CHAPTER XLI .-- --LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
France was reduced to submission; six years of power had sufficed for Richelieu to obtain the mastery; from that moment he directed his ceaseless energy towards Europe.

"He feared the repose of peace," said the ambassador Nani in his letters to Venice; "and thinking himself more safe amidst the bustle of arms, he was the originator of so many wars, and of such long-continued and heavy calamities, he caused so much blood and so many tears to flow within and without the kingdom, that there is nothing to be astonished at, if many people have represented him as faithless, atrocious in his hatred, and inflexible in his vengeance.
But no one, nevertheless, can deny him the gifts that this world is accustomed to attribute to its greatest men; and his most determined enemies are forced to confess that he had so many and such great ones, that he would have carried with him power and prosperity wherever he might have had the direction of affairs.

We may say that, having brought back unity to divided France, having succored Italy, upset the empire, confounded England, and enfeebled Spain, he was the instrument chosen by divine Providence to direct the great events of Europe." The Venetian's independent and penetrating mind did not mislead him; everywhere in Europe were marks of Richelieu's handiwork.

"There must be no end to negotiations near and far," was his saying: he had found negotiations succeed in France; he extended his views; numerous treaties had already marked the early years of the cardinal's power; and, after 1630, his activity abroad was redoubled.

Between 1623 and 1642 seventy-four treaties were concluded by Richelieu: four with England; twelve with the United Provinces; fifteen with the princes of Germany; six with Sweden; twelve with Savoy; six with the republic of Venice; three with the pope; three with the emperor; two with Spain; four with Lorraine; one with the Grey Leagues of Switzerland; one with Portugal; two with the revolters of Catalonia and Roussillon; one with Russia; two with the Emperor of Morocco: such was the immense network of diplomatic negotiations whereof the cardinal held the threads during nineteen years.
An enumeration of the alliances would serve, without further comment, to prove this: that the foreign policy of Richelieu was a continuation of that of Henry IV.; it was to Protestant alliances that he looked for their support in order to maintain the struggle against the house of Austria, whether the German or the Spanish branch.