School of War - Ep 77: Iskander Rehman on Sully, Richelieu, and Mazarin (New Makers of Modern Strategy #6)

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

Iskander Rehman, Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Kissinger Center at Johns Hopkins SAIS and contributor to New Makers of Modern Strategy, joins the show to talk about French grand strategy during the 16th and 17th century rivalry between the Bourbons and Habsburg Spain.  ▪️ Times      •    02:41 Introduction      •    04:35 A nagging curiosity       •    06:59 Sully at the start      •    13:27 The genesis of a struggle     •    21:19 French internal cohesion      •    26:51 Naval power     •    29:28 Religious factions and Richelieu     •    32:14 The 30 Years War and France     •    36:22 The fruits of disorder     •    41:44 Defender of the faith     •    44:41 Mazarin      •    49:48 Hegemonic France     •    53:56 Rapid-fire lessons Follow along on Instagram

Managing and containing bids for hegemony on the continent of Europe is a long-standing theme, in some ways the central theme, of the history of state craft in the West. While in the 20th and 21st centuries, that is meant opposition first to Germany and then to Russia, for several centuries before that, the problem was one of what to do about France. And France's repeated attempts, including under Napoleon, and before that the bourbons, to control all that lay before it. But there was a time, and this story takes us back to the middle of the 16th century, when France itself was prostrate and weak at the mercies of the Habsburgs and Spain.

Our subject today is the multi-generational project undertaken by men like Suli, Rishulu, and Mazarin and their sovereigns of building the diplomatic, economic, and military power that would turn the tables and render the challenge of the Spanish Empire a thing of the past. The relevant dimensions of this conversation for today are, I hope, obvious. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, photos, and more School of War content, follow along on Instagram at School of War. Just tap the link in the show notes and subscribe. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome to this show today, Eskander Rahman. He is the Axon Johnson Fellow at the Kissinger Senator at Johns Hopkins Seiss.

He is the author of numerous publications. I think I first came across your work. It was an essay on Polybius, and Polybius is a... relevance to present-day policy concerns. And I can't remember. Was that War on the Rocks or Texas National Security Review? Where did that show up? Yes, that actually might.

So I actually wrote two different essays on Polybias. So one in War on the Rocks initially and then another slightly longer one in Inglesburg, I did. Got it, got it. Iskander focuses on the connections of strategic history with present-day strategic concerns in a way that I find really fascinating. And he is, and the subject for our discussion today is he is a contributor. to the new makers of modern strategy project and book with a chapter on 16th and 17th century French grand strategy. Ascander, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks very much for

having me. I'm delighted to be here. So could we start with a sort of big picture question? What is it about the strategic history of early modern Europe generally or of France's grand strategy during the period that you're focused on here that could possibly have anything to do with the concerns of Americans or Europeans or Russians or Chinese for that matter here in the early 21st century? Sure. So I think it's a period that most people may only have a passing familiarity with. For the casual outside observer, it may seem a tad complex, even daunting, with its medley of kings, queens, regions, treaties, etc. But I think that there is so much timeliness and relevance to be found.

in examining this particular case study of great power rivalry, France and Spain's great power rivalry, which is probably one of the best documented case studies we have of great power rivalry, and also one of the longest examples we have of great power rivalry. It's extended really from the beginning of the Italian wars of the Renaissance, so 1494, to one could argue the peace of the Pyrenees and Significant. to the negotiation of the peace of the Pyrenees in 1659.

So spanning really two centuries of history with Game of Thrones style, intrigues, massacres, battles, a huge cast of larger-than-life characters in both Spain and France, and huge amounts of source material as well in the forms of diplomatic dispatches, correspondence, archives, etc. But this was the period when early modern states were really coming in. to fruition and building out their bureaucratic apparatuses. So there's a various world treasure trove of information there for both historians of the period and contemporary scholars of strategy. And can I ask sort of a personal question. How did you first come to focus on this period,

which otherwise might say it doesn't seem like the kind of thing one might accidentally stumble onto, but perhaps that is the story here. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. So I had always had a passing interest in Richelieu, who of course will be known to most of your listeners, primarily as the mustachio, twirling villain and the free musketeers. He's mentioned, of course, in most classic volumes on the history of strategy, whether it's Kissinger's work on the history of diplomacy, for example, as being one of the seminal figures in European statecraft. But I realized a few years ago that I actually didn't know that that much about him. And having been brought up in in both UK and France, I was raised perfectly bilingual. So I thought that I was quite well positioned

to delve back into the sources, read more about him. And I ended up producing some work for the Office of Net Assessment, a 100-page monograph, which examined Richelieu's grand strategy during the 30 Years' War, which was then adapted into a Texas National Security Review article. And from then on, I was really just completely hooked by this period, early modern, diplomatic and military history. And that, I guess, is how I kind of fell into it. But yes, the point of departure was a nagging curiosity, really. My pop culture reference for Richelieu, which is now horribly outdated, is under the red robe,

which is a great, I think the 1930s movie starring Conrad Veit, which I got onto because Vite is an actor who appears in a number of Powell Pressburger, British movies of the era. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely. It portrays the character you described, but also with due credit to his savviness. Yeah. So, well, let's go one back from Richelieu then. So in Newmakers Modern Strategy, you tell the story of this period through the careers

and principal focuses of the three chief French strategists of the era, Suli, then Richelieu, and then Mazarin. Let's start with the first, and with Suli, and maybe start by telling us a bit about, you know, as it were, the France that he inherits. What is it like to be a French statesman at this period in history? What are the principal challenges? Sure.

So I think all three of the characters have lead remarkable existences. They're all larger than life personalities. They couldn't be more different in temperament. with their own strengths and weaknesses, very different personal backgrounds. I would say if you had to choose to be in a foxhole with someone, you would perhaps choose to be with Suli. If you wanted someone to sort of map out your career and future plans, you would perhaps go with Rishulieu, the master planner.

And the person who'd probably be the most fun to get a drink or dinner with would definitely be Mazarin, who was renowned for being a consummate charmer. He brought that Italian charm with him to France. Sully is an extremely well-known figure in France. There's a massive imposing statue of Suli outside the French Parliament. Perhaps if you've been on vacation in France, you may have driven along these elm-dline country roads, which are ubiquitous feature of the French countryside. A lot of those elms were originally planted by Suli as part of his massive program of national

industrialization and rearmament. and actually some of the elms that he planted still exist to this day. But Suli, to give a sort of brief overview of his background, he was born into a pretty august aristocratic family. He himself was a Protestant, a Huguenot, so a member of France's Calvinist minority during the wars of religion. And he actually, his defining early life experience that I briefly allude to in the chapter,

but which is recounted with gripping almost harrowing detail in his memoirs, was his survival of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in August of 1572. He was only 12 years old, and he was in Paris for the wedding of Henry of Navarre, who would later become Henry IV, the king of France, to the kings, to the French king's sister. And this in many ways was the original red wedding, if you will. It was designed to bring peace and concord to the kingdom of France after a long period of civil war, brutal wars of religion, a union in between a Protestant lord, Henry of Navarre,

and the Catholic princess Margaret of Belvoir, who was a sister of the king. Four days after the wedding, there is the infamous massacre. in and of itself, that is a absolutely riveting story, which would take an entire podcast to the rate. So I went to tell them to too much detail. But basically what happens is that what commences as a sort targeted assassination operation against leading Protestant nobles in Paris devolves into a general pogrom, basically, of all Huguenots living in Paris. Sully, at the time, he's 12 years old, he's just pledged allegiance to Henry Navaar. And he only manages,

to survive the massacre by taking refuge with a Catholic friend of his family who runs a local private Catholic school as this riveting description of him making his way through the streets of Paris, watching fellow Protestants get butchered by mobs, and getting stopped by the city guard who were also killing Protestants, and only managing to escape from their cutches by brandishing a Catholic prayer book and pretending to be Catholic. So I think that that was very much a formative experience in his life. It inculcated in him a passion for order, a distaste of religious fanaticism of any strife, a staunch form of patriotism because he viewed foreign involvement and particularly Spanish involvement in France's religious wars as having contributed

to the tragedy of St. Bartholomew. And he himself will say, for example, that he amid his memoirs that he was never tainted with that bitter zeal, which the difference of religion inspires. And what I think is remarkable about his career is that he remained a huguenot all of his life, despite coming under considerable pressure from both his future king and patron, Henry of Naval who becomes Henry VIII, who becomes Henry the fourth and converts to Catholicism. He at various junctures pressures Sully to convert, Suli refuses to convert, his own children become Catholic. His brothers were Catholic. They even fought on opposite sides during the religious wars. He chose to remain Protestant. And he also played an enormous role, and we can delve into

us a little bit more depth as basically the great centralizer of France under the reign of Henry the Four. During a period of tenuous peace, he occupied various ministerial roles, the superintendent of finance, was his most important role, that he was also the call Waiyid, France, which means that he was basically in chargeable infrastructure projects. He was also the Grandmaster of Artillery, and he brought his considerable military experience to bear. I mean, that role, standardizing and modernizing France's artillery, turning it into a veritable service arm with the French military.

He was also the master of fortification. So an individual with prodigious amounts of energy, not the easiest personality. We have a lot of testimony from his contemporaries and emissaries from other nations saying that they found him very, very hard to deal with. He was known for having a foul temper for being incredibly proud, but I'm indubitably one of the most consequential figures, I think, in Auxien regime history. So as he comes to power, what is the situation between France and Spain? What are Spanish strengths?

What are French weaknesses? Because the story you tell here, one is one of a reversal of situations from, you know, Spanish or Habsburg, if not primacy, then certainly superiority over France to something like the opposite 100 years later. So what's the situation and what are, and then second question, what are the initial focuses of Suli as he seeks to reverse the situation? Sure, sure. Well, I don't know if it might be helpful to sort of go back in time a little bit and talk a little bit more about the genesis. of Frankos-Benance rivalry. So I mentioned earlier that France and Spain have basically been at loggerheads since the beginning of the 16th century, really. And they had fought a series of wars, the Italian wars, the Renaissance for control of the Italian Peninsula. Those wars came to an end in 1559 with the Treaty of Cato Combroses, whereby France was basically ejected from most of its

territorial possessions. And it held on to a few garrisons, but it was, it basically signals France's defeat in the Italian Wars. And for a whole generation of marshaly-minded nobles, this was viewed as a terrible humiliation. And then when one adds this sort of Dolshloss feeling amongst the French aristocracy, a lot of whom did not accept the terms of the peace treaty initially, refused to evacuate, expressed their anger at the French king, and read the second at the time for having agreed to this. For example, we have some famous chronicles of the period by this man called Brantam,

who was a French noble who served in Italy. And upon the signing of the treaty, he wrote, in the space of an hour with a simple gesture at the quill, we were forced to surrender everything and to tarnish all our glorious past victories with a few drops of ink. So when one adds the humiliation of France defeat in the Italian wars, and then a long period of extended political instability

following the death of the French King Henry II in a freak jousting accident, which is something that's straight out of Game of Friends. He is basically celebrating the signing of this piece, jousting with the Scottish capital of his bodyguards. His advisors are asking him to stop jousting because it could be dangerous. He assists on continuing. the Scottish bodyguard accidentally shatters a lance on the king's helmet. The point, the sort of splinters of the lance, go through his visor, through one of his eyes,

into his brain. He ends up dying a horrible death. And then he is subsequently replaced by a series of weak kings, younger kings, his son. and France basically tumbles into a long period of civil and religious wars, political instability, civil or religious wars. And throughout most of this period, Spain is heavily involved and interfering in France's Byzantine court politics, supporting various factions throughout France, doing everything they can basically to weaken France's reemergence as a potential peer competitor.

For example, there was an advisor to Philip II of Spain, who at one point rather smugly says, the wars in France bring peace for Spain and peace in sprain brings wars for France. Now, when Suli comes into the picture, it's during the last decade or so of France's religious wars. He swears allegiance to Henry of Navarre. Henry of Navarre, after the St. Bartholomew's massacre, he's basically kept under house arrest for a few years. He manages to escape during the hunting expedition, and Suli, who's 16 at the time, rides across country to join his armies. He begins as a simple infantry soldier, but he displays a consummate military skill, reckless courage, encourages a whole series of war wounds during 14 years of campaigns, which will plague him until the end of his life.

And anyway, he rises up through the ranks, and he shows such a talent for legit. logistics, supply, organization. He has a mine like a steel trap, an inordinate love for quantitative data, organization, et cetera, whereas Henry of Navar is a consummate cavalry commander, Suli's real skills lie in siege, warfare, logistics, et cetera. So he takes on a greater and greater role within Henry IV's military campaigns. And then once Henry IV eventually becomes king, those talents are transferred to those the formidable organizational skills that Suli showcased during his military campaign

are then transferred to the civilian domain. For the first few years, he doesn't really occupy any high-level positions. He's basically his role is as an interfictional intermediary because of his trans-confessional background, because he himself as a Protestant, but he has all these family and friendly connections with Catholics. He's very useful as an envoy, as Henry IV is basically trying to. to bring France's fractured nobility back together. And then in 1596, Henry IV realizes that the situation

has seemed sufficiently stable for a Huguenor, Lord like Suli, to occupy a high-ranking position. So he begins to attend meetings of the high-level royal councils. And then from 1599 onwards, he occupies a flurry and ministerial roles and plays an increasingly important role in the formulation of French strategy, even though he isn't the chief minister. So, for example, Rishelieu and Mazare are clearly the chief ministers.

Henry IV, he preferred to have more of a sort of team of rivals approach. He had a triumvirate of three or four different ministers. But at the end of the day, Suli remains the most influential, if only because of this particular bomb that he has with Henry IV, from having been his youth foot companion, having fought alongside him, etc., that the other ministers do not have. So to go back to the situation between France and Spain during that time, well, from 1595 to 1598, there is a state of open war in between France and Spain.

But then there's a peace treaty that's signed in 1598. And thereafter there are 12 years from 1598 to 1610 when Henry IV, dies, as assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. During those 12 years, there is a state of very tenuous peace in between France and Spain. It could basically be described as a Cold War. In Suli's memoirs, he says that it's a peace clouded with disgust and embittered with reciprocal complaints. So you have a lot of espionage going on. You have the Spanish supporting, covertly supporting rebellious nobles within France.

Henry IV secretly meeting with Marisco insurgents within Spain. Marisco is the forcibly converted Muslims of Spain, pledging his support to any future. He's also signing secret deals with the Ottoman Empire, the Sucleine poor, to undermine Spain, etc, et cetera. There are trade wars going on with competitive cycles of tariffs, et cetera. There's a very high-profile case of espionage in France when one of Suli's main colleagues, Ministers Clark, has discovered funneling cipher codes to Spanish. So, yeah, it's a fascinating period.

And I think that one that a lot of your listeners would find eerily resonant, in many ways with other situations of sort of uneasy peace, the great powers of knowing throughout history, wherever, the Cold War in between the United States and the Soviet Union or even now, perhaps, in between the U.S. and China. Is it fair to characterize Suli's contribution to this sort of three-stage story that you're walking us through as follows, that if the ultimate goal is to gain the upper hand with regard to the Habsburgs in Spain, then first we have to get our hapsburgs in Spain. then first we have to get our house in order,

that some level of internal, internal cohesion has to be achieved. Is that fair as a sort of summation or headline? Would that be how you would lead the obituary, strategically speaking? Yes, I think that that's a very good summation. Yes, I'd say that Sully can be perceived as the great centralizer of France.

He put the kingdom's finances in order. He managed, which was viewed as a miracle at the time, to not only get rid of the deficit, but even maintain a slight budgetary surplus, a contingency fund for future military operations. He re-fortified the realm, re-armed the realm, engaged in these massive infrastructure projects that I alluded to earlier, whether it was in the construction of canals, bridges, roads, always with the idea that he needed to strengthen France for a, for a future confrontation with the Habsburg in mind. I mean, to re-knit this. and use of French power for a much larger continent-wide struggle.

And even though the struggle with Spain obviously goes on, he has a vision. I was struck, and I confess I've not read this book, and I was fascinated by your brief account of it in your chapter. But in his book, he has a sort of a vision of European order. And I guess the book's called The Grand Design. Is that right? Tell us a bit about that, or correct me if I've gotten the details wrong here. And what is his long-term vision?

Sure. So he used to actually be very well known amongst 19th century students of geopolitics and European statecraft because he wrote this fabulous multi-volume memoirs, which were widely read. And there is indeed a section of these memoirs, which he calls the grand design, which since has been known as the grand design, where he sort of goes into his, he lays out his vision for the future of European order. Now, what's What's rather interesting about Suis memoirs is that so he actually was forced into retirement in 1611. And the end of his life is actually rather sad, because he spends 30 years in forced retirement. He ends up outliving most of his contemporaries and thus potential critics. And there are times when there are rumors that he may be able to go back into power.

He tries sort of getting his foot on the door, each time the door is closed. and he ends up having to, you know, go back to his drafty castles along the Loire and live this life of forced retirement. And during that time, he writes as memoirs. And he even has them printed in his own castle in a printing press because he knows that some people may disagree with some of the observations contained they're in. But at the end of the day, he doesn't really need to worry too much about it as he outlives everyone.

He dies at the age of 82. Of course, the fact that he outlived most of his contemporaries means that it's harder for for historians to fact-check some of his observations. And so, for example, the grand design, he claims that this was some grand scheme that Henry IV and he had in mind when he was in power to completely re-engineer the geopolitics of the European continent

for the collective good. Now most historians think that this is basically something that Sully projected onto Henry IV may have even somewhat invented at a time when he was trying to highlight his hawkish credentials during we should use ministerial tenure. But notwithstanding the debates over the accuracy or not of whether Henry IV was laboring under this brand design, it's still an enormously important text that inspired people like Russo, Kant, etc. And what it basically says is that France's military might will re-engineer

European geopolitics for the collective good, basically by severing Spain, from its imperial possessions. He says, for example, that the House of Austria, the House of Hampstburg, would be divested of the empire and of all the possessions in Germany, Italy, and the lower countries. In one word, it would be reduced to the sole kingdom of Spain, bounded by the ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Pyrenean mountains. Europe would be reorganized around 15 political entities, so six hereditary kingdoms, which would be France, England, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Lombardy, which Suli suggests would be formed by a fusion of Savoy and the Milanese, five elective states or monarchies, so the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Hungary,

and then four republics. So Venice, of course, Switzerland, Belgium, and a new Italian republic. And the idea would be that it would sort of be a little bit like there are elements that are not, you know, that are somewhat reminiscent of NATO or the United Nations. So the idea would be that there would be a general counsel with delegates, there were delegates from these various entities, who would be charged with mediating disputes among them, and then also levying funds for a joint crusade against the Turks, which was always the sort of pan-European dream of the period, a way to bring Europeans together, basically channeling all the aggression towards the infidel. And so you mentioned separating Spain from its imperial possessions.

And so that points to what I take to be another through line of this, and we can sort of start to move here from Suli onto Rishalu. But the importance of naval power, which I gather was not something France was tremendously successful about up until this period, but is a project begun by Suli and then continues? Yes. Yes. So both Suli and Rishal were very intent on building up France's naval capacity. So primarily to be able to contest Spanish naval market. in the Mediterranean, but also to disrupt its lines of communication, its sea lines of communication, imperil its trade. Suli also suggests at one point in its memoirs that it was necessary for France

to build up its navy to be able to, if need be what he calls Spain's economic heart and entrails, which were its transatlantic imperial possessions, its colonies, etc. to disrupt its silver bullion shipments. There are some quite interesting differences of opinion in between Richelieu and Sully when it comes to France's own imperial expansion, though. Suli didn't really believe that it was worth the cost or the effort to try and expand into Canada. So at one point he says that when it comes to France as costly,

berets into Canada's frigid expanses, there are no kind of riches to be expected from all those countries of the new world which lie beyond the forefront. 40th degree of latitude. He was much more focused on building up France's industrial and agricultural self-sufficiency, and he viewed it as a bit of a fool's errand. I'm engaging in these very costly expeditions to the new world. Richelieu was somewhat more congenial to France's imperial expansion, even though he also was very much focused on the European theater. When it comes to whether they were actually successful, there's a very good book written by a historian called Alan James, who I believe is at King's College on Richelieu's naval development programs.

And he points out that even though it wasn't an unvarnished success, an untrammeled success, there was always a huge amount of competition in terms of funding and priorities, obviously, to resource the continental pharaohs or operations. Nevertheless, by the end of Richelieu's tenure, he had managed to build up a navy, which overshadowed that of England at the time and which rivaled Spain's and the Mediterranean. So if a naval program is one line of continuity, let's take another aspect of sort of national cohesion, the attitude towards the Huguenots and to religious stability. Is there more continuity there between Suli and Richelieu, or is there, are there important

differences? Yes. So two broad constituencies had emerged within France's national security elites during the wars of religion. The Bour-Franc or Politique on the one side, who argued in favor of religious toleration, national unity, and a vigorous policy of containment towards the Hampstburgs. And then on the other side, the Devo, who were more intransigent and intolerant, one could add, when it came to the defense of Catholicism and to the suppression of heresy at home, what they perceived as being heresy at home, and to sometimes even argued in favor of accommodation or alignment with Habsburgs in the name of, in the name of shared confessional beliefs.

Suleu, of course, was the Mahugano. Rishulieu is, I was more fascinating in this regard, and one of the reasons why he's intrigued generations of historians is precisely the fact that he was a devout man of the church, but yet highly willing to subsidize and sponsor Protestant foes of the Habsberg to advance France's interests. And he actually, this was impart a product of his family background. So his father had displayed a trans-confessional form of loyalty by agreeing to serve under Henry IV even prior to his conversion to Catholicism.

And then also he started off his early career as a young bishop in the war-torn province of Rousseau, in the Poitou region, which was a very confessionally mixed province. And some of his first sermons and texts, he argued that Chubiano and Catholic neighbors should be united in affection and loyalty to their king. And so there was an element of religious toleration fretted throughout his thinking. This did not mean that he didn't think that prostans were, you know, misguided and erroneous in their beliefs. He wrote theological treatises on the power of conversion strategies to deploy in converting Huguenots, but he believed first and foremost that they should be converted by the power of reason,

rather than by the power of arms. Where his attitude would shift, however, is when he deemed Huguenots to be posing a political threat to French royal authority. So, for example, the first years of his tenure, he was very much occupied in the repression of a mass huguenot. insurrection, which centered on the siege of La Rochelle, which was a Huguenot bastion. But the main reason behind his repression of that insurrection was not so much the fact that they labored under divergent beliefs, but the fact that they were challenging royal authority.

And as he said, they were seeming to form a state within the state that needed to be eradicated. I almost hesitate to ask this question because a theme of this episode seems to be that each question we discussed could be its own episode, indeed, its own series. And I admire the sort of fluent way in which you can navigate through all these things and identify how they relate to one another so quickly. But we should talk about the 30 years war, I think, as we talk about Richelieu. Give us a sense of the challenge. First of all, tell us what it was, briefly. Briefly, as you can't. And what is the challenge and what is the opportunity presented to France by this adjacent conflagration? Sure. Well,

Well, the 30 years war, which traditionally has been defined as commencing in 1618 and ending with the treaties of Westphalia in 1648, as a series of Europe-wide confessional wars, largely confessional wars, in between Protestant Catholic powers, the epicenter of which was in the Holy Roman Empire. France only really actively, so France, France is obviously very heavily involved throughout the 30 years war, but only actually actively enters the conflict by formally declaring war on Spain in 1635. Prior to that, France is pursuing what Sully called La Guerre-Ren-Rour-the-Foxes-Rour and what Richelieu called La Gerv Courte Covert War, basically sponsoring. and subsidizing not only Protestant, but also sometimes Catholic rivals of the Habsburg. The overarching goal remains to weaken the Habsburgs. That said, the religious fervor that suffuses the international context of the time, the 30 years war, of course, permeates French societies. So there are a lot of concerns that what is happening outside France, that degree of religious

hatred and polarization may come once again to re-infect the French body. politic and cause it to slide back into an unending cycle of brutal religious wars. But of course, France had already gone through many, many decades of religious wars. So, yes, those types of conflicts were already part of the French experience. Another thing I think that's important to add and that somewhat distinguishes Rishulio's tenure from that of Suli or even some of his successors, is that. is that the period under which both Richelieu and Mazuron were operating was at the height of the counter-Reformation.

So it was a period of reinvigorated Catholicism throughout Europe, but especially in France. And that made it all the more challenging for both Richelieu and Mazarin to sell their foreign policy agenda to the French public and to French devos in particular because there was this upsurge and religious vibrancy. and in French Catholicism in particular, which meant that Richelieu,

in order to advance and defend his policies, which were fiercely contested, throughout the entirety of his tenure, and particularly the first six years of his ministeriate, he had to surround himself with what some historians have described as a politico-literary strike force of political theorists and propagandists who basically published these series of pamphlets

defending the, the, the moral virtues behind we should use foreign policy as well as the realpolitik aspects to it. And so whether it's Italy or it's now, you know, effectively Germany, it's the fates of these weak, I almost hesitate to say states because I'm not sure the word is quite right, but these are these weak zones of Europe are sort of the battlegrounds or among the important battlegrounds that Franco-Spanish rivalry is playing out. What is the resolution that that France is seeking here. The whole situation is so complex. Are there sort of principles you can point to? What is good for France and bad for Spain say in the outcome of disorder in the Holy Roman Empire?

Sure. Well, I think how small to medium-sized states position themselves under the sort of overarching framework of this rivalry is absolutely fascinating. There's this great treatise that was written by by the Duke of Rohan, who was a great Protestant lord and commander. During the period in question, he was actually Suli's son-in-law, and he wrote this treatise entitled of the interest of princes and states of Christendom. And he describes how Frankard Spanish rivalry had really become the structuring force across Christendom, with both states, I quote, forming the two poles from which stem the pressures for war and peace upon other states.

with France seeking to play the counterpoise to Spanish ambitions and the princes of Europe, he writes attaching themselves to one or the other according to their interests. Some of these states negotiated this uncomfortable bipolarity very savoy, for example, which was positioned in between France and Spanish possessions in Italy. Its series of rulers were known for being particularly adept at leveraging Franco-Spanish rival will reach their benefit. Some of the most interesting net assessments in a way we have of both France and Spain at the period come from the Venetians who are also very savvy diplomats and very good at sort of assessing the shifting balance of power throughout Europe. When it came to that actual

overarching aims or how they frame them to have a European states, during the period in question, France is continuously trying to position itself as the valiant guarantor of smaller states' interests, as the defender of individual state freedoms against what it refers to as the Habsburg dynasty's desire for universal monarchy. And of course, as I describe in the chapter as the balance of power begins to shift, and France's diplomatic and military successes begin to rack up, then you begin to see elements of hubris, unfortunately, creep into France's grand strategy under Mazarin,

and then, of course, under Louis XIV, as we know, France is now the reviled hegemon of Europe, and in a lot of texts in the period, we have critiques of France's desire of universal monarchy, rather than Spain's desire for universal monarchy. Yeah, a focus on the liberty of small states tends to be the tactic adopted by those seeking to build coalitions against hegemon's or prospective hegemen's. I guess this remains a focus of the British, you know, through to much more recent days and in some ways of the United States today. And so are the Spanish then in response, are they as are they similarly pragmatic as the French with regard to, you know, confessional affiliation?

or are they somewhat more ideological in that regard? How do they conceive of a beneficial outcome in these conflicts? So without wanting to engage in gross simplification, I'd argue that the Spanish are more ideological in their sort of touted defense of Catholicism, in large part because of the confessional makeup of Spain. Spain was not a confessionally mixed country to the degree that France was in.

Protestant ideas never really managed to gain root in Spain, unlike in France. At the same time, though, there were moments when the Spanish supported Huguenot insurrections in France. So, for example, during the first few years of Richelieu's tenure, Spain actively considers lending support to the Huguenot insurrection in France. The major difference, though, I think, is that they don't frame this as being. part of state policy. It's not conducted in a systematic fashion. If it is done, it's done covertly, somewhat shamefully, it's not outwardly defended in the way that it is under Rishulu

and Mazera, in government-sponsored propaganda and pamphlets. And it's certainly not conducted on the same scale and in such a systematic fashion, and with the huge levels of subsidies that the francs pour into, you know, the coffers of the United Provinces in Sweden, for example, when I was against both the Holy Roman Empire and against Spain. So I just, and forgive the way I'm going to frame this question, but I will defend myself by saying as hosting a podcast, gross oversimplification is what I do. It's my stock and trade, at least with this hat on. So is it, would it would have, I'm just trying to, there's so much complexity of this.

I'm just trying to understand it in a straightforward way. Is the following statement somewhat fair or if it falls short, please tell me where it does, that Spain on some level sees itself as, you know, the defender of the faith, the defender of the church. It turns out the defense of the faith, the defense of the church just happens to be more or less coterminous with Spanish power. What's good for the one is good for the other. And therefore, France, from their perspective, is a sort of troublemaking, amoral, immoral, power, seeking to elevate itself by making trouble for the faith and also for Spain.

Is that somewhere around the target? Sure, yeah. I think that that's just a very good summation. In both cases, material and ideological interests were profoundly intertwined. There were evidently inner contradictions, but I think that a lot of the statesmen of the period genuinely believed in the moral aspect of what they were trying to accomplish. Of course, what's interesting is that from both perspectives, they were the status quo power dealing with a revisionist spoiler. So, of course, for the Spaniards, as you were saying, France was this ruthlessly immoral disruptor of Catholic Christendom. For the French, on the other hand, accustomed throughout the centuries to being the natural

ruling hegeman of Europe, whoever was because of the size of France, its larger demography, its agricultural wealth, etc. The meteoric ascent of the Hampstburg dynasty, which they viewed as being fueled by its an unsatiable quest for riches and its desire for universal monarchy. Well, that was the historical aberration and source of instability. And that was one that required urgent and perhaps even forcible correction, which is what Suli lays out in its grand design. I mean, we need to, like, bound these guys back to their natural limits.

And so the challenge for them was twofold. So first, Paris needed to displace Madrid as Europe's lead power and as its prime mover, and then if possible, it needed to isolate or sever the Spanish Hemsbergs from the Austrian dynastic branch. And second, the Bevan monarchy needed to somehow persuade lesser European powers to buy into its vision for regional security by proving that it could play as stabilizing an arbitral role as a benevolent lead power, more open to confessional mixity throughout Europe. And so that was the idea that Paris would be simultaneously and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively both one of the scales in the balance and the holder of the said balance.

And somewhat inevitably, you see this new desire for equilibrium, enter into tension with the more sort of ancient quest for primacy and hegemony. And I argue that eventually it will come to collapse under the weight of these inner contradictions. Well, let's talk about that. and come to the third and final phase here, which is Mazarin and Louis the 14th, early stages of Louis the 14th strain. So we'll talk about exactly that. Mazarin, who seems to me of the, feel free, of course, to push back on this, but it seems to me of the three strategists, the figure of whom you were most critical. He both is the perpetrator of the grand finale, of a successful finale, of this century-long rise of France to a kind of primacy. but then, as you say, soes the seeds along with his boss of its downfall.

So how do these two things happen together? Sure. So I do think that he was prodigiously talented. He was a master negotiator, fierce intellect, who has famously described as Richelieu, as having a mind sufficient to govern four empires. Remarkable life story as well. He was born in Italy.

He spent his youth serving leading Italian noble families, the colonos and the barboreenies, and he initially came to Richelieu's attention when he was serving as a negotiator, a diplomat for the papacy. And he impressed Richelieu during their bilateral negotiations during the Manchin War with his charm, his sparkling verve, his quickness. And thereafter, Rishelieu began to sort of sly lure him into France's orbit, pressing for him to be named as the Papal Nuncier, papal ambassador, basically, to Paris, and then eventually giving him letters of naturalization. And then he went from Giulio Masorini to Jul Mazarin. His name was galicized. And, yeah, so in the end, in 1643, following Louis de 13th's death, he becomes the lead advisor, chief minister,

basically to Anne of Austria, Louis de 13th's widow and the regent of France. Louis 14th was only horrified at the time. So he takes on this lead role that most people were not expecting. He had been carefully and quietly cultivating the Queen Mother for some time. Most people were expecting that it would be one of the French ministers who would take that role. So it was quite a surprise. And I think from the get-go in his defense, he was handicapped by the fact that he was

something of an outsider. So first of all, there was a very long tradition of anti-Italian xenophobia in France. France. Italians were associated with a certain kind of meriginal decadence with Machiavellianism. There had been, you know, the Catherine de Medici, Married a Medici. She were both unpopular regions within France. There had been a previous Italian chief minister, Conchino Conchini, who was assassinated during Louis XVI reign, who was deeply unpopular. So there was this element of stigma, which came with the fact that he was not French. And then there was just the fact that because he was a relative outsider, despite his prodigious intellect, the fact that he spoke

several languages, Spanish, Italian, French, he had perhaps a lesser degree of granular understanding of the functioning of its arcane institutions, power networks, etc. He was also far more interested in foreign policy than in domestic policy. So he had a tendency to delegate. He had a tendency to delegate a lot of the management of domestic affairs to other people because either he wasn't interested by it or he didn't necessarily fully understand it. He was also more corrupt than both Richelieu and Suli. He amassed an enormous amount of wealth. No minister ever amassed the same degrees of wealth that Mazarin did under the ancient regime. But he also did it for self-preservation and for paying off various people and for having his own emergency fund to fund military,

diplomatic operations, for example. So, yes, I think Bifam was to sort of engage in a rapid-fire evaluation of Mazarin, I would say, highly capable negotiator, prodigious intellect, but perhaps insufficient understanding of the necessary of the necessity of reconciling internal and external balancing, the complexity of French domestic politics, and an appetite for venality or corruption that was perhaps excessive even by the standards of the time. When it comes to the actual implementation of his foreign policy as I agree in his chapter, the first few years are clearly crowned with a fair amount of success, but then I think that there are elements of hubris that begin to slip in,

and if you want, we can talk a little bit about that. Yeah, well, just briefly, and I want to be respectfully your time here, and I also want to get to contemporary relevance, but, you know, this period concludes with Westphalia, which, you know, somebody who has thought a bit about the sort of classic Kisingerian view of it as the foundation of, you know, the modern state system and concepts of sovereignty. It's fascinating to hear it arrived at through this context as something that is sort of in the interest of the counter-hegemonic power, you know, which is probably not that unusual way of looking at it, but it's fresh, at least to me. So we sort of, we win. We being France. France achieves its

goals over the course of these three careers and multiple sovereigns. But then just at that moment of success, there begins to be the movement towards sort of the 18th century France that I'm personally more familiar with probably because of my, I know a little bit more about British history than I know about French and Spanish history. And so when you grow up with some knowledge of a hegemonic France that has to be contained, how does that actually come to pass? Sure. So the real challenge for both France and Spain during this period is that security managers on both sides of the equation are acutely aware of the fact that their respective powers simply do not have the finances, the internal solidity, societal resilience to weather the kind of protracted

war that they're engaged in. So they're basically both in a waiting game, hoping that the other party will eventually collapse under the weight of these internal pressures. For a while, it very much seems that France has the upper hand. But I'd argue Mazarin makes several errors of judgment, and the most grievous of which is that he approaches the Spanish with an offer of a secret trade. So he offers to trade French occupied territories in Catalonia with the Spanish Netherlands. But he does this without alerting France's Dutch allies to the fact that he is proposing this deal. He argues at the time against his advisors who are at Monsieur Noz de Blas, Westphalia, that this would be a masterstroke. It would basically end centuries of French vulnerability to attacks.

three to low countries along its northwestern frontier. He writes the acquisition of the Spanish Netherlands would give the city of Paris an impregnable rampart, and it could then truly be called the heart of France. So much blood and money would be well spent if provinces were annexed to the Crown of France, which in the past have provided the means to individual rulers not only to resist France, but the trouble her to the extent. No. The Spanish rather cleverly reveal this to the Dutch, who are absolutely incensed, of course, durably alienates them, and they end up concluding a separate peace deal

with the Spanish at the beginning of 1648, that allows the Spanish to redirect their forces along that front towards operations of France. Meanwhile, tensions are mounting within France. The satisfaction is mounting both towards Mazarin personally and then towards the growing fiscal pressures that are being put on France to sustain this, this multi-front war. And one Paris-based Spanish agent writing of the time writes,

the French are running out of funds and all of them are beginning to unite against the Cardinal. If any, we can continue to fight for another two years, we shall witness a general revolution against this great red devil. And that's basically what happens in 1648, with the series of civil wars known as Lafron, which start off as relatively broad-based movement of Parisian revolt of protests against, Mazarin after his arrest of two members of the French parliament, but that soon turn into something else and basically morph into a series of baronial wars, leading nobles. Of course, this greatly weakens France's military position, its negotiating position at Westphalia. Mazarin is forced to flee into exile twice before eventually coming back in 1652, and by 1652, many of France,

most strategically positioned frontier forts have been recaptured by the Spanish. One of France's best generals, the Prince of Condé, has actually defected and is leading Spain's armies to great effect. So it really set France back. And a lot of people blame Mazur around the time, saying, well, you know, if you had shown less hubris, if you had negotiated a peace deal earlier, we wouldn't have been at war with Spain for another 11 years following the peace of West Bay. There's so much more here we could discuss, but I thought we would conclude, if you wouldn't mind, you used the phrase earlier, so I'll revive it here. In rapid fire fashion, what are the lessons of the history we have just gone through for, say, an American policymaker

today? Sure. I think obviously as we enter an era characterized by the revival of extended great power competition, industrial scale warfare, And on a bash mercantilistic approaches, really, it's worth looking back at other periods marked by protracted multi-generational warfare. And this, as I mentioned, the outset of our talk, I think, is one of the richest and most interesting periods to explore. Issues such as food security, industrial resiliency, trade tariffs and trade wars, proxy wars, foreign political interference espionage, what have you,

vigorous internal debates over grand strategy, force adjudication in between different theaters and stuff. The 150-year-old Franco-Spanish rivalry has all of that, and in spades. And plus I just add, I mean, on a somewhat more frivolous note, perhaps, the memoranda we have from the various protagonists of this conflict, that diplomatic correspondence, the dispatchers from various ambassadors, they're also just a lot of fun to read. They're often beautifully written in a style that, unfortunately,

we no longer necessarily write in. They're unearly uncannily resonant, I think, when you read them, when it comes to laying out the various issues that these people are grappling with, unerringly human. So it's also just a lot of fun to read and study. And finally, I think that this is a period which is particularly intellectually rewarding to explore, if only because I think it points to the complexity of human decision-making and the manner in which states and statesmen continuously grapple with how to balance their ideological or moral preferences, along with their more naked geopolitical interests.

This is something we touched on a little bit earlier during our discussion. It is possible to hold two competing ideas and tension at the same time. It is possible to be very much wedded to the advancement of your country's geopolitical interests and at the same time be confronted with a whole set of ideological and moral quandaries. And I think one of the issues I had going into this is that I was a little bit frustrated by some of the conventional wisdom in some quarters, especially in or in some disciplines like political science, the notion of the Congress of Westphalia, people like Richelieu and his contemporaries mark the clear triumph of geopolitics over moral or confessional interests and the advent of a new, more secularized and cruelly rationalized form of foreign policy.

I think that's like a neat narrative, but it's also the main. It also doesn't do justice to the beautiful complexity and messiness, both of that era and of states' motivations in general. I think, you know, if you want to understand why, for example, a country such as Iran would sponsor and support a Sunni extremist outset like al-Qaeda in their quest for regional supremacy or in their war against the United States and the kind of competing moral and geopolitical quandaries, various states may consistently in the United States may consistently in entertain in the formation of their foreign policy. Looking back to this period, I think,

really helps us acquire types of more nuanced and fine-grained understanding of timeless human motivations in Stedcroft. I don't know if that's a good summation, but... It's a fantastic place to end for now, at least. Scanda Rahman, Axon Johnson, fellow at Johns Hopkins Seiss, contributor to New Makers of Modern Strategy, author of any number of excellent pieces on this period, on Roman strategy and grand strategic thought. I look forward to your book on this subject and on many other books I hope to come teaching us to understand ourselves better by understanding others. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks very much for having me. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.