SULLY, Maximilian de Béthune, Duke of (1560- 1641), French statesman, was born at the château of Rosny near Mantes on 13th December 1560. He derived his early appellation and the title of baron from the place of his birth, and was known as Rosny during the greater part of his life. Some one of his numerous enemies pretended that he did not really belong to the illustrious family represented four centuries earlier by the trouvère and warrior Quenes de Béthune, but that his race was derived from Scottish Bethunes of no mark. There is, however, no reason for giving any credit to this story. Sully was a second son; his elder brother died when but just of age, and even before this his father (if his own account may be trusted) treated Maximilian (so he himself spelt his name, and not Maximilien) as an eldest son. He was only eleven years old when his father, who was a Protestant, was presented to Henry of Navarre, and from that time he was more or less inseparably attached to the future king of France. He had a narrow escape on St Bartholomew’s Day, but he did escape, and when little more than sixteen began to take an active part in the Civil Wars. He distinguished himself not a little, especially in the character of engineer. In 1583 he married Anne de Courtenay, who, however, died in 1589, and in the intervals of war he lived the life of a country gentleman at Rosny. At the battle of Ivry, 1590, he had the good luck, though seriously wounded, to capture Mayenne’s standard. As soon as Henry’s power was established, Sully, who, though by no means always a complaisant or obliging servant, had been uniformly faithful, received his reward in the shape of numerous places, estates, and dignities. In 1601 he was made grand-master of the ordnance and in 1606 duke of ...Sully. He was also practically the king’s minister of finance during the greater part of his reign. After the assassination of his master he makes no further figure in history, though he survived for many years, saw the rise of a far greater minister than himself, and did not die till (less than a year before Richelieu himself died) the 22d of December 1641, at Villebon near Chartres.
He had married a second time, and anecdote is not complimentary to his second wife, while his daughter, who married the great duke of Rohan, also had a not unblemished reputation. Sully, however, who, though deprived of (and indeed resigning) all control of public affairs after Henry’s death, retained great wealth, lived in what was almost a caricature of the stately fashions of the time, aud busied himself in the composition of memoirs which are among the most curious in form, and not the least interesting in contents, of the kind. He instructed his secretaries to draw the book up in the form of an elaborate address to himself: “you then did this”; “you said as follows”; “as you have been good enough to inform us, the affair went on this wise”; and so forth. And he not only had the book executed in this extraordinary fashion but had it read out to him. Its title is as odd as other things about it and runs thus: Mémoires des Sages et Royales (Economies d'Estat, domestiques, politiques, militaires de Henry le Grand, l’Exemplaire des Roys, le Prince des Vertus, des Armes, et des Loix, et le Pere en effet de ses Peuples François. Et des servitudes utiles, obéissances convenables, et administrations loyales de Maximilian de Béthune, l’un des plus confidans, familiers, et utiles soldats et serviteurs du grand Mars des François. Dedieés à la France, à tous les bons soldats, et tous peuples François. Two folio volumes were splendidly printed, nominally at Amsterdam, but really under Sully’s own eye at his château, in 1634; the other two did not appear till twenty years after his death. As his wealth, his im- perious and grumbling temper, the favour which he had enjoyed and his subsequent loss of it, joined to attract odium, his character and his book were rather roughly handled in his lifetime. Marbault secretary to Du Plessis-Mornay, Sully’s chief rival, wrote a very caustic criticism of the Memoirs, from which, though it remained in MS. till the 19th century, Tallemant des Réaux, the insatiable scandal-monger, compiled a not unamusing but distinctly calumnious article on Sully. Most of the stories it contains may be unhesitatingly disbelieved. At the same time Sully was by no means the ideally wise and good minister that he has not unfrequently been represented as being. He was as faithful as a dog, and as surly. He grasped wealth and place to an extent not quite compatible with the idea of pure devotion to his king or his country, and his jealousy of all other ministers and all other favourites was extravagant and unceasing. Still there is no doubt that he was an excellent man of business, that, if not exactly what would be now called an incorruptible minister, he made no gains not sanctioned by the customs of the time, that he was inexorable in interfering with peculation and malversation on the part of others, that he opposed the ruinous personal expenditure which was the bane of almost all European monarchies in his day, and that he did much both as a man of war and as a man of peace to make France strong, united, and happy. His literary power, moreover, was far from small. Although the fantastic form of his Memoirs, after being diverting for a time, grows not a little wearisome, they have phrases and passages of great vivacity, which it is reasonable to attribute to Sully himself rather than to his spokesmen, and they show much grasp of administrative business.
The arrangement of the Memoirs so shocked the 18th century that in 1745 the abbé de l’Écluse re-edited or rather rewrote them in the ordinary form of narrative. This text has of course no interest; the proper version with the commentary of Marbault may be found in the collection of Michaud and Poujoulat (vols. xvi. and xvii.).
