RICHELIEU, Armand-Jean du Plessis de. — Cardinal and Prime Minister of France, b. in Paris on 9 Sept. 1585, d. there on 4 Dec. 1642. Of minor nobility from Poitou, the early death of his father in 1590 forced his mother into a life of considerable austerity at Richelieu (a castle between Poitiers and Tours). The boy, of delicate health, left in 1594 for the Collège de Navarre in Paris, where, after excelling in grammar and philosophy, he entered the Academy at 16, destined for a military career; but a few months later he abandoned it to preserve for his family the enjoyment of the bishopric of Luçon, which King Henry III had granted to his father in recognition of services rendered, his second-born brother having become a Carthusian monk. Richelieu devoted himself with ardor to theological studies, aided by a formidable memory, and at 21, having been designated bishop by the king, he went to Rome to solicit the papal confirmation and dispensation for his youthful age. There he was appreciated by Pope Paul V and was ordained on 17 Apr. 1607. After a further stay in Paris, in December 1608 he took up residence in his impoverished diocese, where, with his customary energy, he visited the diocese, restored the cathedral, and sought to create an educated and combative clergy for the struggle against the Protestants, in which he himself was engaged.
He did not, however, forget Paris; his episcopal activity was a preparation for the power to which his ambition drove him, conscious of his own abilities. In 1614 he became the elector of the clergy of Poitou at the Estates General and was chosen as their spokesman, by designation of the Regent, in the closing session. He owed much to the presence at court of his eldest brother, Henri.
The fruit of such assiduity and, it must be said, of so much servility even toward the minister Concini, the queen’s favorite, was his appointment as minister on 25 Nov. 1616. But the assassination of Concini in the Louvre, by order of King Louis XIII—who, with the help of Luynes, freed himself from his mother’s tutelage and sent her into exile—sent Richelieu back to his bishopric and, indeed, for a year, into exile in Avignon. Yet in 1619 he was needed to reconcile the king with his mother, who had taken refuge among the rebellious nobles; the reward for his skill was the promise of the red hat, which he received only on 5 Sept. 1622, after Luynes’ death, who had been jealous of his superior ability. Overcoming, with the help of the queen mother, the king’s deep-seated aversion, on 19 Apr. 1624 he entered the Council and, in August of that year, became its head, beginning his grand political work.
Richelieu’s primary aim was to repair the errors of foreign policy and “restore,” as he put it, “the name of the king among foreign nations to the level it ought to occupy.” He immediately intervened in the Valtellina to sever the direct communications between Austria and Spain, but encountered obstacles in domestic conditions. He now did not hesitate to oppose the directives of the queen mother, to whom he owed everything, and Maria de’ Medici would end up as the most bitter enemy of the man she had placed beside her son and who no longer wished to serve her. Richelieu dominated the king by appealing to the profound sense of royal grandeur that Louis XIII possessed. The king’s will was weak and vacillating, and Richelieu had constantly to strengthen it, suggest decisions for the good of the state, and show the harsh necessity of action. His foreign policy, initially vague, developed gradually according to circumstances, necessities, and above all the external and internal obstacles—so intertwined that only after crushing the Huguenots, the court conspiracies, and the noble rebellions could he turn freely against the external enemy. Richelieu’s work, with its defects and harshness, must be viewed in the midst of the difficulties and dangers, including personal ones, in which it unfolded.
Not even a month after his rise, Richelieu demanded with an ultimatum the withdrawal of papal troops occupying the Valtellina as a neutral force, and in November 1624 he imposed this by force, creating an unexpected stir in Europe, though no proportionate action followed because a Huguenot revolt, subsidized by Spain, and a conspiracy in which the king’s brother was implicated embarrassed Richelieu, who had to accept, with only minor amendments, the Treaty of Monzón for the Valtellina, arranged by the French ambassador under directives from the queen mother (signed 2 May 1626). Richelieu, however, took advantage of this détente with Spain to prepare the suppression of the Huguenots as a political party with the siege of La Rochelle (July 1627–30 Oct. 1628), which he conducted with tenacity and skill after crushing a court conspiracy that cost the lives of Chalais and Marshal d’Ornano. With a 1,500-meter dam, he had closed the port and rendered the attacks of the English fleet ineffective. When the city fell to famine and Catholic worship was restored, the following year he quelled the last Huguenot revolt in Languedoc and, with the Peace of Alès (28 June 1629), confirming the religious clauses of the Edict of Nantes, placated the dissenters and removed their threat. The true power of Richelieu can be dated from the victory at La Rochelle. During the siege, the Mantuan crisis had erupted (December 1627) over the succession of Duke Gonzaga-Nevers, opposed by Spain and Austria because he was French. Only in December 1628 did Richelieu persuade Louis XIII to intervene against his mother’s advice, and in March 1629 the king forced the pass of Susa and relieved the siege of Casale. The struggle at court, however, remained fierce, but on 14 Sept. 1629, by offering his resignation, Richelieu obtained the creation of the office of principal minister. Afterward, with Mantua and Casale besieged by imperial and Spanish forces, Richelieu and the king occupied Pinerolo (March 1630) and Saluzzo (July of the same year) and forced Charles Emmanuel I to make peace. Upon their return to France, the final battle took place at court: the king was dying in Lyon, and an order had already been given for Richelieu’s arrest as soon as the king died. But Louis recovered, and on 10 Nov. 1630 in Paris, after a terrible scene in which the queen raged against Richelieu before the silent king, all seemed lost; instead, it was “the Day of the Dupes.” Louis confirmed his trust in Richelieu, the queen was confined to Compiègne, fled to the Netherlands, and died in exile; following a new revolt, Marshal Louis de Marillac and the Duke of Montmorency were executed (1632).
R. was now stronger internally, but the fatal open clash with the House of Austria of the two branches drew near, because until then he had only sent financial aid to the Dutch and the Protestants and, not without much hesitation, aided Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden by reconciling him with Poland; now he allied with him (13 Jan. 1631), thus obtaining that the imperial forces evacuate Italy and recognize French succession to Mantua: he had however imposed on the Protestant king the respect of Catholic worship in the occupied lands. But soon the triumphs of Gustavus Adolphus and his growing political ambitions had to worry R., who, when the King of Sweden fell on the field of Lützen (6 Nov. 1632), was seized by the opposite concern for the resurgence of imperial power, which pushed him to have France openly intervene in the war in Germany. A grave decision from the political and religious point of view, but above all dangerous from the military one, because France had troops barely sufficient for modest internal struggles, and not equal, technically, to the armies that twenty years of war had created in Germany and Flanders. The Spanish occupation of Trier, whose Elector had joined France, decided R. and Louis XIII to intervene, with the result that France was invaded from the south and from Flanders, creating real panic in Paris; a prompt reaction drove out the invaders and from then on the war was fought outside France, with slow but steady advances in Alsace and Flanders, while Spain was also attacked in Italy and had to face the revolts of Catalonia and Portugal. In 1642 Perpignan was taken, but victory was still distant when R. died, and he found no better continuer of his policy to point out to the King than an Italian, Giulio Mazzarino, whose services he had secured by taking him from papal diplomacy.
Three months earlier he had thwarted the Cinq-Mars Conspiracy, grand squire of the King, who with other nobles had agreed with Spain.
The true work of R. was to prepare the power of the monarchy in France and its consequent primary position in Europe, but the difficulties of executing these plans made him neglect other important tasks he nonetheless felt. Thus he was only the initiator of French naval power, which did not exist at all at the time of La Rochelle. He also felt the need for administrative and fiscal reorganization: with him came the first intendants, but when in 1630 the fatality of a general war appeared, he deliberately renounced II. He concerned himself with the colonies, with merchant companies, but military necessities stifled every initiative. The man who founded the Académie Française (1635) and the Jardin des Plantes, rebuilt the Sorbonne where he wished to be buried, would, in peacetime, have shown to a greater extent his love for culture and art. The figure and work of R., especially in domestic policy with the restoration of royal authority over fractious nobility, could not be well received either in his time or later, whatever his merits toward France. The nobility could not forgive the man who had subjected it to the law (among other things, though he did not create the measures against duels, he finally enforced them with cold severity); nor could Louis XIII exalt such a harsh collaborator. Moreover, some traits of the man lent themselves to exaggeration: the inexorable harshness of repression, which, though necessary, was often carried out by extraordinary judges; the regal splendor and immense wealth procured through the occupation of numerous abbeys; the grandiose secret service of espionage are realities that cast many shadows around his memory. One must not, however, forget that he served France with ardent and sincere passion, while his adversaries were always ready to come to terms with the foreigner.
Even in ecclesiastical relations with Rome, R. displayed a “lay” spirit: he was a serious and zealous bishop but with a conciliatory spirit toward dissenters; highly expert in theological science, around 1636 he began that *Traité de la perfection du chrétien*, a refined, if not original, exposition on prayer and contemplation; as a minister, though a cardinal, he saw the interests of the State as preeminent. Often he spoke threateningly and harshly to the nuncios, but always avoided open conflict: he was fortunate to deal only with Pope Urban VIII, inclined toward France after his nunciature in Paris and convinced that it was a necessary counterweight to Spanish and Austrian pretensions; thus the Pope reacted weakly to the abrupt expulsion of his troops from the Valtellina, but could certainly not please R. to the point of siding against the Empire in the war in Germany. In France there was moreover, in the Parlements and at the Sorbonne, a lively current of hostility toward the papacy, and R. acted several times as mediator to prevent its excesses, nor is it right to believe that he himself first stirred it up in order to act as mediator after achieving his own ends; even the minister could not approve the excessive agitation of the Parlements, and often his decisions were merely expedients to overcome serious difficulties. As supreme abbot of the Benedictines, he would have liked to have in France also the powers of a legate, and this accords with his eagerness to bend every resistance to royal and his own absolutism, the only remedy, in his view, for the disorder of France. In the financial straits that beset him and drove him to unheard-of harshness to raise money, he showed little regard for the goods of the clergy. But the gravest reproach that Rome had the right to make to R. was that French intervention in Germany, even if for political ends, had prevented there the Catholic restoration that at certain moments had seemed possible with the victory of imperial arms; but for R. it was a political dogma that French security necessarily excluded the political unity of the two neighboring countries, Germany and Italy.