Richelieu became a bishop only because his brother chose the monastery
Armand du Plessis trained as a young officer, learning fencing, riding and drill. Then his family's claim on the rich bishopric of Luçon needed a clergyman, and his older brother preferred to become a Carthusian monk. So Armand switched to the Church, needed papal permission because he was underage, and grew into the formidable Cardinal Richelieu.
Born in Paris in 1585, the sickly fourth of five children in a minor noble family from Poitou, he lost his soldier father to fever when he was five. Consecrated bishop in April 1607, he became the first in France to apply the reforms of the Council of Trent. A friendship with a Capuchin friar, Father Joseph, gave history a phrase: the grey-robed confidant was nicknamed the Grey Eminence, while Richelieu himself became the Red Eminence.
Court politics nearly ended his career early. He rose as Secretary of State in 1616 under Concino Concini, favourite of the queen mother Marie de' Medici, but fell when Concini was assassinated in 1617 and was banished to Avignon. Recalled to reconcile the rebellious queen mother with her son, he succeeded, became a cardinal in 1622 and chief minister to Louis XIII in 1624. On the Day of the Dupes in November 1630, Marie and the king's brother won Louis's agreement to dismiss him, yet Richelieu talked the king round, a reminder that even he depended on royal favour.
His aims were a centralised monarchy and a check on Habsburg Spain and Austria. He abolished the office of Constable in 1626 and ordered private castles razed unless needed against invaders, earning the nobility's hatred. He personally commanded the siege of the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle, which held out over a year until 1628; afterwards Huguenots kept religious toleration but lost political privileges. Abroad, though, he backed Protestant powers such as Sweden and the Dutch Republic against Catholic Habsburgs.
He founded the Académie Française to guard the French language, rebuilt the Sorbonne, and supported Samuel de Champlain, helping recover Quebec from English privateers by treaty in 1632. Made a duke in 1629, he held power until his death in 1642, when his protégé Jules Mazarin took over.
Source: Cardinal Richelieu
