Eminence by Blanchard Jean-Vincent

Author:Blanchard, Jean-Vincent [Blanchard, Jean-Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802778529
Google: 3Epwy0fKJzoC
Amazon: 0802778526
Goodreads: 11870600
Publisher: Walker & Company
Published: 2015-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

War (1635–1637)

In the busy morning hours of May 19, 1635, the guards at Brussels’s Hau gate witnessed a curious spectacle. A proud-looking man arrived on horseback, wearing a maroon coat decorated with a gold motif of French lilies, and a wide black velvet cap. He held a blue baton, also decorated with a motif of lilies. Next to him was a drummer, on horseback as well, who beat his instrument before the gate. Once the drumbeat stopped, the first horseman shouted solemnly that he was Louis XIII’s herald and that he carried a message for the Cardinal-Infant, the brother of the Spanish king. The puzzled guards sent out for instructions. After a while, the two Frenchmen were let inside the city and taken to a house, where they waited for several hours. But the Spanish mistook them for impostors, and the envoy, Jean Gratiolet, charged back to France with his drummer once he understood that nobody wanted to see him. Before crossing back over the border, however, he nailed a formal declaration of war on a pole as his companion beat the drum again.1

And so, in the wake of what was in essence a German religious and civil conflict, the long awaited, great pan-European war between France and the Habsburgs began with an old-fashioned ritual that Richelieu had resuscitated as a publicity stunt.2 The cardinal insisted that war had to be justified by an overt attack from the enemy. Yet war was not an ordeal in the medieval sense of the term, for once war was deemed appropriate it did serve political ends. The point was to push the Habsburgs into a negotiated settlement that would resolve the conflict to France’s best advantage. It would, indeed, thus laying the foundations of modern Europe. But, in truth, Gratiolet’s emphatic declaration of war against Spain fell a bit flat.

In Richelieu’s strategy, the French and Dutch were to combine forces and shock the Spanish Netherlands. Short on military resources and preparations, he thought a blitz was the soultion. War against the Dutch had exhausted the Spanish territory. Ever since the death of Infanta Isabella on December 1, 1633, and the end of the semiautonomous rule that her reign guaranteed, the local population felt increasingly dissatisfied with its Spanish rulers. It was for this reason that the cardinal opened hostilities only with Spain. He thought he could compartmentalize the conflict, strike audaciously, and overwhelm the Habsburgs.

Led by Gaspard III de Coligny, Maréchal de Châtillon, and Urbain, Maréchal de Maillé-Brézé—the latter was the husband of Richelieu’s sister Nicole—French battalions of twenty-two thousand soldiers and four thousand horsemen entered the Spanish Netherlands to face the smaller armies of Prince Thomas of Savoy. The clash happened in Avein, on May 22, just a few days after the herald left Brussels. A resounding French success, this battle left five thousand enemy soldiers dead on the field and spread tales of French fury all around Europe. Te Deum hymns rose everywhere.

What followed this hopeful opening, however, turned out to be a catastrophe.

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