Talk:Cardinal Richelieu

Errata, inconsistence between linked articles!
In the arts and culture section, there are some weird file paths. This could be vandalism, or a honest mistake. Either way, it should be fixed. Noghiri (talk) 19:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"Consecrated as a bishop in 1617, he later entered politics, becoming a Secretary of State in 1616" -- neat trick, traveling back in time like that! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.187.25 (talk) 08:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The sentence "Concini was consequently assassinated, and Marie de Médicis overthrown." does not comply with the information in the article on Concino Concini, in which its explained that Concini was killed when shouting "À moi!" ("To me!") to his guards, which was interpreted as resisting the King's order. Only one of these articles can be right, so I'll let you research on it and choose. My vote goes toward the Concino Concini article being right. No fghgddddddjhgktyk, after all, the order of the king. Trubadurix 19:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

The Wikiquote at the end does gives an error message - the correct link is http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu, but I can't find a way to tweak the template to it points there rather than to the wikiquote with the full name of the article. Does anyone give a fuck how to fix? I couldn't find documentation on Wikiquote linking either, there should perhaps be a pointer in the Wikiquotes article? Espen 07:53, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I tried it, but failed either. Anybody else? Thijs 12:40 (CET), 15 jan 2006

One thing I've noticed relating to the details of Richelieu here is the omission of his involvement in the founding of the One Hundred Associates, his patronage of Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Québec city, and the subsequent development of New France - and the continued existance of French Canada - as in part due to his actions.

Do people feel that this part of Richelieu's legacy should be detailed here?

In keeping with the other Cardinal pages, shouldn't this be at Armand-Jean du Plessis Cardinal de Richelieu? RickK 06:52, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I think it should stay here, as this is the name he's most commonly known by in English (by far). --Delirium 02:53, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Louis XIII had lovers? As far as I know, he had favourites, but I doubt he engaged into homosexual love. David.Monniaux 09:23, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The link to 'secretary of state' does not explain what it means in the context of French politics. Probably people who worked on the Richelieu article can expand on the 'secretary of state' article and include a paragraph on France there? Thanks!

Interesting that this article is the featured article on the day Pope John Paul II died. A very Catholic day on Wikipedia's front page.
 * The featuring of this article was arranged well beforehand. -- Emsworth 15:17, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I agree with RickK from more than a year ago. This page should be at Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, or something along those lines. Pages shouldn't be at honorifics. john k 15:20, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree as well, except that there is no need for a comma in such titles. -- Emsworth 15:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Except that "Du Plessis," and not "Richelieu" was his surname. john k 17:09, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Should we not then use "Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal et Duc de Richelieu"? -- Emsworth 17:24, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But his ducal title isn't commonly used. I think it should be avoided in the title. john k 17:52, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * In any case, it is "Cardinal de Richelieu". "Cardinal Richelieu" is just weird. Rama 18:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I also think RickK and John are right: it would make sense to have the "Cardinal Richelieu" usage as one that links to it, as it's not accurate and is inconsistent with other cardinals.Silverwhistle (talk) 22:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice to mention the town Richelieu was granted south of the Loire: It's called "Richelieu", and has a rather interesting archetecture, being surrounded by a moat and arranged in a grid structure around a series of squares, which gives it the appearence of an American rather than a European town. I went there about five years ago (before the era of digital cameras, alas).

At the north end of the town is a park which contains the ruins of the Cardinal's palace.

Éminence grise
What about François du Tremblay? The Merriam-Webster entry 'éminence grise' says:


 * Etymology: French, literally, gray eminence, nickname of Père Joseph (François du Tremblay) died 1638 French monk and diplomat, confidant of Cardinal Richelieu who was known as Éminence Rouge red eminence; from the colors of their respective habits

Kent Wang 04:31, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Painters' names in captions
It is common practice to mention the names of painters of portraits. One of the editors here has been known to delete them, or I would add them myself. It seems like essential information. Should ther reader have to click on the image to discover the painter's name? --Wetman 1 July 2005 23:15 (UTC)


 * I agree with that the name of the artist should be included in the captions. Otherwise, it appears to me, they are just pretty illustrations and not encyclopedic additions. Thank you, 24.47.173.120 (talk) 05:27, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Addendum: Sorry - I thought I was logged in already. Wordreader (talk) 05:29, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Richelieu in popular culture?
Wouldn't it make sense to devote a short separate section to the portrayal of Richelieu in popular culture? Well, that's a personal opinion of a Russian for whom Dumas' legacy is much more actual than for an American, and of a fan of Monty Python, but anyway...
 * The 'Pop Culture' section has been created. I note what appears to be a duplicate entry. Lines 1 and 16 both refer to the 1632 Ring of Fire series by Eric Flint. I leave it to someone else to make correction as I'm a 'newbie', and I'm reluctant to stick my finger in someone else's pie. Romaq 22:19, 14 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Romaq (talk • contribs)

Famous Sayings
While having a section of quotes from Richelieu is appropriate, it is inappropriate to put one at the top of the article, any such quotes must be cited, and they must be properly formatted. Perhaps simply linking to Wikiquote is sufficient. Michaelbusch 20:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Posthumous reputation
(Cut n pasted notes from Reference desk, which might give further hints Wetman 04:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC))

There are people like Richelieu-Cardinal Wolsey in England is another such-who were born to be politicians rather than churchmen; men, in other words, who are in the church through circumstances, rather than design. Richelieu stands astride his age like a giant, a man who put the interests of the state before that of his class, and the interests of his nation before that of his church. He was not the model of Machiavelli's The Prince; he was the Prince. Inevitably such men make enemies rather more than they make friends, and even Louis XIII, who was so dependent on his great minister, is said to have expressed some relief when he died in December 1642. It was not just the king who was pleased by his departure. According to Father Griffet, writing in 1768, the Cardinal "...was disliked by the people and I have known old men who could still remember the bonfires that were lit in the provinces when the news of his death was received." Cardinal de Retz claimed that Richelieu had created "within the most lawful of monarchies the most scandalous and most dangerous tyranny which may ever have ensalved the state." In his 1712 history on the reign of Louis XIII Michael Le Vasor wrote "I can look only with horror on a prelate who sacrifices the liberty of his fatherland and the peace of Europe to his ambition." This charge against the Cardinal-warmonger was later to make an apperance in Voltaire's Le Siècle de Louis XIV, where he says "...there was fighting since 1635 because Cardinal Richelieu wanted it in order to make himself necessary." For Montesquieu Cardianl Richelieu was, quite simply, a 'wicked citizen.'

Of course, none of this is fair or objective, and most of his later critics underestimate the extent to which Habsburg power, concentrated in Spain and the Empire, was a considerable danger to the security of France, especially after the onset of the Thirty Years War, which the Cardinal viewed in political rather than religious terms. But the image of the malevolent and scheming churchman made its way down the ages, emerging in the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century, in which the Cardinal is relentlessly vilified by poets and dramatists of all sorts. In a sense he became, in post-Revolutionary France, the archetype of all that was wrong with the ancien regime. In Cinq-Mars, Alfred de Vigny's novel of 1826, Richelieu's attack on the nobility is blamed for all of France's subsequent ills. It was in this form that the Cardinal-mad, bad and dangerous to know-made his way across the English Channel, where Vigny's novel inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton to write a play, called Richelieu or the Conspiracy. Thus it was that the Cardinal, both sinister and witty, made his way on to the English theatre, one of the great stage villains of the age, depicted by Henry Irving, among others. Though barely aware of his existence before, English people discoverd in the Red Eminence qualities that made him 'the man you love to hate.' And so it went on, back to France and The Three Musketeers, and back again to England in Stanley Weyman's popular novel of 1896, Under the Red Robe. From movie, to comedy, and even in children's cartoons, Richelieu lives. Better, I suppose, to be misunderstood and parodied than forgotten. Clio the Muse 23:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

It is curious to me that his warring against the Huguenots is not mentioned more in the article. He destroyed the strongholds granted in the edict of nantes and personally campaigned against them in 1627. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.114.199.173 (talk) 02:55, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The Three Musketeers and Richelieu
This article states that Dumas depicted Richelieu as avaricious and power hungry. The french version of it, however, describe the portrayal of Richelieu in Dumas' novel as "il le dépeint comme l'homme d'État par excellence, machiavélique et empli de sa mission gouvernementale (D'Artagnan devient lieutenant des mousquetaires grâce à Richelieu)" ("He depicts him as the ultimate statesman, machiavelian and utterly focused on his governmental mission (D'Artagnan becomes a Lieutenant of the Musketeers thanks to Richelieu)." Having read (admitedly a long time ago) the novel myself, the later depiction seems closer to the facts than the one given here.--65.94.14.92 08:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "machieavelian and utterly focused on his governmental mission" is very close to the "avaricious and power hungry" in terms of how one interprets it. Machievelian leader is a very ruthless type of leader, so I don't see the depictions as being very distinct. Perhaps machievelian is a better term and power hungry, but to me, at least, the terms are very closely related.--RossF18 (talk) 04:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * While the Cardinal can certainly be considered power hungry in the novel, from memory there is little to indicate he is personally avaricious. The sentence also needs to distinguish clearly between the morally complex approach to his character in the novel to the often melodramatic one-sided villainy in the various film portrayals.210.84.17.220 (talk) 10:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

In-line citation...
As others have noted, the article's lacked in-line citations for a while. I've gone through and done a quick scrub on the historical side, but it will still need a bit of work on the legacy section.Hchc2009 (talk) 17:29, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

What kind of cardinal?
What kind of cardinal was Richelieu? Cardinal-bishop? Cardinal-priest? Cardinal-deacon? Which diocese / church / diaconate was he assigned in Italy?

Top.Squark (talk) 19:50, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Synthesis
The last paragraph of the lede read:
 * He is also a leading character in The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and its subsequent film adaptations, portrayed as a main antagonist, and a powerful ruler, even more powerful than the King himself, though events like the Day of the Dupes show that in fact he very much depended on the King's confidence to keep this power.

Here we have a connection between the cardinal's fictional power "more than the king" and a real-life event, the day of the Dupes. Unless this event is portrayed by Dumas inside his fiction, and done so specifically counter his own invention "more powerful than the king" this connection is demonstrably false. The passage reads as if the editor wanted to show us that the power held by the cardinal in the fiction of Dumas could not be real, as exemplified by the real-life event. This is original research, or synthesis: both parts of the statement are true, but the connection is created by the editor.

I have decoupled the claims; moving the Day of the Dupes trivia earlier in the lede, where it now only concerns the real-life cardinal, not the Richelieu of Dumas. CapnZapp (talk) 07:53, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

File:Cardinal de Richelieu.jpg to appear as POTD
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Cardinal de Richelieu.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on September 9, 2014. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2014-09-09. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:47, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

what does it mean?
"Richelieu's early decision to support a Protestant canton against the Pope was a foretaste of the purely diplomatic power politics he would espouse in his foreign policy.". This immediately follows a sentence about Richelieu using troops. Usually "diplomatic" means finding a way NOT to use troops. In context, it apparently has to do with operating as if he wasn't even a cardinal, or, as if he had nothing but secular power. The sentence reflects a value judgment but there is no citation. What is it supposed to mean and where did the  concept come from? 100.15.120.162 (talk) 23:19, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 02:13, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

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"Portrayals in fiction" section
I've taken the liberty of removing two short, uncited paragraphs giving examples of Richelieu appearing in films. The examples were reasonably presented but no indication was given that they were any more noteworthy than any of the other ninety four film and television depictions of the Cardinal. Obviously, it is not desirable that the "Portrayals in fiction" section degenerate into a trivia free-for-all. I also removed one example of blatant trivia creep. 79.65.126.184 (talk) 02:19, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Is this actually accurate? (Portrayal by Dumas)
"Richelieu's motives are the focus of much debate among historians: some see him as a patriotic supporter of the monarchy, while others view him as a power-hungry cynic. The latter image gained further currency due to Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which depicts Richelieu as a self-serving and ruthless de facto ruler of France." Most adapatations of The Three Musketeers certainly portray him like that, but is that actually how Dumas portrayed him? It's a long time since I read the novel, but at the time (to my surprise, given how he normally appears) he seemed to come out of it very well. Ruthless, yes, but competant and patriotic, and concerned with the security and wellbeing of the French state. (In contrast to most of the royals and nobles, and to some extent even the Musketeers themselves, who generally seemed more driven by personal desires, short-term whims, and concern about their own reputations). Iapetus (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I would tend to agree - admittedly, it's a personal opinion, but Richelieu comes off to me more in line with the carte blanche he writes for Milady - that what he does is done for the good of France [or something similar to that] - so quite ruthless, but not seeking power for his own sake as to protect what he regards as France's proper power and rights.
 * I particularly dislike saying he's the primary "villain" of Dumas' work, where "antagonist" is probably a more accurate term, at least regarding the original novel. (The many adaptations on the other hand, that would absolutely fit.) umrguy  42  05:44, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * "I particularly dislike saying he's the primary "villain" of Dumas' work, where "antagonist" is probably a more accurate term" I admittedly have only read an abridged version of the original novel. But Richelieu's primary plot in the novel is to expose the infidelity of Anne of Austria, and use it as a pretext to launch a war against the Kingdom of England. The Musketeers are doing their best to prevent Louis XIII from finding out some unpleasant truths about how little support he actually has in court. And in the process, they violate several laws and orchestrate the extrajudicial execution of Milady de Winter. The novel has little to do with heroes versus villains, and more to do with court intrigues and with a fictionalized version of the assassination of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Dimadick (talk) 12:07, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

"Grand Eminence" ???
In one of the styles boxes, Richelieu is said to have been styled "His Grand Eminence" and "Your Grand Eminence". In more than forty years of reading Richelieu and about Richelieu, I have never seen these terms. I'm afraid I must demand a citation. In Latin, he was "Eminentissimus et Reverendissimus Dominus, Dominus Cardinalis Armandus.... etc."

--Vicedomino (talk) 05:28, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Austro-Spanish
In the entry for "Austro-Spanish", IP wikified "spanish" and a previous editor wikified "austro" to austria. Both links are clearly incorrect. While I'm not convinced this term should be wikified at all, I directed "Austro" to Habsburg Monarchy and "Spain" to Habsburg Spain. I didn't fully explain the edit in the edit summary soI've left this message ---- Work permit (talk) 01:32, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

"red eminence" in the lead - sourcing/wording
Richelieu is also known by the sobriquet l'Éminence rouge ("the Red Eminence"), from the red shade of a cardinal's clerical dress and the style "eminence" as a cardinal. There are a couple of problems here.

First, the use of the nickname is unsourced and not mentioned directly later in the article. It is easy to source that Richelieu has been called the red eminence at some point (for instance here's a recent fr radio broadcast that uses it in the title) but I did not find anything in a quick online search attesting of the use during his life (which the sentence does not say but heavily implies).

Moreover, the explanation is missing a crucial piece of information: "red eminence" would be a pleonasm ("cardinal cardinal" essentially) if it was not for the existence of a grey eminence (François Leclerc du Tremblay). "Grey eminence" was in contemporary use (see sourcing in the associated article) and it is tempting to guess that the associated "red eminence" appeared at the same time but it would be good to have a source for that. Tigraan Click here to contact me 16:41, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Shouldn't the IPA in the lead be the other way around?
Currently, the pronunciation of the title of the article is glossed in a footnote, but the subject's birth name is given IPA that is clearly visible at the head of the article without the use of a mouse. Isn't this the wrong way round? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 17:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)