20 September 1628

September 20, 1628, marks a pivotal moment in the political and romantic intrigues of the Siege of La Rochelle. On this date, Cardinal Richelieu, having received a coded letter from his agent Milady announcing her success in obtaining the queen's diamond studs from the Duke of Buckingham, calculates the logistics of her return and proposes to King Louis XIII that a ball be held on October 3, a seemingly festive event that is in fact a carefully laid trap for Queen Anne of Austria.

The Cardinal's Calculation

On the eighth day after the scene in which the king confronted the queen about her letter to the King of Spain, the cardinal received a letter with a London stamp containing only the lines: "I have them; but I am unable to leave London for want of money. Send me five hundred pistoles, and four or five days after I have received them I shall be in Paris." On the same day, King Louis XIII put his customary question to the cardinal about when the proposed ball should take place. Richelieu counted on his fingers and calculated: "She will arrive, she says, four or five days after having received the money. It will require four or five days for the transmission of the money, four or five days for her to return; that makes ten days. Now, allowing for contrary winds, accidents, and a woman's weakness, there are twelve days."

The Proposal to the King

When the king asked if the cardinal had made his calculations, Richelieu replied: "Yes, sire. Today is the twentieth of September. The aldermen of the city give a fete on the third of October. That will fall in wonderfully well; you will not appear to have gone out of your way to please the queen." The cardinal then added a crucial instruction: "A propos, sire, do not forget to tell her Majesty the evening before the fete that you should like to see how her diamond studs become her." This seemingly casual remark was the key to the cardinal's scheme: by forcing the queen to wear the studs, he would expose her gift of them to Buckingham and thus destroy her.

The Broader Context

The date of September 20, 1628, falls within the prolonged Siege of La Rochelle, a major military and political undertaking by Cardinal Richelieu to crush the Huguenot rebellion and eliminate the last stronghold of Protestant resistance in France. The siege had begun in September 1627 and would continue until October 1628. The cardinal's machinations regarding the diamond studs were intertwined with the larger conflict, as the Duke of Buckingham, the queen's lover, was leading English forces in support of the Rochellais. The ball at the Hotel de Ville was thus not merely a social event but a battlefield in the secret war between the cardinal and the queen, with the fate of the kingdom hanging in the balance.

The Significance of the Date

September 20, 1628, is the moment when the cardinal's plot reaches its final stage. His calculation of Milady's return and his proposal to the king set in motion the events that will culminate in the ball on October 3, where the queen's possession or lack of the diamond studs will determine her fate. The date also highlights the cardinal's meticulous planning and his ability to manipulate time and events to his advantage, using the calendar as a weapon in his campaign against the queen and her allies.