MARIE DE' MEDICI queen consort and queen regent of France, daughter of Francis de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, and Joanna, an Austrian archduchess, was born in Florence on April 26, 1573. She married Henry IV. of France in October 1600. Her eldest son, the future Louis XIII., was born at Fontainebleau in September of the next year; the other children who survived were Gaston duke of Orleans; Elizabeth queen of Spain ; Christine duchess of Savoy; and Henrietta Maria queen of England. During her husband's lifetime Marie de' Medici showed little sign of political taste or ability; but after his murder in 1610 when she became regent, she devoted herself to affairs with unfailing regularity and developed an inherited passion for power. She gave her confidence chiefly to Concini, afterwards marechal d'Ancre, the husband of Leonora Galigal, a friend of her childhood. Under the regent's lax and capricious rule the princes of the blood and the great nobles of the kingdom revolted; and the queen, too weak to assert her authority, con sented at Sainte Menehould (May 15, 1614) to buy off the dis contented princes. In 1616 Richelieu entered her councils. Louis
XIII., who was now 16 years old, threw off the tutelage of his mother and Concini. By his orders Concini was murdered, Leonora Galigal was tried for sorcery and beheaded, Richelieu was banished to his bishopric, and the queen was exiled to Blois.
After two years of virtual imprisonment she escaped in 1619 and became the centre of a new revolt. Louis XIII. easily dis persed the rebels, but through the mediation of Richelieu was reconciled with his mother, who was allowed to hold a small court at Angers, and resumed her place in the royal council in 1621. For a single day, the journee des dupes, Nov. 12, 1630, she seemed to have succeeded against the minister; but the triumph of Richelieu was followed by her exile to Compiegne, whence she escaped in 1631 to Brussels. From that time till her death at Cologne on July 3, 1642 she intrigued in vain against the cardinal.
See A. P. Lord, The Regency of Marie de Medicis (19o4) ; L. Batiffol, La Vie intime d'une reine de France (1906; Eng. trans., 1908).