Google's AI gets it wrong imagining a world without Richelieu

The Richelieu alternate history that AI can't tell

Imagine a Europe without French intervention in the Thirty Years' War. According to Google's artificial intelligence models, Cardinal Richelieu —Catholic but a realist— would have let the Habsburgs crush the German, Swedish and Dutch Protestants. The result: an indestructible Catholic empire, the end of Protestantism in Central Europe and no trace of the Westphalian principle or the Sun King. But this alternate history falls apart when checked against the reality of the seventeenth century.

The numbers that don't add up

AI treats history like a chessboard, but seventeenth-century military logistics were a nightmare. The Spanish Empire, which had already declared bankruptcy several times, could hardly have sustained total hegemony over half of Europe. The Twelve Years' Truce (1609-1621) was signed precisely because Spain was exhausted, not because of French pressure. And the Dutch Republic was no puppet: its fleet and the VOC dominated the Baltic and Indian Ocean routes, an advantage not even the tercios could counter.

Westphalia is not Richelieu's invention

The AI suggests that without Richelieu the modern nation-state would never have emerged. But the Peace of Westphalia (1648) merely confirmed a process already under way: French centralization since Henry IV, the Papacy's weakness after the Sack of Rome in 1527, and the perpetual rivalry between the Habsburgs and Rome over Italy. Attributing everything to one man reduces history to an anecdote.

The awkward fact: Spanish bankruptcy was endemic, and no geopolitical strategy, however brilliant, could have paid the tercios. Google's alternate history is entertaining, but deeply naive.