On this day (December 4) in 1642 Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu) died. He had served as France’s King Louis XIII’s “Chief Minister” or “First Minister” for nearly 20 years. Richelieu is known today as a leading character and a main antagonist in The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. He is also famous for his patronage of the arts; most notably, he founded the Académie Française, responsible for matters pertaining to the French language. Many avenues or boulevards in French cities are graced with his name.
Richelieu should be primarily remembered, however, as the one responsible for beginning the process of taking away the rights and privileges of the Reformed Church of France, the Huguenots. He left the finishing of the work to his successors, but he clearly set a pattern of deliberately destroying (through coercion and deception) the power of the Huguenots by removing their privileges one by one. The climax of the campaign he began was reached 43 years after his death when the first and greatest of the Edicts in favor of the Huguenots (the Edict of Nantes) was revoked by King Louis XIV.
According to the historian W. H. Foote, “Under the influence of Richelieu, more or less direct, the number of the Reformed pastors was lessened; the number of congregations greatly lessened, and some have supposed that the great body of the Huguenots, by death and exile, were diminished one half from the remains of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Extortion, deception, falsehood, extravagance, selfishness and waste of human life under false pretences, consorted with his ideas of religion while living, and had his approbation when dying.”
The lack of Protestant witness in France today is in part the work of Richelieu. Leadership has consequences, even for the generations that follow.
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