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The True Story of Cardinal Richelieu, the Villain of ‘The Three Musketeers’
Both Alexandre Dumas and the Hollywood films do him a disservice
Back in November, I wrote a profile of legendary French author Alexandre Dumas, and in that article I said that even if you weren’t familiar with his name, you surely knew his novels (and the movies made from them): The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, and of course The Three Musketeers. As famous as the musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis have become over the past 175 years, the most iconic character from that novel was the evil Cardinal Richelieu. And while the musketeers were loosely based on historical figures, at least their names were altered; Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, also known as the Red Eminence, received no such consideration and Dumas’ Richelieu bears almost no resemblance to the real historical person.
Armand Jean du Plessis was born in Paris on September 9, 1585, the fourth of five children and the third son. Though he trained for a military career following his father’s death, he ultimately joined the clergy to (in part at least) protect an important source of his family’s revenue. He was consecrated a bishop in 1607 and appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616, the first in a series of upward moves that placed him far more squarely…
