Richelieu, said Michel Carmona, was "the most perfect specimen of the average Frenchman with his vices and his virtues pushed to extremes". This may be true. More likely, the average Frenchman is an imitation of the great Cardinal. He was the earliest - and perhaps the pre-eminent - architect of the French State, and through that of the French national character. To an extent that we can scarcely understand, let alone appreciate, our neighbours on the other side of the Channel expect their government to be both centralised and absolute. They expect it to be endowed with powers that, even now, would leave us appalled. They expect it to use those powers with a total lack of scruple. They will condemn nothing in their government except failure or muddy thinking. Whether they look to a King or President or Emperor, their expectations are unchanged. Our model of what a State should be and do derives from our troubles of the 17th Century - theirs from what Richelieu taught them between 1624 and 1646.

Joseph Bergin's book is both useful and well-written. It deals not with Richelieu in his days of glory, when he had established France as the foremost power in Europe, and himself as her indisputable master - but with his life before he became minister. Most previous writers on this subject have relied more or less unreservedly on the mémoires, prepared at the direction of, and partly written by, Richelieu himself.

They have assumed that, from the very beginning, he was a statesman of the sort praised by Machiavelli; that he possessed the most exceptional foresight and judgment, and that he used these at every opportunity. They have too readily seen his early career, from his first entry into politics till his securing of high office as a kind of arrow-flight - where aim is taken, and every point along the trajectory is a necessary part of the chain. As one admirer has said, tout ce qu'il a fait, il l'a voulu.

The teleological fallacy is common among historians. It is a wonderful means of organising the data. It raises the great heroes and villains of the past still further above the rest of us. We drift through life with a few vague plans. They seized Destiny by the hand. We do not, on the whole, care to be told how they were often as blind and bumbling as we are. But that is how they were. They were cleverer than us and luckier than us. But, for all this, their world was as contingent as ours. The fallacy must be resisted; and the surest defence is to combine common sense with a thorough knowledge of the sources. Berg in, I suspect, has achieved this combination.

In dissenting from this traditional account, he does to Richelieu what A.J.P. Taylor did to Hitler. The Cardinal is demythologised. He entered politics not as an independent power, but as the representative of his family and its established connections. For years, he stood in the shadow of Henri, his elder brother. Even after made a Bishop, he was referred to by the French ambassador in Rome as le frere de Monsieur de Richelieu. His earliest promotions were organised by Henri. His purpose was to advance the family's interests at Court.

Nor in acting of his own motion was he at first infallible. In 1610, for instance, after the assassination of Henry IV, he submitted a spontaneous oath of loyalty from himself and his clergy to the new King. He failed to consider how this would recall the habits of the late civil war, when such oaths were seen more as matters of choice than duty. Fortunately, the letter was sent via Henri, who suppressed it. His reputation for cunning sagacity he acquired almost by accident, and several years before his powers had matured sufficiently for him to deserve it.

More generally, Dr Bergin throws a flood of light on what remains an obscure period of French history. He is particularly good on the complex and shifting relationships between religious and family interests within France, and how these in turn influenced and were influenced by the balance of international power. This is a specialised work, and I will not say that it even begins to replace the relevant parts of Carl Burckhardt's Richelieu and His Age. It is, nevertheless, a valuable corrective, and is as such to be recommended.

Sean Gabb