Emmanuel de Waresquiel

Beautiful biography of an unjustly little-known great French statesman. Richelieu administred New Russia for Czar Alexander I and modeled the now Ukrainian city of Odessa on a classicist scheme. He excelled in foreign policy, finance and defense of the Charte Octroyée as Louis XVIII’s Prime Minister at two times, brought down by an unlikely coalition of Left and Right. Richelieu’s origins in one of the most famous French noble families (Cardinal Richelieu under Louis XIII, the Ambassador Richelieu acquainted with Louis XV) make him a perfect alternative figure to Talleyrand, whose legacy is quite critically assessed through the eyes of this great rival. Wonderful book by Emmanuel de Waresquiel, authority on the French Restauration.… (more)

(2nd ed, rev, augm) Highly conscientious recent biography of the celebrated French diplomat & statesman Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand (1754-1838). Drawing on bounties of freshly excavated source material, the emerging aggregate portrait is, all things considered, not so dissimilar from earlier landmark bios - Cooper, Orieux - but with vastly more detail & granularity. Its 800 pages remain wieldy & readable, each chapter a marvel of compressed writing & editing. Warmly recommended.… (more)