We are brought now to the third great object of Richelieu’s policy.  He saw from the beginning that Austria and her satellite Spain must be humbled, if France was to take her rightful place in Europe.

Hardly, then, had he entered the council, when he negotiated a marriage of the King’s sister with the son of James I. of England; next he signed an alliance with Holland; next he sent ten thousand soldiers to drive the troops of the Pope and Spain out of the Valtelline district of the Alps, and thus secured an alliance with the Swiss.  We are to note here the fact which Buckle wields so well, that, though Richelieu was a Cardinal of the Roman Church, all these alliances were with Protestant powers against Catholic.[C] Austria and Spain intrigued against him,—­sowing money in the mountain-districts of South France which brought forth those crops of armed men who defended La Rochelle.  But he beat them at their own game.  He set loose Count Mansfyld, who revived the Thirty Tears’ War by raising a rebellion in Bohemia; and when one great man, Wallenstein, stood between Austria and ruin, Richelieu sent his monkish diplomatist, Father Joseph, to the German Assembly of Electors, and persuaded them to dismiss Wallenstein and to disgrace him.

[Footnote C:  History of Civilisation in England, Vol.  I. Chap.  VIII.]

But the great Frenchman’s master-stroke was his treaty with Gustavus Adolphus.  With that keen glance of his, he saw and knew Gustavus while yet the world knew him not,—­while he was battling afar off in the wilds of Poland.  Richelieu’s plan was formed at once.  He brought about a treaty between Gustavus and Poland; then he filled Gustavus’s mind with pictures of the wrongs inflicted by Austria on German Protestants, hinted to him probably of a new realm, filled his treasury, and finally hurled against Austria the man who destroyed Tilly, who conquered Wallenstein, who annihilated Austrian supremacy at the Battle of Lueizen, who, though in his grave, wrenched Protestant rights from Austria at the Treaty of Westphalia, who pierced the Austrian monarchy with the most terrible sorrows it ever saw before the time of Napoleon.

To the main objects of Richelieu’s policy already given might be added two subordinate objects.

The first of these was a healthful extension of French territory.  In this Richelieu planned better than the first Napoleon; for, while he did much to carry France out to her natural boundaries, he kept her always within them.  On the South he added Roussillon, on the East, Alsace, on the Northeast, Artois.

The second subordinate object of his policy sometimes flashed forth brilliantly.  He was determined that England should never again interfere on French soil.  We have seen him driving the English from La Rochelle and from the Isle of Rhe; but he went farther.  In 1628, on making some proposals to England, he was repulsed with English haughtiness.  “They shall know,” said the Cardinal, “that they cannot despise me.”  Straightway one sees protests and revolts of the Presbyterians of Scotland, and Richelieu’s agents in the thickest of them.