Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis de

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 premature death of his father in '90 forced his mother into a very restricted life at Richelieu (a castle between Poitiers and Tours), which the boy, of very delicate health, left in '94 for the Collège de Navarre in Paris, whence, having brilliantly completed his studies of grammar and philosophy, at 16 he passed to the Academy, destined for military life; but a few months later he left it in order to preserve for the family the enjoyment of the bishopric of Luçon, with which King Henry III had rewarded his father's services, since his second-born brother had become a Carthusian. R. devoted himself with ardor to theological studies, aided by a formidable memory, and at 21, designated bishop by the King, he went to Rome to solicit the appointment and the dispensation for his age; there he was also esteemed by Pope Paul V and was ordained on 17 Apr. 1607; after a new stay in Paris, in Dec. 1608 he installed himself in his wretched bishopric, where, with his customary energy, he visited the diocese, restored the Cathedral and sought to create an instructed and combative clergy for the struggle, to which he himself devoted himself, against the Protestants.

He did not forget Paris, however; his episcopal activity was a preparation for the power toward which his ambition drove him, conscious of his own abilities; in 1614 he became the elected representative of the clergy of Poitou at the Estates General and was its orator, by designation of the Regent, at the closing session; much he owed to the presence at court of his eldest brother Henry. The fruit of so much ability, and, it must also be said, of so much servility even toward the minister Concini, favorite of the Queen, was obtained on 25 Nov. 1616, with his appointment as minister. But the killing of Concini at 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 R. back to his bishopric, and indeed, for a year, to exile in Avignon. However, in 1619 he was needed for a reconciliation with the Queen Mother, who had taken refuge with the rebellious nobles; the reward of his ability was the promise of the cardinal's hat, which however he obtained only on 5 Sept. 1622, after the death of Luynes, jealous of his superior ability. Overcoming with the help of the Queen Mother the King's intimate repugnance, he entered the Council on 19 Apr. 1624 and in action, as its head, began his grandiose political work.

R.'s first aim is to repair the errors of foreign policy and « to restore - as he says - the name of the king among foreign nations to the point at which it ought to be »; and he immediately intervened in the Valtellina to cut the direct communications between Austria and Spain, but he had an obstacle in internal conditions. He now does not hesitate to take a stand against the directives of the Queen Mother, to whom he nevertheless owes everything, and Maria de' Medici would end up being the most bitter enemy of the man whom she had placed beside her son and who no longer wished to serve her. R. dominated the King by satisfying the deep awareness of royal greatness that Louis XIII had. The King's will is weak and wavering and R. must continually strengthen it and suggest decisions for the good of the State and show their harsh necessity. R.'s program toward abroad, generic at the beginning, develops gradually according to circumstances, necessities and above all external and internal obstacles, so intertwined with one another that, only after crushing the Huguenots, the Court conspiracies and the noble rebellions, could he turn freely against the external enemy. R.'s work, with its defects and its harshness, must be seen amid the difficulties and dangers, even personal ones, in the midst of which it unfolded.

Not even a month after his advent, R. demanded with an ultimatum the evacuation of the papal troops that occupied, as a neutral force, the Valtellina and in Nov. 1624 he imposed it by force, creating with this unexpected gesture an upheaval in Europe, which however was not followed by proportionate action, because a Huguenot revolt, subsidized by Spain, and a conspiracy in which the King's brother was involved, embarrassed R., who had to submit to, only amending it, the Treaty for the Valtellina with Spain, arranged at Monzón by the French ambassador on the directives of the Queen Mother (signed on 2 May 1626). R., however, taking advantage of this détente with Spain, prepared 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 ability after having repressed a court conspiracy that cost the life of Chalais and of Marshal d'Ornano. With a dike of 1500 m. he had closed the port and rendered vain the attacks of the English fleet. The city having fallen from hunger and Catholic worship having been reestablished there, the following year he repressed the last Huguenot revolt in Languedoc and with the « grace » of Alais (28 June 1629), confirming the religious clauses of the Edict of Nantes, he pacified the dissidents and eliminated their threat. From the victory of La Rochelle the true power of R. can be dated. During the siege the Mantuan crisis had broken out (Dec. 1627) with the succession of Duke Gonzaga-Nevers, opposed by Spain and Austria, because he was French. Only in Dec. 1628 did R. induce Louis XIII to intervene against the opinion of his mother and, in March 1629, the King forced the pass of Susa and unblocked the besieged Casale. The struggle at Court, however, is always hard, but R. on 14 Sept. 1629, by offering his resignation, obtained his creation as principal minister. After that, Mantua and Casale being besieged by imperial and Spanish forces, R. and the King occupied

Pinerolo (March 1630) and Saluzzo (July of the same year) and bent Charles Emmanuel I to peace. On the return to France there was the last battle at Court; the King was dying at Lyon and the order had already been given to arrest R. as soon as the King died, but the latter recovered and on 10 Nov. 1630 in Paris, after a terrible scene of the Queen against R., before the silent King, everything seemed finished; instead it was « the day of the dupes », Louis confirmed to R. his confidence, the Queen was confined to Compiègne, fleeing to the Netherlands and would die 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 open clash with the House of Austria of the two branches was fatally approaching, because he had so far only sent financial aid to the Dutch and the Protestants and, not without much hesitation, had helped Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden by pacifying him with Poland; now he allied himself with him (13 Jan. 1631), thereby obtaining that the imperial forces evacuate Italy and recognize the French succession at Mantua: he had, however, imposed on the Protestant King respect for the Catholic worship in the occupied lands. But soon the triumphs of Gustavus Adolphus and his growing political ambitions must have worried R., who then, 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 drove him to bring France openly into the war in Germany. A grave decision from the political and religious standpoint, but above all dangerous from the military one, because France had troops barely sufficient for modest internal struggles, and not technically equal 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 a veritable panic in Paris; a prompt reaction drove out the invaders, and from then on the war was fought outside France, with slow but continuous progress 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 stormed, but victory was still far off when R. met his death, and he found no better continuator of his policy to indicate to the King than an Italian, Giulio Mazzarino, whose services he had secured by taking him from papal diplomacy.

Three months earlier he had foiled the Cinq-Mars Conspiracy, the King's Grand Equerry, who with other great nobles had come to an agreement with Spain.

R.'s true work was to prepare the power of the monarchy in France and its consequent primary position in Europe, but the difficulties of carrying out these designs made him neglect other important tasks that 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 an administrative and fiscal reorganization: with him came the first intendants, but when in 1630 the inevitability of a general war appeared, he deliberately renounced it. He concerned himself with the colonies, with trading companies, but military necessities extinguished every initiative of his. 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 reestablishment of the King's authority over the unruly nobility, could not be well regarded either in his own time or afterward, whatever his merits toward France. The nobility did not forgive the man who had subjected it to the law (among other things, although he had not created the measures against dueling, he finally made them respected with cold severity); nor could Louis XIII exalt such a harsh collaborator. Moreover, certain traits of the man lent themselves to exaggeration: the relentless harshness of the repression which, though necessary, was often carried out by extraordinary judges, the regal splendor and the immense riches procured by the occupation of numerous abbeys, the grandiose secret espionage service are realities that cast many shadows around his memory. It must not be forgotten, however, that he served France with ardent and sincere passion, while his adversaries were always ready to come to an agreement with the foreigner.

Even in ecclesiastical relations with Rome R. displays a "lay" spirit: he was a serious and zealous bishop but with a spirit of conciliation toward dissidents; most expert in theological science, around 1636 he began that Traité de la perfection du chrétien, a refined, though not original, exposition on prayer and contemplation; as a minister, even though a cardinal, he sees the interests of the State as paramount. He often speaks menacingly and harshly with the nuncios, but he always avoids any open conflict: he had the good fortune 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 claims; therefore the Pope reacted weakly to the abrupt expulsion of his troops from the Valtellina, but he certainly could not gratify 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 against 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 play the mediator after achieving his own ends; also, as a minister he could not have been pleased by the excessive agitation of the Parlements, and often his decisions were merely expedients to overcome grave difficulties. As supreme Abbot of the Benedictines, he would have wished to have in France also the powers of a legate, and this fits with his craving to bend every resistance to royal absolutism and his own, the only remedy, in his view, for the disorder of France. In the financial straits that gripped him and that drove him to unheard-of harshness to raise money, he showed little regard for the property of the clergy. But the gravest reproach that Rome had the right to make to R. was that the French intervention in Germany, even if for a political end, had prevented there the Catholic restoration that at certain moments had appeared 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.

1907 in Paris; on their authenticity see P. Bertrand, in Revue historique, 141 [1922], pp. 40-65, 198-227. For the political testament cf. W. Mommsen, R.s politisches Testament, Berlin 1926; L. André, Testament politique de R., in Revue historique, 73 (1949), pp. 55-71; his letters etc. are in G. D'Avenel, Lettres... de R., 8 vols., Paris 1853-74, and E. Griselle, Louis XIII et R. Lettres, ibid. 1911. Among the numerous works on R. cf. (besides the general histories of France and among them especially Lavisse's) G. Hanotaux and La Force (duc de), Histoire du card. de R., 6 vols., ibid. 1893-1947 (fundamental). Cf. furthermore G. D'Avenel, R. et la monarchie absolue, 4 vols., ibid. 1880-87. On specific moments: E. de Vaux de Foletier, Le siège de la Rochelle, ibid. 1931, passim; L. Batiffol, R. et Louis XIII, ibid. 1934; B. Baustaedt, R. und Deutschland, Berlin 1936; C. J. Burckhardt, R., der Aufstieg zur Macht, Munich 1937; L. Batiffol, Autour de R., Paris 1937; G. Pagès, Autour du grand Orage. R. et Marillac : deux politiques, in Revue historique, 179 (1937), p. 63 ff.; A. Leman, R. et Olivarès, Lille 1938; W. Andreas, R., Leipzig 1941; J. Canu, Louis XIII et R., Paris 1944. On Italian policy: R. Quazza, La guerra per la successione di Mantova e del Monferrato, 2 vols., Mantua 1926, passim; S. Foà, Vittorio Amedeo I, Turin 1930, passim; R. Bergadani, Carlo Emanuele I, ibid. 1932, passim. On relations with Rome: A. Leman, Urbain VIII et la rivalité de la France et de la maison d'Autriche de 1631 à 1635, Lille 1921; Pastor, XIII, see index. On the administrative side: G. Pagès, La monarchie d'ancien régime en France, Paris 1928; G. zu Mecklemburg, R. als merkantilistischer Wirtschaftspolitiker und der Begriff des Staatsmerkantilismus, Jena 1929; H. Hauser, La pensée et l'action économique du card. de R., Paris 1944; R. von Albertini, Das politische Denken in Frankreich zur Zeit R.s, Cologne 1951. On his spirituality: P. Pourrat, La spiritualité chrétienne, III, Paris 1944, pp. 486-91.

Luigi Simeoni