Memoirs Of Jean Francois Paul De Gondi, Cardinal De Retz, Volume II.

J >> Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz >> Memoirs Of Jean Francois Paul De Gondi, Cardinal De Retz, Volume II.


I had not been long gone home when the Marechal d'Estrees and M.
Senneterre came, furnished with all the flowers of rhetoric, to persuade
me that degradation was honourable; and finding me immovable, they
insinuated that my obstinacy might oblige his Highness to use force, and
order his guards to carry me, in spite of myself, to Notre-Dame, and
place me there on a seat below his. I thought this suggestion too
ridiculous to mind it at first, but being forewarned of it that very
evening by the Duke's Chancellor, I put myself upon the defensive, which
I think is the most ridiculous piece of folly I was ever guilty of,
considering it was against a son of France, and when there was a profound
tranquillity in the State, without the least appearance of any commotion.
The Duke, to whom I had the honour of being related, was pleased with my
boldness. He remembered the Abby de la Riviere for his insolence in
complaining that the Prince de Conti was marked down for a cardinal
before him; besides, the Duke knew I was in the right, having made it
very evident in a statement I had published upon this head. He
acquainted the Cardinal with it, said he would not suffer the least
violence to be offered to me; that I was both his kinsman and devoted
servant, and that he would not set out for the army till he saw the
affair at an end.

All the Court was in consternation for fear of a rupture, especially when
the Prince de Conde had been informed by the Queen of what his son had
said; and when he came to my house and found there sixty or eighty
gentlemen, this made him believe that a league was already made with the
Duke, but there was nothing in it. He swore, he threatened, he begged,
he flattered, and in his transports he let fall some expressions which
showed that the Duke was much more concerned for my interest than he ever
yet owned to me. I submitted that very instant, and told the Prince that
I would do anything rather than the royal family should be divided on my
account. The Prince, who hitherto found me immovable, was so touched at
my sudden surrender in complaisance to his son, at the very time, too,
when he himself had just assured me I was to expect a powerful protection
from him, that he suddenly changed his temper, so that, instead of
thinking as he did at first, that there was no satisfaction great enough
for the Duc d'Orleans, he now determined plainly in favour of the
expedient I had so often proposed,--that I should go and declare to him,
in the presence of the whole Court, that I never designed to be wanting
in the respect I owed him, and that the orders of the Church had obliged
me to act as I did at Notre-Dame. The Cardinal and the Abby de la
Riviere were enraged to the last degree, but the Prince put them into
such fear of the Duke that they were fain to submit. The Prince took me
to the Duc d'Orleans's house, where I gave them satisfaction before the
whole Court, precisely in the words above mentioned. His Highness was
quite satisfied with my reasons, carried me to see his medals, and thus
ended the controversy.

As this affair and the marriage of the Queen of Poland had embroiled me
with the Court, you may easily conceive what turn the courtiers gave to
it. But here I found by experience that all the powers upon earth cannot
hurt the reputation of a man who preserves it established and unspotted
in the society whereof he is a member. All the learned clergy took my
part, and I soon perceived that many of those who had before blamed my
conduct now retracted. I made this observation upon a thousand other
occasions. I even obliged the Court, some time after, to commend my
proceedings, and took an opportunity to convince the Queen that it was my
dignity, and not any want of respect and gratitude, that made me resist
the Court in the two former cases. The Cardinal was very well pleased
with me, and said in public that he found me as much concerned for the
King's service as I was before for the honour of my character.

It falling to my turn to make the speech at the breaking up of the
assembly of the clergy at Paris, I had the good luck to please both the
clergy and the Court. Cardinal Mazarin took me to supper with him alone,
seemed to be clear of all prejudices against me, and I verily believe was
fully persuaded that he had been imposed upon. But I was too much
beloved in Paris to continue long in favour at Court. This was a crime
that rendered me disagreeable in the eyes of a refined Italian statesman,
and which was the more dangerous from the fact that I lost no opportunity
of aggravating it by a natural and unaffected expense, to which my air of
negligence gave a lustre, and by my great alms and bounty, which, though
very often secret, had the louder echo; whereas, in truth, I had acted
thus at first only in compliance with inclination and out of a sense of
duty. But the necessity I was under of supporting myself against the
Court obliged me to be yet more liberal. I do but just mention it here
to show you that the Court was jealous of me, when I never thought myself
capable of giving them the least occasion, which made me reflect that a
man is oftener deceived by distrusting than by being overcredulous.

Cardinal Mazarin, who was born and bred in the Pope's dominions, where
papal authority has no limits, took the impetus given to the regal power
by his tutor, the Cardinal de Richelieu, to be natural to the body
politic, which mistake of his occasioned the civil war, though we must
look much higher for its prime cause.

It is above 1,200 years that France has been governed by kings, but they
were not as absolute at first as they are now. Indeed, their authority
was never limited by written laws as are the Kings of England and
Castile, but only moderated by received customs, deposited, as I may say,
at first in the hands of the States of the kingdom, and afterwards in
those of the Parliament. The registering of treaties with other Crowns
and the ratifications of edicts for raising money are almost obliterated
images of that wise medium between the exorbitant power of the Kings and
the licentiousness of the people instituted by our ancestors. Wise and
good Princes found that this medium was such a seasoning to their power
as made it delightful to their people. On the other hand, weak and
vicious Kings always hated it as an obstacle to all their extravagances.
The history of the Sire de Joinville makes it evident that Saint Louis
was an admirer of this scheme of government, and the writings of Oresme,
Bishop of Lisieux, and of the famous Juvenal des Ursins, convince us that
Charles V., who merited the surname of Wise, never thought his power to
be superior to the laws and to his duty. Louis XI., more cunning than
truly wise, broke his faith upon this head as well as all others. Louis
XII. would have restored this balance of power to its ancient lustre if
the ambition of Cardinal Amboise,--[George d'Amboise, the first of the
name, in 1498 Minister to Louis XII., deceased 1510.]--who governed him
absolutely, had not opposed it.

The insatiable avarice of Constable Montmorency--[Anne de Montmorency,
Constable of France in 1538, died 1567.]--tended rather to enlarge than
restrain the authority of Francois I. The extended views and vast
designs of M. de Guise would not permit them to think of placing bounds
to the prerogative under Francois II. In the reigns of Charles IX. and
Henri III. the Court was so fatigued with civil broils that they took
everything for rebellion which was not submission. Henri IV., who was
not afraid of the laws, because he trusted in himself, showed he had a
high esteem for them. The Duc de Rohan used to say that Louis XIII. was
jealous of his own authority because he was ignorant of its full extent,
for the Marechal d'Ancrel and M. de Luynes were mere dunces, incapable of
informing him. Cardinal de Richelieu, who succeeded them, collected all
the wicked designs and blunders of the two last centuries to serve his
grand purpose. He laid them down as proper maxims for establishing the
King's authority, and, fortune seconding his designs by the disarming of
the Protestants in France, by the victories of the Swedes, by the
weakness of the Empire and of Spain, he established the most scandalous
and dangerous tyranny that perhaps ever enslaved a State in the best
constituted monarchy under the sun.

Custom, which has in some countries inured men even to broil as it were
in the heat of the sun, has made things familiar to us which our
forefathers dreaded more than fire itself. We no longer feel the slavery
which they abhorred more for the interest of their King than for their
own. Cardinal de Richelieu counted those things crimes which before him
were looked upon as virtues. The Mirons, Harlays, Marillacs, Pibracs,
and the Fayes, those martyrs of the State who dispelled more factions by
their wholesome maxims than were raised in France by Spanish or British
gold, were defenders of the doctrine for which the Cardinal de Richelieu
confined President Barillon in the prison of Amboise. And the Cardinal
began to punish magistrates for advancing those truths which they were
obliged by their oaths to defend at the hazard of their lives.

Our wise Kings, who understood their true interest, made the Parliament
the depositary of their ordinances, to the end that they might exempt
themselves from part of the odium that sometimes attends the execution of
the most just and necessary decrees. They thought it no disparagement to
their royalty to be bound by them,--like unto God, who himself obeys the
laws he has preordained. ['A good government: where the people obey their
king and the king obeys the law'--Solon. D.W.] Ministers of State, who
are generally so blinded by the splendour of their fortune as never to be
content with what the laws allow, make it their business to overturn
them; and Cardinal de Richelieu laboured at it more constantly than any
other, and with equal application and imprudence.

God only is self-existent and independent; the most rightful monarchs and
established monarchies in the world cannot possibly be supported but by
the conjunction of arms and laws,--a union so necessary that the one
cannot subsist without the other. Laws without the protection of arms
sink into contempt, and arms which are not tempered by laws quickly turn
a State into anarchy. The Roman commonwealth being set aside by Julius
Caesar, the supreme power which was devolved upon his successors by force
of arms subsisted no longer than they were able to maintain the authority
of the laws; for as soon as the laws lost their force, the power of the
Roman Emperors vanished, and the very men that were their favourites,
having got possession of their seals and their arms, converted their
masters' substance into their own, and, as it were, sucked them dry under
the shelter of those repealed laws. The Roman Empire, formerly sold by
auction to the highest bidder, and the Turkish emperors, whose necks are
exposed every day to the bowstring, show us in very bloody characters the
blindness of those men that make authority to consist only in force.

But why need we go abroad for examples when we have so many at home?
Pepin, in dethroning the Merovingian family, and Capet, in dispossessing
the Carlovingians, made use of nothing else but the same power which the
ministers, their predecessors, had acquired under the authority of their
masters; and it is observable that the mayors of the Palace and the
counts of Paris placed themselves on the thrones of kings exactly by the
same methods that gained them their masters' favours,--that is, by
weakening and changing the laws of the land, which at first always
pleases weak princes, who fancy it aggrandises their power; but in its
consequence it gives a power to the great men and motives to the common
people to rebel against their authority. Cardinal de Richelieu was
cunning enough to have all these views, but he sacrificed everything to
his interest. He would govern according to his own fancy, which scorned
to be tied to rules, even in cases where it would have cost him nothing
to observe them. And he acted his part so well that, if his successor
had been a man of his abilities, I doubt not that the title of Prime
Minister, which he was the first to assume, would have been as odious in
France in a little time as were those of the Maire du Palais and the
Comte de Paris. But by the providence of God, Cardinal Mazarin, who
succeeded him, was not capable of giving the State any jealousy of his
usurpation. As these two ministers contributed chiefly, though in a
different way, to the civil war, I judge it highly necessary to give you
the particular character of each, and to draw a parallel between them.

Cardinal de Richelieu was well descended; his merit sparkled even in his
youth. He was taken notice of at the Sorbonne, and it was very soon
observed that he had a strong genius and a lively fancy. He was commonly
happy in the choice of his parties. He was a man of his word, unless
great interests swayed him to the contrary, and in such a case he was
very artful to preserve all the appearances of probity. He was not
liberal, yet he gave more than he promised, and knew admirably well how
to season all his favours. He was more ambitious than was consistent
with the rules of morality, although it must be owned that, whenever he
dispensed with them in favour of his extravagant ambition, his great
merit made it almost excusable. He neither feared dangers nor yet
despised them, and prevented more by his sagacity than he surmounted by
his resolution. He was a hearty friend, and even wished to be beloved by
the people; but though he had civility, a good aspect, and all the other
qualifications to gain that love, yet he still wanted something--I know
not what to call it--which is absolutely necessary in this case. By his
power and royal state he debased and swallowed up the personal majesty of
the King. He distinguished more judiciously than any man in the world
between bad and worse, good and better, which is a great qualification in
a minister. He was too apt to be impatient at mere trifles when they had
relation to things of moment; but those blemishes, owing to his lofty
spirit, were always accompanied with the necessary talent of knowledge to
make amends for those imperfections. He had religion enough for this
world. His own good sense, or else his inclination, always led him to
the practice of virtue if his self-interest did not bias him to evil,
which, whenever he committed it, he did so knowingly. He extended his
concern for the State no further than his own life, though no minister
ever did more than he to make the world believe he had the same regard
for the future. In a word, all his vices were such that they received a
lustre from his great fortune, because they were such as could have no
other instruments to work with but great virtues. You will easily
conceive that a man who possessed such excellent qualities, and appeared
to have as many more,--which he had not,--found it no hard task to
preserve that respect among mankind which freed him from contempt, though
not from hatred.

Cardinal Mazarin's character was the reverse of the former; his birth was
mean, and his youth scandalous. He was thrashed by one Moretto, a
goldsmith of Rome, as he was going out of the amphitheatre, for having
played the sharper. He was a captain in a foot regiment, and Bagni, his
general, told me that while he was under his command, which was but three
months, he was only looked upon as a cheat. By the interest of Cardinal
Antonio Barberini, he was sent as Nuncio Extraordinary to France, which
office was not obtained in those days by fair means. He so tickled
Chavigni by his loose Italian stories that he was shortly after
introduced to Cardinal de Richelieu, who made him Cardinal with the same
view which, it is thought, determined the Emperor Augustus to leave the
succession of the Empire to Tiberius. He was still Richelieu's
obsequious, humble servant, notwithstanding the purple. The Queen making
choice of him, for want of another, his pedigree was immediately derived
from a princely family. The rays of fortune having dazzled him and
everybody about him, he rose, and they glorified him for a second
Richelieu, whom he had the impudence to ape, though he had nothing of
him; for what his predecessor counted honourable he esteemed scandalous.
He made a mere jest of religion. He promised everything without scruple;
at the same time he intended to perform nothing. He was neither
good-natured nor cruel, for he never remembered either good offices or
bad ones. He loved himself too well, which is natural to a sordid soul;
and feared himself too little, the true characteristic of those that have
no regard for their reputation. He foresaw an evil well enough, because
he was usually timid, but never applied a suitable remedy, because he had
more fear than wisdom. He had wit, indeed, together with a most
insinuating address and a gay, courtly behaviour; but a villainous heart
appeared constantly through all, to such a degree as betrayed him to be a
fool in adversity and a knave in prosperity. In short, he was the first
minister that could be called a complete trickster, for which reason his
administration, though successful and absolute, never sat well upon him,
for contempt--the most dangerous disease of any State--crept insensibly
into the Ministry and easily diffused its poison from the head to the
members.

You will not wonder, therefore, that there were so many unlucky cross
rubs in an administration which so soon followed that of Cardinal de
Richelieu and was so different from it. It is certain that the
imprisonment of M. de Beaufort impressed the people with a respect for
Mazarin, which the lustre of his purple would never have procured from
private men. Ondedei (since Bishop of Frejus) told me that the Cardinal
jested with him upon the levity of the French nation on this point, and
that at the end of four months the Cardinal had set himself up in his own
opinion for a Richelieu, and even thought he had greater abilities. It
would take up volumes to record all his faults, the least of which were
very important in one respect which deserves a particular remark. As he
trod in the steps of Cardinal de Richelieu, who had completely abolished
all the ancient maxims of government, he went in a path surrounded with
precipices, which Richelieu was aware of and took care to avoid. But
Cardinal Mazarin made no use of those props by which Richelieu kept his
footing. For instance, though Cardinal de Richelieu affected to humble
whole bodies and societies, yet he studied to oblige individuals, which
is sufficient to give you an idea of all the rest. He had indeed some
unaccountable illusions, which he pushed to the utmost extremity. The
most dangerous kind of illusion in State affairs is a sort of lethargy
that never happens without showing pronounced symptoms. The abolishing
of ancient laws, the destruction of that golden medium which was
established between the Prince and the people, and the setting up a power
purely and absolutely despotic, were the original causes of those
political convulsions which shook France in the days of our forefathers.

Cardinal de Richelieu managed the kingdom as mountebanks do their
patients, with violent remedies which put strength into it; but it was
only a convulsive strength, which exhausted its vital organs. Cardinal
Mazarin, like a very unskilful physician, did not observe that the vital
organs were decayed, nor had he the skill to support them by the chemical
preparations of his predecessor; his only remedy was to let blood, which
he drew so plentifully that the patient fell into a lethargy, and our
medicaster was yet so stupid as to mistake this lethargy for a real state
of health. The provinces, abandoned to the rapine of the
superintendents, were stifled, as it were, under the pressure of their
heavy misfortunes, and the efforts they made to shake them off in the
time of Richelieu added only to their weight and bitterness. The
Parliaments, which had so lately groaned under tyranny, were in a manner
insensible to present miseries by a too fresh and lively remembrance of
their past troubles. The grandees, who had for the most part been
banished from the kingdom, were glad to have returned, and therefore took
their fill of ease and pleasure. If our quack had but humoured this
universal indolence with soporifics, the general drowsiness might have
continued much longer, but thinking it to be nothing but natural sleep,
he applied no remedy at all. The disease gained strength, grew worse and
worse, the patient awakened, Paris became sensible of her condition; she
groaned, but nobody minded it, so that she fell into a frenzy, whereupon
the patient became raving mad.

But now to come to particulars. Emeri, Superintendent of the Finances,
and in my opinion the most corrupt man of the age, multiplied edicts as
fast as he could find names to call them by. I cannot give you a better
idea of the man than by repeating what I heard him say in full
Council,--that faith was for tradesmen only, and that the Masters of
Requests who urged faith to be observed in the King's affairs deserved to
be punished. This man, who had in his youth been condemned to be hanged
at Lyons, absolutely governed Mazarin in all the domestic affairs of the
kingdom. I mention this, among many other instances which I could produce
of the same nature, to let you see that a nation does not feel the
extremity of misery till its governors have lost all shame, because that
is the instant when the subjects throw off all respect and awake
convulsively out of their lethargy.

The Swiss seemed, as it were, crushed under the weight of their chains,
when three of their powerful cantons revolted and formed themselves into
a league. The Dutch thought of nothing but an entire subjection to the
tyrant Duke of Alva, when the Prince of Orange, by the peculiar destiny
of great geniuses, who see further into the future than all the world
besides, conceived a plan and restored their liberty. The reason of all
this is plain: that which causes a supineness in suffering States is the
duration of the evil, which inclines the sufferers to believe it will
never have an end; as soon as they have hopes of getting out of it, which
never fails when the evil has arrived at a certain pitch, they are so
surprised, so glad, and so transported, that they run all of a sudden
into the other extreme, and are so far from thinking revolutions
impossible that they suppose them easy, and such a disposition alone is
sometimes able to bring them about; witness the late revolution in
France. Who could have imagined, three months before the critical period
of our disorders, that such a revolution could have happened in a kingdom
where all the branches of the royal family were strictly united, where
the Court was a slave to the Prime Minister, where the capital city and
all the provinces were in subjection to him, where the armies were
victorious, and where the corporations and societies seemed to have no
power?--whoever, I say, had said this would have been thought a madman,
not only in the judgment of the vulgar, but in the opinion of a D'Estrees
or a Senneterre.

In August, 1647, there was a mighty clamour against the tariff edict
imposing a general tax upon all provisions that came into Paris, which
the people were resolved to bear no longer. But the gentlemen of the
Council being determined to support it, the Queen consulted the members
deputed from Parliament, when Cardinal Mazarin, a mere ignoramus in these
affairs, said he wondered that so considerable a body as they were should
mind such trifles,--an expression truly worthy of Mazarin. However, the
Council at length imagining the Parliament would do it, thought fit to
suppress the tariff themselves by a declaration, in order to save the
King's credit. Nevertheless, a few days after, they presented five
edicts even more oppressive than the tariff, not with any hopes of having
them received, but to force the Parliament to restore the tariff. Rather
than admit the new ones, the Parliament consented to restore the old one,
but with so many qualifications that the Court, despairing to find their
account in it, published a decree of the Supreme Council annulling that
of the Parliament with all its modifications. But the Chamber of
Vacations answered it by another, enjoining the decree of Parliament to
be put in execution. The Council, seeing they could get no money by this
method, acquainted the Parliament that, since they would receive no new
edicts, they could do no less than encourage the execution of such edicts
as they had formerly ratified; and thereupon they trumped up a
declaration which had been registered two years before for the
establishment of the Chamber of Domain, which was a terrible charge upon
the people, had very pernicious consequences, and which the Parliament
had passed, either through a surprise or want of better judgment. The
people mutinied, went in crowds to the Palace, and used very abusive
language to the President de Thore, Emeri's son. The Parliament was
obliged to pass a decree against the mutineers.