jurisdiction or about the registration of edicts respecting finances,
which the Parliament claimed to have the right of looking into, caused
between the king, inspired by his minister, and the Parliament of Paris
an irritation which reached its height during the trial of the Duke of
La Valette, third son of the Duke of Epernon, accused, not without
grounds, of having caused the failure of the siege of Fontarabia from

jealousy towards the Prince of Conde.  The affair was called on before
a commission composed of dukes and peers, some councillors of state and
some members of the Parliament, which demanded that the duke should be
removed to its jurisdiction.  "I will not have it," answered the king;
"you are always making difficulties; it seems as if you wanted to keep me
in leading-strings; but I am master, and shall know how to make myself
obeyed: It is a gross error to suppose that I have not a right to bring
to judgment whom I think proper and where I please."  The king himself
asked the judges for their opinion.  [_Isambert, Recueil des anciennes
Lois Francaises,_ t. xvi.]  "Sir," replied Counsellor Pinon, dean of the
grand chamber, "for fifty years I have been in the Parliament, and I
never saw anything of this sort; M. de La Valette had the honor of
wedding a natural sister of your Majesty, and he is, besides, a peer
of France; I implore you to remove him to the jurisdiction of the
Parliament."  "Your opinion!" said the king, curtly.  "I am of opinion
that the Duke of La Valette be removed to be tried before the
Parliament."  "I will not have that; it is no opinion."  "Sir, removal is
a legitimate opinion."  "Your opinion on the case!" rejoined the king,
who was beginning to be angry; "if not, I know what I must do."
President Bellievre was even bolder.  "It is a strange thing," said he to
Louis XIII.'s face, to see a king giving his vote at the criminal trial
of one of his subjects; hitherto kings have reserved to themselves the
rights of grace, and have removed to their officers' province the
sentencing of culprits.  Could your Majesty bear to see in the dock a
nobleman, who might leave your presence only for the scaffold?  It is
incompatible with kingly majesty."  "Your opinion on the case!" bade the
king.  "Sir, I have no other opinion."  The Duke of La Valette had taken
refuge in England: he was condemned and executed in effigy.  The
attorney-general, Matthew Mold, "did not consider it his business to
carry out an execution of that sort: "and recourse was obliged to be had
to the lieutenant-governor of convicts at the Chatelet of Paris.

The cup had overflowed, and the cardinal resolved to put an end to an
opposition which was the more irritating inasmuch as it was sometimes
legitimate.  A notification of the king's, published in 1641, prohibited
the Parliament from any interference in affairs of state and
administration.  The whole of Richelieu's home-policy is summed up in the
preamble to that instrument, a formal declaration of absolute power
concentrated in the hands of the king.  "It seemeth that, the institution
of monarchies having its foundation in the government of a single one,
that rank is as it were the soul which animates them and inspires them
with as much force and vigor as they can have short of perfection.  But
as this absolute authority raises states to the highest pinnacle of their
glory, so, when it happens to be enfeebled, they are observed, in a short
time, to fall from their high estate.  There is no need to go out of
France to find instances of truth.  .  .  .  The fatal disorders and
divisions of the League, which ought to be buried in eternal oblivion,
owed their origin and growth to disregard of the kingly authority  Henry
the Great, in whom God had put the most excellent virtues of a great
prince, on succeeding to the crown of Henry III., restored by his valor
the kingly authority which had been as it were cast down and trampled
under foot.  France recovered her pristine vigor, and let all Europe see
that power concentrated in the person of the sovereign is the source of
the glory and greatness of monarchies, and the foundation upon which
their preservation rests.  .  .  .  We, then, have thought it necessary
to regulate the administration of justice, and to make known to our
parliaments what is the legitimate usage of the authority which the
kings, our predecessors, and we have deposited with them, in order that a
thing which was established for the good of the people may not produce
contrary effects, as would happen if the officers, instead of contenting
themselves with that power which makes them judges in matters of life and
death and touching the fortunes of our subjects, would fain meddle in the
government of the state which appertains to the prince only."

The cardinal had gained the victory.  Parliament bowed the head; its
attempts at independence during the Fronde were but a flash, and the yoke
of Louis XIV. became the more heavy for it.  The pretensions of the
magistrates were often foundationless, the restless and meddlesome
character of their assemblies did harm to their remonstrances; but for a
long while they maintained, in the teeth of more and more absolute kingly
power, the country's rights in the government, and they had perceived the
dangers of that sovereign monarchy which certainly sometimes raises
states to the highest pinnacle of their glory, but only to let them sink
before long to a condition of the most grievous abasement.

Though always first in the breach, the Parliament of Paris was not alone
in its opposition to the cardinal.  The Parliament of Dijon protested
against the sentence of Marshal Marillac, and refused, to its shame, to
bear its share of the expenses for the defence of Burgundy against the
Duke of Lorraine, in 1636, a refusal which cost it the suspension of its
premier president.

The Parliament of Brittany, in defence of its jurisdictional privileges,
refused to enregister the decree which had for object the foundation of a
company trading with the Indies, "for the general trade between the West
and the East," a grand idea of Richelieu's, the seat of which was to be
in the roads of Morbihan; the company, already formed, was disheartened,
thanks to the delays caused by the Parliament, and the enterprise failed.
The Parliament of Grenoble, fearing a dearth of corn in Dauphiny, quashed
the treaties of supply for the army of Italy, at the time of the second
expedition to Mantua; it went so far as to have the dealers' granaries
thrown open, and the superintendent of finance, D'Emery, was obliged to
come to terms with the deputies of Dauphiny, "in order that they of the
Parliament of Grenoble, who said they had no interests but those of the
province, might have no reason to prevent for the future the transport of
corn," says Richelieu himself in his Memoires.

The Parliament of Rouen had always passed for one of the most
recalcitrant.  The province of Normandy was rich, and, consequently,
overwhelmed with imposts; and several times the Parliament refused to
enregister financial edicts which still further aggravated the distress
of the people.  In 1637 the king threatened to go in person to Rouen and
bring the Parliament to submission, whereat it took fright and
enregistered decrees for twenty-two millions.  It was, no doubt, this
augmentation of imposts that brought about the revolt of the Nu-pieds
(Barefoots) in 1639.  Before now, in 1624 and in 1637, in Perigord and
Rouergue, two popular risings of the same sort, under the name of
Croquants (Paupers), had disquieted the authorities, and the governor of
the province had found some trouble in putting them down.  The Nu-pieds
were more numerous and more violent still; from Rouen to Avranches all
the country was a-blaze.  At Coutances and at Vire, several monopoliers
and gabeleurs, as the fiscal officers were called, were massacred; a
great number of houses were burned, and most of the receiving-offices
were pulled down or pillaged.  Everywhere the army of suffering (_armee
de souffrance_), the name given by the revolters to themselves, made,
appeal to violent passions; popular rhymes were circulated from hand to
hand, in the name of General _Nu-pieds (Barefoot),_ an imaginary
personage whom nobody ever saw.  Some of these verses are fair enough.

[Illustration: The Barefoots----221]



TO NORMANDY.

"Dear land of mine, thou canst no more
What boots it to have served so well?
For see! thy faithful service bore
This bitter fruit--the cursed gabelle.
Is that the guerdon earned by those
Who succored France against her foes,
Who saved her kings, upheld her crown,
And raised the lilies trodden down,
In spite of all the foe could do,
In spite of Spain and England too?

"Recall thy generous blood, and show
That all posterity may know--
Duke William's breed still lives at need:
Show that thou hast a heavier hand
Than erst came forth from Northern land;
A hand so strong, a heart so high,
These tyrants all shall beaten cry,
'From Normans and the Norman race
Deliver us, O God of grace!'"

The tumult was more violent at Rouen than anywhere else, and the
Parliament energetically resisted the mob.  It had sent two counsellors
as a deputation to Paris to inform the king about the state of affairs.
"You may signify to the gentlemen of the Parliament of Rouen," said
Chancellor Seguier, in answer to the delegates, "that I thank them for
the trouble they have taken on this occasion; I will let the king know
how they have behaved in this affair.  I beg them to go on as they have
begun.  I know that the Parliament did very good service there."

In fact, several counsellors, on foot in the street and in the very midst
of the revolters, had, at the peril of their lives, defended Le Tellier
de Tourneville, receiver-general of gabels, and his officers, whilst the
whole Parliament, in their robes, with the premier president at their
head, perambulated Rouen, amidst the angry mob, repairing at once to the
points most threatened, insomuch that the presidents and counsellors were
"in great danger and fear for their skins."  [_Histoire du Parlement de
Normandy,_ by M. Floquet, t. iv.]  It was this terror, born of tumults
and the sight of an infuriated populace, which, at a later period,
retarded the Parliament in dealing out justice, and brought down upon
it the wrath of the king and of the cardinal.

Meanwhile the insurrection was gaining ground, and the local authorities
were powerless to repress it.  There was hesitation at the king's council
in choosing between Marshal Rantzau and M. de Gassion to command the
forces ordered to march into Normandy.  "That country yields no wine,"
said the king "that will not do for Rantzau, or be good quarters for
him."  And they sent Colonel Gnssion, not so heavy a drinker as Rantzau,
a good soldier and an inflexible character.  First at Caen, then at
Avranches, where there was fighting to be done, at Coutances and at
Elbeuf, Gassion's soldiery everywhere left the country behind them in
subjection, in ruin, and in despair.  They entered Rouen on the 31st of
December, 1639, and on the 2d of January, 1640, the chancellor himself
arrived to do justice on the rebels heaped up in the prisons, whom the
Parliament dared not bring up for judgment.  "I come to Rouen," he said,
on entering the town, "not to deliberate, but to declare and execute the
matters on which my mind is made up."  And he forbade all intervention on
the part of the archbishop, Francis de Harlay, who was disposed, in
accordance with his office of love as well as the parliamentary name he
bore, to implore pity for the culprits, and to excuse the backward
judges.  The chancellor did not give himself the trouble to draw up
sentences. "The decree is at the tip of my staff," replied Picot, captain
of his guards, when he was asked to show his orders.  The executions were
numerous in Higher and Lower Normandy, and the Parliament received the
wages of its tardiness.  All the members of the body, even the most aged
and infirm, were obliged to leave Rouen.  A commission of fifteen
councillors of the Parliament of Paris came to replace provisionally the
interdicted Parliament of Normandy; and, when the magistrates were
empowered at last to resume their sitting, it was only a six months'
term: that is, the Parliament henceforth found itself divided into two
fragments, perfect strangers one to the other, which were to sit
alternately for six months.  "A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign
court, for by the six months' term," says M. Floquet, "there was no
longer any Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament,
making war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to
carve and cut without control."

"All obedience is now from fear," wrote Grotius to Oxenstiern, chancellor
of Sweden; "the idea is to exorcise and annihilate hatred by means of
terror."  "This year," wrote an inhabitant of Rouen, "there have been no
New Year's presents [_etrennes_], no singing of 'the king's drinking-song
[_le roi boit_], in any house.  Little children will be able to tell
tales of it when they have attained to man's estate; for never, these
fifty years past, so far as I can learn, has it been so."  [_Journal de
l'Abbe de la Rue_.]  The heaviest imposts weighed upon the whole
province, which thus expiated the crime of an insignificant portion of
its inhabitants.  "The king shall not lose the value of this handkerchief
that I hold," said the superintendent Bullion, on arriving at Rouen.  And
he kept his word: Rouen alone had to pay more than three millions.  The
province and its Parliament were henceforth reduced to submission.

It was not only the Parliaments that resisted the efforts of Cardinal
Richelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in the hands of
the king.  From the time that the sovereigns had given up convoking the
states-general, the states-provincial had alone preserved the right of
bringing to the foot of the throne the plaints and petitions of subjects.
Unhappily few provinces enjoyed this privilege; Languedoc, Brittany,
Burgundy, Provence, Dauphiny, and the countship of Pau alone were
states-districts, that is to say, allowed to tax themselves
independently and govern themselves to a certain extent.  Normandy,
though an elections-district, and, as such, subject to the royal agents
in respect of finance, had states which continued to meet even in 1666.
The states-provincial were always convoked by the king, who fixed the
place and duration of assembly.

The composition of the states-provincial varied a great deal, according
to the districts.  In Brittany all noblemen settled in the province had
the right of sitting, whilst the third estate were represented by only
forty deputies.  In Languedoc, on the contrary, the nobility had but
twenty-three representatives, and the class of the third estate numbered
sixty-eight deputies.  Hence, no doubt, the divergences of conduct to be
remarked in those two provinces between the Parliament and the
states-provincial.  In Languedoc, even during Montmorency's insurrection,
the Parliament remained faithful to the king and submissive to the
cardinal, whilst the states declared in favor of the revolt: in Brittany,
the Parliament thwarted Richelieu's efforts in favor of trade, which had
been enthusiastically welcomed by the states.

In Languedoc as well as in Dauphiny the cardinal's energy was constantly
directed towards reducing the privileges which put the imposts, and,
consequently, the royal revenues, at the discretion of the states.
Montmorency's insurrection cost Languedoc a great portion of its
liberties, which had already been jeoparded, in 1629, on the occasion of
the Huguenots' rising; and those of Dauphiny were completely lost; the
states were suppressed in 1628.

The states of Burgundy ordinarily assembled every three years, but they
were accustomed, on separating, to appoint "a chamber of states-general,"
whereat the nobility, clergy, and third estate were represented, and
which was charged to watch over the interests of the province in the
interval between the sessions. When, in 1629, Richelieu proposed to
create, as in Languedoc, a body of "elect" to arrange with the fiscal
agents for the rating of imposts without the concurrence of the states,
the assembly proclaimed that "it was all over with the liberties of the
province if the edict passed," and, in the chamber of the nobility, two
gentlemen were observed to draw their swords.  But, spite of the
disturbance which took place at Dijon, in 1630, on occasion of an impost
on wines, and which was called, from the title of a popular ditty, _la
Sedition de Lanturlu,_ the province preserved its liberties, and remained
a states-district.

It was the same subject that excited in Provence the revolt of the
_Cascaveous,_ or bell-bearers.  Whenever there was any question of
elections or "elect," the conspirators sounded their bells as a rallying
signal, and so numerous was the body of adherents that the bells were
heard tinkling everywhere.  The Prince of Conde was obliged to march
against the revolters, and the states assembled at Tarascon found
themselves forced to vote a subsidy of one million five hundred thousand
livres.  At this cost the privileges of Provence were respected.

The states of Brittany, on the contrary, lent the cardinal faithful
support, when he repaired thither with the king, in 1626, at the time of
the conspiracy of Chalais; the Duke of Vendome, governor of Brittany, had
just been arrested; the states requested the king "never to give them a
governor issue of the old dukes, and to destroy the fortifications of the
towns and castles which were of no use for the defence of the country."
The petty noblemen, a majority in the states, thus delivered over the
province to the kingly power, from jealousy of the great lords.  The
ordinance, dated from Nantes on the 31st of July, 1626, rendered the
measure general throughout France.  The battlements of the castles fell
beneath the axe of the demolishers, and the masses of the district
welcomed enthusiastically the downfall of those old reminiscences of
feudal oppression.

As a sequel to the systematic humiliation of the great lords, even when
provincial governors, and to the gradual enfeeblement of provincial
institutions, Richelieu had to create in all parts of France, still so
diverse in organization as well as in manners, representatives of the
kingly power, of too modest and feeble a type to do without him, but
capable of applying his measures and making his wishes respected.  Before
now the kings of France had several times over perceived the necessity of
keeping up a supervision over the conduct of their officers in the
provinces.  The inquisitors (_enquesteurs_) of St.  Louis, the ridings of
the revising-masters (_chevauehees des maitres des requetes_), the
departmental commissioners (_commissaires departis_) of Charles IX., were
so many temporary and travelling inspectors, whose duty it was to inform
the king of the state of affairs throughout the kingdom.  Richelieu
substituted for these shifting commissions a fixed and regular
institution, and in 1637 he established in all the provinces overseers of
justice, police, and finance, who were chosen for the most part from
amongst the burgesses, and who before long concentrated in their hands
the whole administration, and maintained the struggle of the kingly power
against the governors, the sovereign courts, and the states-provincial.

At the time when the overseers of provinces were instituted, the battle
of pure monarchy was gained; Richelieu had no further need of allies, he
wanted mere subjects; but at the beginning of his ministry he had felt
the need of throwing himself sometimes for support on the nation, and
this great foe of the states-general had twice convoked the Assembly of
Notables.  The first took place at Fontainebleau, in 1625-6.  The
cardinal was at that time at loggerheads with the court of Rome: "If the
Most Christian King," said he, "is bound to watch over the interests of
the Catholic church, he has first of all to maintain his own reputation
in the world.  What use would it be for a state to have power, riches,
and popular government, if it had not character enough to bring other
people to form alliance with it?"  These few words summed up the great
minister's foreign policy, to protect the Catholic church whilst keeping
up Protestant alliances.  The Notables understood the wisdom of this
conduct, and Richelieu received their adhesion. It was just the same the
following year, the day after the conspiracy of Chalais; the cardinal
convoked the Assembly of Notables.  "We do protest before the living
God," said the letters of convocation, "that we have no other aim and
intention but His honor and the welfare of our subjects; that is why we
do conjure in His name those whom we convoke, and do most expressly
command them, without fear or desire of displeasing or pleasing any, to
give us, in all frankness and sincerity, the counsels they shall judge on
their consciences to be the most salutary and convenient for the welfare
of the commonwealth."  The assembly so solemnly convoked opened its
sittings at the palace of the Tuileries on the 2d of December, 1626.  The
state of the finances was what chiefly occupied those present; and the
cardinal himself pointed out the general principles of the reform he
calculated upon establishing.  "It is impossible," he said, "to meddle
with the expenses necessary for the preservation of the state; it were a
crime to think of such a thing.  The retrenchment, therefore, must be in
the case of useless expenses.  The most stringent rules are and appear to
be, even to the most ill-regulated minds, comparatively mild, when they
have, in deed as well as in appearance, no object but the public good and
the safety of the state.  To restore the state to its pristine splendor,
we need not many ordinances, but a great deal of practical performance."

The performance appertained to Richelieu, and he readily dispensed with
many ordinances.  The Assembly was favorable to his measures; but amongst
those that it rejected was the proposal to substitute loss of offices and
confiscation for the penalty of death in matters of rebellion and
conspiracy.  "Better a moderate but certain penalty," said the cardinal,
"than a punishment too severe to be always inflicted."  It was the
notables who preserved in the hands of the inflexible minister the
terrible weapon of which he availed himself so often.  The Assembly
separated on the 24th of February, 1627, the last that was convoked
before the revolution of 1789.  It was in answer to its demands, as well
as to those of the states of 1614, that the keeper of the seals, Michael
Marillac, drew up, in 1629, the important administrative ordinance which
has preserved from its author's name the title of _Code Michau_.

The cardinal had propounded to the Notables a question which he had
greatly at heart--the foundation of a navy.  Already, when disposing,
some weeks previously, of the government of Brittany, which had been
taken away from the Duke of Vendome, he had separated from the office
that of admiral of Brittany; already he was in a position to purchase
from M. de Montmorency his office of grand admiral of France, so as to
suppress it and substitute for it that of grand master of navigation,
which was personally conferred upon Richelieu by an edict enregistered on
the 18th of March, 1627 .

"Of the power which it has seemed agreeable to his Majesty that I should
hold," he wrote on the 20th of January, 1627, "I can say with truth, that
it is so moderate that it could not be more so to be an appreciable
service, seeing that I have desired no wage or salary so as not to be a
charge to the state, and I can add without vanity that the proposal to
take no wage came from me, and that his Majesty made a difficulty about
letting it be so."

The Notables had thanked the king, for the intention he had "of being
pleased to give the kingdom the treasures of the sea which nature had so
liberally proffered it, for without [keeping] the sea one cannot profit
by the sea nor maintain war."  Harbors repaired and fortified, arsenals
established at various points on the coast, organization of marine
regiments, foundation of pilot-schools, in fact, the creation of a
powerful marine which, in 1642, numbered sixty-three vessels and
twenty-two galleys, that left the roads of Barcelona after the
rejoicings for the capture of Perpignan and arrived the same evening at
Toulon--such were the fruits of Richelieu's administration of naval
affairs. "Instead," said the bailiff of Forbin, "of having a handful of
rebels forcing us, as of late, to compose our naval forces of foreigners
and implore succor from Spain, England, Malta, and Holland, we are at
present in a condition to do as much for them if they continue in
alliance with us, or to beat them when they fall off from us."

So much progress on every point, so many efforts in all directions,
eighty-five vessels afloat, a hundred regiments of infantry, and three
hundred troops of cavalry, almost constantly on a war footing, naturally
entailed enormous expenses and terrible burdens on the people.  It was
Richelieu's great fault to be more concerned about his object than
scrupulous as to the means he employed for arriving at it.  His
principles were as harsh as his conduct.  "Reason does not admit of
exempting the people from all burdens," said he, "because in such case,
on losing the mark of their subjection, they would also lose remembrance
of their condition, and, if they were free from tribute, would think that
they were from obedience also."  Cruel words those, and singularly
destitute of regard for Christian charity and human dignity, beside
which, however, must be placed these: "If the subsidies imposed on the
people were not to be kept within moderate bounds, even when they were
needed for the service of the country, they would not cease to be
unjust."  The strong common sense of this great mind did not allow him to
depart for long from a certain hard equity.  Posterity has preserved the
memory of his equity less than of his hardness: men want sympathy more
than justice.




CHAPTER XL.----LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, THE CATHOLICS AND THE
PROTESTANTS.

Cardinal Richelieu has often been accused of indifference towards the
Catholic church; the ultramontanes called him the Huguenots' cardinal; in
so speaking there was either a mistake or a desire to mislead; Richelieu
was all his life profoundly and sincerely Catholic; not only did no doubt
as to the fundamental doctrines of his church trouble his mind, but he
also gave his mind to her security and her aggrandizement.  He was a
believer on conviction, without religious emotions and without the
mystic's zeal; he labored for Catholicism whilst securing for himself
Protestant alliances, and if the independence of his mind caused him to
feel the necessity for a reformation, it was still in the church and by
the church that he would have had it accomplished.

Spirits more fervent and minds more pious than Richelieu's felt the same
need.  On emerging from the violent struggles of the religious wars, the
Catholic church had not lost her faith, but she had neglected sweetness
and light.  King Henry IV.'s conversion had secured to her the victory in
France, but she was threatened with letting it escape from her hands by
her own fault.  God raised up for her some great servents who preserved
her from this danger.

The oratorical and political brilliancy of the Catholic church in the
reign of Louis XIV. has caused men to forget the great religious movement
in the reign of Louis XIII.  Learned and mystic in the hands of Cardinal
Berulle, humane and charitable with St. Vincent de Paul, bold and saintly
with M. de Saint Cyran, the church underwent from all quarters quickening
influences which roused her from her dangerous lethargy.

The effort was attempted at all points at once.  The priests had sunk
into an ignorance as perilous as their lukewarmness. Mid all the
diplomatic negotiations which he undertook in Richelieu's name, and the
intrigues he, with the queen-mother, often hatched against him, Cardinal
Berulle founded the con gregation of the Oratory, designed to train up
well-informed and pious young priests with a capacity for devoting
themselves to the education of children as well as the edification of the
people.  " It is a body," said Bossizet, " in which everybody obeys and
nobody commands."  No vow fettered the members of this celebrated
congregation, which gave to the world Malebranche and Massillon.  It was,
again, under the inspiration of Cardinal B6rulle, renowned for the pious
direction of souls, that the order of Carmelites, hitherto confined to
Spain, was founded in France.  The convent in Rue St.  Jacques soon
numbered amongst its penitents women of the highest rank.

The labors of Mgr. de Berulle tended especially to the salvation of
individual souls; those of St. Vincent de Paul embraced a vaster field,
and one offering more scope to Christian humanity.  Some time before, in
1610, St. Francis de Sales had founded, under the direction of Madame de
Chantal, the order of Visitation, whose duty was the care of the sick and
poor; he had left the direction of his new institution to M. Vincent, as
was at that time the appellation of the poor priest without birth and
without fortune, who was one day to be celebrated throughout the world
under the name of St. Vincent de Paul.  This direction was not enough to
satisfy his zeal for charity; children and sick, the ignorant and the
convict, all those who suffered in body or spirit, seemed to summon
M. Vincent to their aid; he founded in 1617, in a small parish of Bresse,
the charitable society of Servants of the poor, which became in 1633, at
Paris, under the direction of Madame Legras, niece of the keeper of the
seals Marillac, the sisterhood off Servants of the sick poor, and the
cradle of the Sisters of Charity.  "They shall not have, as a regular
rule," said St.  Vincent, "any monastery but the houses of the sick, any
chapel but their parish-church, any cloister but the streets of the town
and the rooms of the hospitals, any enclosure but obedience, any grating
but the fear of God, or any veil but the holiest and most perfect
modesty."  Eighteen thousand daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, of whom
fourteen thousand are French, still testify at this day to the
far-sighted wisdom of their founder; his regulations have endured
like his work and the necessities of the poor.

It was to the daughters of Charity that M. Vincent confided the work in
connection with foundlings, when his charitable impulses led him, in
1638, to take up the cause of the poor little abandoned things who were
perishing by heaps at that time in Paris.  Appealing for help, on their
account, to the women of the world, one evening when he was in want of
money, he exclaimed at the house of the Duchess of Aiguillon, Cardinal
Richelieu's niece, "Come now, ladies; compassion and charity have made
you adopt these, little creatures as your own children; you have been
their mothers according to grace, since their mothers according to nature
have abandoned them.  Consider, then, whether you too will abandon them;
their life and their death are in your hands; it is time to pronounce
their sentence, and know whether you will any longer have pity upon them.
They will live if you continue to take a charitable care of them; they
will die and perish infallibly if you abandon them."  St. Vincent de Paul
had confidence in human nature, and everywhere on his path sprang up good
works in response to his appeals; the foundation of Mission-priests or
Lazarists, designed originally to spread about in the rural districts the
knowledge of God, still testifies in the East, whither they carry at one
and the same time the Gospel and the name of France, to that great
awakening of Christian charity which signalized the reign of Louis XIII.
The same inspiration created the seminary of St. Sulpice, by means of
M. Olier's solicitude, the brethren of Christian Doctrine and the
Ursulines, devoted to the education of childhood, and so many other
charitable or pious establishments, noble fruits of devoutness and
Christian sacrifice.

Nowhere was this fructuating idea of the sacrifice, the immolation of man
for God and of the present in prospect of eternity, more rigorously
understood and practised than amongst the disciples of John du Vergier de
Hauranne, Abbot of St. Cyran.  More bold in his conceptions than Cardinal
Berulle and St. Vincent de Paul, of a nature more austere and at the same
time more ardent, he had early devoted himself to the study of theology.
Connected in his youth with a Fleming, Jansen, known under the name of
Jansenius and afterwards created Bishop of Ypres, he adopted with fervor
the doctrines as to the grace of God which his friend had imbibed in the
school of St. Augustin, and employing in the direction of souls that
zealous ardor which makes conquerors, he set himself to work to
regenerate the church by penance, sanctity, and sacrifice; God supreme,
reigning over hearts subdued, that was his ultimate object, and he
marched towards it without troubling himself about revolts and
sufferings, certain that he would be triumphant with God and for Him.

[Illustration: The Abbot of St. Cyran----234]

Victories gained over souls are from their very nature of a silent sort:
but M. de St. Cyran was not content with them.  He wrote also, and his
book "Petrus Aurelius," published under the veil of the anonymous,
excited a great stir by its defence of the rights of the bishops against
the monks, and even against the pope.  The Gallican bishops welcomed at
that time with lively satisfaction, its eloquent pleadings in favor of
their cause.  But, at a later period, the French clergy discovered in
St. Cyran's book free-thinking concealed under dogmatic forms.  "In case
of heresy any Christian may become judge," said Petrus Aurelius.  Who,
then, should be commissioned to define heresy?  So M. de St. Cyran was
condemned.

He had been already by an enemy more formidable than the assemblies of
the clergy of France.  Cardinal Richelieu, naturally attracted towards
greatness as he was at a later period towards the infant prodigy of the
Pascals, had been desirous of attaching St. Cyran to himself.
"Gentlemen," said he one day, as he led back the simple priest into the
midst of a throng of his courtiers, "here you see the most learned man in
Europe."  But the Abbot of St. Cyran would accept no yoke but God's: he
remained independent, and perhaps hostile, pursuing, without troubling
himself about the cardinal, the great task he had undertaken.  Having
had, for two years past, the spiritual direction of the convent of Port
Royal, he had found in Mother Angelica Arnauld, the superior and reformer
of the monastery, in her sister, Mother Agnes, and in the nuns of their
order, souls worthy of him and capable of tolerating his austere
instructions.

Before long he had seen forming, beside Port Royal and in the solitude of
the fields, a nucleus of penitents, emulous of the hermits of the desert.
M. Le Maitre, Mother Angelica's nephew, a celebrated advocate in the
Parliament of Paris, had quitted all "to have no speech but with God."
A howling (_rugissant_) penitent, he had drawn after him his brothers,
MM. de Sacy and de Sericourt, and, ere long, young Lancelot, the learned
author of Greek roots: all steeped in the rigors of penitential life, all
blindly submissive to M. de St.  Cyran and his saintly requirements.  The
director's power over so many eminent minds became too great.  Richelieu
had comprehended better than the bishops the tendency of M. de St.
Cyran's ideas and writings.  "He continued to publish many opinions, new
and leading to dangerous conclusions," says Father Joseph in his
_Memoires,_" in such sort that the king, being advertised, commanded him
to be kept a prisoner in the Bois de Vincennes."  "That man is worse than
six armies," said Cardinal Richelieu; "if Luther and, Calvin had been
shut up when they began to dogmatize, states would have been spared a
great deal of trouble."

The consciences of men and the ardor of their souls are not so easily
stifled by prison or exile.  The Abbot of St. Cyran, in spite of the
entreaties of his powerful friends, remained at Vincennes up to the death
of Cardinal Richelieu; the seclusionists of Port Royal were driven from
their retreat and obliged to disperse; but neither the severities of
Richelieu, nor, at a later period, those of Louis XIV., were the true
cause of the ultimate powerlessness of Jansenism to bring about that
profound reformation of the church which had been the dream of the Abbot
of St. Cyran.  He had wished to immolate sinful man to God, and he
regarded sanctity as the complete sacrifice of human nature corrupt to
its innermost core.  Human conscience could not accept this cruel yoke;
its liberty revolted against so narrow a prison; and the Protestant
reformation, with a doctrine as austere as that of M. de St. Cyran, but
more true and more simple in its practical application, offered strong
minds the satisfaction of direct and personal relations between God and
man; it saw the way to satisfy them without crushing them; and that is
why the kingly power in France succeeded in stifling Jansenism without
having ever been able to destroy the Protestant faith.

Cardinal Richelieu dreaded the doctrines of M. de St. Cyran, and still
more those of the reformation, which went directly to the emancipation of
souls; but he had the wit to resist ecclesiastical encroachments, and,
for all his being a cardinal, never did minister maintain more openly the
independence of the civil power.  "The king, in things temporal,
recognizes no sovereign save God."  That had always been the theory of
the Gallican church.  "The church of France is in the kingdom, and not
the kingdom in the church," said the jurisconsult Loyseau, thus
subjecting ecclesiastics to the common law of all citizens.

The French clergy did not understand it so; they had recourse to the
liberties of the Gallican church in order to keep up a certain measure of
independence as regarded Rome, but they would not give up their ancient
privileges, and especially the right of taking an independent share in
the public necessities without being taxed as a matter of law and
obligation.  Here it was that Cardinal Richelieu withstood them: he
maintained that, the ecclesiastics and the brotherhoods not having the
right to hold property in France by mortmain, the king tolerated their
possession, of his grace, but he exacted the payment of seignorial dues.
The clergy at that time possessed more than a quarter of the property in
France; the tax to be paid amounted, it is said, to eighty millions.  The
subsidies further demanded reached a total of eight millions six hundred
livres.

The clergy in dismay wished to convoke an assembly to determine their
conduct; and after a great deal of difficulty it was authorized by the
cardinal.  Before long he intimated to the five prelates who were most
hostile to him that they must quit the assembly and retire to their
dioceses.  "There are," said the Bishop of Autun, who was entirely
devoted to Richelieu, "some who show great delicacy about agreeing to all
that the king demands, as if they had a doubt whether all the property of
the church belonged to him or not, and whether his Majesty, leaving the
ecclesiastics wherewithal to provide for their subsistence and a moderate
establishment, could not take all the surplus."  That sort of doctrine
would never do for the clergy; still they consented to pay five millions
and a half, the sum to which the minister lowered his pretensions.  "The
wants of the state," said Richelieu, "are real; those of the church are
fanciful and arbitrary; if the king's armies had not repulsed the enemy,
the clergy would have suffered far more."

Whilst the cardinal imposed upon the French clergy the obligations common
to all subjects, he defended the kingly power and majesty against the
Ultramoutanes, and especially against the Jesuits.  Several of their
pamphlets had already been censured by his order when Father Sanctarel
published a treatise on heresy and schism, clothed with the pope's
approbation, and containing, amongst other dangerous propositions, the
following: "The pope can depose emperor and kings for their iniquities or
for personal incompetence, seeing that he has a sovereign, supreme, and
absolute power."  The work was referred to the Parliament, who ordered it
to be burned in Place de Greve; there was talk of nothing less than the
banishment of the entire order.

Father Cotton, superior of the French Jesuits, was summoned to appear
before the council; he gave up Father Sanctarel unreservedly, making what
excuse he best could for the approbation of the pope and of the general
of the Jesuits.  The condemnation of the work was demanded, and it was
signed by sixteen French fathers.  The Parliament was disposed to push
the matter farther, when Richelieu, always as prudent as he was firm in
his relations with this celebrated order, represented to the king that
there are "certain abuses which are more easily put down by passing them
over than by resolving to destroy them openly, and that it was time to
take care lest proceedings should be carried to a point which might be as
prejudicial to his service as past action had been serviceable to it."
The Jesuits remained in France, and their college at Clermont was not
closed; but they published no more pamphlets against the cardinal.  They
even defended him at need.

Richelieu's grand quarrel with the clergy was nearing its end when the
climax was reached of a disagreement with the court of Rome, dating from
some time back.  The pope had never forgiven the cardinal for not having
accepted his mediation in the affair with Spain on the subject of the
Valteline; he would not accede to the desire which Richelieu manifested
to become legate of the Holy See in France, as Cardinal d'Amboise had
been; and when Marshal d'Estrees arrived as ambassador at Rome, his
resolute behavior brought the misunderstanding to a head: the pope
refused the customary funeral honors to Cardinal La Valette, who had died
in battle, without dispensation, at the head of the king's army in
Piedmont.  Richelieu preserved appearances no longer; the king refused
to receive the pope's nuncio, and prohibited the bishops from any
communication with him.  The quarrel was envenomed by a pamphlet called
_Optatus Gallus_.  The cardinal's enemies represented him as a new Luther
ready to excite a schism and found a patriarchate in France.  Father
Rabardeau, of the Jesuits' order, maintained, in reply, that the act
would not be schismatical, and that the consent of Rome would be no more
necessary to create a patriarchate in France than it had been to
establish those of Constantinople and Jerusalem.

Urban VIII. took fright; he sent to France Julius Mazarin, at that time
vice-legate, and already frequently employed in the negotiations between
the court of Rome and Cardinal Richelieu, who had taken a great fancy to
him.  The French clergy had just obtained authority to vote the subsidy
in an assembly; and the pope contented himself with this feeble
concession.  Mazarin put the finishing touch to the reconciliation, and
received as recompense the cardinal's hat.  In fact, the victory of the
civil power was complete, and the independence of the crown clearly
established.  "His Holiness," said the cardinal, "ought to commend the
zeal shown by his Majesty for the welfare of the church, and to remain
satisfied with the respect shown him by an appeal to his authority which
his Majesty might have dispensed with in this matter, having his
Parliaments to fall back upon for the chastisement of those who lived
evilly in his kingdom."  In principle, the supreme question between the
court of Rome and the kingly power remained undecided, and it showed
wisdom on the part of Urban VIII., as well as of Cardinal Richelieu,
never to fix fundamentally and within their exact limits the rights and
pretensions of the church or the crown.

Cardinal Richelieu had another battle to deliver, and another victory,
which was to be more decisive, to gain.  During his exile at Avignon, he
had written against the Reformers, violently attacking their doctrines
and their precepts; he was, therefore, personally engaged in the
theological strife, and more hotly than has been made out; but he was
above everything a great politician, and the rebellion of the Reformers,
their irregular political assemblies, their alliances with the foreigner,
occupied him, far more than their ministers' preaching.  It was state
within state that the reformers were seeking to found, and that the
cardinal wished to upset.  Seconded by the Prince of Conde, the king had
put an end to the war which cost the life of the constable De Luynes, but
the peace concluded at Montpellier on the 19th of November, 1622, had
already received many a blow; pacific counsels amongst the Reformers were
little by little dying out together with the old servants of Henry IV.;
Du Plessis-Mornay had lately died (November 11, 1623) at his castle of
Foret-sur-Sevres, and the direction of the party fell entirely into the
hands of the Duke of Rohan, a fiery temper and soured by misfortunes as
well as by continual efforts made on the part of his brother, the Duke of
Soubise, more restless and less earnest than he.  Hostilities broke out
afresh at the beginning of the year 1625.  The Reformers complained that,
instead of demolishing Fort Louis, which commanded La Rochelle, all haste
was being made to complete the ramparts they had hoped to see razed to
the ground: a small royal fleet mustered quietly at Le Blavet, and
threatened to close the sea against the Rochellese.  The peace of
Montpellier had left the Protestants only two surety-places, Montauban
and La Rochelle; and they clung to them with desperation.  On the 6th of
January, 1625, Soubise suddenly entered the harbor of Le Blavet with
twelve vessels, and seizing without a blow the royal ships, towed them
off in triumph to La Rochelle--a fatal success, which was to cost that
town dear.

The royal marine had hardly an existence; after the capture made by
Soubise, help had to be requested from England and Holland; the marriage
of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henry IV., with the Prince of Wales,
who was soon to become Charles I., was concluded; the English promised
eight ships; the treaties with the United Provinces obliged the
Hollanders to supply twenty, which they would gladly have refused to send
against their brethren, if they could; the cardinal even required that
the ships should be commanded by French captains.  "One lubber may ruin a