Louis XIII

King of France (r. 1610-1643)

• Born: September 27, 1601
• Birthplace: Fontainebleau, France
• Died: May 14, 1643
• Place of death: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

Louis XIII governed France during an era of conflict and was overshadowed by his father and son. Nevertheless, he increased the power of the Crown with the help of the chief minister Cardinal de Richelieu.

Early Life

France entered the seventeenth century with a royal wedding. The groom, Henry of Navarre, came to the throne of France on the death of his cousin, Henry III, after civil war and conversion from his Huguenot faith. The bride was Marie de Médicis , niece of Phillip III of Spain. She brought Catholic stability and the hope of an heir for the new royal house. The newlyweds met in December, 1600, and a healthy son, Louis, was born the next September.

The early childhood of Louis XIII passed in the shelter of the royal nursery. He was attended by his own physician, indulged by an adored nurse, and surrounded by a retinue of servants shared with his siblings and the many royal bastards. Louis was a stubborn child with a violent temper and was often beaten on his father’s orders. Henry was an expansive, promiscuous, hot-tempered man, intelligent but manipulative. He alternately ignored and overwhelmed Louis. Henry looked for adult qualities in the small son who both adored and feared him. He openly preferred his older bastards. Louis was a timid child but overcame fears of loud noises and rough weather to develop kingly courage. He also strove to conquer his temper and submit to Henry to win his love. Marie was a shallow, cold woman with little affection to share with her children. She largely ignored Louis during his nursery days.

An intelligent and perceptive child with a retentive memory, Louis learned early lessons in reserve and in secrecy from his courtiers. Rumored to be a simpleton, he later said that he had not been taught to read or write. In fact, he could do both before leaving the nursery in January, 1609. He used rumors of disability as a protective cover, although he resented them. Books did not appeal to him; he preferred military studies and hunting. Louis was surrounded by older men, friends of his father who were skilled in military arts. He excelled in falconry, was fond of dogs and horses, and showed precocious skill with firearms. Scrupulous in Catholic observances, Louis may have lacked deep Christian faith. He was passionately attuned to questions of rank and greatly resented his father’s preference for his other children. In his features and physical makeup, Louis was a Habsburg like his mother. He was intelligent like Henry but reserved and suspicious as a result of a childhood spent among manipulative adults.

On May 14, 1610, Henry of Navarre was assassinated. He had been preparing to go to war against Spain. Louis became king, with his mother as regent. At first, Marie retained Henry’s counselors, but she changed policies. She humbled France to Spain and Austria and arranged marriages for Louis and for her eldest daughter with the eldest children of the king of Spain. This policy angered many of France’s most powerful nobles, who also resented the fact that she never learned to speak French well and surrounded herself with Italians. Her beloved foster sister, Leonora Galigai, and her husband, Concino Concini, were the courtiers most hated by the French. Led by Henry II of Bourbon, third prince of Condé, the nobles rose in a series of revolts against the regent. Condé’s first revolt ended in a lucrative agreement that gave large pensions to the rebels and demanded a meeting of the Estates-General, begun in October, 1614.

Louis had reached his official majority by this date, but he was still helpless. He resented the power of the Concinis and their following as well as his mother’s extravagance. The Estates-General brought no great reforms but gave the young Bishop of Luçon (later known as Richelieu) the chance to flatter the regent in a closing speech. He became a favorite of the Queen Mother, devoted to her service for years, a role Louis XIII later found hard to forgive. In November of 1615, the royal court celebrated the weddings of Elizabeth of France with the future Philip IV of Spain and of Louis XIII with the young infanta Anne of Austria . Condé led another uprising but was upstaged by the pageant of the royal weddings. Louis’s marriage was not happy, owing to court intrigues, and the young couple did not establish regular conjugal relations for three years. Anne suffered a number of miscarriages, and Louis’s younger brother Gaston remained the royal heir until the birth of the future Louis XIV in 1638.

Louis began his personal rule in April, 1617, with the murder of Concini and the exile of the regent, soon followed by the trial and execution of Marie’s beloved Galigai. He reinstated several of his father’s former ministers but continued his mother’s pattern of rule by favorites in following the wishes of his hunting companion, Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes.

Life’s Work

When Louis assumed control of the government, France was surrounded by Habsburg holdings in Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. Europe was a hotbed of religious tension, with conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Henry’s Edict of Nantes guaranteed Huguenots religious freedom and possession of certain free cities, but in May, 1621, the La Rochelle Assembly established a Protestant state within France. The free cities were fortified as if in preparation for war. Protestant England and Catholic Spain encouraged the rebels, even though the queens of both countries were sisters of Louis XIII.

Family and political life were mingled and were unlucky for Louis. Although reconciled with his mother after the death of Luynes, Louis suspected her of complicity in plots to replace him with his brother Gaston. Louis’s trust in his queen had been compromised by the extravagant court paid her by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, the special envoy who arranged the marriage of Charles I of England to Henrietta Maria of France. In 1626, a plot was discovered for the destruction of Richelieu and the removal of Louis in favor of Gaston. Anne’s distant implication in the intrigue damaged relations even more. Richelieu was named a cardinal in 1622. By 1624, he joined the Royal Council. He gave Louis absolute fidelity coupled with a visionary focus on French national destiny. Both men shared a taste for military life.

It was almost a relief for Louis when open war broke out with the Huguenots of La Rochelle in 1627. Cardinal de Richelieu prepared to lay siege to the rebellious port city by fortifying islands in the harbor. Buckingham countered in June with a fleet of English ships. Louis and the cardinal joined the French troops in October, and the king himself worked on the construction of a dike across the harbor. Buckingham was forced to retreat in November. Two more English fleets appeared and retreated, and the people of La Rochelle suffered a siege that reduced their number from twenty-five thousand to five thousand. On their surrender in November, 1628, Louis guaranteed their religious freedom and spared the lives of their leaders but razed the city walls.

No sooner was La Rochelle pacified than Louis and Richelieu plunged into another campaign over the succession of Mantua, in Italy. A French nobleman had fallen heir to the city-state, but his inheritance was contested by both Spain and Austria. The French army made a winter crossing of the Alps and enjoyed early successes in Italy, but worries over the continuing religious troubles in France and Louis’s health forced a return to France. Louis was to enjoy more victories over his Huguenot subjects, but the stress of war and intrigue made him ill. By the fall of 1630, he lay near death and received last rites. At the same time, the Diet of Ratisbon was meeting in Germany to decide the affairs of the Holy Roman Empire.

As Richelieu grappled with the political maneuvers of the German meeting, which eventually allowed him to defuse the Mantuan situation, Louis was reconciled with his wife and mother. The two queens hated and feared Richelieu and demanded his removal. The situation culminated on November 10, 1630, the Day of the Dupes, when Marie’s extravagant behavior completely estranged her from Louis. She was sent into exile, never to return, and died in Cologne in 1642. Richelieu was firmly established and his policies vindicated.

Although often at odds with his wife, Louis was a faithful husband and pursued his conjugal duties on a regular schedule, though with no great enthusiasm. Popular history attributes the birth of their first surviving child, the future Sun King, Louis XIV, to a snowstorm that forced Louis XIII to share the only royal bed in the Louvre in December of 1637. Great joy greeted the birth of a dauphin on September 5, 1638. The succession was secured when a second son was born in 1640.

Plagued by illness and unable to trust Anne of Austria, who was known to have pursued secret correspondence with Spain during wartime, Louis designed limits to be enforced on her regency in the case of his death. Richelieu died, after a long illness, on December 4, 1642. Louis spent the winter of 1642-1643 in preparation for a campaign against the Spanish governor of the Netherlands but fell ill and died on May 14, 1643, just before the great French victory over the Spanish at Rocroi (May 19). Anne immediately had his reservations set aside and entered into an unlimited regency for her four-year-old son.

Significance

In many ways, Louis XIII was an ordinary man caught in an extraordinary period in history. His father had been able to charm by flamboyant personality. His son enjoyed a long reign marked by personal absolutism. Louis was handicapped by the limits of his personality, his health, and the politics of his time. Intelligent, conscientious, and hardworking, he was lucky in the service of men such as Richelieu. He was able to consolidate and hold power for France and for the monarchy. He bequeathed his son a hunger for military victory and an empty treasury. Yet he reformed and strengthened the French navy and army. Although personally intolerant, he continued to protect Protestant worship after religious wars curtailed Huguenot political powers. The French Academy took wing under him. Despite a tendency toward resentment and suspicion, he gained a reputation for clemency and was known in his time as Louis the Just.

Bibliography

Belloc, Hilaire. Richelieu. Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City, 1929. The prolific biographer centers his study on the establishment of French nationalism through the partnership of Richelieu and Louis XIII.

Bergin, Joseph, and Laurence Brockliss, eds. Richelieu and His Age. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1992. Collection of essays by eight historians. The authors reject the depiction of Richelieu as an exponent of realpolitik, and maintain he was a devout and politically astute diplomat with a genuine desire to establish a more just and peaceful Europe.

Burckhardt, Carl J. Richelieu and His Age. Translated by Edwin Muir and Willa Muir. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1940. This three-volume work has a dual focus: illuminating with a wealth of detail the great cardinal and the king he served. The bibliography is arranged by chapter, and the last volume includes genealogical charts.

Levi, Anthony. Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000. Levi argues that Richelieu sought to create a French national unity as much through cultural symbolism as through political means.

Marvick, Elizabeth Wirth. Louis XIII: The Making of a King. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. Marvick has produced an unusual book, based on the detailed journal kept by Louis’s personal physician. She marshals fascinating and illuminating materials to provide a Freudian perspective of Louis’s life and personality.

Moote, A. Lloyd. Louis III, The Just. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Insightful and readable biography. Moote describes how Louis was not overshadowed by Richelieu, but was an equal, if not controlling element, in the partnership that enabled France to grow and emerge as a superpower.

Ranum, Orest A. Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1963. Ranum studies the interplay of power and personality in the managerial policies of Louis XIII and Richelieu. Includes an appendix of documents and a bibliography.

Tapié, Victor Lucien. France in the Age of Louis XII and Richelieu. Edited and translated by D. Lockie. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Translation of a monumental study, recounting the two men’s policies and how their actions affected the French people and the nation’s culture.