Insubordination and the rise of absolutism: the Mercure françois under Richelieu

Abstract

It is often argued that Cardinal Richelieu appropriated the Mercure françois, France’s first printed newspaper, immediately upon entering the king’s council in 1624. This consensus originates in a questionable nineteenth-century work by Louis Dedouvres yet has not been seriously challenged, seemingly because it tallies neatly with traditional étatiste understandings of Richelieu as a great state-builder. By refuting Richelieu’s control over the Mercure during the 1620s, this article buttresses revisionist re-evaluations of his influence over the French state during that period. It extends such revisionism to Richelieu’s regulation of the mainstream press and public sphere, and suggests the Mercure represents a valuable alternative source through which the earliest years of his second ministry might be better apprehended.