A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

that people felt they had a right to think for themselves and to assert their individuality. His son
Charles I learned this greatly to his cost when his parliament went to war against him, and
eventually cut off his head.
In France, the situation looked altogether more stable, closer to the world of the Middle Ages. After
the murder of Henry of Navarre by Ravaillac in 1610, Henry’s wife, Marie de Medici, became
regent - since the heir, Louis XIII, was only nine years old. Marie showed herself an expert in
intrigue, and ruled with the aid of her lady-in-waiting, Leonora Galigai, and her husband Concini.
The shy and introverted boy-king, whose only pleasure was hunting, poured out his heart to this
chief falconer, Luynes. One day, the commander of the guard pushed his way through a crowd of
courtiers, walked up to Concini, and signalled his men, who raised their guns and killed Concini on
the spot. ‘Now I am really king,’ said Louis proudly, while his mother had hysterics in bed. Threequarters
of a century earlier, the young king of Russia, Ivan the Terrible - who was thirteen at the
time - ordered his servants to murder his enemy Prince Shuisky and throw his corpse to the dogs; it
was the beginning of a bloody but highly successful reign. But Louis was living in the new century.
Luynes turned out to be greedy and corrupt as an adviser. The queen mother had to be recalled
from her exile, together with her chief adviser, Cardinal Richelieu. And it was Richelieu who
became head of the royal council, made bargains with England, Holland and Denmark, plotted
against the descendants of Charles V - the Hapsburgs - and eventually involved France in the
disastrous Thirty Years War. Unlike Russia, France had no place for a tsar; it needed a diplomat
capable of turning double somersaults.
The Thirty Years War is another demonstration of how the rules of history were changing. It started
as the great culminating clash between Protestants and Catholics, when Ferdinand of Bohemia -
another Hapsburg - tried to crush Lutherans and Calvinists in his dominions. The Protestants of
Bohemia rebelled, and threw two leading Catholic governors out of the window of Prague Castle -
the famous ‘defenestration of Prague’. (Amusingly, one of the attackers shouted angrily: ‘Now let’s
see if the Virgin will help him’; then looked out of the window and said: ‘My God, she has! He’s
crawling away...’) The Spanish sent troops to help Ferdinand put down the rebellion, and a
Protestant German prince, Frederick of the Palatinate, marched in on the side of the rebels.
Hungary was dragged into the war, then Sweden. The history of the conflict resounds with great
names: Tilly - the Fighting Monk, Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus. If Ferdinand had not
mistrusted his great general Wallenstein so deeply, he would probably have won the war; as it was,
Wallenstein was murdered by his own side, to the delight of the Protestants. Then the Catholic
Richelieu came into the war on the side of the Protestants, for he had no desire to see a Hapsburg
become the most powerful ruler in Europe. So the war dragged on to its indecisive end in 1648, and
neither side could claim victory. In retrospect, it was a pure waste of time.
Thanks to Richelieu, France came out of the Thirty Years War stronger than ever, so that the next
king, Louis XIV, was able to behave like a Roman caesar. If anyone stood a chance of recalling the
ways of an old-time conqueror, it was the Sun King, who had so much money that he was able to
bribe half the monarchs of Europe. He was certainly strong enough to revoke the Edict of Nantes in
1685 and outlaw Protestantism in France. He built Versailles and had the sense to choose as his
chief minister a shopkeeper’s son - Jean Baptiste Colbert - who revolutionised France’s industry
and made it rich. Then, powerful and secure, he began to behave like an emperor. He flatly
declined to entertain Colbert’s idea that the nobles ought to pay taxes like everybody else, since he
felt that wealthy and idle nobles ought to decorate the court of a truly great king. The result is that
Louis drained the national wealth as fast as Colbert created it. Then, deciding that a great king