Jules Mazarin

Italian-born French statesman and diplomat

• Born: July 14, 1602
• Birthplace: Pescina, Kingdom of Naples (now in Italy)
• Died: March 9, 1661
• Place of death: Vincennes, France

Mazarin played a central role in stabilizing the French monarchy and laying the political foundations for French absolutism in the critical period between 1643 and 1661. Mazarin’s patronage of the arts and letters was extravagant, and he exercised profound influence in shaping the foundations of modern French art, music, and drama.

Early Life

Jules Mazarin (jewlz maw-zaw-rahn) was born in the Abruzzi region of central Italy. The oldest son of a minor government official, he received his early education from the Jesuits in Rome. From 1622 to 1624, he studied law at Alcalá in Spain. In 1624, Mazarin became a captain in a papal regiment. In 1626, he took up the position as secretary to G. F. Sacchetti, who received an appointment two years later as papal nuncio to the Spanish viceroy of Milan.

Continuing his service in Milan under Sacchetti’s successor, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Mazarin undertook his first important mission as a diplomat in 1630, when he carried out negotiations with the French minister Cardinal de Richelieu at Lyons. In October, 1630, as the Spanish forces besieging the French at Casale prepared to attack, Mazarin boldly rode through the Spanish lines shouting “Peace!” as though hostilities had been suspended. In the resulting talks, he persuaded the Spanish to call off their attack.

Rewarded for his daring diplomacy with a canonry (a minor ecclesiastical office not requiring holy orders), Mazarin’s star was clearly on the rise. From 1632 to 1634, Pope Urban VIII entrusted Mazarin with a series of special diplomatic missions and in 1634 named him special nuncio to France. Once in France, Mazarin took every opportunity to acquaint himself with the workings of the French government, and while he failed to prevent France from declaring war on Spain in 1635, his services were so valued that he was soon acting as France’s unofficial ambassador in Rome. Mazarin received France’s nomination for the cardinalate in 1636, but the Spanish faction in Rome blocked his hopes for the honor. Officially entering France’s service in December, 1639, Mazarin began a career that would bring him to the heights of power and wealth in only a few short years.

Life’s Work

Entering Richelieu’s diplomatic entourage, Mazarin immediately became the French plenipotentiary at the peace talks with the Habsburgs. At that point in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), neither side saw any advantage to immediate peace and the talks came to nothing. After undertaking several additional diplomatic missions, he was created cardinal in December, 1641. A trusted adviser to Richelieu, Mazarin’s scope of political activity expanded when he assisted in dealing with the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars. Strongly recommended to the king, Mazarin joined Louis XIII’s council immediately after Richelieu’s death in December, 1642. Following the king’s own death six months later, Mazarin joined the regency council formed to govern in the name of the five-year-old Louis XIV . Within days, however, the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria , had disbanded the council, claimed the regency for herself, and named Mazarin her principal minister. From that point until Mazarin’s death in 1661, Mazarin and Anne of Austria ruled France—in Louis’s name until 1651, when he declared his majority, with the king’s authority thereafter.

Historians have devoted much attention to the relationship between Mazarin and Anne of Austria, especially over the question of a secret marriage. Such a liaison was not inconceivable (Mazarin never took the vows of the priesthood) but if known would have proved problematic and extremely damaging. No known documents support the notion of the marriage, but to concentrate exclusively on such legal formalities is to miscast the historical questions concerning their relationship. They never lived as husband and wife, but they shared an intimacy and a convergence of interests so close as to mark their union as extraordinarily personal. Moreover, Mazarin formed an extremely paternalistic bond with Louis, Anne’s son. For his part, the young king clearly responded to Mazarin as a son would to a father.

Mazarin became Richelieu’s successor as France’s principal minister, but his tenure in that position was marked by circumstances dramatically different from those Richelieu had enjoyed. First, he served a regency government that had to defend itself from enemies among the highest nobility, several of whom enjoyed claims to the regency at least as strong as Anne’s. Second, Mazarin’s Italian birth and speech marked him as a foreigner, and he did nothing to diminish the French tendency toward xenophobia as he brought numerous members of his extended family to France to arrange marriages or place them in political offices. Indeed, Mazarin’s nepotism and his persistence in pursuing advantageous marriages for his many nieces became legendary. Third, as the French involvement in the Thirty Years’ War deepened and as the fighting dragged on year after year, the people of France became increasingly restive under the extraordinary tax burdens Mazarin and Anne imposed.

Following the first outbreak of opposition among the parlementaires (judges and lawyers of the Paris law court) and the Parisian bourgeoisie in mid-1648, Mazarin and Anne pressed the military commanders in the field to provide a quick resolution to the war. The Great Condé, a prince of the blood, provided that victory at Lens in August, 1648, and with Condé’s victory all the major belligerents, except France and Spain, arrived at terms in a series of treaties that has come to be known as the Treaty of Westphalia. Although the specifically French-Spanish conflict dragged on for another ten years, the peace of 1648 marked a reduction in hostilities that allowed Mazarin and Anne to turn their attention to subduing the parlementaires. Supported by Condé’s troops, Mazarin and Anne instituted a reversal of earlier concessions to the Paris opposition. This move led to the first war of the Fronde (January to March, 1649), a rebellion that pitted the city of Paris against a coalition headed by Mazarin, Anne, and Condé. Quickly victorious in quelling the Fronde of the parlementaires, Condé sought higher positions for himself and for his entourage.

Frictions with Anne and Mazarin finally led Condé to declare a second Fronde against them. This second prince’s Fronde lasted from January, 1650, until February, 1651, only to be succeeded by the third Fronde (December, 1651, to February, 1653), once again led by Condé. In the second Fronde, the battle was for the regency over Louis XIV, and the basis for that war ended with Louis’s premature declaration of his majority in September, 1651. With the third Fronde, Condé had lost any claim to legality for his actions and the fighting ended only with his military defeat and a formal charge of treason against him. From 1653, until the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) put an end to war (and gave reinstatement to his title and lands in France), Condé fought in Spain’s service.

The three Fronde and Condé’s treason pointed up the weakness of the French monarchy. Twice during the Fronde, Mazarin had been forced to flee into exile in the Germanies to escape not only the frondeurs but also the wrath of factions loyal to the monarchy. Following the Fronde, Mazarin devoted all of his energy to rebuilding the monarchy’s political foundations. Among his more important acts, the reestablishment of the royal commissioners (intendants) in the provinces and his gathering together of supporting ministers proved to have the most enduring consequences. Later formalized under Louis XIV and his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the system of intendants furnished the basic administrative mechanism for royal government until the Revolution. In that sense, Mazarin’s reforms following the Fronde marked the end of the traditional feudal form of the French monarchy. The feudal nobility retained its titles and status, but following the establishment of the intendancies the monarchy moved quickly toward a centralized, bureaucratic administration.

In bringing together his own circle of advisers, Mazarin also selected and trained the ministers who were to dominate the first half of Louis’s personal reign: François-Michel Le Tellier, Hugues de Lionne, Colbert, and the ill-fated Nicolas Fouquet. Many have noted the brilliance of these ministers and have credited Mazarin with much of the success of Louis’s early personal reign. Such a claim can have only limited value, but it is borne out to some degree through comparisons drawn between the successes of Le Tellier, Lionne, and Colbert and the lackluster performances common among Louis’s later ministers. Certainly, Mazarin had a talent for selecting and preparing his favorites for political service.

During his last years, Mazarin was preoccupied with achieving an advantageous peace with Spain and arranging the king’s marriage. He succeeded in both these tasks at the same time, making Louis’s marriage to King Philip IV’s eldest daughter Marie-Thérèse one of the terms included in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The marriage posed a serious obstacle to the negotiations, since Philip insisted on protecting the Spanish inheritance from the possibility of its falling into Bourbon hands. In what was perhaps his greatest diplomatic victory, Mazarin persuaded Philip to agree to an extraordinarily large dowry (500,000 gold ecus) as the price for Louis’s renunciation of all claims to the Spanish crown. Mazarin saw clearly that Spain would never be able to make the payments on this astronomical sum, which was scheduled to be paid in installments. He thus laid the basis for later French claims (and ultimate Bourbon succession) to the Spanish throne.

Throughout his service to France, Mazarin proved himself to be an avid patron of the arts and letters as well. His most noteworthy accomplishments in this regard are found in his devotion to his library and his patronage of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which he founded in 1648. After his library had been broken up and sold by his enemies during the Fronde, he patiently reassembled the collection during the late 1650’s. Following his death, his library formed the basis for the first of the great royal collections, and his endowments established the College of the Four Nations, an educational institution established for the king’s non-French subjects. The Institut de France in Paris was built through money he had bequeathed for its construction, and his library serves as the core of that institution’s collections.

Mazarin died of cancer at the château of Vincennes on March 9, 1661. Popular hostility toward the cardinal minister had never abated. He was the continuing target of scurrilous lampoons and pamphlets that came to be known as mazarinades. Nevertheless, he enjoyed Louis’s steadfast support to the end, and when Mazarin willed all of his earthly goods to the king, Louis returned them as a gift to demonstrate his confidence in the minister. Clearly, Louis held Mazarin in the very highest regard, and it is certain that so long as Mazarin lived, he delayed implementing his plan to take personal responsibility for ruling France. At Mazarin’s death, the king did announce that decision, and in that sense Mazarin’s passing marked one of the most significant turning points in the history of France.

Significance

Mazarin stands as the pivotal figure between Cardinal de Richelieu’s first policies tending toward absolutism and Louis XIV’s implementation of a full-scale, centralized monarchy. Acting as regent and principal minister, Mazarin steered the monarchy through the perilous years of Louis’s minority and early reign. Certainly, his foreign birth and his style of governing contributed to the antagonisms engendered in the Fronde, but any minister who sought to pursue Richelieu’s vision of the state would have faced severe difficulties in the France of the 1640’s. Given the circumstances he faced in 1643, Mazarin achieved remarkable successes: He pursued war with France’s foreign enemies to successful conclusion; he broke the hold of the high nobility over the throne; he avoided financial collapse; and he exercised a guardianship over the young Louis XIV that must be counted as one of the most successful apprenticeships in statecraft ever achieved.

Perhaps the best measure of his success is simply to compare the political, social, and economic condition of France at the moment of his rise to power (1643) against conditions at his death in 1661. There is no question that Mazarin deserves major credit for laying the foundation for Louis XIV’s France.

Bibliography

Bonney, Richard. Political Change in France Under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Bonney, a historian who specializes in early modern French history, provides an overview of the changing political climate under the two powerful ministers.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Society and Government Under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. In his second book about Richelieu and Mazarin, Bonney focuses on French society and government during the two men’s administrations.

Croxton, Derek. Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of Westphalia, 1643-1648. Selinsgrove, N.J.: Susquehanna University Press, 1999. Examines France’s position during negotiations to end the Thirty Years’ War, focusing on Mazarin’s role in the negotiations.

Levi, Anthony. Louis XIV. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. A comprehensive biography of Louis XIV and his reign. Levi speculates that Louis XIV probably was not the son of Louis XIII but of Mazarin, the real power in France during Louis XIV’s childhood.

Maland, David. Culture and Society in Seventeenth-Century France. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970. Still the best survey in English treating French high culture and political involvement with patronage. Places Mazarin and his patronage against the larger backdrop of rapid developments in art, drama, and literature.

Ogg, David. Europe in the Seventeenth Century. 9th ed. London: A. and C. Black, 1971. Ogg’s political survey is excellent for placing Mazarin’s ministry in a larger European perspective.

Shennan, J. H. The Parlement of Paris. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968. The two chapters on the seventeenth century provide excellent material on the basic constitutional issues facing Richelieu and Mazarin. The material on the period of the Fronde is heavily weighted toward discussion of opposition to Mazarin.

Sturdy, David J. Richelieu and Mazarin: A Study in Statesmanship. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. Concise and comparative analysis of the public and private careers of the two ministers, including an assessment of their historical significance.

Treasure, Geoffrey. Mazarin: The Crisis of Absolutism in France. New York: Routledge, 1995. Treasure argues that Mazarin was a remarkable statesman, who helped the French monarchy survive during the Fronde rebellion, provided guidance to a young Louis XIV, and offered diplomatic assistance to end the Thirty Years’ and the Franco-Spanish Wars.

Wolf, John B. Louis XIV. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968. Particularly valuable for insights into the personal relations between Mazarin, Anne of Austria, and Louis XIV. Wolf’s scholarship is authoritative, and the work stands as one of the most widely respected treatments of Louis’s reign. The material on Mazarin’s policy objectives is particularly insightful.