CHAPTER II 1590—1595

Friends and relations—The household at Richelieu—Country life in Poitou.

WHETHER THE WIDOW OF François de Richelieu was in famine-stricken Paris during the siege—one of those afflicted ladies to whom the good-natured and politic Henry sent provisions first, passports later, that they might escape from the city—or whether she had already, her husband being so strongly in opposition to the ruling powers there, removed herself and her five children into the country it seems impossible to know.

She was not without influential friends in Paris; the more useful, perhaps, because they were not in the fighting line. Her father lived in the Rue Hautefeuille, near the Church of St. André-des-Arcs, in the heart of the Latin quarter; the old turrets of his house still remain. He was divided from the Rue du Bouloy, on the north side of the river beyond the Louvre, by two bridges, the Island, and a labyrinth of dirty, narrow, dangerous streets. There may well have been a gulf fixed, during those horrible months of the siege, between the old advocate and his daughter.

But Amador de la Porte, his younger son, and Denys Bouthillier, his head clerk and future successor, were not likely to let Suzanne and her children suffer any unnecessary privation. Both were strong and brilliant men, worthy members of that bourgeoisie which was the pride and life of Paris. Amador, some years younger than his sister, was apparently too restless to settle down in his father’s profession. But François de la Porte had been very useful, as advocate, to the Order of Malta. They rewarded him by receiving Amador as a Knight of the Order, without a too close inquiry into his proofs of nobility. His foot once on the ladder, Amador rose to be Commander, then Grand Prior of France, and by his nephew’s favour held several important governments.

These two men, Amador de la Porte and Denys Bouthillier, were constant friends and guardians of the Richelieu children. Bouthillier and his sons were devoted to the Cardinal throughout his career, to their very great advantage. Claude, the eldest, made an enormous fortune as surintendant des finances under Louis XIII., and his son Leon, Comte de Chavigny, was a minister under both Richelieu and Mazarin. Sébastien and Victor rose high in the Church. Denys became private secretary to Queen Marie de Médicis, and was created Baron de Rancé; he was the father of Armand Jean de Rancé, the famous Abbot of La Trappe.

Through the Cardinal’s other La Porte uncle, of whom, personally, not much is known, the old advocate’s family stepped up into something like equality with the highest in the kingdom. His son, Charles, a bold, eccentric creature, attached himself from the first to the fortunes of his cousin, Armand de Richelieu, and by this means became a Marshal of France and Duc de la Meilleraye. He was one of the Cardinal’s most trusted aides-de-camp, and later on, a conspicuous figure in Paris during the troubles of the Fronde.

In the autumn of 1590, if not sooner, a family of women and children was established at the Chateau de Richelieu. There were Dame Françoise de Rochechouart, widow of the Seigneur Louis, and her daughter, also a widow, Françoise du Plessis, Madame de Marconnay. There were Suzanne de la Porte, widow of the Grand Provost, and her five children; Françoise, a girl of twelve—who married first the Seigneur de Beauvau, secondly, René de Vignerot, Seigneur du Pont-de-Courlay, and was the mother of the Cardinal’s favourite niece, Madame de Combalet, afterwards created Duchesse d’Aiguillon; Henry, a well-known courtier of Louis XIII.’s young days; Alphonse, at this time intended for the Bishopric of Luçon; Armand Jean, the political genius, now a delicate, feverish atom of five years old; Nicole, who married the Marquis de Maillé-Brézé, and whose daughter, Claire Clémence, became the wife of the great Condé.

The head of this household, according to immemorial French custom, was the grandmother, Françoise de Rochechouart. Her rule, no doubt, was severe, and there are evidences that her daughter-in-law, a woman of gentler type, suffered under it. The hard old aristocrat who had condescended in her marriage with Louis du Plessis was scornful of the bourgeoise mother of her grandchildren. She was soured too by the losses and troubles of her life. Probably Suzanne brought from Paris the habits of a civilisation that did not suit that rough old home, that “ancient house of stone, roofed with slates,” strongly fortified with walls and moats as useful now as in the time of the English wars, when they were new. In 1590, the civil wars were by no means at an end. The province, devastated for years by Catholics and Huguenots flying at each other’s throats, now suffered equally in the struggle between Henry IV. and the League. Poitiers took the latter side, and for three years, from 1591 to 1594, the King’s army besieged it in vain. All the neighbouring country, including the valley of the Mable, was ruined and unsafe. A band of ruffian soldiers sacked the small town of Faye-la-Vineuse, on the hills overlooking Richelieu. No wonder if the gentle Suzanne, “loyal lady” and tender mother, was kept sleepless by burning horizons as often as by her little Armand, shivering with fever in the unwholesome mists of that river valley.

Her anxieties indeed were many; for though Dame Françoise might be mistress of the house, all the business connected with her children and her inheritance devolved on her. And the Richelieu affairs were in an embarrassed state. The Grand Provost had left heavy debts behind him. There was the management of various small estates and chateaux in Poitou, which by some means or other had become possessions of the family: one of these was Mausson, name of ill-omen, which had been taken in exchange for an estate in Picardy, part of the dowry of Suzanne de la Porte.

She was an excellent woman of business, with hereditary instincts of law and order. All her tact and capacity, directed by strong affection, were devoted to the interests of her children. The words she wrote to Armand, years later, when he was Bishop of Luçon, seem to have been the key-note of her life:

“L’inquietude que j’ai me tue et je vois bien que je n’aurai jamais de joie que lorsque, vous sachant tous heureux, je serai en paradis.”

With such a mother, and with an indulgent aunt in Madame de Marconnay—in spite of a fierce grandmother, barred gates and alarms of war—the children’s life at Richelieu need not have been unhappy. Indeed it was not so, if one may judge by the Cardinal’s recollections of it, and his constant devotion to the old place where most of his childhood was spent. After all, the family was on the winning side. France was growing tired of the League, attracted by the sunny, accommodating patriotism of Henry IV. If the harvests of Poitou were destroyed, woods cut down, villages burnt and pillaged, it was often, odd as this may sound, the work of friends, and in the intervals of these stormy visits of robber bands, country life went on cheerfully.

The strong old manor nestled snugly on the islet in the river-bed, something after the fashion of Chenonceaux in Touraine or Bazouges in Anjou. On the border of these two provinces and of Poitou, the country round Richelieu had something of the character of all three. The rich fertility of Touraine, the vineyards and gardens, though not unknown here, soon gave way to the forests and marshes of the wilder provinces. But Richelieu had its park and its avenues, leading from the high road which ran south from Chinon and Champigny into Poitou. By this road came all the travellers, all the visitors: Amador de la Porte, the beloved uncle, with news from Paris; Jacques du Plessis, the great-uncle, the non-resident Bishop of Luçon, with his eye on a young successor; or, less welcome to the heads of the family, the Duc de Montpensier, the feudal neighbour, with his pack of wolf-hounds and swaggering troop of guards and followers. One may fancy, even then, that the dark eyes of Armand watched the owner of Champigny, scarred from the wars, without much friendliness.

There are signs that the family at Richelieu was on kindly terms with its neighbours of lower estate. The cure of Braye, M. Yver, who said mass often in the chapel of the chateau, was an intimate friend. There was no oppression of the peasants, who lived round about in their low, mud-floored, one-roomed cottages, and eked out their poor harvest by catching game in the forest or fishing in the river. All through the western provinces, indeed, then and for long afterwards, seigneur and peasant lived well together; the contrary was the exception. And the contrary came to pass, in great measure, through the action of the founder of absolute monarchy, the boy who ran about hand in hand with his mother at Richelieu.

In the meanwhile, Dame Suzanne befriended and doctored the people, knew them all by name, visited them, gossiped with them. She and her children witnessed their marriages, were sponsors at the baptism of their babes; a few years later, in 1618, the old registers of Braye bear witness that the infant son of young Henry du Plessis was named at the font, in the chapel at Richelieu, by two “poor orphans,” assisted by “ten other poor persons.” The gates of the chateau were open to any humble neighbours who suffered in the wars; the kitchen supplied them with food, sometimes not...