In December 1793, a crowd of Parisians with loud cries burst into the Sorbonne Church, where the remains of Cardinal Richelieu rested for a hundred and a half years. Excited people opened the tomb and tore the remains of the once powerful cardinal. This is just one of the evidence that the personality of Richelieu and his actions were ambiguously evaluated in French society.
Richelieu personality ratings inconsistency
Many years after mocking the remains of the Cardinal, the French people paid tribute to the leader of medieval France. The country widely covered Richelieu's contribution to military and political history. Oddly enough, but some researchers agree that the cardinal achieved particularly great successes not in government, not in diplomacy and economics, but in culture.
Cardinal Richelieu can be attributed to the number of rare statesmen whose actions and decisions still cause heated debate in society. The mark left by the politician in the history of France and all of Europe turned out to be too deep. In terms of significance, the personality of Richelieu, who acted in the political arena in the first half of the 17th century, can only be compared with Cromwell, Peter the Great, or Napoleon Bonaparte.
However, during his lifetime, Richelieu was not popular among the population of France. Not only the people, but also the aristocrats feared the cardinal and hated him. And this is not surprising, because Richelieu contributed to the decline of the nobility, undermining the feudal foundations of old France by its actions. And the military actions launched by him against the Habsburgs led to the aggravation of the disasters of the masses.
