Cardinal de Richelieu

In the year 1585, when Elizabeth of England was at the height of her power, when Mary of Scotland lay in prison within two years of her death, when Philip of Spain was beginning to dream of the Invincible Armada, when Henry of Guise and the League were triumphing in France, the future dominator of European politics was born. Armand Jean du Plessis, third and youngest son of François du Plessis, Seigneur de Richelieu, was an infant of no great importance. Even his birthplace, for a long time, was not known with any certainty. His family was noble, but not of the higher nobility which governed provinces, commanded armies, and glittered at Court. He belonged to that race of French country gentlemen which led a strenuous life in the sixteenth century, either for good or evilperhaps mostly for evil. They were generally poor, proud, and greedy. If, by fair means or foul, they could capture a rich wife of their own station, so much the better; if not, they readily sacrificed birth for money, and bestowed an old name, coat and sword, rough manners and ruinous walls, on some heiress of the bourgeoisie. When the resource of marriage failed, such a gentleman would turn himself into a mercenary soldier, Catholic or Huguenot, or creep into Court employment in the shadow of some great noble of his province; or failing such honest means, he might clap on a mask and take to highway robbery, rich travellers being better worth pillaging than the peasants who hid in their hovels as his horse's heavy hoofs clanked by. Sometimes Religion herself, or the false Duessa who personified her in those days, might help a needy gentleman to a livelihood. There was many an abbot who had never been a monk; and there were lucky familiesthat of Du Plessis, for instancewho possessed a bishopric as provision for a younger son. The Du Plessis were an old family of Poitou. In that ancient and famous province they had held several fiefs so far back as the early thirteenth century; but they were a wandering, fighting race, without strong attachment, it seems, to their native soil. One of them is said to have gone to England in the suite of Guy de Lusignan, and to have married a noble English wife. Another journeyed to Cyprus with the same distinguished patron. In the Hundred Years War, two Du Plessis brothers were found fighting on opposite sides, French and English. Pierre, the elder, head of the less distinguished branch of the family, was a robber of Church property as well as a traitor to the national cause; but in the way of morals there was not much to choose between him and his brother Sauvage, the patriot, in favour of whom their father threatened to disinherit him.

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