[Born at Florence, 1573. Died at Cologne, 1642. Aged 69.]
Daughter of Francis II., Grand Duke of Tuscany; wife of Henry IV. of
France; and mother of Henrietta-Maria, the queen of Charles I. of
England. She wedded Henry IV. after he had divorced his first wife,
Margaret of Valois, and the alliance was not a happy one. Crowned the
day before the assassination of her husband, at which some of her
contemporaries more than suspected that she herself connived. But no
proof of her guilt has been forthcoming. Regent during the minority of
her son Louis XIII., she threw France into confusion by her
misgovernment, prodigality, intrigues and wilfulness. The confusion
ended in civil war. Resigning the regency when Louis XIII. attained his
majority, she took up arms against her son; but reconciliation being
made through the intervention of Richelieu, then Superintendent of her
household, she introduced that great and wily man into the counsels of
the king. Richelieu, appointed Prime-Minister, arrested his former
mistress at Compeigne, and threw her friends into the Bastile. The sun
of Mary had finally set; she became an outcast and a wanderer in Europe.
Our own Charles I. found his mother-in-law an asylum; but he himself was
soon in need of human charity, and the abased queen must needs creep to
Cologne, where she lived in obscurity and died--as travellers are still
shown--in a garret. A weak woman, with strong passions. Ambitious,
jealous, irascible. In her character, as with all men and women--even
the worst---there is one brighter spot for contemplation. She introduced
into France an enlightened and a pure taste for art. There still exist
some specimens of engraving by her hand. To her, Paris owes the Palace
of the Luxembourg, and, for her, Rubens painted a gallery still
possessed by France.
[The companion statuette to 305A.]