Richelieu, the cardinal who created modern France

There is a Richelieu of the popular vulgate, the cold, careerist, Machiavellian politician who has been returned to us by opposing publications and by the novels of Alexandre Dumas. Alongside this stereotyped image, the most recent historiography has reconstructed the complex and fascinating traits of a man who managed to transform the French monarchy and international politics in the first half of the seventeenth century. This is the Richelieu that we find in the homonymous biography written by Stefano Tabacchi and published by Salerno Editrice (2022, euro 27, pp. 424, also e-book).

In Tabacchi's book - documented, rigorous and at the same time enjoyable - the portrait of a genuinely religious spirit emerges, far from lacking in ideal inspirations, but capable of lucid and ruthless determination in political action . A political action that aimed at a vast project of strengthening the monarchical power and affirmation of France on an international level.

However, Richelieu's project is impossible to understand without reconstructing , as Stefano Tabacchi does in his book, the contours of the era in which the cardinal found himself acting . After emerging from the period of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in the second half of the sixteenth century, France had been reunited by Henry IV and had over time gained a dominant position within the European political scene. In 1610, however, Henry IV was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic and the French throne was ascended by his very young son Louis XIII, who had to reign for several years under the regency of his mother Maria de' Medici.

During the period of the regency the monarchy had weakened, the nobility had reared its head demanding the restitution of the ancient privileges, while another major problem was that of the Protestants, whose economic activities and the military fortresses at their disposal aroused the hostility of the majority catholic. Without safe leadership, France was at great risk of plunging into new civil wars.

In these turbid years Armand-Jean du Plessis , Duke of Richelieu, a cadet of a family of minor nobility, took the political rise, but who became the active reforming bishop of the small diocese of Luçon in his early twenties in 1606. Linked to the queen mother Maria de' Medici, he began a political career which was conducted by combining extreme ductility in dealing with contingencies, an equally extreme inflexibility for the final objective: the strengthening of France.

Richelieu added to these two qualities a third that all his opponents lacked: patience , a virtue that was of great help to him in waiting his turn after his ascent was abruptly interrupted, in 1617, by the disgrace of his patroness , removed from power by her son, Louis XIII. Richelieu returned to vogue only in 1624 , together with Maria de' Medici, and was able to win the complete trust of Louis XIII, thanks to the successes achieved in foreign policy and with the defeat of the French Protestants. Thus, in the second half of the 1620s, a real marriage was born between the cardinal and the French sovereign, a marriage of common sense and based on the common idea that for a strong and powerful France an equally strong and powerful monarchy was needed.

With this in mind, Richelieu did not hesitate to fight the enemies of his project with all his might. Thus he came to an incurable break with the ancient patroness, Maria de' Medici, who in 1631 was forced to flee France. From this moment until his death, the cardinal was a prime minister, if not omnipotent, certainly omnipresent, the center of an extensive power network and the target of an endless series of conspiracies. Sick and tired, in his last years he continued his action which was only interrupted by his death in December 1642 , a few months before the death of Louis XIII.

THE LEGACY – The political seeds left on the ground by Richelieu germinated within a few years . Far from any form of Machiavellianism, the cardinal had expressed a conception of power as a form of rationality, inspired by God, called to impose itself on a conflicted and torn society. From this inspiration came a strongly absolutist policy which then found realization in the long reign of Louis XIV , a time in which France was the center of the world.

Almost four hundred years after the events that saw Richelieu as protagonist, however, one wonders what is left of what the cardinal sowed. We take the liberty of replying that it remains the example of a man of power who used his authority and influence by placing the good of the state above any coterie and any personal interest, even if it were his own. His ambition , however immense, was never superior to his sense of duty and this seems to us to be a valid message especially today, speaking of powerful and rulers. If we then read among his many papers, we discover how in internal politics he claimed that "making a law and not enforcing it is equivalent to authorizing the thing that one wants to prohibit", while in foreign policy he recommended "negotiate, always negotiate, even while you are waging war ”. If all of this isn't current, what is?