There is nothing as precious to a country as visionary leadership. During Europe’s brutal 17th Century religious war, it mattered on whose side you were on. As the Habsburg Dynasty, which ruled Europe at the time, and the Papacy (Roman Catholic) both sought to stamp out any challenge to their authority mounted by a fast spreading protestantism (primarily the cause of the war), Catholic sovereigns were obliged to unite in opposition to the new heresis.
However, France, then a Catholic sovereign under chief minister Cardinal de Richelieu, boldly abandoned the papacy, citing its own strategic interests. Cardinal de Richelieu went on to articulate the dominance of the pursuit of a nation’s strategic interests. In fact, he invented the idea that the State was abstract and a permanent entity existing in its own right.
