PREFACE TO RICHELIEU.
The administration of Cardinal Richelieu, whom
(despite all his darker qualities) Voltaire and
History justly consider the true architect of the
French monarchy, and the great parent of French
civilization, is characterised by features alike
tragic and comic. A weak king—an ambitious
favourite; a despicable conspiracy against the
minister, nearly always associated with a dangerous
treason against the State—These, with little
variety of names and dates, constitute the eventful
cycle through which, with a dazzling ease, and an
arrogant confidence, the great luminary fulfilled
its destinies. Blent together, in startling contrast,
we see the grandest achievements and the pettiest
agents;—the spy—the mistress—the capuchin;—
the destruction of feudalism;—the humiliation of
Austria;—the dismemberment of Spain.
Richelieu himself is still what he was in his
own day—a man of two characters. If, on the
one hand, he is justly represented as inflexible
and vindictive, crafty and unscrupulous; so, on
the other, it cannot be denied that he was placed
in times in which the long impunity of every
license required stern examples—that he was
beset by perils and intrigues, which gave a certain
excuse to the subtlest inventions of self-defence—
that his ambition was inseparably connected with
a passionate love for the glory of his country—
and that, if he was her dictator, he was not less
her benefactor. It has been fairly remarked, by
the most impartial historians, that he was no less
generous to merit than severe to crime—that, in
the various departments of the State, the Army,
and the Church, he selected and distinguished the
ablest aspirants—that the wars which he conducted
were, for the most part, essential to the
preservation of France, and Europe itself, from
the formidable encroachments of the Austrian
House—that, in spite of those wars, the people
were not oppressed with exorbitant imposts—
and that he left the kingdom he had governed
in a more flourishing and vigorous state than at
any former period of the French history, or at the
decease of Louis XIV.
The cabals formed against this great statesman
were not carried on by the patriotism of public
virtue, or the emulation of equal talent: they were
but court struggles, in which the most worthless
agents had recourse to the most desperate means.
In each, as I have before observed, we see combined
the twofold attempt to murder the minister
and to betray the country. Such, then, are the
agents, and such the designs, with which truth, in
the Drama as in History, requires us to contrast the
celebrated Cardinal;—not disguising his foibles or
his vices, but not unjust to the grander qualities
(especially the love of country), by which they
were often dignified, and, at times, redeemed.
The historical drama is the concentration of
historical events. In the attempt to place upon
the stage the picture of an era, that license with
dates and details, which Poetry permits, and which
the highest authorities in the Drama of France
herself, have sanctioned, has been, though not unsparingly,
indulged. The conspiracy of the Duc
de Bouillon is, for instance, amalgamated with the
dénouement of The Day of Dupes;
and circumstances
connected with the treason of Cinq Mars
(whose brilliant youth and gloomy catastrophe
tend to subvert poetic and historic justice, by seducing
us to forget his base ingratitude and his
perfidious apostacy) are identified with the fate of
the earlier favourite Baradas,
whose sudden rise
and as sudden fall passed into a proverb. I ought
to add, that the noble romance of Cinq Mars suggested
one of the scenes in the fifth act; and that
for the conception of some portion of the intrigue
connected with De Mauprat and Julie, I am, with
great alterations of incident, and considerable if
not entire reconstruction of character, indebted
to an early and admirable novel by the author of
Picciola.
London, March, 1839.