Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu

• Sleep in fits and starts: Richelieu suffered from severe insomnia due to migraines. He would go to bed around 11 pm, but would wake up at 2 or 3 am from pain or thoughts of work.
• Night dictations: Waking up in the middle of the night, he would call the secretary on duty straight to his bedroom. Lying in bed, by candlelight, the cardinal would spend hours dictating diplomatic dispatches, orders for generals, or his “Memoirs.”
• Morning sleep: Around 6-7 am he would fall asleep for a couple more hours. At 8 am his official working day began: morning toilet, prayer and endless reception of ministers, ambassadors and petitioners.
• Hospital menu: His diet consisted mainly of liquid broths, pureed soups, boiled chicken, and bread soaked in water or weak wine. Very often, he ate right during work sessions, without interrupting the discussion of state affairs.
• Avoiding excesses: He drank virtually no hard liquor, preferring wine heavily diluted with water, and was strict about ensuring that those around him at work remained sober and collected.
• Maniacal perfectionism: Richelieu demanded absolute order. All papers and codes on his desk had to be arranged in strict chronological order. He couldn't stand being interrupted unnecessarily and valued brevity in people.
• Clearing his mind with cats: His most famous habit was seclusion with his cats. Before making difficult decisions or after difficult conversations with the king, the cardinal would lock himself in his room, lie down on the sofa, and let his 14 pets jump all over him. The animals' purring was his main psychological and physical painkiller.
• Sincere piety: Contrary to the image of a cynical politician, Richelieu made sure to find time every day to read the breviary (prayer book) and celebrate Mass. His faith was strict and deep.
• Concealment of illness: Due to ulcers and tissue necrosis, the cardinal emitted a heavy odor in his later years. To hide this from courtiers and ambassadors, Richelieu developed the habit of liberally perfumed himself with concentrated musk.

• Marie de Medici: The Queen Mother was the one who noticed the young bishop and elevated him at court. However, when Richelieu became First Minister, he refused to be her puppet. The Cardinal chose the interests of France over the ambitions of his patroness. This led to fierce hatred on the part of Marie de Medici, culminating in April Fools' Day (1630), after which the Cardinal achieved her permanent exile from the country. Bluche emphasizes that Richelieu took this break hard on a purely human level, but the needs of the state prevailed.
• Anne of Austria: Richelieu's relationship with Louis XIII's wife was woven from mutual mistrust. Bluche decisively refutes the romantic myths (popularized by Alexandre Dumas in the story of the pendants). In reality, the cardinal saw the Spanish queen as a potential agent of Madrid in Paris. He established strict surveillance of her, read her correspondence, and uncovered her involvement in conspiracies against France, which is why Anne of Austria feared and hated the minister for many years.
• Marie de Hautefort and Louise de Lafayette: Two platonic lovers of Louis XIII. Both were influenced by the cardinal's opponents and tried to turn the monarch against his first minister. Richelieu used every lever of influence—from confessors to court gossip—to distance them from the king and maintain his absolute influence over the sovereign.
• Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse: The most dangerous woman of the era, a brilliant intriguer and friend of the queen. She was the main driving force behind the aristocratic conspiracies against Richelieu. The Cardinal admired her intelligence, but waged a merciless war against her, exiling her several times and confiscating her property.

Marie-Madeleine was widowed early on—her unloved husband, a marriage arranged by her uncle for political gain, died in battle when she was only 18. Shocked by the loss and deeply religious, Marie-Madeleine went to the Carmelite nuns and passionately begged her uncle to allow her to take the veil permanently.
However, Richelieu, as the absolute head of the du Plessis family, responded with a categorical, harsh refusal. Bluche emphasizes that the cardinal was guided by both family interests and selfish personal attachment. He literally pulled his niece out of the convent and installed her in his palace, the Palais-Cardinal. Richelieu was jealous of Marie-Madeleine's feelings for the entire world:
• He stopped any of her attempts to arrange her personal life.
• The cardinal never allowed her to remarry, although among the candidates were the most noble people of France and even the king’s brother, Gaston of Orleans.
• Richelieu wanted her to belong solely to him and the interests of his new state empire. In private, the icy and formidable first minister was transformed. Marie-Madeleine was practically the only person in whose presence Richelieu allowed himself a moment of weakness: he could cry in front of her from helplessness during depressive episodes or groan from hellish pain during migraine attacks. In their correspondence, which historians have analyzed, the cardinal emerges as a tender, caring father. He called her "his daughter," "his most precious being in the world." Richelieu's letters to her are full of sincere warmth, concern for her health and peace of mind, which was in stark contrast to his dry, commanding dispatches to generals and ministers. • Political lightning rod: As a lady-in-waiting at court, she quelled conflicts, acted as a mediator between the cardinal and petitioners, and also helped to uncover conspiracies (it was she who helped her uncle learn of Saint-Mars's final betrayal).
• Cultural influence: Marie-Madeleine managed his charitable foundations, financed monasteries and supported great playwrights,

The cat room (Chatterie) at the Palais-Cardinal housed up to 14 pets. History has preserved their cries, reflecting the cardinal's subtle irony and keen observation:
• Soumise (Soumise - "Submissive"): Richelieu's snow-white favorite, distinguished by her affectionate, gentle disposition.
• Lucifer: A completely black cat. By giving him this name, the cardinal (the highest Catholic bishop) openly ridiculed the superstition of the era that black cats were companions of the devil.
• Louis the Cruel (Ludovic le Cruel): The palace's chief and merciless rat-catcher, named for his harsh disposition towards rodents.
• Gazette: A calico cat named after the first official French newspaper, La Gazette, which was overseen by Richelieu. The cat was so named for its extreme immodesty and habit of sticking its nose into everything.
• Rubis sur l'Ongle ('Until the last drop'): A cat named for his habit of carefully drinking milk from a bowl until the very last drop.
• Mounard le Fougueux: A grumpy and hot-tempered fighter with a quixotic character.
• Racan and Perruque (Racan et Perruque): Twin kittens born in the expensive wig of the famous poet Racan. The playwright didn't notice them, put on the wig, and only discovered the furry guests during an audience with Richelieu, when they began scratching the top of his head. The cardinal took the kittens for himself.
• Pyrame et Thisbé: An inseparable pair of grey cats, named after the legendary lovers because they always slept together, their paws clasped tenderly.
• Mimi-Paillon and Ludoviska: Rare foreign cats. Mimi-Paillon was a luxurious golden Angora brought from Turkey (one of the first in Europe), and Ludoviska was a gift to the cardinal from Poland.
• Serpolet (Serpolet - "Thyme"): A sybarite cat who ignored palace intrigues and loved nothing more than to bask in the sun.
The influence of these animals on Richelieu was enormous: they gave peace of mind to the man who controlled the fate of Europe.

• From early youth (1590s - 1600s) - Chronic migraine. From his youth until the end of his life, Richelieu suffered from attacks of severe headaches. They worsened with any nervous tension, often depriving him of sleep. The first signs of asthenia (nervous exhaustion) also appeared during this period.
• 1605 – Venereal disease (presumably gonorrhea). An acute illness suffered in his youth led to complications affecting the genitourinary system. Because of this, the cardinal suffered from painful urination and periodic inflammations for the rest of his life.
• 1611 — Malaria (malarial fever). The first severe attack of a protracted fever occurred in Luçon. The illness undermined him for six months; Richelieu could not walk and moved only in a stretcher. From that moment on, attacks of debilitating fever returned to him regularly every autumn and spring.
• 1621 – Hemorrhoids and rectal abscesses (ulcers, fissures of the rectum). This affliction made his life a living hell, as the cardinal spent much time in the saddle and at his desk. Exacerbations of the disease caused excruciating pain, prevented him from sitting, and in his later years led to incontinence and a heavy odor, which he tried to mask with perfume.
• 1632 — Rheumatism and polyarthritis. After the colossal strain of the siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628) and April Fools' Day (1630), the cardinal's joints began to rapidly deteriorate. From 1632 onward, pain in his knees and back became constant, his posture began to deteriorate, and he increasingly governed the country from his bed.
• 1639–1640 — Bone tuberculosis (necrosis of the right hand) and furunculosis. Festering ulcers and fistulas, reaching down to the bone, developed on his right hand (with which he wrote state decrees). Because of this, the cardinal could no longer write independently and hired numerous secretaries. His entire body became covered in painful boils.
• 1642 – Purulent pleurisy and lung cancer / pulmonary tuberculosis. The final stage of destruction of the body. The cardinal coughed up blood, experienced constant suffocation, suffered

The cardinal's behavior showed signs of cyclothymia—sharp mood swings. Periods of incredible intellectual exaltation, surging energy, and feverish activity alternated with bouts of profound depression, tears, and despair. During moments of acute political crisis (as in 1636, when Spanish troops threatened Paris), Richelieu could briefly lapse into a state of prostration and apathy, doubting his own strength. However, he was saved by an iron will, which allowed him to quickly mobilize his mind.
The cardinal's nervous system functioned in a state of permanent stress. Living under the constant threat of conspiracies and assassination attempts generated severe anxiety. Richelieu's psyche responded to this with severe psychosomatic symptoms—torturous migraines that had plagued him since early youth and intensified with any political tension.

The core of his personality was the absolute subordination of his own ambitions and feelings to the concept of "raison d'État." This principle was not an abstraction for him—Richelieu sincerely perceived his service to France and the king as a sacred duty before God. This was the source of his astonishing capacity for work: the cardinal labored 15-18 hours a day, personally delving into all aspects of government—from military plans and diplomatic codes to the grammar rules of the French Academy he was creating. Behind the outward mask of icy arrogance, impeccable manners, and rigidity lay an extremely vulnerable, sensitive, and emotional nature. Richelieu keenly experienced betrayal, injustice, and the hatred of court circles. However, his key trait was phenomenal self-control. With sheer willpower, he suppressed personal grievances and sentimentality if they conflicted with the good of the crown. He knew how to be flexible, compromise, and calmly await the right moment to strike. Yet he was not without human warmth: the cardinal demonstrated genuine devotion to his few close friends and associates, and in his rare moments of solitude, he found peace surrounded by his beloved cats, who were his main silent companions. He was a stoic personality type—a man who consciously chose the path of solitude and hard work in the name of a higher purpose.

The cardinal possessed refined, classically aristocratic features: a high, open forehead bespoke profound intelligence, a long, straight nose with a barely noticeable hump, and thin, tightly pressed lips that emphasized his secretive and strong-willed character. Contemporaries and artists alike drew particular attention to his eyes—dark, lively, deep-set, and possessing a penetrating, almost hypnotic gaze. His face was framed by a neatly trimmed, now iconic, mustache and a pointed goatee, visually elongating his already elongated oval face.
Genetically, Richelieu's appearance was a classic manifestation of severe asthenic syndrome and dolichocephaly (an elongated skull), inherited from his mother's side of the family, the de La Porte family. This genetic type predetermined his tall stature, extreme thinness, narrow chest, and pale, almost waxy skin, which often made the cardinal appear like a living corpse. The thin, long fingers that Champaigne so gracefully depicted in his paintings were also a consequence of this innate bone structure. Hereditary vascular fragility and a vulnerable nervous system manifested themselves in his tendency to severe migraine attacks, which he suffered from early in his youth. A genetic predisposition to joint diseases and tuberculosis meant that his originally majestic, proud posture degenerated over the years into a painful immobility, and his facial features acquired a tinge of constant suffering. However, as Bluche emphasizes, it was precisely these natural features—paleness, thinness, and refinement—combined with the purple of the cardinal's robe, that created the unique, majestic image of a man whose mind completely dominated his weak body.

• September 9, 1585 - Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, the future architect of French absolutism, was born in Paris into the family of the chief provost of France.
• 1607 – Consecrated Bishop of Luçon. François Bluche notes that in this devastated diocese, Richelieu first showed himself to be an outstanding administrator.
• 1614 - Deputy to the Estates General. His brilliant speech in defense of the clergy attracts the attention of the regent Marie de Medici.
• 1616 – Appointed Secretary of State for Military and Foreign Affairs, but in 1617, due to the palace coup of Louis XIII, he loses his post and is sent into exile.
• 1619–1620 – He acts as a brilliant mediator and reconciles the rebellious Marie de Medici with the king, proving his political indispensability to Louis XIII.
• 1622 – Elevated to the rank of Cardinal of the Catholic Church.
• August 1624 – Appointed head of the Royal Council (First Minister). Their strong intellectual alliance with Louis XIII begins, based on the primacy of the “interest of state” (raison d'État).
• 1626 – Issues an edict banning duels and an order to demolish internal castles, harshly suppressing the feudal separatism of the aristocracy.
• 1627–1628 – Personally leads the siege of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle. The cardinal’s military engineering genius crushes the “state within a state.”
• 1629 – Signs the Edict of Grace. The Huguenots are deprived of their fortresses and political privileges, but retain freedom of religion, which saves France from religious schism.
• November 11, 1630 – “April Fools’ Day”. Richelieu triumphantly uncovers the conspiracy of Marie de Medici; the Queen Mother is forever exiled, and central power is strengthened.
• 1635 – Founds the French Academy to centralize culture and language. That same year, he draws France into the Thirty Years' War against the Catholic Habsburgs, guided by geopolitics rather than religion.
• 1642 – Suppresses the last conspiracy of the aristocrats (Saint-Mars).
• December 4, 1642 - Died in Paris, leaving France as the strongest power