[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.]