The Purpose of this history of Cardinal Richelieu is to show the living personality of the man - to show it evolving, reacting to and acted on by other personalities - and to portray the conditions in France as he found them and transformed them.

Within such a narrow compass it is not possible to give full particulars of the sources on which this biography is based. It is a remarkable fact that in French literature apart from works by the cardina;'s contemporaries, there is no biography of Richelieu, and the great work projected by Gabriel Hanotaux has been left uncompleted.