The danger to which Richelieu had been exposed on this occasion, though it did not render him less vicious, rendered him, at least in one respect, more prudent; he did not again put his head in the way of being brought to the block. Thenceforward he limited his political intrigues, in France, to acquiring benefits for himself, circumventing his rivals, providing mistresses for the king, and making those mistresses the instruments of his designs; and by these arts he became a thriving courtier. Honours of all kinds, military and civil, were showered upon him. At the age of twenty-four, without any literary pretensions whatever, he was unanimously chosen a member of the French Academy; and, in 1734, he was nominated an honorary member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. In the army he rose to the rank of marshal; but his titles as a soldier were not unearned. At Kehl, Philipsburg, Dettingen, Friburg, Fontenoy, Laufeldt, Genoa, and Minorca, they were fairly won. In his last campaign, however, that of Hanover, in 1757, he sullied his laurels by the most infamous conduct. His rapacity and extortion were a scorpion scourge to the country which France had subdued; and, as though he feared that his own endless exactions would not suffice to make him hated, he allowed, if not encouraged, his troops to be guilty of marauding, and of various other enormities. The subsequent defeats of the French army were the righteous result of these dishonourable proceedings. As a negotiator, Richelieu manifested considerable skill. He was twice employed in that capacity; at Vienna, from 1725 to 1729, and at Dresden, in 1746. In both instances he fully accomplished the purpose of his mission, and in both he displayed a degree of ostentatious magnificence which had seldom been equalled. When he entered Vienna, his train consisted of seventy-five carriages; and his horses, and those of his officers, were shod with silver, the shoes being slightly fastened, that they might fall off and be left for the populace. In the state employments which he held, there appears to have been but a solitary instance in which he was entitled to praise. As lieutenant-general of the king in Languedoc, he once deviated into the right path; by a judicious mixture of firmness and mildness, he averted the disturbances which were about to arise from the persecution of the protestants. But it was not in his nature to be permanently good. At a later period, his harshness, in the same country, was rewarded by his being appointed governor of Guienne and Gascony; and his pride and tyranny very soon rendered him an object of detestation in both of these provinces. At court, his influence and his example had a baneful effect. He for more than a quarter of a century possessed the friendship of Louis XV., and he foully abused it; he pandered to the monarch’s lusts, and strained every nerve, with too much success, to prevent the misguided