Louis XIII (French pronunciation: [lwi tʁɛz]; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown.
Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de' Medici, acted as regent during his minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italian favourites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court.
Louis XIII, taciturn and suspicious, relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and then Cardinal Richelieu, to govern the Kingdom of France. The King and the Cardinal are remembered for establishing the Académie française, and ending the revolt of the French nobility. They systematically destroyed the castles of defiant lords, and denounced the use of private violence (dueling, carrying weapons, and maintaining private armies). By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu had established "the royal monopoly of force" as the ruling doctrine. The king's reign was also marked by the struggles against the Huguenots and Habsburg Spain.
Born at the Palace of Fontainebleau, Louis XIII was the eldest child of King Henry IV of France and his second wife Marie de' Medici. As son of the king, he was a Fils de France ("son of France"), and as the eldest son, Dauphin of France. His father Henry IV was the first French king of the House of Bourbon, having succeeded his second cousin, Henry III (1574–1589), in application of Salic law. Louis XIII's paternal grandparents were Antoine de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, and Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. His maternal grandparents were Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Joanna of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Eleonora de' Medici, his maternal aunt, was his godmother.
As a child, he was raised under the supervision of the royal governess Françoise de Montglat and his physician, Jean Héroard.
The ambassador of King James I of England to the court of France, Sir Edward Herbert, who presented his credentials to Louis XIII in 1619, remarked on Louis's extreme congenital speech impediment and his double teeth:
...I presented to the King [Louis] a letter of credence from the King [James] my master: the King [Louis] assured me of a reciprocal affection to the King [James] my master, and of my particular welcome to his Court: his words were never many, as being so extream [sic] a stutterer that he would sometimes hold his tongue out of his mouth a good while before he could speak so much as one word; he had besides a double row of teeth, and was observed seldom or never to spit or blow his nose, or to sweat much, 'tho he were very laborious, and almost indefatigable in his exercises of hunting and hawking, to which he was much addicted...
Regency of Marie de' Medici, 1610–1617
Louis XIII ascended the throne in 1610 upon the assassination of his father, and his mother Marie de' Medici acted as his Regent. Although Louis XIII came of age at thirteen (1614), his mother did not give up her position as Regent until 1617, when he was 16. Marie maintained most of her husband's ministers, with the exception of Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, who was unpopular in the country. She mainly relied on Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy, Noël Brûlart de Sillery, and Pierre Jeannin for political advice. Marie pursued a moderate policy, confirming the Edict of Nantes. She was not, however, able to prevent rebellion by nobles such as Henri, Prince of Condé (1588–1646), second in line to the throne after Marie's second surviving son Gaston, Duke of Orléans. Condé squabbled with Marie in 1614, and briefly raised an army, but he found little support in the country, and Marie was able to raise her own army. Nevertheless, Marie agreed to call an Estates General assembly to address Condé's grievances.
The assembly of this Estates General was delayed until Louis XIII formally came of age on his thirteenth birthday. Although his coming-of-age formally ended Marie's Regency, she remained the de facto ruler of France. The Estates General accomplished little, spending its time discussing the relationship of France to the Papacy and the venality of offices, but reaching no resolutions.
Beginning in 1615, Marie came to rely increasingly on Concino Concini, an Italian who assumed the role of her favourite, and was widely unpopular because he was a foreigner. This further antagonised Condé, who launched another rebellion in the early months of 1616. Huguenot leaders supported Condé's rebellion, which led the young Louis XIII to conclude that they would never be loyal subjects. Eventually, Condé and Queen Marie made peace with the ratification on 3 May of the Treaty of Loudun, which allowed Condé great power in government but did not remove Concini. However, on 1 September, after growing dissatisfaction from nobles due to Concini's position, Queen Marie, with Louis's help, imprisoned Condé to protect Concini, leading to renewed revolts against the Queen and Concini.
In the meantime, Louis XIII decided, with the encouragement of Charles d'Albert (the Grand Falconer of France) and other advisers, to break with his mother and to arrest Concini. On 24 April 1617, during the attempted arrest, Concini was killed. His widow Leonora Dori Galigaï was tried for witchcraft, condemned, beheaded, and burned on 8 July 1617, and Marie was sent into exile in Blois. Later, Louis conferred the title of Duke of Luynes on Charles d'Albert.
Ascendancy of Charles de Luynes, 1617–1621
Luynes soon became as unpopular as Concini had been. Other nobles resented his monopolisation of the King. Luynes was seen as less competent than Henry IV's ministers, many now elderly or deceased, who had surrounded Marie de' Medici.
The Thirty Years' War broke out in 1618. The French court was initially unsure of which side to support. On the one hand, France's traditional rivalry with the House of Habsburg argued in favour of intervening on behalf of the Protestant powers (and Louis's father Henry IV of France had once been a Huguenot leader). On the other hand, Louis XIII had a strict Catholic upbringing, and his natural inclination was to support the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburg Ferdinand II.
The French nobles were further antagonised against Luynes by the 1618 revocation of the paulette tax and by the sale of offices in 1620. From her exile in Blois, Marie de' Medici became the obvious rallying point for this discontent, and the Bishop of Luçon (who became Cardinal Richelieu in 1622) was allowed to act as her chief adviser, serving as a go-between Marie and the King.
French nobles launched a rebellion on 2 July 1620, but their forces were easily routed by royal forces at the Battle of Ponts-de-Cé on 7 August 1620. Louis then launched an expedition against the Huguenots of Béarn who had defied a number of royal decisions. This expedition managed to re-establish Catholicism as the official religion of Béarn. However, the Béarn expedition drove Huguenots in other provinces into a rebellion led by Henri, Duke of Rohan.
In 1621 Louis XIII was formally reconciled with his mother. Luynes was appointed Constable of France, after which he and Louis set out to quell the Huguenot rebellion. The siege at the Huguenot stronghold of Montauban had to be abandoned after three months owing to the large number of royal troops who had succumbed to camp fever. One of the victims of camp fever was Luynes, who died in December 1621.