Cardinal Richelieu

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, was a French bishop, statesman and nobleman who became the dominant minister of Louis XIII. Born in 1585, he entered the church partly to preserve a family bishopric and became bishop of Luçon. His political rise accelerated after the Estates-General of 1614; he was created cardinal in 1622 and joined the king’s council in 1624, thereafter directing much of French domestic and foreign policy until his death in 1642.

Richelieu sought to make royal government more effective by reducing the independent military power of great nobles and of the Huguenot political strongholds, most famously through the siege of La Rochelle. Abroad he treated Habsburg power as the principal strategic threat to France, subsidising Protestant enemies of the Habsburgs before bringing France directly into the Thirty Years’ War. His ministry strengthened the Bourbon monarchy, but heavy taxation, war and political repression also generated repeated opposition and enduring controversy.

In G. P. R. James’ Lord Montagu’s Page, set in France during the late 1620s, Lord Montagu’s Page follows English and French characters through the court and military politics of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. In G. P. R. James’ Richelieu: A Tale of France, set in France during the 1620s and 1630s, Richelieu: A Tale of France places private loyalty and romantic attachment inside the dangerous politics of Louis XIII’s court.