Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. 2)

“Cordeliers a branch of the Franciscans, piqued on the subject of poverty, that is to say the revenues of Saint Francis, who became so animated that they waged war against him through books.” Something even more important and more scholarly; especially when one mistakes John XXII for Benedict XI, and when, in a political testament, one speaks neither of the manner in which one must conduct the war against the Empire and Spain, nor of the means to make peace, nor of current dangers, nor of resources, nor of alliances, nor of generals, nor of the ministers who must be employed, nor even of the Dauphin, whose education was so important to the state; in short, of no object of the ministry.

I consent with all my heart that people burden, since they so wish, the memory of Cardinal de Richelieu with this wretched work filled with anachronisms, ignorance, ridiculous calculations, and recognized falsehoods, of which any clerk with a little intelligence would have been incapable; that people strive to persuade others that the greatest minister was the most ignorant and the most tedious, as well as the most extravagant of all writers. This may give some pleasure to all those who detest his tyranny.

It is even good, for the history of the human mind, that one knows that this detestable work was praised for more than thirty years, while it was believed to be by a great minister.

But one must not betray the truth to make people believe that the book is by Cardinal de Richelieu. One must not say that a continuation of the first chapter of the Political Testament was found, corrected in several places by the hand of Cardinal de Richelieu, because