Born September 9, 1585
Richelieu, was the master statesman and Machiavellian politician who held France together while Louis XI II was young, and brought it to great power, through personal endeavour, during his rule. Richelieu was born to the aristocracy, and was ordained and made a Bishop in 1607.
He became a statesman, and was noticed by Marie de Medici's in 1614, and appointed as First Minister in 1616. He suffered by the whims of the young King in 1617, when he was exiled to Blois with Marie de Medici's, but he returned to court in 1619, and patched things up between the quarrelling King and Queen Mother, Richelieu's plans for France were to make it stable within, and invincible without.
To accomplish this, he crushed the French Protestants, who offered an internal conflict, but, at nearly the same time, allied with the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War, to France's great advantage.
He was a competent General, an eloquent courtier, and a master of espionage and Realpolitik. He was so powerful under the often timid King Louis XIII, that it was sometimes said that there were two Kings in France.
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