On a cold winter day in , a crowd of French revolutionaries burst into the chapel of the Sorbonne. Howling vandals dragged a desiccated cadaver from the crypt, and a grisly β and most likely apocryphal β tale describes how street urchins were later spotted playing with its severed head. Richelieu is best known for three things: his unabashed authoritarianism, his efforts to stiffen the sinews of the French state, and his decision to position France as a counterweight to Habsburg hegemony through a network of alliances with Protestant powers.
It is these aspects of his domestic and international legacy β all of which are frequently viewed as closely intertwined β that have triggered the most controversy.
On the one hand, there are the aforementioned critics β those that viewed the cardinal as a devious and shadowy character, the mustachio-twirling villain of The Three Musketeers who cloaked his naked ambition and venal appetites under his crimson robes.
Is Richelieu the embodiment of prudentia , or sagacious statecraft, as some have argued? Perhaps most importantly, are the policies and writings of a 17th-century clergyman relevant and worthy of scrutiny by contemporary security managers?
In an effort to answer these questions, the article proceeds in three main parts. The net result was a philosophy of power tempered by prudence β one which sought to transcend confessional divisions in favor of domestic unity and international strength. Weakened by years of war and religious turmoil, and riven with bitter divisions, France, which only a century earlier was considered the greatest military power in the West, was in a defensive crouch, ill-equipped and reluctant to engage in a transcontinental armed struggle.
