Word: richelieu
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Holy Fifth Column. Richelieu's foreign policy had two interlocking parts: 1) to unify France under an absolute monarchy; 2) to break the power of the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs and exalt the Bourbons. Up & down the rutted roads and cow paths of Europe padded barefoot Father Joseph. He visited kings, the Pope, rebellious nobles, foreign agents. The Pope made him Apostolic Commissary of Missions...
During the year-long siege of La Rochelle, which broke the rebellious Huguenots, Father Joseph was offered quarters in Richelieu's house. Instead he chose "a deserted summerhouse standing beside a broad ditch at the end of the garden. . . . When the wind blew hard from offshore and the tides were high, the ditch overflowed, ankle deep, into the friar's bedroom...
...garden house had "one inestimable advantage: it was private. . . ." In the damp and windy solitude of his gazebo he could meditate in peace. And visitors could come & go unnoticed. "For, as in Paris, so here before La Rochelle, the friar acted as chief of Richelieu's secret service." With Catholic secret agents and Huguenot traitors, in the flooded summerhouse, the friar would sit "into the small hours, listening to their reports and giving them instructions. Then, dismissing them with their wages, he would lie down to sleep. Before daybreak he was up again and on his knees...
Nevertheless, he managed to outlive by four years the friar who was to have succeeded him. Father Joseph's death snatched Richelieu away from the theater. "Ou est mon appui?" cried Richelieu, "j'ai perdu mon appui...
...memorable comment on the Cardinal's own death came from an even higher dignitary and was even more cryptic. "When the news of [Richelieu's] passing was brought to Urban VIII, the old Pope sat for a moment in pensive silence. 'Well,' he said at last, 'if there is a God, Cardinal Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not, he has done very well...