LOUIS XIII., sou of IIeuri IV. and of Mary do' Medici, succeeded his father in 1610, beiug only nine years of age, under the regency of his mother. In October 1614, he was declared to be of age, and in the following year he married Anne, daughter of Philip III. of Spain. Concino Concini, mardchal d'Ancre, a Florentine, the favourite minister of the queen-dowager, had, by his insolence and his intrigues, excited the jealousy of many of the high nobility, with the prince of Conde at their head, who left the court and began a civil war. Louis XIII., who was impatient of the rule of his mother, and of the favourite, but had not spirit enough to shake it off, consulted with a young courtier called Luinea, and by his advice ordered Vitri, an officer of his body guard, to arrest tho marshal Vitri stopped him on the drawbridge of the Louvre ; the marshal attempted to defend himself, upon. which Vitri killed him. Tho people of Paris made great rejoicings at his death, dragged his body through the streets, cut it to pieces, and threw into the river. The parliament of Paris declared him to have been guilty of treason and sorcery, and on the same grounds sentenced his wife, who was also a Florentine, named Galigai, to be beheaded, and her body burned, a sentence which was executed on the 8th July 1617. This trial and sentence are amongst the most disgraceful of tho old French judicature. The queen-dowager was sent to Blois ruder arrest. Luinca now became the ruling favourite; for Louis was totally incapable of governing himself during the whole of his life. Some years after the queen-dowager escaped from Blois, and being supported by several nobles, the civil war broke out again • but Armand du Plessia, bishop of Luson, known afterwards as de Richelieu, acted as mediator between the king and his mother, in consequence of which he obtained a cardinal's hat, and in 1624 became minister, and lastly prime minister, which he continued to be till his death in 1642. Richelieu was certainly one of the greatest ministers
of France under the old monarchy ; fertile in resources, firm, sagacious, and unscrupulous, he succeeded in humbling and weakening the feudal nobility, and thus paved the way for the absolute govern ment of Louis XIV. He checked the ambition of the house of Austria by assisting, first secretly and afterwards openly, the German I'rotestant states and the Swedes, by which means France acquired a considerable influence in the affairs of the Empire." In 1628 Richelieu took La Rochelle, the great stronghold of the Protestants of France, which had often withstood the kingly forces under the former reigns. The French armies took an important part in the Thirty Years' War; they acted on the Rhine in concert with the Swedes, whilst another French army carried on the war in Italy against the Spaniards, a third army was fighting in Flanders, and a fourth on the frontiers of Catalonia. The French were generally successful : they took Roussillon Alsace, the duchy of Bar, and other provinces. In December 1642, Richelieu died at Paris, being fifty-eight years of age. Ills great object had been, during all his ministry, to render the government of the king absolute, and he succeeded. Richelieu at the same time patronised learning and the fine arts; be established the royal press ; he embellished Paris; he was magnificent and high-minded : his ambition was not a selfish or a vulgar one. Among his agents and confidants there was a Capuchin, called Father Joseph, whom he employed in the most secret and important affairs, and who seems to have equalled his master in abilities.
Louis survived his minister only a few months; he died in May 1643, leaving his son Louis XIV. a minor, under the regency of the queen-mother.