Cardinal Richelieu is perhaps the most famous French politician in Russia, but the real Richelieu is not known here. Meanwhile, this man four centuries ago largely determined the appearance of modern Europe. At the age of less than twenty-two, he became a bishop, and fifteen years later a cardinal, but he was not famous at all for serving the Catholic Church. He easily exchanged his cassock for military armor and, if the interests of the church contradicted the interests of France, he chose France without a shadow of a doubt. He was equally feared and hated by both aristocrats and the people, but it was he who became one of the main creators of the victory of France in the Thirty Years' War, founded the French Academy, established religious peace in the country, without which the French would never have been able to take place as a single nation. The period when he was the "chief minister of the king" is called the "Richelieu era".Pyotr Cherkasov is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Knight of the Legion of Honor.