A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Wars of Religion in Sixteenth-Century France 143

exploration of the St. Lawrence River in 1534. Samuel de Champlain
founded the colony of Quebec in 1608. Two years later, the first two French
Jesuit missionaries arrived in what became known as New France.
On May 14, 1610, Henry’s carriage became ensnared in traffic in cen­
tral Paris. When some of his guards dashed forward to try to clear the way,
a crazed monk named Francois Ravaillac jumped up to take revenge for the
kings protection of Protestants. He stabbed the king three times, fatally.

Louis XIII and the Origins of Absolute Rule

Henry’s sudden death left Marie de’ Medici, his widow, as regent for his

young son, Louis XIII (ruled 1610—1643), who was eight years old at the

time. Neither Philip III (ruled 1598-1621) of Spain nor James I of Eng­

land, nor any of the princes of the German states, were in a position to try

to intervene in France on behalf of either Huguenots or Catholics. Marie

put aside Henry’s planned campaign against the Habsburgs and adopted a

policy that considered Catholic powers to be friends.

Marie foiled several nobles’ plots against her in 1614—1616. The convo­

cation of the Estates-General in 1614 accentuated the eagerness of noble

rivals to gain influence with the young king. One of them convinced Louis

to impose his own rule. The king ordered the murder of one of his mother’s

confidants; Louis then exiled his unpopular mother, hoping to restore

calm. When a group of nobles took this as occasion to raise the standard of

revolt, the young king’s army defeated them at Ponts-de-Ce near Angers

in 1620. The royal army then defeated a revolt by Huguenot nobles in the

southwest and west.

Emotionally, the stubborn and high-strung boy-king Louis XIII never

really grew up. Throughout his life, he demonstrated the psychological

burdens of having been regularly whipped as punishment on his father’s

orders. His father’s murder when he was young also marked him. Louis

XIII’s marriage to an Austrian princess began with a wedding-night fiasco

that, whatever happened between the precocious young couple, led to a

six-month period in which they did not even share a meal. Finally, things

went better. After suffering several miscarriages, the queen produced an

heir in 1638, but the royal couple was otherwise unhappy.

Louis XIII was intelligent and liked to sketch and listen to music, the lat­

ter calming him when he fell into a rage. He enjoyed hunting and winning at

chess, once hurling the offending pieces at the head of a courtier who had

the bad grace to checkmate him. Louis was a pious man who attended

church every day. But he was also invariably willful, ruthless, and cruel,

lashing out savagely at his enemies; indeed, no other ruler of France ordered

as many executions as Louis XIII. Among those executed were a number of

nobles convicted of dueling, a practice that the king detested because it rep­

resented to him the possibility that nobles could raise private armies against

the throne.