The high nobles were now exasperate. Gaston tied the country, first issuing against Richelieu a threatening manifesto. Now awoke the Duke of Montmorency. By birth he stood next the King's family: by office, as Constable of France, he stood next the King himself. Montmorency was defeated and taken. The nobles supplicated for him lustily: they looked on crimes of nobles resulting in deaths of plebeians as lightly as the English House of Lords afterward looked on Lord Mohun's murder of Will Mountfort, or as another body of lords looked on Matt Ward's murder of Professor Butler: but Montmorency was executed. Says Richelieu, in his Memoirs, "Many murmured at this act, and called it severe; but others, more wise, praised the justice of the King, _who preferred the good of the State to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency._" Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of Epernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the Regency,--him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of La Valette disobeyed orders in the army, and he was executed as a common soldier would have been for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see if he could not revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel army; but Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain Court nobles,--pets of the King,--Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new plot, and, to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the Cardinal, though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his agent, and the traitors expiated their treason with their blood. But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris,--a court of justice,--filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end, tried to interpose _forms_ between the Master of France and the vermin he was exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done something. They might have insisted that petty quibbles set forth by the lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution set forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, and the time for legal forms had gone by. The Paris Parliament would not see this, and Richelieu crushed the Parliament. Then the Court of Aids refused to grant supplies, and he crushed that court. In all this the nation braced him. Woe to the courts of a nation, when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legality as injustice!--woe to the councils of a nation, when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legislation as traffic!--woe, thrice repeated, to gentlemen of the small pettifogger sort, when they have brought such times, and God has brought a man to fit them! There was now in France no man who could stand against the statesman's purpose.