RICHELIEU, Armand Jean du Mends de, 5r-man them dii ples-se resh-le-e, Eng. reshloo, Cardinal, Due DE, French prelate and states man: b. Paris, according to Jal, who cites a register of baptism, 9, not as usually stated, 5 Sept. 1585; d. Paris, 4 Dec. 1642. Armand was the third son; his father lost his life at the siege of Paris, 10 July 1S90, and the mother was left with five children and an estate heavily encumbered with debt. By practising careful economies she liquidated the debt and brought up the children as befitted their rank. In 1594 the future cardinal entered the Coll* de Navarre, where he made a brilliant course in grammar and philosophy. He next entered a school)" in preparation for the life of a courtier and where his training was directed toward a military career. This career was cut short when Alphonse, his elder brother, refused the bishopric of Lucon, prefer ment to which had been vested in the Richefien family by Henry III. Armand was thereupon induced to enter the Church. At 21, in 1606, Henry IV nominated him bishop of Luton. He obtained from the Pope a dispensation allowing him to accept the office though under age, and on 16 April 1607 was consecrated by the Cardinal de Givry in presence of the Pope himself (Paul V). For several years he devoted himself to the duties of his see, reforming abuses and laboring for the conversion of Protestants. But his ambi tion always made him turn his eyes toward the court, and having come to Paris in 1614 as deputy of the clergy of Poitou to the States General he managed to insinuate himself into the favor of the queen-mother, who obtained for him the post of grand-almoner, and in 1616 that of Secretary of State for War and Foreign Affairs. On the disgrace of the queen-mother (1617) Richelieu fell with her, and was ban ished first to Blois and then to Avignon. In 1620 he managed to •effect a reconciliation be tween Mary of -Medici and her son, Louis XIII. On 5 Sept. 1622 he obtained through her influence the cardinal's hat, and on 19 April 1624 was admitted into the Council of State. No sooner was Richelieu secure in his high post than' he began systematically to extend the power of the Crown by crushing the Hugue nots and overthrowing the privileges of the great vassals, and to increase the influence of the French monarchy by undermining that of the Hapsburgs, both beyond the Pyrenees and in Germany. Louis XIII, sensible of the energy of his Minister, favored his plans, though he always showed a dislike for the man, whom he would gladly have destroyed had he been able to govern without him. The Huguenots had for a long time resisted the royal power; and bloody insurrections, in several receding reigns, had arisen from their' struggles in their attempts to gain political and religious power. The wis dom and mildness of Henry IV had, indeed, assuaged the excitement of the contending parties, but his reign was too short to extin guish the fires. resolved to crush the weaker by the aid of the stronger party, and thus to deprive those who should be disposed to resist his schemes of 'their main prop. The rallying-point of the Huguenots was Rochelle; and Richelieu neglected no means to make himself master of that city. In the celebrated siege of Rochelle he commanded the army in Rochelle, supported by England, from which it received supplies, held out for a long time against all the efforts of the cardinal; and the hope of reducing it was already nearly abandoned, when Richelieu, by the erection of an immense mole, cut off • the communication by sea,-and finally compelled it to surrender by famine (1628). It would be a mistake to see in this war that Richelieu waged against the Huguenots an example Of religions intolen• ance, for although this would have been -quite in keeping with the spirit of his time, Richeliett was, with respect • to this matter, in advance of his age. He destroyed the political cons*• quence of the Huguenots as .a separate body within the state, but by the Peace of Alois or Edict of Grace, which concluded the war (June 1629), he left them liberty of worship and equality of civil rights, and throughout his ministry employed them, with other citizens, in the army, the magistracy and offices con nected with the revenue. During the continu ance of this war Richelieu had taken various steps in pursuance of the other main end of his internal policy, the overthrow of the power of the great nobles. In 1626 he ordered the demolition of all those feudal fortresses which could not be used for the defense of the fron tiers, and which were a perpetual menace to the Crown. The next step was the removal
from court of the queen-mother who had be come hostile and endeavored to obtain Riche lieu's downfall. Saint Simon represented to the king the services of Richelieu and the im possibility of dispensing with his aid. Louis, therefore, ordered him to Versailles, and assigned him apartments in the palace directly below his own. This day (10 Nov. 1630), on which the hopes of the queen and of the cardi nal's enemies were disappointed, was called the "Day of the Dupes" ("la Journee des Dupes"). The queen-mother was banished to Compiegne, her friends removed from place and some of them thrown into the Bastile. This step, and the almost total annihilation of the privileges of the parliaments and the clergy, excited all classes against the despotic admin istration of the cardinal, and the discontent broke out in numerous risings and conspiracies, which, however, were not only suppressed by the prudence and vigor of his measures, but also contributed to the furtherance of his plans, and gradually rendered the royal power entirely absolute. In 1632 the royal arms, directed by Richelieu (in the previous year raised to the rank of duke), suppressed the rising in favor of the Duke of Orleans, the idng's brother, to which the Duke of Montmorency had been induced to lend his support. Even those whom the king privately favored were obliged to yield to the all-powerful Minister, and paid with their lives for their rashness in venturing to oppose him, as in the instance of Cinq-Mars, who in 1642 had entered into a conspiraCy against him, which the king was not without reason, believed to have favored. While the Minister was thus extending the power of the Crown at home he did not neglect the aggrandizement of the tnon abroad. The Thirty Years' War gave him an opportunity of effecting this object. The same man who pursued, with the great est severity, the Protestants in France, employed all. the arts of negotiation, and even force of 'arms, to protect the same sect in Germany, for the purpose of humbling the house of Austria. In the early stages of the war he subsidized Count: Mansfield. Subsequently Gus tavus Adolphus, of Sweden, the great bulwark of religious liberty in• Germany, re ceived aid of every kind from Richelieu as long as he was not in danger of becoming formidable to France; hut when the brilliant victories of Gustavus gave the cardinal reason to consider his power as more dangerous than that of Austria he abandoned that prince in the midst of his successes. The war which he undertook against Spain, and which continued till 1659, put France in possession of Catalonia and Roussillon, and the separation of Portugal from Spain was effected by his assistance (1640).
Richelieu must be allowed to have deserved the character of a great statesman; he cannot he denied the glory of having raised the power of the sovereign in France to its highest pitch; but he was proud, arrogant and vindictive. He was a patron of letters and art, and founder of the French Academy and the Jardin des Plantes. Louis XIII died a few months after him; but in the long reign of Louis XIV the effects of Richelieu's policy were yet visible.
Richelieu was a voluminous writer ; his most important works may be consulted in (Me moires sur la regne de Louis XIII' (in Col lection Petitot, Paris 1823 et seq.) ; (Memoire d'Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, eveque de Luton, ecrit de sa main, l'annee 1607 ou 1610,) edited by Baschet, A. (Paris 1880) ; instructions, diplomatiques, etc.,) edited by Avenal, G. d' (8 vols., Paris 1853-77) ; (Testa ment politique d'Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu) (Amsterdam 1687). For extended biography consult Avenal, G. d', et la monarchic absolue) (2d ed., 4 vols., Paris 1895) ; Barriere, J. F. (Memoirs of the Duke de Richelieu' (New 'York 1904) ; Caillet, J., (L'Administration en France sous le ministcre du cardinal de Richelieu' (new ed.; 2 vols., Paris 1863) • Fagnicz, G., pere Joseph et Richelieu' (2 vols., Paris Hanoteaux, G., du cardinal de Richelieu) (Paris 1893) ; Lodge, R., (Richelieu' (London 1896) ; Martineau, A., cardinal de Richelieu) (Paris 1865) ; Perkins, J. B., and the Growth of the French Power) (New York 1900) ; Topin, M. J. F., (Louis XII et Richelieu' (Paris 1885).