The Monarch who Persecuted Protestants in France and Defended Them in Germany

Louis XIII., of France, "the nobody who wore the crown," is not so much to blame for the inconsistency of persecuting the Protestants at home and defending them abroad, as his great minister of State, Armand Jean Duplessis, Cardinal Richelieu. Richelieu was the real ruler of France from 1622 to 1643, and he had three distinct aims steadily in view;--to destroy the Huguenots or French Protestants as a party, to subdue the nobles of France, and to humble the house of Austria. To accomplish these ends, Richelieu did not hesitate alternately to assume the helmet of the warrior and the scarlet hat of the Cardinal. For nineteen years the history of France and her King is but a biography of this man of iron will. Richelieu has been compared to Cardinal Wolsey, of England, and in many points the comparison holds good. Like Wolsey he was a prelate, a minister, a politician, and a master of intrigue; he was, however, far more crafty and unscrupulous than the great minister of Henry VIII. (1509-1547). From 1529 to 1629 there had existed in France a Protestant party of great political power; alienated by persecution, they had attempted to throw off their allegiance and establish an independent state, of which Rochelle was to be the capital. Richelieu laid siege to this city, and after a most obstinate resistance of fourteen months it surrendered to him October 28th, 1628. Of the 24,000 inhabitants only 4000 remained. The long religious civil wars were now ended, and the Protestant power in France finally crushed.

During the "Thirty Years' War" (1618-1648), which had Germany for a centre, and which was, strictly speaking, between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant princes of Germany, Richelieu did not hesitate to take the part of the German Protestant princes, in order to weaken the power of Ferdinand of Austria. This end he accomplished by giving aid to the great champion of Protestantism, Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden; and after the death of that hero at Lutsen in 1632, by letting France take the field directly as one of the combatants. The power of the nobles was always hostile to Richelieu, but by his stern resolve and deep craft he thwarted all their schemes against himself, and during the last years of his authority he monopolized all the powers of state. Thus he triumphed over all his enemies, the Reformed Faith, the house of Austria, and the nobility of France. It must be remembered that it was from purely political motives that he aided the German Protestants; he did not love them any more than the French Huguenots. He died in 1643, and in the same year Louis XIII. left vacant the throne he had only nominally filled.