like Condé was content to draw aside the curtains for him to pass, and to sue for the hand of Richelieu’s niece for his son, the “Great Condé.” His pride and ambition were gratified by the foundation of a sort of dynasty of his nephews and nieces, whose hands were sought by the noblest in the realm. Like all statesmen of his time, Richelieu made money out of politics. He came to court in 1617 with an income of 25,000 livres from his ecclesiastical benefices. In the later years of his life it exceeded 3,000,000 livres. He lived in imperial state, building himself the great Palais Cardinal, now the Palais Royal, in Paris, another at Rueil near Paris, and rebuilding his ancestral château in Poitou. His table cost him a thousand crowns a day, although he himself lived simply. He celebrated his triumphs to the full with gorgeous fétes in his palace, especially with lavish theatrical representations. In January 1641 the tragedy of Mirame, said to have been his own, was produced with great magnificence. Richelieu was anxious for literary fame, and his writings are not unworthy of him. But more important than his own efforts as an author were his protection and patronage of literary men, especially of Corneille, and his creation of the French Academy in 1635. His influence upon French literature was considerable and lasting. Hardly less important was his rebuilding of the Sorbonne and his endowments there. When he died, on the 4th of December 1642, he was buried in the chapel of the Sorbonne, which still stands as he built it. His tomb, erected in 1694, though rifled at the Revolution, still exists.
Many writings are attributed to Richelieu, although owing to his habit of working with substitutes and assistants it is difficult to settle how much of what passes under his name is authentic. Les Thuileries, 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: Mémoire d’Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, évêque de Luçon, écrit de sa main, l’année 1607 ou 1610, alors qu’il méditait de paraître à la cour, edited by Armand Baschet (1880); Histoire de la mère et du fils (i.e. of Marie de Medici and Louis XIII.), sometimes attributed to Mézeray, published at Amsterdam in 1730 and, under the title Histoire de la régence de reine Marie de Médicis, femme de Henry IV., at the Hague in 1743; Mémoires sur la règne de Louis XIII., extending from 1610 to 1638, and of which the earlier portion is a reprint of the Histoire de la mère et du fils, published in Petitot’s collection (Paris, 1823 seq.); Testament politique d’Armand du Plessis, cardinal de Richelieu (Amsterdam, 1687 seq.); Journal de 1630–31 (Paris, 1645); “Lettres, instructions diplomatiques, et papiers d’état,” published by G. d’Avenel in the Coll. de doc. inéd. (Paris, 1853–77); and “Maximes d’état et fragments politiques, ” published by G. Hanotaux in Mélanges historiques: Choix de doc. iii., in the same collection.
See G. Hanotaux, Cardinal Richelieu (1893), one volume of the four then promised, an exhaustive history of the period down to 1614; and G. d’Avenel, Richelieu et la monarchie absolue (4 vols., 1895). The most important sources for Richelieu’s statesmanship are the “Lettres, instructions diplomatiques, et papiers-d’état,” mentioned above, and Richelieu’s Mémoires (1610–38) may be consulted in Petitot’s and J. F. Michaud and J. Poujoulat’s collections. Innumerable memoirs of the time also bear upon his life, e.g. those of Madame de Motteville, Mathieu Molé, De Brienne, and Bassompierre. In English there are short biographies by Richard Lodge (in the Foreign Statesmen series, 1896) and by J. B. Perkins (in Heroes of the Nations series, 1900). (J. T. S.*)
RICHELIEU, LOUIS FRANÇOIS ARMAND DU PLESSIS, Duc de (1696–1788), marshal of France, was a grandnephew of Cardinal Richelieu, and was born in Paris on the 13th of March 1696. Apart from his reputation as a man of exceptionally loose morals, he attained, in spite of a. deplorably defective education, distinction as a diplomatist and general. As ambassador to Vienna (1725–29) he settled in 1727 the preliminaries of peace; in 1733–34 he served in the Rhine campaign. His real public career began ten years later. He fought with distinction at Dettingen and Fontenoy, where he directed the grapeshot upon the English columns, and three years afterwards he made a brilliant defence of Genoa;
in 1756 he expelled the English from Minorca by the capture of the San Felipe fortress; and in 1757–58 he closed his
military career by those pillaging campaigns in Hanover
which procured him the sobriquet of Petit Père de la Maraude. After the wars he plunged again into court intrigue, favoured
the comtesse du Barry and supported his nephew the duc
d’Aiguillon. Louis XVI., however, was not favourably inclined to him. In his early days he was thrice imprisoned in the Bastille: in 1711 at the instance of his stepfather, in 1716 in consequence of a duel, and in 1719 for his share in Alberoni’s conspiracy against the regent Orleans. He was thrice married: first, against his will, at the age of fourteen to Anne Catherine
de Noailles; secondly, in 1734, by the intrigues (according to the witty Frenchman’s own account) of Voltaire, to Marie Elisabeth Sophie, Mademoiselle de Guise; and thirdly, when he was eighty-four years old, to an Irish lady. He died in Paris on the 8th of August 1788. Marshal Richelieu’s, Mémoires, published by J. L. Soulavie in nine volumes (1790), are partially
spurious.
See H. Noel Williams, The Fascinating Duc de Richelieu (1910).
RICHEPIN, JEAN (1849–), French poet, novelist and
dramatist, the son of an army doctor, was born at Medea
(Algeria) on the 4th of February 1849. At school and at the
École normale he gave evidence of brilliant, if somewhat
undisciplined, powers, for which he found physical vent in
different directions—first as a franc-tireur in the Franco-German
War, and afterwards as actor, sailor and stevedore—and an
intellectual outlet in the writing of poems, plays and novels
which vividly reflected his erratic but unmistakable talent.
A play, L’Étoile, written by him in collaboration with André
Gill (1840–1885), was produced in 1873; but Richepin was
virtually unknown until the publication, in 1876, of a volume
of' verse entitled Chanson des gueux, when his outspokenness
resulted in his being imprisoned and fined for outrage aux mœurs.
The same quality has characterized his succeeding volumes
of verse: Les Caresses (1877), Les Blasphèmes (1884), La Mer
(1886), Mes paradis (1894), La Bombarde (1899). His novels
have developed in style from the morbidity and brutality of
Les Morts bizarres (1876), La Glu (1881) and Le Pave (1883)
to the more thoughtful psychology of Madame André (1878),
Sophie Monnier (1884), Césarine (1888), L'Aimé (1893), Grandes
amoureuses (1896) and Lagibasse (1899), and the more simple
portrayal of life in Miarka (1883), Les Braves Gens (1886),
Truandailles (1890), La Miseloque (1892) and Flamboche (1895).
His plays, though occasionally marred by his characteristic
proneness to violence of thought and language, constitute in many
respects his best work. The most notable are Nana Sahib
(1883), Monsieur Scapin (1886), Le Filibustier (1888), Par le
glaive (1892), Vers la joie (1894), Le Chemineau (1897), Le Chien
de garde (1898), Les Truands (1899), Don Quichotte (1905),
most of which were produced at the Comédie française. He
also wrote Miarka (1905), adapted from his novel, for
the music of Alexandre Georges, and Le Mage (1897) for the
music of Iules Massenet.
His son, Jacques Richepin (b. 1880), the author of La Reine de Tyr (1899), La Cavaliere (1901), Cadet-Roussel (1903) and Falstaff (1904), based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV., gave promise of making his mark as a dramatist.
RICHERUS, monk of St Remi at Reims, and a chronicler of
the 10th century, son of Rodulf, a trusty councillor and captain
of Louis IV. He studied at Reims under Gerbert, afterwards
Pope Silvester II., who taught him mathematics, history,
letters and eloquence. He was also well versed in the medical
science of his time, and in 991 travelled to Chartres to consult
the medical MSS. there. He was still living in 998, but there
is no mention of him after that date. In spite of his violent
partisanship,—for Richerus was an ardent upholder of the
Carolings and French supremacy,—of great defects of style,
and of an utter disregard of accuracy and truth, his Historiae
has a unique value as giving us the only tolerably full account
by a contemporary of the memorable revolution of 987, which
placed the Capets on the throne of France. The History, in
four books, begins with Charles the Fat and Eudes, and goes
down to the year 995. From 969 onwards Richerus had no
earlier history before him, and his work is the chief source for
the period. It was first edited in Pertz’s Monumenta Germaniae,
vol. iii.
