Louis XIII seized power at 16 by having his mother's favourite killed
Crowned at eight after his father's assassination, Louis XIII spent years sidelined by his mother's regency and her Italian favourite. At 16 he struck back: the favourite was killed during an arrest attempt and the queen mother exiled. With Cardinal Richelieu he then set out to bring France's nobles to heel.
Louis was born at Fontainebleau on 27 September 1601, eldest son of Henry IV, the first Bourbon king, and Marie de' Medici. He was raised under a royal governess and the physician Jean Héroard. An English ambassador, Sir Edward Herbert, left a vivid sketch of the king in 1619: a stutterer so severe he sometimes held out his tongue for a while before managing a word, with a double row of teeth, yet tireless at hunting and hawking.
His father was assassinated shortly before Louis turned nine, and Marie became regent. She kept most of Henry's ministers, confirmed the Edict of Nantes and fended off a rebellion by the Prince of Condé. Louis came of age at 13 in 1614, but his mother kept ruling in practice and leaned increasingly on Concino Concini, an unpopular Italian favourite. On 24 April 1617, encouraged by his falconer Charles d'Albert, the king ordered Concini's arrest, and Concini was killed in the attempt. Marie was sent into exile at Blois, and d'Albert became Duke of Luynes and the new power behind the throne.
Luynes proved as resented as Concini. As the Thirty Years' War broke out in 1618, the court hesitated between France's rivalry with the Habsburgs and the king's strict Catholic upbringing. Discontented nobles rallied around the exiled Marie, whose adviser, the Bishop of Luçon, would become Cardinal Richelieu in 1622.
Richelieu went on to dominate the reign. Together, king and cardinal founded the Académie française, crushed noble revolts, demolished the castles of defiant lords and condemned duels, weapon-carrying and the keeping of household troops. Before the 1620s were out, the cardinal had made the crown's monopoly of force the governing principle. The reign also saw struggles with the Huguenots and Habsburg Spain. Taciturn and suspicious, remembered as Louis the Just, he died on 14 May 1643.
Source: Louis XIII
