Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1585–1642)
Born 1585 CE, died 1642 CE.
Armand Jean du Plessis, 1st Duke of Richelieu (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), commonly known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French Catholic prelate and statesman who had an outsized influence in civil and religious affairs. He became known as the Red Eminence (French: l'Éminence Rouge), a term derived from the style of Eminence applied to cardinals and their customary red robes. Consecrated a bishop in 1607, Richelieu was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616. He continued to rise through the hierarchy of both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a cardinal in 1622 and chief minister to King Louis XIII in 1624. He retained that office until his death in 1642, when he was succeeded by Cardinal Jules Mazarin, whose career the cardinal had fostered. Richelieu became engaged in a bitter dispute with Marie de Médici, the king's mother, and formerly his close ally. Richelieu sought to consolidate royal power and restrained the power of the nobility in order to transform France into a strong centralized state.
Text from the Wikipedia article Cardinal_Richelieu, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.