King Louis XIII and his life Part 2

Marie de Medici went to Blois, accompanied by the hooting of the Paris mob. Suddenly everything has changed: the new broom swept the Board clean. Louis decided to rule with the help of the advisers of his father; Richelieu was ordered to resign. He followed into exile for the Queen-mother, hoping to take revenge with it.

Louis inherited his mother’s stubbornness, irascibility, and vindictiveness, but he did not know how to dissemble and were consistent in their actions. He accepted or rejected men entirely, once and for all. Early deprived of his father, he experienced his death not only as the loss of a loved one but also as the loss of a mentor, needing male role models.

After the April coup took place Concini favorite of king Charles Albert de Luini, who was then thirty-nine years. People quite ordinary has earned the sympathy of his Majesty for his kindness and compassion to him in his early years (maternal affection Louis, too, was deprived), Luini used his position for personal enrichment and in order to attach at court numerous relatives. In civil and military Affairs, he was incompetent, but he proved himself a skillful schemer.

Charles d’albert favorite (minion) the French king Louis XIII, who for his sake restored abolished the title of constable of France, and made him Duke de Luynes. His descendants are the Ducal title to this day.

Richelieu secretly wrote to the Royal favorite, offering their services, but received in reply a letter with explicit threats. Terrified, he fled from Blois, where he was exiled along with the Queen, but thereby put himself in an awkward position.

The king sent him to Avignon, sent his elder brother, the Marquis Henri de Richelieu, and the husband of their sister du Pont de Carle. Wife of Henry died in childbirth, a child also died, the family of Richelieu was under threat. Arman was seriously ill and was dying when the course of history again changed dramatically: Marie de Medici also fled from Blois and headed the rebellion of the feudal lords, dissatisfied with his removal from power and the rise Luina.

Franciscan father Joseph du Tremblay, who favored the Bishop Lysosome and had a great influence on the pious and devout king, managed to convince Louis that only Richelieu will be able to extinguish the conflict and to persuade the mother to reconcile with his son.

The Bishop lived up to the expectations, but the fragile peace did not last long: in 1620 a new outbreak of war between mother and son in which the victory (arms) was won by the king. Maria has made to peace talks led Richelieu, putting one of the conditions of reconciliation with the application for assignment cardinal Sana your pet. But the Bishop Lysonski became cardinal Richelieu in November 1622, a year after the death Luina during the siege of the Protestant strongholds of Manner.

Under pressure from the Queen mother, the king took the cardinal to the Council (1624). Gradually Richelieu managed to overcome the hostility of the king, adjusting the financial Affairs of the state and allowing complex military conflict in Valtellina in which France had opposed Spain and the Papal throne. Actually performing the duties of the chief Minister, he became an indispensable Advisor to the king, his right hand.

The elevation of cardinal pleased far not all: in 1626 up to the first conspiracy involving the king’s brother, Gaston, Duke of Anjou (later Duke of Orleans).

Gaston was the favorite of his mother, who knocked him out of the way, inspiring his hopes for the throne: Louis was in poor health, besides, he still had no children. Intelligent and educated, but weak and fickle, Gaston was ambitious, but not serious, lazy, vain, dissolute and cowardly.

Using the fact that his high position protected it from the harsh punishment, he had entered into conspiracies, and then without a twinge of conscience “handed over” their partners. In 1626 the Prince’s cowardice cost the life of count de Chalet, cruelly executed in Nantes.

Then the king dispatched for the protection of the cardinal and fifty Musketeers, which henceforth was called the cardinal’s guards and wore red cloaks with a silver cross (cloaks of the Royal Musketeers was blue).

The inspiration of the “conspiracy Chalet”, and then all subsequent attempts to power the life of the cardinal was the Duchess de Chevreuse, last widow of albert de Luina, a close friend of Anne of Austria. Louis didn’t love her, called “the Devil” and tried to remove from the court; Richelieu tried to use it to maintain the balance of power not to allow his enemies to defeat him. Duel the cardinal with the “Devil” – the fascinating story of the novel; unfortunately, in real life, he fathered not one tragedy.

Settling conflicts with their closest relatives, Louis XIII was intended for another serious internal problem that threatened to escalate into an external. The Huguenots, who owned several towns and fortresses in the South of France, did not obey French law and virtually established a state within a state.

A kind of interpreting the edict of Nantes on religious tolerance issued by Henry IV in 1598, the Huguenots spread religious liberty in the administrative area: issued its own laws, imposed the taxes. In 1620, the Assembly of the Protestants in Lucene shut down its decision, the access of Catholics in a Protestant fortified town.

25 December of the same year a meeting of Protestants in La Rochelle, proclaimed the Union of reformed provinces of France. Louis and Lying Montauban was besieged, but the siege has not brought results and had to be removed. The following year, after the death Luina, king headed a new military campaign against the Huguenots.