The red statesman: Richelieu

Frederick was a historical man that taught in a university, and he was choosing the argument for his academic year, he thought to ancient history and modern history, but the argument was difficult; he had took from a sleep because he was dog tired; hence he laid on the bath and he slept, after an hour he was awaked from somebody that was calling him and he asked that he sit to writing desk, Frederick awaked immediately and he was in a room, where a man with red cloth read a sheet, and spoken to a soldier; Fredrick heard, and he understood everything they were telling; he understood that the language was French, and he known not the French language. But there he understood all; the man with red cloth gazed him and invited him to seat, Fredrick immediately made it and he gazed the red man, that while he reading a letter he spoken to Frederick: “You must write what I will dictate. You are new secretary, and what is your name?”, and Frederick: “Frederick”, and the red man: “German?”, and Frederick: “No absolutely”, and the red man: “Spanish?”, and Frederick: “No! I come from…”, and the red man interrupted him very sharply, and while he read a sheet: “My name is Armand Jean du Plessis, duke of Richelieu, cardinal, and I am born in Paris in 1585 and there I died in 1642. Where you are from or where you are born, I don’t cure, you are secretary, and you must alone write my history, above all during the war of thirty years”, and Frederick nodded alone, because he was impressed from this figure, and his nobility, hence: “The        France in the sixteenth century had reached the same state of misery which Germany attained in the seventeenth during the Thirty Years’ War: laid waste, torn into factions, reeling from plague to plague and from famine to famine. The realm staggered under a monstrous load of debt; law and order were quite in abeyance; the kingship as an institution was questioned; tyrannicide was not only tolerated as a legitimate means, but actually advocated. A series of religious and civil wars had come and gone; complete anarchy, confusion and exhaustion prevailed everywhere. And Late in the sixteenth century Henry IV, backed by the burghers and others, began the political rehabilitation of France. The mighty and resolute rise of France to unity was to last for the whole of the seventeenth century, yet it did not proceed undisturbed. Men’s spirits had emerged still burning from the conflagration of the unexampled sixteenth century, and a long time was to pass before they cooled. In the sixteenth century individuals had grown too strong in a State that was too feeble; now they had to be disciplined out of their endless misery and embroilments. was to pass before they cooled. In the sixteenth century individuals had  grown too strong in a State that was too feeble; now they had to be  disciplined out of their endless misery and embroilments. They had to be pieced together into a unity; a closely-knit ruling class had to be devised; a new and strict regime, a new authority had to be set up. The task was hard and unremitting to the point of desperation, involving setbacks all the time and risking collapse at every moment. How great was the task for which these men had to nerve themselves! How vastly still loomed the power of their dangerous neighbor, Spain! Spain: that meant all the Iberian peninsula, now including Portugal; a great part of Italy (Milan and the Kingdom of Naples) with Sicily and Sardinia; and, from the Burgundian patrimony, the Netherlands and Franche-Comté. To its enormous American colonies it had added those of Portugal, scattered round Africa and about the Indian Ocean. A Spanish chronicler of the time asserted that the domain of his King exceeded twenty times the territory of the ancient Roman Empire. All Europe knew the saying: “When Spain stirs the earth tremble.” The huge fabric of this worldwide State rested on an army that was world-famous, the infantry tercios in particular, in whose ranks the noblest and bravest were enlisted, while at sea even the destruction of the Invincible Armada in 1588 had not permanently damaged the naval prestige of Spain. ”., and Frederick: “Therefore the French was surrounded from an enemy very dangerous”, and Richelieu: “I ascertain that you have understood very well”, and Frederick: “Yes because…”, but the Richelieu interrupted immediately: “Shut now”, and Frederick: “Yes, in conformity to your will lord”. Richelieu continued his dictated: “Against this mighty power France held its own and eventually overcame it. Eventually: after long and hard endurance and a still longer preliminary period of lying in wait. The task of France was to spy out the vulnerable spots in the greatest power in Europe, to estimate in Madrid and Vienna the weaknesses of the Hapsburgs, to search for the Empire’s hidden, self generating poisons, of which the most violent would be found in the struggle for German liberties.”, and Frederick: “But German was protestant, why so much attention?” and Richelieu: “Because also the protestant are useful when the enemy is so important and breaded, whereby, the Protestant believe was usable, because the principal enemy was the Spain and his estates in Europe and no, certainly the Protestantism, whose I don’t cured”, and Frederick: “But you are a cardinal”, and Richelieu: “I am statesman, and I believe to Christ when it is necessary, otherwise it is useless”, and Frederick. “Why?”, and Richelieu: “The religion is a serious motive to piece together a people, and the unity was necessary to French because the stirred powers among the feudal lords, and the jealousies dominant among them, for prestige, for richness, for power and other would guarantee to the Spain a aid very important, because everybody could be corruptible, for this were necessary alone some promise and the feudal lords could have betrayed immediately”, and Frederick: “But also in French were the treacherous”, and Richelieu: “Every country and town has its treacherous, also the neighbor could become a treacherous, if you says something”, and Frederick: “I hold for me my secrets”, and Richelieu: “ An Italian statesman used repeat “When a secret know two person it isn’t a secret”. Frederick suddenly had sleep, and in fact he slept almost immediately, and when he awaked he was in the classroom of his university, where everybody gazed him, and a student asked: “Are you from a masked ball?”, and Frederick gazed the student, and asked: “Why?”, and the student: “Because you are clothed as a secretary of 17^th century”, and Frederick: “Yes, I wanted adhere to the time of Armand Jean du Plessis, duke of Richelieu”, and other student, that while was approached: “You have set to program”, and Frederick: “Yes, but just a moment because I must go to bath, you can seat”, and when he gone back he seen that the students were different, and somebody indicated to him a chair, he sat, and he gazed on the professorship a figure much noble that has known, that turned to him and asked: “Now I know are you from, from bathroom”.

Alessandro Lusana