Cardinal Richelieu: Hero or Villain

Robert Knecht looks at the ‘eminence rouge’ and considers how his image, carefully crafted during his lifetime, has become that of a demonic schemer.

Among foreign statesmen of the past who are well-known to the average educated Briton, Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) occupies an almost unique position. He turns up in the most unlikely places, such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the children’s cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds . Yet his career did not impinge particularly on English history. His role in defeating Buckingham’s expedition to the Ile de Ré hardly explains the exceptional place he has come to occupy in British historical thinking. The only other foreign statesman who enjoys a comparable status is Bismarck. We need to ask ourselves whether we have been brainwashed by Richelieu’s own propaganda or by the fictional portrayal of the Cardinal generated by the Romantic movement in the nineteenth century.

Richelieu, who dominated French foreign and domestic politics as Louis XIII’s chief minister from 1624 until his death in 1642, took great pains to ensure for himself an enviable reputation. His skilful use of propaganda has left its mark on history, though recent research has helped to put the record straight. From the start of his ministry he took care to amass extensive personal archives. The many reports which he sent to Louis XIII (r.1610-43) and his letters to other important contemporaries bear the stamp of a man writing for posterity. He supported extensive archival research by men such as Pierre Dupuy (1582-1651) and Théodore Godefroy (1580-1649) in the hope of giving his policies a historical perspective. He sponsored the composition of pamphlets in his favour, reviewed and corrected the works of historians writing about contemporary events. The history of Louis XIII’s reign written by Scipion Dupleix, a militant Catholic and protagonist of absolutism, is an excellent guide to the estimate Richelieu wanted to leave of himself. Dupleix lists the qualities needed of a minister: judgement, reason, diligence, assiduity, knowledge, experience of state affairs, uprightness, reputation, nobility of birth, eloquence, skill and courage. He finds them all in Richelieu and even asserts that the Cardinal was divinely chosen and inspired.


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