[p. 549]
|549| monarchy, the principle of Germany the formation of a multitude of states of their own. Both still had to struggle with their opposite [principle]; Richelieu succeeded in bringing both countries to their firm, mutually opposed system.
The two principles which prevented France from becoming one state in the form of a monarchy were the Great and the Huguenots; both waged wars with the kings.
The Great, among whom the members of the royal family also [counted], intrigued with armies against the minister. Sovereignty, to be sure, had long been sacred to the monarch and raised above all claims, and the Great did not lead armies into the field to maintain a sovereignty for themselves, but to be, as ministers, governors of provinces, etc., the first subjects of the monarchs. Richelieu’s merit of having subjected the Great to public power in its first emanations, the ministry, has, regarded superficially, the appearance of ambition. Those who were his enemies seem to have fallen as sacrifices to his ambition; they protested, and quite probably with the greatest truth, in their revolts and conspiracies their innocence and devotion to duty towards their sovereign, and regarded resistance by arms against the person of the minister neither as a civil crime nor as a crime against the state. They succumbed, however, not to the person of Richelieu but to his genius, which bound his person to the necessary principle of the unity of the state and made offices of state dependent on the state. And in this consists political genius, when the individual identifies himself with a principle; in this connection it must necessarily carry off the victory. As the merit of a minister, what Richelieu did, namely to have given unity to the executive state power, is infinitely superior to the merit of having enlarged a country by a province or otherwise torn it out of distress.
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