[Born at Fontainebleau, 1601. Died at St. Germain, 1643. Aged 42.]
He succeeded his father Henry IV. when nine years old. In 1614, his majority was declared: in the following year he married Anne of Austria. His reign is chiefly remarkable for the ascendancy acquired over the King and his government, by Cardinal Richelieu, whose policy, although directed by personal ambition, elevated the power of France and prepared it for the glory of the succeeding reign. Louis XIII. was surnamed “The Just:” but the good, which he desired, he had neither firmness nor enlightenment enough to secure. He was timid and diffident, though scrupulous, sincere, and pious. He had a melancholy nature. Grandeur had no seductions for him, and it could not be said that he enjoyed the sweets of private life. His mother Richelieu caused to be banished, and Louis suffered her to die in misery at Cologne; an unfilial act to be attributed rather to weakness of character, and the influence of the Cardinal, than to deliberate unkindness. He was the father of Louis XIV.
[From a fine portrait statue in bronze, by Simon Guillain of Paris, who died in 1658. The original is in the Louvre, and a copy of it is at Versailles: it has lost a spur and the fleur-de-lys which was at the top of the sceptre. The King wears the royal fleur-de-lys mantle over his armour, and the grand collar of the Order of the St. Esprit. He holds the sceptre in one hand, and stretches out the other, as if giving a command. There is an interesting bust at Versailles of the same King when a boy, and no doubt from the life.]
307A. Louis XIII. King of France.
[From the marble statue in the Louvre, by Guillaume Couston, a pupil of Coysevox, who died at Paris in 1746. The King wears the royal fleur-de-lys mantle, and on his knees offers his crown and sceptre to the Virgin. The 15th of August, 1638, the day on which Louis XIV. was born, was ordered to be celebrated by a solemn procession in Nôtre-Dame; and throughout France, to this day it is kept in the Cathedral, and called the ceremony of the Vow of Louis XIII. The attitude chosen by the sculptor is thus explained. There are several other examples of the same kind at Versailles; the statue of Louis XIV. (No. 308) is one. At Versailles there is a similar statue by Coysevox, and a bust by Warin.]
307.* Anne of Austria. Queen of France.
[Born in Spain, 1602. Died in France, 1666. Aged 64.]
The daughter of Philip II. of Spain, and wife of Louis XIII. of France. She was neglected by the King, her husband, and had no influence in France during his lifetime. But upon his decease, the parliament annulled his will, which had restricted the Queen’s power, and gave her the unlimited Regency of the kingdom, and sole guardianship of her son, Louis XIV. She appointed Cardinal Mazarin her Prime Minister, and the alliance thus formed between a Spanish princess and an Italian priest, gave rise in France to the civil wars of “La Fronde.” In spite of the opposition which she encountered, she made over the sovereignty of France unimpaired to her son when he reached his majority. Of a mild and docile temper, religious and charitable. As a mother she was devoted to her children, and sought to imbue them with high moral and religious principles.
[Mask from the statue referred to in note No. 308.]
308. Louis XIV. King of France.