stand against Gustavus Adolphus.  Wallenstein, deeply offended, had for
a long while held out; but, being assured of the supreme command over the
fresh army which Ferdinand was raising in all directions, he took the
field at the end of April, 1632.  Wallenstein effected a junction with
the Elector of Bavaria, forcing Gustavus Adolphus back, little by little,
on Nuremberg.  "I mean to show the King of Sweden a new way of making
war," said the German general.  The sufferings of his army in an
intrenched camp soon became intolerable to Gustavus Adolphus.  In spite
of inferiority of forces, he attacked the enemy's redoubts, and was
repulsed; the king revictualled Nuremberg, and fell back upon Bavaria.
Wallenstein at first followed him, and then flung himself upon Saxony,
and took Leipzig; Gustavus Adolphus advanced to succor his ally, and the
two armies met near the little town of Liitzen, on the 16th of November,
1632.

There was a thick fog.  Gustavus Adolphus, rising before daybreak, would
not put on his breastplate, his old wounds hurting him under harness:
"God is my breastplate," he said.  When somebody came and asked him for
the watchword, he answered, "God with us;" and it was Luther's hymn,
_"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (Our God is a strong tower),_ that the
Swedes sang as they advanced towards the enemy.  The king had given
orders to march straight on Lutzen.  "He animated his men to the fight,"
says Richelieu, "with words that he had at command, whilst Wallenstein,
by his mere presence and the sternness of his silence, seemed to let his
men understand that, as he had been wont to do, he would reward them or
chastise them, according as they did well or ill on that great day."

It was ten A. M., and the fog had just lifted; six batteries of cannon
and two large ditches defended the Imperialists; the artillery from the
ramparts of Liitzen played upon the king's army, the balls came whizzing
about him; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar was the first to attack, pushing
forward on Liitzen, which was soon taken; Gustavus Adolphus marched on to
the enemy's intrenchments; for an instant the Swedish infantry seemed to
waver; the king seized a pike and flung himself amidst the ranks.  "After
crossing so many rivers, scaling so many walls, and storming so many
places, if you have not courage enough to defend yourselves, at least
turn your heads to see me die," he shouted to the soldiers.  They
rallied: the king remounted his horse, bearing along with him a regiment
of Smalandaise cavalry.  "You will behave like good fellows, all of you,"
he said to them, as he dashed over the two ditches, carrying, as he went,
two batteries of the enemy's cannon.  "He took off his hat and rendered
thanks to God for the victory He was giving him."

Two regiments of Imperial cuirassiers rode up to meet him; the king
charged them at the head of his Swedes; he was in the thickest of the
fight; his horse received a ball through the neck; Gustavus had his arm
broken; the bone came through the sleeve of his coat; he wanted to have
it attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to assist him in
leaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant-
colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shot
him, point-blank, in the back with a pistol.  The king fell from his
horse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king's
squires, who killed him.  Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a German
page, who tried to raise him; the king could no longer speak; three
Austrian cuirassiers surrounded him, asking the page the name of the
wounded man; the youngster would not say, and fell, riddled with wounds,
on his master's body; the Austrians sent one more pistol-shot into the
dying man's temple, and stripped him of his clothes, leaving him only his
shirt.  The melley recommenced, and successive charges of cavalry passed
over the hero's corpse; there were counted nine open wounds and thirteen
scars on his body when it was recovered towards the evening.

[Illustration: Death of Gustavus and his Page----290]

One of the king's officers, who had been unable to quit the fight in
time to succor him, went and announced his fall to Duke Bernard of
Saxe-Weimar.  To him a retreat was suggested; but, "We mustn't think of
that," said he, "but of death or victory."  A lieutenant-colonel of a
cavalry regiment made some difficulty about resuming the attack: the duke
passed his sword through his body, and, putting himself at the head of
the troops, led them back upon the enemy's intrenchments which he carried
and lost three times.  At last he succeeded in turning the cannon upon
the enemy, and "that gave the turn to the victory, which, nevertheless,
was disputed till night."

"It was one of the most horrible ever heard of," says Cardinal Richelieu;
"six thousand dead or dying were left on the field of battle, where Duke
Bernard encamped till morning."

When day came, he led the troops off to Weisenfeld.  The army knew
nothing yet of the king's death.  The Duke of Saxe-Weimar had the body
brought to the front.  "I will no longer conceal from you," he said, "the
misfortune that has befallen us; in the name of the glory that you have
won in following this great prince, help me to exact vengeance for it,
and to let all the world see that he commanded soldiers who rendered him
invincible, and, even after his death, the terror of his enemies."  A
shout arose from the host, "We will follow you whither you will, even to
the end of the earth."

"Those who look for spots on the sun, and find something reprehensible
even in virtue itself, blame this king," says Cardinal Richelieu,
"for having died like a trooper; but they do not reflect that all
conqueror-princes are obliged to do not only the duty of captain, but of
simple soldier, and to be the first in peril, in order to lead thereto
the soldier who would not run the risk without them.  It was the case
with Caesar and with Alexander, and the Swede died so much the more
gloriously than either the one or the other, in that it is more becoming
the condition of a great captain and a conqueror to die sword in hand,
making a tomb for his body of his enemies on the field of battle, than to
be hated of his own and poniarded by the hands of his nearest and
dearest, or to die of poison or of drowning in a wine-butt."

Just like Napoleon in Egypt and Italy, Gustavus Adolphus, had performed
the prelude, by numerous wars against his neighbors, to the grand
enterprise which was to render his name illustrious.  Vanquished in his
struggle with Denmark in 1613, he had carried war into Muscovy, conquered
towns and provinces, and as early as 1617 he had effected the removal of
the Russians from the shores of the Baltic.  The Poles made a pretence of
setting their own king, Sigismund, upon the throne of Sweden; and for
eighteen years Gustavus Adolphus had bravely defended his rights, and
protected and extended his kingdom up to the truce of Altenmarket,
concluded in 1629 through the intervention of Richelieu, who had need of
the young King of Sweden in order to oppose the Emperor Ferdinand and the
dangerous power of the house of Austria.  Summoned to Germany by the
Protestant princes who were being oppressed and despoiled, and assured of
assistance and subsidies from the King of France, Gustavus Adolphus had,
no doubt, ideas of a glorious destiny, which have been flippantly taxed
with egotistical ambition.  Perhaps, in the noble joy of victory, when he
"was marching on without fighting," seeing provinces submit, one after
another, without his being hardly at the pains to draw his sword, might
he have sometimes dreamed of a Protestant empire and the imperial crown
upon his head; but, assuredly, such was not the aim of his enterprise and
of his life.  "I must in the end make a sacrifice of myself," he had said
on bidding farewell to the Estates of Sweden; and it was to the cause of
Protestantism in Europe that he made this sacrifice.  Sincerely religious
in heart, Gustavus Adolphus was not ignorant that his principal political
strength was in the hands of the Protestant princes; and he put at their
service the incomparable splendor of his military genius.  In two years
the power of the house of Austria, a work of so many efforts and so many
years, was shaken to its very foundations.  The evangelical union of
Protestant princes was re-forming in Germany, and treating, as equal with
equal, with the emperor; Ferdinand was trembling in Vienna, and the
Spaniards, uneasy even in Italy, were collecting their forces to make
head against the irresistible conqueror, when the battle-field of Lutzen
saw the fall, at thirty years of age, of the "hero of the North, the
bulwark of Protestantism," as he was called by his contemporaries,
astounded at his greatness.  God sometimes thus cuts off His noblest
champions in order to make men see that He is master, and He alone
accomplishes His great designs; but to them whom He deigns to thus employ
He accords the glory of leaving their imprint upon the times they have
gone through and the events to which they have contributed.  Two years of
victory in Germany at the head of Protestantism sufficed to make the name
of Gustavus Adolphus illustrious forever.

Richelieu had continued the work of Henry IV.; and Chancellor Oxenstiern
did not leave to perish that of his master and friend.  Scarcely was
Gustavus Adolphus dead when Oxenstiern convoked at Erfurt the deputies
from the Protestant towns, and made them swear the maintenance of the
union.  He afterwards summoned to Heilbronn all the Protestant princes;
the four circles of Upper Germany (Franconia, Suabia, the Palatinate, and
the Upper Rhine), and the elector of Brandenburg alone sent their
representatives; but Richelieu had delegated M. de Feuquieres, who
quietly brought his weight to bear on the decision of the assembly, and
got Oxenstiern appointed to direct the Protestant party; the Elector of
Saxony, who laid claim to this honor, was already leaning towards the
treason which he was to consummate in the following year; France at the
same time renewed her treaty with Sweden and Holland; the great general
of the armies of the empire, Wallenstein, displeased with his master, was
making secret advances to the cardinal and to Oxenstiern; wherever he did
not appear in person the Imperial armies were beaten.  The emperor was
just having his eyes opened, when Wallenstein, summoning around him at
Pilsen his generals and his lieutenants, made them take an oath of
confederacy for the defence of his person and of the army, and, begging
Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and the Saxon generals to join him in Bohemia, he
wrote to Feuquieres to accept the king's secret offers.

Amongst the generals assembled at Pilsen there happened to be Max
Piccolomini, in whom Wallenstein had great confidence: he at once
revealed to the emperor his generalissimo's guilty intrigues.
Wallenstein fell, assassinated by three of his officers, on the 15th of
February, 1634; and the young King of Hungary, the emperor's eldest son,
took the command-in chief of the army under the direction of the veteran
generals of the empire.  On the 6th of September, by one of those
reversals which disconcert all human foresight, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar
and the Swedish marshal, Horn, coming up to the aid of Nordlingen, which
was being besieged by the Austrian army, were completely beaten in front
of that place; and their army retired in disorder, leaving Suabia to the
conqueror.  Protestant Germany was in consternation; all eyes were turned
towards France.

Cardinal Richelieu was ready; the frequent treasons of Duke Charles of
Lorraine had recently furnished him with an opportunity, whilst directing
the king's arms against him, of taking possession, partly by negotiation
and partly by force, first of the town of Nancy, and then of the duchy of
Bar; the duke had abdicated in favor of the cardinal, his brother, who,
renouncing his ecclesiastical dignity, espoused his cousin, Princess
Claude of Lorraine, and took refuge with her at Florence, whilst Charles
led into Germany, to the emperor, all the forces he had remaining.  The
king's armies were coming to provisionally take possession of all the
places in Lothringen, where the Swedes, beaten in front of Nordlingen,
being obliged to abandon the left bank of the Upper Rhine, placed in the
hands of the French the town of Philipsburg, which they had but lately
taken from the Spaniards.  The Rhinegrave Otto, who was commanding in
Elsass for the confederates, in the same way effected his retreat,
delivering over to Marshal La Force Colmar, Schlestadt, and many small
places; the Bishop of Basle and the free city of Mulhausen likewise
claimed French protection.

On the 1st of November, the ambassadors of Sweden and of the Protestant
League signed at Paris a treaty of alliance, soon afterwards ratified by
the diet at Worms, and the French army, entering Germany, under Marshals
La Force and Breze, caused the siege of Heidelberg to be raised on the
23d of December.  Richelieu was in treaty at the same time with the
United Provinces for the invasion of the Catholic Low Countries.  It was
in the name of their ancient liberties that the cardinal, in alliance
with the heretics of Holland, summoned the ancient Flanders to revolt
against Spain; if they refused to listen to this appeal, the confederates
were under mutual promises to divide their conquest between them.  France
confined herself to stipulating for the maintenance of the Catholic
religion in the territory that devolved to Holland.  The army destined
for this enterprise was already in preparation, and the king was setting
out to visit it, when, in April, 1635, he was informed of Chancellor
Oxenstiern's arrival.  Louis XIII. awaited him at Compiegne.  The
chancellor was accompanied by a numerous following, worthy of the man who
held the command of a sovereign over the princes of the Protestant
League; he had at his side the famous Hugo Grotius, but lately exiled
from his country on account of religious disputes, and now accredited as
ambassador to the King of France from the little queen, Christina of
Sweden.  It was Grotius who acted as interpreter between the king and the
chancellor of Sweden.  A rare and grand spectacle was this interview
between, on the one side, the Swede and the Hollander, both of them great
political philosophers in theory or practice, and, on the other, the
all-powerful minister of the King of France, in presence of that king
himself.  When Oxenstiern and Richelieu conferred alone together, the two
ministers had recourse to Latin, that common tongue of the cultivated
minds of their time, and nobody was present at their conversation.
Oxenstiern soon departed for Holland, laden with attentions and presents:
he carried away with him a new treaty of alliance between Sweden and
France, and the assurance that the king was about to declare war against
Spain.

And it broke out, accordingly, on the 19th of May, 1635.  The violation
of the electorate of Treves by the Cardinal Infante, and the carrying-off
of the elector-archbishop served as pretext; and Louis XIII. declared
himself protector of a feeble prince who had placed in his hands the
custody of several places.  Alencon, herald-at-arms of France, appeared
at Brussels, proclamation of war in hand; and, not be able to obtain an
interview with the Cardinal Infante, he hurled it at the feet of the
Belgian herald-at-arms commissioned to receive him, and he affixed a copy
of it to a post he set up in the ground in the last Flemish village, near
the frontier.  On the 6th of June, a proclamation of the king's summoned
the Spanish Low Countries to revolt.  A victory had already been gained
in Luxembourg, close to the little town of Avein, over Prince Thomas of
Savoy, the duke-regnant's brother, who was embroiled with him, and whom
Spain had just taken into her service.  The campaign of 1635 appeared to
be commencing under happy auspices.  These hopes were deceived; the Low
Countries did not respond to the summons of the king and of his
confederates; there was no rising anywhere against the Spanish yoke;
traditional jealousy of the heretics of Holland prevented the Flanders
from declaring for France; it was necessary to undertake a conquest
instead of fomenting an insurrection.  The Prince of Orange was advancing
slowly into Germany; the Elector of Saxony had treated with the emperor,
and several towns were accepting the peace concluded between them at
Prague; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, supported by Cardinal Valette, at the
head of French troops, had been forced to fall back to Metz in order to
protect Lothringen and Elsass.  In order to attach this great general to
himself forever, the king had just ceded to Duke Bernard the landgravate
of Elsass, hereditary possession, as it was, of the house of Austria.
The Prince of Conde was attacking Franche-Comte; the siege of Dole was
dragging its slow length along, when the emperor's most celebrated
lieutenants, John van Weert and Piccolomini, who had formed a junction in
Belgium, all at once rallied the troops of Prince Thomas, and, advancing
rapidly towards Picardy, invaded French soil at the commencement of July,
1636.  La Capelle and Le Catelet were taken by assault, and the
Imperialists laid siege to Corbie, a little town on the Somme four
leagues from Amiens.

Great was the terror at Paris, and, besides the terror, the rage; the
cardinal was accused of having brought ruin upon France; for a moment the
excitement against him was so violent that his friends were disquieted by
it: he alone was unmoved.  The king quitted St. Germain and returned to
Paris, whilst Richelieu, alone, without escort, and with his horses at a
walk, had himself driven to the Hotel de Ville right through the mob in
their fury.  "Then was seen," says Fontenay-Mareuil, "what can be done by
a great heart (vertu), and how it is revered even of the basest souls,
for the streets were so full of folks that there was hardly room to pass,
and all so excited that they spoke of nothing but killing him: as soon as
they saw him approaching, they all held their peace or prayed God to give
him good speed, that he might be able to remedy the evil which was
apprehended."

On the 15th of August, Corbie surrendered to the Spaniards, who crossed
the Somme, wasting the country behind them; but already alarm had given
place to ardent desire for vengeance; the cardinal had thought of
everything and provided for everything: the bodies corporate, from the
Parliament to the trade-syndicates, had offered the king considerable
sums; all the gentlemen and soldiers unemployed had been put on the
active list of the army; and the burgesses of Paris, mounting in throngs
the steps of the Hotel de Ville, went and shook hands with the veteran
Marshal La Force, saying, "Marshal, we want to make war with you."  They
were ordered to form the nucleus of the reserve army which was to protect
Paris.  The Duke of Orleans took the command of the army assembled at
Compiegne, at the head of which the Count of Soissons already was; the
two princes advanced slowly; they halted two days to recover the little
fortress of Roze; the Imperialists fell back; they retired into Artois;
they were not followed, and the French army encamped before Corbie.

Winter was approaching; nobody dared to attack the town; the cardinal had
no confidence in either the Duke of Orleans or the Count of Soissons.  He
went to Amiens, whilst the king established his headquarters at the
castle of Demuin, closer to Corbie.  Richelieu determined to attack the
town by assault; the trenches were opened on the 5th of November; on the
10th the garrison parleyed; on the 14th the place was surrendered.  "I am
very pleased to send you word that we have recovered Corbie," wrote
Voiture to one of his friends, very hostile to the cardinal [_OEuvres de
Voiture,_ p. 175]: "the news will astonish you, no doubt, as well as all
Europe; nevertheless, we are masters of it.  Reflect, I beg you, what has
been the end of this expedition which has made so much noise.  Spain and
Germany had made for the purpose their supremest efforts.  The emperor
had sent his best captains and his best cavalry.  The army of Flanders
had given its best troops.  Out of that is formed an army of twenty-five
thousand horse, fifteen thousand foot, and forty cannon.  This cloud, big
with thunder and lightning, comes bursting over Picardy, which it finds
unsheltered, our arms being occupied elsewhere.  They take, first of all,
La Capelle and Le Catelet; they attack, and in nine days take, Corbie;
and so they are masters of the river; they cross it, and they lay waste
all that lies between the Somme and the Oise.  And so long as there is no
resistance, they valiantly hold the country, they slay our peasants and
burn our villages; but, at the first rumor that reaches them to the
effect that Monsieur is advancing with an army, and that the king is
following close behind him, they intrench themselves behind Corbie; and,
when they learn that there is no halting, and that the march against them
is going on merrily, our conquerors abandon their intrenchments.  And
these determined gentry, who were to pierce France even to the Pyrenees,
who threatened to pillage Paris, and recover there, even in Notre-Dame,
the flags of the battle of Avein, permit us to effect the circumvallation
of a place which is of so much importance to them, give us leisure to
construct forts, and, after that, let us attack and take it by assault
before their very eyes.  Such is the end of the bravadoes of Piccolomini,
who sent us word by his trumpeters to say, at one time, that he wished we
had some powder, and, at another, that we had some cavalry coming, and,
when we had both one and the other, he took very good care to wait for
us.  In such sort, sir, that, except La Capelle and Le Catelet, which are
of no consideration, all the flash made by this grand and victorious army
has been the capture of Corbie, only to give it up again and replace it
in the king's hands, together with a counterscarp, three bastions, and
three demilunes, which it did not possess.  If they had taken ten more of
our places with similar success, our frontier would be in all the better
condition for it, and they would have fortified it better than those who
hitherto have had the charge of it.  .  .  .  Was it not said that we
should expend before this place many millions of gold and many millions
of men with a chance of taking it, perhaps, in three years?  Yet, when
the resolution was taken to attack it by assault, the month of November
being well advanced, there was not a soul but cried out.  The best
intentioned avowed that it showed blindness, and the rest said that we
must be afraid lest our soldiers should not die soon enough of misery and
hunger, and must wish to drown them in their own trenches.  As for me,
though I knew the inconveniencies which necessarily attend sieges
undertaken at this season, I suspended my judgment; for, sooth to say, we
have often seen the cardinal out in matters that he has had done by
others, but we have never yet seen him fail in enterprises that he has
been pleased to carry out in person and that he has supported by his
presence.  I believed, then, that he would surmount all difficulties; and
that he who had taken La Rochelle in spite of Ocean, would certainly take
Corbie too in spite of Winter's rains.  .  .  .  You will tell me, that
it is luck which has made him take fortresses without ever having
conducted a siege before, which has made him, without any experience,
command armies successfully, which has always led him, as it were, by the
hand, and preserved him amidst precipices into which he had thrown
himself, and which, in fact, has often made him appear bold, wise, and
far-sighted: let us look at him, then, in misfortune, and see if he had
less boldness, wisdom, and far sightedness.  Affairs were not going over
well in Italy, and we had met with scarcely more success before Dole.
When it was known that the enemy had entered Picardy, that all is a-flame
to the very banks of the Oise, everybody takes fright, and the chief city
of the realm is in consternation.  On top of that come advices from
Burgundy that the siege of Dole is raised, and from Saintonge that there
are fifteen thousand peasants revolted, and that there is fear lest
Poitou and Guienne may follow this example.  Bad news comes thickly, the
sky is overcast on all sides, the tempest beats upon us in all
directions, and from no quarter whatever does a single ray of good
fortune shine upon us.  Amidst all this darkness, did the cardinal see
less clearly?  Did he lose his head during all this tempest?  Did he not
still hold the helm in one hand, and the compass in the other?  Did he
throw himself into the boat to save his life?  Nay, if the great ship he
commanded were to be lost, did he not show that he was ready to die
before all the rest?  Was it luck that drew him out of this labyrinth,
or was it his own prudence, steadiness, and magnanimity?  Our enemies are
fifteen leagues from Paris, and his are inside it.  Every day come
advices that they are intriguing there to ruin him.  France and Spain,
so to speak, have conspired against him alone.  What countenance was kept
amidst all this by the man who they said would be dumbfounded at the
least ill-success, and who had caused Le Havre to be fortified in order
to throw himself into it at the first misfortune?  He did not make a
single step backward all the same.  He thought of the perils of the
state, and not of his own; and the only change observed in him all
through was that, whereas he had not been wont to go out but with an
escort of two hundred guards, he walked about, every day, attended by
merely five or six gentlemen.  It must be owned that adversity borne with
so good a grace and such force of character is worth more than a great
deal of prosperity and victory.  To me he did not seem so great and so
victorious on the day he entered La Rochelle as then; and the journeys he
made from his house to the arsenal seem to me more glorious for him than
those which he made beyond the mountains, and from which he returned with
the triumphs of Pignerol and Suza."

This was Cardinal Richelieu's distinction, that all his contemporaries,
in the same way as Voiture, identified the mishaps and the successes of
their country with his own fortunes, and that upon him alone were fixed
the eyes of Europe, whether friendly or hostile, when it supported or
when it fought against France.

For four years the war was carried on with desperation by land and sea in
the Low Countries, in Germany, and in Italy, with alternations of success
and reverse.  The actors disappeared one after another from the scene;
the emperor, Ferdinand II., had died on the 15th of February, 1637;--the
election of his son, Ferdinand III., had not been recognized by France
and Sweden; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar succumbed, at thirty-four years of
age, on the 15th of July, 1639, after having beaten, in the preceding
year, the celebrated John van Weert, whom he sent a prisoner to Paris.
At his death the landgravate of Elsass reverted to France, together with
the town of Brisach, which he had won from the Imperialists.

The Duke of Savoy had died in 1637; his widow, Christine of France,
daughter of Henry IV., was, so far as her brother's cause in Italy was
concerned, but a poor support; but Count d'Harcourt, having succeeded, as
head of the army, Cardinal Valette, who died in 1638, had retaken Turin
and Casale from the Imperialists in the campaign of 1640; two years
later, in the month of June, 1642, the Princes Thomas and Maurice,
brothers-in-law of the Duchess Christine, wearied out by the maladdress
and haughtiness of the Spaniards, attached themselves definitively to the
interests of France, drove out the Spanish garrisons from Nice and Ivrea,
in concert with the Duke of Longueville, and retook the fortress of
Tortona as well as all Milaness to the south of the Po.  Perpignan,
besieged for more than two years past by the king's armies, capitulated
at the same moment.  Spain, hard pressed at home by the insurrection of
the Catalans and the revolt of Portugal at the same time, both supported
by Richelieu, saw Arras fall into the hands of France (August 9, 1640),
and the plot contrived with the Duke of Bouillon and the Count of
Soissons fail at the battle of La Marfee, where this latter prince was
killed on the 16th of July, 1641.  In Germany, Marshal Guebriant and the
Swedish general Torstenson, so paralyzed that he had himself carried in a
litter to the head of his army, had just won back from the empire
Silesia, Moravia, and nearly all Saxony; the chances of war were
everywhere favorable to France, a just recompense for the indomitable
perseverance of Cardinal Richelieu through good and evil fortune.  "The
great tree of the house of Austria was shaken to its very roots, and he
had all but felled that trunk which with its two branches covers the
North and the West, and throws a shadow over the rest of the earth."
[_Lettres de Malherbe,_ t. iv.]  The king, for a moment shaken in his
fidelity towards his minister by the intrigues of Cinq-Mars, had returned
to the cardinal with all the impetus of the indignation caused by the
guilty treaty made by his favorite with Spain.  All Europe thought as the
young captain in the guards, afterwards Marshal Fabert, who, when the
king said to him, "I know that my army is divided into two factions,
royalists and cardinalists; which are you for?" answered, "Cardinalists,
sir, for the cardinal's party is yours."  The cardinal and France were
triumphing together, but the conqueror was dying; Cardinal Richelieu had
just been removed from Ruel to Paris.

For several months past, the cardinal's health, always precarious, had
taken a serious turn; it was from his sick-bed that he, a prey to cruel
agonies, directed the movements of the army, and, at the same time, the
prosecution of Cinq-Mars.  All at once his chest was attacked; and the
cardinal felt that he was dying.  On the 2d of December, 1642, public
prayers were ordered in all the churches; the king went from St. Germain
to see his minister.  The cardinal was quite prepared.  "I have this
satisfaction," he said, "that I have never deserted the king, and that I
leave his kingdom exalted, and all his enemies abased."  He commended his
relatives to his Majesty, "who on their behalf will remember my
services;" then, naming the two secretaries of state, Chavigny and De
Noyers, he added, "Your Majesty has Cardinal Mazarin; I believe him to be
capable of serving the king."  And he handed to Louis XIII. a
proclamation which he had just prepared for the purpose of excluding
the Duke of Orleans from any right to the regency in case of the king's
death.  The preamble called to mind that the king had five times already
pardoned his brother, recently engaged in a new plot against him.

The king had left the cardinal, but without returning to St. Germain.  He
remained at the Louvre.  Richelieu had in vain questioned the physicians
as to how long he had to live.  One, only, dared to go beyond commonplace
hopes.  "Monsignor," he said, "in twenty-four hours you will be dead or
cured."  "That is the way to speak!" said the cardinal; and he sent for
the priest of St. Eustache, his parish.  As they were bringing into his
chamber the Holy Eucharist, he stretched out his hand, and, "There," said
he, "is my Judge before whom I shall soon appear; I pray him with all my
heart to condemn me if I have ever had any other aim than the welfare of
religion and of the state."  The priest would have omitted certain
customary questions, but, "Treat me as the commonest of Christians," said
the cardinal.  And when he was asked to pardon his enemies, "I never had
any but those of the state," answered the dying man.

The cardinal's family surrounded his bed; and the attendance was
numerous.  The Bishop of Lisieux, Cospdan, a man of small wits, but of
sincere devoutness, listened attentively to the firm speech, the calm
declarations, of the expiring minister.  "So much self-confidence appalls
me," he said below his breath.  Richelieu died as he had lived, without
scruples and without delicacies of conscience, absorbed by his great aim,
and but little concerned about the means he had employed to arrive at it.
"I believe, absolutely, all the truths taught by the church," he had said
to his confessor, and this faith sufficed for his repose.  The memory of
the scaffolds he had caused to be erected did not so much as recur to his
mind.  "I have loved justice, and not vengeance.  I have been severe
towards some in order to be kind towards all," he had said in his will,
written in Latin.  He thought just the same on his death-bed.

The king left him, not without emotion and regret.  The cardinal begged
Madame d'Aiguillon, his niece, to withdraw.  "She is the one whom I have
loved most," he said.  Those around him were convulsed with weeping.  A
Carmelite whom he had sent for turned to those present, and, "Let those,"
he said, "who cannot refrain from showing the excess of their weeping and
their lamentation leave the room; let us pray for this soul."  In
presence of the majesty of death and eternity human grandeur disappears
irrevocably; the all-powerful minister was at that moment only this soul.
A last gasp announced his departure; Cardinal Richelieu was dead.

He was dead, but his work survived him.  On the very evening of the 3d of
December, Louis XIII. called to his council Cardinal Mazarin; and next
day he wrote to the Parliaments and governors of provinces, "God having
been pleased to take to himself the Cardinal de Richelieu, I have
resolved to preserve and keep up all establishments ordained during his
ministry, to follow out all projects arranged with him for affairs abroad
and at home, in such sort that there shall not be any change.  I have
continued in my councils the same persons as served me then, and I have
called thereto Cardinal Mazarin, of whose capacity and devotion to my
service I have had proof, and of whom I feel no less sure than if he had
been born amongst my subjects."  Scarcely had the most powerful kings
yielded up their last breath, when their wishes had been at once
forgotten: Cardinal Richelieu still governed in his grave.

[Illustration: The Palais-Cardinal----305]

The king had distributed amongst his minister's relatives the offices and
dignities which he had left vacant; the fortune that came to them was
enormous; the legacies left to mere domestics amounted to more than three
hundred thousand-livres.  During his lifetime Richelieu had given to the
crown "my grand hotel, which I built, and called Palais-de-Cardinal, my
chapel (or chapel-service) of gold, enriched with diamonds, my grand
buffet of chased silver, and a large diamond that I bought of Lopez."  In
his will he adds, "I most humbly beseech his Majesty to think proper to
have placed in his hands, out of the coined gold and silver that I have
at my decease, the sum of fifteen hundred thousand livres, of which sum
I can truly say that I made very good use for the great affairs of his
kingdom, in such sort, that if I had not had this money at my disposal,
certain matters which have turned out well would have, to all
appearances, turned out ill; which gives me ground for daring to beseech
his Majesty to destine this sum, that I leave him, to be employed on
divers occasions which cannot abide the tardiness of financial forms."

The minister and priest who had destroyed the power of the grandees in
France had, nevertheless, the true instinct respecting the perpetuation
of families.  "Inasmuch as it hath pleased God," he says in his will,
"to bless my labors, and make them considered by the king, my kind
master, showing recognition of them by his royal munificence, beyond what
I could hope for, I have esteemed it a duty to bind my heirs to preserve
the estate in my family, in such sort that it may maintain itself for a
long while in the dignity and splendor which it hath pleased the king to
confer upon it, in order that posterity may know that, as I served him
faithfully, he, by virtue of a complete kingliness, knew what love to
show me, and how to load me with his benefits."

The cardinal had taken pleasure in embellishing the estate of Richelieu,
in Touraine, where he was born, and which the king had raised to a
duchy-peerage.  Mdlle. de Montpensier, in her _Memoires,_ gives an
account of a visit she paid to it in her youth.  "I passed," she says,
"along a very fine street of the town, all the houses of which are in the
best style of building, one like another, and quite newly made, which is
not to be wondered at.  MM. de Richelieu, though gentlemen of good
standing, had never built a town; they had been content with their
village and with a mediocre house.  At the present time it is the most
beautiful and most magnificent castle you could possibly see, and all the
ornament that could be given to a house is found there.  This will not be
difficult to believe if one considers that it is the work of the most
ambitious and most ostentatious man in the world, premier minister of
state too, who for a long while possessed absolute authority over
affairs.  It is, nevertheless, inconceivable that the apartments should
correspond so ill in size with the beauty of the outside.  I hear that
this arose from the fact that the cardinal wished to have the chamber
preserved in which he was born.  To adjust the house of a simple
gentleman to the grand ideas of the most powerful favorite there has ever
been in France, you will observe that the architect must have been
hampered; accordingly he did not see his way to planning any but very
small quarters, which, by way of recompense, as regards gilding or
painting, lack no embellishment inside.

"Amidst all that modern invention has employed to embellish it, there are
to be seen, on the chimney-piece in a drawingroom, the arms of Cardinal
Richelieu, just as they were during the lifetime of his father, which the
cardinal desired to leave there, because they comprise a collar of the
Holy Ghost, in order to prove to those who are wont to misrepresent the
origin of favorites that he was born a gentleman of a good house.  In
this point, he imposed upon nobody."

The castle of Richelieu is well nigh destroyed; his family, after falling
into poverty, is extinct; the Palais-Cardinal has assumed the name of
Palais-Royal; and pure monarchy, the aim of all his efforts and the work
of his whole life, has been swept away by the blast of revolution.  Of
the cardinal there remains nothing but the great memory of his power and
of the services he rendered his country.  Evil has been spoken, with good
reason, of glory; it lasts, however, more durably than material successes
even when they rest on the best security.  Richelieu had no conception of
that noblest ambition on which a human soul can feed, that of governing a
free country, but he was one of the greatest, the most effective, and the
boldest, as well as the most prudent servants that France ever had.

Cardinal Richelieu gave his age, whether admirers or adversaries, the
idea which Malherbe expressed in a letter to one of his friends: "You
know that my humor is neither to flatter nor to lie; but I swear to you
that there is in this man a something which surpasses humanity, and that
if our bark is ever to outride the tempests, it will be whilst this
glorious hand holds the rudder.  Other pilots diminish my fear, this one
makes me unconscious of it.  Hitherto, when we had to build anew or
repair some ruin, plaster alone was put in requisition.  Now we see
nothing but marble used; and, whilst the counsels are judicious and
faithful, the execution is diligent and magnanimous.  Wits, judgment, and
courage never existed in any man to the degree that they do in him.  As
for interest, he knows none but that of the public.  To that he clings
with a passion so unbridled, if I may dare so to speak, that the visible
injury it does his constitution is not capable of detaching him from it.
Sees he anything useful to the king's service, he goes at it without
looking to one side or the other.  Obstacles tempt him, resistance piques
him, and nothing that is put in his way diverts him; the disregard he
shows of self, and of all that touches himself, as if he knew no sort of
health or disease but the health or disease of the state, causes all good
men to fear that his life will not be long enough for him to see the
fruit of what he plants; and moreover, it is quite evident that what he
leaves undone can never be completed by any man that holds his place.
Why, man, he does a thing because it has to be done!  The space between
the Rhine and the Pyrenees seems to him not field enough for the lilies
of France.  He would have them occupy the two shores of the
Mediterranean, and waft their odors thence to the extremest countries of
the Orient.  Measure by the extent of his designs the extent of his
courage."  [Letters to Racan and to M. de Mentin. _OEuvres de Malherbe,_
t. iv.]

[Illustration: The Tomb of Richelieu----308]

The cardinal had been barely four months reposing in that chapel of the
Sorbonne which he had himself repaired for the purpose, and already King
Louis XIII. was sinking into the tomb.  The minister had died at
fifty-seven, the king was not yet forty-two; but his always languishing
health seemed unable to bear the burden of affairs which had been but
lately borne by Richelieu alone.  The king had permitted his brother to
appear again at court.  "Monsieur supped with me," says Mdlle. de
Montpensier, "and we had the twenty-four violins; he was as gay as if
MM. Cinq-Mars and De Thou had not tarried by the way.  I confess that I
could not see him without thinking of them, and that in my joy I felt
that his gave me a pang."  The prisoners and exiles, by degrees,
received their pardon; the Duke of Vendome, Bassompierre, and Marshal
Vitry had been empowered to return to their castles, the Duchess of
Chevreuse and the ex-keeper of the seals, Chateauneuf, were alone
excepted from this favor.  "After the peace," said the declaration
touching the regency, which the king got enregistered by the Parliament
on the 23d of April.  The little dauphin, who had merely been sprinkled,
had just received baptism in the chapel of the Castle of St. Germain.
The king asked him, next day, if he knew what his name was.  "My name is
Louis XIV.," answered the child.  "Not yet, my son, not yet," said the
king, softly.

Louis XIII. did not cling to life: it had been sad and burdensome to him
by the mere fact of his own melancholy and singular character, not that
God had denied him prosperity or success.  He had the windows opened of
his chamber in the new castle of St. Germain looking towards the Abbey of
St. Denis, where he had, at last, just laid the body of the queen his
mother, hitherto resting at Cologne.  "Let me see my last resting-place,"
he said to his servants.  The crowd of courtiers thronged to the old
castle, inhabited by the queen; visits were made to the new castle to see
the king, who still worked with his ministers; when he was alone, "he was
seen nearly always with his eyes open towards heaven, as if he talked
with God heart to heart."  [_Memoires sur la Mort de Louis XIII.,_ by his
valet-de-chambre Dubois; _Archives curieuses,_ t. v.  p. 428.]  On the
23d of April, it was believed that the last moment had arrived: the king
received extreme unction; a dispute arose about the government of
Brittany, given by the king to the Duke of La Meilleraye and claimed by
the Duke of Vendome; the two claimants summoned their friends; the queen
took fright, and, being obliged to repair to the king, committed the
imprudence of confiding her children to the Duke of Beaufort, Vendome's
eldest son, a young scatter-brain who made a great noise about this
favor.  The king rallied and appeared to regain strength.  He was
sometimes irritated at sight of the courtiers who filled his chamber.
"Those gentry," he said to his most confidential servants, "come to see
how soon I shall die.  If I recover, I will make them pay dearly for
their desire to have me die."  The austere nature of Louis XIII. was
awakened again with the transitory return of his powers; the severities
of his reign were his own as much as Cardinal Richelieu's.

He was, nevertheless, dying, asking God for deliverance.  It was
Thursday, May 14.  "Friday has always been my lucky day," said Louis
XIII.: "on that day I have undertaken assaults that I have carried; I
have even gained battles: I should have liked to die on a Friday."  His
doctors told him that they could find no more pulse; he raised his eyes
to heaven and said out loud, "My God, receive me to mercy!" and
addressing himself to all, he added, "Let us pray!"  Then, fixing his
eyes upon the Bishop of Meaux, he said, "You will, of course, see when
the time comes for reading the agony prayers; I have marked them all."
Everybody was praying and weeping; the queen and all the court were
kneeling in the king's chamber.  At three o'clock, he softly breathed his
last, on the sane day and almost at the same moment at which his father
had died beneath the dagger of Ravaillac, thirty-three years before.

France owed to Louis XIII. eighteen years of Cardinal Richelieu's
government; and that is a service which she can never forget.  "The
minister made his sovereign play the second part in the monarchy and the
first in Europe," said Montesquieu: "he abased the king, but he exalted
the reign."  It is to the honor of Louis XIII. that he understood and
accepted the position designed for him by Providence in the government of
his kingdom, and that he upheld with dogged fidelity a power which often
galled him all the while that it was serving him.





CHAPTER XIII.----LOUIS XIII., RICHELIEU, AND LITERATURE.

Cardinal Richelieu was dead, and "his works followed him," to use the
words of Holy Writ.  At home and abroad, in France and in Europe, he had
to a great extent continued the reign of Henry IV., and had completely
cleared the way for that of Louis XIV.  "Such was the strength and
superiority of his genius that he knew all the depths and all the
mysteries of government," said La Bruyere in his admission-speech before
the French Academy; "he was regardful of foreign countries, he kept in
hand crowned heads, he knew what weight to attach to their alliance;
with allies he hedged himself against the enemy.  .  .  .  And, can you
believe it, gentlemen? this practical and austere soul, formidable to the
enemies of the state, inexorable to the factious, overwhelmed in
negotiations, occupied at one time in weakening the party of heresy, at
another in breaking up a league, and at another in meditating a conquest,
found time for literary culture, and was fond of literature and of those
who made it their profession!"  From inclination and from personal
interest therein this indefatigable and powerful mind had courted
literature; he had foreseen its nascent power; he had divined in the
literary circle he got about him a means of acting upon the whole nation;
he had no idea of neglecting them; he did not attempt to subjugate them
openly; he brought them near to him and protected them.  It is one of
Richelieu's triumphs to have founded the French Academy.

We must turn back for a moment and cast a glance at the intellectual
condition which prevailed at the issue of the Renaissance and the
Reformation.

For sixty years a momentous crisis had been exercising language and
literature as well as society in France.  They yearned to get out of it.
Robust intellectual culture had, ceased to be the privilege of the
erudite only; it began to gain a footing on the common domain; people no
longer wrote in Latin, like Erasmus; the Reformation and the Renaissance
spoke French.  In order to suffice for this change, the language was
taking form; everybody had lent a hand to the work; Calvin with his
Christian Institutes (_Institution Chretienne_) at the same time as
Rabelais with his learned and buffoonish romance, Ramus with his
Dialectics, and Bodin with his Republic, Henry Estienne with his essays
in French philology, as well as Ronsard and his friends by their
classical crusade.  Simultaneously with the language there was being
created a public intelligent, inquiring, and eager.  Scarcely had the
translation of Plutarch by Amyot appeared, when it at once became, as
Montaigne says, "the breviary of women and of ignoramuses."  "God's life,
my love," wrote Henry IV. to Mary de' Medici, "you could not have sent me
any more agreeable news than of the pleasure you have taken in reading.
Plutarch has a smile for me of never-failing freshness; to love him is to
love me, for he was during a long while the instructor of my tender age;
my good mother, to whom I owe everything, and who set so great store on
my good deportment, and did not want me to be (that is what she used to
say) an illustrious ignoramus, put that book into my hands, though I was
then little more than a child at the breast.  It has been like my
conscience to me, and has whispered into my ear many good hints and