Richelieu's foreign policy was as inflexible as his home policy. To humble the Habsburgs he aided the Protestant princes of Germany against the emperor, in spite of the strong opposition of the disappointed Catholic party in France, which had looked to the cardinal as a champion of the faith. The year of Richelieu's triumph over the Huguenots (1629) was also that of the Emperor Ferdinand's triumph in Germany, marked by the Edict of Restitution, and France was threatened by a united Germany. Richelieu, however, turned against the Habsburgs young Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, pay ing him a subsidy of a million livres a year by the treaty of Barwald of Jan. 23, 1631. The dismissal of Wallenstein was of double value to Richelieu when his Swedish ally marched south. After the treaty of Prague, in May 1635, by which the emperor was reconciled with most of the German princes, Richelieu was finally obliged to declare war, and, concluding a treaty of offensive alliance at Compiegne with Oxenstierna, and in October one at St. Germain-en-Laye with Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, he pro ceeded himself against Spain, both in Italy and in the Nether lands. The war opened disastrously for the French, but by 1642, when Richelieu died, his armies,—risen from 12,000 men in 1621 to 150,000 in 1638—had conquered Roussillon from Spain; they held Catalonia, which had revolted from Philip IV. of Spain, and had taken Turin and forced Savoy to allow French troops on the borders of the Milanese. In Germany Torstensson was sweep ing the imperialist forces before him through Silesia and Moravia. The lines of the treaty of Westphalia, six years later, were already laid down by Richelieu ; and its epochal importance in European history is a measure of the genius who threw the balance of power from Habsburg to Bourbon.
His own personality was his strongest ally. The king himself quailed before that stern, august presence. His pale, drawn face was set with his iron will. His frame was sickly and wasted with disease, yet when clad in his red cardinal's robes, his stately carriage and confident bearing gave him the air of a prince. His courage was mingled with a mean sort of cunning, and his ambition loved the outward trappings of power as well as its reality; yet he never swerved from his policy in order to win approbation, and the king knew that his one motive in public affairs was the welfare of the realm—that his religion, in short, was "reason of state." No courtier was ever more assertive of his prerogatives. He
claimed precedence over even princes of the blood, and one like Conde was content to draw aside the curtains for him to pass, and to sue for the hand of Richelieu's niece for his son, the "Great Conde." His pride and ambition were gratified by the foundation of a sort of dynasty of his nephews and nieces, whose hands were sought by the noblest in the realm. Like all states men of his time, Richelieu made money out of politics. He came to court in 1617 with an income of 25,000 livres from his eccle siastical benefices. In the later years of his life it exceeded 3,000,000 livres. He lived in imperial state, building himself the great Palais Cardinal, now the Palais Royal, in Paris, another at Rueil near Paris, and rebuilding his ancestral château in Poitou. In January 1641 the tragedy of Mirame, which was said to have been his own, was produced with great magnificence. Richelieu was anxious for literary fame, and his writings are not unworthy of him. But more important than his own efforts as an author were his protection and patronage of literary men, especially of Corneille, and his creation of the French Academy in 1635. When he died, on Dec. 4, 1642, he was buried in the chapel of the Sorbonne, which still stands as he built it. His tomb, erected in 1694, though rifled at the Revolution, still exists.
Many writings are attributed to Richelieu, although owing to his habit of working with substitutes and assistants it is difficult to settle how much of what passes under his name is authentic. Les Tuileries, La Grande Pastorale, Mirame, and the other plays, have long been forgotten ; but a permanent interest attaches to his Memoires and correspondence: Memoire d'Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, l'annee 1607 a 161o, ed. by A. Baschet (1880) ; Histoire de la mere et du fils (Marie de Medici and Louis XIII.), sometimes attributed to Mezeray (Amsterdam, 1730) and, under title Histoire de la regence de reine Marie de Medici, femme de Henry IV. (The Hague,
; Memoires sur le regne de Louis XIII., 1610 to 1638, and of which the earlier portion is a reprint of the Histoire de la mere et du fils, Petitot's collection (1823, seq.) ; Testament politique d'Armand du Plessis, cardinal de R. (Amsterdam, 1687, seq.) ; Journal de 163o-31 (1645) ; "Lettres, instructions diplomatiques, et papiers d'etat," publ. by d'Avenel in the Coll. de doc. fined. (1853-77) ; these, with the Memoires in J. F. Michaud and J. Poujalat's collections, are the most important sources for Richelieu's statesmanship.