Duke de Richelieu

Armand Emmanuel du Plessis, 5th Duke of Richelieu (1766?1822), was given the name Emmanuel Osipovich in Russia and was depicted in bronze as the Duke. A distant great-great-grandnephew of the famous cardinal and grandson of a marshal, he was forced to leave his homeland during the revolutionary upheavals, voluntarily participated in the bloody assault on the Turkish fortress of Izmail, and served faithfully for 24 years in his "adoptive homeland" - Russia, where, as governor-general, he fought against stagnation, ignorance, and bribery. Upon returning to ravaged France, he engaged in exhausting cabinet battles for the independence and prosperity of the country as head of government but did not become a courtier and remained "a stranger among his own." His boundless ability to love was forced to dwell at the edge of a dream of personal happiness. Russian Emperor Alexander I called the Duke his only friend who told him the truth, while English Duke Wellington believed that "the word of Richelieu is worth a treatise."