Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu

Duc de Richelieu
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Prime Minister of France
In office September 26, 1815 – December 29, 1818 February 20, 1820–December 14, 1821
Preceded by	Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Comte Decazes
Succeeded by	Marquis Dessolles Comte de Villèle
Born	September 25, 1766
Died	May 17, 1822
Political party	None

Armand Emmanuel Sophie Septemanie du Plessis, le Duc de Richelieu (September 25, 1766 - May 17, 1822) was a French and Russian statesman.

Early Years

He was born in Paris, the son of Louis Antoine du Plessis, duc de Fronsac and grandson of the marshal de Richelieu (1696-1788). The comte de Chinon, as the heir-apparent to the Richelieu honors was called, was married at fifteen to Rosalie de Rochechouart, a deformed child of twelve, with whom his relations were never more than formal. After two years of foreign travel, he entered the Queens dragoons and next year received a place at court, where he had a reputation for puritanical austerity.

On the Russian Service

He left Paris in 1790 for Vienna, and in company with his friend Prince Charles de Ligne joined the Russian army as a volunteer, reaching the Russian headquarters at Bender (today's Tighina, Moldova) on November 21. He was present at Suvorov's capture of Izmail and received from the Catherine the Great the Cross of St George and a golden sword. By the death of his father, in February 1791, he succeeded to the title of duc de Richelieu. He returned to Paris shortly afterwards on the summons of Louis XVI, but he was not sufficiently in the confidence of the court to be informed of the projected flight to Varennes.

In July he obtained a passport from the National Constituent Assembly for service in Russia. In the Russian army he obtained the grade of Major General, only to be forced by the intrigues of his enemies to resign. The accession of czar Alexander I brightened his prospects. His erasure from the list of émigrés, which he had failed to secure from Bonaparte, was accorded on the request of the Russian government, and in 1803 he became governor of Odessa. Two years later he became governor general of the Chersonese, of Ekaterinoslav and the Crimea, then called New Russia. In the eleven years of his administration, Odessa rose from a miserable village to an important city, and the grateful Odessites erected a bronze monument to him in 1828. These are the famous Odessa Steps, crowned by a statue of the duke. He commanded a division in the Turkish War of 1806-1807, and was engaged in frequent expeditions to the Caucasus.

Return to France

Ivan Martos's statue of Duc de Richelieu in Odessa.

Richelieu returned to France in 1814; on the return of Napoleon from Elba he accompanied Louis XVIII as far as Lille, whence he went to Vienna to join the Russian army, believing that he could best serve the interests of his king and of France by attaching himself to the headquarters of czar Alexander.

Richelieu's character and antecedents alike marked him out as valuable support of the monarchy at the Restoration. Though the bulk of his confiscated estates were lost beyond recall, he did not share the resentment of the mass of the returned émigrés, from whom and their intrigues he had held aloof during his exile, and was far from sharing their delusions as to the possibility of undoing the work of the Revolution. As the personal friend of the Russian emperor his influence in the councils of the Allies was of great service. He refused, indeed, the regicide Talleyrand's offer of a place in his ministry, pleading long absence from France and ignorance of its conditions; but after Talleyrand's resignation he consented to follow him as prime minister, though - as he himself said - he did not know the face of a single one of his colleagues.

It was mainly due to his efforts that France was so early relieved of the burden of the allied army of occupation. It was for this purpose mainly that he attended the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. There he had been informed in confidence of the renewal by the Allies of their treaty binding them to interfere in case of a reprise of revolutionary trouble in France; it was partly owing to this reassuring knowledge that he left office in December of the same year, on the refusal of his colleagues to support a modification of the electoral law. After the murder of the duc de Berry and the enforced retirement of Decazes, he was again called to the premiership (February 21, 1821); but his position was untenable owing to the attacks of the "Ultras" on the one side and the Liberals on the other and on December 12, 1821, he again resigned.

He died, of apoplexy, on May 17, 1822.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Great part of Richelieu's correspondence with Pozzo di Borgo, Capo d'Istria and others, with his journal of his travels in Germany and the Turkish campaign, and a notice by the duchesse de Richelieu, is published by the Imperial Historical Society of Russia, vol. 54.
• There is an exhaustive study of his career by Léon de Crousaz-Crétet, Le Duc de Richelieu en Russie et en France (1897), with which compare an article by L. Rioult de Neuville in the Revue des questions historiques (Oct. 1897)
• See also R. de Cisternes, Le Duc de Richelieu, son action aux conférences d'Aix-la-Chapelle (1898), containing copies of documents.

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