Marie de' Medici

• 1. Introduction

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  Marie de' Medici scaled a forty-meter wall on a rope ladder on the night of the 21st to the 22nd of February 1619. She was 43 years old, and her prison was the Château de Blois. Her own son had put her there. Riders sent by the Duc d'Épernon waited below with a coach.

  In November 1600, she had entered Marseille at the head of a retinue of two thousand people. She came from Florence as the new wife of King Henry IV of France. She bore him six children and outlived him by thirty-two years. Yet she died on the 3rd of July 1642 in Cologne, in destitution. The house was loaned by a painter she had once employed.

  How does a woman who controlled the debts of kings end up dying in a borrowed house? The answer starts with a number: the 1,174,000 écus that France owed the Medici bank.

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• 2. A Florentine Education

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  Marie was born on the 26th of April 1575 at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Her father was Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Her mother was Archduchess Joanna of Austria, a direct descendant of Joanna of Castile and Philip I of Castile. That made Marie a Habsburg as well as a Medici.

  Childhood at the Palazzo Pitti was shaped by early death. Her mother died on the 10th of April 1578, after falling from a staircase while heavily pregnant. The child she was carrying was born stillborn the following day. Of Marie's five elder sisters, only the eldest, Eleonora, born on the 28th of February 1567, survived past infancy. A brother, Philip, born on the 20th of May 1577, died on the 29th of March 1582 at the age of four. A sister, Anna, born on the 31st of December 1569, died on the 19th of February 1584, aged fourteen.

  In 1584, her only surviving sister Eleonora married Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir to the Duchy of Mantua, and moved away. Marie's closest companion became her first cousin Virginio Orsini, son of Isabella de' Medici. Her stepmother, Bianca Cappello, also brought a young companion to the Palazzo Pitti: a girl named Dianora Dori, who was renamed Leonora. Leonora was a few years older than Marie and quickly gained such influence over the princess that Marie would not make a decision without consulting her first.

  On the 19th and the 20th of October 1587, Grand Duke Francesco I and Bianca Cappello both died at the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano. Historians have not agreed on whether the cause was poison or malarial fever. Marie was orphaned at the age of twelve. Her uncle, Ferdinando I de' Medici, became Grand Duke. In 1589, he married Christina of Lorraine, a granddaughter of Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France.

  Under Ferdinando's guardianship, Marie received a thorough education in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and the arts. Jacopo Ligozzi taught her drawing, and by all accounts she was talented. She sang, played the guitar and the lute, and had a passion for jewelry and precious stones. Among the suitors who came forward was François, Count of Vaudémont, heir to the Duchy of Lorraine. A more powerful king had just freed himself: Henry IV of France obtained an annulment from Margaret of Valois in December 1599.

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• 3. The Marriage Calculation

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  The Medici promised a dowry of 600,000 écus d'or for the marriage, equivalent to two million livres in total. Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Henry IV's maîtresse-en-titre, was unimpressed; she gave Marie the nickname "la grosse banquière": the big banker.

  As granddaughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, who held that title from 1556 to 1564, Marie also offered a crucial dynastic advantage. The Catholic League and Habsburg Spain had questioned Bourbon legitimacy during the French Succession War from 1589 to around 1593. Marie's Habsburg descent helped settle any remaining doubts about the legitimacy of children she would bear Henry IV.

  The marriage contract was signed in Paris in March 1600. The proxy wedding took place at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence on the 5th of October. Henry IV's favorite, the Duc de Bellegarde, stood in for the king. Four thousand guests attended, entertained in part by a newly invented musical genre: opera. Jacopo Peri's Euridice was among the works performed.

  Marie left Florence on the 23rd of October and reached Lyon on the 3rd of December. She and Henry IV finally met in person on the 9th of December. A Papal legate arrived on the 17th of December and gave his blessing at the Cathedral of Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon.

  Their son Louis was born on the 27th of September 1601 at the Palace of Fontainebleau. France had been waiting for a Dauphin for more than forty years. Five more children followed between 1602 and 1609. The marriage itself was not a happy one. Henry IV forced Marie to socialize with his mistresses; she quarreled fiercely with Catherine de Balzac d'Entragues. Money was a constant source of dispute: despite her enormous dowry, Henry regularly denied her the funds she needed to maintain her royal household.

  The coronation Marie had been requesting for ten years came only in May 1610. Henry IV needed a legitimate regent before leaving for the War of Succession over the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg.

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• 4. The Regent's Court

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  The Parliament of Paris confirmed Marie as regent for her son, the eight-year-old Louis XIII, on the 14th of May 1610. Her first act was to banish Catherine de Balzac d'Entragues from court. She kept Henry IV's key advisers in their posts at first. In 1611, she also took the title of Governess of the Bastille, entrusting its physical command to her knight of honor, Joachim de Chateauvieux.

  Marie reconfirmed the Edict of Nantes, preserving her late husband's policy of religious tolerance for Protestants. She reversed the Treaty of Bruzolo, an alliance Henry IV had signed with the Duke of Savoy against the Habsburgs. A new alignment with Habsburg Spain followed, culminating in a double marriage in 1615: her daughter Elisabeth married Philip, Prince of Asturias, the future Philip IV of Spain, and Louis XIII married Anne of Austria.

  At the center of controversy during her regency were two Italian confidants, Concino Concini and Leonora "Galigai" Dori. Concini was created Marquis d'Ancre and appointed Marshal of France, despite having never fought a single battle. He and Leonora secured the dismissal of the Duke of Sully, Henry IV's able minister. Stirred by xenophobic resentment, French nobles blamed Marie's Italian favorites for the kingdom's troubles, saying the foreigners were enriching themselves at France's expense.

  The Prince of Condé led a series of rebellions against Marie's regency. By the Treaty of Sainte-Menehould, signed on the 15th of May 1614, she agreed to convene the Estates General in Paris. The assembly ended without decisive reform. The Lit de justice of the 2nd of October 1614 declared Louis XIII of legal age, formally ending the regency. Marie became head of the Conseil du Roi instead and kept her grip on government. A second rebellion by Condé was settled by the Treaty of Loudun, signed on the 3rd of May 1616. That settlement granted him 1,500,000 livres and the governorship of Guyenne. Marie had him arrested on the 1st of September 1616 and imprisoned in the Bastille. On the 5th of November 1616, she appointed Armand Jean du Plessis as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Du Plessis, later known as Cardinal Richelieu, had come to prominence at the Estates General meetings.

  Louis XIII, technically of age but still sidelined from power, organized a coup on the 24th of April 1617. He worked with his favorite, the Duc de Luynes, in what became known as the Coup de majesté. Concino Concini was assassinated by the Marquis de Vitry. Marie was exiled from court. The minister she had appointed, Armand Jean du Plessis, survived the upheaval intact.

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• 5. Palaces and Painters

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  Ambroise Dubois, a Flemish-born painter, decorated Marie's cabinets at the Palace of Fontainebleau with scenes from the Ethiopics of Heliodorus. For her gallery there, he painted a series evoking Diana and Apollo as mythological stand-ins for the royal couple.

  Jacob Bunel, Guillaume Dumée, and Gabriel Honnet decorated her Louvre apartments on the theme of Jerusalem Delivered, the epic poem by Torquato Tasso. A French translation by Antoine de Nervèze had been Marie's first reading in that language. For portraits, she employed Charles Martin and especially the Flemish Frans Pourbus the Younger.

  Her most ambitious construction project began in 1612, when she purchased a site for the building she called her "Palais Médicis." Salomon de Brosse designed it, and construction began in 1615. By the 1620s, the Luxembourg Palace was attracting artistic talent from across Europe simultaneously.

  The most celebrated commission went to the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. Between 1622 and 1625, Rubens composed a cycle of twenty-one paintings glorifying her life and reign for the Luxembourg Palace gallery. He also produced three individual portraits of Marie and her family. Throughout the cycle, Henry IV and Marie appear as Jupiter and Juno; the French state is depicted as a female warrior. The complete Marie de' Medici cycle is now displayed in the Louvre Museum.

  Orazio Gentileschi spent two years in Paris, from 1623 to 1625, under her patronage. She brought Guido Reni's Annunciation to the Luxembourg Palace and received a suite of Muses painted by Giovanni Baglione. Sculptors Guillaume Berthelot and Christophe Cochet, and painters Jean Monier, the young Philippe de Champaigne, and Simon Vouet all contributed to the palace apartments. Her attempts to attract Pietro da Cortona and Guercino to Paris ended in failure.

  The twenty-one canvases Rubens painted showed Marie at the height of royal power. Within a decade, she would be asking European courts for refuge.

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• 6. Wars of Mother and Son

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  In 1619, Marie took refuge at the Château d'Angoulême and organized an uprising against Louis XIII. The conflict became known as the guerre de la mère et du fils: the war of mother and son. Richelieu, who had survived the 1617 coup, negotiated the Treaty of Angoulême to settle the first outbreak. Marie rejected it and launched a second war. Louis XIII defeated her coalition of nobles at the Battle of Ponts-de-Cé on the 7th of August 1620. The King forgave his mother; she returned to Paris. After the death of the Duc de Luynes in December 1621, Richelieu guided her political restoration and brought her back to the Conseil du Roi.

  For years after her return, Marie attended the Conseil du Roi alongside Richelieu without fully perceiving how far his power had grown. When she finally moved to have him dismissed, Louis XIII sided with the minister. The confrontation reached its crisis on the 10th and the 11th of November 1630. History calls it the Journée des Dupes: the Day of the Dupes. Richelieu retained his position as principal minister. Louis XIII encouraged his mother to retire to the Château de Compiègne.

  On the 19th of July 1631, Marie fled the Château de Compiègne toward the city of Étrœungt in the County of Hainaut. From there she continued to Brussels. Some accounts suggest the flight was a trap: Louis XIII had quietly withdrawn the regiments guarding the château, leaving her no path except into enemy territory. Stripped of her French pensions, she became a stateless exile.

  Her chaplain Mathieu de Morgues remained loyal throughout the exile and wrote pamphlets against Richelieu that circulated clandestinely in France. She visited the Spanish Netherlands, where Isabella Clara Eugenia and the ambassador Balthazar Gerbier worked to reconcile her with Richelieu, without success. She spent three years at the English court of her daughter, Queen Henrietta Maria, stopping at Gidea Hall on the way to London. She also traveled to Germany, attempting to form a league among her sons-in-law to press her case against France.

  Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert designed the spectacular displays for Marie's visit to Amsterdam, where the Dutch Republic staged an elaborate ceremonial royal entry of a kind it normally avoided for its own rulers. Water pageants took place in the harbor, along with a procession led by two mounted trumpeters. A large temporary structure was erected on an artificial island in the Amstel River. Once Marie set foot on the floating island and entered its pavilion, dramatic tableaux were staged in her tribute. The burgomaster Albert Burgh offered her an Indonesian rice table. He also sold her a famous rosary that had been captured in Brazil. The visit prompted the scholar Caspar Barlaeus to write his Medicea hospes in 1638, titled in English "The Medicean Guest."

  She fell ill in June 1642 and died of pleurisy, five months before Cardinal Richelieu. Her body was laid to rest at the Basilica of Saint Denis on the 8th of March 1643. The burial was held without much ceremony. Her heart was sent to La Flèche, in accordance with Henry IV's wish that their two hearts be reunited. In 1793, during the Revolution, her remains were exhumed and desecrated. Some among the crowd tore out her remaining hair tufts and passed them around; her bones were thrown into a mass grave. In 1817, Louis XVIII ordered her reburial in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint Denis. Her son Louis XIII survived her by just two months, dying on the 14th of May 1643.

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