Pope Gregory XV made Richelieu a cardinal in 1622. Despite this, he targeted papal resources when it suited his overall goal of increasing the powers and reach of the French monarchy. In 1626, he sided with a Protestant Swiss region because he wanted an alliance with it and sent troops to drive out the troops that had been sent there by the pope.

About the same time, Richelieu made enemies of many nobles by eliminating the office of Constable of France, the nominal army commander-in-chief and second-in-command of the government. The position dated to 1060 and the reign of Philip I.

The Thirty Years War was raging at this time. France was not directly involved from the start but did eventually join the Europe-wide conflict, on the side of the Protestant powers, primarily because Louis and Richelieu didn't want the Holy Roman Emperor and Spanish monarch, Ferdinand II, to expand his realm of influence into northern Italy.

In the throes of warfare, monarchs and their ministers routinely instituted new taxes or raised existing ones. Louis and Richelieu were no different, raising both the gabelle (salt tax) and the taille (land tax), angering the peasants first and foremost because the clergy and nobility were already exempt from both of those taxes. A number of peasants rose up in revolt against these tax increases in particular and the government in general, at various times between 1636 and 1639. Richelieu's crackdown on this dissent was harsh and long-lasting.

Further, Richelieu set up a system of tax collection that went directly to the crown, through a group of officials known as intendants. That action angered local tax officials, who were used to taking some of what they collected in order to spend it on their own regions (or, at times, put it in their own pockets). Richelieu used a good portion of that tax revenue to reform the army and build up the navy; both actions served the country well in the conflicts and decades that followed.

Richelieu encouraged the king to expand his holdings in North America. Samuel de Champlain was governor of New France at the time; and Louis, at Richelieu's insistence, ordered Champlain to treat Native Americans as "natural Frenchmen"–provided that they converted to Catholicism, of course. To counter Dutch and English interests in North America, Louis and Richelieu in 1627 established the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France (Company of 100 Associates), a fur trading organization that had a twin goal of colonization. Part of the war between England France during this period was the occasional English seizure of French ships bound for New France. At one point, English troops demanded the surrender of the largest French settlement, Quebec. The French soldiers garrisoned there; having insufficient forces to take the city, the English withdrew.

This war between England and France was not technically part of the Thirty Years War. France didn't join that conflict until 1635. But England and France were fighting against each other all the same. At one point, English troops under King Charles I's chief minister, Buckingham, invaded France, ostensibly to aid efforts by French Huguenots to gain more freedoms. (Huguenots were French Protestants who had fought against royals, nobles, and other Catholics during the French Wars of Religion during the last four decades of the 17th Century. The Edict of Nantes, issued by Henry IV in 1598, had effectively ended those wars but, like the handful of edicts that preceded it, hadn't made everyone happy. With the Crown occupied elsewhere, discontented Huguenots in La Rochelle took their shot at once again gaining independence. French troops besieged La Rochelle (left), a Huguenot stronghold reinforced by English troops, in 1627. French troops took the city the following year.

In 1630, the Queen Mother was again at odds with her son Louis; in fact, mother had sided with another son, Gaston, targeting both king and First Minister, Richelieu. Louis, again, stood up to his mother, flexing his royal muscle and siding with Richelieu. Marie and Gaston fled to the Spanish Netherlands.

A musician and playwright himself, Richelieu was a strong believer in the promotion of the arts. He funded the careers of a handful of authors and made sure that Louis allocated funds to establish the Académie Française.

Cardinal Richelieu had an extensive spy network that informed him of the goings-on both inside French borders and without. A strong believer in government censorship and a vitally strong authoritarian as monarch, he made many enemies during his lifetime and survived a handful of assassination attempts. It was tuberculosis, in the end– not an assassin's bullet or poison or sword–that killed him. He died on Dec. 4, 1642, in Paris; he was 57. Succeeding him as the king's chief minister was one of his most trusted officers, Cardinal Mazarin.

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