Richelieu

Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu remade France in his own image. As chief minister to the young Louis XIII, he transformed a fractious kingdom into the most powerful state in Europe, crushing noble dissent, silencinng the Protestant threat at La Rochelle, and wielding diplomacy as a weapon with the precision of a rapier. George Joseph Gustave Masson examines the architect of French absolutism with careful attention to the political labyrinths Richelieu navigated: the queen mother's intrigues, the conspiracies of the nobles, the endless war against the Habsburgs. This is a study of power in its purest form, of a man who believed the state was worth any sacrifice, including his own soul. Masson renders the Cardinal not as a cardboard villain of popular legend, but as a supremely practical statesman whose ruthlessness served a vision of France that would outlast him by three centuries.