He demanded an audience; but it was denied on several pretexts[400]; because they wanted farther information of what was doing at Hamburg.  It was at last granted[401] on the 16th of November, 1640.  He saw the Queen first, whom he complimented on the birth of the Duke of Anjou:  he afterwards saw the King, and delivered to him the Queen’s letters of the 10th of September.  He congratulated him on the advantages gained last campaign, and on the birth of a second son of France; and entreated his Majesty to send a greater force into Germany as the only means to obtain a glorious peace.  The King promised it, and afterwards repeated to Grotius what Chavigny had said; that the treaty of alliance would soon expire; that he would be glad to renew it on the former conditions; but that if her Swedish Majesty disliked them, he wished to know it immediately, that he might regulate his measures accordingly.  He often repeated that it was not in his power to augment the subsidies, though the Ambassador proved that he could never make a better use of his money.  Grotius informed the Queen of what passed at this audience by a letter of the 17th of November, 1640, in which he assures her that the true reason why the King deferred seeing him was his waiting for Cardinal Richelieu, with whom he wanted to concert the answer he should make.  He acquainted this Princess at the same time, that it was from the Superintendant’s own friends he understood the Swedes might hope for an increase of the subsidies on renewing the alliance.

Salvius informed Grotius of the state of the negotiation[402], that they might act in concert.  The Vice-Chancellor was the primum mobile of this great affair:  Grotius was subordinate to him, and did him great service by the instructions which he sent him.

FOOTNOTES: 

[398] Ep. 1420. p. 647.

[399] Bougeant. l. 6. n. 38.

[400] Ep. 1440. p. 653.

[401] Ep. 1442. p. 654.

[402] Ep. 1472. p. 666.

X. Cardinal Richelieu died the year after the renewal of the treaty of alliance between France and Sweden, on the 4th of December, 1642.  This famous Minister was not much regretted by the Swedish Ambassador:  independent of the grounds of complaint which Grotius thought he had against the Cardinal, it is not surprising that he should have no great veneration for him; they were of too different sentiments to esteem, or perhaps to do one another justice.

Lewis XIII. did not long survive his Prime Minister; the fourteenth of May, 1643, was his last.  Anne of Austria, his widow, was Regent of the Kingdom during the minority of her son Lewis XIV.  She told the Swedish Ambassador by Chavigny, and repeated it herself, that the King’s death would make no change in the alliance between France and Sweden; that she would follow the intentions of the late King in every thing, and observe with the greatest fidelity the treaties made with the allies.