rom La Rochelle
and from the Isle of Re; but he went further. In 1628, on making some
proposals to England, he was repulsed with English haughtiness. "They
shall know," said the Cardinal, "that they cannot despise me."
Straightway one sees protests and revolts of the Presbyterians of
Scotland and Richelieu's agents in the thickest of them. And now what
was Richelieu's statesmanship in its sum?

1. In the political progress of France his work has already been
sketched as building monarchy and breaking anarchy. Therefore have men
said that he swept away old French liberties. What old liberties?
Richelieu but tore away the decaying, poisonous husks and rinds which
hindered French liberties from their chance of life and growth.
Therefore also have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The
charge is true and welcome. For evidently absolutism was the only force
in that age which could destroy the serf-mastering caste. Many a Polish
patriot, as he to-day wanders through the Polish villages, groans that
absolutism was not built to crush that serf-owning aristocracy which has
been the real architect of Poland's ruin. Anyone who reads to much
purpose in De Mably, or Guizot, or Henri Martin knows that this part of
Richelieu's statesmanship was but a masterful continuation of all great
French statesmanship since the twelfth century league of the king and
commons, against nobles, and that Richelieu stood in the heirship of all
great French statesmen since Suger. That part of Richelieu's work, then,
was evidently bedded in the great line of divine purpose running through
that age and through all ages.

2. In the internal development of France, Richelieu proved himself a
true builder. The founding of the French Academy and of the Jardin des
Plantes, the building of the College of Plessis, and the rebuilding of
the college of the Sorbonne, are among the monuments of this
part-statesmanship. His, also, is much of that praise usually lavished
on Louis XIV for the career opened in the seventeenth century to
science, literature, and art. He was also a reformer, and his zeal was
proved, when in the fiercest of the La Rochelle struggle he found time
to institute great reforms not only in the army and navy, but even in
the monasteries.

3. On the general progress of Europe, his work must be judged as mainly
for good. Austria was the chief barrier to European progress, and that
barrier he broke. But a far greater impulse to the gener