Part I: raise to power
Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu was
born on September 9, 1585, in Paris1. His parents were of mixed
social origin: his father, François du Plessis sieur de
Richelieu, was the Grand Provost of King Henri III, and his
mother, Suzanne de la Porte, was a daughter of a Parisian lawyer,
albeit a famous one. Armand-Jean was the fourth child.
François du Plessis was 37 at the time of his son's birth, and he died five years later. His widow left Paris with her five young children (Richelieu's sister Nicole was the fifth) and moved to the family estate in Poitou. From what is known about her, she was a strong-willed woman and her influence on her children was considerable.
From young age, Armand-Jean was destined for the career of a soldier. As usual in noble families of the period, the oldest son, Henri du Plessis, was to be a courtier, the second one, Alphonse, was for the Church, and the younger children (Armand-Jean, in this case) could only make their fortune in the army. Accordingly, Armand-Jean was sent to the Collège de Navarre and his tutors prophesied a brilliant future for him, when his older brother Alphonse declared that he would be a monk.
From the point of view of the period this was a question of money rather than devotion. By deciding to become a monk, Alphonse du Plessis was resigning from the post of the Bishop of Luçon, currently occupied by a proxy. In the 17th century France, Church positions were, for all purposes, hereditary and passed from uncle to nephew. By keeping them in the family, the family ensured for itself an important source of revenues. To help his mother to keep the revenues from the bishopric, Armand-Jean agreed to change careers.
At seventeen, Armand-Jean entered the Church - at twenty-one he went to Rome, where he made a strong impression on the Pope and was consecrated the Bishop of Luçon, even though he was several years below the canonical age. Although he could have followed the example of many others before him and spent his life in Paris, trying to win the favor of the king, Richelieu chose to go and reside in Luçon, which thereby obtained a resident bishop for the first time in the living memory of the inhabitants.
During the next few years in this dismal town, Richelieu made an acquaintance of the man who was to assist him throughout his life: François le Clerc du Tremblay, better known as Father Joseph and in the future, as Grey Eminence. A visionary and a shrewd politician, Father Joseph had a considerable influence on the powers-that-be, and through his intervention, Richelieu was noticed. In 1615, he was requested to compose an address to the throne from the Estates General - the nominal representative body of the French nation. This address made a strong impression, and the Regent Queen, Marie de Medici, began to use him on internal diplomatic missions until in 1616 he was appointed the Foreign Minister.
The ascension to power of Louis XIII, who was declared of age several years earlier, was followed by dismissal of all of his mother's creatures, and Richelieu had to return to Luçon.
He spent the next few years in frustration, from time to time negotiating for peace between Louis XIII and his mother. For this he was made a Cardinal, but not called to the court. It would seem that it was precisely his obvious talents that made Louis XIII hesitate so much - he feared that Richelieu would dominate him. It is difficult to say whether the young King was right - for the entire period of Richelieu's power, no important decision was made without asking the King's opinion first, but it is not clear whether the King ever had an opinion of his own.
Common sense, the insistence of Richelieu's friends and the disastrous condition of the French politics finally prevailed - in 1624, Louis XIII appointed Richelieu a member of the Royal Council. On August 24, 1624, a few days before his 39th birthday, Richelieu became the head of this council.
Footnotes:
1 Richelieu's birthplace is a disputed topic; here I adopt the opinion expressed by the subject himself, who called himself a Parisian. He was baptized in Paris, on the 5th of May of the following year, in the church of Saint-Eustache. The delay can be explained by the fact that both the mother and the child were very ill after the delivery and not expected to survive.
Bibliography:
Belloc, Hilaire: Richelieu. Star Books,
1929.
Erlanger, Philippe: Richelieu. Librairie Académique
Perrin, Paris, 1985.
Huxley, Aldous: The Devils of Loudun, Harper & Row,
1959.
Huxley, Aldous: Grey Eminence. Meridian Books Inc., New
York, 1959.
Wedgwood, C. V.: Richelieu and the French Monarchy.
Collier Books, 1962.
Wikisource: Gabriel Hanotaux, Richelieu Cardinal et Premier Ministre (in French)
Wikisource: Victor Cousin, Secret history of the French court under Richelieu and Mazarin (chapter 1)
Richelieu and cats (a blog in Russian)
