Le Maréchal-duc de Richelieu, l’héritier du cardinal, un homme de pouvoir et de guerre au Siècle des Lumières. Par Émilie Champion

Abstract

Louis-François-Armand Du Plessis was born in 1696. He was lucky. Not merely was he born into a powerful court dynasty at Versailles, but he was set to inherit two dukedoms and a peerage, and vast estates scattered throughout Aquitaine and the Loire Valley. His family was not as ancient as other court dynasties, but as relatives of Louis XIII’s principal minister and great favourite Cardinal Richelieu they remained a force to be reckoned with in the kingdom. Even so, his father’s gambling debts had jeopardized the family’s finances and forced the sale of some important court offices. On first regard the third duke, with a legendary reputation as a debauched womanizer and best friend of Louis XV, seems neither a sympathetic figure nor a particularly promising life to chronicle. Yet he was to rescue the family’s fortunes and reverse the decline. Émilie Champion, in her sumptuously researched ‘total’ biography, demonstrates that the third duke was a meticulous and shrewd manager of his estates. Indeed, he cherished the large vineyards on his Fronsac fiefs and became something of a representative for French wines, especially great clarets, throughout Europe. Still, he was driven by his friendship with Louis XV and his unrestrained political ambition. He was a soldier by vocation, whose defence of Genoa and the Siege of British Minorca gained him the coveted title of Marshal of France. Despite this his troops were ill disciplined during the 1757 Hanover campaign, pillaging everything in sight and failing to come to the Prince de Soubise’s aid during the disastrous Battle of Rossbach. Such behaviour gained him a decidedly mixed reputation as a commander.