Richelieu And The Conspirators
In a richly-furnished state apartment of the royal palace of the
Luxembourg, on a day in November, 1630, stood Louis XIII., king of
France, tapping nervously with his fingers on the window-pane, and with
a disturbed and irresolute look upon his face. Beside him was his
favorite, St. Simon, a showily-dressed and handsome gentleman of the
court.
"What do you think of all this?" asked the king, his fingers k
eping up
their idle drumming on the glass.
"Sir, I seem to be in another world," was the politic reply. "But at any
rate you are master."
"I am," said the king, proudly, "and I will make it felt, too."
The royal prisoner was stirring uneasily in the bonds which hard
necessity had cast round his will. It was against Cardinal Richelieu
that his testy remark was made, yet in the very speaking he could not
but feel that to lose Richelieu was to lose the bulwark of his throne;
that this imperious master, against whose rule he chafed, was the glory
and the support of his reign.
Just now, however, the relations between king and cardinal were sadly
strained. Mary de' Medici, the king's mother, once Richelieu's ardent
friend, was now his active foe. The queen, Anne of Austria, was equally
hostile. Their influence had been used to its utmost to poison the mind
of the monarch against his minister, and seemingly with success. To all
appearance it looked as if the great cardinal was near his fall.
Rumor of what was afloat had invaded the court. Everywhere were secret
whisperings, knowing looks, expectant movements. The courtiers were
flocking to the Luxembourg, in hopes of some advantage to themselves.
Marillac, the keeper of the seals, was at his country house at Glatigny,
very near Versailles, where the king was expected. He remained there in
hopes that Louis would send for him and put the power of the disgraced
cardinal into his hands. The colossus seemed about to fall. All waited
expectantly.
The conspiracy of the queen-mother had gone farther than to use her
personal influence with her son against the cardinal. There were others
in league with her, particularly Marillac, the keeper of the seals, and
Marshal Marillac, his brother, then in command of a large force in
Piedmont. All had been carefully prepared against the fall of the
minister. The astute conspirators had fully laid their plans as to what
was to follow.
Unfortunately for them, they did not reckon with the two principal
parties concerned, Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu. With all his
weaknesses of temper and mind, the king had intellect enough to know
what were the great interests of his kingdom and power, and on whose
shoulders they rested. Above all the littleness of a court cabal he
could not but discern the great questions which impended, and with which
he felt quite incompetent to deal. And he could perceive but one man in
his kingdom able to handle these great problems of state.
As for Richelieu, he was by no means blind to what was going on around
him. He was the last man in the world to be a dupe. Delaying until the
time seemed ripe to move, he requested and obtained an interview with
the king. They were a long time closeted, while all the courtier-world
of Paris waited in expectation and suspense.
What passed in that private cabinet of the palace no one knew, but when
the interview was over it quickly became evident that the queen-mother
and her associates had lost, the cardinal had won. Michael de Marillac
had hopeful dreams that night, as he slept in his house at Glatigny; but
when he awoke in the morning it was to receive the disturbing news that
the king and the cardinal were at Versailles together, the minister
being lodged in a room under that of the monarch. Quickly came still
more disturbing news. The king demanded a return of the seals. Before
this tidings could be well digested, the frightened plotter learned that
his own arrest had been ordered, and that the exons were already at his
door to secure his person.
While the courtier conspirator was being thus attended to, the soldier,
his brother, was not forgotten. A courier had been despatched to the
headquarters of the army in Piedmont, bearing a letter to Marshal
Schomberg, who, with Marshals La Force and Marillac, had formed there a
junction of the forces under their control. Marillac was in command on
the day of the courier's arrival, and was impatiently awaiting the news,
for which he had been prepared by his brother, of the cardinal's
disgrace.
Schomberg opened his despatches. The first words he saw, in the king's
own handwriting, were these:
"My dear cousin, you will not fail to arrest Marshal Marillac; it is for
the good of my service and for your own exculpation."
Schomberg looked at the document with startled eyes. What could this
mean? And was it safe to attempt an arrest? A large section of the
troops were devoted to Marillac. He consulted with La Force, who advised
him to obey orders, whatever the consequences. Schomberg thereupon
showed Marillac the despatch. He beheld it with surprise and alarm, but
without thought of resistance.
"I can protest that I have done nothing contrary to the king's service,"
he said. "The truth is, that my brother, the keeper of the seals, and I
have always been the servants of the queen-mother. She must have had the
worst of it, and Cardinal Richelieu has won the day against her and her
servants."
So it proved, indeed, and he was to suffer for it. He was tried,--not on
any political charge, however, the crimes alleged against him were
peculation and extortion, common practices with many of his
fellow-generals.
"It is a very strange thing," said he, bitterly, "to prosecute me as
they do; my trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and
lime; there is not case enough for whipping a lackey."
He was mistaken; there was case enough for beheading a marshal. It was
not a question of peculation, but of offending the great cardinal, for
which he was really put on trial, and the case ended in his being found
guilty of malfeasance in office and executed. His brother died in prison
three months afterwards,--of decline, so the records say.
"Dupes' Day," as the day we have described came to be called, was over.
The queen-mother had lost. Her dupes had suffered. Richelieu was more
powerful than ever. She had but strengthened his ascendancy over the
king. But Mary de' Medici was not the woman to acknowledge defeat
easily. No sooner had her first effort failed than her enmity against
the too-powerful minister showed itself in a new direction, the
principal agent of her purposes being now her son, the Duke of Orleans,
brother to the king. The duke, after an angry interview with the
cardinal, left Paris in haste for Orleans, his mother declaring to the
king that the occasion of his sudden departure was that he could no
longer tolerate by his presence Richelieu's violent proceedings against
herself. She professed to have been taken by surprise by his departure,
which Louis doubting, "she took occasion to belch forth fire and flames
against the cardinal, and made a fresh attempt to ruin him in the king's
estimation, though she had previously bound herself by oath to take no
more steps against him."
Her malignity defeated itself. Richelieu was too skilful an adept in the
game of politics to be so easily beaten. He brought the affair before
the council, seemingly utterly indifferent what might be done; the
trouble might be ended, he suggested, by his own retirement or that of
the queen-mother, whichever in their wisdom they might deem best.
The implied threat settled the matter. The king, alarmed at the idea of
having the government of France left on his weak hands, at once gave the
offending lady to understand that she had better retire for a time to
one of his provincial palaces, recommending Moulins. Mary de' Medici
heard this order with fiery indignation. She shut herself up in the
castle of Compiegne, where she then was, and declared that she would not
leave unless dragged out by main force. In the end, however, she changed
her mind, fled by night from the castle, and made her way to Brussels,
where she took refuge from her powerful foe. Richelieu's game was won.
Mary de' Medici had lost all influence with her son. She was never to
see him again.
A number of years passed before a new plot was hatched against the
cardinal. Then a conspiracy was organized which threatened not only his
power but his life. It was in 1636. The king's headquarters were then
at the castle of Demuin. The Duke of Orleans, who had been recently in
armed rebellion against the king, and had been pardoned for his treason,
determined, in common with the Count of Soissons, that their enemy, the
cardinal, should die. There were others in this plot of assassination,
two of the duke's gentlemen, Montresor and Saint Ibal, being chosen to
deal the fatal blow. They were to station themselves at the foot of the
grand stairway, meet Richelieu at his exit from the council, and strike
him dead. The duke was to give the signal for the murderous assault.
The door of the council chamber opened. The king and the cardinal came
out together and descended the stairs in company, Richelieu attending
Louis until he had reached the foot of the stairway, and gone into an
adjoining room. The cardinal turned to ascend again, without a moment's
suspicion that the two gentlemen at the stair-foot clutched hidden
daggers in their hands, ready, at a signal from the duke, who stood near
by, to plunge them in his breast.
The signal did not come. At the last moment the courage of Gaston of
Orleans failed him. Whether from something in Richelieu's earnest and
dignified aspect, or some sudden fear of serious consequences to
himself, the chief conspirator turned hastily away, without speaking the
fatal word agreed upon. What the duke feared to do, the count dared not
do. The two chosen assassins stood expectant, greeting the cardinal as
he passed, and waiting in nervous impatience for the promised signal.
It failed to come. Their daggers remained undrawn. Richelieu calmly
ascended the stairs to his rooms, without a dream of the deadly peril he
had run.
The conspiracy against the cardinal which has attained the greatest
historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the
famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the
courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the
king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master
of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called,
and grand enough he seemed, in his independent and capricious dealings
with the king. Louis went so far as to complain to Richelieu of the
humors of his youthful favorite.
"I am very sorry," he wrote, under date of January 4, 1641, "to trouble
you about the ill-tempers of M. Le Grand. I upbraided him with his
heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he could not change, and
that he should do no better than he had done. I said that, considering
his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that manner. He
answered in his usual way; that he didn't want my kindness, that he
could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well
content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but as for changing his ways and
his life, he couldn't do it. And so, he continually nagging at me and I
at him, we came as far as the court-yard, where I said to him that,
being in the temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming
to see me. I have not seen him since."
This letter yields a curious revelation of the secret history of a royal
court. There have been few kings with whom such impudent independence
would have served. Louis XIII. was one of them. Cinq-Mars seems to have
known his man. The quarrel was not of long continuance. Richelieu, who
had first placed the youth near the king, easily reconciled them, a
service which the foolish boy soon repaid by lending an ear to the
enemies of the cardinal. For this Richelieu was in a way responsible. He
had begun to find the constant attendance of the favorite upon the king
troublesome to himself, and gave him plainly to understand so. "One day
he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his
heels, and treated him even to his face with as much tartness and
imperiousnesss as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Such
treatment was not likely to be well received by one of the independent
disposition of Cinq-Mars. He joined in a plot against the cardinal.
The king was ill; the cardinal more so. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was
again in Paris, and full of his old intriguing spirit. The Duke of
Bouillon was there also, having been sent for by the king to take
command of the army of Italy. He, too, was drawn into the plot which was
being woven against Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, was another
of the conspirators. The plot thus organized was the deepest and most
far-reaching which had yet been laid against the all-powerful minister.
Bouillon was prince-sovereign of the town of Sedan. This place was to
serve the conspirators as an asylum in case of reverse. But a town was
not enough; an army was needed; whence should it come? Spain might
furnish it.
The affair was growing to the dimensions of a conspiracy against the
crown as well as the minister. Viscount de Fontrailles, a man who
detested the cardinal, and would not have hesitated to murder him as a
simpler way of disposing of the difficulty, was named by Cinq-Mars as a
proper person to deal with the Spaniards. He set out for Madrid, and
soon succeeded in negotiating a secret treaty, in the name of the Duke
of Orleans, by whose terms Spain was to furnish the conspirators with
twelve thousand foot, five thousand horse, and the necessary funds for
the enterprise. The town of Sedan, and the names of Cinq-Mars and
Bouillon, were not mentioned in this treaty, but were given in a
separate document.
While this dangerous work was going on the cardinal was dangerously ill,
a prey to violent fever, and with an abscess on his arm which prevented
him from writing. The king was with the army, which was besieging
Perpignan. With him was Cinq-Mars, who was doing his best to insinuate
suspicions of the minister into the mind of the king. All seemed
promising for the conspirators, the illness of the cardinal, in their
opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile
preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with
the king.
Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal
Richelieu. In all his severe illness his eyes had not been blind, his
intellect not at rest. Keen as they thought themselves, they had a man
with double their resources to deal with. Though Richelieu was by no
means surrounded by the intricate web of spies and intrigues with which
fiction and the drama have credited him, he was not without his secret
agents, and his means of tracing the most hidden movements of his
enemies. Cinq-Mars lacked the caution necessary for a conspirator. His
purposes became evident to the king, who had no thought of exchanging
his great minister for a frivolous boy who was only fitted to amuse his
hours of relaxation. The outcome of the affair appears in a piece of
news published in the Gazette de France on June 21, 1642.
"The cardinal-duke," it said, "after remaining two days at Arles,
embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming
better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de
Cinq-Mars, grand equerry of France."
Had a thunderbolt fallen in their midst, the enemies of Richelieu could
not have been in greater consternation than at this simple item of news.
How came it about? The fox was not asleep. Nor had his illness robbed
his hand and his brain of their cunning. The king, overladen with
affairs of state from which his minister when well had usually relieved
him, sent a message of confidence to Richelieu, indicating that his
enemies would seek in vain to separate them. In reply the cardinal sent
the king a document which filled the monarch with an astonishment that
was only equalled by his wrath. It was a copy of the secret treaty of
Orleans with Spain!
The king could hardly believe his eyes. So this was what lay behind the
insinuations of Cinq-Mars? An insurrection was projected against the
state! The cardinal, mayhap the king himself, was to be overthrown by
force of arms! Only the sleepless vigilance of Richelieu could have
discovered and exposed this perilous plot. It remained for the king to
second the work of his minister by decisive action. An order was at once
issued for the arrest of Cinq-Mars and his intimate friend, M. de Thou;
while a messenger was sent off in all haste to the army of Italy,
bearing orders for the arrest of the Duke of Bouillon at the head of his
troops.
Fontrailles, just arrived from his mission to Spain, returned to that
kingdom with all haste, having first said to Cinq-Mars, "Sir, you are a
fine figure; if you were shorter by the whole head you would not cease
to be very tall. As for me, who am already very short, nothing could be
taken off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest
figure in the world. You will be good enough, if you please, to let me
get out of the way of edge tools."
The minor parties to the conspiracy, with the exception of the prudent
Fontrailles, were in custody. The most guilty of all, the king's
brother, was at large. What part was he to play in the drama of
retribution? Flight, or treachery to his accomplices, alone remained to
him. He chose the latter, sending an agent to the king, who had just
joined the cardinal at Tarascon, with directions to confess everything
and implore for him the pardon of his royal brother. The cardinal
questioned this agent, the Abbe de la Riviere, with unrelenting
severity, made him write and sign everything, and was inclined to make
the prince-duke appear as a witness at the trial, and yield up his
accomplices in the face of the world. This final disgrace, however, was
omitted at the wish of Louis, and an order of exile was sent from the
king to his brother, which bore this note in the cardinal's hand,--
"Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a
month, the same sum that the king of Spain had promised to give him."
The dying cardinal had triumphed over all his foes. He had, from his bed
at Tarascon, dictated to the king the course to be pursued, entailing
dishonor to the Duke of Orleans and death to the grand equerry of
France. The king then took his way back to Fontainebleau in the litter
of the cardinal, which the latter had lent him. Richelieu did not
remain long behind him. He was conveyed to his house in Lyons in a
litter shaped like a square chamber, covered with red damask, and borne
on the shoulders of eighteen guards. Within, beside his couch, was a
table covered with papers, at which he worked with his ordinary
diligence, chatting pleasantly at intervals with such of his servants as
accompanied him. In the same equipage he left Lyons for the Loire, on
his return to Paris. On the way it was necessary to pull down walls and
bridge ditches that this great litter, in which the greatest man in
France lay in mortal illness, might pass.
What followed needs few words. The Duke of Bouillon confessed
everything, and was pardoned on condition of his delivering up Sedan to
the king. He was kept in prison, however, till after the death of his
accomplices, Cinq-Mars and De Thou, who were tried and sentenced to
execution.
Bouillon had not long to wait. The execution took place on the very day
on which sentence had been pronounced. The two culprits met death
firmly. Cinq-Mars was but twenty-two years of age. He had rapidly run
his course. "Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to
death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of
the things of the world," he wrote. "Enough of this world; away to
Paradise!" said De Thou, as he walked to the scaffold.
There were no more conspiracies against Richelieu. There was no time for
them, for in less than three months afterwards he was dead. The
greatest, or at least the most dramatic, minister known to the pages of
history had departed from this world. His royal master did not long
survive him. In five months afterwards, Louis XIII. had followed his
minister to the grave.