黎塞留的政治思想、目的和实践

黎塞留的政治思想、目的和实践 From Joseph R. Strayer, Hnas W. Gatzke, and E. Harris Harbison, The Main Stream of Civilization to 1715 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1974) There is no mystery about Richelieu, as there is about many other great figures in history. He had the clearest and most penetrating mind of any statesman of his generation. And he made his purpose perfectly plain: to enhance the power and prestige of the French monarchy beyond any possibility of challenge. He came to his task with a marvelous grasp of political and diplomatic possibilities, and infallible memory, and an inflexible will (p. 419) unhampered by moral scruples. Richelieu admired Machiavelli’s writings, and the heart of his political creed was raison d’état—the doctrine that the good of the state is the supreme good, and that any means may be used to attain it. He would coolly send an innocent man to his death in order to frighten other troublemakers, enhance the authority of the monarchy, and so save bloodshed in the end. “In judging crimes against the state,” he argued, “it is essential to banish pity.” He was not irreligious, but the workings of his mind were overwhelmingly this-worldly. “Man is immortal; his salvation is hereafter,” he once argued against some conscientious scruples of the king, but “the state has no immortality, its salvation is now or never.” While his cardinal’s robes helped protect him against assassination, his policy was that of an astute secular statesman who put public order before religious zeal. His reputation for diabolical cleverness went even beyond the reality and helped him to bewilder his enemies and gain his ends. Richelieu had three concrete objectives that had to be carried out more or less simultaneously. First, he meant to break the political and military power of the Huguenots. Second, he meant to crush the political influence of the great nobles. And finally, he meant to destroy the power of the Habsburgs to intervene in French internal affairs. The Edict of Nantes [decreed by Henry IV in 1598] had allowed the Huguenots to garrison about 200 towns, the chief of which was La Rochelle on the west coast. Richelieu persuaded Louis XIII that he would never be master in his own house until he had wiped out this “empire within an empire.” Rumors that the government had decided to attack provoked the Huguenots to rebel, and Richelieu proceeded to besiege and capture La Rochelle. At the Peace of Alais in 1629, which settled the dispute, Richelieu was unexpectedly generous in his terms. He had no respect whatever for what he contemptuously called “the allegedly Reformed religion,” but he allowed the Huguenots the right to worship as they pleased once he had attained his primary objective of eliminating their political and military autonomy. He did not wish to alienate Protestants abroad who could help him in a war with Spain and Austria, and he hoped he could make loyal and useful citizens out of the Huguenots. In this he was successful. The Huguenots served the crown in the war that followed against the Habsburgs and loyally supported the monarchy in the crisis of the Fronde. Richelieu’s attack on the political power of the nobility was less successful than his attack on the Huguenots, but it was just as determined. Until the very end of his career, he was constantly threatened by aristocratic intrigues. In response to this threat, he developed a network of spies, set up a special tribunal to try noble lawbreakers, and sternly forbade dueling, a privilege that marked the freedom of the aristocracy from ordinary restraints. He gradually weakened the power of the great nobles who were provincial governors and gave more local administrative responsibilities to direct representatives of the crown. These representatives, called intendants, were usually drawn from the noblesse de la robe, ennobled office-holders of middle-class ancestry. They were therefore more dependent on the monarchy than the older nobility. Richelieu did nothing to lessen the economic or social privileges of the French nobility, but he did curtail its political power. Richelieu was no financier, nor did he have any interest in bettering the condition of the common people. He spent large sums on rebuilding the armed forces and even more in actual warfare against Spain. He left the government’s finances and the nation’s peasants in worse condition than he had found them. (p. 421) But through his subtle diplomacy and his well-timed intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, he made France, instead of Spain, the leading European power. (p. 422) …. …. Since coming to power in 1624, Richelieu had kept in close touch with the progress of the war through his ambassadors and agents. But for ten years he did not feel that the French army was strong enough to intervene in Germany. His major purpose was to crush the Habsburgs, both Austrian and Spanish, and he was ready to ally with anyone, Protestant or Catholic, who was opposed to them. The Dutch, who went back to war with their old enemies the Spanish, were his first allies, and in 1631 he subsidized the invasion by Gustavus Adolphus. When the Swedes were finally defeated in 1634, Richelieu saw that he would have to intervene directly if he was to check Habsburg expansion in, and perhaps control of, Europe. And so in 1635 he sent a French herald to Brussels to declare war on the king of Spain. ….[Richelieu died in 1642.] In 1643 the French finally destroyed the legend of Spanish invincibility by crushing a Spanish army at Rocroi in Netherlands. It was the first time in 150 years that a Spanish army had suffered a major defeat….(p. 432)