Maniere de Bien Bastir pour Toutes Sortes de Personnes - Pierre Le Muet -1623

This book of building construction was first published in 1623, a decade before the completion of the cité idéale of Richelieu. 

Maniere de bien bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes
was written by the architect and engraver 

Pierre Le Muet.

click on his name for more biographic details!

Some  say that the hôtels particuliers of the Grande Rue of Richelieu were constructed to the principles and designs in this book
to a standard design required by the cardinal duc.

Each cost 10,000 livres tournois.

Pierre Le Muet - Batir pour toutes sortes de personnes by Howard Copping on Scribd

The phantom cardinal-duc

…a huge spooky and shadowy figure appeared...

Le Chasteau de Richelieu

 or

L'Histoire des Dieux et des Heros de l'Antiquité,

avec des Réfléxions morales.

par Mr. Benjamin Vignier - à Saumur

chez Henri Desbordes, imprimeur

& Marchand Librairie

1681

avec privilege du Roy

Benjamin Vignier was the steward in charge of the Château de Richelieu shortly after the cardinal duc's lifetime. He left this detailed description of the palace in 1681, presumably in the lifetime of the second duke. It is the principal written text describing the magnificent building at its apogee and detailing the artistic treasures that it contained, in particular the painting, the statues and busts of Roman antiquities.

click here below

https://books.google.co.uk/books/reader?id=rcitqP22K1sC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA24

Richelieu in Love

or

The Youth of Charles 1

This 1850's play about Queen Anne of Austria and her paramour Lord Buckingham was a popular production on the London stage.

click here below

https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=65Q-AAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PP1

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Alexandre Dumas père - b.2 July 1802 - d.5 Dec 1870

d'Artagnon and his three chums….

Alexandre Dumas is the author whose book 'The Three Musketeers' subverts the reputation of the historical cardinal-duc de Richelieu. Dumas' famous fizzing narrative needs a pantomime villain to serve the story and the cardinal-duc's portrayal fits right into this purpose.  And so popular is the book that few consider if his machiavellian and cynical portrayal was really deserved.  Another picture emerges if one reads any balanced historical text: the real Richelieu was machiavellian sometimes, but on other occasions quite visionary for his time and the turbulent context of the early 17th century.

Alexandre Dumas in 1855
author of The Three Musketeers

Dumas has, of course, done a great favour to the little town of Richelieu, even if he links its creation the that 'literary stinker', the devious Armand-Jean du Plessis.

Better some publicity and reputation than none!

The Dumas memorial by Gustave Doré

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_du_Général-Catroux

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartier_de_la_Plaine-de-Monceaux

http://www.peter-pho2.com/2016/01/passing-in-front-of-dartagnan.html

d'Artagnan in a Van Dyke pose...
limbs akimbo, 'to occupy space'

A first edition of Les Trois Mousquetaires of 1844 at auction

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The current bedtime reading of Abbé Henri

He has started to read this text book to understand the development of Hapsburg Spain the the era of the cardinal duke.

As the old political maxim says:

'Know the enemy better than he knows himself.'

Spain was the superpower of the 17th century, but was finally checked by the cunning long-term power-politics of Armand-Jean whose FRANCE finally came to question this Hispanic supremacy in the reign of the young sun-king Louis XIV, following Richelieu's own death in 1642.

While the palace and cité idéale of Richelieu were being created, the First Minister of France duelled with his opposite number in Madrid 

the 'conde-duque' Olivares,

Minister to his master, Felipe IV, King of Spain.

a detail from 'The surrender of Breda' by Diego Velázquez

Felipe IV,  King of Spain
Velázquez

Don Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar
the Count of Olivares
and Duke of San Lúcar la Mayor
Velázquez

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Franck Maubert and his 2013 novel 'Ville Close'

Franck Maubert (b.1955) a french novelist and essayist who has written a short novel concerning the strange qualities of the cité idéale of Richelieu.  His first visit and the impressions formed were in the 1990s and this 2013 book sketches his perception of a little town dominated by its insistent stoney design and fabric.  He was struck by recent bizarre real events; including a suicide - a 'defenestration' - of a young woman, and other rather odd aspects of the little population and their strange and surreal habits.

Some of the descriptions are only too recognisable from the reality!

No references to the Abbé Henri Proust, thank goodness!

• 1985 : La Peinture moderne, éd. Nathan. Essai.
• 1997 : Lexique Toxique, éd.
• 2002 : Est-ce bien la nuit ?, éd. Stock, 136 pages. Roman.
• 2003 : Près d'elles, éd. Flammarion, 211 pages. Roman.
• 2005 : Le Paris de Lautrec, éd. Assouline.
• 2005 : Et les arbres n'en seront pas moins verts, éd. Assouline.
• 2005 : Gainsbourg for ever, éd. Scali, 136 pages.
• 2006 : avec Isabelle Maeght et Yoyo Maeght, Maeght: L'Aventure de l'art vivant, éd. de La Martinière, 309 pages. L'étonnante histoire de la famille Maeght.
• 2005 : La Mélancolie de Nino, éd. Scali, 136 pages.
• 2008 : Le Père de mon père, éd. Philippe Rey, 141 pages. Roman.
• 2009 : L'odeur du sang humain ne me quitte pas des yeux : Conversations avec Francis Bacon, éd. Mille et une nuits, 108 pages.
• 2012 : Le Dernier modèle, éd. Fayard / Mille et une nuits, 128 pages. Dans le Montparnasse de l'après-guerre.- Prix Renaudot de l'essai 20122.
• 2013 : Ville Close

1902 book illustrations by Maurice Leloir in the book 'Richelieu' by Théodor Cahu

CLICK HERE
for more illustrations
Even the  cardinal himself could not prevent smoke coming down his own chimney
(here apparently in Luçon!) when the wind blew the wrong way - try shutting the window, Émminentissime! 
And he never sorted out what to do with all those messy oak logs lying by the hearth.
Bet he trips up over those tongs too...

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