Perhaps as a glimpse of the manners and customs in Richelieu's day this film can be condoned, but there are too many unpleasant details connected with it. A wholesale duel is not quite the mental pabulum which is desired by present-day Americans. The execution is much too bald. The audience sees the stroke of the axe and then the severed head is held up for them to see. All the time the wife or sweetheart is writhing in the clutches of the soldiers in the foreground. It is too bloodthirsty and nerve-racking to allow it to run. If the riot of bloodshed is to begin all over again in the films, the censor had better get busy. - The Moving Picture World, January 16, 1909