"Supported by the king, Richelieu had exercised a veritable dictatorship which the French people had submitted to with impatience, but without which the national work would have been impossible. The nobles were not the only ones who protested. More than once the peasants rose up because of the taxes, the bourgeois because the interest was not paid. The greatness of the result to be attained—France entrenched on the Rhine, the conquest of the "natural frontiers," the end of the German danger, the humbling of the Hapsburgs—were ideas fitted to exalt the minds of those shaping French policy. But how could the masses be expected to renounce their comforts cheerfully for such far-off ends which were beyond their powers of comprehension? Later the policy of Richelieu became a tradition, a national dogma, respected even by the revolutionists. But during his lifetime his contemporaries were far from feeling that no sacrifice was too great if it meant the defeat of the house of Austria. In truth the death of the great Cardinal was felt rather as a relief."