e created a national
navy, protected commerce and industry, rewarded genius, and formed the
French Academy. He attained a greater pitch of greatness than any
subject ever before or since enjoyed in his country, greater even than
was possessed by Wolsey. Wolsey, powerful as he was, lived, like a
Turkish vizier, in constant fear of his capricious master. But
Richelieu controlled the king himself. Louis XIII. feared him, and
felt that he could not reign without him. He did not love the
cardinal, and was often tempted to dismiss him, but could never summon
sufficient resolution. Richelieu was more powerful than the queen
mother, the brothers of the king, the royal mistresses, or even all
united, since he obtained an ascendency over all, doomed the queen
mother to languish in exile at Cologne, and compelled the duke of
Orleans to succumb to him. He was chief of three of the principal
monastic orders, and possessed enormous wealth. He erected a palace as
grand as Hampton Court, and appeared in public with great pomp and
ceremony.

[Sidenote: Character of Richelieu.]

But an end came to his greatness. In 1642, a mortal malady wasted him
away; he summoned to his death bed his royal master; recommended
Mazarin as his successor; and died like a man who knew no remorse, in
the fifty-eighth year of his age, and the eighteenth of his reign as
minister. He was eloquent, but his words served only to disguise his
sentiments; he was direct and frank in his speech, and yet a perfect
master of the art of dissimulation; he could not be imposed upon, and
yet was passionately fond of flattery, which he liked in such large
doses that it seemed hyperbolical; he was not learned, yet appreciated
learning in others, and magnificently rewarded it; he was fond of
pleasure, and easily fascinated by women, and yet was cold, politic,
implacable, and cruel. But he was a great statesman, and aimed to
suppress anarchy and preserve law. In view of his labors to preserve
order, we may almost excuse his severity. "Placed," says Montresor, as
quoted by Miss Pardoe, "at an equal distance between Louis IX., whose
aim was to abolish feudality, and the national convention, whose
attempt was to crush aristocracy, he appeared, like them, to have
received a mission of blood from heaven." The high nobility, repulsed
under Louis XI. and Francis I., almost entirely succumbed under
Richelieu, preparing, by its overthrow, the calm, unitarian, and
despotic reign of Lo