Speaker 1:	It is a distinct pleasure to introduce today's speaker and my colleague, Jean-Vincent Blanchard, who is, as you heard, an Associate Professor in the French and Francophone program, and has been teaching at Swarthmore College since 1997, the year he received his PhD from Yale University. While Jean-Vincent is a specialist in early modern literature and culture, he has wide-ranging interests of teaching and other research, from modernism, to French theory, from theory and conceptions of identity and performance to Quebec literature and culture. 
	His extensive professional engagements include a multiyear stint as a member of the Executive Committee of the North American Society for American French Literature and, until last year, he was President of the Society of French Interdisciplinary Seventeenth Century Studies. He has also organized large scale conferences here in Swarthmore and in Philadelphia, and works on review boards of various organizations, such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and University of Quebec.
	At Swarthmore, Jean-Vincent has been able to teach a great variety of classes, both in the French and Francophone program, but also in interdisciplinary programs, especially Interpretation Theory. He has been the Director of that program for numerous years and he has taught a large number of its capstone classes. Looking at the themes of these classes, one can clearly see the immense broadness of his intellectual interests. 
	For instance, he taught with Scott Gilbert a class entitled Mind, Body, and Machine. With Cynthia Halpern from Political Science, he taught a capstone entitled Politics, Violence, and Mediation. With Richard Eldridge from Philosophy, he taught a course on Walter Benjamin: Images and the Poetics of Culture. With Robin Wagner-Pacifici, erstwhile of Anthropology and Sociology, he has taught a class called Simultaneity and Monumentality. It is very clear how fruitful such collaborative efforts are for the faculty. When I see that the next book project Jean-Vincent is embarking on is entitled Dreams of Stone: The Poetics of Monumentalism in the Modern State in Seventeenth Century France. You see a direct connection to the titles he has taught together with Robin.
	I want to come back into the present but not into the future and to the project at hand today. Jean-Vincent's first book in English, I want to stress, is a biography of arguably one of the most important figures of modern France. Please forgive me when I am dispensing here with cataloging a long list of articles you have written and simply focus on this particular book. It is entitled Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France. It is, I'm using here American parlance, a really great read. Its narrative style is of an immediacy that jumps from the page. Its magisterial use of original sources is conjuring up a picture of the man and his times that is really making it clear why Richelieu made France into Europe's predominant nation state.
	I think it takes some courage, and maybe a dose of chutzpah to actually engage on a book project that deals with a subject as widely chronicled as Cardinal Richelieu but as one critic wrote, "Blanchard excels at digging deep beneath the surface to reveal the extraordinary man who spawned the legend." I fully agree with another critic after actually reading the book just recently, who writes, "Blanchard paints a riveting picture of the scope of Richelieu's career and the melodramatic intrigues of the main figures of the early Bourbon dynasty." Riveting indeed. Reading the book, I was as eager to turn the pages as I remember doing reading The Three Musketeers as a teenager.
	Without further ado, I would like to present my colleague, Jean-Vincent Blanchard.
Jean-Vincent B.:	Well thank you very much for the feel good moment.
	Good evening and thank you all for being here. Before I begin, just a note, this is my book talk. This is designed for the general audience. Anyone wanting specifications can read the book. The research I did for Eminence also yielded work that is of more interest to scholars in the field. These might want to read some articles that are already published in the French journal Littérature Classique, for example.
	I'm here to tell you about one of history's favorite villains, Cardinal Richelieu. Some of you might have heard of Richelieu in history books or classes. He was the principal minister of Louis XIII and the architect of a new France in the first half of the seventeenth century. You might have heard of him in a political discussion. Henry Kissinger wrote that, "Few statesmen can claim a greater impact on history. Richelieu was the father of the modern state system." 
	Some of you might have heard of him during a trip to France where, for the reasons I just stated, his name was given to streets, monuments, and his figure put on a bank note. Closer to us, you might have seen his name carved in the stone walls of the great post office building at Sixth Avenue and Thirty-third Street in New York. I'm talking to the BoltBus crowd here, I guess. That's because Richelieu was responsible for the creation of what is considered the first public system of postal relays. 
	Let's face it, many of you, I'm sure, know him mostly as a disquieting character of Alexandre Dumas' timeless classic, The Three Musketeers. Enough with vanity, I need my glasses. In this book of historical fiction, which first appeared in 1844, Cardinal Richelieu is ready to preserve his power at any cost. For that, he employs his own musketeers, of course, the lethal agent Milady de Winter, with whom he tries to frame the neglected Queen of France, Anne, who's having an affair with the English Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal's plot fails, thanks to D'Artagnan. When England declares war to France and sends Buckingham as commander of the fleet, high politics are bound with personal enmity between the Duke and the Minister.
	The Three Musketeers has been adapted countless times on the screen. For that reason, there's no French man that has been interpreted by such a gallery of illustrious Hollywood actors than Cardinal Richelieu. Take, for example, this rendition by Vincent Price, who, I'm sure you'll recall, distinguished himself in various horror movies.
Vincent Price:	I treasure the anticipation of our next meeting.
Jean-Vincent B.:	Yes, very scary.
Speaker 4:	The Countess de Winter.
Lana Turner:	Your Excellency.
Vincent Price:	[inaudible 00:08:34] Milady. You were never so welcome as at this moment.
Lana Turner:	Nor so unwilling to come. You promised me a holiday. I'm having my holiday.
Vincent Price:	Oh? Yes, and what is the name of your holiday? The Count de Wardes?
Lana Turner:	Do you know everything that transpires in France?
Vincent Price:	I only know I'm in the midst of a great project and that you, Milady, are part of that great project.
Jean-Vincent B.:	You could also think of this fine performance by Charlton Heston, who did not star in horror movies.
Speaker 6:	In you go.
Speaker 7:	Why won't you tell me? I did nothing. I was lying in bed. I was alone in bed with my wife when this man breaks into my home. I swear, I've done nothing! Nothing! What will they do to me?
Speaker 6:	Everything. You're in the Bastille, you must have done something.
Charlton Heston:	What you have done is high treason. You are accused of conspiring with your wife and with the Duke of Buckingham.
Speaker 6:	No, no! No!
Charlton Heston:	You know your accuser. Who brought you here?
Speaker 6:	That ... That is the man!
Charlton Heston:	Take him away.
Speaker 6:	That is not the man. It was another man altogether. This is a very honorable gentleman. I tell you, it's not this man, I tell you. [inaudible 00:10:00]
Christopher Lee:	[inaudible 00:10:05] to the Queen of Buckingham.
Charlton Heston:	Where?
Christopher Lee:	At the palace. I learned of this when it was too late.
Charlton Heston:	You mean he slipped through your fingers?
Christopher Lee:	Through Your Eminence's fingers. I had no orders.
Charlton Heston:	What happened?
Christopher Lee:	The woman Bonacieux took Buckingham to the palace.
Charlton Heston:	The woman Bonacieux? I thought I told you to arrest her, to hold her.
Christopher Lee:	I failed. One does, occasionally.
Charlton Heston:	If I blundered as you do, my head would fall.
Christopher Lee:	I would say from a greater height than mine, Eminence.
Charlton Heston:	You would?
Christopher Lee:	The height of vaulting ambition.
Charlton Heston:	You have none?
Christopher Lee:	No.
Charlton Heston:	Do you fear me, Rochefort?
Christopher Lee:	Yes, I fear you, Eminence. I also hate you.
Charlton Heston:	I love you, my son, even when you fail.
Jean-Vincent B.:	I could have showed you a clip featuring Tim Curry, who, to startling effect, channeled Dr. Frankenfurter in a Walt Disney production. Last but not least, here's Christoph Waltz, who plays the Cardinal in a much anticipated 3d movie. No doubt, he will bring to the role the kind of villainy that Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards fought.
	Whether you have known Richelieu as a historical figure or as a character of The Three Musketeers, I'm sure you have a question in mind. What is the relationship between Cardinal Richelieu, the historical figure, and the historical fiction of Dumas? Who was the real Richelieu? Was he the clever strategist who designed and led military campaigns? A man of wonders who mastered information and technology, thus coming to represent a new era of progress and rationality? Did you see that little slide projector he had in the second clip? There's something to that.
	In other words, to what extent can we say that Richelieu was a contemporary of Galileo and Descartes? Was Richelieu the priest, a Cardinal no less, who professed to be a Christian, yet became known as a ruthless intriguer who felt free to order arbitrary arrests, jail his countrymen for political reasons, and even tortured because he thought the interest of the state justified these kinds of actions. Worst even, this Darth Vader dressed in red might have fancied himself as even more powerful than his King, Louis XIII. Last but not least, must we think that Richelieu's silken red capa magna did not make him less than a man. In other words, did Richelieu define a certain idea de la France concerning its politicians and their seductions? [inaudible 00:12:47]
	Well, Richelieu's times have always been my focus of interest, and so I had a few ideas on these matters when I decided to write the book. This is why I thought it would be great to tell the general public about the Cardinal. Let me tell you, I had no idea that after five years spent sifting through dusty old manuscripts and creaky parchment-bound memoirs, I could stand before you and declare that indeed, Cardinal Richelieu was a lot of that, and then some.
	You see, Alexandre Dumas did write historical fiction. The [French 00:13:17] that he used as a source of inspiration lived later than the historical events depicted in The Three Musketeers. Still, Dumas' characters evolve in a world of real events and many real characters. That's not surprising because Dumas used the services of a historian to aid his imagination and create a plausible backdrop to his plots. That historian used many of the same documents that we now use to reconstitute the Cardinal's life and times.
	The real Armand Jean du Plessis was born in 1585 in Paris. His family hailed from the hamlet of Richelieu in western France. First, he became a Bishop and then, a much esteemed Charge des Affaires, a Minister for the Regent Queen, Marie de Medici, the mother of Louis XIII. The King and his mother had a rather tumultuous relationship. He killed her confidant, they both led armies to fight each other across France, they eventually reconciled. 
	After some difficult years spent trying to dispel the King's enduring mistrust toward him, Richelieu became a Cardinal and then a Minister and Advisor to that King Louis XIII. Louis XIII, by the way, is also known for building a small, very modest hunting manor in the village of Versailles. A manor which the Sun King developed to make it the palace we still admire nowadays. That's the king that he served all his life. He died just a year after him. That's mama, Queen Marie de Medici. Quite a character.
	These are gorgeous ... Before it was Philippe de Champaigne, that's from Peter Paul Rubens, of course, who started drawing at the Court of France and gave us all these beautiful pictures.
	From then on, Richelieu proved that he had the stuff of an extraordinary statesman. He survived some nefarious intrigues and assassination attempts, sent some foolish young nobles who dared to defy the king's power to the scaffold, but mostly he began to forge political unity in the kingdom of France. Notably, by besieging and subduing the port city of La Rochelle, the Atlantic stronghold of the French Protestants. Then, signing a general peace treaty with these Frenchmen.
	This 13-month Siege of La Rochelle truly marked the beginning of the Cardinal's European fame. I would say eternal fame, if I may say. It is a grand story and one central to the plot of The Three Musketeers, because it is also where the love story between the English Duke of Buckingham and the Queen of France and of Austria comes to an end. That's Queen Anne of Austria, so she married Louis XIII. She was famous throughout Europe for her beautiful forearms and hands that had a marvel-like beauty. That's the Duke of Buckingham, by Rubens as well.
	Let us not forget that the Siege of La Rochelle is also a very tragic tale. At the heart of the matter was the political independence of the French Protestants. They were Calvinists, to be specific. La Rochelle had a history of independence and thought of itself as a city-state, even maintaining its own diplomatic ties with foreign powers like England, the country that was at odds with the King of France. When war broke out between England and France, Richelieu took the opportunity to once and for all subdue the city of merchants.
	The problem were La Rochelle's super fortifications and a location at the end of a bay and in the middle of salt marshes, that made the city virtually impregnable. This is when Richelieu proved to be a man of wonders. I would say, of technical wonders. He built a bulwark across the Bay of La Rochelle to prevent the enemy boats from resupplying the city with food. The Bay was about half a mile wide but its waters were not very deep. You have to picture what a colossal enterprise and what an engineering feat this represented. We're in the 1600s, right?
	Winter brought a fierce storm, at some point, in the middle of the construction. The waves of which toppled the stones that made up the bulwark. Once the storms had passed, Richelieu's engineers observed that the stones now formed a sloped embankment in which the waves crashed and lost their violence. Evidently, building a dam wide at the top was useless. Workers immediately put to use a new design. Not only did it allow the bulwark to withstand the force of the ocean, but the structure now retained mounds of steel that further solidified it. 
	All around the city, the Cardinal built a strong defense line. At the height of the siege, there were about 30,000 soldiers making sure that nothing could reach the wretched [inaudible 00:17:42]. Here's a contemporary engraving of the war theater. This is the city of La Rochelle, not very precise, with the fortifications. This is the bay. This is the famous bulwark, after which Richelieu, he was called the New Alexander, because according to legend, Alexander also want to subdue tire. Armada of boat. Here, you see this three-kilometer-long wall that surrounded the city. Because they could not take it, they had to isolate it and make sure that nothing would go inside. No food.
	The strategy worked. 
	Oh yes, I forgot. Here's a nineteenth century painting representing Richelieu on the famous bulwark. You see these big spikes here that protect the bay against the [inaudible 00:18:30]. It was amazing. You know, this is from the nineteenth century and people usually say, "Well, what a grandiose scene but it's invented." Well, you know, I have the papers and the plans for that bulwark. It pretty much looked like that.
	The strategy worked, leading to an unconditional surrender after many months. Historians estimate that about 12,000 people died of starvation inside the walls of La Rochelle. Reading the testimonies and diaries of these men and women is quite heart wrenching. The horror stories that accompany these sieges are all there, including, usually, cases of cannibalism.
	Throughout the siege, don't expect Cardinal Richelieu to be only sitting at his desk, pouring over maps and administrative memos. The Cardinal was a man of action and he often dropped his cardinal's robe to don a fine armor and lead an attack on horseback, which he did many times during the siege. At the final showdown of the siege, when the French army was pushing at one more attempt by the English Navy to free La Rochelle, you will find him on his flagship, before the bulwark, frantically dispatching orders to all corners of this incredible war theater. 
	Yes, that left him little time for prayers, but he had obtained a special dispensation from the Pope, and you only had to recite a shorter version of the prayer [inaudible 00:19:46]. Richelieu's thought that a Christian duty is to act in the world, if it appeared that that was God's design. There was little of the contemplative, let alone the mystical in Cardinal Richelieu.
	You might find it quite heartless to hear about a Cardinal who lets thousands die of starvation. That, indeed, is what makes Richelieu a controversial figure. I must point out that Richelieu's goal was truly political. He always offered La Rochelle and the French protestants a way out of the siege and their freedom of religion, as long as they would profess obedience to their sovereign. That's what he did when they surrendered.
	When you consider the overall history of the times, with its [inaudible 00:20:25] of horrors and gratuitous massacres, it's easy to think that he could have wiped out the city entirely, just to set an example, after it was liberated, after it surrendered. There were still thousands of people inside. Louis XIII and his ministers surely could have taken the city as soon as its defenders became too weakened by their starvation. They could barely hold a gun at the end. Nonetheless, Richelieu believed, as he wrote in his memoirs, that letting the siege run its course affirmed royal power.
	This might seem rather counterintuitive. What better stand on his power could Louis have taken than by ordering the attack on the city with force, at a time when the guard could not offer meaningful resistance? As the Cardinal put it, "It is unfortunate when one has to take with authority what reason should concede." Cardinal Richelieu did not have the hypocrisy to hope that La Rochelle would actually recognize Louis XIII sovereign authority as good. He wanted to force La Rochelle to reach a consensus on the king's power.
	This exploited La Rochelle, among others, gave him the strength to fight the influence of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg dynasties. Specifically, Emperor Ferdinand and the Minister Olivares in a protracted military and diplomatic conflict known as the 30 years war. Let us remember that Habsburg territories encircled all of France at that time and Richelieu saw the Habsburgs as mortal threats to the French Bourbon dynasty.
	Facing the Catholic Habsburg threat, Richelieu chose to pursue the policies of King Louis' father, Henry IV, by striking alliances with Protestant princes, such as the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, another incredible character in this gallery of really incredible people. The talent of this formidable military leader had earned him the nickname "Lion of the North." Now, if this alliance between Catholic France and a Protestant power appeared understandable under Henry IV, who was a recent convert to Catholicism, it was quite shocking when forged by a cardinal of the Catholic Church.
	Think about this again, in an age where religious intolerance caused wars and untold misery, to conceivably [inaudible 00:22:36] balance of powers. Aiming at keeping in check Habsburg ambition was quite extraordinary. Eventually, such a non-dogmatic understanding of the state's interest allowed European political entities to think of themselves as nations, rather than parts of the church's body.
	Cardinal Richelieu, then, was not dogmatic or fanatical. That's why he holds such an important place in history and politics. At the heart of his political thought was a firm belief that rational decisions were reconcilable with God's design, because he saw reason as precisely God's gift to the human creature. Let me quote here his famous Testament politique, "The natural light of thought makes it obvious to anyone that man, having been created reasonable, is bound to act using this power. Otherwise, he would act against his own nature and, consequently, offend his Creator."
	That said, I surely do not want to give the impression that Richelieu was a pure rationalist. His belief in the dignity of human rationality must always be understood in parallel with another very strong conviction, that human society is naturally made of hierarchal orders. Chief among the human powers are churchmen, of course. Above all, there is the king, the God-given sovereign monarch. Dubious alliances were, in the end, the expression of a sovereign will and Richelieu would have emphasized that striking an alliance with Sweden was a step in the direction of an entirely Catholic Europe.
	Richelieu's dark legend portrays him as a master puppeteer who manipulated a feeble King Louis XIII and even wanted to replace him on the throne. That was represented quite smartly in the Charlton Heston bit. When he exited the room, he opens the door. I don't know if you had time to notice but there's a painting. That's Louis XIII, in a very famous portrait. I think that the smart guy who did the movie, forgive me, I can't recall his name, wanted to show that well, the king was a bit of a decorative object in this whole story. That's actually quite far from the truth.
	Yes, Richelieu's methods were often dubious, and I will tell you shortly about his ambivalent relationship with the king. Let me just stress this forcefully. Richelieu had a determining influence on France as we know it today because he relentlessly sought to affirm the sovereign power of the French king. Before law courts, the myriad of local governments and institutions that made France at the time, and the high nobility.
	Thus, after La Rochelle, and for 14 years until his death in 1642, Richelieu spent a large portion of his life crisscrossing France over the snowy Alps, on the seas, fighting battles along King Louis, while governing the kingdom. It was quite a tall order. This is a story of extraordinary work capacity, persistence, and tenacity. High wire diplomatic acts, with the help of his famous advisor, Father Joseph, stunning reversals, sometimes embarrassing snafus, strokes of luck, lots of them, actually, and masterful recoveries and epic victories succeed one another. 
	I said snafus because no matter how prudent and strategic Richelieu was, he could also make terrible mistakes. The first years of the open war with the Habsburg turned out to be harrowing. In 1636, the Spanish armies came so close to Paris, they could be seen from Marmont and the capital had to be evacuated. Yeah.
	Adding to the difficulty, and the interest of the story, I should say, were the intrigues of the French high nobility. You see, there was something of medieval France left in the habits of the French nobles under Richelieu. They saw themselves as privileged advisor to the king. They did not like at all this cardinal, who came from what can be described at best as mid-tier provincial nobility. A man who had become Louis XIII's trusted and immensely powerful advisor, while extolling the virtues of an absolute sovereign. 
	It did not help that Richelieu's fortune grew exponentially and somewhat mysteriously during his ministry and those years of war. He used the fortune to build lavish houses, to furnish them with antiques that his agent sent from Rome. Lastly, he sunk colossal amounts of money in elaborate, theatrical productions for his own state-of-the-art theater. The Cardinal loved the theater. I should mention at this point that Richelieu was a fantastic orator and founded the Académie française in 1635 to promote the purity and good use of the French language.
	This is ... Richelieu came from a very tiny hamlet. It was just a little house and as soon as he got money, he built this chateau in Richelieu, to make sure that, you know, he looked like an important guy. The left wing of the chateau in the back is actually the old house. It was like built around it. It was a beautiful place. It was known as the most beautiful house built by a subject of the French king, meaning that only kings, until then, had built houses like that. 
	Don't try to go and see it, there's not one stone left standing. This is one of the kinds of monuments that we can only think about because it was destroyed during the Revolution. The stones were sold to build houses in nearby village. This was chock full of [French 00:27:59], whatever you want. It was like an art gallery. I think he went once, but there's not one doorknob that he did not approve before doing it. All that from Paris, by correspondence. There's probably a shuttling by people on horseback. Really amazing.
	Early on, and throughout his career, Richelieu had to untangle many plots. He became infamous for his fearless musketeers, his secret police, and the spies he paid in all corners of the Louvre. There were more daring nobles who ended up on the scaffold after some rather dubious trials. The punishment Richelieu meted out were violent and many thought that these represented sheer brutality more than a need for exemplarity. The state's enemy were his own.
	Under all this pressure, I hate to say it, but the Cardinal often showed a bitter, high-strung, and vindictive fiber. By now, you understand by Eminence was a bit of a gory tale. His enemies thought that he never forgave. His first biographer reported that, "He often felt sorrow for not experiencing as deeply as he wanted remorse over his mistakes, and the love of God." The danger of palace revolutions and assassinations became much more pressing after the Siege of La Rochelle. In a stunning turn of events, the [inaudible 00:29:22] and haughty Queen Marie de Medici withdrew her favor, drawing into an ever widening circle of malcontents, including Louis' younger brother, Gaston, a rather lethal character who coveted his brother's throne. 
	That by Van Dyck.
	Marie just found that her former protégé, the Cardinal, was becoming too arrogant and sure of himself. The tension led to a famous showdown seen at the Palais du Luxembourg, the Day of the Dupes, involving all the main characters of the story. There's a collection of books in France, it's called, as I said, The Thirty Most Important Days in the History of France. The Day of Dupes made the cut, of course. Big showdown.
	Eventually, Marie had to flee France. Richelieu made sure that she would never return. So, after 1631, the Queen Mother of France, mother of four queens and kings, that's amazing because she married [inaudible 00:30:20] to the King of England. Anyway, you get the picture. Yeah, didn't want to test my memory at this point. After 1631, the Queen Mother of France lived abroad for the rest of her life, fueling with her resentment all kinds of nefarious plots against the Cardinal and causing her son, Louis, much chagrin. Louis was good enough to feel remorse about this sorry state of the royal familial affair, even though Marie had never really loved him.
	I'm sorry to tell friends of The Three Musketeers that in spite of all my best efforts, I could not find a character that resembles the Milady de Winter of The Three Musketeers. However, I can tell you that among Cardinal Richelieu's most tenacious enemies was a Duchess, Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, known as Madame de Chevreuse. She was a duchess, she was fabulously rich, and as Queen Anne of Austria's best friend, she hated the Cardinal with a passion.
	Here's Marie de Chevreuse as Diana. Yes.
	What made Chevreuse such a thorn in the Cardinal's side was her habit of mixing court intrigue with high politics. It is proven, for example, that she helped the Duke of Buckingham forge some alliances with France's neighboring potentates, the Duke of Lorraine, right before La Rochelle. Madame de Chevreuse counted Buckingham and Lorraine as her former lovers, and she definitely knew how to mix pleasure with business. The Cardinal, who knew everything through his network of informants, reacted with a mix of indignation and titillation.
	Here's an anecdote. It turns out that he was quite facetious and he loved to give nicknames. Madame de Chevreuse, in his parlance, was "la chevrette," the little goat, because Chevreuse, la chevrette. In a letter, I found Richelieu speaking of Buckingham and he was trying to find a moniker for Buckingham. He decided that the English Duke's name had to be "le bouquin," evoking the male goat, because, as he writes in the letter, Buckingham had "bouquine la chevrette." You get an idea of the kind of humor that Richelieu could have. It's quite surprising.
	Madame de Chevreuse's status in the high nobility protected her to a certain extent. For most of her adventurous life, spent trying to undermine the Cardinal, she got away with mere exile in her chateaus. Perhaps it is because Richelieu had a soft spot for her. Here's another anecdote. Eventually, Chevreuse ... We're in the light part of the program here. Eventually, Chevreuse was allowed to return from exile from her chateau in [inaudible 00:32:59], wherever she wanted to be, not in Paris. She was allowed to return from exile because Richelieu wanted to get something out of the queen, I can't recall what.
	Once again, she proved to be up to no good. She began an affair with the Minister of Justice, and the pillow talk allowed her to communicate state secrets to a foreign ruler and a former lover. Naturally, Richelieu's secret police was intercepting the Duchess' correspondence, which you can still read in the French archives. Chevreuse's betrayal, it turns out, was even worse than the Cardinal could have thought. 
	She spent much time describing how he visited her dressed in his best civilian outfits. If we trust her, he proved to be quite a flirt. I can believe that. We saw that he had a sense of humor and contemporaries spoke highly of his charm and social grace. Chevreuse just thought that it was hilarious and she would have none of it. She gave him a nickname of her own, "Rotten ass." As it turns out, that was both figurative and literal. A copious note in the book explains that.
	After causing yet more mayhem, Chevreuse had to flee France precipitously. She was helping Queen Anne to communicate with her Spanish relatives. Not a good idea in a time of French war with Spain. So, when the plot was discovered, the Duchess thought that this time she would not escape the swift justice of the Cardinal. Chevreuse put on a man costume, painted her favorite white horse in another color, and began an epic crossing of France. Quite a cavalcade.
	Of course, Richelieu followed this flight through the reports of his spies. Once Madame de Chevreuse reached the Spanish border, he sent her this note. That's in the official correspondence of Richelieu. "I lament more than I can tell you the hardships of your trip and confess that I could not help laughing at certain of your exploits. You have reacted disproportionately to this alarm. I can assure you that no one wants to harm you. I also understand that everything seems shadowy when one lives in fear." That gives you an idea of the kind of subplots that run underneath Richelieu's grand enterprise of extricating France from the Habsburg stranglehold. 
	Time is running out, so we'll not have much time to relate the most explosive plots to overthrow and assassinate Richelieu, the jaw-dropping conspiracy of the Marquis of Cinq-Mars is one of the main threads in the last two chapters of the book. All the while, Richelieu is heroically trying to gain the upper hand against the Spanish army in the southwest province of the [French 00:35:38].
	What I can end at is that [inaudible 00:35:40] was Louis XIII male companion, and that Richelieu himself had placed him in the King's entourage. Yes, that's why Louis XIII did not have much interest in his beautiful wife, Anne. The conspiracy of Cinq-Mars is a murky tale with a melancholic neurotic and a bit sadistic with the XIII is revealed to be a man of rather strange secrets, including some long-simmering resentment against his minister. While that resentment does make sense, considering that Richelieu used his authority as a churchman to promote his political agenda and his own personal interests.
	Venetian Ambassador, Angelo Correr wrote, "Richelieu made himself Louis XIII director of conscience because, as the most famous doctor of the Sorbonne, he wanted to be the only one to resolve the doubts and scruples that worried that royal conscience." At the same time, Richelieu kept assuring Louis that keeping his mother, Marie de Medici abroad was essential to France's safety. He created diversions by pushing young favorites in the royal arms. Trust me, the price Richelieu ended up paying was a very high price. What is most obvious in this fascinating story is how the [inaudible 00:36:53] between a master and a servant has to be full of contradictions. These are, perhaps, the contradictions of sovereign power.
	By the time he passed away in 1642, at the age of 57, Richelieu could claim quite a few successes. Having laid the political, institutional, and cultural foundations for a nation. Last but not least, securing strategic military positions all around the territory. Surely his task was far from over, and it took many years for his successor, Cardinal Mazarin, to settle the conflicts with the Habsburgs. After years of war, the France of Richelieu teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and a large part of the population could hardly eat. 
	Many Frenchmen, it must be said, breathed a sigh of relief when Richelieu passed away. It was like fireworks of epigrams and poems that celebrated his death. Some flattering, some celebratory. Here's one, "Here rests Cardinal Richelieu, who surely deserves a tomb more magnificent and beautiful since, with his Eminence, rests all of France." Still, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu had allowed them, the Frenchmen, to think of a grand future for themselves. That is no small legacy for a leader.
	To conclude, I would like to offer a few thoughts on what it meant to write this biography. My first duty, of course, was to be truthful. I thought my reader expected it and, to the best of my knowledge, what I describe in Eminence is really what happened. There's an incredible wealth of documents that has survived from the Cardinal's time in government. Trust me, he was a very well-organized man. After some time spent writing about the life of the French court in the seventeenth century, it sounds a little cliché but I really felt I was a direct witness to their stories.
	Yet, something that is inherent to the genre of the biography necessarily came to the fore as I wrote. That even with years of painstaking research in French archives, I was still writing about human nature. Because of that, part of my observations would remain in the realm of the hypothetical. To write a good story, cause and effect have to be inferred between facts that, in and of themselves, standalone, disconnected in the distant past. We are, after all, dealing with human subjects who lived almost four centuries ago.
	It soon became clear, then, that the key to writing a successful biography of Cardinal Richelieu was to find the right narrative voice. Through style, I had to establish a bond of trust between the narrator and the reader, who wants to learn while having a good time. A fundamental agreement must exist as soon as the first sentence of a biography unfolds. With a story so rich in outlandish characters and melodramatic events, it turns out the style had to be lucid and unadorned. If my kind audience will allow me to invoke some prestigious patronage, expect more the spirit of [inaudible 00:39:47] than that of [inaudible 00:39:48] when reading my pages. In other words, do not expect the bodice-ripper.
	I'd like to say ... Like, maybe you would get that impression from the book talk.
	I'd like to say that there's an added benefit to these writing choices. When finishing the book, I was reminded of this age old truth, that the epic vision, that sentiment that something grand is happening in history, never shines more than when it is seen through the prism of the familial. What you see in Eminence is the drama of the royal family on the backdrop of France emerging as a great nation, and a map of Europe being redrawn.
	Surely the book shows that the Minister of Louis XIII was all too human too. In wrestling with a cast of princely characters did not play a little part in making Armand Jean du Plessis the cardinal that we know. Far from betraying him, I think that animating the frozen, cerebral, and stately figure, painted by Philippe de Champaigne, gave him a depth of character. A sense of opportunity, amazing decisiveness, and courage were the Cardinal's most extraordinary political qualities. These were the traits that allow him to succeed, often in spite of himself. Armand Jean du Plessis was a true baroque hero, a bit of a manic, oscillating between depression and exhilaration. Sometimes ruthless, sometimes charming, always piercingly intelligent.
	I can't say if he will appreciate being portrayed so differently than in those portrait he commissioned. I tried to do him justice. In any case, I'm glad I don't have to explain it all standing before his Eminence.
	Thank you.