GUARDS OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU

Cardinal Richelieu (full name: Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu) was born in 1585 in Paris and died in the same city in 1642. The future cardinal came from the impoverished French nobility and was very quickly assigned to the path of a spiritual career, becoming the bishop of Lucon in 1606 (he was then 21 years old!), And in 1622 - a cardinal. His great political career began in 1624, when he was appointed the office of the first minister by the then king of France, Louis XIII of the Bourbon dynasty - then he was 39 years old. He held this office until his death. As the first minister of France, he adhered to the principle of raison d'état - everything was to be subordinated to the drive to increase the state's power and its role in the international arena. The cardinal successfully strove for the maximum centralization of power in the hands of his monarch and ruthlessly cracked down on any political opposition. In a victorious way (in the years 1625-1628) he also dealt with the possible danger posed by the Huguenots, to whom, however, after destroying their kind of political independence, he granted freedom of religion in an act of grace. Cardinal Richelieu greatly improved the country's administration - both at the local and central level - some of its solutions were still used by Napoleon Bonaparte! He put great emphasis on the development of the French economy in the spirit of mercantilism and trade - including ocean trade. He significantly expanded the French navy and merchant navy and the ground forces. In foreign policy, he was an inexorable enemy of the Habsburgs and was instrumental in the French triumph in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Undoubtedly, at the time of his death, he left behind France, which was one of the greatest European powers and which, during the reign of Louis XIV, was to strive to impose its hegemony on Western Europe.