MARIE DE MEDICIS, SECOND QUEEN OF HENRY IV OF FRANCE.

THE LIFE

OF

MARIE DE MEDICIS

Queen of France

CONSORT OF HENRI IV, AND REGENT OF THEKINGDOM UNDER LOUIS XIII

BY

JULIA PARDOE

AUTHOR OF

'LOUIS XIV AND THE COURT OF FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY,'

'THE COURT AND REIGN OF FRANCIS THE FIRST,' ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I

1890

TO

MR. AND MRS. CHARLES BECKET

(OF HEVER COURT, KENT)

These Volumes

ARE VERY AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

BY

THE AUTHOR

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

All the existing records of European royalty do not, probably, comprisethe annals of a life of greater vicissitude than that which has beenchosen as the subject of the present work. We find numerous examples inhistory of Queens who have suffered exile, imprisonment, and death; butwe believe that the unfortunate Marie de Medicis is the onlyauthenticated instance of a total abandonment on the part alike of herfamily and friends, which terminated almost in starvation. Certain it isthat after having occupied the throne of France, presided over itsCouncils, and given birth to the ancestor of a long line of Princes, shewas ultimately indebted to the sympathy and attachment of a foreignartist, of whom she had once been the zealous patron, for a roof underwhich to terminate her miserable existence! The whole life of thisill-fated Queen is, indeed, full of startling contrasts from which themind shrinks back appalled; and her entire career is so freighted withalternate grandeur and privation that it is difficult to reconcile thepossibility of their having fallen to the share of the same individual;and this too in an age when France, above all other nations, boasted ofits chivalry, and when some of the greatest names that have ever figuredin its annals gave grace and glory to its history.

The times were, moreover, as remarkable as the men by whom they wereillustrated; for despite the civil and foreign wars by which they wereso unhappily distinguished, the arts flourished, and the spread ofpolitical liberty became apparent; although it is equally certain thatthey were at the same time fatal alike to the aristocracy and to themagistrature; and that they rapidly paved the way to the absolutism ofLouis XIV, to the shameless saturnalia of the Regency, and to thedishonouring and degrading excesses of Louis XV, who may justly be saidto have prepared by his licentiousness the scaffold of his successor.

During several centuries the French monarchs had indulged in a blindegotism, which rendered them unable to appreciate the effects of theirown errors upon their subjects. L'ÉTAT C'EST MOI had unfortunately beenpractically their ruling principle long ere Louis XIV ventured to put itinto words. To them the Court was the universe, the aristocracy thenation, and the Church the corner-stone of the proud alta

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