Download Cardinal Richelieu`s Conquest of La Rochelle: The Fall ofthe

Cardinal Richelieu's Conquest of La Rochelle: The Fall ofthe Huguenots
and France's Subsequent Decline
by Andrew Farrand
Since the Concordat of Bologna was signed in 1516, creating an alliance between the
French monarchy and Catholic pope, Catholicism was the official state religion of
France.1 By the middle of the sixteenth century, however, a small group of Protestants
following the teachings of John Calvin was rapidly growing. These "Huguenots" could be
found throughout the hierarchy of French society, from poor shopkeepers, artisans, and
farmers to businessmen and lawyers of the bourgeoisie. By the early seventeenth century,
an estimated one million French citizens had renounced Catholicism in favor of the
revolutionary new Reformed theology,2 gaining the attention of the French Crown.
At the time, the bustling city of La Rochelle, located on the Atlantic coast of France, was
one of the chief Protestant strongholds and centers of operation. For this town, the
veritable Mecca of Protestantism in France, played a crucial role in political matters.
Because the Huguenots presented a rapidly increasing threat to France's religious and
social unity, Catholic monarchs considered a forceful response. The monarchs recognized
La Rochelle's importance as the keystone of the Huguenot movement, and noted that if it
were taken through military force, the Protestants' power throughout all of France would
be crippled.
Such political tensions between the Huguenots and Catholics were not new; in fact they
had existed for over a century in France, and had previously culminated in the late
sixteenth century during the French Wars of Religion. After several decades of civil war,
King Henry IV of Navarre ascended the French throne as a Catholic, and in 1598
proclaimed the Edict of Nantes to put a decisive end to the religious wars. In lingering
sympathy for the Huguenots, this politique, a politically, rather than religiously,
motivated Catholic convert, declared in the Edict:
"And in order to leave no occasion for troubles or differences between our subjects, we
have permitted, and herewith permit, those of the said religion called Reformed to live
and abide in all the cities and places of this our kingdom and countries of our sway,
without being annoyed molested, or compelled to do anything in the matter of religion
contrary to their consciences."3
This proclamation also prevented Protestants from being turned away from French
schools and hospitals, and officially designated La Rochelle and some 150 other towns as
Huguenot "places of surety."4 The Protestants were limited to openly practicing their
religion in these cities, where they were permitted to hold public assemblies and worship
in Protestant churches without fear of Catholic incursion. The Edict detailed these terms:
"We very expressly forbid to all those of the said religion [Protestantism] its exercises,
either in respect to ministry, regulation, discipline, or the public instruction of children,
or otherwise... otherwise than in theplaces permitted and granted by the present edict."5
However, in order to ensure his personal political safety, King Henry was also obliged to
accept the Catholic dominance of France. His Edict also dictated:
"We ordain that the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion shall be restored and
reestablished in all places and localities of this our kingdom and countries subject to our
sway..." 6
In 1628, when Cardinal Richelieu, the extremely influential advisor to the young King
Louis XIII, besieged and finally defeated La Rochelle, he violated the sacred Edict of
Nantes. Such extreme measures were justified, he felt, by the Huguenots' rapid growth of
military and political power, which threatened his vision of a French nation loyal to his
Absolute rule. The Cardinal wished to reign over France with Absolute power, an entirely
undisputed, unchallenged, and unquestioned might. Richelieu explained,
"So long as they [the Huguenots] have foothold in France, the King will not be master in
his own house and will be unable to undertake any great enterprise abroad." 7
For this reason the Cardinal described the Huguenot organization as a "state within a
state,"8 a separate republic that threatened his power just as much as any rival European
nation did.
Many wary French citizens, however, disagreed with this policy and began to lose faith in
Richelieu's and Louis Xlll's political system. Several years prior to Richelieu's capture of
La Rochelle, one French scholar foresaw the potentially dangerous effects of upsetting
France's precarious political balance. The scholar said that without a return to stability
and peace, there would exist,
"...A serious possibility that France will fall into deplorable confusion.... Nor could
anyone doubt that to embark upon even the smallest war, be it against England or La
Rochelle (or anywhere else in the kingdom) would lead to our entire ruin. As a result it
seems that the King cannot take wiser advice than to have the necessity of peace agreed
upon... "9
But Richelieu, firmly resolved to achieve unity and loyalty within France, had to
destabilize the Huguenots and permanently oust them from the French political sphere.
As the Cardinal had hoped, this ultimately devastated the Huguenots' chances of gaining
political strength in the French nation, and insured the monarch's dominance for the next
several centuries. Richelieu, however, had not foreseen that the transfer of power from
the Huguenots to the monarchy would contribute greatly to the eventual decline of the
French nation.
For most of his twenty-year tenure as chief royal advisor, Cardinal Richelieu abided by
the Edict of Nantes in dealing with the Huguenots, and had no reason other than religious
beliefs to condemn them. Richelieu was faced with issues besides the Huguenots' threat,
often being forced to subdue the unruly French nobility's revolts. In one letter to King
Louis XIII, Richelieu describes the fighting near Languedoc, where the Huguenots, lead
by the Duke de Rohan, revolted against the Catholic monarchy with strong, military
aggression.10 As the unofficial chef d'état of the French Empire, the ambitious Cardinal
was faced with more significant issues than a small minority's theological beliefs.
Richelieu was more concerned with improving France's political position in Europe,
which was constantly in jeopardy as a result of conflicts with rival nations Great Britain,
Spain, and the Netherlands.
By the mid-l620's, however, the Huguenots, who were rapidly gaining political
momentum, had become a formidable, immediate threat to France's unity and to
Richelieu's power. In order that he be able to return his focus to international conflicts,
the Cardinal saw no choice but to destroy the Huguenot organization quickly and
effectively. In a statement to King Louis XIII, Richelieu cited the Huguenots as the cause
for much of France' political disruption:
"The true remedy for all these evils is the capture of La Rochelle. If one succeeds in
capturing this place quickly, our open enemies will not cease their ill will but at least
their active hostility; those who are secret enemies will applaud the King's victories,
although they would have preferred to cause trouble. We will have peace everywhere if
we so wish." 11
Richelieu endeavored to do so through military force rather than attempts to convert the
Protestants to the mainstream Catholic theology. The Cardinal was aware that because
the Huguenot "state within a state" had political and economic ambitions in addition to its
religious beliefs, merely introducing a new theology would not end the political threat
posed by the Huguenot organization. A successful war against the Huguenots would have
to eliminate them not just in the religious realm but politically as well.
In 1627 Cardinal Richelieu temporarily turned his attention away from foreign relations
and instead toward a campaign to end the Huguenot threat. The Cardinal embarked upon
his aggressive crusade to destroy the Huguenots' power by systematically overthrowing
their designated "places of surety," including La Rochelle. When Richelieu arrived at the
city and was unable to breach its fortifications, he proceeded to surround La Rochelle in
order to besiege it. At the time, La Rochelle was inhabited by about 17,000 citizens,
mostly Protestants, who for fourteen months successfully defended their city under
Mayor Jean Guiton in hopes of a rescue by British naval forces. Cardinal Richelieu,
however, blockaded the harbor with a makeshift dam, eliminating the possibility of
British intervention, and patiently awaited the surrender of the starving Huguenots. When
the town finally capitulated in October of 1628, it was after the death of some 10,000 of
its citizens.12 However, far more detrimental to the Huguenots were the military,
economic, religious, and especially political effects of the defeat of their most critical
stronghold.
Directly after the fall of La Rochelle Protestants throughout France began to feel the
results of Richelieu's victory. La Rochelle's defeat allowed the Cardinal to take with less
resistance several other Protestant strongholds. The fall of other Huguenot towns such as
Montauban and Alais solidified Richelieu's military conquest of the Protestants, ensuring
their political destruction. After Richelieu's defeat of these towns, the advisor reported to
his King, young Louis Xlll:
"Now it can truly be said that the springs of heresy and rebellion have run dry. ...
Everything bends in submission to your name."13
In June of 1629, after the conquest of the major Huguenot strongholds, the terms of
defeat outlined in the Peace of Alais completed the Cardinal's successful campaign and
revoked many of the Huguenots' political rights. By this document, the "places of surety"
and right to public assembly were lost, the Protestant towns' defensive fortifications
razed, and their military forces disassembled, bringing Huguenot military capabilities to
an end. With the revocation of their immunity within the strongholds, the Huguenots
were rendered incapable of continuing the rigid structure that had for decades allowed
them to expand and cope with the opposition of a stronger Catholic majority. Richelieu's
defeat of La Rochelle and other Huguenot centers effectively prevented the Huguenots
from ever regaining their former status as a powerful political organization.
Economically, the Huguenots suffered from the destruction of their "state within a state"
and the subsequent 'annexation' into France of one of the largest French seaports on the
Atlantic. La Rochelle was a rich port city that brought great profit to local merchants
through continual trade with the British who, largely Protestant themselves, had
supported Huguenot activities in France. La Rochelle's status as a Protestant center meant
that many of the merchants who resided there were Huguenots. The loss of the city
therefore' caused a decrease in profits to many of the key members of the French
Protestant movement, further damaging the Huguenots' economic status and chances of
regaining political sway in France.
In the years directly following the fall of La Rochelle, despite the gradual decrease in
French Protestants' rights, many Huguenots remained loyal to their faith. However, the
Cardinal's political disabling of the Huguenots had weakened their organization as well
as their ability to continue to expand their numbers. The demographic results of
Richelieu's attacks are evident in La Rochelle's population decrease. Prior to Richelieu's
defeat of La Rochelle, approximately 86 percent of the city's population were Huguenots,
compared to only 45 percent in years soon alter Richelieu's conquest, and merely 21
percent by 1685.14 Protestantism in France was no longer structured, and as a result began
to diminish throughout French society. The formerly booming Huguenot population had
been so crippled by the loss of key cities and the prohibition of public assembly that it
was unable to maintain the religious organization's structure or its economic and political
strength.
While the immediate effects of the fall of La Rochelle were detrimental to Protestants,
following the Peace of Alais it appeared that Richelieu's campaign had greatly benefited
the primarily Catholic French nation. In terms of military strategy, the elimination of the
Huguenots as a threat to the French monarchy allowed Richelieu to focus his attention on
fighting the Spanish, British, and other enemy powers throughout Europe. On a shortterm scale, it appeared that the official end of Calvinism in France had also created a state
of religious unity throughout the nation. However, many devout Huguenots began to
emigrate to neighboring European countries, while others, particularly the nobility,
withheld a strong distrust for the monarch. On a superficial level, the fall of La Rochelle
had brought Cardinal Richelieu another step closer to his goal - to hold Absolute rule
over France or, as he said, "To make the king absolute in his kingdom in order to
establish order therein."15 However, Richelieu was unable to foresee that in crushing the
Huguenots, he had set in motion many detrimental long-term results throughout France.
After his defeat of the Huguenots at La Rochelle, no significant rival group or individual
within France contested the Cardinal's political power or military dominance of the
nation. Richelieu had advanced his power past a certain threshold after which the
monarch's strength was truly Absolute and uncontested by any internal rival.
In succeeding Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII was easily able to maintain this control
throughout his reign. His successor, Cardinal Mazarin, the regent for the young King
Louis XIV, was only briefly tested with the Frondes, a large uprising of nobles fearful of
the monarch's disproportionate amount of power. After Mazarin crushed this rebellion, no
rivals remained to challenge the power of the French Crown. Without a competitor to
keep the monarchs alert and engaged in their duties as rulers, they were permitted,
because no one could regulate them, to do as they pleased, a situation that later proved
detrimental to France.
When Louis XIV ascended the throne to actively rule in 1661, the Absolutism that
Cardinal Richelieu had established in his defeat of the Huguenots allowed the "Sun King"
to nearly bring about the ruin of the French Empire. Louis ruled with an excessive
Absolute power, at one point describing himself with a famous statement which
epitomizes the French monarchy's runaway Absolutism: "L'état, c'est moi" (I am the
state).16 With Louis's power unchecked by any outside force, the Sun King created an
unnecessarily massive and expensive standing army of 400,000 troops.17 Louis's
construction of Versailles, an ostentatious royal palace outside of Paris, was inspired
because, as a member of his court casually noted, "He showed a disinclination for
Paris."18 Louis's rampant, lavish spending greatly damaged France's financial status, and
even with the wise economic practices of his chief advisor, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the
foolish Sun King had crippled the French treasury beyond repair. The Absolutism
established by Cardinal Richelieu had granted an incompetent, capricious monarch an
immense amount of power that, after his death, led to a financial collapse of the
overburdened French government.
Other long-term effects of the Cardinal's defeat of La Rochelle and the Huguenot
organization include prolonging a dangerous pre-existing social premise in France.
Richelieu's Absolutist greed for power brought him to tyrannize a minority without
considering the potentially harmful impact it could have on the French nation. Later
monarchs considered it a standard obligation of their office to oppress minorities in the
same way that Richelieu and his predecessors had. For example, in the 1680's Louis XIV
without reason cruelly capitalized on the Huguenots' political weakness by creating laws
to force their conversion to Catholicism. One act permitted French troops to be quartered
in Huguenot households,19 and another allowed Huguenot children to be taken from their
parents to be educated as loyal Catholics.20 Far worse yet for the French Protestants was
Louis's Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which in 1685 rescinded all of the Huguenots'
previously granted freedoms.21 This action was based upon Louis's belief that the
monarch should rule with Absolute authority in his realm, a philosophy which the Sun
King summarized in yet another statement, "One Faith, One Law, One King."22 The
revocation of the Edict of Nantes prompted an estimated 200,000 Huguenots to flee
France for Protestant European countries or the more tolerant British colonies in North
America.23
The premise established by Richelieu's lack of respect for the rights of the Huguenots
continued to affect the relationship between minorities and the French monarchy for
centuries. In the mid-1700's the narrow-minded French rulers initially rejected the
philosophes' radical theories, despite the brilliant and practical logic they offered. In
1791, monarchs and a majority of citizens repudiated feminist Olympe de Gouges'
"Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen."24 As a result of
Richelieu's defeat of the Protestants at La Rochelle, throughout the next several centuries'
tyrants cruelly suppressed avant-garde, freethinking minorities, hindering France's
intellectual progression and further deteriorating the frail state of the French nation.
Through the abuse of power in the name of Absolutism, the superfluous spending of
government finances, and the unprovoked persecution of social non-conformists, tyrants
gradually caused the breakdown of the French nation. Once Louis XIV had depleted the
French treasury, his equally unwise successors were powerless to reverse France's social,
political, and religious decline. The monarch's Absolute power deteriorated, rapidly
creating an imbalance of power throughout the reeling French government and social
hierarchy.
Cardinal Richelieu's fateful decision to subdue the Protestants rather than accept them
into French society had so disrupted France that for over a century it was impossible for
the nation to regain its former stability. France underwent a long period of turmoil that
culminated in the French Revolution, and only then, two hundred years after the fall of
La Rochelle, did France's former stable, secure balance of power begin to be
reconstructed.
In the 1620's and 1630's, rather than employ a laissez-faire system of government,
Richelieu unjustly suppressed the Huguenots by overthrowing La Rochelle and
effectively destroying the French Protestant organization. These foolish practices forced
much of the Huguenot population to flee to more tolerant areas, while back in France
Cardinal Richelieu's excessive Absolutism had begun the resulting social, economic, and
political decline of the French nation.
Endnotes
1
Iannuzzo, C.T. "The Reformation: The Gallican Tradition." July 7, 1998.
<http://www.lepg.org/religion.htm>. Return.
2
Benedict, Philip. The Huguenot Population of France, 1600-1685: The Demographic
Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The American
Philosophical Society, 1991., 76. Return.
3
The Global Experience: Readings in World History Since 1500, 2nd edition, 7. Return.
4
Goubert, Pierre, The Course of French History, trans. Maarten Ultee, 161. Return.
5
The Global Experience: Readings in World History Since 1500, 2nd edition, 7. Return.
6
The Global Experience: Readings in World History Since 1500, 2nd edition, 6. Return.
7
Glossop, Pat, Richelieu. 55. Return.
8
Goebert, Pierre, The Course of French History, Trans. Maarten Ultee, 161. Return.
9
"On the necessity of peace in the kingdom [September 1625]," Document 10. May 6,
2001. <http://www..le.ac.uk/hi/bon/Govtsoc/doc10.html.> Return.
10
Tapié, Victor Lucien, France in the Age of Louis XIII and Richelieu, trans. D. McN.
Lockie, 122-126. Return.
11
"Advice which the Cardinal [de Richelieu] gave to the King on his return to Pans from
La Rochelle. [About 20 April 1628]," Document 31. Accessed May 6, 2001.
<http://www.le.ac.uk/hi/bon/resources/Govtsoc/doc31.html>. Return.
12
Benedict, Philip. The Huguenot Population of France, 1600-1685: The Demographic
Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The American
Philosophical Society, 1991, 51. Return.
13
Tapié, Victor Lucien, France in the Age of Louis XIII and Richelieu, trans. D. McN.
Lockie, 202. Return.
14
Benedict, Philip. The Huguenot Population of France, 1600-1685: The Demographic
Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The American
Philosophical Society, 1991., 55. Return.
15
Glossop, Pat. Richelieu, 37. Return.
16
Richards, James O. "Toward the Second 'Europe': The Era 1350-1650 as a Transitional
Period." Accessed May 6, 2001.
<http://www.gdn.peachnet.edu/PT_Faculty/j_richards/lectures/Hist1121TowardSecondE
urope.htm>. Return.
17
Spielvogel, Jackson J., World History: The Human Odyssey. Bruton, Lynn; Jelinek,
Phyllis; Samples, Glenda; and Starkey, Pam, ed. United States of America: West
Publishing Company, 1998., 471. Return.
18
The Global Experience: Readings in World History Since 1500, 2nd edition, 44. Return.
19
"Huguenots," New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7. University of America,
Washington D.C.: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1967., 204. Return.
20
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity. 2 vols: AD 1500-AD 1975.
United States of America: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1975., 769. Return.
21
"Modern History Sourcebook: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October 22, 1685."
<http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1685revocation.html>. Halsall, Paul. July, 1998.
Return.
22
Francois and Joao. "The Huguenot." May 6, 2001.
<http.//members.tripod.com/DuToit.F/the_huguenot.htm>. Return.
23
Spielvogel, Jackson J. World History: The Human Odyssey. Bruton, Lynn; Jelinek,
Phyllis; Samples, Glenda; and Starkey, Pam, ed. United States of America: West
Publishing Company, 1998., 470. Return.
24
Ibid., 635. Return.