Cardinal Richelieu

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), was the French statesman who ruled France as chief minister of Louis XIII. Born in Paris into the lesser nobility of Poitou, a sickly child who lost his father at five, he became Bishop of Luçon in 1607.

Named chief minister in 1624, he set out to make the crown supreme: he curbed the great nobles and broke Huguenot power at the siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628), leaving them freedom of worship. He survived the Day of the Dupes in 1630, and in 1635 brought France into the Thirty Years' War against the Habsburgs.

His Capuchin confidant Father Joseph was nicknamed the Grey Eminence. He founded the Académie Française in 1635 and ran a network of spies and censorship. He died in Paris on 4 December 1642 and Mazarin took his place; Louis XIV later built absolute monarchy on his work.