Excerpt from The Life of Cardinal Richelieu When undertaking to write a life of Cardinal Richelieu, I was quite sufficiently impressed with the difficulties of the task. In the first place, I knew that no one should attempt to give an account of the actions of any distinguished character, without making an earnest and unprejudiced inquiry into the motives, the carrying out, and the results of them in the next, I believe that there exists no such'extraordinary dis crepancy in the materials at command, respecting the history of any person, as in the instance of Richelieu. With some writers he is above humanity, - With at least as many, far beneath it and lastly, the man, his policy, his power, together with the personages he was mixed up with, and the times he lived in, have proved so attractive to novelists and play-writers, that Richelieu has taken a place and a colouring in the minds of general readers, which no sober and honest biographer can hope to remove or equal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.