The starving citizens of La Rochelle scan the bay in hope. At last the English sails blossom on the horizon; at last fellow Protestants are coming to rescue them from the encircling armies of Louis XIII, Catholic King of France.

Between the many-towered seaport and the English fleet, on a massive breakwater bristling with guns, stands a man determined to foil and crush the rebellious Rochellese. He is Armand de Richelieu, Cardinal and his King's First Minister....

Foil and crush he did—many times before and many times after the siege of La Rochelle in 1628. Born to a noble family, Armand was trained as a soldier but became a bishop at the age of twenty-one. His sole aim was service—to his King and for the glory of France.

"The image of Armand de Richelieu which has come down to us is one part history, one part legend, and one part Alexandre Dumas," writes Burke Wilkinson about his statesman-hero. The account he gives of a man and his times is bursting with incident and intrigue, with scenes of Court conspiracy and battlefield valor, with fascinating characters such as you would meet in the finest historical novel. The man who wore a steel breastplate under his red Cardinal's robes, who loved cats and practical jokes, who sought and gained more power than any man of his day, who changed the history of France and Europe for centuries, has "sat" for many verbal portraits. This brilliant new one, graced by firsthand descriptions of the places Richelieu knew, is notable for its view of the Cardinal as a dynamic modern man of action.

From the dust jacket