The regency and the beginnings of Louis XIII (1610-1614)

The assassination of Henry IV, on 14 May 1610, left the throne to an eight-year-old child. Within two hours of the king’s death, the Parlement had proclaimed the regency of Marie de Médicis — but the political and financial legacy left by twenty-one years of reign was to deteriorate with surprising speed over the following four years, until Louis XIII’s coming of age.

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💸 A rapidly squandered legacy

Ill-prepared for the exercise of power, pious and easily influenced, Marie de Médicis at first kept most of Henry IV’s ministers on her council, foremost among them Sully. But disagreements accumulated rapidly, and the old superintendent, increasingly isolated in the face of the rising influence of the regent’s Italian favourites, resigned in January 1611. His departure marked the beginning of a rapid financial decline: the reserve treasury accumulated at the Bastille was gradually swallowed up by the court’s largesse, forcing the government to multiply the sale of offices and costly loans to fill a resurgent deficit.

On the diplomatic front, the regent broke with the late king’s anti-Spanish policy by negotiating, as early as 1612, a double marriage with Spain: that of Louis XIII with the Infanta Anne of Austria, and that of his sister Élisabeth with the future Philip IV. This rapprochement, celebrated in 1615, sealed peace with the Habsburgs but effectively abandoned the ambition of European balance that Henry IV had pursued until his death.

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⚔️ Noble revolts and the last Estates-General

The weakness of the regent’s power quickly encouraged unrest among the great nobles. In the spring of 1614, Henri II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, first prince of the blood and presumptive heir so long as Louis XIII had no children, raised an army and marched on Paris to challenge the conduct of affairs. Lacking sufficient forces to oppose him, the regent had to negotiate: the Treaty of Sainte-Menehould, signed in 1614, granted Condé a considerable indemnity along with the governorship of Berry, while other discontented lords — the Dukes of Nevers and Bouillon — obtained comparable compensation. This precedent, in which rebellion found itself openly rewarded, durably weakened the authority of the regency.

The treaty also provided for the convening of the Estates-General, held in Paris at the end of 1614: the debates, marked by the opposition between a Third Estate demanding a reduction in taxes and a nobility defending its privileges, ended in near-total deadlock and the dissolution of the assembly in 1615, without lasting reform. These Estates-General were to remain, until the convening of 1789, the last in the history of the French monarchy. Louis XIII, reaching his legal majority of thirteen in September 1614, did not truly take power until 1617, after the assassination of Concini, his mother’s Italian favourite — opening the way, a decade later, to Richelieu’s arrival in office.

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🧠 Key takeaways

• Sully’s departure in 1611 marked the beginning of a rapid deterioration of royal finances that twenty years of effort had nonetheless put in order
• The Treaty of Sainte-Menehould (1614), which rewarded the revolt of the Prince of Condé with financial and territorial concessions, illustrated the weakness of the regent’s power
• The Estates-General of 1614-1615, which ended in deadlock, remained the last convened before 1789; Louis XIII did not truly take power until 1617

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