ARCHBISHOP AND ADMIRAL. BY DAVID HANNAY. D'ESCOUBLEAU DE HENRI SOURDIS, Archbishop of Bordeaux, Primate of Aquitaine, President of the Navy Board, and Admiral in command at sea from 1636 to 1642 for the King of France, was not so much of an exception or oddity as this strange-looking combination of titles would seem to imply. If he does appear to have cumulated incompatible functions, that is the case only because he came at the end of a long line of fighting churchmen. He himself wrote or caused to be written-a treatise appropriately named 'The Prelate in Arms' to demonstrate the orthodoxy of his position. It will be found in the third volume of his correspondence, edited by Eugène Sue, and published in handsome form at Paris in 1839. M. Sue is still remembered, though but vaguely, as the author of the 'Wandering Jew,' and of a whole shelf of stories on The Seven Deadly Sins," together with much else in the way of melodramatic, or, one may be pardoned for saying, raw gin and red-herring romance. MrSaintsbury confesses that he had not found it necessary to read him through before assigning him his place in the history of the French novel, nor does the professor exactly station him on the quarter-deck. But M. 66 Sue did his work of editor well, and when he dealt with the French Navy of the seventeenth century in the historical way, he was far from being negligible. The Archbishop-Admiral was notable for more than for being a belated example of the mediaval warrior priest. He was very much a man of the age of Corneille and of Richelieu, and was in himself not insignificant. The very name smacks of the "Cadet de Gascogne," and, indeed, he came from that part of France. He was a cadet of a known house, a younger son of François d'Escoubleau, Marquis of Sourdis and of Alluye. The Escoubleau was a family name, the Sourdis a "territorial designation." It was by the second that gentlemen of France were commonly known, and so the surname can be omitted in future. Isabelle Babou de la Bordaisière was the maiden name of his mother, and it is not a mere item of scandal, but an essential fact, that she was aunt of King Henri IV.'s mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées. Her sons had a good introduction at Courta most weighty consideration,for in the France of that and other times the road to fortune ran through the Court. Arms, the Church, and the King's house offered the three possible the noblesse "of the sword," who were practically forbidden by class consciousness" from joining the other noblesse "of the robe," who were lawyers. Henri and his elder brother François chose the Church, or it was chosen for them, on the ground, neatly defined by Swift -namely, that it was easier to provide for ten men in orders than for one outside. François became Archbishop of Bordeaux, and had a busy life of conflict with unruly clergy, a legacy of the wars of religion, and with the Parlement of his province. While the elder was thus employed, the younger brother was following his star in the household of Cardinal Richelieu, where he held one of those posts of gentlemanly domesticity domesticity familiar in the establishments of "the great." To serve the Cardinal meant to go to the wars on occasion. Henri de Sourdis followed his master to the siege of Rochelle and other fields. He must soon have convinced the Cardinal that he could be a useful agent, was actively employed, and decorated with the order of the Saint Esprit. It was not merely by family interest that he was chosen to succeed his brother as Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1629. Richelieu had a use for him in that particular place. careers for a younger son of to punish, in some way or other to abate, the then Governor of Guienne. This great man, by rank and fortune, is known to us all by the good offices of Dumas. He was that Jean Louis de Nogaret de Lavalette created Duke of Epernon by Henri III. No worse specimen of the kind of adventurer who rose in the Court of the later Valois could be found. The king had loaded him with gifts of wealth and rank for services which need not be quoted. It is enough that he was a "mignon." Apart from what was merely vice, he was chosen to be a creature of the King, set up to counterbalance turbulent great nobles. By marriage with Mlle. de Foix and Candale, the greatest heiress in the south of France, he became so powerful that he could safely defy and insult the King, who had raised him from nothing. When Henri III. was despatched by assassination, Epernon was so well planted that Henri IV. had to buy his support, and even his neutrality, at a huge price. If Epernon headed the party of the "Politiques" who made it possible for Henri of Navarre to become King of France, he did not serve his cause for naught. In 1633, when he and the new Archbishop came fairly, and in the literal sense of the words, to blows, the Duke was about eighty. Years had added a senile incapacity to control his temper to his inherited fund of natural insolence. He was, in a capital Irish phrase, blue What he did when he took possession of his Metropolitan throne is quite sufficient evidence of what was expected of him. And that was to check, moulded for a beating, and to insult and assault the Arch Richelieu, whom he had offended personally, was now firmly established in the King's confidence, and perfectly disposed to back up the Archbishop in giving what was needed. The course taken, no doubt by Sourdis' choice and with the Cardinal's approval, was nicely calculated to provoke an arrogant old man on the verge of dotage into making a fool of himself. Because he made it much his business to worry the lawyers of the Parlement, the late Archbishop had been the ally of Epernon, who hated them with all the arrogance of the sword for the robe. The new Archbishop, again assuredly by Richelieu's directions, took another course. Those legal gentlemen were often unmanageable when the King was weak. When he was strong, and by the Cardinal's good management the Crown was becoming irresistibly powerful, they were obedient even to servility. The Parlement of Bordeaux was therefore a safe and effective instrument to employ against the Governor of Guienne. Epernon fell into what we can see was a trap laid for his destruction. After a succession of impertinences which Sourdis countered quite coolly, he worked into a beastly froth of rage. Being, in good legal and ecclesiastical phrase, instigated by the devil, he sent one Naugas, a led captain, at the head of fifty carabins 66 that is to say, swashbucklers bishop while he was carrying out a visitation of one of his churches. Sourdis retaliated on the captain and his men with ecclesiastical censures. Epernon put up one of his military chaplains to preach against the Archbishop. When the priest was called upon to show cause why he should not also be ecclesiastically censured, he refused contumaciously. Then the paternal correction of the Church fell on him in the form of excommunication. But the thunders of the Church, when not supported by the secular arm, were just idle noise in the ears of the carabins and their chiefs. Epernon assumed that he was the secular arm. In the distracted state of mind in which he now was, the Governor was ripe for any extravagance. The particular course he took was to wait for the Archbishop outside the metropolitan church of Saint André at the head of a mob equivalent to the Looty Wallahs of an Indian Rajah, and there commit downright assault and battery in the fullest extent of the term. The Governor of Guienne punched the Primate in the stomach three times, and then thrice on the nose and mouth, drawing blood, or shall we call in the language of the P.R. and say tapping his claret. Sourdis bore himself with Christian meekness. He rebuked "the tyrant" in mild wellchosen words, but ended by pronouncing him excommunié. Other We have his word for it, and Hundred Years' War; while can believe him. His obvious the troubles of Louis XIII.'s game was to leave Epernon to minority had stirred up old commit all the excesses. The evils. Riotous assaults, mere frantic dotard did not fail to cudgellings, and duels which go on blundering. Screaming were no better than murders that but for his respect for the were common. In 1633, Richecloth he would have laid lieu and his King were taking Sourdis out on the pavement, up the task of Henri IV. and he was piously content only Sully, of Charles VII. and to prod him on his already Louis XI.-they were subduing punched stomach with a cane. anarchy and enforcing respect Epernon had now committed for the law. himself up to the neck. details of ducal frenzy and carabin rowdyism can be left to the reader's imagination. He can hardly exaggerate. Nothing need be added except that the case was summoned into the King's Council, and Epernon was condemned to make the amende honorable, the nature of which was that he had to present himself alone before the Archbishop's Court, to go down on his knees to beg pardon, and to pray that the excommunication weighing on him might be taken off. And 30 he did. The Cardinal could have sent him to the Bastille, but his sagacity dictated a better course. A man might go to the Bastille with credit, but when he had to grovel publicly, he was covered with ridicule and ignominy. Those who form their opinion of the doings of gentlemen of France and other countries in that age from historical novels may suppose that this story is an exception. It is no such thing. The Wars of Religion had disordered France almost as much, or even quite as badly, as the Sourdis had shown that he could be a profitable servant when this was the work to be done. Therefore it was that on the 12th April 1635 he was appointed "Chef des Conseiles du Roi en l'Armée Navale." Our naval organisation was so different from the French that it is not possible to find an English verbal translation for this title. Its meaning is nowise obscure. The Archbishop of Bordeaux was put at the head of both the military and of the civil sides of the Navy, or, as we would put it, of the Admiralty and of the Navy Board. Richelieu had bought out the mere provincial admiralties, and had given France her first united naval administration. He placed himself in the command over all, but for the execution he needed lieutenants, and Sourdis was the man he chose. That he selected an Archbishop was not surprising in that age. The Earl of Northumberland, whom Charles I. took for Lord High Admiral, and sent to sea with the Shipmoney Fleet, was no more bred to the sea than Sourdis. The Parliamentary it was assumed by all, above Admiral, the Earl of Warwick, and below, that leadership in had sailed on privateering voy- war should go to aristocratic ages, but was no regular bred birth and high social rank. sailorman. Nor was Blake, The secular nobles were turbuthough being a merchant he lent, and were generally his had no doubt sailed in his own enemies, so the Cardinal took ships. Monk, Deane, and Pop- a brother churchman who was ham were army officers. The by birth a gentleman, stood "generals" of the East India high by his ecclesiastical office, Company were men of business. and had given signs that he The admiral or general who possessed the needful character. governed from above repre- He could be trusted to obey, sented authority. Technical and there was as good a prosduties done by his orders were pect that he would be obeyed left to technically trained men. as could be hoped for. There is at any rate mythical truth in the old story that Monk in the heat of battle with the Dutch forgot that he was no longer a cavalry officer, and gave the order to wheel to the left. The master and his mates, together with the quartermasters, knew what he meant, and they duly starboarded the helm. Sir Charles Pasley, himself a soldier, was of opinion that a man may have the temperament and the turn of mind of a general, even though he has not been professionally taught the business. In fact, this keen-witted soldier makes it pretty clear that he would rather see such a one directing from above than a regular bred artist in the mere "froth of discipline and the tricks of parade." The words are Burgoyne's, but Pasley had what they mean in his mind. Richelieu needed a commander for his rising navy who would bring a vigorous intellect and a firm will to the business of direction. In that generation In 1635 the great Cardinal felt confident that he had sufficiently prepared the way for an attack on the House of Austria. He had crushed disorder at home for the time being, and had made alliances abroad. The first round was disappointing. The said House of Austria was not only prepared, but was animated by the offensive spirit. On the northern frontier its forces advanced rapidly into France as far as Corbie at the very gates of Paris. On the south Spanish galleons and galleys brought a landing force of soldiers, and took possession of the Lérins Islands, Sainte Marguérite, and Saint Honoré, near Antibes. Elements of disorder were not lacking in Provence, and when France reacted against the onset, as she promptly did, one of the first measures to be taken was to recover those islands lest they should provide a basis of operations for possible rebels, supported by Spain. Soldiers and militia |