eu humbled the great nobles of France, hanging them when
they disobeyed his laws. Next by his part in the Thirty Years' War he
won territory from both Germany and Spain. He was by no means the first
Catholic ruler thus to seek Protestant allies; Francis I and Henry II
had both done so in France; in Germany Charles V had sent a Lutheran
army against the Pope. But it was Richelieu's successful adherence to
this plan that positively and finally relegated religion to a minor
place in statecraft, and made nationality, political supremacy, what
some have called "vainglory," the foremost impulse.

Last, not least, in Richelieu's brilliant career, is to be noted that he
revived literature in France. He created the "French Academy," the
"forty immortals" in whose successors Paris still takes pride to-day.
The French drama was born. Corneille wrote _The Cid_, and the Cardinal
himself took his pen and attempted to produce a better tragedy. Comedy,
too, arose. Moliere began the marvellous career which a little later was
to make him the undying idol of the stage in France.[11]

Nor did Richelieu's death (1642) turn his country from the triumphant
course toward which he had led the way. His King died with him, and his
power passed to another cardinal, Mazarin, ruling for another baby-king,
who was to be Louis XIV. Mazarin found himself confronting an almost
similar situation to that which had followed the death of Henry IV.
There was a child upon the throne; an incapable queen-mother as regent,
foreign, and friendly to the Spaniards; the nobles grasped after power;
Paris grumbled under taxation. Mazarin had even to face a feeble,
frivolous civil war against himself, the Fronde.[12] But he soon
established his supremacy, secured for France in 1648 all she had earned
out of the war with Germany, and then ruled with firm hand, bringing
wealth and peace and prosperity to the state until his death in 1661.
Richelieu and Mazarin made possible that most spectacular period of all
French history which immediately followed under Louis XIV.

THE PURITAN REVOLUTION

Turn now to England, to see why she had held so apart from the
continental struggles of the period. James I, her Scotch king of 1603,
had indeed interfered a bit in the Thirty Years' War, seeking to aid
his unlucky son-in-law, the King of Bohemia. But James had soon found
difficulties enough at home. The Elizabethan age had made Englishmen
feel very highly their individual impor