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Updated: June 15, 2025
Have pity on France and give us peace." Richelieu's heart was certainly none of the softest, but even he seems to have been touched by this earnest appeal. At all events, he showed no anger. "I wish for peace," he declared, "and I am taking means to procure it, but it does not depend on me alone"; and he dismissed Vincent with an unwonted urbanity.
By a curious anomaly, while women were excluded from succession to the throne of France, the queen-mother was invariably preferred to all other claimants for the Regency, and Anne of Austria became regent in accordance with old custom. She retained in office Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu's faithful disciple, chosen by him to continue the traditions of his policy.
When young Gaston, son of Henri IV., seeking to get free from Richelieu's insolent despotism, withdrew to the Duc de Lorraine, the Cardinal uttered a cry of joy, and remarked to Louis XIII., that vindictive, jealous prince, "Oh, what a good turn the Duc d'Orleans has just done you to-day! By going to stay with M. de Lorraine, he will oust him!"
Some of them espoused the cause of Corneille others openly traduced his plays and were his enemies. He had the independence to correct one of Richelieu's plays without the consent of his comrades, and Richelieu reprimanded him for it. He became disgusted and left Paris for Rouen. He was quite willing, too, to return to the lady who had inspired his sonnet.
Between Paris and Calais, Porthos, Aramis, and Athos were all left behind, wounded by Richelieu's guards, and D'Artagnan only effected a passage to Dover by fighting and nearly killing a young noble who held a permit from the cardinal to leave France. Once in England, D'Artagnan hastened to find Buckingham.
I was ashamed of my companions, but I couldn't help catching stray fragments of the conversation, and the involuntary mixing of Bertie's affairs with the Religious Wars, and the destruction of Les Baux by Richelieu's soldiers, had a positively weird effect on my mind.
Richelieu's plan, in fact, was to found a despotism, though a wise and well-ordered despotism, at home, while he made France great by conquests abroad. And at this time the ambition of France found a favourable field in the state both of Germany and of Spain. The War in Flanders and Italy.
But Mazarin, the inheritor, not only of Richelieu's power, but also of his principles and his projects, followed out with renewed zeal the plans of his predecessor, though the French subject was destined to pay dearly enough for the political greatness of his country.
And very soon his confidential relations with the persecuted princess became so marked as necessarily to excite Richelieu's suspicions, the more so that he ventured to speak of the Cardinal's administration in the boldest terms.
He has been spoken of, indeed, as the ame damnee of Cesare Borgia; but that is a purely romantic touch akin to that which gave the same designation to Richelieu's Father Joseph.
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