Power over souls, the power of the church can also be power and state power - which was fully demonstrated by the famous Cardinal Richelieu. Everyone knows about him who at least once in their life opened the Three Musketeers. The enemy of d'Artagnan and his friends died, hated by all estates and even by the king and the pope, despite the fact that he made the power of the first absolute, and strengthened the power of the second with the "cleansing" of home-grown Protestant Huguenots.
In our time in France, Richelieu is a very respected politician, although the attitude towards him is different: like all authoritarian reformers, the uncrowned king built a bright future for the country, not really caring about the present. And all because Cardinal Richelieu disdained economics, considering it a more speculative science, which is suitable for theoretical reasoning, but not for practical application.
Under the wing of the "family"
The future cardinal, duke and first minister was born on September 9, 1585 in an impoverished noble family and his name was then not Richelieu, but Armand-Jean du Plessis. The blood of lawyers flowed in his veins: his father was the chief provost (the highest judicial official) under Henry III, and his mother came from a lawyer's family. From childhood, the sickly boy loved to communicate more with books than with peers, nevertheless dreamed of a military career. But to a greater extent - about wealth: when Armand-Jean was 5 years old, his father died, leaving only debts to the large family.
After graduating from the Paris Navarre College, the young man began to prepare to enter the Royal Guard. But fate decreed otherwise.
In those days, one more or less reliable source of income for the du Plessis family was the family position of the bishops of Lucon, which was granted by Henry III. The diocese was located near the port of La Rochelle, which played an important role in the career of the future Cardinal Richelieu. After the middle brother, who was promised a diocese, abandoned it and went to a monastery, the family insisted that the youngest, Armand-Jean, sit on the trough. But then he was only 21 years old - at that age he was not ordained to the clergy. The applicant had a chance to go to Rome - to beg papal permission.
There the future great intriguer spent the first intrigue in his life: at first he hid his real age from the Pope, and then he repented. Grasp and wisdom beyond his years impressed the head of the Vatican, and he blessed the newly-made Luçon bishop, who took the name Richelieu. Contrary to expectations, the diocese fell to him frail, completely ruined during the years of religious wars, but the young ambitious man took full advantage of his new position in another field: the rank of bishop opened the way for him to court.
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King Henry IV, who reigned at that time, himself being a bright and strong nature, openly favored the same personalities, and not the faceless court sycophants. He drew attention to the educated, intelligent and eloquent provincial priest and brought him closer to him, calling him nothing else but "my bishop." What caused the understandable jealousy of other applicants for fortune: as a result of their intrigues, Richelieu's rapidly begun court career immediately ended. He had to go back to his diocese and wait for better times.
Although, he was not going to despair. The Bishop of Lyusonskiy actively began to engage in self-education (having read to the point that later all his life suffered from headaches) and reforms - while at the level of the diocese. In addition, he had the occasion to repeatedly mediate conflicts between the central government and the regional: after the assassination of Henry IV by a Catholic fanatic and the establishment of the regency of Queen Mother Maria de Medici, the country plunged into chaos and civil strife. The restoration of order in the monastic economy and Richelieu's diplomatic talent did not go unnoticed: in 1614, the local clergy chose him as their representative in the States General. In modern terms, a senator.
The tradition of gathering the States General, an advisory body under the king with representation of three estates (spiritual, noble and bourgeois), has been going on since the Middle Ages. Kings rarely and reluctantly condescended to listen to the opinions of their subjects (the next States General, for example, did not meet until 175 years later), and Richelieu did not miss the rare chance to make a career at court again.
The young Louis XIII drew attention to the eloquent, intelligent and tough politician, who knew how to find a compromise. But unlike his father, the new French king was a weak-willed and narrow-minded person, which cannot be said about his mother Maria de Medici and her entourage.
In those days, the country was actually ruled by a court "family", which included both high-born aristocrats and upstart favorites of the Queen Mother. The family was internally split, and the queen needed an intelligent, cunning and moderately cynical assistant. With her participation, Richelieu was quickly promoted to a strategically important place: he became the confessor of the king's young wife, the Austrian princess Anne, after which he was automatically introduced to the royal council - the then government of France.
At this stage of his career, the aspiring politician made his first significant mistake: he bet on the wrong horse. Richelieu decided to enlist the support of the queen mother's all-powerful favorite, Marshal D'Ancre. But this Italian adventurer Concino Concini, who knocked out the marshal's baton for himself, was a typical temporary worker who considered the state treasury as his wallet. As a result, it cost him his life: in 1617 the conspirators of the courtiers stabbed the hated "Italian" in the chambers of the Louvre.
And after that, they began to systematically move the supporters of the favorite, among whom was Richelieu, from the power trough. He was escorted first to Luçon, and then sent even further - to Avignon, where the hapless courtier found solace in the composition of literary and theological books.
P avnoudalennye feudals
True, this seclusion was short-lived. In the absence of Richelieu, the king's weakness and lack of will was taken advantage of by his closest relatives - the princes of the blood, who actually raised a revolt against the king. The party of the palace opposition was led by the vengeful Maria de Medici, who thirsted for blood for her murdered lover. To appease his mother, who demonstratively left the capital and joined the rebels, the monarch again had to resort to Richelieu's diplomatic talent. He was able to reach a truce, and the queen mother, who returned to Paris, insisted that her son make the disgraced bishop a cardinal.
1622, September - Richelieu changed his white and gold miter for a red cardinal's hat. Now, for the first time, the cherished goal - the post of first minister - has really loomed before the newly made head of the French clergy. Less than two years later, Richelieu's dream came true: the monarch made him the second person in the state.
Under a weak king, he received virtually complete and unlimited power over France. Unlike many rulers, Richelieu used this power primarily in the interests of the state, and only then in his own. He took from the royal hands and money, and land, and titles. But power has always remained the main thing in life for Richelieu, he subordinated his temperament, character, personal tastes and preferences to it.
First of all, Richelieu naturally considered the courtyard, mired in intrigues, as a danger for the country (and for himself personally). The first steps of the new de facto ruler of the kingdom to strengthen the power of the legitimate ruler - the king - provoked sharp opposition from the nobility.
Among Richelieu's enemies were the king's closest relatives: brother Gaston of Orleans, wife Anne of Austria and even Maria de Medici, who managed to regret that she had raised not a tame favorite, but a strong politician-statesman. And the monarch himself was weighed down by the purely decorative functions left to him by the first minister, and secretly wished for his downfall. Richelieu, on the other hand, saw state power as exclusively individual (formally royal, but in fact his own) and, in order to strengthen its vertical, he began to resolutely remove all applicants: some into exile and some to the next world.
The second method was more reliable, but for the execution of the king's entourage, especially his relatives, it was necessary to prove their participation in conspiracies against him - or at least convince him of the existence of such conspiracies. That is why Richelieu, during his 18-year reign, revealed them more than all his predecessors.
It is easy to believe in this, considering the unprecedented heyday reached under Cardinal Richelieu by investigation, denunciation, espionage, fabrication of court cases, provocations, etc. In particular, the head of Richelieu's secret service distinguished himself in this field - his closest adviser, father of the Capuchin Order Joseph.
We owe him the stable phrases “the gray cardinal” (Richelieu himself was nicknamed “the red cardinal”) and “the black office” (that was the name of the special secret chambers in the Louvre, where the mail was read). And to the very first minister - with the no less famous aphorism: "Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest person, and I will find in them a reason to send the author to the gallows."
The first galaxy of noble conspirators who ascended the block was opened by the unfortunate Comte de Chalet, to whom a volunteer soldier (the regular executioner was kidnapped by the convict's friends) was able to chop off his head only with the tenth blow. And the bloody list of victims ended with the favorite of the king, the Marquis de Saint-Mar, whose conspiracy, real or imaginary, vigilant first minister revealed a few weeks before his own death.
In addition to the court nobility, the first minister of the kingdom brutally suppressed the provincial noble freemen that roamed the country during the years of the regency. It was under him that the fortified castles of the feudal lords began to be systematically destroyed. In the provinces, the posts of plenipotentiary representatives of the king were established - intendants, endowed with judicial-police, financial and partly military power. The city's highest judicial authorities (parliaments) were prohibited from questioning the constitutionality of royal legislation. In the end, as readers of Dumas will remember, Cardinal Richelieu strongly forbade dueling, believing that the nobility should give their lives for the king on the battlefield, and not in senseless skirmishes on trifling occasions.
Counter-terrorist operation in La Rochelle
Richelieu no less successfully suppressed another source of threat to his plans to strengthen royal power - the Huguenots. According to the Edict of Nantes in 1598, with the help of which Henry IV planned to end the religious wars in France, the Protestant minority was granted certain political and religious freedoms (complete freedom of conscience and limited - of worship). In addition, many cities and fortresses were under the rule of the Huguenots, including the main stronghold in the west of the country - the fortress of La Rochelle, almost native to the ex-bishop.
The existence of these almost independent states in the state, especially at the time when France was waging constant wars with its neighbors, was a direct challenge to the "architect of French absolutism."
Richelieu accepted this challenge.
He waited for a suitable pretext - an attack on the French ports of the British squadron, during which the attackers were assisted by the "fifth column" from La Rochelle, and by January 1628 he personally led the siege of the rebellious fortress.
After 10 months, having lost almost 15,000 townspeople from starvation alone, the Huguenots surrendered. Having achieved the desired result, the pragmatic Cardinal Richelieu did not begin to crush the vanquished: the peace treaty signed the following year retained for the Protestants all the rights and freedoms named in the Edict of Nantes, with the exception of the right to have fortresses.
There is no better means to stay in power, wars are victorious and at the same time permanent. The hardened politician Richelieu quickly learned this paradoxical truth, therefore, immediately after the fall of La Rochelle, he moved the French troops beyond the borders of the country - to northern Italy, where there was one of the theaters of operations of the Thirty Years War that was then raging on the continent.
It was one of the bloodiest and most devastating European wars, in which the Habsburg bloc (Catholic German princes headed by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire) was opposed by the alliance of German Protestant princes and the free cities that joined them. The first were supported by two ancestral branches of the Habsburgs - the royal houses of Spain and Austria, as well as Poland; Sweden and Denmark supported the Protestants with the support of England and Russia.
France had a chance to maneuver between two fires: on the one hand, she was afraid of the strengthening of the Habsburgs, and on the other, she did not want to openly side with the Protestants, having at her side the bleeding Huguenot problem.
For Cardinal Richelieu, the decisive argument has always been political expediency, he often repeated that "the difference in religious beliefs can cause a split in the next world, but not in this one." The first minister of the Catholic kingdom saw the main danger in Catholic Spain, therefore, at first he supported the Protestant princes with money, and then, albeit belatedly, plunged his country into hostilities on the side of the same Protestants.
During its course, fellow soldiers of d'Artagnan and his Musketeer friends thoroughly ravaged Germany (as evidenced to this day by the ruins of the fortified castles they blown up on both banks of the Rhine), inflicted a number of sensitive defeats on the Spaniards, and ultimately tipped the scales in favor of the anti-Habsburg coalition … At the same time, the war very strongly undermined the economy of France itself, and besides this, Louis quarreled with the Vatican. The question was even about the excommunication of the apostate king. Even before the end of the war, Pope Urban II, hearing about the death of the hated French cardinal, in his hearts said: “If God exists, I hope Richelieu will answer for everything. And if there is no God, then Richelieu is lucky."
Until his last days, Cardinal Richelieu had occasion to wage war on two fronts. The pro-Hispanic group at the French court, which the cardinal called the "party of the saints", was extremely strong, led by Prince Gaston of Orleans and the Queen Mother, who now treated her protege with outright hatred. But Richelieu also managed to win this internal war: the king, trying to get out of dependence on his power-hungry mother, refused to dismiss Richelieu. After that, Maria de Medici and the Prince of Orléans left France in protest, finding shelter in Holland, which was then ruled by the Habsburgs.
Controlled autocracy
During those 18 years, when France, while the king was still alive, was ruled almost completely by his first minister, Cardinal Richelieu was able to carry out many political, administrative and military reforms. And not a single economic one.
The first minister can be credited with the first codification of French laws (the so-called Michaud code), the already mentioned strengthening of the vertical of power (suppression of noble freemen, provincial and religious independence), reorganization of the postal service, and the creation of a powerful fleet. In addition, the cardinal renewed and expanded the famous Sorbonne University and contributed to the creation of the first weekly newspaper in France (and possibly in the world).
As for the projects he developed to improve the national economy, they were not destined to be realized for at least two reasons. The first was the endless wars into which Cardinal Richelieu himself plunged France: they caused the need for loans, which, in turn, led to an increase in taxes, and those inevitably led to riots and peasant uprisings. Richelieu brutally suppressed riots, but was unable to suppress the economic causes that caused them.
The second reason lay in the relative economic illiteracy of the first minister. In general, he was quite well-read, including in economics, but he never took it seriously, considering only a servant of politics. Richelieu declared war without thinking about supplying the army, advocated the independence of the market - and at the same time did not admit the thought that this sphere of public life would be outside the power of the king. The cardinal gave impetus to the colonial expansion of France, strove to expand foreign trade - and he himself in every possible way interfered with it, either by petty control, or by protectionist measures. At the same time, the cardinal did not hesitate to personally head a number of international trading companies, motivating this, of course, exclusively with the interests of the state.
The main obstacle to his economic plans was that the first minister made the strengthening of royal power the goal of his life, and absolutism, centralization and total control do not get along well with a free economy.
Odessa "duke"
Be that as it may, the name of Cardinal Richelieu is forever inscribed in French history. And also in the history of the city, located very far from the cardinal's homeland.
When at the end of 1642 the 57-year-old ruler of France felt that his days were numbered (nervous exhaustion affected, to which was added purulent pleurisy), he asked for a last meeting with the monarch. Reminding the king that he leaves the country fortified, and the enemies defeated and humiliated, the first minister implored not to leave the royal patronage of his heir-nephew, and also to appoint Cardinal Mazarin as the first minister of the kingdom.
The king complied with both requests. France later bitterly regretted the second, but the first had an unexpected effect on Russian history. Because one of the cardinal's descendants, the grandson of Marshal of France Armand Emmanuel du Plessis, Duke de Richelieu, who also bore the title of Count de Chinon, at the age of 19 became the first chamberlain of the court, served in the dragoon and hussar regiments, and when the revolution occurred, he fled from the Jacobin terror. in Russia. Where he turned into Emmanuel Osipovich de Richelieu and made a good career: in 1805 the tsar appointed him governor-general of Novorossiya.
At the end of his emigration, the duke returned to France and even became a member of two cabinets. But he achieved greater fame in his second homeland. And today the main street of Odessa - the city that owes its prosperity to him - bears his name. And at the top of the famous Potemkin Stairs he himself stands: a bronze honorary citizen of Odessa, Duke de Richelieu, whom everyone in the city simply calls “duke”.
A. Soloviev