the Protestants was dissolved at Nördlingen, despite the efforts of Oxenstierna (September 1634). Moreover, Wallenstein, who had been urged by Richelieu to set up an independent kingdom in Bohemia, had been killed on the 23rd of February 1634. In the course of a year Württemberg and Franconia were reconquered from the Swedes; and the duke of Lorraine, who had taken the side of the Empire, called in the Spanish and the imperial forces to open the road to the Netherlands through Franche-Comté.
His allies no longer able to stand alone, Richelieu was obliged to intervene directly (May 19th, 1635). By the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye he purchased the army of Bernard of Saxe-
- ↑ Ferdinand is reported to have said: “Le capucin m’a désarmé avec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux.”
