Emmanuel-Armand de Richelieu, duke d’Aiguillon

Emmanuel-Armand de Richelieu, duke d’Aiguillon (born July 31, 1720—died Sept. 1, 1788, Paris, France) was a French statesman, whose career illustrates the difficulties of the central government of the ancien régime in dealing with the provincial Parlements and estates, the extent to which powerful ministers were at the mercy of court intrigue, and how French diplomacy suffered under Louis XV as a result of secret diplomacy.

In 1750 he succeeded to the peerage duchy of Aiguillon and in 1753 was appointed military commander for Brittany, where he was the chief representative in the province of the central government and so incurred the hostility of the Parlement of Rennes and of the provincial estates, which resisted the government’s fiscal reforms of 1764–65. He also aroused the personal enmity of L. R. de Caradeuc de La Chalotais (q.v.), the powerful procureur-général of the Parlement. These quarrels led to his recall in 1766. Aiguillon, however, was a man of great ambition and, after the fall of the duc de Choiseul, was appointed minister of foreign affairs (June 1771). He was closely associated with the chancellor, René de Maupeou, and with the controller-general, the abbé Joseph-Marie Terray, in the so-called triumvirate, which attempted to destroy the political powers of the Parlements. As foreign minister he was unable to prevent the rapid decline of French influence in central and northern Europe. Though this was partly due to the rising power of Prussia and Russia, he gave no firm direction to French diplomacy and could not save Poland from being partitioned in 1772. His only—dubious—success was the help he gave Gustavus III of Sweden in effecting his coup of 1772. He was dismissed from office on the accession of Louis XVI in 1774.