RICHELIEU Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de (1585-1642), the greatest French statesman of the 17th century. As the chief events of his life have been recorded in connexion with the sketch of his political career in the article France (vol. ix. pp. 567-570), it only remains briefly to mention here some matters of secondary importance. In the early days of his courtiership when he retired for a time to Avignon Richelieu wrote two religious works which attained to considerable popularity— Principaux points de la foy défendus contre l’escrit adresse au roy par les quatre ministres de Charenton (1617), and La méthode la plus facile et assurée de convertir ceux qui sont séparés de l’Eglise (Paris, 1651). After he became master of France, his desire for distinction as a man of letters and especially as a dramatic author led him to resort to various devices that were as undignified and ludicrous as they were high-handed and arbitrary. In the life of Corneille it has already been told how he employed “five poets” to “wash his dirty linen” (as Voltaire described the similar service he rendered to Frederick the Great), and how he attempted to revenge himself on Corneille, the greatest of the five, by causing the French Academy to pass a hostile verdict on the Cifil. Even this high treason against art may perhaps be forgiven in consideration of the practical services the cardinal rendered to the cause of literature. Les Τhuileries, La Grande Pastorale, Mirame, and the other plays, over whose fate he trembled as over the result of an embassy or a campaign, have long been forgotten; but a permanent interest attaches to his Mémoires and correspondence (though owing to his way of working with substitutes and assistants it has been a difficult task to settle how much ...