“The Cardinal was disgusted with that house, finding it unpleasant and unhealthy; both because of its low situation, yet without fountains or other waters, and because of many other things that were lacking; and he was happy to seize a good chance of getting rid of it, and greatly to his advantage; which he could not have expected in any other quarter. For the Queen-mother’s persuasion decided the King to gratify the Cardinal her creature, in whom she had then every confidence.” The last sentence hardly bears the stamp of truth. In the year 1627 and later, Richelieu could not be described as the creature of Marie de Médicis, and her confidence in him had almost ceased to exist. In the spring of that year the discontent between France and England flashed out into war. This had been imminent since the early autumn of 1626, when Charles I. roughly drove out his wife’s French household; and Bassompierre’s embassy of remonstrance had only smoothed matters over for the time. Richelieu did not desire war with England; it meant a new struggle with the Huguenots. He intended to fix his own date for that, and to make it final. He was not yet ready. But this time Buckingham’s jealous anger and restless ambition were strong enough to force his hand. Louis XIII. had refused to receive the Duke again at the French Court. This, according to contemporaries, be they right or wrong, was the chief and secret cause of the war. Outwardly, it was brought about by quarrels and piracies on both sides at sea, as well as by Charles I.’s sympathy with the oppressed Huguenots; but every enemy of Richelieu’s government, Protestant or Catholic, was more or less drawn into a coalition against him. Not only the Duc de Soubise and his friends in England, and the Duc de Rohan in Languedoc, but Duke Charles of Lorraine, influenced by Madame de Chevreuse, the Duke of Savoy and his guest the Comte de Soissons, and the Archduchess Isabel, ruler of the Low Countries, who did her best to draw Spain to England’s side, were concerned in this great enterprise of crushing Cardinal de Richelieu. As a fact, at this very time, Spain and France were allied by treaty against England; but Richelieu differed from the Queen-mother and the rest of the Catholic party in profoundly distrusting Olivarez; and he knew, quite as well as his many enemies did, that an English victory would leave France, divided in herself, standing alone against Europe.