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CARDINAL RICHELIEU

Political Testament

Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of a noble family, and was at first educated for the profession of arms, but entered the Church in order to become Bishop of Luçon in 1606. Having come up to Paris to make his way in the world, he was appointed almoner to the young queen Anne of Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for War and for Foreign Affairs. He received the cardinal's hat in 1622, and for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was, in everything but name, the Majesty of France. His mind was bold, unscrupulous, remorseless, and inscrutable. Yet it was always noble--the minister who sent so many to the scaffold could truly say that in his vast labours he had but one pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security while he watched night after night. He was a friend to literature, was founder of the Academy, and was himself a considerable author in history and theology. His greatest work, "Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu," which was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his counsel in statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance, exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very high order but an acute faculty for literary expression. Richelieu died on December 4, 1642.

Retrospect

At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families behaved as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces as if they had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own audacity to be the measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious were considered the wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad the friendship of France was despised. At home private interests were preferred to the general advantage. The dignity of the throne had so far declined, through the fault of my predecessors in office, that it was almost unrecognisable. To have continued to entrust to their hands the helm of the state would have led to irremediable disaster; yet, on the other hand, too swift and too great a change would have been fraught with dangers of its own. In that emergency the wisest considered that it was hardly possible to pass without shipwreck through the reefs and shoals, and there were many who had foretold my fall even before your majesty had raised me to power.

Yet, knowing what kings may do when they make good use of their power, I was able to promise your majesty that your prudence and firmness, with the blessing of God, would give new health to this kingdom. I promised to devote all my labours, and all the authority with which I might be clothed, to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the pride of the great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to elevating your majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful reputation.

I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors, inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.

The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that the union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be completed also between you in grace. And if, after many years, this purpose by the malice of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my consolation to remember how often your majesty has been heard to say that when I was working most for the honour of the queen, your mother, she was conspiring for my ruin.

Of Education

Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that they should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose every subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having eyes in every part; pride and presumption would be general, and obedience almost disappear.

Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse of peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in rustic ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the sciences. It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed only to chicane, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace, but could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences fitted to oppose than to defend the truth.