The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

2. In the internal development of France, Richelieu proved himself a true builder. The founding of the French Academy and of the Jardin des Plantes, the building of the College of Plessis, and the rebuilding of the college of the Sorbonne, are among the monuments of this part-statesmanship. His, also, is much of that praise usually lavished on Louis XIV for the career opened in the seventeenth century to science, literature, and art. He was also a reformer, and his zeal was proved, when in the fiercest of the La Rochelle struggle he found time to institute great reforms not only in the army and navy, but even in the monasteries.

3. On the general progress of Europe, his work must be judged as mainly for good. Austria was the chief barrier to European progress, and that barrier he broke. But a far greater impulse to the general progress of Europe was given by the idea of toleration which he thrust into the methods of European statesmen. He, first of all statesmen in France, saw that in French policy—to use his own words—"A Protestant Frenchman is better than a Catholic Spaniard"; and he, first of all statesmen in Europe, saw that, in European policy, patriotism must outweigh bigotry.

4. His faults in method were many. His underestimate of the sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a force of right?

5. His faults in policy crystallized about one; for while he subdued the serf-mastering nobility, he struck no final blow at the serf system itself.

Our running readers of French history need here a word of caution. They follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of the serf system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its most shocking outward features, remained. Richelieu might have crushed the serf system, really, as easily as Louis X and Philip the Long had crushed it nominally. This Richelieu did not.

And the consequences of this great man's fault were terrible. Hardly was he in his grave when the nobles perverted the effort of the Paris Parliament for advance in liberty and took the lead in the fearful revolts and massacres of the Fronde. Then came Richelieu's pupil, Mazarin, who tricked the nobles into order; and Mazarin's pupil, Louis XIV, who bribed them into order. But a nobility borne on high by the labor of a servile class must despise labor; so there came those weary years of indolent gambling and debauchery and "serf-eating" at Versailles.