Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (25 September 1766-17 May 1822) was Prime Minister of France from 26 September 1815 to 29 December 1818 (succeeding Charles de Talleyrand and preceding Jean-Joseph, Marquis Dessolles) and from 20 February 1820 to 14 December 1821 (succeeding Elie, Duc Decazes and preceding Joseph de Villele).
Biography[]
Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis was born in Paris, France in 1766, the son of Antoine de Vignerot du Plessis, the 4th Duke of Richelieu. He served in Queen Marie Antoinette's Regiment of Dragoons, and he served as a courtier at the Palace of Versailles before warning the Queen about the Women's March on Versailles in 1789 and going into exile in Vienna in 1790. While in exile, he joined the Imperial Russian Army and served under Alexander Suvorov at Izmail, for which he was decorated by Queen Catherine the Great. In 1791, he succeeded to the title Duke of Richelieu, and he was summoned back to Paris by King Louis XVI; he initially served as a diplomat before joining the Royalist Army of Conde. He later rejoined the Russian army and rose to the rank of Major-General, befriending Czar Alexander I of Russia. In 1803, Alexander appointed him Governor of Odessa, and he commanded a division in the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812 and was engaged in frequent expeditions to the Caucasus. He returned to France on the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, and, while most of his estates were lost beyond recall, he did not share his fellow returning emigres' desire to reverse the French Revolution, and he affiliated himself with the liberal Doctrinaires. He served as Prime Minister from 1815 to 1818 and from 1820 to 1821, but attacks from the Ultra-Royalists to the right and the Liberals to the left forced him to resign in 1821. He died of a stroke a year later.