Richelieu Breaks the French Nobles

To crown all, the Queen-Mother began now to plot against Richelieu because he would not be her puppet, and he banished her from France forever.

Continuing Cardinal Richelieu’s Administration,
our selection from Special Article to Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume XI. by Andrew D. White published in 1905. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages. The selection is presented in nine easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Cardinal Richelieu’s Administration

In 1626 Gaston, with the Duke of Vendôme, half-brother of the King, the Duchess of Chevreuse, confidential friend of the Queen, the Count of Chalais, and the Marshal Ornano, formed a conspiracy after the old fashion. Richelieu had his hand at their lofty throats in a moment. Gaston, who was used only as a makeweight, he forced into the most humble apology and the most binding pledges; Ornano he sent to die in the Bastille; the Duke of Vendôme and the Duchess of Chevreuse he banished; Chalais he sent to the scaffold.

The next year he gave the grandees another lesson. The serf-owning spirit had fostered in France, through many years, a rage for duelling. Richelieu determined that this should stop. He gave notice that the law against duelling was revived, and that he would enforce it. It was soon broken by two of the loftiest nobles in France — by the Count of Bouteville Montmorency and the Count des Chapelles. They laughed at the law: they fought defiantly in broad daylight. Nobody dreamed that the law would be carried out against them. The Cardinal would, they thought, deal with them as rulers have dealt with serf-mastering lawbreakers from those days to these — invent some quibble and screen them with it. But his method was sharper and shorter. He seized both, and executed both on the Place de la Grève — the place of execution for the vilest malefactors.

No doubt that under the present domineering of the pettifogger caste there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that they hold legal forms not a means, but an end; these will cry out against this proceeding as tyrannical. No doubt, too, that under the present palaver of the “sensationist” caste, the old ladies of both sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune: these will lament this proceeding as cruel. But for this act, if for no other, an earnest man’s heart ought in these times to warm toward the great statesman. The man had a spine. To his mind crime was not mere misfortune: crime was crime.

Crime was strong; it would pay him well to screen it: it might cost him dear to fight it. But he was not a modern “smart” lawyer to seek popularity by screening criminals; nor a modern soft juryman, to suffer his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of law; nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of politeness to the murderer’s mistress. He hated crime; he whipped the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between him and a rascal. He had the sense to see that this course was not cruel, but merciful. In the eighteen years before Richelieu’s administration, four thousand men perished in duels; in the ten years after Richelieu’s death nearly a thousand thus perished; but during his whole administration, duelling was checked completely. Which policy was tyrannical? Which policy was cruel?

The hatred of the serf-mastering caste toward their new ruler grew blacker and blacker, but he never flinched. The two brothers Marillac, proud of birth, high in office, endeavored to stir revolt as in their good days of old. The first, who was keeper of the seals, Richelieu threw into prison; with the second, who was a marshal of France, Richelieu took another course. For this marshal had added to revolt things more vile and more insidiously hurtful: he had defrauded the government in army contracts. Richelieu tore him from his army and put him on trial. The Queen-Mother, whose pet he was, insisted on his liberation. Marillac himself blubbered that it “was all about a little straw and hay, a matter for which a master would not whip a lackey.” Marshal Marillac was executed. So, when statesmen rule, fare all who take advantage of the agonies of a nation to pilfer a nation’s treasure.

To crown all, the Queen-Mother began now to plot against Richelieu because he would not be her puppet, and he banished her from France forever.

The high nobles were now exasperated. Gaston fled the country, first issuing against Richelieu a threatening manifesto. Now awoke the Duke of Montmorency. By birth he stood next the King’s family: by office, as constable of France, he stood next the King himself. Montmorency was defeated and taken. The nobles supplicated for him lustily: they looked on crimes of nobles resulting in deaths of plebeians as lightly as the English House of Lords afterward looked on Lord Mohun’s murder of Will Mountfort, or as another body of lords looked on Matt Ward’s murder of Professor Butler: but Montmorency was executed. Says Richelieu in his Memoirs, “Many murmured at this act, and called it severe; but others, more wise, praised the justice of the King, who preferred the good of the state to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency.”

Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of Épernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the regency, him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of Valette disobeyed orders in the army, and was executed as a common soldier would have been for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see if he could not revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel army; but Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain court nobles — pets of the King — Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new plot, and, to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the Cardinal, though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his agent, and the traitors expiated their treason with their blood.

But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris — a court of justice — filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end, tried to interpose forms between the master of France and the vermin he was exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done something. They might have insisted that the petty quibbles set forth by the lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution set forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, and the time for legal forms had gone by. The Paris Parliament would not see this, and Richelieu crushed the Parliament. Then the court of aids refused to grant supplies, and he crushed that court. In all this the nation upheld him. Woe to the courts of a nation when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legality as injustice! Woe to the councils of a nation when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legislation as traffic! Woe thrice repeated to gentlemen of small pettifogging sort when they have brought such times, and God has brought a man to fit them!

More information on Cardinal Richelieu’s Administration here and here, and below.

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