Excerpt from Richelieu: Or the Conspiracy
The administration of Cardinal Richelieu, whom (despite all his darker qualities) Voltaire and history justly consider the true architect of the French monarchy and the great parent of French civilization, is characterized by features alike tragic and comic. A weak king, an ambitious favourite; a despicable conspiracy against the minister, nearly always associated with a dangerous treason against the state: these, with little variety of names and dates, constitute the eventful cycle through which, with a dazzling ease and an arrogant confidence, the great luminary fulfilled its destinies. Blended together in startling contrast, we see the grandest achievements and the pettiest agents; the spy, the mistress, the Capuchin; the destruction of feudalism; the humiliation of Austria; the dismemberment of Spain.
Richelieu himself is still what he was in his own day, a man of two characters. If, on the one hand, he is justly represented as inflexible and vindictive, crafty and unscrupulous; so, on the other, it cannot be denied that he was placed in times in which the long impunity of every license required stern examples; that he was beset by perils and intrigues, which gave a certain excuse to the subtlest inventions of self-defence; that his ambition was inseparably connected with a passionate love for the glory of his country; and that, if he was her dictator, he was not less her benefactor.
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