Great interests were at stake, for Richelieu, reckoning upon the monarch’s weak health, meditated procuring the regency for himself. Anne of Austria, aware of this intention, approved of the project of Cinq-Mars, which of course implied the assassination of the Cardinal. No other mode of defying his power and talent could have been contemplated. But Richelieu was on the watch. The Court was then in the south of France, engaged in the conquest of Roussillon, a situation favourable for the relation of the conspirators with Spain. The Minister surprised one of the emissaries, had the fortune to seize a treaty concluded between them and the enemies of France; and with this flagrant proof of their treason, he repaired to Louis, and forced from him an order for their arrest. It was tantamount to their condemnation. Cinq-Mars and his friends perished on the scaffold; Anne of Austria was again humbled; and every enemy of the Cardinal shrunk in awe and submission before his ascendency. Amongst them was the King himself, whom Richelieu looked upon as an equal in dignity, an inferior in mind and in power. The guards of the Cardinal were numerous as the Monarch’s, and independent of any authority save that of their immediate master. A treaty was even drawn up between king and minister, as between two potentates. But the power and the pride of Richelieu reached at once their height and their termination. A mortal illness seized him in the latter days of 1642, a few months after the execution of Cinq-Mars. No remorse for his cruelty or abatement of his pride marked his last moments. He summoned the monarch like a servant to his couch, instructed him what policy to follow, and appointed the minister who was to be his own successor. Even in the last religious duties, the same character and the same spirit were observable. As his cardinal’s robe was a covering and excuse for all crimes in life, he seemed to think that it exempted him from the common lot of mortals after death.
Such was the career of this supereminent statesman, who, although in the position of Damocles all his life, with the sword of the assassin suspended over his head, surrounded with enemies, and with insecure and treacherous support even from the monarch whom he served, still not only maintained his own station, but possessed time and zeal to frame and execute gigantic projects for the advancement of his country and of his age. It makes no small part of Henry IV.’s glory that he conceived a plan for diminishing the power of the House of Austria. Richelieu, without either the security or the advantages of the king and the warrior, achieved it. Not only this, but he dared to enter upon the war at the very same time when he was humbling that aristocracy which had hitherto composed the martial force of the country.