Cardinal Mazarin
Richard Wilkinson reassesses the much-maligned prelate, asking whether the man who steered France through the minority of Louis XIV deserves such as bad press.
Richelieu I respected, much though I disliked him; Mazarin I neither liked nor respected'. Such was the verdict of Paul de Retz. Although this ambitious troublemaker's opinions should be treated with caution, his contemporaries agreed that whereas Richelieu was 'le grand cadinal', Mazarin was at best a stop-gap, a second-rater. Historians have been more generous, yet have found Mazarin enigmatic and forbidding. While studies of Richelieu roll off the press, Mazarin has been cold-shouldered. Geoffrey Treasure's Mazarin, which came out last year, is the first biography in English since Hassall's Heroes of the Nations study of 1904. Nor have French writers shown much greater interest.
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