ABSTRACT
‘To a gentleman (galant homme) any country is his homeland’. So Mazarin had written in 1637, in the equable spirit that supported him in many trials. He had begun to see himself as a Frenchman ‘by gratitude and by temperament’. During his last Roman summer, he had been willing to serve in any capacity so long as it would afford escape. In June 1639 he had written to the king: ‘I have no duty or greater desire in this world than to be able to appear in fact the servant of such immense devotion and respect as the goodness of Your Majesty gives me the glory of being’. Anxious to please, he worked on plans for Richelieu’s projected theatre but soon became immersed in politics. To help effect a reconciliation between new master and old he secured the recall of d’Estrées. As if testing Mazarin’s commitment, Richelieu first nominated him envoy to the proposed congress at Cologne, then held him back. At Easter he was required to attend the court at Amiens, established there to maintain contact with the army besieging Arras. 1 The Spanish defended it with a tenacity that suggests they were far from demoralised. If they had already sunk to a condition of irreversible decline, the history of the next two decades, and that of Mazarin, would have been very different. The city held out till August.
