Mémoires du Maréchal duc de Richelieu, Pair de France, premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi, &c. ... Ouvrage composé dans la bibliothèque, & sous ... ... Volume 7 of 9 (French Edition)
Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis was a French clergyman, nobleman, and statesman.
Background
Born on 9 September 1585, in Paris, Armand du Plessis was the fourth of five children and the last of three sons: he was delicate from childhood, and suffered frequent bouts of ill-health throughout his life.
His family was somewhat prominent, belonging to the lesser nobility of Poitou: his father, François du Plessis, seigneur de Richelieu, was a soldier and courtier who served as the Grand Provost of France, and his mother, Susanne de La Porte, was the daughter of a famous jurist. When he was five years old, his father died fighting in the French Wars of Religion, leaving the family in debt; with the aid of royal grants, however, the family was able to avoid financial difficulties.
Education
At the age of nine, young Richelieu was sent to the College of Navarre in Paris to study philosophy. Thereafter, he began to train for a military career. His private life seems to have been typical of a young officer of the era: in 1605, aged twenty, he was treated by Théodore de Mayerne for gonorrhea.
King Henry III had rewarded Richelieu's father for his participation in the Wars of Religion by granting his family the bishopric of Luçon. The family appropriated most of the revenues of the bishopric for private use; they were, however, challenged by clergymen, who desired the funds for ecclesiastical purposes. To protect the important source of revenue, Richelieu's mother proposed to make her second son, Alphonse, the bishop of Luçon. Alphonse, who had no desire to become a bishop, became instead a Carthusian monk. Thus, it became necessary that the younger Richelieu join the clergy. He had strong academic interests and threw himself into studying for his new post.
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.
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 (February 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.
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).
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 December 4, 1642.
The Catholic party in France looked to the cardinal as a champion of 'the faith'.
Politics
Richelieu's tenure was a crucial period of reform for France. Earlier, the nation's political structure was largely feudal, with powerful nobles and a wide variety of laws in different regions. Parts of the nobility periodically conspired against the King, raised private armies, and allied themselves with foreign powers. This system gave way to centralized power under Richelieu. Local and even religious interests were subordinated to those of the whole nation, and of the embodiment of the nation — the King. Equally critical for France was Richelieu's foreign policy, which helped restrain Habsburg influence in Europe. Richelieu did not survive to the end of the Thirty Years' War. However, the conflict ended in 1648, with France emerging in a far better position than any other power, and the Holy Roman Empire entering a period of decline.
Richelieu's successes were extremely important to Louis XIII's successor, King Louis XIV. He continued Richelieu's work of creating an absolute monarchy; in the same vein as the Cardinal, he enacted policies that further suppressed the once-mighty aristocracy, and utterly destroyed all remnants of Huguenot political power with the Edict of Fontainebleau. Moreover, Louis took advantage of his nation's success during the Thirty Years' War to establish French hegemony in continental Europe. Thus, Richelieu's policies were the requisite prelude to Louis XIV becoming the most powerful monarch, and France the most powerful nation, in all of Europe during the late seventeenth century.
Richelieu is also notable for the authoritarian measures he employed to maintain power. He censored the press, established a large network of internal spies, forbade the discussion of political matters in public assemblies such as the Parlement de Paris (a court of justice), and had those who dared to conspire against him prosecuted and executed.
Richelieu's motives are the focus of much debate among historians: some see him as a patriotic supporter of the monarchy, while others view him as a power-hungry cynic. The latter image gained further currency due to Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which depicts Richelieu as a self-serving and ruthless de facto ruler of France.
His legacy is also important for the world at large; his ideas of a strong nation-state and aggressive foreign policy helped create the modern system of international politics. The notions of national sovereignty and international law can be traced, at least in part, to Richelieu's policies and theories, especially as enunciated in the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years' War.
A less renowned aspect of his legacy is his involvement with Samuel de Champlain and the fledgling colony along the St. Lawrence River. The retention and promotion of Canada under Richelieu allowed it — and through the settlement's strategic location, the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes gateway into the North American interior — to develop into a French empire in North America, parts of which eventually became modern Canada and Louisiana.
Views
Quotations:
"To know how to dissimulate is the knowledge of kings."
"Friendship is the medicine for all misfortune; but ingratitude dries up the fountain of all goodness."
"Carry on any enterprise as if all future success depended on it."
"War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men."
"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."
"Friendship is the medicine for all misfortune; but ingratitude dries up the fountain of all goodness."
"I was excellent. Everybody loved me. I love myself, and I like bums."
"Nothing is as dangerous for the state as those who would govern kingdoms with maxims found in books."
"Reason must be the universal rule and guide; all things must be done according to reason without allowing oneself to be swayed by emotion."
"Harshness towards individuals who flout the laws and commands of the state is for the public good; no greater crime against the public interest is possible than to show leniency to those who violate it."
"A single word has sometimes lost or won an empire."
"Had Luther and Calvin been confined before they had begun to dogmatize, the states would have been spared many troubles."
"First, all means to conciliate; failing that, all means to crush."
Membership
Richelieu was also the founder and patron of the Académie française, the pre-eminent French literary society.
Académie française
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
The Canadian historian and philosopher John Ralston Saul has referred to Richelieu as the "father of the modern nation-state, modern centralised power (and) the modern secret service."
Interests
Richelieu was also famous for his patronage of the arts; most notably, he founded the Académie française, the learned society responsible for matters pertaining to the French language.
Artists
Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Nicolas Poussin, Veronese and Titian