vermin became luxuries. The starving
women beseeched the inexorable enemy for permission to retire: they
remembered the mercy that Henry IV. had shown at the siege of Paris. But
war in the hands of masters has no favors to grant; conquerors have no
tears. The Huguenots, as rebels, had no hope but in unconditional
submission. They yielded it reluctantly, but not until famine had done
its work. And they never raised their heads again; their spirit was
broken. They were conquered, and at the mercy of the crown; destined in
the next reign to be cruelly and most wantonly persecuted; hunted as
heretics by dragonnades and executioners, at the bidding of Louis XIV.,
until four hundred thousand were executed or driven from the kingdom.

But Richelieu was not such a bigot as Louis XIV.; he was a statesman,
and took enlightened views of the welfare of the country. Therefore he
contented himself with destroying the fortifications of La Rochelle,
filling up its ditches, and changing its government. He continued, in a
modified form, the religious privileges conceded by the Edict of Nantes;
but he kept a strict watch, humiliated the body by withholding civil
equalities and offices in the army and navy, treating with disdain their
ministers, and taking away their social rank, so that they became
plebeian and unimportant. He pursued the same course that the English
government adopted in reference to Dissenters in the eighteenth century,
when they were excluded from Oxford and Cambridge and church
burial-grounds. So that Protestantism in France, after the fall of La
Rochelle, never asserted its dignity, in spite of Bibles, consistories,
and schools. Degraded at court, deprived of the great offices of the
state, despised, rejected, and persecuted, it languished and declined.

Having subdued the Huguenots, Richelieu turned his attention to the
nobles,--the most worthless, arrogant, and powerful of all the nobility
of Europe; men who made royalty a mockery and law a name. I have alluded
to their intrigues, ambition, and insolence. It was necessary that they
should be humiliated, decimated, and punished, if central power was to
be respected. So he cut off their towering heads, exiled and imprisoned
them whenever they violated the laws, or threatened the security of the
throne or the peace of the realm. As individuals they hated him, and
conspired against his rule. Had they combined, they would have been more
powerful than he; but they were t