RICHELIEU 41 RICHELIEU entirely in his hands. So ended "the Day of Dupes" (Nov. 11, 1630). The queen- mother fled to Brussels, Bassompierre went to the Bastille, Gaston fled to Lor- raine. The cardinal was now made duke and peer, and Governor of Brittany. Fur- ther intrigues and attempted rebellions by the emigrant nobles and governors of provinces were crushed with merciless severity — Marillac and Montmorency and other nobles were sent to the block. Mean- time Gustavus Adolphus had run his brief and brilliant course; and his death at Liitzen removed an ally with whom it might have become difficult to reckon. In July, 1632, Richelieu had seized the duchy of Lorraine. He continued his intrigues with the Protestants against Ferdinand, subsidizing them with his gold, but till 1635 he took no open part in the war. In May of that year, after completing his preparations and concluding a close alli- ance with Victor Amadeus of Savoy, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, and the Dutch, he declared war on Spain, and at once placed in the field an army of 132,000 men. But his first efforts were singularly unsuccessful, and in 1636 Piccolomini and the Cardinal-Infante, Governor of the Netherlands, entered Picardy, crossed the Somme, and threatened Paris itself. In this hour of peril Richelieu rose to the height of his genius, and awoke a new and irresistible force as he threw him- self on tbe patriotism of France. With 30,000 foot and 12,000 horse he swept the enemy out of Picardy, while his ally Bernhard drove them across the Rhine, and in 1638 destroyed the imperial army in the decisive battle of Rheinfelden, a victory which opened to him the gates of the key-fortress of Breisach. The unex- pected death of Bernhard threw the fruit of his victories into the hands of Riche- lieu, whose policy soon bore further fruit in the disorganization of the power of Spain — revolts in Catalonia, and the loss of Portugal; the victories of Wolfen- biittel (1642) and Kemp ten (1642) over the Imperialists in Germany; and at length in 1641 in Savoy also in the ascen- dency of the French party. Another tri- umph that same year was the speedy col- lapse of the Imperialist invasion in the N. by the Count of Soissons, who perished in the first battle. The hatred of the great French nobles to his rule had never slumbered, however, and Richelieu found safety alone in the king's sense of his own helplessness with- out him. The last conspiracy against him was that of the grand-equerry, the young Cinq-Mars, whose intrigues with Gaston, the Duke of Bouillon, and the Spanish court were soon revealed to the cardinal, the center of a network of espionage which covered the whole of France. When the hour was ripe he placed in the king's hands at Tarascon proofs of the traitor- ous plot with Spain, and was given full powers as lieutenant-general of the realm. Cinq-Mars and De Thou were at once ar- rested, and the wretched coward, Gaston of Orleans, hastened after his kind to buy his own security by betraying his accom- plices. Cinq-Mars and De Thou were exe- cuted at Lyons in the autumn of 1642. But the great minister was himself dying in the hour of his greatest triumphs. He faced the inevitable at last with calm tranquillity — when the priest bade him forgive his enemies, he made answer, "I have never had any other enemies than the State's." He died Dec. 4, 1642, be- queathing Mazarin to the king as his successor. Richelieu built up the power of the French crown, he achieved for France a preponderance in Europe, and throughout life he moved onward to his goal with the strongest tenacity of purpose, unmoved either by fear or pity. He destroyed the local liberties of France, and crushed every element of constitutional govern- ment, and his policy overwhelmed the citi- zens with taxation and made waste places some of her fairest provinces and most thriving towns. Our judgment of him will always differ according as we ex- amine his end or his means — the public or the private man. He never sacrificed to personal ambition the interests of his country as these seemed to himself, but he often forgot in his methods the laws of morality and humanity. The weakest point in Richelieu's char- acter was his literary ambition and the extraordinary pains he took to construct a literary reputation. His own plays, for the fate of which he trembled with anx- iety, sleep in safe oblivion, but his "Mem- oirs" are still read with interest. He founded the French Academy. His Cor- respondence and State Papers, edited by d'Avenel, fill eight volumes of the "Col- lection de Documents inedits sur l'Histoire de France" (1853-1877). RICHELIEU, LOUIS FRANCOIS AR- MAND DU PLESSIS, DUC' DE, a Marshal of France, descended from the same family as the Cardinal; born in 1696. After the death of Louis XIV., he was admitted into the court of the Re- gent; the Due d'Orleans and he largely participated in its profligacy. He was sent to the Bastille in 1716, for fighting a duel with the Comte de Gace, and again in 1719, as an accomplice with the Span- ish ambassador in a conspiracy against the Regent. He distinguished himself under Villars, and afterward at Kehl, Philipsburg, Dettingen, and Fontenoy; conquered Minorca, forced the Duke of
