RICHBOROUGH 



RICHELIEU 



709 



Rambler ( No. 97 ), and the voluminous but not very 

 interesting correspondence published ( with an 

 excellent memoir) by Mrs Barbauld in 1804, Rich- 

 ardson left no other literary remains of any im- 

 portance. In later life a nervous habit grew upon 

 him, which terminated in 1761 by a fit of apoplexy, 

 of which he died. He has left his own protrait in 

 his letters to Lady Bradshaigh (Corr. h. 206, and 

 iv. 290); but it might almost have been deduced 

 from his letters. He was a sentimental, purring, 

 methodical, well-meaning little man, domesticated 

 and aflectionate, whose lilting environment was 

 feminine society of the sympathetic sort ; and he 

 has repaid the gentle caresses with which his 

 worshippers tempered the wind of adverse criticism 

 to his sensitive soul by depicting their sex in 

 return with a patience, a discrimination, a sus- 

 tained analysis of secret spring and motive which 

 it has been given to no other male author, living or 

 dead, to achieve. It is the most unequivocal testi- 

 mony to his native genius that his impracticable 

 method of telling his story by correspondence, and 

 his intolerable circumstantiality and diffuseness 

 (he thinks nothing of an epistle of fifteen pages, 

 and Clarissa takes nineteen for her will) have only 

 served to tighten his hold upon his reader, and to 

 emphasise and intensify the reality of his creations. 

 A reprint of Richardson's novels, with an admirable 

 preface by Mr Leslie Stephen, was issued in 1883. The 

 essays of Mrs Oliphant (Blackwoorl, March 1869), of Mr 

 Bnxton Forman (Fortnightly, xii.), of Mr H. D. Traill 

 ( Contemporary, xliv.), and of Mrs Andrew Lang ( National 

 Rerirw, xiv.) all deserve the attention of the student. 



Itu-liboroiiKh. See SANDWICH. 



Richelieu, ARMAND JEAN DUPLESSIS, CAR- 

 DINAL, Due VK, one of the greatest statesmen of 

 France, was born of a noble but impoverished 

 family at Richelieu, 12 miles S.SE. of Chinon, Sep- 

 tember 5, 1585. He abandoned a military career 

 for the church, in order to keep in the family 

 the bishopric of Lucon, to which he was con- 

 secrated at twenty- two. Representative of the 

 Poitou clergy at the States-general in 1614, he 

 attracted the notice of the queen-mother, and rose 

 in Hi hi to be secretary at war and foreign affaire ; 

 but the downfall of Marshal d'Ancre, the queen- 

 regent's favourite, in April 1617, sent him back to 

 his diocese. At length in August 1620 the queen- 

 mother and the young king were reconciled, mainly 

 through the agency of tlie celebrated Capuchin 

 Father Joseph ' 1 'eminence grise ' of later days, till 

 his death in 1638 the intimate friend of Richelieu. 

 The latter showed much tact and patient forbear- 

 ance in his measures ; he formed an alliance with 

 the powerful Due de Luynes, and in 1622 was 

 named cardinal, in 1624 minister of state. This 

 position he retained to the end of his life, in spite 

 of countless court intrigues, and ere long the most 

 powerful open and secret opposition from the 

 1 1 iir, MI. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, and a host of 

 minor intriguers, first among whom was the too 

 famous Duchess de Chevreuse. His first important 

 measure was the blow to Spain of an alliance with 

 England, cemented by the betrothal (1625) of the 

 king's sister Henrietta with Charles, then Prince 

 of Wales. In the Valtelline war he cleared the 

 country of the Spanish and papal troops, but was 

 unable to pursue nls advantage, and had to submit 

 to the terms of the peace of Monzon (1626). His 

 next task was to destroy the political power of the 

 Huguenot party. After a fifteen months' siege, 

 which he conducted in person, concentrating all 

 his energy ii|H>n the task, the great stronghold of 

 La Rochelle was starved into submission, 30th 

 October 1628. He next turned to crush Rohan 

 ami the L inguedoc rebels, and destroyed the proud 

 walls of Montauhan, last refuge of Huguenot in- 

 dependence. Early in 1630 he entered Italy with 



a splendid army, himself in command, and soon re- 

 duced Savoy to submission. Meanwhile he plunged 

 into dark and tortuous intrigues with the Italian 

 princes, the pope, and with the Protestants of the 

 north against the House of Austria. He promised 

 a large subsidy to Gustavus Adolphus, and, through 

 the masterly diplomacy of Father Joseph at the 

 Ratisbon Diet in June 1630, succeeded in persuad- 

 ing Ferdinand to dismiss Wallenstein. The first 

 treaty of Cherasco (April 1631) ended the Italian 

 war, the second gave France the important strategic 

 position of Piuerolo. Just before this final triumph 

 Richelieu had successfully surmounted the greatest 

 danger of his life a great combination formed 

 for nis downfall by the queen-mother, Gaston of 

 Orleans, the House of Guise, Bassompierre, Crequi, 

 and the Marillacs. She tried to bully the king by* 

 her violence, but Richelieu followed his master to 

 Versailles, and again had the whole power of the 

 realm placed entirely in his hands. So ended ' the 

 Day of Dupes ' (llth November 1630). The queen- 

 mother fled to Brussels, Bassompierre went to the 

 Bastille, Gaston fled to Lorraine. The cardinal was 

 now made duke and peer, and governor of Brittany. 

 Further intrigues and attempted rebellions by the 

 emigrant nobles and governors of provinces were 

 crushed with merciless severity Marillac and Mont- 

 morency and other nobles were sent to the block. 

 Meantinie Gustavus Adolphus had run his brief 

 and brilliant course ; ana his death at Liitzen 

 removed an ally with whom it might have become 

 difficult to reck-on. In July 1632 Richelieu had 

 seized the duchy of Lorraine. He continued his 

 intrigues with the Protestants against Ferdinand, 

 subsidising them with his gold, but till 1635 he took 

 no open part in the war. In May of that year, 

 after completing his preparations and concluding 

 a close alliance with Victor. Amadeus of Savoy, 

 Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, and the Dutch, he 

 declared war on Spain, and at once placed in the 

 field an army of 132,000 men. But his first efforts 

 were singularly unsuccessful, and in 1636 Picco- 

 lomini and the Cardinal-Infante, governor of the 

 Netherlands, entered Picardy, crossed the Somme, 

 and threatened Paris itself. But in this hour of 

 peril Richelieu rose to the height of his genius, 

 and awoke a new and irresistible force as he threw 

 himself upon the patriotism of France. With 

 30,000 foot and 12,000 horse he swept the enemy 

 out of Picardy, while his ally Bernhard drove them 

 across the Rhine, and in 1638 destroyed the im- 

 perial army in the decisive battle of Rheiufelden, 

 a victory which opened to him the gates of the 

 key-fortress of Breisach. The unexpected death of 

 Bernhard threw the fruit of his victories into the 

 hands of Richelieu, whose policy soon bore further 

 fruit in the disorganisation of the power of Spain 

 revolts in Catalonia, and the loss of Portugal ; the 

 victories of Wolfenbiittel (1642) and Kempten 

 (1642) over the Imperialists in Germany; and at 

 length in 1641 in Savoy also in the ascendency of 

 the French party. Another triumph that same 

 year was the speedy collapse of tlie Imperialist 

 invasion in the north by the Count of Spissons, 

 who perished in the first battle. The failure to 

 capture Tarragona was the one exception to the 

 complete triumph of the cardinal's latest years. 



But the hatred of the great French nobles to his 

 rule had never slumbered, and Richelieu found 

 safety alone in the king's sense of his own helpless- 

 ness without him. He was firmly convinced that 

 the only safe government for France was a strong 

 absolutism uncontrolled either by the selfish am- 

 bition of the nobles or the constitutional legalism 

 represented by the Parlement of Paris. The last 

 conspiracy against him was that of the Grand- 

 equerry, the young Cinq-Mars, whose intrigues 

 with Gaston, the Duke of Bouillon, and the 



