In theological language, ‘idle curiosity’ may have been one of the baits employed by Satan to lure him away from God. Against this greed for merely mundane information Father Joseph had been warned, not only by his own master, but by all the great contemplatives of medieval and modern times. News, they had all assured him, is one of the great distractions, separating the mind from reality. For this reason the aspiring contemplative must practise self-denial in regard to curiosity, just as he does in regard to any other craving or intellectual dissipation. That Father Joseph should have disregarded the unanimous advice of all the mystics is strange. How did he justify himself in his own eyes? Partly, no doubt, by the belief that he could ‘annihilate’ his news-gathering activities. Partly, perhaps, by a conviction (born of the consciousness of enormous talents) that he had a vocation for politics comparable to his vocation for preaching and teaching. Even in those early days, when Ezechiely had gone about the country winning souls to God, Tenebroso-Cavernoso had felt that he could do God’s will, and had prepared himself for his yet undetermined task by a secret and methodical collection of information.
Now, through the instrumentality of Richelieu, the task had been assigned to him, and it was worse than hell worse than hell, even though it was in accord with the divine will; worse than hell, in spite of the fact that he had a real genius, not only for the more avowable forms of politics, but also for the hidden, backstairs business of espionage and the organization of fifth columns. ‘In Richelieu’s enterprises,’ writes Fagniez, ‘treason was almost always called in to supplement open force, or to make force unnecessary.’ And he goes on to give a number of examples of the way in which Father Joseph, acting as head of the secret service, made use of money or honours to buy, now a piece of useful information, now a complaisance, now a downright treachery. Once again, one wonders how he contrived to justify himself in his own eyes. Here he was, a Franciscan friar, vowed to the service of a Church which existed for the salvation of souls, but using all his own talents, all the baits of Lucifer, Mammon and Belial, to induce fellow-Christians to damn themselves by lying, by breaking their pledged word, by betraying the trust imposed in them.
In order to do what he conceived to be his political duty, he had to do the Satanic opposite of what he had promised to do when he entered religion.
Catholic secret agents and Huguenot traitors were received by Father Joseph at his headquarters in the flooded summerhouse. They came at night, slipping out unobserved through the defenders’ lines. The friar would sit with them into the small hours, listening to their reports and giving them instructions. Then, dismissing them with their wages, he would lie down to sleep. Before daybreak he was up again and on his knees for an hour or two of that mental prayer, without which he could not live, but to which, as his political activities were multiplied, he was finding it ever more difficult to bring a spirit that was fit to converse with God.
It was a strenuous life, all the more so as Father Joseph kept four Lents a year and was living, during the greater part of this winter in the salt marshes, on bread and ditchwater, with an occasional feast-day dinner of mouldy stock fish. His body showed the marks of fatigue and undernourishment; but in spite of the Cardinal’s protests, he held on his course unswervingly. The siege settled down to a dismal routine, and by February of 1628 Louis XIII was so desperately bored that he insisted on leaving his army and going back to Paris. It was the fox-hunting at Versailles that lured him away. In the neighbourhood of La Rochelle a sportsman could find only wild-fowl and a few hares. The king had done his best to keep himself amused with hawk and arquebus and beagle. On more than one occasion military operations had been suspended that the game might not be disturbed and His Majesty deprived of his favourite, indeed his only recreation. But by February the longing for foxes had become irresistible.
Richelieu implored his master to stay. With the king’s departure, he insisted, the army would lose heart. Worse, the great nobles who had accompanied the expedition might turn from their wavering loyalty. They were good Catholics, it was true; but the existence of a strong Protestant minority was the guarantee of royal weakness, and royal weakness was the condition of the nobles’ power. ‘We should be fools,’ Bassompierre had said, ‘to take La Rochelle.’ But while the king was actually present it was psychologically difficult for him and his fellows not to behave as fools, not to subordinate long-range interests to the immediate and active expression of traditional loyalty.
There was yet another reason why Richelieu was anxious for the king to stay with his army. The Queen Mother was in Paris; and though Richelieu still made a show of grateful deference towards her, he had done all he could to keep her from interfering in the affairs of state, not merely because she was stupid and incompetent, but also because her pro-Spanish foreign policy was diametrically opposed to his own. Marie’s liking for the Cardinal had turned to rancorous hatred, and her palace had become the meeting place of all those who, for whatever reason, desired to see him overthrown. In Paris these malcontents would have free access to the king. What if he were to listen to their whisperings ? What if he were to let himself be worn down by the loud incessant hectoring of his mother?
In spite, however, of all his minister could say, Louis set out. The most that Richelieu could get from him was a promise to be back in the spring. Richelieu remained with the forces in an agony of apprehension. From Paris, his agents sent news of intrigues against him -news so alarming, that on several occasions he was on the point of posting back to rejoin the king. It was Father Joseph who kept him at La Rochelle. To desert the army at this juncture would be, he insisted, an act of treason against the Church. The Cardinal’s place was with the crusaders against heresy. As for the intrigues in Paris, they would come to nothing; for God would not allow them to succeed. Richelieu stayed on.
In April the king moved south again -very slowly, for he had to stop several times on the way to hunt the stag-but in the end he arrived. The siege dragged on. After a number of ineffectual attempts had been made to cut off La Rochelle from the sea, it was decided to build a great dam of stones across the outer harbour, beyond the range of the defenders’ cannon. It was a tremendous undertaking, for the channel at this point was more than a mile across. But in spite of all that the pessimists could say, the work was begun. It progressed slowly -so slowly, indeed, that in the summer of 1628 Richelieu lost courage and talked of abandoning the campaign against the Huguenots. The king was growing impatient; the foreign situation was becoming ever more menacing; most of the Cardinal’s advisers were convinced that La Rochelle was impregnable; and all the time the expedition was costing money, taxes had had to be increased and the people were murmuring.
To raise the siege now, he argued weakly, would be humiliating, indeed, but not fatal; to stay on and be compelled to raise it later would be a catastrophe, from which he could not hope to recover. Once again Father Joseph intervened. To the Cardinal’s wavering purpose he brought the reinforcement of a will that no reverses could shake. La Rochelle, he insisted, must be taken, and the king and Cardinal must be present in person when it was surrendered. Sustained by the inflexibility of his friend’s purpose, Richelieu recovered his strength; and meanwhile Ezechiely’s eloquence was thundering to good effect in the council chamber and the royal apartments. The siege went on, and the king and his minister remained with the army. Later, when the town was captured, Louis XIII publicly acknowledged the debt that was owing to the Capuchin, affirming that ‘he was the only man to stand firm in the hope of reducing the town to obedience, and that it was he who had confirmed the others.’
In his almost single-handed struggle against the
