Louis XIII, King of France

LOUIS XIII, King of France. - Of the House of Bourbon, b. at Fontainebleau on 27 Sept. 1601 to Henry IV and Marie de' Medici, d. on 14 May 1643 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1615 he married Anne of Austria, by whom he had Louis XIV and Philip of Orléans. Having lost his father, killed in 1610, he had an unhappy childhood, under the guardianship of his mother, amid the struggles of factions and the domination of favorites, from which he was freed by the assassination, in 1617, of Concini.

He then fell into the hands of other overbearing and incapable men, until in 1624 he made Cardinal Richelieu first minister, to whom he maintained his trust until death, despite the profound hostility of the Court and of the nobility, recalcitrant against the minister who restored the absolute authority of the king, crushed the Parlements, the nobility and the Huguenots as a political party. A mediocre man but full of a sense of his royal duties, he took part in the siege of La Rochelle and in expeditions into the south and into Piedmont. He seconded Richelieu in the struggle against the House of Austria both in Germany and in the various Spanish dominions (Flanders,

Catalonia, Portugal, Italy) and, after Richelieu's death, with the appointment of Mazarin he ensured its continuation and success. He had good relations with Pope Urban VIII, even though the latter was suspicious of Spanish overbearance. Piedmont, governed by his sister Christina, regent, followed his directives.

Luigi Simeoni