but he called an Assembly of Notables. In
this was not one prince or duke, and two-thirds of the members came
directly from the people. Into this body he thrust some of his own
energy. Measures were taken for the creation of a navy. An idea was now
carried into effect which many suppose to have sprung from the French
Revolution; for the army was made more effective by opening its high
grades to the commons.[A] A reform was also made in taxation, and shrewd
measures were taken to spread commerce and industry by calling the
nobility into them.

[Footnote A: See the ordonnances in Thierry, Histoire du Tiers Etat.]

Thus did France, under his guidance, secure order and progress. Calmly
he destroyed all useless feudal castles which had so long overawed the
people and defied the monarchy. He abolished also the military titles of
Grand Admiral and High Constable, which had hitherto given the army
and navy into the hands of leading noble families. He destroyed some
troublesome remnants of feudal courts, and created royal courts: in one
year that of Poitiers alone punished for exactions and violence against
the people more than two hundred nobles. Greatest step of all, he
deposed the hereditary noble governors, and placed in their stead
governors taken from the people,--_Intendants,_--responsible to the
central authority alone.[B]

[Footnote B: For the best sketch of this see Caillet, _L'Administration
sous Richelieu._]

We are brought now to the _third_ great object of Richelieu's policy.
He saw from the beginning that Austria and her satellite Spain must be
humbled, if France was to take her rightful place in Europe.

Hardly, then, had he entered the council, when he negotiated a marriage
of the King's sister with the son of James I. of England; next he signed
an alliance with Holland; next he sent ten thousand soldiers to drive
the troops of the Pope and Spain out of the Valtelline district of the
Alps, and thus secured an alliance with the Swiss. We are to note here
the fact which Buckle wields so well, that, though Richelieu was a
Cardinal of the Roman Church, all these alliances were with Protestant
powers against Catholic.[C] Austria and Spain intrigued against
him,--sowing money in the mountain-districts of South France which
brought forth those crops of armed men who defended La Rochelle. But he
beat them at their own game. He set loose Count Mansfyld, who revived
the Thirty Tears' War by raising a rebellion in Bo