Insubordination and the rise of absolutism: the Mercure françois under Richelieu

Abstract

Despite being considered France’s earliest printed newspaper, the Mercure françois remains surprisingly overlooked by scholars. First published in 1611 by the politique brothers Jean and Estienne Richer, the journal sought to prevent a return to civil war following Henri IV’s assassination by supporting the monarchy and teaching virtuous behaviour through the example of recent history.¹ Its inaugural volume was however censured by the Paris parlement after almost provoking a diplomatic crisis with Cologne.² These inauspicious beginnings notwithstanding, the journal rapidly became a pillar of monarchical propaganda, its publication following an annual to biennial rhythm until its cessation in 1648. After 1638, it was managed by Richelieu’s associate, Théophraste Renaudot, founder of the rival Gazette. Each thousand-page volume reported on wide-ranging domestic and foreign affairs, typically spanning two or three years. As well as sporting pamphlets and edicts already in the public sphere, the editions incorporated much original material. A table of contents and copious marginal notes guided readers through the dense information within.

The volumes under consideration are particularly significant. Covering the period 1623 to 1628, they narrated the earliest phase of Richelieu’s second ministry, during which it is often said that he began paving the way for monarchical absolutism. He supposedly did so by fashioning new state apparatus, and by subverting the ability of entrenched interests and representative institutions to withstand monarchical authority, making use of print and other means to champion his cause.³ Richelieu’s control over the press was such that he allegedly ‘exercised a more or less direct influence on all literary productions of his time’.⁴ Through them, he pitted his pragmatic ideology of raison d’état against the dévot faction’s naïve emphasis on international Catholic unity, consolidating the populace under effective royal sovereignty. Many of these étatiste perspectives, with their foregrounding of Richelieu, have drawn chiefly on the cardinal’s correspondence, and on his posthumously published Mémoires and Testament politique, which were intended to cement his own reputation.⁵ Yet if étatiste instincts still dictate modern understandings of Richelieu’s early ministry, they are gradually being superseded by studies characterizing him as a man of his times whose tentacles did not pervade French politics and society, and whose prolonged tenure of office was unforeseeable in 1624.⁶ Far from corroborating traditional perceptions of Richelieu’s early ministry (as is widely posited), this reading of volumes ten to fourteen of the Mercure in fact strengthens these revisionist arguments.

In particular, this analysis indicates that public political discourse could occur in 1620s France without constraints as harsh as those suggested by Jürgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Habermas distinguished between a traditional public sphere, in which absolute monarchies represented their authority before their peoples, and a critical public sphere that only sprouted outside of royal control in the late eighteenth century in places of bourgeois sociability, including salons, clubs and philosophical societies. It was within such institutions that private individuals, unable to critique state politics in print, used their reason to architect a new, more authentic public sphere that would defy and ultimately expropriate the monarchical public sphere.⁷ Habermas’ characterization and chronology have attracted contention, with scholars pointing out that controversial issues were debated throughout much of seventeenth-century Europe, especially in pamphlets.⁸ They have also questioned the bourgeois nature of the early modern public sphere, its economic—as opposed to religious—roots, as well as Habermas’ focus on political affairs when early modern public opinion centred primarily on religious, literary and artistic matters.⁹ These disagreements notwithstanding, the French public sphere has regularly been considered particularly repressed compared to its British counterpart, especially following Richelieu’s return to power in 1624.¹⁰ Through the Mercure, the Richers were able to make public, written use of their reason to participate authentically in political matters far earlier than is often thought possible for directors of an official publication printed in Paris during the 1620s. This is not to say that a fully fledged public sphere existed in 1620s France—as alluded to above, scholars in any case have no agreed definition for that concept. Rather, through volume ten in particular, a proto-public sphere can be discerned that displayed elements of the characteristics typically associated with public spheres: a protected place for rational–critical debate to openly occur, including of nonroyal political actors, that was theoretically accessible to all members of literate society, regardless of social rank.¹¹

In the absence of substantive archival evidence surrounding the Mercure’s editorship, this article re-examines Richelieu’s control over volumes ten to fourteen via fresh yardsticks: evidence of clear promotion of the cardinal; the presence of pamphlets he sponsored; support for those within his factional circle and the denigration of those outside it. This approach is justified by Richelieu’s enthusiasm for stamping his name over works he sponsored, even during the insecurity of his early second ministériat.¹² Such brazen propaganda was necessary because the cardinal’s contemporaries, the dévots included, distinguished sharply between the monarchical and the ministerial, with the result that government by a dominant first minister was far from universally accepted.¹³ This gauge also helps surmount the major obstacles encountered by previous studies. By moving beyond policy, it allows a more nuanced account that distinguishes appropriately between propaganda for the king and that on behalf of Richelieu, and hence between indirect and direct control. The metric is also justified in its focus on Richelieu in these volumes; in contrast, he is mentioned only once in volume nine (for his nonattendance at the conclave that elected Urban VIII).¹⁴

I

In his comprehensive refutation, published in the Mercure’s eleventh volume (1626), of the infamous libel Admonitio ad regem, Léonore d’Étampes, the bishop of Chartres, adumbrated several examples of animals following their superiors before concluding that monarchical fidelity is a fundamental ‘natural law’.¹⁵ Although almost certainly intensified by way of its conception as a monarchically sponsored counterpoise to a highly incendiary pamphlet, the bishop’s message nonetheless broadly coincided with the Mercure’s editorial line from 1624 to 1626. During that period, the paper acted as a mouthpiece for the monarchy’s propaganda alone, and volume ten in particular reveals Richelieu’s immense political fragility. Little suggests that Richelieu directly shaped the periodical’s contents before volume twelve’s publication in 1627, or that he fully tamed it before 1638.

Historiographical tradition holds otherwise. As Chantal Grell suggests: ‘In 1624, Richelieu seized control of the Mercure françois and consequently of French public opinion. From that year onwards, the periodical assembled pieces and commentaries designed to justify the cardinal’s policies …’.¹⁶ Nearly every historian to have commented on the Mercure agrees on the momentousness of 1624 for its editorial history. For Sharon Kettering, Richelieu used the Mercure from 1624 to ‘influence the Parisian elite’.¹⁷ Stéphane Haffemayer believes that Richelieu bestowed ‘the reins of the operation’ upon his henchman Père Joseph in 1624.¹⁸ His understanding is shared by David Sturdy and Jeffrey Sawyer, who maintains that Père Joseph ‘used the Mercure to advocate Richelieu’s foreign policy and to deflect criticism of his despotic control of the king’s councils’.¹⁹ Significantly, none of these historians appear to have examined the newspaper in detail, relying instead on the findings of several earlier historians. The most influential of these by far was Louis Dedouvres, who sought to demonstrate that Richelieu installed Père Joseph as the Mercure’s ‘director’ with editorial responsibility for volumes ten (1625) to twenty (1637), the last published before Père Joseph’s death.²⁰ His evidence was highly circumstantial: an increased use of proverbs and maxims, and the supposed employment of a more personal mode of writing during those years. Dedouvres’ work was built upon by Étienne Thuau and William Church, who saw in the Père Joseph-headed Mercure a major channel used by Richelieu to diffuse his theories of reason of state.²¹ Buttressing these assertions was the knowledge that Richelieu’s Mémoires incorporated excerpts from volumes of the Mercure published in the 1620s, and that Richelieu went to extraordinary lengths to control public opinion: ‘Immediately upon entering the council, Richelieu, with his perceptive grasp of the press’ power, most assuredly appropriated [the Mercure] …’.²²

Recent historical writing has nuanced the last foundational contention and called the first into question. If it remains widely accepted that well-directed propaganda would have seemed invaluable to Richelieu in 1624, revisionist historians such as Joseph Bergin have created an intellectual climate within which Richelieu’s ability to give human shape to those desires in that year looks doubtful in the Mercure’s case. They have done so by demonstrating that, early in his second ministériat, Richelieu’s control over other organs of state was far looser than previously thought. Moreover, Christian Jouhaud and Virginie Cerdeira, the most prominent current students of the Mercure, observe that there is no concrete evidence whatsoever for Père Joseph’s involvement.²³ Indeed, his most recent biographer is unable to be more affirmative than ‘[Père Joseph] was perhaps an editor from 1624’.²⁴ The authorship of many other works Dedouvres attributed to Père Joseph has also been disputed.²⁵ To these objections might be added that two of the most striking stylistic features of the paper, namely regular references to previous volumes and transitional sentences between topics of the type ‘that is everything concerning [A] … now let us see what happened at [B]’, are conserved across the alleged 1624 divide.

These weighty qualifications notwithstanding, Jouhaud and Cerdeira both follow the traditional thesis in identifying 1624 as the year in which Richelieu began directly controlling the Mercure. This is largely because they have concentrated on editions published after 1630’s Day of the Dupes (the moment that cemented Richelieu above the dévots in the king’s favour), coupled with the entrenched étatiste conceptions with which they approach the paper. Jouhaud has shown that volume fifteen (1630) is significantly more effusive about Richelieu’s rhetorical prowess during an official visit to Montauban than François de Bassompierre’s Journal de ma vie.²⁶ He overlooks volumes ten to fourteen entirely, but states elsewhere that ‘the political authorities [implicitly Richelieu] undoubtedly surveyed each volume’s preparation closely. … In reality, the Mercure’s history reveals a contrast between a period of political unrest, confrontation, and uncertainty (roughly 1610–1624) and the years in which Richelieu successfully imposed political hegemony.’²⁷ He does so at the risk of submitting to what Bergin has described as the ‘powerful and long-standing teleological reflexes, which tend to inflate even insignificant or uncertain aspects of [Richelieu’s] career’.²⁸ Cerdeira, meanwhile, notes that the insertion into volume twenty (1637) of Henri de Rohan’s De l’Interest des princes, preceded by a dedicatory epistle to Richelieu, is far more critical of the queen mother, Marie de Medici, than earlier volumes.²⁹ Having investigated volumes ten to fourteen for their treatment of duelling and the Huguenots alone, and having found they take a governmental line, she suggests tentatively that her findings for the 1630s might be extrapolated back to 1624: ‘It is probable that Richelieu’s return to power in 1624 heralded weightier government intervention in the periodical’s editorial line.’³⁰ She follows earlier scholars in refusing to exclude Père Joseph’s involvement: ‘Père Joseph was possibly Richelieu’s chosen intermediary for shaping the Mercure’s contents with even greater precision. However, this is impossible to affirm and his involvement was perhaps only ad hoc.’³¹

Although Richelieu’s Mémoires incorporated selected excerpts from volumes of the Mercure published in the 1620s, this suggests no more than a certain congruence between the excerpts’ content and what Richelieu might have wanted them to say several years after their initial publication: ‘Any act of promotion can be propaganda only if and when it becomes part of a deliberate campaign to induce action through influencing attitudes.’³² Indeed, the Mémoires had borrowed from editions of the Mercure stretching back to 1611, long before Richelieu could meaningfully influence its contents.³³ Moreover, historians’ focus on government policy—carried out in Louis XIII’s name no matter how extensively devised by Richelieu—has left them unable to differentiate between the perspective of the monarchy and that of the cardinal. As Cerdeira points out, the authorities’ censure of volume one had cemented the Richers’ ‘monarchical loyalty and willingness to serve the government in all circumstances’ long before 1624.³⁴ Existing approaches thus fail to rule out the significant possibility that the Mercure was organically supporting policies associated with Richelieu because Louis backed them.

Insofar as it demonstrates that Richelieu did not directly control the Mercure at all before 1627, and only partially between then and 1638, this article contributes in four respects to recent re-evaluations of étatiste interpretations. On a microcosmic level, it suggests that Richelieu failed to staff the paper with his own créature as early as is commonly believed. On a theoretical level, it questions the validity of a major evidential base used by Thuau and Church to associate the cardinal so closely with theories of reason of state. Third, it counters traditional narratives regarding Richelieu’s predominance in government during the 1620s. Finally, it extends anti-étatiste interpretations to the public sphere, challenging the prevailing view that Parisian book production and censorship were tightly controlled by Richelieu right from the very start of his second ministériat.

II

Volume ten (printing privilege granted 18 March 1625) covered from 1623 to 1625. Amongst other domestic and foreign affairs, it discussed the Thirty Years’ War (including sizeable portions devoted to the Valtelline crisis), the marriage alliance between Charles I of England and Louis’ sister Henrietta Maria, duelling and the second Huguenot rebellion (1625). Traditional perspectives place the cardinal centre stage in these developments. To resolve the Valtelline conundrum, which sprang from a French dispute with Spain over the control of a strategically important Alpine pass, Richelieu is said to have immediately solicited Urban VIII for help and, when he proved unobliging, to have sent a Franco–Swiss army to expel papal garrisons from the region in November 1624.³⁵ The cardinal’s implication in the Anglo–French marriage negotiations is also characterized as profound, his guidance and despatch of the marquis d’Effiat to London in the summer of 1624 often being cited as crucial to the marriage’s fruition.³⁶ Even better known are his actions to chasten the grands and the Huguenots, part of the four-point plan frequently adduced as evidence that Richelieu set France on the high road to absolutism.³⁷

Considering such accounts, Richelieu’s elusiveness in volume ten is striking. Across 910 pages, Richelieu was mentioned on just three, and none of these references was overwhelmingly supportive. The first occurred when he was cited as a signatory to the Anglo–French marriage treaty.³⁸ By placing him second in the list of French representatives, the treaty implied that Richelieu’s role in the negotiations was secondary to that of the council’s nominal president, the Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld. This suggests that Richelieu’s ability to control volume ten even indirectly was limited. Richelieu was then treated within the partially quoted libel La Voix publique au Roy, seemingly mobilized to attack him.³⁹ Finally, and more flatteringly, Richelieu was mentioned alongside Claude, duke of Chevreuse, for the magnificence of his hôtel particulier, whose grandeur elicited fountains of praise for Louis from visitors to Paris. This comment’s positivity is undercut, however, by an awareness that the hurried reader might not even have noticed it; the marginal note guiding readers through the section spotlighted Chevreuse’s residence alone: ‘The Hôtel de Chevreuse and others’ (Figure 1).⁴⁰

Figure 1.

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Richelieu was not even a marginal figure in volume ten. Photograph of the copy held by the École des Ponts ParisTech taken by Cécile Soudan on behalf of the Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l'Histoire du Littéraire (GRIHL), with arrow added by the author (<http://mercurefrancois.ehess.fr/picture.php?/11835/category/76>)

By relegating Richelieu out of the margins and into oblivion, volume ten fully supports David Parrott’s contention that ‘Richelieu’s exercise of power as first minister from 1624 was not seen as a providential gift of strong leadership in difficult times’. Simply put, it failed spectacularly to provide what Richelieu needed in 1625: an explanation as to why Louis should seek his counsel over that of members of the royal family and representative institutions, considered ‘natural advisors’ to the monarch.⁴¹ This was partly because the Richers downplayed Richelieu’s positive qualities by modifying two libels he sponsored. Combined with the cardinal’s penchant for distorting history to his own ends, this suggests it would be misleading to attribute the paucity of references to Richelieu purely to that volume’s concentration on events that transpired before he took power. These editorial interventions, which tarnished the appeal of government by Richelieu as dominant first minister, closely fit Hans Speier’s definition of public opinion as ‘opinions on matters of concern to the nation freely and publicly expressed by men outside the government who claim as a right that their opinions should influence or determine the actions, personnel, or structure of their government’.⁴² Taken together, they positioned volume ten as a space of encounter between Richelieu’s pamphlet discourse and the Richers’ countervailing views; a medium through which opinions were articulated, negotiated and reshaped; and an agenda-setter for public political conversations amongst its aristocratic, ecclesiastical and bourgeois readership. Insofar as the public sphere is ‘the location of the public use of reason and the place where “public opinion” is formed’, volume ten can thus be considered to have belonged to an early seventeenth-century French public sphere that had politics, not mercantile capitalism, at its developmental epicentre.⁴³ It was politics’ overlap with public opinion in a desire to avert civil war that had first spurred the Richers to establish the Mercure. By 1625, that same motive seemingly inclined them to vocally support the consensus-driven advice of the royal council over Richelieu’s first-ministerial autocracy.

It might appear a strange undertaking to demonstrate that volume ten’s inclusion of La Voix publique (1624) and Le Mot à l’oreille (1624) belies its alleged role as a medium for Richelieu’s propaganda. Composed by Richelieu’s chief propagandist François Dorval-Langlois, sieur de Fancan, the pamphlets were integral to Richelieu’s successful attempt to discredit his rival Charles de La Vieuville, surintendant des finances in 1623-24, whom they accused of underhand machinations and inept political helmsmanship.⁴⁴ Simultaneously, they designated Richelieu as La Vieuville’s obvious successor, with the result that La Voix publique in particular ‘decisively influenced opinion in his favour and was an important factor in bringing about his appointment as first minister’.⁴⁵ Cerdeira, following Maximin Deloche, has therefore suggested in passing that the libels’ presence indicates that the relationship between the Mercure and Richelieu was ‘close to collaboration’.⁴⁶ Together, these two works comprised the sum of the pamphlets reproduced in volume ten whose attribution to Richelieu’s camp does not hinge upon their inclusion in that volume. But contrary to the Richers’ suggestions that they faithfully transcribed both works (‘here are the key points contained in the libel Le Mot à l’oreille’; ‘these are the contents of La Voix publique au Roy’), the versions provided are heavily truncated.⁴⁷ In circumstances difficult to square with the paper being under Richelieu’s control, the cuts systematically removed Fancan’s praise for Richelieu, which aimed at finessing government by a dominant first minister. The two pamphlets were therefore probably not included on Richelieu’s orders but because of their efficacy in justifying Louis’ discharge of La Vieuville, whom the Richers appear to have had their own reasons for strongly disliking. As they themselves remarked, La Voix publique ‘contributed greatly to [La Vieuville’s] dismissal’ (it caused such a stir that Louis himself had to publicly repudiate claims that it portended La Vieuville’s downfall), and Le Mot à l’oreille carried sufficient influence to force a written response from the marquis himself.⁴⁸ The Richers’ comments on La Voix publique uphold V. V. Biryukovich’s assertion that, following the pamphlet’s publication, ‘the waves of public indignation [against La Vieuville and his associates] now began to beat more and more strongly against the walls of the Louvre, menacing the monarchy with new upheavals’.⁴⁹ They imply that a public sphere corresponding to Habermas’ ‘sphere that mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion’ existed in some form decades before the economic ascendancy of the bourgeoisie and the emergence of novel arenas for social discourse in the eighteenth century.⁵⁰ As an instrument for marshalling public opinion as a political force, this proto-public sphere empowered the populace by enabling it to exert real leverage over the very state to whose interests Richelieu would soon supposedly subordinate them.

Volume ten’s summary of Le Mot à l’oreille’s criticisms of La Vieuville was substantively accurate. Crucially, however, it excised Fancan’s peroration, which constructed a threefold case for Richelieu’s promotion to first minister. Fancan’s first argument centred on Richelieu’s lineage (‘that good old Gaul’) and personal qualities (his youth, vigour and diligence), which he threw into bolder relief by portraying the cardinal as the odious La Vieuville’s nemesis—Richelieu had even pilgrimaged to Notre-Dame de Liesse in the hope of precipitating the surintendant’s downfall through divine intervention. Having identified a crippling antagonism between the two ministers, Fancan pointed the way forward via a prophetic argument for the council’s domination by a single minister: ‘What need is there to give [His Majesty] so many counsellors, whose number only engenders confusion? A single good man would be more valuable to him than a thousand. Remember that I told you so.’⁵¹ The possibility that the Richers received a partial copy of the libel cannot reasonably be entertained: their version is unique; and they acknowledged their own editing hand (and tacitly designated Richelieu as unimportant) in stating that they provided the original libel’s ‘key points’ alone.⁵² It is not unreasonable to suppose that many readers would have been familiar with both libels, noticed these omissions and interpreted them as reproving the cardinal. Volume ten’s exclusion of Richelieu from Le Mot à l’oreille thus reminds historians that the cardinal’s mastery of even those pamphlets he sponsored was limited in 1625; he could not prevent them being distorted once in the public domain, including by an authoritative organ of state he supposedly controlled.

Moreover, volume ten omitted La Voix publique’s exhaustive praise for the cardinal, aimed at legitimating his domination of the council similarly to Le Mot à l’oreille. Fancan began by elaborating Richelieu’s positive qualities: ‘Courtiers consider Richelieu refined to 22 carats … being skilful and prudent, as he is, there is no sign that he will seek out any support other than the legitimate authority of Your Majesty, nor any object for his great mind other than the proper management of your affairs …’.⁵³ This loyalty was presented as inborn, the father’s royalist actions during the troubles of the League having foretold the glorious exploits to which the son was destined: ‘He will imitate such a brave cavalier, and … without pandering to Spanish or Cagot interests, he will embrace those of Your Majesty as another Cardinal Georges d’Amboise.’⁵⁴ The elimination of this sentence is especially surprising given that Richelieu was ‘as proud of his birth as of his cardinalate’, and was consistently compared to Amboise by propagandists.⁵⁵ Fancan then enhanced Richelieu’s qualities by portraying him as La Vieuville’s ‘main enemy’.⁵⁶ To courtiers’ surprise that La Vieuville should have acquiesced in Richelieu’s elevation—‘the cardinal was the last person he should want in the council’—Fancan responded that La Vieuville ‘had been forced to do so’; the cardinal’s untold skills and formidable reputation would provide the beleaguered La Vieuville with much-needed respite until he found alternative means to promote his long-term survival.⁵⁷ Once again, Fancan identified Richelieu’s elevation above La Vieuville and his allies (whose underhand machinations had made it impossible for Richelieu to concomitantly serve Louis loyally and work harmoniously with the other councillors) as offering the only hope of felicitously resolving the king’s chaotic affairs: ‘How can [Richelieu] serve Your Majesty without contradicting so many pernicious propositions?’⁵⁸

In place of citing these arguments presenting Richelieu’s elevation to first minister as the only credible way forward, volume ten offered just two of Fancan’s sentences concerning Richelieu, which together set forth some, but not all, of Fancan’s reasons as to why La Vieuville placed Richelieu in the council. In the original, the sentences sought to resolve the tension between La Vieuville’s wickedness and his advancement of Richelieu (an act beneficial to France) by emphasizing that La Vieuville was selfishly motivated. Without the contextualizing animosity between the two councillors, without Fancan’s evidence that Richelieu was desperately trying to serve Louis and with minimal support for him elsewhere in volume ten, these two sentences became considerably more ambiguous than Fancan had intended them to be, and showcased just how politically fragile Richelieu was in 1625:

Observing that [La Vieuville] was not strong enough, in either mind or credit, to govern alone, or initially to withstand the grands’ jealousy, he introduced Richelieu into your council not to re-establish order, but simply to disguise the bitter pill he had forced [Jean-Baptiste d’Ornano] to swallow, and simultaneously to incite Monsieur your brother against the queen mother, sowing division where love ought to have been inviolable. He also hastened to introduce him to offload onto him all the criticisms he expected to receive surrounding his negotiations with Holland and England.⁵⁹

Richelieu quite plausibly became here little more than a destabilizing pawn—possibly even a willing accomplice—strategically deployed by La Vieuville to fan dissent between the queen mother and Louis’ younger brother, Gaston d’Orléans. Richelieu’s political sagacity was also rendered unclear, insofar as there was now nothing to suggest that he was aware of the surintendant’s plans to turn him into a magnet for polemic against himself. Indeed, the marginal notes that accompanied both sentences did not seek to persuade readers of Richelieu’s victimhood. At best, they were indifferent towards him. At worst, through their physical proximity to one another, they might have been seen to hint at a link between La Vieuville’s pernicious designs and Richelieu: ‘Cardinal Richelieu, head of the council’; ‘La Vieuville’s plan to sow division between the queen mother and Monsieur the king’s brother.’⁶⁰

Keith Baker has noted that, under the theoretical framework of absolutist kingship, the monarch alone had the right to participate in politics by transforming competing claims into ‘authoritative definitions of the general good’.⁶¹ Yet the dispute over whether this general good was represented by Richelieu becoming the dominant first minister suggests a more nuanced relationship operated in practice. With both sides well aware that victory in the court of public opinion would influence political decision-making in their favour, the cardinal’s appeals to public opinion necessitated counter-appeals by the Richers, underscoring the proto-public sphere’s legitimate political function even amid the rise of absolutism. Indeed, the Richers saw each volume as ‘a history of current events’ aimed simultaneously at present and future generations: volume ten is subtitled ‘The History of our Time’.⁶² Those of their many contemporaries who had previously encountered La Voix publique would likely have discerned their edits and concluded they were no supporters of the cardinal. For those of their contemporaries unfamiliar with the libel, as well as for later audiences, the editorial decisions taken with respect to that libel probably only reinforced their impression of the cardinal’s irrelevance and possibly even deleteriousness. Far from clamouring for Richelieu’s assumption of exclusive power as first minister, the pamphlet as quoted in the Mercure thus contained much to make readers question that scenario’s desirability. Having seen Richelieu’s political fortunes change before, it appears that even seven months after he became first minister, the Richers neither wanted nor expected him to survive in that position.

A clue as to why the Richers felt hostile towards Richelieu is offered by their tremendously favourable treatment of the disgraced Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery (previously garde des sceaux and chancelier) and his son Pierre Brûlart, viscount Puysieux (formerly secrétaire d’État aux Affaires étrangères). The relationship between Richelieu and the Brûlarts was characterized by animosity, the pair having impeded Richelieu’s candidature for the College of Cardinals and explicitly excluded him from a 1622 pact of reciprocal fidelity with the queen mother.⁶³ The feeling was mutual, and Richelieu sponsored a series of diatribes against the Brûlarts, with at least three of which the Richers were familiar: La France mourante; Le Mot à l’oreille and La Voix publique.⁶⁴ Aided by La Vieuville’s separate actions, Richelieu’s campaign had culminated in the Brûlarts’ untimely disgrace in January 1624 amid allegations of corruption and undue influence.⁶⁵ The Richers had already capitalized on Louis’ show of clemency towards the Brûlarts in early February 1624 to implicitly express their dismay at this turn of events on volume nine’s penultimate page (privilege granted 28 February 1624), presenting Sillery’s departure as voluntary: ‘Owing to his advanced age, Monsieur le chancelier had the seals returned to the king at the beginning of this year … .’⁶⁶ The intervening fall of La Vieuville, which coincided closely with Sillery’s death, appears to have opened the way for the Richers to give much freer expression to their personal views on the Brûlarts in volume ten by means of a fulsome nine-page obituary of Sillery, by some distance the fullest afforded any figure in volumes ten to fourteen. In all probability, the politique Richers’ strong predilection for Sillery can be at least partially explained by the latter’s close ties to their hero Henri IV (‘the world’s greatest monarch’), who they note in the obituary once singled Sillery out as his best ever servant.⁶⁷ The Mercure’s continued production of a vigorously argued counter-narrative to Richelieu’s own propaganda concerning the Brûlarts constitutes further evidence that the Richers had been neither removed nor brought into Richelieu’s fold by 1625. It further implies the existence of a proto-public sphere that served as a forum for political debate and in whose eyes the brothers felt compelled to seek legitimacy for their views, contravening those historians who emphasize the precedence of art, literature and religion over politics in the emergence of French public opinion, Habermas included.⁶⁸ As Michael Warner remarks: ‘No single text can create a public … . Only when a previously existing discourse can be supposed, and when a responding discourse can be postulated, can a text address a public.’⁶⁹

The opening section of La Voix publique, effaced by volume ten, had lumped Sillery together with his former protector Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy, vilifying both for their ‘false reputation for integrity’, for having poisoned the minds of the majority of the council, and in so doing paved the way for La Vieuville’s tyranny: ‘through their connivance with the marquis d’Ancre [Marie de Medici’s ill-fated favourite, Concino Concini], they laid the foundations of all our present ills’.⁷⁰ The deleted peroration of Le Mot à l’oreille, too, had associated Sillery with his successor, describing the former as the latter’s ‘benefactor’.⁷¹ Through their obituary of Sillery, the Richers appear to have been intentionally entering into dialogue with these two accounts sponsored by the cardinal, contradicting them unconditionally. Far from whipping Sillery, La Vieuville and Concini into a cohesive triumvirate, volume ten presented the former as a victim of the latter two, raising Sillery in readers’ estimation through contrast. Sillery’s inaugural disgrace was attributed to Concini, and the inquisitive reader was directed back to volume four should they wish to read up on the subject, underscoring the reliability of the Mercure’s account.⁷² Meanwhile, by removing all suggestion that La Vieuville and Sillery were partners in crime, the Richers made Fancan’s claim that La Vieuville engineered Sillery’s second downfall (repeated four times in volume ten) look less like a deserved stab in the back than an unprovoked attack on a model servant of the crown.⁷³ The Richers’ particular insistence on this point, given their readiness to dispense with broad portions of Fancan’s libel, suggests they genuinely believed La Vieuville to have had a hand in Sillery’s downfall and were not being instructed to stake that claim by Richelieu.

Also resisted were La Voix publique’s attempts to tax Sillery with a ‘false reputation for integrity’, the reputation he enjoyed being depicted as far less impressive than he deserved. If Sillery never failed to read from his breviary and often awoke at midnight to pray for two hours, few were aware of those actions, Sillery having humbly requested that his confessor keep them under wraps. Sillery’s Christian credentials were only enhanced by the terms in which the Mercure couched his justification for doing so (‘true devotion must be performed unostentatiously lest it constitute hypocrisy’), which recall to mind Matthew 6:5: ‘When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.’⁷⁴

Moreover, the Richers appear to have been responding via Sillery’s necrology to La France mourante’s slurs (later included in Richelieu’s Mémoires) regarding the nature and effects of the Brûlarts’ royal service.⁷⁵ That pamphlet had chastised Sillery for obtaining the seals ‘underhandedly’, France herself labelling him as ‘a purveyor of balderdash alight with insatiable greed’.⁷⁶ The libel had then broadened its censure to encompass Sillery’s kindred, most notably Puysieux, arraigned for his exercise of power ‘via his wife’s reproductive organs’, and Sillery’s brother, spotlighted for his inept diplomacy, conducted to Spain’s great benefit.⁷⁷ Richelieu’s stellar qualities shone all the brighter for being placed against such a lacklustre ministerial background, bolstering his pretensions to first-ministerial rule.

Once again, and with seeming premeditation, the Richers fastidiously dismantled this line of Richelieu’s. The Richers’ considered responses to Fancan’s accusations diminish the principal objection typically levied against pamphlet exchanges being considered part of the public sphere: the lack of critical reflection behind their often seditious, ethically questionable and vulgar content.⁷⁸ Far from being avaricious, Sillery’s ‘great services’ as garde des sceaux and chancelier earned him European-wide renown.⁷⁹ Just as unparalleled were his ambassadorial skills. ‘Through [Sillery’s] prudence and dexterity’, peace with the Spanish following Henri IV’s capture of Amiens was concluded honourably and to the king’s advantage. As an extraordinary ambassador at Rome, Sillery conducted official business to his sovereign’s great satisfaction.⁸⁰ Volume ten also made clear that Sillery did not obtain the seals deceitfully when its potted history of the Brûlarts’ loyalty to the French monarchy sweepingly informed readers that all offices held by the Brûlarts since Louis XI’s reign ‘were given to them freely … as rewards for their services, without a single one having been bought or obtained nefariously’.⁸¹ The Mercure explicitly integrated Puysieux into this history when recounting the manner in which his father gave him the family’s customary blessing from his deathbed, shifting the locus of his authority from his wife’s reproductive system to his male forebears: ‘“I [Sillery] exhort and beseech you to imitate and follow me, and whatever their Majesties desire of you, always show them the respect and obedience due unto them, as I have unfailingly done.” That said, he gave [Puysieux] the same blessing as his father the late President Brûlart had used on his death bed.’⁸² Given Richelieu’s intention to remove ministerial rivals was ‘clear from the outset’, it seems highly improbable that either he or his agents would have authorized the publication of an obituary linking the living albeit disgraced Puysieux to decades of royal service.⁸³

Richelieu’s use of skilfully constructed pamphlet campaigns against the Brûlarts and La Vieuville, combined with the fact that royal censorship was well established and relatively easy for him to appropriate, has meant that historians have often simply assumed that the cardinal’s control over Louis’ censors was secure from 1624. Historiographical debate on Richelieu’s command of censorship has consequently centred almost exclusively on the clandestine press.⁸⁴ Volume ten’s editorial line raises thought-provoking questions concerning Richelieu’s powers of coercion over Louis’ censors in the earliest phases of his second ministry, questions made more acute by the Mercure’s status as the most prominent political publication of its time.⁸⁵ It also changes the narrative around absolutism’s role in the rise of the public sphere. The Habermasian tradition has influentially argued that the turmoil of the sixteenth-century French Wars of Religion created an overwhelming desire for absolutist kingship. Absolutist kingship in turn engendered the public sphere by producing its own object, the public, whose constituents engaged their rational faculties in scrutinizing those activities that became objects of public policy: ‘The publicum developed into the public, the subjectum into the [reasoning] subject, the receiver of regulations from above into the ruling authorities’ adversary.’⁸⁶ In the Richers’ case, the experience of civil war seems to have led more directly to the public sphere by impelling them to publicly criticize divisive political actors who threatened their politique agenda. Robert Darnton has argued that, even in the late eighteenth century, aspects of the public sphere ‘lacked a [political] program’, revolving around smear campaigns rather than ideas or issues.⁸⁷ Although often expressed through their treatment of personalities, for the Richers, the latter were very much at stake; in volume ten’s privilege, Estienne is reported to have justified its publication as being in the interests of ‘the public good and utility’.⁸⁸

III

Volume eleven (privilege granted 29 April 1626) covered the period from 1625 to 1626. In addition to continuing volume ten’s discussion of the Valtelline crisis, the Anglo–French marriage, duelling and the Huguenot rebellion, it also examined the Franco–Savoyard invasion of Genoa.⁸⁹ In most accounts, 1625 marked the year in which Richelieu seized outright control of French foreign policy, launching France into her first major conflict of the seventeenth century over Spanish ascendancy in the Valtelline whilst rashly attacking Genoa. Richelieu then tried to mask both enterprises’ failure by pointing to the resurgence of the Huguenots, in whose defeat he is considered to have played the decisive role.⁹⁰ These Richelieu-led events are typically cited as the defining features of 1625 in France’s history. Yet if volume eleven was noticeably more commendatory of Richelieu than volume ten and did not lend significant support to his political enemies, remarkably little was made of his role in the above affairs. Richelieu was mentioned on just nine (0.68 per cent) of volume eleven’s 1,324 pages. He was first referenced after 366 pages for the superlative feast he laid on in celebration of the Anglo–French marriage—‘Richelieu’s was unparalleled’.⁹¹ Some 100 pages later, he appeared as the foremost nonroyal bystander when Louis received the Genoese flags captured during the First Genoese–Savoyard War.⁹² A summary of Richelieu’s speech advocating a peace favourable to the king in the Valtelline, made before Louis in his council at Fontainebleau ‘in few words but with perfect eloquence’, was then accorded two pages.⁹³ We also learn of Richelieu’s exemplary actions against the Huguenots from the bishop of Chartres.⁹⁴ A final reference derived from a brief paragraph of unknown authorship summarizing and implicitly condemning the ‘slander published against Richelieu’. These included claims that he was in Venice’s pay and had resolved to massacre German Catholics in the Valtelline under Habsburg protection from France’s allies, the Protestant Grisons.⁹⁵ Given their continued sparseness, these references almost certainly do not constitute evidence that Richelieu had appropriated the paper or made substantial inroads into the proto-public sphere.

Corroborating this, many of the references have highly plausible sources of inspiration other than Richelieu. Volume eleven’s account of the Anglo–French marriage focused on the trappings of monarchical power: Notre Dame, hung with the ‘richest royal tapestries of gold, silver and silk’; interminable processions of richly clad dignitaries, meticulously named; the transcendent beauty of Henrietta Maria, for whom a raging storm ceased just before she crossed to England; and Louis’ munificence in freeing prisoners.⁹⁶ Its three-line remark concerning Richelieu’s feast fell under the same rubric. Indeed, the feast’s grandeur became distinctly less outstanding for being positioned within memorable distance of a three-page account of the nuptial banquet laid on by Jean-François de Gondi, the archbishop of Paris, reported to have taken place ‘in the greatest magnificence that words can describe’.⁹⁷ The table of contents reflected the superior importance of the archbishop’s dinner in the Mercure’s account by according it a title of its own, Richelieu’s banquet being presented as just a minor sideshow to the duke of Buckingham’s efforts to accelerate Henrietta Maria’s departure for England (Figure 2). If Richelieu’s claims to exceptionality were diminished by the presence of such a formidable rival, the French monarchy’s glory was only enhanced. The supposition that volume eleven was predominantly promoting the monarchy through its fleeting rendition of Richelieu’s feast is further reinforced by that volume’s total occultation of the cardinal’s involvement in the marriage negotiations and ceremony.

Figure 2.

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By volume eleven's account, Richelieu's feast was not the most significant given in celebration of the Anglo-French marriage. Photograph of the copy held by the École des Ponts ParisTech taken by Cécile Soudan on behalf of the GRIHL, with arrows added by the author (<http://mercurefrancois.ehess.fr/picture.php?/9665/category/69>)

The elevated positioning of Richelieu within the list of onlookers requires little exposition. An act of name-dropping, it hints at no more than his modest influence and indirect control over the Mercure’s contents. In support of this claim, however, it is noteworthy that volume eleven, in stark contrast to Richelieu’s propaganda machine, did not blame the French defeat at Genoa primarily on the Huguenot rebellion.⁹⁸ Over 200 pages came between the section dealing with Genoa and that covering the revolt; the Richers did not connect them with marginal notes. Although the Richers did evanescently mention in their section on the revolt that it took place ‘at a time when France’s allies, attacked by Spain, required the assistance of her arms, vessels and money’, they did not highlight that claim through marginal notes or the table of contents.⁹⁹ Instead, volume eleven predominantly pointed the finger at France’s slippery Italian allies and Spain’s underhanded stratagems, highlighted by marginal notes and the table of contents. Following the capture of Acqui by the duke of Feria, commander of Spain’s forces in Italy, ‘the whole country became enemies of the French and Savoyards, the people having suddenly switched sides’.¹⁰⁰ For instance, when Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy left Albenga to link up with the maréchal de Créquy, the town, which only days previously had received the prince with open arms, unexpectedly massacred the garrison he had left behind. Analogous scenarios occurred at Novi and Campo Ligure.¹⁰¹ Spain’s unscrupulous tactics constitute the other major reason given for France’s defeat. Rather than helping the Genoese in their own country, Feria sordidly stabbed Savoy in the back by bringing war to his strife-free lands.¹⁰² Equally ignoble in this account was the Spanish captain by the name of Barca, who along with his accomplice Batin Marigliano cut down French and Savoyard troops as they peacefully retreated from Genoa and Montferrat, sick and wounded combatants included.¹⁰³ In this respect, volume eleven differed radically from volume fifteen’s section on 1629, whose opening sentence associated Louis’ victory over the Huguenots with his decision to militarily assist Charles III, duke of Nevers during the War of the Mantuan Succession.¹⁰⁴

The comments concerning Richelieu’s eloquence were taken directly from the Resolution du Roy en son Conseil sur le departement du Legat, an anonymous printed work without known links to the cardinal. It was conceived as a celebration not of the first minister but of a more traditional style of government, the king’s council. The cardinal’s persuasive oratory was presented as insufficient for first-ministerial rule, being paralleled by the lucid reasoning of Étienne d’Aligre (garde des sceaux and chancelier) and the courage of Henri de Schomberg (maréchal de France).¹⁰⁵ Further attesting to the author’s belief in the relatively equal standing of all ministers was the pamphlet’s inclusion of Aligre’s plea for ‘everyone to give their opinion freely’, reiterated in the Resolution’s summary of the recommendations made by Nicolas de Verdun, president of the Paris parlement.¹⁰⁶ The Resolution itself enacted those enjoinders by summarizing the speeches of all seven councillors present. Given that the ability to monopolize advice to the ruler determined the strength of first-ministerial rule, any pamphlet advocating that Louis take a broad range of counsel was unlikely to have been welcomed by Richelieu, no matter how much it praised him personally.¹⁰⁷ Indeed, Richelieu’s Testament would go on to argue that ‘there is nothing more dangerous in a state than several equal authorities in the administration of affairs’.¹⁰⁸ For the public sphere to be rational, participants had to be apprised of goings-on; volume eleven’s summary of the council meeting discharged that function, albeit in delayed fashion. Absolutism’s core tenet of the mystique of statehood—underpinned by a belief that rulers and their ministers alone could understand the arcana imperii, and regularly seen as opposing the public sphere’s transparency—had seemingly not yet been widely disseminated in French society. Indeed, the transparency and debate facilitated by the Mercure enjoyed implicit royal encouragement via the privilege granted to it on Louis’ behalf. This is despite scholars having drawn on the trope of absolutist opacity to explain the lack of observable change to the Mercure post-1624, claiming it illuminates Richelieu’s unfathomable genius at subtlety and concealment. Cerdeira suggests that ‘keeping the periodical in its original form’ would have enabled Richelieu ‘to mitigate the propagandistic effect that was perhaps too evident in some of [his] libels’, whilst Deloche spoke of the ‘cardinal’s ingenuity in concealing his role’ in literary collaborations more broadly.¹⁰⁹

By far the most glowing review of the cardinal in volume eleven was that left by the bishop of Chartres in his speech refuting the Admonitio ad regem, given during a general assembly of the French clergy in December 1625. The Admonitio vehemently attacked Louis, his council and especially Richelieu, designating them as collectively responsible for the ruin of Catholicism.¹¹⁰ It was so influential that Richelieu sent an emissary to Cologne to hunt down its printer, and he sponsored numerous pamphlets refuting its allegations.¹¹¹ Consequently, the Admonitio came to structure French political debate between its publication (1625) and the Siege of La Rochelle (1627–28).¹¹² Chartres’ address went some way towards defending Richelieu from the Admonitio’s affirmations. Lauded as an excellent theologian, the cardinal, it was claimed, had eirenically advanced Catholicism through the ‘many learned writings he published against the heretics’. Richelieu also played a signal part in Louis’ naval victory through his sage counsel. The French clergy were accordingly able to rejoice at the cardinal’s conduct, which raised them collectively in the general estimation: ‘those … who previously considered us inconstant, barbarous, coarse and imprudent now hold us more circumspect and sagacious’.¹¹³

Although highly acclamatory, Chartres’ address did not form part of Richelieu’s propaganda. It was above all ‘a sizeable treatise eulogizing the majesty and power of the monarchy’, and contradicted some of the finer points of Richelieu’s own pamphlets; Richelieu never approved it.¹¹⁴ Moreover, despite the cardinal’s pressing need to justify his religious credentials following the Admonitio, the Richers did nothing to direct readers towards those sections of Chartres’ address that spoke highly of Richelieu’s Catholicism. In summarizing the refutation, the table of contents avoided directly mentioning Richelieu, focusing attention on the king’s counsellors as a collective: ‘Response to the Admonitio’s unjust accusations against the king’s counsellors.’ Nor were readers shunted towards Chartres’ speech by marginal notes in the main section on the revolt—which did not mention Richelieu at all and was separated from Chartres’ address by 250 pages—despite the editors’ perennial recourse to marginalia encouraging readers to consult faraway pages on related topics.

It is also remarkable that volume eleven housed only one work indubitably sponsored by Richelieu: Jérémie Ferrier’s Response au Manifeste du sieur de Soubize.¹¹⁵ That the Response was not included on Richelieu’s orders is suggested by volume eleven’s deviation from his default position on the Huguenot revolt with respect to Genoa, as well as by the regular eschewal of Richelieu’s pamphlets in favour of similar alternatives. This includes the Richers’ refusal to provide a single refutation of the Admonitio sponsored by Richelieu. The Sorbonne’s annotated copy of Pelletier’s Apologie was opted for over Ferrier’s Examen de l’Apologie du sieur Pelletier; and Chartres’ Déclaration and the Considérations d’Estat over Ferrier’s Le Catholique d’Estat (1625).¹¹⁶ This is despite the latter pamphlet being so dear to Richelieu that he instructed France’s foreign ambassadors to distribute it within their respective countries.¹¹⁷ If Deloche believed that Richelieu had sponsored the Considérations d'Estat, his argument rested in large part on its inclusion in volume eleven, assumed by circular reasoning to be under Père Joseph’s control.¹¹⁸ Other commentators have attributed it to ‘circles hostile to Richelieu’ because it fomented trouble between him and the Jesuits, although the Mercure’s version is so heavily abridged as to escape any such conclusion.¹¹⁹

It was perhaps volume eleven’s abject failure to defend him from the Admonitio, combined with an increasingly polarized public sphere following the second Huguenot revolt, that persuaded Richelieu of the need to intervene in the paper.¹²⁰ Both the Mercure’s twelfth volume and the preface to the Recueil collated by the cardinal’s apologist Paul Hay du Chastelet would later note that an unusually large number of pamphlets were printed against Richelieu in 1626, and the cardinal’s own propaganda machine began picking up appreciable momentum in that year also.¹²¹

IV

The paucity of positive references to Richelieu in volumes ten and eleven diverged markedly from volume twelve (privilege obtained 17 April 1627), which covered 1626/27 (principally 1626). It discussed the Company of Morbihan (a trading company headed by Richelieu); the Chalais conspiracy (a plot by leading noblemen against Richelieu and Louis); Gaston’s marriage to Marie, duchess of Montpensier; François de Montmorency-Bouteville’s infamous duel; and the national Huguenot synod at Castres (1626). The volume mentioned Richelieu on fifty-five (5.54 per cent) of its 992 pages, the first time that Richelieu’s involvement in state affairs undeniably marked him out from Louis’ other ministers.¹²² At times, these evocations simply informed readers of Richelieu’s movements, as when he returned to Pontoise from Brittany via Paris.¹²³ Such details might have been anodyne in appearance, but they discreetly pointed to Richelieu’s diligence in conducting royal affairs. Far more often, however, they explicitly extolled Richelieu to encourage obedience to him as the dominant first minister. Given the Richers’ apparent hostility towards Richelieu in 1625 and continued reticence on his account in 1626, the increase in remarks concerning Richelieu probably marked the first major milestone in his step-by-step appropriation of the paper and of the proto-public sphere.

Supporting this, many of the editorial decisions were the polar opposites of those taken previously, a sign that the Richers’ freedom of political expression was narrowing in scope. Whereas volume ten had removed comments concerning Richelieu’s noble birth from Fancan’s pamphlets, volume twelve referenced it twice. A page-long Latin éloge d’honneur of Richelieu singled him out as a man ‘of noble stock’, whilst Matthieu de Morgues’ Advis d'un theologien sans passion lauded Richelieu as ‘a gentleman of ancient lineage, born of a father who was amongst our kings’ foremost officers and of a mother who, according to all who knew her, was a pearl of virtue and honour’.¹²⁴ Volumes ten and eleven had downplayed Richelieu’s involvement in the Anglo–French marriage negotiations almost entirely; volume twelve belatedly scrambled to foreground Richelieu’s finesse in exacting concessions on behalf of English Catholics when it included a sixteen-page copy of one of Effiat’s speeches: ‘Richelieu, taking matters into his own hands, conducted them so well, and negotiated with the English ambassadors so prudently and dextrously that they were forced to bow before that powerful mind … .’¹²⁵ Whereas volume ten had supported Richelieu’s enemies, volume twelve’s obituary of Ferrier (whose most important pamphlet had moreover been omitted from volume eleven) explicitly noted that ‘[he] was held in great esteem by Cardinal Richelieu’.¹²⁶ Volume eleven’s extensive account of the marquis de Thémines’ actions in crushing the Huguenot rebellion had not referenced the killing of Richelieu’s brother by Thémines’ son.¹²⁷ By contrast, volume twelve did so when discussing Thémines’ elevation to the governorship of Brittany in order to enhance Richelieu’s reputation as an impartial councillor who refuses to be blinded by self-interest.¹²⁸

Volume twelve also housed numerous other works known to have received the cardinal’s approval or else patently written by his partisans. Sections from volume twelve’s coverage of the Chalais conspiracy were later used by Pierre Dupuy, Richelieu’s client, for his Histoire de plus illustres favoris anciens et modernes.¹²⁹ An appreciative allusion was made to La Somme des fautes et faussetez capitales contenues en la Somme theologique du pere Francois Garasse by Richelieu’s friend Jean Duvergier de Hauranne.¹³⁰ Moreover, volume twelve relayed the minor pamphleteer Dryon’s Discours au Roi sur la paix qu’il a donnée à ses sujets de la religion prétendue réformée, which it recounted had been sent to Richelieu for approval.¹³¹ Longer pamphlets were often edited prior to their inclusion, but this never occurred at Richelieu’s expense. On the contrary, comments concerning the cardinal were regularly enhanced through paratext. De Morgues’ Advis was written in close collaboration with Richelieu, who furnished notes and added the finishing touches.¹³² Although shortened prior to its inclusion, all its many comments concerning Richelieu (eight straight pages in the Mercure) were conserved.¹³³ Unlike the summary of Chartres’ address provided by volume eleven’s table of contents, volume twelve directed readers towards those sections of the Advis that defended Richelieu: ‘Response to the aforementioned libels’ slander against the king, queen mother, principal ministers for his affairs and Richelieu.’¹³⁴ In so doing, it offered one of the first real indications within the Mercure that Richelieu was and ought to be more than just one of Louis’ many ‘principal ministers’. Moreover, when discussing Gaston’s marriage, the pamphlet that the Richers introduced as the Discours sur les affaires du temps was in fact Hay du Chastelet’s Discours sur plusieurs poincts importans.¹³⁵ If only about 10 per cent of the original was quoted, the text cut was precisely that covering other issues, such as the Anglo–French marriage and the Huguenot revolt, that understandably had no place in a section on Gaston’s marriage.¹³⁶ The Richers explicitly sided with Hay du Chastelet’s defence of Richelieu from accusations of undue influence in their introduction to the pamphlet, which presented the cardinal as a devoted purveyor of balanced advice to the king: ‘Those who have written about the marriage actually say that Richelieu gave the king all the pros and cons of the marriage, but that the king alone made the decision to go through with it. Here is what the Discours sur les affaires du temps has to say on the matter.’¹³⁷

The highly uneven distribution of references across volumes thirteen and fourteen suggests, however, that Richelieu’s increased control over volume twelve was not achieved by parachuting in Père Joseph, but rather reflective of ad hoc intervention, perhaps involving the occasional provision of pamphlets. Both tomes spoke very highly indeed of the cardinal. Volume thirteen (privilege awarded 28 September 1628) covered the years 1626 to 1627 (chiefly 1627), including the third Huguenot rebellion and the implementation of the Treaty of Monçon in the Valtelline. It offered the following exceptionally glowing review of Richelieu, seemingly composed by the Richers: ‘In truth, one cannot overly appreciate this glorious statesman, the subtlety of whose great mind can penetrate the most mysterious state affairs … in short he is a Nestor for the king’s wellbeing and service and his crown’s glory; an Achates in his loyalty and passion for the advancement of the general good; a Scipio in the strength and wisdom he displays against state enemies and for France’s bliss … .’¹³⁸ In volume fourteen (privilege obtained 5 February 1629), meanwhile, which primarily covered developments at Mantua and most especially La Rochelle during 1627 to 1628, Richelieu became in his preparations to besiege La Rochelle a soothsayer whose ‘judgements are always followed by the effect he predicted’.¹³⁹

But Richelieu was discussed on just sixteen (1.75 per cent) of volume thirteen’s 914 pages.¹⁴⁰ This contrasted with eighty-six (7.21 per cent) of volume fourteen’s 1,192 pages.¹⁴¹ Exactly half of volume thirteen’s references were accounted for by Louis’ edict establishing Richelieu as grand-maître, chef et surintendant général de la navigation et du commerce. Volume fourteen’s opening pages proudly attested to its intention to correct the shortcomings present in its predecessor’s account of Richelieu’s actions at La Rochelle. This suggests the imbalance is to be interpreted as an indication that Richelieu’s control over the Mercure remained haphazard until 1629 at the earliest:

But having only talked [in the previous volume] about happenings on the île de Ré, we made out that the honour for this glorious victory is due unto Toiras alone: we wish to show in this fourteenth volume how it is due first and foremost unto the king and after him unto Cardinal Richelieu, to demonstrate the admirable care they took to deliver and conserve the island, without which it would undoubtedly have been lost.¹⁴²

The Richers’ propagandistic relapse in volume thirteen further suggests that they were not inherently enamoured of the cardinal, but rather took considerable time to be won round. To the extent that Richelieu did organize ‘political propaganda with unprecedented perfection and efficacy’, this does not appear to have extended to the Mercure during the 1620s.¹⁴³ The lack of coverage Richelieu received in volume thirteen might also suggest that, even in 1628, he was simply not perceived as unquestionably the pre-eminent first minister, policy-making still not being unambiguously focused on his person.

Volume fourteen’s mission statement disclosed yet a further way in which Richelieu’s ability to control the Mercure’s contents remained limited through to at least 1629. Conscious of his vulnerability to intrigues and hostility, Richelieu consistently hid his agency behind Louis: ‘Following the king’s orders, the cardinal made haste … to assemble all those needed to rescue the citadel’; ‘The same day, following his Majesty’s resolution and orders, Cardinal Richelieu sent ships to the île d’Oléron to embark Plessis Pralin’s regiment.’¹⁴⁴ Furthermore, Richelieu’s remarks in volume twelve concerning Louis’ fortune—to be assisted by the ‘queen mother’s wise advice’ and ‘Monsieur’s support’—remind readers that his need to maintain a broad base of allies included Marie de Medici and Gaston.¹⁴⁵ It was only after the Day of the Dupes had reassured Richelieu of his position that he felt sufficiently secure to use the paper to disparage those with whom he had been constrained into forming an uneasy alliance.

Cerdeira notes that, in the period from 1631 to 1632, Estienne Richer was particularly active in publishing the cardinal’s propaganda separately from the Mercure.¹⁴⁶ As late as 1636, however, de Morgues, by now Richelieu’s resolute opponent, responded as follows to vituperative attacks on the Mercure’s reliability by the cardinal’s propagandist Scipion Dupleix: ‘[Dupleix] attacks in passing those who compile the Mercure françois; although servants of the times, they are not as enslaved to them as Dupleix, and teach us more truth than he … .’¹⁴⁷ It was probably only with Renaudot’s takeover in 1638 that Richelieu was able to end his long-running battle with the paper and exploit its full propagandistic potential.

V

Historians have long assessed the Mercure in terms of its supposed servility to Richelieu, a reception encapsulated by Henri-Jean Martin:

The later history of the Mercure français [sic] is of consuming interest because it passed into the sinister hands of Father Joseph in 1624, the year Richelieu came to power for good, and the result was improved appearance and better coverage. Instead of a dull recital of unrelieved facts and bald notices of events, it was shaped and edited with a firm objective in view, the favourable presentation of government policy, with comment and explanation—in short, a vigorous line.¹⁴⁸

Contrary to this received wisdom, the present article has argued that the Mercure’s fascination lies in its insubordination—both to Richelieu and to étatiste historical thinking.

Far from appearing as a hammer of the nobles and Huguenots whilst facing labyrinthine diplomatic challenges with consummate skill, Richelieu became in volume ten (and only to a slightly lesser extent in volumes eleven and thirteen) almost a nonparticipant in French political life. Even in volumes twelve and fourteen, where he was undoubtedly Louis’ leading councillor, Richelieu was not the policy monopolist historians have often depicted. Rather, he operated within a much broader political framework that included such dévots as Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle and Michel de Marillac, both of whom opposed Richelieu’s foreign policy yet, far from appearing marginal or naïve, received significant and favourable coverage.¹⁴⁹ Although the Richers appear to have initially entertained hostility towards Richelieu, their journal may provide a better insight into how power was perceived, if not exercised, during the 1620s than historical accounts founded upon Richelieu’s literary artefacts.

Besides reaffirming familiar critiques of étatiste perspectives, the Mercure’s autonomy beyond 1624—greater than traditionally recognized—encourages rethinking several widely held historical assumptions about media–state relations in Richelieu’s France. The first is that public political discourse could occur more freely than both étatiste historians and Jürgen Habermas have suggested. Although fervent monarchists, the Richers were not simply mouthpieces singing to Richelieu's or Louis’ tune. Rather, they participated actively in political exchange, drawing attention to particular actors, events and interpretations whilst downplaying others, invariably to serve the monarchy as best they saw fit. This included their modification of Fancan’s pamphlets and use of marginal notes to change the official line on the Brûlarts, Richelieu’s character and the suitability for France of government by a dominant first minister, reminding historians that obedience to early modern French ministers was not a natural corollary of obedience to the monarchy. The Richers’ participation in public political discourse is especially notable given their paper was printed in Paris—as an officially licensed publication overseen by royal censors—long before the emergence of what Habermasian theory would recognize as the critical public sphere. Jane McLeod has questioned the early modern French state’s influence over provincial book production. However, apart from Robert Schneider’s study of the Académie française, little has been done to challenge the assumption that Parisian literary culture, centred on the locus of state power, operated firmly under Richelieu’s control from 1624.¹⁵⁰

Moreover, the Mercure’s independence from Richelieu raises questions over the extensive attribution of its constituent pamphlets to him and his associates. Since Dedouvres, historians have considered the Mercure ‘the first collection of literary works assembled on Richelieu’s orders’.¹⁵¹ This belief, coupled with pamphleteers’ tendency towards anonymity, has led to Richelieu being credited as the author, collaborator or approver of practically all works printed in volume ten and subsequent editions. For instance, Deloche argued that La France en convalescence must have been ‘inspired’ by Richelieu because the pamphlet repeats arguments Richelieu made elsewhere and because he ‘authorized’ its publication in volume ten, understood to be under Père Joseph’s editorship.¹⁵² Léon Geley asserted on similar grounds that Fancan authored the work.¹⁵³ Given volume ten’s editorial line and the inherent indeterminacy of stylistic attributions, neither historian persuades. Their influence has nonetheless percolated through to modern scholarship, with the Bibliothèque nationale de France and Hélène Duccini attributing the pamphlet to Fancan.¹⁵⁴ Similar misattributions are likely to have taken place for many of the other pamphlets in volumes ten and eleven, together comprising nearly 2,500 pages. This includes Les Parallèles du Roy Saint Louis et du Roy Louis XIII, the Discours sur les affaires de la Valteline and Le Grand mercy de la chrestiente au Roy.¹⁵⁵ The ascription to Richelieu’s camp of certain pamphlets published in volumes twelve to twenty also looks unsteady in view of the Richers’ apparent exercise of greater editorial individuality in those volumes than historians have traditionally allowed for. In one particularly glaring example, Deloche and Church claim that Fancan penned volume twelve’s Advis salutaire sur l’état présent des affaires d’Allemagne, citing its style, anti-Habsburg stance and inclusion in the Mercure.¹⁵⁶ In the final analysis, Richelieu, Fancan and Père Joseph were likely less prolific propagandists than Dedouvres, Geley and Deloche have led historians to commonly believe.

The misattribution of the Mercure’s contents to the cardinal and his colleagues is especially significant given the paper is widely believed to ‘project the particular light in which Richelieu wished his own thoughts and activities to be understood’.¹⁵⁷ Consequently, those pamphlets within the journal that evoke raison d’état have been marshalled by historians as evidence of Richelieu’s success in popularizing the concept as the chosen framework for rationalizing political decisions, and in ridding the state of domestic and foreign threats. Foremost amongst them is Church, who drew heavily on the Mercure: ‘The works of [Richelieu’s] many supporters … developed positions that were central to the growth of reason of state. In fact, these tracts provide the most extensive evidence of the manner in which reason of state was articulated during this period and are therefore crucial to our investigation.’¹⁵⁸ Yet if Richelieu did not go near the Mercure before 1627, arguments concerning his ambitions for the French state should not be supported with pamphlets from volumes ten and eleven, including the Discours sur l’occurrence des affaires présentes, the Discours de l’Estat de tous les princes chrestiens and Quatre raisons d’État qui obligent tous les Rois à la défense de leurs alliés, variously attributed without strong grounds to Richelieu, Père Joseph and Fancan.¹⁵⁹ Moreover, if Richelieu’s control remained incomplete before 1638, pamphlets from volumes twelve to twenty can no longer be drawn upon unquestioningly for the same purpose; Richelieu may have had a hand in volume twelve’s Discours pour montrer qu’il est expédient au Roi pour le bien de son État d’être fort et puissant sur mer, amongst others, but this will probably remain unproven.¹⁶⁰ The Mercure thus offers an antidote to Thuau’s claim that pamphlets evoking raison d’état were ‘less often born of a writer’s own initiative than of government orders’, showing instead that grassroots support for the doctrine could be inspired amongst those with politique roots who feared the positive correlation between monarchical weakness and civil war.¹⁶¹

Following La Rochelle’s capture in 1629, Richelieu sought to remind Louis of the need for urgency in effecting state reforms: ‘Men’s salvation occurs ultimately in the next world, and it is therefore not surprising that God wishes men to leave to Him the punishment of wrongs that He scourges with his judgments in eternity. But states have no being after this world. Their salvation is either in the present or nonexistent.’¹⁶² In practice, the binary he proposed was less absolute. The cardinal may have yearned for recognition as a revolutionary administrator who took the helm in acutely pressing circumstances, but if the Mercure’s account is representative, contemporaries did not welcome him as such, if at all, in 1624/25. Conditioned by the unwanted turmoil of the religious wars, participants viewed the proto-public sphere as a space for championing consensual stability, not divisive change. For much of the 1620s, Richelieu was seen as another, probably transient minister, whose role in the unfolding events and actions of the period appeared in the Mercure to have been a lot more marginal than subsequent historians have assumed.

Footnotes