Free The Bourbon Kings of France by Desmond Seward Page A

Richelieu would probably have lost not only his place but his life as well.
    Sometimes even Louis found Richelieu irritating. There is a story that on one occasion the King growled at him, ‘You go first, since you are the real King.’ Richelieu replied smoothly, ‘Only to light the way,’ and, picking up a torch, preceded Louis like a lackey. In reality the King seems to have been fond of the Cardinal rather than otherwise. His letters to him were often almost excessively affectionate; he could write, ‘Be assured that I shall love you until my last breath’, signing himself
‘Louis de très bon coeur’
. Richelieu took care to let the King know exactly what he was doing. Besides a daily correspondence, the two men spent long hours together, discussing plans and projects. Louis once said of Richelieu, ‘He is the greatest servant that France has ever had.’ The Cardinal wrote gratefully, ‘The capacity to permit his ministers to serve him is not the least of qualities in a great King.’
    In the autumn of 1630 Louis fell so ill that he was not expected to live; he received the Last Sacraments, asking pardon for any wrong he might have done. The doctors thought he was suffering from dysentery but in fact he had an internal abscess: fortunately it burst, and he made a slow recovery, during which he was nursed by his wife and by his mother. The latter had now turned against the Cardinal. When Louis was at his weakest they insisted that he must dismiss Richelieu. Rumours of the Cardinal’s imminent disgrace circulated, and appeared to be confirmed by Louis’s curious coldness when Richelieu visited him. On his return to Paris, the King stayed with his mother at her new palace of the Luxembourg. On 10 November Marie took Louis into her chamber and again demanded that he dismiss the Cardinal. As she was speaking, Richelieu, who had been warned, burst into her room through a back door, to be met with a torrent of abuse from the Queen Mother. He knelt before the King begging for mercy, at which Marie screamed at Louis, ‘Do you prefer a lackey to your own mother?’ The King, who must have found the scene intolerable, told Richelieu to rise, bowed to his mother and left for his hunting-lodge at Versailles. Marie thought she had won: courtiers flocked to her, including the Marshal de Marillac and his brother, the Garde des Sceaux, as well as Bassompierre.
    Richelieu made preparations for flight. Suddenly one of the King’s young cronies, Claude de Saint-Simon, appeared with a message from Louis summoning him to Versailles. There he again knelt before the King, and in an emotional scene Louis told him, ‘I have in you the most faithful, the most affectionate servant in the world. I have seen the respect and the attention which you have always paid the Queen my mother. If you had failed in your duty to her I would have cast you off. But she has no cause whatever to complain of you. She has let herself be prejudiced by a cabal whom I know very well how to destroy. Serve me as you have so far served me and I will defend you against every enemy.’ The Marshal de Marillac was arrested at the head of his troops, accused of embezzlement and beheaded; his brother, the Garde des Sceaux, died in prison; Bassompierre was sent to the Bastille, where he spent twelve years. Louis, not the Cardinal, was responsible for these measures. The Queen Mother was confined at Compiègne, from where in 1631 she fled to the Spanish Netherlands, dying in exile a decade later. Her attempt to overthrow Richelieu is known as ‘The Day of Dupes’.
    Gaston too left France. From Lorraine he appealed to all Frenchmen to revolt against the Cardinal. He won a valuable recruit in the rich and popular Duc de Montmorency, who was angry at not being given the great office of Constable which his father and grandfather had held. In autumn 1632 Gaston invaded France and was joined by Montmorency, but their little army was easily defeated at Castelnaudry.