Louis XIII (French pronunciation:[lwitʁɛz]; sometimes calledthe Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) wasKing of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 andKing of Navarre (asLouis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown.
Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his fatherHenry IV was assassinated. His mother,Marie de' Medici, acted as regent during his minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italianfavourites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, includingConcino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court.[1]
Louis XIII, taciturn and suspicious, relied heavily on his chief ministers, firstCharles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and thenCardinal Richelieu, to govern theKingdom of France. The King and the Cardinal are remembered for establishing theAcadémie française, and ending the revolt of theFrench nobility. They systematically destroyed the castles of defiant lords, and denounced the use of private violence (dueling, carrying weapons, and maintaining private armies). By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu had established "the royal monopoly of force" as the ruling doctrine.[2] The king's reign was also marked by the struggles against theHuguenots andHabsburg Spain.[3]
The ambassador of KingJames I of England to the court of France,Sir Edward Herbert, who presented his credentials to Louis XIII in 1619, remarked on Louis's extreme congenital speech impediment and hisdouble teeth:
...I presented to the King [Louis] a letter of credence from the King [James] my master: the King [Louis] assured me of a reciprocal affection to the King [James] my master, and of my particular welcome to his Court: his words were never many, as being so extream [sic] a stutterer that he would sometimes hold his tongue out of his mouth a good while before he could speak so much as one word; he had besides a double row of teeth, and was observed seldom or never to spit or blow his nose, or to sweat much, 'tho he were very laborious, and almost indefatigable in his exercises of hunting and hawking, to which he was much addicted...[6]
Louis XIII ascended the throne in 1610 upon the assassination of his father, and his mother Marie de' Medici acted as hisRegent. Although Louis XIII came of age at thirteen (1614), his mother did not give up her position as Regent until 1617, when he was 16. Marie maintained most of her husband's ministers, with the exception ofMaximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, who was unpopular in the country. She mainly relied onNicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy,Noël Brûlart de Sillery, andPierre Jeannin for political advice. Marie pursued a moderate policy, confirming theEdict of Nantes. She was not, however, able to prevent rebellion by nobles such asHenri, Prince of Condé (1588–1646), second in line to the throne after Marie's second surviving sonGaston, Duke of Orléans. Condé squabbled with Marie in 1614, and briefly raised an army, but he found little support in the country, and Marie was able to raise her own army. Nevertheless, Marie agreed to call anEstates General assembly to address Condé's grievances.
The assembly of this Estates General was delayed until Louis XIII formally came of age on his thirteenth birthday. Although his coming-of-age formally ended Marie's Regency, she remained thede facto ruler of France. The Estates General accomplished little, spending its time discussing the relationship of France to thePapacy and thevenality of offices, but reaching no resolutions.
Half Louis d'Or (1643) depicting Louis XIII
Beginning in 1615, Marie came to rely increasingly onConcino Concini, an Italian who assumed the role of her favourite, and was widely unpopular because he was a foreigner. This further antagonised Condé, who launched another rebellion in the early months of 1616.Huguenot leaders supported Condé's rebellion, which led the young Louis XIII to conclude that they would never be loyal subjects. Eventually, Condé and Queen Marie made peace with the ratification on 3 May of theTreaty of Loudun, which allowed Condé great power in government but did not remove Concini. However, on 1 September, after growing dissatisfaction from nobles due to Concini's position, Queen Marie, with Louis's help, imprisoned Condé to protect Concini, leading to renewed revolts against the Queen and Concini.[7]
In the meantime, Louis XIII decided, with the encouragement ofCharles d'Albert (theGrand Falconer of France) and other advisers, to break with his mother and to arrest Concini.[8] On 24 April 1617, during the attempted arrest, Concini was killed.[9] His widowLeonora Dori Galigaï was tried for witchcraft, condemned, beheaded, and burned on 8 July 1617,[10] and Marie was sent into exile inBlois.[11] Later, Louis conferred the title ofDuke of Luynes on Charles d'Albert.[12]
Luynes soon became as unpopular as Concini had been. Other nobles resented his monopolisation of the King. Luynes was seen as less competent than Henry IV's ministers, many now elderly or deceased, who had surrounded Marie de' Medici.
TheThirty Years' War broke out in 1618. The French court was initially unsure of which side to support. On the one hand, France's traditional rivalry with theHouse of Habsburg argued in favour of intervening on behalf of the Protestant powers (and Louis's father Henry IV of France had once been a Huguenot leader). On the other hand, Louis XIII had a strict Catholic upbringing, and his natural inclination was to support theHoly Roman Emperor, the HabsburgFerdinand II.
The French nobles were further antagonised against Luynes by the 1618 revocation of thepaulette tax and by the sale of offices in 1620. From her exile in Blois, Marie de' Medici became the obvious rallying point for this discontent, and the Bishop of Luçon (who becameCardinal Richelieu in 1622) was allowed to act as her chief adviser, serving as a go-between Marie and the King.
French nobles launched a rebellion on 2 July 1620, but their forces were easily routed by royal forces at theBattle of Ponts-de-Cé [fr] on 7 August 1620. Louis then launched an expedition against the Huguenots ofBéarn who had defied a number of royal decisions. This expedition managed to re-establish Catholicism as the official religion of Béarn. However, the Béarn expedition drove Huguenots in other provinces into a rebellion led byHenri, Duke of Rohan.
In 1621 Louis XIII was formally reconciled with his mother. Luynes was appointedConstable of France, after which he and Louis set out to quell the Huguenot rebellion. The siege at the Huguenot stronghold ofMontauban had to be abandoned after three months owing to the large number of royal troops who had succumbed to camp fever. One of the victims of camp fever was Luynes, who died in December 1621.
Following the death of Luynes, Louis determined that he would rule by council. His mother returned from exile and, in 1622, entered this council, where Condé recommended violent suppression of the Huguenots. The 1622 campaign, however, followed the pattern of the previous year: royal forces won some early victories, but were unable to complete a siege, this time at the fortress ofMontpellier.
The rebellion was ended by theTreaty of Montpellier, signed by Louis XIII and the Duke of Rohan in October 1622. The treaty confirmed the tenets of the Edict of Nantes: several Huguenot fortresses were to be razed, but the Huguenots retained control of Montauban andLa Rochelle.
Louis ultimately dismissed Noël Brûlart de Sillery and Pierre Brûlart in 1624 because of his displeasure with how they handled the diplomatic situation over theValtellina withSpain. Valtellina was an area with Catholic inhabitants under thesuzerainty of the ProtestantThree Leagues. It served as an important route to Italy for France and it provided an easy connection between the Spanish and the Holy Roman empires, especially in helping each other with armies if necessary. Spain was constantly interfering in the Valtellina, which angered Louis, as he wanted to hold possession of this strategically important passageway.[a] He therefore found a better servitor in hisSuperintendent of FinancesCharles de La Vieuville, who held similar views of Spain as the king, and who advised Louis to side withthe Dutch via theTreaty of Compiègne.[13]However, La Vieuville was dismissed by the middle of 1624, partly due to his bad behaviour (during his tenure as superintendent he was arrogant and incompetent) and because of a well-organized pamphlet campaign byCardinal Richelieu against his council rival.[14] Louis needed a new chief advisor; Cardinal Richelieu would be that counsellor.
Cardinal Richelieu played a major role in Louis XIII's reign from 1624, determining France's direction over the course of the next eighteen years. As a result of Richelieu's work, Louis XIII became one of the first examples of anabsolute monarch. Under Louis and Richelieu, the crownsuccessfully intervened in theThirty Years' War against the Habsburgs, managed to keep the French nobility in line, and retracted the political and military privileges granted to the Huguenots by Henry IV (while maintaining their religious freedoms). Louis XIII successfully led the importantSiege of La Rochelle. In addition, Louis had the port ofLe Havre modernised, and he built a powerful navy.
In order to continue the exploration efforts of his predecessor Henry IV, Louis XIII considered a colonial venture inMorocco, and sent a fleet underIsaac de Razilly in 1619.[15] Razilly was able to explore the coast as far asMogador. In 1624 he was given charge of an embassy to the pirate harbour ofSalé in Morocco, in order to solve the affair of theZaydani Library ofMulay Zidan.[16]
In 1630, Razilly was able to negotiate the purchase of French slaves from the Moroccans. He visited Morocco again in 1631, and helped negotiate theFranco-Moroccan Treaty (1631).[17] The treaty gave France preferential treatment, known ascapitulations: preferential tariffs, the establishment of a consulate, and freedom of religion for French subjects.[18]
Unlike other colonial powers, France, under the guidance of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, encouraged a peaceful coexistence inNew France between the natives and the colonists. Indians, converted to Catholicism, were considered as "natural Frenchmen" by theOrdonnance of 1627:
The descendants of the French who are accustomed to this country [New France], together with all the Indians who will be brought to the knowledge of the faith and will profess it, shall be deemed and renowned natural Frenchmen, and as such may come to live in France when they want, and acquire, donate, and succeed and accept donations and legacies, just as true French subjects, without being required to take letters of declaration of naturalization.[19]
Acadia was also developed under Louis XIII. In 1632, Isaac de Razilly became involved, at the request of Cardinal Richelieu, in the colonization of Acadia, by taking possession ofPort-Royal (nowAnnapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) and developing it into a French colony. The King gave Razilly the official title oflieutenant-general for New France. He took on military tasks such as taking control ofFort Pentagouet atMajabigwaduce on thePenobscot Bay, which had been given to France in an earlier Treaty, and to inform the English they were to vacate all lands north of Pemaquid. This resulted in all the French interests in Acadia being restored. InBrazil, the colony ofEquinoctial France was established in 1612, but only lasted 4 years until it was eliminated by the Portuguese. In 1642, Louis XIII authorised French subjects to engage in theAtlantic slave trade provided those they enslaved were converted to Christianity.[20]
Also in 1615, Marie de' Medici incorporated the merchants of Dieppe and other harbours to found theCompany of the Moluccas. In 1619, an armed expedition composed of three ships (275 crew, 106 cannon) and called the "Fleet of Montmorency" under GeneralAugustin de Beaulieu was sent from Honfleur, to fightthe Dutch in theFar East. In 1624, with theTreaty of Compiègne, Cardinal Richelieu obtained an agreement to halt the Dutch–French warfare in the Far East.[22]
Antipathy with brother
Twice the king's younger brother, Gaston, Duke of Orléans, had to leave France for conspiring against his government and for attempting to undermine the influence of his mother and Cardinal Richelieu. After waging an unsuccessful war inLanguedoc, he took refuge inFlanders. In 1643, on the death of Louis XIII, Gaston became lieutenant-general of the kingdom and fought against Spain on the northern frontiers of France.
Marriage
Anne of Austria, Queen of France, wife of Louis XIII (byPeter Paul Rubens, 1625)
On 24 November 1615, Louis XIII marriedAnne of Austria, daughter ofPhilip III of Spain.[23] The couple were second cousins, by mutual descent fromFerdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor. This marriage followed a tradition of cementing military and political alliances between the Catholic powers of France and Spain with royal marriages. The tradition went back to the marriage ofLouis VII of France andConstance of Castile. The marriage was only briefly happy, and the King's duties often kept them apart. After 23 years of marriage and four stillbirths, Anne finally gave birth to a son on 5 September 1638, the futureLouis XIV.
Many people regarded this birth as a miracle and, in show of gratitude to God for the long-awaited birth of an heir, his parents named him Louis-Dieudonné ("God-given"). As another sign of gratitude, according to several interpretations, seven months before his birth, France was dedicated by Louis XIII to theVirgin Mary, who, many believed, had interceded for the perceived miracle.[24][25][26] But the text of the dedication does not mention the royal pregnancy and birth as one of its reasons, and Louis XIII himself is said to have expressed his scepticism with regard to the miracle after his son's birth.[27] In gratitude for having successfully given birth, the queen founded theBenedictine abbey of theVal-de-Grâce, for which Louis XIV laid the cornerstone of itschurch, an early masterpiece of French Baroque architecture.
Voltaire claimed in the second edition ofQuestions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771) that before Louis XIV was born, Louis XIII had an illegitimate son, who was jailed and his face hidden beneath an iron mask (see theMan in the Iron Mask).
There is no evidence that Louis kept mistresses (a distinction that earned him the title "Louis theChaste"), but several reports suggest that he may have been homosexual. The prolonged temporal gap between the queen's pregnancies may have been a result of Louis XIII's aversion to heterosexual activity, a matter of great political consequence, since it took the couple more than 20 years of marriage before Louis XIV's birth.[28] His interests as a teenager were focused on male courtiers and he developed an intense emotional attachment to his favourite,Charles d'Albert, although some say there is no clear evidence of a sexual relationship.[29]Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, drawing from rumours told to him by a critic of the King (theMarquise de Rambouillet), explicitly speculated in hisHistoriettes about what happened in the king's bed.
A furtherliaison with anequerry, François de Baradas, ended when the latter lost favour fighting a duel after duelling had been forbidden by royal decree.[30]
Louis was also captivated byHenri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq-Mars, 19 years his junior, who was later executed for conspiring with the Spanish enemy in time of war. Tallemant described how on a royal journey, the King "sent M. le Grand [de Cinq-Mars] to undress, who returned, adorned like a bride. 'To bed, to bed' he said to him impatiently... and the mignon was not in before the king was already kissing his hands. But he did not find that M. le Grand, whose heart was elsewhere, responded to his great ardour."[31]
Death
Louis XIII was unwell during the winter of 1642–1643. He managed a few hunting trips to Versailles, but by the middle of February was mostly bedridden. From contemporary descriptions, modern historians have surmised that he suffered fromextrapulmonary tuberculosis.[32] On 13 April his chief physician informed him that his illness would be fatal.[33] He died in Paris on 14 May 1643, the 33rd anniversary of his father's death. According to his biographer A. Lloyd Moote,
"his intestines were inflamed and ulcerated, making digestion virtually impossible;tuberculosis had spread to his lungs, accompanied by habitual cough. Either of these major ailments, or the accumulation of minor problems, may have killed him, not to mention physiological weaknesses that made him prone to disease or his doctors' remedies ofenemas andbleedings, which continued right to his death."[34]
Composer and lute player
Louis XIII shared his mother's love of thelute, developed in her childhood in Florence. One of his first toys was a lute and his personal doctor, Jean Héroard, reports him playing it for his mother in 1604, at the age of three.[35] In 1635, Louis XIII composed the music, wrote the libretto and designed the costumes for the "Ballet de la Merlaison". The king himself danced in two performances of the ballet the same year at Chantilly and Royaumont.[36]
Louis XIII, his wife Anne, and Cardinal Richelieu became central figures inAlexandre Dumas,père's 1844 novelThe Three Musketeers and subsequent television andfilm adaptations. The book depicts Louis as a man willing to have Richelieu as a powerful advisor but aware of his scheming; he is portrayed as bored and sour, dwarfed by Richelieu's intellect. Films such asthe 1948,the 1973 orthe 2011 versions tend to treat Louis XIII as a comic character, depicting him as bumbling and incompetent. In the1993 film, he is depicted as willing to stand up to Richelieu when necessary but still strongly influenced by him. He is also depicted as in love with his wife, Anne, but very nervous and unsure around her.
The 2014 BBC TV series,The Musketeers, merging the historical with the fictional, portrayed the King as both incompetent and strong, whose alliance with Spain is ever faltering. He is portrayed byRyan Gage.
Louis XIII, his wife Anne, his younger brother Gaston, Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Mazarin and members of the Royal family are mentioned throughout the course of the1632 series of novels and other writings byEric Flintet al., especially1636: The Cardinal Virtues.
Ken Russell directed the 1971 filmThe Devils, in which Louis XIII is a significant character, albeit one with no resemblance to the real man. Louis XIII is portrayed as an effeminategay man who amuses himself by shooting Protestants dressed up as birds. The film was based onAldous Huxley's 1952 bookThe Devils of Loudun.
^Tilly, Charles (1985). "War making and state making as organized crime". In Evans, P.B.; Rueschemeyer, D.;Skocpol, T. (eds.).Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge University Press. p. 174.
^Kettering 2008, pp. 76–78. According to Moote, it is generally accepted that Louis XIII knew that Concini would be killed during the arrest (Moote 1989, p. 94).
^Round table of Franciscan research. Vol. 17, 18. Capuchin Seminary of St. Anthony. 1952.The narrative really begins in 1619, when the adventurer, Admiral S. John de Razilly, resolved to go to Africa. France had no colony in Morocco; hence, King Louis XIII gave whole-hearted support to de Razilly.
^Dubé, Jean-Claude; Rapley, Elizabeth (2005).The Chevalier de Montmagny (1601–1657): First Governor of New France. University of Ottawa Press. p. 111.ISBN978-0-7766-0559-3.
^García-Arenal, Mercedes; Wiegers, Gerard Albert (2003).A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe. Translated by Beagles, Martin. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 114.ISBN978-0-8018-7225-9.OL7871017M.
^Brémond 1908, pp. 381 "Sans l'assurance d'avoir un fils, Louis XIII n'aurait pas fait le voeu de 1638." Translation: "Without the assurance of having a son, Louis XIII would not have made the vow of 1638."
^Louis XIV. MSN Encarta. 2008. Archived fromthe original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved20 January 2008.
^Dulong, Claude,Anne d’Autriche. Paris: Hachette, 1980. "Irrité de voir tant de courtisans parler de "miracle", Louis XIII aurait répliqué que "ce n'était point là si grand miracle qu'un mari couchât avec sa femme et lui fasse un enfant." Translation: "Irritated to see so many courtiers speak of a 'miracle', Louis XIII is said to have replied: 'it was not such a great miracle that a husband slept with his wife and made a child with her'."
^Crompton 2006, pp. 338 The grandson of Henry III, Saint-Luc, penned the irreverent rhyme: "Become a bugger, Baradas / if you are not already one / like Maugiron my grandfather / and La Valette".
^In these years the French kingdom was literally surrounded by the Habsburg realms, for the Habsburgs were Kings of Spain as well as Holy Roman Emperors. In addition, the Spanish and Holy Roman empires included the territories of today's Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, and northern Italy.
Kettering, Sharon (2008).Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621). Manchester: Manchester University Press.ISBN9780719089985.
Kleinman, Ruth (1985).Anne of Austria: Queen of France. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.ISBN9780814204290.
Blanchard, Jean-Vincent.Éminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France (2011) New York: Walker & Company.ISBN978-0-8027-1704-7
Hayden, J. Michael. "Continuity in the France of Henry IV and Louis XIII: French foreign policy, 1598–1615." Journal of modern history 45.1 (1973): 1–23.[1]
Howell, James "Louis XIII" English historiographer Royal 1661–1666
Huxley, Aldous. "The Devils of Loudun" (1952). The trial ofUrbain Grandier, priest of the town who was tortured and burned at the stake in 1634
Knecht, Robert,Renaissance France, genealogies, Baumgartner, genealogical tables
Malettke, Klaus.The Crown, Ministeriat and Nobility at the court of Louis XIII (German Historical Institute London, 1991)online.
Willis, Daniel A. (comp).The Descendants of Louis XIII (1999). Clearfield
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