The Count-Duke of Olivares, 1587-1645

The aloof and imposing figure of Cardinal Richelieu dominates traditional accounts of European history in the age of the Thirty Years War, and this is understandable enough. French victory in the war, and the subsequent establishment of French hegemony over Europe, have naturally focused attention on the rise of France to its position of predominance under the leadership of Richelieu.

But it is arguable that the preoccupation of historians with the revival of French power and the policies of Richelieu has distorted the whole picture of European history in the first half of the seventeenth century; for contemporaries were still overwhelmingly impressed by the power of Spain, and, if they watched with intense interest the activities of Cardinal Richelieu in Paris, they were at least no less interested in the activities of his great rival, the Count-Duke of Olivares, in Madrid.

These two men, jealously eyeing each other’s every move on the European chess-board, seemed at the time well matched, which makes it all the more ironical that the figure of one of them, Olivares, should have been so entirely eclipsed in later historical narratives.