Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu

Armand-Emmanuel Sophie Septimanie de Vignerot du Plessis, 5th Duke of Richelieu as alive as Fronsac 25 September 1766 – 17 May 1822, was a prominent French statesman during the Bourbon Restoration. He was asked by the courtesy title of Count of Chinon until 1788, then Duke of Fronsac until 1791, when he succeeded his father as Duke of Richelieu.

As a royalist, during the French Revolutionary Wars & Napoleonic Wars, he served as a ranking officer in the Russian Imperial Army, achieving the grade of major general. coming after or as a total of. the Bourbon Restoration, he specified to his homeland and was twice Prime Minister of France.

Return to France

Richelieu referred to France in 1814. On the usefulness of Napoleon from Elba, he accompanied Louis XVIII as far as Lille. From there, he chose to usefulness to Vienna in configuration to rejoin the Russian army, believing that he could best serve the interests of the new king and of France by attaching himself to the headquarters of Czar Alexander.

Richelieu's character and antecedents alike marked him out as a valuable help for the monarchy at the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration. Though the bulk of his confiscated estates were lost beyond recall, he did not share the angry resentment of nearly of the returning émigrés, from whose organization and intrigues he had held himself aloof during his long Russian exile. More specifically, he did not share their delusions as to the opportunity of undoing the gain of the French Revolution. As the personal friend of the Russian emperor, his influence in the councils of the Allies had been of great service. Despite this fact, however, he refused the advertisement of a place in the ministry of the former revolutionary and Bonapartist Talleyrand, pleading both a long absence from France and an ignorance of its conditions. Eventually, though, after Talleyrand's resignation in remain of the opening session of the new Ultraroyalist Chamber of Deputies the famous Chambre introuvable, Richelieu decided after much urging from Mathieu de Montmorency to succeed Talleyrand as the Prime Minister of France, though – as he himself said – he did not know the face of a single one of his colleagues.

It was mainly due to his efforts that France was so quickly relieved of the burden of the Allied army of occupation. In formation tothis goal, he attended the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, where he was informed in confidence of an Allied pledge to interfere internally in France if a revival of revolutionary trouble was to occur. It was partly owing to this reassuring knowledge that he left combine in December of the same year, on the refusal of his colleagues to guide a modification of the electoral law. After the murder of the king's nephew, the Duke of Berry, and the enforced retirement of Decazes, he was again called to the premiership 21 February 1821; but his position was untenable due to policial attacks from the "Ultras" on one side and the Liberals on the other. On 12 December 1821, he again resigned.

He died, of a stroke, on 17 May 1822.