Cardinal Richelieu Click to enlarge

• Born: 9 September 1585
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: 4 December 1642
• Best Known As: The power behind the throne of Louis XIII

Name at birth: Armand-Jean du Plessis

A bright child, Armand-Jean du Plessis studied theology as a teen and at the young age of 21 was appointed Bishop of Lucon. In 1622 he was made a cardinal and from there rose to become head of the Royal Council and prime minister of France. King Louis XIII was a weak ruler and Richelieu filled the void, more or less running the empire via his advice to the king. A clever politician and strategist, Richelieu expanded royal power, punished dissent harshly, and built France into a great European power. At the same time he supported the arts and learning and founded the famous French Academy. Novelist Alexandre Dumas made Richelieu a crafty villain in his 1844 book The Three Musketeers, and Richelieu's name has since become synonymous with political intrigue and ambitious power "behind the throne."

Richelieu is also called the Red Eminence, or in French L'Eminence Rouge.

Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de (1585-1643), the greatest of a series of clerical first ministers who organized the war finances of the French kings. He dominated French foreign and military policy under Louis XIII from 1624 until his death, but his preference lay in diplomacy and intrigue rather than war. In his Political Testament he advocated negotiations ‘everywhere without cease, openly and secretly’. In 1624 he arranged the Treaty of Compiègne with the Dutch, and in 1625 he arranged the marriage of Charles I of England to the French Princess Henrietta Maria, who is said to have been influential in the king's alleged secret conversion to Roman Catholicism and much of his subsequent folly.

In Germany Richelieu fomented rivalry between the German princes and the emperor at the Diet of Ratisbon in 1630, and persuaded Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to intervene militarily after 1631 with a large subsidy. He also seriously undermined the position and credibility of Wallenstein and possibly helped arrange for his assassination. In the continuing saga of Franco-Habsburg rivalry it seemed that he had discovered the secret of success by using surrogates to fight the wars, while French military forces concentrated on internal security and were only committed abroad in peripheral theatres such as the Valtelline in northern Italy.

From 1635 events compelled him to get more directly involved in the Thirty Years War before adequate preparation had been made, following the defeat of the Swedes at Nördlingen the year before and the Peace of Prague between Saxony and the empire. France suffered some serious reverses when the Spanish invaded in 1636, but Richelieu put in hand the organization that eventually bore fruit in one of the turning points in military history, the victory of Rocroi which he did not live to see.

— Toby McLeod

The French statesman and cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu (1585-1642) devoted himself to securing French leadership in Europe and royal domination of the existing social order in France.

The policies and personal conduct of Richelieu were distinguished by self-restraint, flexibility in response to changing opportunities, and alertness to remote consequences. His long-range intentions could be achieved only at the expense of Spain abroad and of the King's family and the great noblemen at home.

In the early 17th century a precarious balance existed between reasons of state and religious sectarianism as principles for international action. A similar balance existed in France between the rights of the King and the particular rights of provinces, localities, classes, and persons. Each balance was tipped toward the first alternative during Richelieu's career. The alignments of European states shifted and their relative power changed. The French political system began to define anew the relation of each social group to the monarchy and thus to other social groups. These historical developments eventually went far beyond Richelieu's plans, but he played a significant part in them.

Armand du Plessis was born on Sept. 9, 1585, in Paris, fourth of the five children of François du Plessis, the lord of Richelieu, and Suzanne de La Porte. His father was provost of the King's central administrative establishment and grand provost of France under Henry III and conducted the investigation of the King's murderer in 1589; he remained in the same post serving Henry IV but in 1590 died of a fever. His mother, the self-effacing daughter of a learned, vain lawyer prominent in the Paris bourgeoisie, was placed in severe financial difficulties by early widowhood. She moved to the old stone manor house of Richelieu, a few miles east of Loudun in Poitou, to reside with her mother-in-law, a proud noblewoman originally of the Rochechouart family. About 4 years later, Armand returned to Paris to study grammar and philosophy at the College de Navarre, from which he went on to a military academy.

The Du Plessis family's plans appeared to be settled. The eldest son, Henri, was seeking to become established in the entourage of the new queen, Maria de' Medici. The second son, Alphonse, was destined to be bishop of Luçon; the mother received the income of the benefice. But Alphonse declined the nomination and became a Carthusian monk. Armand was designated instead, and in 1603 he began serious study of theology. Younger than the canonical age to become a bishop, he went to Rome for a papal dispensation in 1607 and was consecrated there. He returned to Paris, obtained his degree in theology, and lingered to multiply his acquaintances among clergymen and among the associates of his brother Henri.

Career as Bishop

At the end of 1608 Richelieu arrived in Luçon, then little more than a village amid the marshes, a short distance from the Atlantic and north of La Rochelle. He found it "the most ignoble, mud-covered, unpleasant bishopric in France." He was an assiduous bishop, controlling his canons, carefully choosing parish priests, encouraging the preaching missions of the Capucin monks led by Father Joseph of Paris (François Le Clerc du Tremblay), and, while residing at his priory of Coussay between Loudun and Poitiers, cooperating with other active churchmen.

Richelieu's first important political opportunity came with the convocation of the Estates General in 1614. The clergy of Poitou elected him a deputy. At Maria dé' Medici's suggestion he was chosen to speak for the clergy as a whole at the last session of the Estates (Feb. 23, 1615). He then went back to Poitou but a year later returned to Paris, served her in negotiations with the Prince of Condé, and was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs and war. He held the post for only 5 months because Louis XIII seized power in April 1617 and dismissed his mother's councilors. Further steps against them followed, and in 1618 the bishop of Luçon was ordered into exile in the papal city of Avignon.

From Poitou, in 1617, Richelieu had joined in a pamphlet controversy between the King's Jesuit confessor and four Protestant ministers. In Les Principaux points de la foi de l'église Catholique, he employed moderate terms and rejected force as a means of conversion. He answered the Protestant ministers on several issues and told them, "You give to the people a power much greater than the one you deny to the pope, which is greatly disadvantageous to kings." In Avignon, in 1618, he finished a catechism he had been preparing in his diocese, L'Instruction du Chrétien, a calm, simple explanation of dogma and commandments which makes clear the sovereignty of God by comparing it to the sovereignty of the King.

Among Louis XIII's advisers, Father Joseph and others believed that Richelieu would be a moderating influence on the King's mother. Accordingly the King recalled him from Avignon in March 1619 and ordered him to resume serving her. Thereafter Richelieu's biography merges increasingly with the history of the monarchy. Representing the queen mother that spring, he negotiated an agreement with the King's commissioners that she would reside in Anjou. She designated his brother Henri de Richelieu as governor of the provincial capital; but 7 weeks later Henri was killed in a duel at Angoulême. This event, the personal sorrow of Armand de Richelieu's life, deprived him of a valued political ally.

The queen mother aspired to sit in the King's council. She also wanted the King to obtain Richelieu's nomination as a cardinal; for him this would mean undisputed political eminence, a voice in important decisions of state, and greater security than a bishop could expect. She hoped in the end to control royal policy through the influence Richelieu would exercise as a member of the King's council. These motives played an important part in the threat of an armed uprising in the summer of 1620 and in the tangle of duplicity and argument that ensued, with Richelieu in the role of mediator between the queen mother and her opponents. The resistance of the King and his ministers gradually crumbled. The queen mother was invited into the council at the beginning of 1622; in the following September, the Pope appointed Richelieu a cardinal; finally, the King called Richelieu to his council in April 1624 and designated him chief councilor 3 1/2 months later.

Position as Minister

Richelieu remained the King's principal minister until his death, and he was made a duke in 1631. He was never the only royal adviser, but he gradually built up in the council a group of men, his "creatures," loyal to him as well as to the King. He was never free from potential rivals. He relied on his family, which he extended by carefully arranging marriages of his nieces and cousins into great families. Thus he used intensively the kind of patron-client relation that had assisted his early career. He made clear that the King was his patron, and he made sure that Louis XIII knew that Richelieu was the King's creature.

From the first, Richelieu encountered a strong current of "devout" Catholic opinion that regarded Protestants everywhere as the enemy or as possible converts and insisted on reforms within France. The queen mother, Maria, the queen consort, Anne, and the keeper of the seals, Michel Marillac, shared that opinion. Richelieu partly satisfied it for a time, negotiating the marriage of the King's sister Henriette to Charles I of England, conducting the siege of the Huguenot city of La Rochelle, and cooperating with Marillac on a program of proposed reforms. But he firmly advised Louis XIII to intervene in northern Italy, against the Spanish king and the Emperor, in order to maintain a foothold on the route between Madrid and Vienna. Over this question the queen mother finally broke with Richelieu in 1630. The King eliminated her clientele and influence from his court.

Opposition to Richelieu and his policies arose also from ambitious, dissatisfied noblemen. This led to plots sanctioned by the King's brother Gaston (1626, 1632, 1636, and 1642), Queen Anne (1633), and a second cousin of the King, the Comte de Soissons (1636 and 1641). These all failed. Three scions of great families were beheaded (the Comte de Chalais in 1626, the Duc de Montmorency in 1632, and the Marquis de Cinq-Mars in 1642).

Foreign Policy

Richelieu gave first priority to foreign policy. He concluded, probably very early, that war against Spain in the long run would be unavoidable. He strove to delay it by encouraging German resistance to the Hapsburg emperor in Vienna, thereby diverting into central Europe the resources and attention of the Hapsburg king in Madrid. In his German policy, he relied heavily on Father Joseph. He subsidized the Dutch Republic and the Swedish warrior king Gustavus Adolphus (Gustavus II) and in 1634 was prepared to aid the Bohemian general A. E. W. von Wallenstein against the Emperor.

From 1635 until his death Richelieu was preoccupied by an overt war against Spain and by the diplomacy it entailed. The fighting occurred principally on the northern and eastern frontiers of France, secondarily on the Mediterranean coast and in the Pyrenees. It was complicated by armed revolts of the populace, especially in western provinces. Richelieu negotiated often with emissaries of Spain but insisted on French control of Lorraine and French garrisons in northern Italy. The negotiations broke down. The war was still going on when Richelieu died on Dec. 4, 1642.

Further Reading

The best brief study of Richelieu in English is a thoughtful essay by Dietrich Gerhard in Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern, eds., The Responsibility of Power: Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn (1968). A narrative concentrating on international relations is Daniel Patrick O'Connell, Richelieu (1968), with a good bibliography. A more personal treatment is provided in Carl J. Burckhardt's trilogy, Richelieu and His Age (1934-1966), of which two volumes have appeared in English: His Rise to Power, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir, and Assertion of Power and Cold War, translated by Bernard Hoy. Valuable special studies include Orest A. Ranum, Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII (1963), and Aleksandra D. Lublinskaya, French Absolutism: The Crucial Phase, 1620-1629, translated by Brian Pearce (1968).

For more information on Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal and duke de Richelieu, visit Britannica.com.

Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, cardinal de (1585-1642). The greatest French politician and statesman of his age, who was also an active and influential patron of the arts. He came to prominence at the États Généraux of 1614, which he attended as bishop of Luçon (a see in the gift of his family, to which he had been appointed in 1607). After a period of time in the service of the Queen Mother, he became first minister of Louis XIII in 1628, and immediately made his mark by a successful campaign against the Protestants in France, who were forced to surrender important privileges after the siege of La Rochelle. He concentrated power in the royal government, and extended the frontiers of France by systematically opposing Spanish interests, a policy which led him into alliances with German Protestant states against the Catholic Empire.

His years in power were marked not only by ruthlessness and shrewd judgement at home and abroad, but also by an active, even interventionist, interest in the arts in general and literature in particular. He was instrumental in the foundation of the Académie Française in 1634-5, and gave financial assistance and protection to many of its early members. His enthusiasm for the theatre was very great; not only did he build a theatre in his Paris residence, but he also formed a company of five authors (Corneille, Boisrobert, Colletet, L'Estoille, and Rotrou) who were brought together to write dramas under his direction and in collaboration with him. The resulting plays were not particularly well received. His relations with Corneille seem to have been strained: he it was who instructed the Academy to pass judgement on Le Cid, whose celebration of Spanish chivalry and tacit acceptance of duelling among the nobility were uncongenial both to his foreign and his domestic policy. He left a Testament politique, and his ghost-written memoirs reproduce many of his confidential reports to Louis XIII.

[Ian Maclean]

(Cardinal Richelieu) (ärmäN' zhäN dü plĕsē' dük də rēshəlyö'), 1585–1642, French prelate and statesman, chief minister of King Louis XIII, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Consecrated bishop of Luçon (1607), he was a delegate of the clergy to the States-General (1614). In 1616, through the favor of the king's mother, Marie de' Medici, he became a secretary of state. He went into exile with Marie after the king freed himself from her influence with the aid of the duc de Luynes. The death (1621) of Luynes and the reconciliation of Louis XIII and Marie restored Richelieu to favor. In 1622 he was made cardinal, and he became chief minister in 1624. The growing jealousy of Marie and the great nobles endangered his position, and in 1630 Marie supported a conspiracy against Richelieu. She was unable to win the king's support, however, and was exiled. Richelieu then had full control of the government. His domestic policy aimed at consolidating and centralizing royal authority, which had as its corollary the destruction of the power of the Huguenots and the great nobles. The Huguenots were humbled by the capture of La Rochelle (1628); the peace of Alais (1629) ended their special political privileges—without, however, denying them religious toleration. Conspiracies of the nobles, who invariably found a figurehead in the king's brother Gaston d'Orléans, were rigorously suppressed. In foreign affairs, Richelieu reacted against Marie de' Medici's pro-Hapsburg diplomacy in favor of the traditional French anti-Spanish and anti-Austrian policy. To this end he strengthened the army and the navy, made alliances with the Netherlands and the German Protestant states, and subsidized Gustavus II of Sweden against the Holy Roman Emperor in the Thirty Years War. In 1635 he formed an active alliance with Sweden and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, and France entered the Thirty Years War. Although Richelieu died before the peace was signed (1648; see Westphalia, Peace of), the terms agreed to were in general conformity to his aims. In France, the war resulted in heavy taxation; this, combined with Richelieu's poor management of finances, depleted the treasury and caused dissatisfaction with his rule. Overseas, however, he encouraged commercial capitalism, organizing companies to trade in the Indies and Canada. He was a patron of the arts and the founder of the French Academy. Among his literary works are his memoirs (1650) and the Testament politique (1688, tr. 1961).

Bibliography

See biographies by R. Lodge (1896, repr. 1970) and C. Burckhardt (tr. 1940); studies by F. C. Palm (1922, repr. 1970), C. V. Wedgwood (1949, rev. ed. 1962), G. R. R. Treasure (1972), E. W. Marvick (1983), and J. Bergin (1985).

Richelieu, Armand-Jean Du Plessis, Cardinal (1585–1642), French ecclesiastical and political figure. Richelieu was the youngest son of a middle-ranking noble family from Poitou, whose father enjoyed short-lived prominence as grand provost of France under Henry III (ruled 1574–1589), but whose early death and bankruptcy (1590) spelled possible disaster for his widow and young children. The support of patrons, new and old, and the goodwill of King Henry IV (ruled 1589–1610) enabled Armand-Jean, after foreshortened theology studies in Paris, to become a very young bishop of Luçon by 1606. Although a neglected and unattractive diocese with well-entrenched Protestant communities, Luçon could afford wider career prospects to an ambitious cleric. This and several years of active pastoral activity in Luçon gradually drewhim intocontact withtheroyal court during a time of political—especially ministerial—instability following Henry IV's murder in 1610. This context, rather than his role at the 1614 Estates-General, explains his appointment in 1615 as grand almoner to Louis XIII's (ruled 1610–1643) young queen, Anne of Austria, and then secretary of state in November 1616, but he was rapidly swept out of office (April 1617) with theassassination of his first patron, Concino Concini, the Italian favorite of the queen mother, Marie de Médicis. Alone among Concini's protégés to make a political comeback, Richelieu survived seven turbulent years during which he honed his political skills as he was successively sent into internal exile, recalled, and finally made a cardinal despite the deep-seated reluctance of Louis XIII and hisministers. Well before 1624, when he was made a minister again, he had become Marie de Médicis's right-hand man and the principal beneficiary of her insistence on playing a political role throughout the 1620s.

The King's Minister

Richelieu's new position, which would gradually evolve toward that of a "principal" minister, struck most contemporaries as that of a conventional royal favorite. But despite the enormous power and influence he enjoyed until his death, he never became Louis XIII's favorite in the accepted sense. From the outset, his relations with Louis were tense and difficult, and they remained so even after the political ménage à trois with Marie de Médicis finally ended with her disgrace and exile abroad in 1630–1631. Until then, Richelieu's ministry had been highly vulnerable: he depended mainly on Marie and her supporters, the dévots, at a time when the overlapping of domestic and foreign questions created acute problems of political management. Protestant and aristocratic rebellion was an enduring feature of the 1620s, and could sometimes play havoc with pursuing a foreign policy that, because it aimed at containing Habsburg expansionism, required alliances with certain Protestant states. This required considerable dexterity, and laid Richelieu—a cardinal of the Roman church, after all!—open to accusations of being a disciple of Machiavelli. The ending of Protestant revolt in 1629 was the only major success of this period, while France's military efforts against the Habsburgs were limited to intervention in northern Italy, when the real threat was building up elsewhere, in the empire. King and minister agreed fully on the need to oppose it, but were wary of precipitous action while aristocratic revolt and provincial discontent were still serious domestic threats.

Richelieu, whose essential duty was to articulate and manage foreign policy, fell foul of Marie and her dévot supporters, who were deeply hostile to Protestant alliances and wanted peace in order to pursue internal reforms. He barely survived the ensuing crisis, known as the Day of the Dupes (November 1630), although it took at least two more years to deal with the aftershocks from it. This partly explains the caution of foreign policy and the preference for fighting the Habsburgs using proxies like Denmark or Sweden. Thus full-scale war was postponed until it became unavoidable, in 1635. The king and minister's optimism about an early victory and peace was rudely shattered, so that the final years of Richelieu's ministry were dominated by the unending burdens of organizing and financing armies, coaxing allies, cajoling military commanders to fight—all with very mixed results—and, finally, framing plans for a peace that would only materialize in 1648.

The Plenitude of Power

Richelieu's position as chief minister took final shape during the 1630s, when his attention was devoted primarily to war and foreign affairs. After Marie de Médicis's fall, he no longer needed to fear opposition within the ministry itself, since all of the ministers were now clients of his who could work well together and who recognized their dependence on him. Internal affairs were, consequently, largely devolved to them, and the main changes to royal government resulted more from the pressures of war than from conscious plans for reform or centralization, plans that Richelieu progressively jettisoned by the late 1620s. His relations with Louis XIII could still be strained, thus offering hope to assorted royal favorites and conspirators to plot his downfall. The last of these, the famous Cinq-Mars conspiracy (1642), may even have had some royal sympathy and ended only months before Richelieu's own death. But Louis's waverings were always effectively countered by Richelieu's astute realization that all important decisions be taken explicitly by the king, thus making it virtually impossible for him to disown them later. The main opponents of Richelieu's accumulation of power and influence came from within the royal family and certain great noble houses. But a general assault on them was scarcely possible, given the wider political context, and Richelieu himself was no sworn enemy of the higher nobility. The best he could do was to win over as many of them as possible through offices, military commands, or advantageous marriage alliances, but some, like the Guise and the Montmorency, would not play the game by his rules, and suffered disgrace, exile, or even execution. Moreover, this policy of "divide and rule" was itself limited in its potential scope: it worked far better in peacetime than during war, when the crown depended more heavily on aristocratic goodwill. Some of Richelieu's strongest enemies had to be given army commands after 1635, and at least one used his army to provoke a rebellion in 1641. The cardinal's most spectacular success lay in turning the previously rebellious Bourbon-Condé family into allies, even to the extent of securing the marriage of its heir, the future "great" Condé, to his niece in 1641. Richelieu made additional enemies and critics by the way he used his immense power to restore and extend his family's fortunes, a sometimes ruthless process in which his wealth consolidated his power, and vice versa. His power was not confined to the "four square feet of the king's study" or council chamber but extended into the provinces, thanks to provincial and town governorships as well as tenure of the admiralty of France. When he died, he was not only Louis XIII's richest subject, but he had secured three duchies for members of his extended family, who were now well integrated into the upper reaches of the French nobility.

Power and Ideas

Richelieu's many offices, his great wealth (which included works of art, precious stones, and châteaus) and his many buildings (the Palais-Royal, Richelieu town and château in Poitou, the new Sorbonne college) all show him behaving as a Renaissance-style cardinal was expected to do. But neither wealth nor office alone could sustain political power, especially when it was as bitterly contested as his was. His early years in politics convinced him that cultural patronage, beginning but not ending with political propaganda, was indispensable.

From the early 1620s, he recruited writers into his service and initially used them to undermine existing favorites and ministers of Louis XIII—a dangerous game, which he learned to play effectively. Back in office, he needed propagandists to defend often unpopular policies. He quickly saw the advantages of crown-sponsored newsletters and gazettes, not to mention quasi-official histories of his own time. Thus, crown policies would be stoutly defended in print, successes publicly celebrated by every means available. Even the foundation of the Académie Française (1635) and Imprimerie Royale (1640), both important milestones in the French monarchy's attempts at cultural absolutism, were not divorced from such political considerations. Many of Richelieu's other projects, such as founding special academies to educate the nobility, were frustrated by the imperatives of war. Finally, as befitted a university theology graduate with enduring intellectual aspirations, he wrote extensively throughout his career on religious matters—pastoral instructions, a catechism, treatises on the conversion of France's Protestants and on Christian perfection. These works may not bear comparison with those of his greatest contemporaries (François de Sales, Pierre de Bérulle), but they show a genuine desire to apply religious precepts to the daily life lived by ordinary mortals. In theological terms Richelieu was essentially a Thomist who, despite being influenced by neo-Stoic ideas, never shared the Augustinian pessimism of contemporaries like Bérulle or Saint-Cyran. Psychologically and intellectually, he was comfortable with a relatively optimistic view of humankind as inhabited by a God-given reason. It may be claimed that his Political Testament, the most problematic of his works but not published in his lifetime, was itself typical of this lifelong didactic passion, and it was aimed at the Christian—as exemplified by his master, Louis XIII—rather than the Machiavellian prince.

Bibliography

Bergin, Joseph. Cardinal Richelieu: Power and the Pursuit of Wealth. New Haven and London, 1985.

——. The Rise of Richelieu. New Haven and London, 1991.

Church, William F. Richelieu and Reason of State. Princeton, 1972.

Elliott, J. H. Richelieu and Olivares. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1984.

Levi, Anthony. Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France. London and New York, 2000.

Ranum, Orest A. Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII: A Study of the Secretaries of State and Superintendents of Finance in the Ministry of Richelieu, 1635–1642. Oxford, 1963.

—JOSEPH BERGIN

(rish-uh-looh, ree-shuhl-yeu)

A French clergyman and political leader of the seventeenth century. Cardinal Richelieu was the chief of government under King Louis XIII. He achieved two difficult goals in his career: establishing absolute monarchy in France and breaking the political power of the Huguenots, or French Protestants.

Quotes:

"To know how to disguise is the knowledge of kings."

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

"Give me six lines written by the most honorable person alive, and I shall find enough in them to condemn them to the gallows."

"Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the State."

"Carry on any enterprise as if all future success depended on it."