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Summary

    Beginning
    Bishop of Luzon

State policy of Cardinal Richelieu

Death and inheritance

Richelieu's legacy

The little story

Representation in arts and culture

Notes and references

Bibliography

Appendices

    Genealogy

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu

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Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu
Illustrative image of the article Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu
Triple portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, by Philippe de Champaigne
(London, National Gallery, circa 1642).
Biography
Birth September 9, 1585
Paris, France)
Religious order Cistercian order
Death December 4, 1642 (at age 57)
Paris, France)
Cardinal of the Catholic Church
Created
cardinal September 5, 1622
by Pope Gregory XV
Cardinal title Cardinal-priest
Bishop of the Catholic Church
Episcopal consecration April 17, 1607
By S.É. Anne de Pérusse d’Escars de Givry
Bishop of Luzon
1605 (confirmed December 18, 1606) – April 29, 1624
(17 years, 4 months and 11 days)
Previous Alphonse-Louis du Plessis de Richelieu Emery de Bragelongne1 Next
Abbot of Cîteaux
(coadjutor from 1627)
November 19, 1635 – December 4, 1642
(7 years and 15 days)
Previous Pierre III Nivelle Claude Vaussin Next
Abbot and general of Cluny
(coadjutor from 1627)
1635 – December 4, 1642
(7 years, 11 months and 3 days)
Previous Jacques IV Vény d'Arbouze Armand de II Bourbon-Condé [ref. desired], prince of Conti Next
Other functions
Secular function
Doctor of the Sorbonne in 1607. Principal minister of King Louis XIII from 1624 to 1642.
Replaced after his death by Cardinal Mazarin
Signature of Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu
Coat of arms
“Candorem purpura servat et dirigit et firmat2”
“Expertus fidelem jupiter”
(en) Notice on www.catholic-hierarchy.org
edit See the template documentation

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, known as Cardinal de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu and Duke of Fronsac, is a French ecclesiastic and statesman, born September 9, 1585 in Paris and died December 4, 1642 in the same city . Peer of France, he was the principal minister of King Louis XIII.

Initially intended for the profession of arms, he was forced to take holy orders in order to keep the benefit of the bishopric of Luçon for his family. Temporarily Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1616, he was named cardinal in 1622 and became principal minister of state for Louis XIII in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642, when Cardinal Mazarin succeeded him.

The function exercised by Richelieu with Louis XIII is often referred to by the expression "Prime Minister", although the title was only used unofficially at the time to designate the king's principal minister whose action also included many political, diplomatic and colonial dimensions as well as cultural and religious ones.

Renowned for his skill and even for his character considered devious, often criticized for his uncompromising firmness, he renewed the vision of reason of state and made it the keystone of his methods of government and his conception of diplomacy and policy. Fighting abroad against the Habsburgs, and internally against the nobility and the Protestants, he severely repressed both murderous duels and peasant anti-tax revolts. He also distinguished himself in cases that remained famous, such as the Affair of the Demons of Loudun.

Richelieu is considered one of the major founders of the modern state in France. His action is a long fight for a strengthening of royal power.

Through its action, the monarchy asserted itself in a new form which would later be designated by the term absolutism, in a triumphant manner under the personal government of Louis XIV (1661 – 1715), then in a more peaceful manner under that of Cardinal de Fleury (1726 – 1743).
Bishop of Luzon
Youth
François du Plessis, Lord of Richelieu, Grand Provost of France and father of the cardinal.

Richelieu was born on September 9, 1585 in Paris, in the Hôtel de Losse located rue du Bouloi3, n 1. He is wavy from his birth because we do not know if this sickly and feverish infant will survive. He was not baptized until the eighth month, on May 5, 1586, in the Saint-Eustache church in Paris6. His family, of ancient nobility (nobility of dress and sword) both Poitevin and Parisian but poor, is very honorably known: his father, François du Plessis, lord of Richelieu, is a soldier and a courtier who occupies the office of Grand Provost of France; his mother, Suzanne de La Porte, is the daughter of a lawyer in parliament7. He is the third in a family of five children8:

    Henry born in 1578;
    Alphonse, born in 1582;
    Armand Jean himself;
    Françoise, born in 1586 (wife of Jean-Baptiste de Beauvau then of René de Vignerot de Pontcourlay);
    Nicole, born in 1587 (wife of Urbain de Maillé-Brézé).

An Isabelle, unknown to historians until 19019, would be an ignored sister10 whose existence and identity were contested11. She married in 1613, without the consent of her family, a certain Louis Pidoux, doctor. They lived in Franche-Comté to escape the Blois ordinance of 1579 and Isabelle died in 1648.

There is also talk of a “Marguerite” in the birth registers of the church of Braye-sous-Faye, parish of the Château de Richelieu in Poitou, but, due to lack of information, we can think that this child died in young age.

When young Armand was only five years old, his father, captain of Henry IV's guards, died on June 10, 1590 of pernicious fever. He leaves a family in debt but royal generosity allows him to avoid financial difficulties. Previously, to reward her for the participation of François du Plessis in her service during the Wars of Religion, King Henry III had given the bishopric of Luçon to her family in 158412. The latter thus receives the majority of the income for its private use, which dissatisfies the ecclesiastics who would have preferred that these funds were used for the Church13.

At the age of nine, young Armand-Jean was sent to Paris, by his uncle Amador de La Porte, in September 1594 to the college of Navarre, to study philosophy, Latin, Greek and Hebrew: he then bears the title of “Marquis du Chillou”14, from the former possession of the lords of Chillou in Jaulnay, district of Chinon, of which Richelieu is the distant descendant15; title that he would also later bear at the Academy founded by him. He then received training at the equestrian academy of Monsieur de Pluvinel, who trained gentlemen for military careers. There he learned horse riding, but also equestrian acrobatics, fencing, dance, literature, mathematics and drawing. He then lived the typical life of an officer of the time, the doctor Théodore de Mayerne having to treat him for gonorrhea in 160516. In 1599, he met François Leclerc du Tremblay, a former student at the Collège de Navarre, who had come to announce to his former teachers his intention to abandon his military life and his titles, to devote himself to his vocation as a Capuchin.
Temperament of Mr. de Luçon

Françoise Hildesheimer, in her Richelieu, in chap. The conquest of the hat, p. 113, presents it as follows:

    “He certainly does not feign illness, this neurotic whose acute hypersensitivity, extreme nervous tension, uncontrolled outbursts of anger, tears, melancholy, even depression are the daily lot. These ever-recurring intrigues that he must overcome and this patience to which he must force himself are, undoubtedly, tiring for this emotional person who has been able to acquire an apparent more or less lasting self-control. »

Of her protégé, Marie de Médicis, who is also knowledgeable on the subject, states: "He cries when he wants", suggesting a duplicity that her pious biographer Antoine Aubéry will transform into quality, her tears marking "a tenderness of heart and a natural compassion17", in any case an ability to feel and express emotions thanks to which we can better understand this obsessed with reason18.
Canonical investiture

Destined for the profession of arms, Richelieu found himself obliged in 1605 to turn towards a religious career: his brother Alphonse-Louis du Plessis refused the bishopric of Luçon (kept for 20 years in the family) to become a monk upon entering at the Grande Chartreuse, and the family refuses to lose what they consider to be an important source of income. He was frail and sickly (migraines perhaps due to epileptic seizures and tuberculosis at the end of his life19): the prospect of becoming a bishop did not displease him in the least. University studies attracted him: he began studying theology in 1605 and obtained his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1607.

A priest without a vocation but attached to his duties20, he was named bishop of Luçon on December 18, 1606 by King Henry IV, and went to Rome where he received canonical investiture on April 17, 1607 from Cardinal de Givry21. According to Tallemant des Réaux, he would have cheated on his age (he is 22 years old, while the age required to be a bishop is 26 years old)22 and, after a supposed confession by the new bishop before Pope Paul V, he would have commented with a simple sentence: “If he lives long, he will be a great cheat”22. Michel Carmona nevertheless believes that the anecdote, however pleasant it may be, does not conform to reality: Richelieu having gone to Rome precisely to obtain a dispensation linked to his young age, he could hardly lie about the fact that -ci21.

He met the chapter of Luçon in Fontenay-le-Comte on December 15, 1608 and did not go to Luçon until the following year. Shortly after his installation in his diocese, he showed his character as a Catholic reformer by being the first bishop in France to implement the institutional reforms that the Council of Trent had prescribed between 1545 and 1563.

Richelieu then became friends with François Leclerc du Tremblay (better known as “Father Joseph”), a Capuchin monk, becoming his closest confidant. This intimacy with Richelieu (whom we called “His Eminence”) and the gray color of his frock earned Father Joseph the nickname gray eminence. Richelieu subsequently often used him as an emissary and agent during diplomatic negotiations.

During this period, Richelieu also began to surround himself with friends who would remain loyal to him throughout his life. The secretaries Denis Charpentier and Michel Le Masle, as well as the doctor François Citoys, were recruited in 1608-160923,24.

Richelieu assisted Father Humblot in the religious conference held at Châtellerault between July 8 and 16, 1611, against the Dauphinois pastor Daniel Chamier and the minister Le Faucheur. The aim of the dispute is to obtain the conversion of a local noblewoman named La Foulenne25. Richelieu was therefore already committed to fighting against Protestantism before his political rise.
Political rise
Cardinal coat of arms of Richelieu: silver, with three gules chevrons surmounted by a ducal crown and a cardinal's hat26.

In August 1614, at the age of 29, thanks to the support of the queen's private secretary, Denis Bouthillier, he was elected deputy of the Poitevin clergy to the States General of Paris, then spokesperson for the assembly27.

He then placed himself at the service of the regent on the recommendations of Cardinal du Perron who praised his intellectual qualities28 and remained on rue des Mauvaises-Paroles until 161729.

Marie de Medici, the queen mother, had him appointed in November 1615 grand chaplain to the young Queen Anne of Austria, then on November 25, 1616 secretary of state for foreign affairs, with entry and session at the King's Council. He shares the usufruct of this office with the old secretary Villeroy, who refuses to give him his work tools and files30. Along with Claude Barbin and Claude Mangot, he was one of the principal ministers in the service of Concino Concini, Marshal of Ancre and favorite of the Queen Mother31. This first ministry will only last 6 months.

On April 24, 1617, the execution of Concini, at the initiative of Louis XIII and the Duke of Luynes, led to the exclusion of the queen mother from the king's entourage. Louis XIII, meeting Richelieu at the Louvre, said to him “Here I am freed from your tyranny, Monsieur de Luçon”32. However, his disgrace was not as significant as that of Claude Barbin and Claude Mangot and he was not subject to legal proceedings. Richelieu must follow the disgraced queen mother to Blois. He initially tried to mediate between the Queen Mother and the Duke of Luynes, then retired on June 11 to his priory of Coussay without warning the Queen, who was increasingly suspicious of her head of the Council. Distressed, seeing his political career lost, he wrote his will there16. The king even banished him in April 1618 to Avignon where he stayed at the Hôtel de Beaumont, dragging his older brother Henri and his brother-in-law René de Vignerot de Pont-Courlay33 into his disgrace. He devoted the majority of his time there to writing, composing for example The Instruction of the Christian16.

Marie de Medici, under house arrest at the Château de Blois, escaped on February 22, 1619 with the complicity of the Duke of Épernon and took the lead in an aristocratic rebellion. Luynes then calls on Richelieu, who he instructs to negotiate an accommodation between mother and son. He succeeded in bringing together Louis XIII and Marie de Medici, concluded the Treaty of Angoulême on April 30, 1619 and organized the first reconciliation at the Château de Couzières on September 7, 161934, acquiring a reputation as a fine negotiator. Marie de Medici, dissatisfied, restarts the war (“second war of mother and son”). This time Richelieu was clearly in the rebel camp but played it safe, which allowed him, after the defeat of the noble coalition, to participate in the solemn reconciliation at the Château de Brissac, in August 1620, and in the treaty of 'Angers on the 10th of the same month.

Even if Luynes got closer to Richelieu by marrying his nephew M. de Combalet to his niece Marie-Madeleine, Louis XIII and his favorite acted secretly against him. While the galero - cardinal's hat - was promised to him against his arbitration, it was Valletta and Bentivoglio which were appointed by Paul V, at the suggestion of France. Finally, the death of Luynes following a fever created a political vacuum which benefited Marie de Medici. She obtained from the new Pope Gregory XV the cardinalate for her protégé, who was enthroned in Lyon on December 12, 162234. The same year, Richelieu, now a cardinal, was suggested by Marie de Medici to the young king. However, Louis XIII - who has bitter memories of Concino Concini - initially refuses to appeal to the cardinal. It was not until April 29, 1624 that Richelieu again entered the King's Council, with the protection of the Queen Mother. This appointment marks a decisive turning point in the reign of Louis XIII.

The year 1624 certainly marks the end of the first part of his biography, his long march towards the top of the State. At the end of a difficult journey through the desert, the young bishop who became a cardinal and then a minister is a mature man of almost forty years old35 and, although power is within reach, the majority of his life is now behind him.

Marie de Medici donated, on June 28, 1627, to her favorite Richelieu, the Petit Luxembourg, subsequently part of the Dupes' Day36.
State policy of Cardinal Richelieu
Cardinal Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne, Strasbourg Museum of Fine Arts.

To a touchy Louis XIII anxious to assert royal authority, Richelieu proposed the following program:

    destroy the political power of Protestantism in France;
    to destroy the pride and factious spirit of the nobility;
    and lower the House of Austria.

At first suspicious, Louis XIII then placed his trust in Richelieu37.

At the head of the devout party, Marie de Medici ended up taking offense at Richelieu's desire to counter the hegemony of the Catholic house of Habsburg: for this purpose he was ready to ally himself with Protestant states. During Dupes' Day (1630), she demanded from the king the dismissal of the cardinal whom she considered too independent. The latter, who owes everything to the Queen Mother, believes himself lost. His friend the Cardinal of Valletta stopped him from fleeing. But the king confirms his confidence in Richelieu: it is Marie de Médicis and the chancellor Michel de Marillac who must leave. The exile of the queen mother confirms the abandonment of a policy which, to ensure the triumph of Catholicism in Europe, agreed to leave the leading role to Spain. Marie de Medici will never forgive her “creature” for having betrayed her16.
Political and military submission of Protestants
Cardinal Richelieu at the siege of La Rochelle, by Henri-Paul Motte. Orbigny Bernon Museum, La Rochelle, 1881.

In 1625, Richelieu addressed the king in his council to warn him “that it was a certain thing that as long as the Huguenot party existed in France, the King would not be absolute in his Kingdom”38. However, following the Edict of Nantes, the Protestants of France formed a state within a state: they had their political assemblies, a territorial organization and their military strongholds. Their metropolis is the city of La Rochelle, which has in fact freed itself from royal authority for half a century. When Richelieu came to power, the king led several military campaigns against the Protestants, but in vain, being poorly served by his favorite Charles d'Albert de Luynes. The cardinal will pursue the king's policy with inflexible will.

In a context of tension between France and England, the latter encouraging the sedition of the Reformed, the city of La Rochelle intends to preserve its freedoms, in particular that of maintaining direct relations with foreign powers, in particular England. Richelieu decides to definitively subdue the city. He undertook the siege and did not shy away from any means: a 1,500 meter dike was built which blocked all communication between the city and the sea. The siege then took a dramatic turn: La Rochelle resisted for more than a year at the cost of the death of four fifths of its population. The surrender of the city (1628) sounded the death knell for Protestant political and military autonomy. Louis XIII, however, confirmed freedom of worship with the Edict of Grace of Alès (1629).

Furthermore, the religious climate of the time was at the time of a counter-offensive by Catholicism. This is the Counter-Reformation: Louis XIII has always been deeply Catholic, unlike his father Henry IV who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism to access the throne. In 1620 he imposed the reestablishment of Catholic worship in the Protestant province of Béarn (in which it had been banned since 1570, by decision of Jeanne d'Albret). Richelieu himself inaugurated the Saint-Louis church of the Jesuit order in Paris.
Supremacy of royal power against the Greats

In his memoirs, Richelieu defends his policy by maintaining that there was an absolute necessity to bring into line all these “Great ones who, abusing the goods that the King has given them and the power that they hold from His Majesty, do not “are used only to make themselves criminals”39. Also, faced with the turbulent nobility and its regular uprisings, Richelieu responded with firmness: he removed the high offices that the great lords exercised with the king and razed more than 2,000 fortified castles which were no longer useful to the king. defense of the kingdom (notably Pamiers and Mazéres).
Cardinal Richelieu.

It gives more power to the Stewards who are sent to enforce royal decisions in the provinces. Provincial assemblies (states) are sometimes suppressed. The institutionalization of this stewardship of police, justice and finances, made it possible to impose from 1635 the "fiscal tightening" which followed France's entry into the war, considered abusive and which increased Richelieu's unpopularity. at that time40.

The governors of the provinces, sometimes powerful notables, were monitored and Richelieu did not hesitate to take action with the greatest: he had the Duke of Montmorency, governor of Languedoc, beheaded, who took up arms with Gaston d'Orléans in 1632 and defended the claims of the province. He ended up placing under house arrest in the fortress of Loches the old Duke of Épernon, governor of Guyenne and faithful of Marie de Medici who reported the negative effects on the population of the increasing tax levies of the central power. He did not hesitate to rely on shifting networks of alliances and local factions by weaving a sometimes complex set of relationships with parliaments and the nobility41.

Furthermore, Richelieu must thwart the numerous intrigues organized by all those his action bothers, notably the queen mother Marie de Medici and the king's brother Gaston d'Orléans. The plotters did not hesitate to consider the assassination of the cardinal or to appeal to foreign powers. But the conspiracies led by the Count of Chalais in 1626 and the Marquis of Cinq-Mars in 1642 were resounding failures, the protagonists being executed (Chalais, Cinq-Mars), put in prison (Marshal d'Ornano, César and Alexandre de Vendôme) or disgraced (the Duchess of Chevreuse, the Princess of Conti, the Marshal of Bassompierre) by Louis XIII. Only the main beneficiary and accomplice of these plots, the king's brother, Gaston, escaped without too much damage; However, he lost his rights to the regency.

Deeply affected by the death, on July 8, 1619, of his brother Henri during a duel, Richelieu repressed this practice with the greatest severity and had the nobles caught in the act of fighting put to death. On June 22, 1627, François de Montmorency-Bouteville and his cousin François de Rosmadec, Count of Chapelles, murderers in a duel of the Marquis de Bussy d'Amboise, were executed.
Lowering of the House of Austria
Related article: History of the French navy from Richelieu to Louis XIV.

After having reestablished the authority of the king in France, Richelieu undertook to lower the pretensions of the House of Austria in Europe. The Habsburgs succeeded, thanks to a successful patrimonial policy, in bringing together under their control a large number of European states: Austria, Bohemia, Spain, Milan, Naples, Netherlands, Portugal. In the name of militant Catholicism, they sought to establish their authority in Germany and to reduce the Protestant states there during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

France was already financing Holland and Sweden, Protestant powers at war against the Habsburgs. Initially, Richelieu placed the Valtelline valley, an essential communications hub in Europe, which Spain disputed with him (1626), under French control. He ensured the Duke of Nevers the Duchy of Mantua and Montferrat by forcing his way to Susa (1629): this is the episode of the War of the Succession of Mantua.

In 1632, the king's army occupied the States of Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, hostile to France.

Louis XIII declared war on Spain in 1635. The first times of war were difficult: the fall of Corbie on the Somme in 1636 raised fears of an attack on Paris. Richelieu is collapsed but Louis XIII organizes the defense of the capital. From 1640, the war effort tilted fortunes in favor of France. Richelieu, who gave himself the title of “Grand Master and Superintendent of Navigation”, developed a land army but also a permanent war navy. It considerably increased tax levies, leading to numerous revolts among the peasantry which were harshly repressed.

Marie de Medici, advised by the pamphleteer Mathieu de Morgues, tried in vain to revive the party of “good Catholics” against its policy of alliance with the Protestant States42.

Richelieu exploits the lack of cohesion within the Spanish monarchy. Catalonia seceded in 1640. Shortly after, Portugal restored its independence, ending the Iberian Union into which it had been forced sixty years previously under the reign of Philip II of Spain.

The armies of the King of France conquered Alsace and Artois in 1640, then Roussillon in 1642. After the death of the cardinal, a brilliant military leader, the future Prince Louis II de Condé won the victories of Rocroi (1643), Freiburg im Breisgau (1644), Nördlingen (1645) and Lens (1648).
A great design

The grand design is part of the arsenal of ordinary and glorious attributes with which great politicians are awarded. Thus, Richelieu would have been the champion of the conquest of “natural borders”43, placing France within the limits of seas, rivers and mountains44. The idea, in reality, is foreign to a time which adapts very well to political-geographical diversity: Richelieu's strategic concern is not to draw geographically coherent borders, but much more to "open doors" towards the outside thanks to the possession of landlocked strongholds in foreign territory; hence the importance of Pignerol, Saluces, Philippsburg and Vieux-Brisach in the negotiations.

This strategy constitutes the commonplace of an Ancien Régime diplomacy45 concerned with protecting the country from invasion, as well as allowing it to carry its weapons abroad. More recently, Henri Hauser discovered another great design in the cardinal minister: opening new economic routes to France intended to ensure its prosperity46. But, however real, original and interesting they may have been, these aims remained, like the internal reform of the kingdom, on the fringes of his concerns47.
The price of glory

    “In the modern era, from the 16th century to the 18th century, the State was ultimately only a military State responsible almost exclusively for controlling violent impulses: protection and possibly conquest abroad, control of violence private inside. The rest was in some way the consequence of this state of affairs. »

— Jean Meyer, The Weight of the State, PUF, 1983, 304 p., (ISBN 978-2-1303-7770-2).

The modern State is indeed a State of war. The time of the “war king”48 studied by the historian Joël Cornette corresponds to this “first 17th century” which saw the desire to sacrifice any other design to the war effort including Richelieu, for France49, and Olivarès, for Spain50, appear the champions for their respective sovereigns, whose glory it is up to them to triumph.

This policy of glory will be the matrix of all violence: military violence; economic violence; violence of reduction to obedience, and thus violence of the law. Here are the future works of Richelieu, zealous servant of this State and this king eager for glory, a cardinal-minister such as the image has been transmitted to us by his adversaries and reinforced by romantic literature - "the man with the bloody hand, with the scarlet dress” by Victor Hugo, who passes, mercilessly, in the background of Marion Delorme’s scene.

Because it was indeed the cardinal-minister who ensured the transition, through a state of war increasingly greedy in men and money, from the royalty of the king of justice inherited from Saint Louis to the administrative monarchy of Louis XIV and Colbert and the so-called “finance” state. In the shorter term, however, as a reward for years of sacrifice and effort, it will be a war to continue and an unbearable financial problem for the populations that Richelieu and Louis XIII will bequeath to Mazarin51.
Other achievements

It gave a great extension to the colonial establishments, occupying in particular the Lesser Antilles, Santo Domingo, Guyana, Senegal, etc. To support Samuel de Champlain in New France and retain the post of Quebec, he founded the Compagnie des Cent-Associés in 1627, then returned Canada to the French authority of Champlain by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye ( 1632), after the colony was taken by the Kirke brothers in 1629. This success allowed the colony to subsequently develop and become the center of French-speaking culture in North America.

Richelieu is also famous for his support of the arts; the best known fact is the founding in 1635 of the French Academy, a society responsible for questions concerning the French language.
Death and inheritance
Richelieu on his deathbed, painted by Philippe de Champaigne.

In the last years of his life, Richelieu suffered from recurrent fevers (perhaps malaria), rheumatism and gout (he only moved in a sedan chair and litter), tenesmus (caused by repeated hemorrhoids). and probably contracted by his gonorrhea during his military training, which gives rise to trivial sarcasm about the “cardinal with the rotten ass”52), intestinal tuberculosis (resulting in fistulas and tuberculous osteitis which causes his right arm to fester) and migraine, which accentuates his hypochondria. The enemas and bloodletting carried out by his doctors only weakened him. Frequently coughing up blood, he died on December 4, 1642, probably as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis, his autopsy having revealed caseous necrosis of the lungs53.

The demands of his policies made the cardinal so unpopular that when his death was announced, the people lit bonfires to celebrate the event54,55.
Legacy

Richelieu recommends to the king the man who will be his successor, Jules Mazarin, whose trajectory will be similar to his own. The two cardinals will have spent the same time in power; Richelieu from April 1624 to December 1642, Mazarin from January 1643 to Mars 1661. The first suffered the storm of November 1630, the second the storm of the Fronde between 1648 and 1652. Both came into business thanks to the support of the queen mothers. Fairly penniless, in a country bleeding dry by war, both built immense fortunes.

The historian Joseph Bergin56 analyzed the stages of that of Richelieu57. It is based on land wealth divided into three poles: the Poitou-Touraine complex, the Aunis-Saintonge complex, the Paris and Île-de-France complex. This leads him, with his great mastery of Navigation, to control the economic and financial activities of the sea. Richelieu also benefits from tax revenues via his rights over the king and his governments, including those of Brittany and Aunis. He accumulated ecclesiastical benefits as a representative of the best-endowed abbeys in the kingdom such as Cluny, Cîteaux, Saint-Arnould de Metz, La Chaise-Dieu, Saint-Lucien de Beauvais.

On his death he left a fortune of 20 million pounds. This is more than Henry II of Bourbon-Condé, who nevertheless had received the Montmorency inheritance, whose fortune did not exceed 15 million pounds at his death. Mazarin intended to do better58.
Personal inheritance
Will
His will, Carnegie library (Reims).

At his death, the Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu left a large fortune, estimated at around twenty million pounds divided between lands, buildings, profits, prebends from the fifteen abbeys of which he was commendatory abbot (Cluny, Marmoutiers, Cîteaux la Chaise- Dieu, Redon, Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire59,60), debts, money and jewelry. Its distribution was specified in a will drawn up in May 1642 in Narbonne with Chancellor Séguier, Secretary of State Claude Bouthillier and Secretary of State for War Sublet de Noyers as executors. They, with Alphonse, archbishop of Lyon and brother of the deceased, as well as in an unofficial but essential manner, the Duchess of Aiguillon had to settle the disputes raised by Miss de Brézé, forgotten by the cardinal and who claimed the status of intestate heiress and by the Grand Condé thanks to her marriage with Claire-Clémence de Maillé, niece of the cardinal-duke. If an agreement was reached with the first in 1631, it was not until 1674 that the conflict with the second was resolved61.
Legatees

Richelieu’s legatees were:

    King Louis XIII who definitively received the Palais-Cardinal (offered in 1636 but of which Richelieu had retained the usufruct) and its furniture, the Hôtel de Sillery, 1,500,000 livres in currency, the large white Richelieu diamond, the “chapel of gold and diamonds”;
    as universal legatee, his great-nephew Armand-Jean de Vignerot du Plessis, received his own father's debts, the duchy of Richelieu, the lands of Saintonge, the domain of Brouage, Ferté-Bernard and a number of furniture and buildings;
    Jean Armand de Maillé de Brézé who inherited more than 1.7 million books in various forms;
    Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot d'Aiguillon who inherited Petit Luxembourg, land, jewelry, an annuity and her dower;
    the Marquis de Pont-Courlay who received 200,000 pounds of silver and 65,000 pounds of income;
    Urbain de Maillé, marshal of Brézé, who received the usufruct of Trèves and the debts of his family;
    292,000 pounds were distributed among part of the members of his household, his “domesticity”61.

Family
Detailed article: Maison du Plessis de Richelieu.

The direct descendants of Armand-Jean de Vignerot du Plessis include Marshal de Richelieu, friend of Louis XV, as well as the Duke of Richelieu, Prime Minister of Louis XVIII from 1815 to 1818.

One of his brother's descendants, the Duke of Aiguillon, was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1771 to 1774.
Burials
Statues of the Richelieu cenotaph in the Sorbonne chapel.

The cardinal's body was buried in the Sorbonne chapel, then in a vault under a Carrara marble mausoleum commissioned by his heir the Duchess of Aiguillon, sculpted by François Girardon from drawings by Le Brun; it was not completed until 1694. This funerary monument supports a sculpted group representing the half-reclining cardinal, one hand on his heart and on the cord of the Order of the Holy Spirit, the other open on the book, his eyes turned towards the altar and the Creator , abandoning himself in the arms of the allegory of Piety and at his feet the allegory of Christian Doctrine (or Science?)[clarification necessary] also afflicted by his death. On the sides, two angels bear his coat of arms, which are reproduced on the stained glass windows of the three windows which light the interior porch. Above him hangs, thirty feet high, the cardinal's authentic red hat decorated with tassels of the same color. According to legend, when the cord lets go, the hat will fall and the cardinal's soul will ascend to Paradise62.

On December 5, 1793, revolutionaries ransacked his tomb despite the physical intervention of Alexandre Lenoir. They exhume the body, then decapitate it; the rest of the body was either thrown into the Seine or placed in one of the cellars of the Sorbonne serving as a common grave with those of several members of his family, including Marshal de Richelieu. This desecration gives rise to trafficking in relics without our being able to attest to their authenticity, such as the head, hair and a little finger of the cardinal63. The partly mummified head would have been taken away by a man named Cheval, a hosier or grocer on rue de la Harpe who, when the Terror was over, perhaps repentant, insistently offered the anterior part64 to Father Boshamp65 who, on his death in 1805, in turn bequeaths it to Nicolas Armez, mayor of Plourivo. His great-nephew Louis Armez, deputy for Côtes-du-Nord, sometimes brought the mummified head to Paris to show it to his colleagues in the National Assembly.

In 1846, the head was loaned to the painter Bonhomé to create a full-length portrait of the cardinal for the Council of State. Sheltered in Saint-Brieuc where it is exhibited every year during the college awards ceremony, the relic returned to the Sorbonne on December 15, 1866 during a funeral ceremony in the presence of Victor Duruy, Minister of the Public education and a delegation from the French Academy66.

In 1896, Gabriel Hanotaux, Minister of Foreign Affairs and biographer of the cardinal, took possession of the skull to examine it one last time, take photographs and casts67,68, before placing it in a sealed box and making covered with a screed of reinforced cement, in an undisclosed location near the tomb69.

On December 4, 1971, the head was