Dan Snow's History Hit - Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

The Three Musketeers paints a picture of King Louis XIII of France as a rather weak monarch controlled by his powerful chief minister Cardinal Richelieu. Louis’ reign is generally thought of as being the beginning of the “age of absolutism” when ministers like Richelieu were in the ascendancy and the power of the court and courtiers declined. But was this really the case?In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Marc Jaffré, who believes it’s time to revise the conventional view of this significant period in French history.This episode was edited by Thomas Ntinas and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi there, History Hit fans. Let's let you know about another podcast we've got. Not Just the Tudors, with Professor Susanna Lipscomb. You know when I'm walking down the streets, you know what most people ask me? What's Professor Susanna Lipscomb like? So, you can find out for yourself, I say. Listen to her flipping podcast. It's right here, available wherever you get your pods. Not Just the Tudors. You know what that's about?

The Tudors, but Not Just the Tudors. She talks about the Aztecs. She talks about the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Mughals. She talks about the Aztecs. She talks about the Yuan dynasty, the Ming dynasty, the Mughals. She talks about everything that's going on in that wonderful age, the Renaissance, that remarkable age of growth, beauty, tragedy, terror and transformation,

the 16th and 17th centuries. You've got to go and check it out, folks. Go and listen. For all of your Tudor and Tudor Plus requirements, get involved in Susanna Lipscomb's podcast, not just the Tudor and Tudor Plus requirements. Get involved in Susanna Lipscomb's podcast, not just the Tudors, wherever you get your pods. If you have read The Three Musketeers or watched one of its film or TV adaptations,

you'll have come across the King of France, Louis XIII, who is painted as a rather weak monarch, eclipsed by his all-powerful Chief Minister, Cardinal Ressouleur, who died 380 years ago this month. Indeed, Louis XIII's reign, which lasted from 1610 to 1643, is regarded by some as the beginning of the Age of Absolutism, meaning that the state and government ministers became more powerful along with the monarch, while the church nobility, including the royal court and courtiers, became less powerful. This school of thought has found less to say about Louis, but plenty to say about

ministers like Richelieu, who became powerful thanks to their administrative abilities. The picture this paints is that absolutism meant that the court and courtiers, who had grown powerful because of their favour from the king, were in decline, and the ever-reaching machinery of state run by ministers managing the kingdom was in the ascendancy. But did the power of courtiers in the court really decline under Louis XIII? Did ministers like Rassule ascend while courtierstered? And what, in this context, does the Thirty Years' War, or the fight with the Huguenots, or the creation of the Académie Française, tell us about Louis and his court? Is it time, in other words, to revise our view of Louis XIII? Dr Marc Jaffray, lecturer in early modern European history at Durham University,

certainly thinks so. He's motivated by an interest in understanding the relationship between human experience and the state. His 2017 PhD study is, as we speak, being turned into his first monograph, The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610-1643, due for publication by Oxford University Press in 2023. And I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Jaffray today for what promises to be a fascinating review of Louis XIII, his Cardinal Rousselot and his court. Dr. Jaffray, thank you so much for joining me on Not Just the Tudors.

I'm really excited to talk about this somewhat overlooked king, actually, and his court. Thank you very much for having me on. I'm very happy to talk to you about this. So we're going to be talking about Louis XIII. Can you introduce him to us? Tell us what family he was from and who he succeeded and give us a bit of a sense of his character to start with. So Louis XIII is the second of the Bourbon monarchs of France. He's the son of Henry IV of France and Mary de' Medici. He was born in 1601, but became king at the age of nine in 1610 after the assassination of his father, Henry IV.

Then there was a rather long regency. Officially, the regency ended in 1614, but his mother continued to officially hold the reins of power until 1617, at which point, Louis XIII and some of his intimates organize the assassination of Conchino Conchini, who was his mother's favorite, and that allows him to seize the reins of power. And then he rules all the way up till 1643 when he dies. In terms of his personality, he's a rather taciturn type of figure. And, you know, this is probably part of why he's been overlooked. He also had a speech impediment, which affected him. According to one of the English ambassadors, Herbert of Cherbury, his impediment was so bad that at times he had to hold his tongue between his thumb and his index in order to speak properly.

Gosh, it's interesting because people are saying similar things about James I and his speech impediment at the time. One of the interesting things is that Louis XIII's first physician actually made like an incision in his tongue when he was young to try and help him overcome the speech impediment. Obviously, it made things rather worse. I suppose the other reason he's been overlooked is because of his glittering sun. Pretty much everybody falls into the shadows when you're looking at the Sun King. So that means that attention hasn't necessarily been paid to him. But we want to have a think about him and his court. And I think perhaps we need to do some definitions early on as well,

because it's important to be clear that historians do not necessarily agree on the meaning of court. Can you outline the different ideas for us and your personal view? Well, yes, I think this is something that people who aren't mired in the day-to-day of studying courts don't realize is actually the court is a really complicated thing to define. And part of the reason for that is how you define the court is going to change a lot depending on what you're trying to uncover and what you're trying to show. So historians who have been interested in more institutional history might want to conflate the court with the household because that's a much more clearly defined institution. You can find the names of the people who worked in the different departments of the household,

and you have clear ordinances that say how the household is meant to function. And so in a sense, that's all much more clearly defined. And so if you're doing institutional history, that's an easy way in to doing court history. On the other hand, if you're more interested in cultural history, then you might be looking more at policies and paintings, buildings and places, as opposed to groups of people. And then on the other hand, a lot of political historians have often used the court as a shorthand for the center without necessarily getting much thinking about the details of it. And there've been also like varied approaches. Some people have wanted to

see the court as a kind of new institution in the early modern period and distinguishing feature of the developing states. So then they might put an accent on sovereignty and central control as being like a prerequisite to the court. For me, I see the court as having three main elements. I see it, first of all, as a place that's defined by the king's presence. I see it as a group of people, and that's the people who are in proximity to the king. And then I see it also as a society, which is the society that these people form. And so these tend to be the three things that I think about when I think about the court. Historians have traditionally dismissed Louis XIII's court as not worthy of study, but you take the opposite view. Yeah, obviously, for the same reason that Louis XIII has been ignored, his court has also been

ignored. It's in the shadow of Louis XIV's Versailles, which has obsessed court historians for quite some time. And also, his personality has often been seen as not being conducive to maintaining a court. If you're reserved and taciturn, you're not going to attract, you know, the kind of bubbling court, bubbling society that is necessary for a court to function. And also, a lot of historians have wanted to chart the development of the French court as kind of really kicking off under Francis I and the Renaissance and seeing it as a kind of ever-developing, ever-growing court, which there's a pothiosis under Louis XIV. But both actually, Louis XIII and Henry IV's court don't really fit very well in this kind of narrative. So they've been kind of ignored as a result. I take a very different approach. I believe that we tend to focus too much on monarchs'

personalities when we want to try to understand how courts develop. And one of the things that I try to show in my research is that the court jurors themselves, the financiers, the merchants who contract with the court, these are all people who are heavily invested in the court as an institution. And they are very much propelling also the development of the court. And so focusing so much on what the monarch is doing, I think, can obscure other important developments that are not being driven by him. I think, can obscure other important developments that are not being driven by him. The other traditional position is to see that Louis was dominated by his chief ministers,

and so therefore the court and courtiers are consequently less important. Let's introduce some of these chief ministers so we can get a sense of this story. The first is Charles d'Albert, Louis' first favourite chief minister from 17 to 1621. So Louis was 16 to 20 years old during that time. Who was d'Albert and how did he become a favourite? He captured Louis XIII's affections when Louis XIII was still very young, so during the Regency. And he did this mainly through hawking, which was one of Louis XIII's favorite activities and favorite types of hunts. Very early on, Louis is put in charge of three sets of hawking birds that came to be known as the birds of the cabinet. And he's able to kind of capitalize on proximity that the hawking expeditions give him to Louis

to gain his affection. So very quickly, he becomes captain of the king's ordinary gentlemen. He becomes captain of the Tuileries Palace and the Louvre Palace. In 1616, he becomes Grand Falconer of France. So it's already a pretty spectacular rise. And of course, in 1617, when he organizes the assassination of Concino Concini, the Queen Mother's favorite, this allows him to take over as chief minister. And with it comes a whole host of courtly honors, first gentleman of the chamber. And by 1621, he actually even becomes constable of France, qu'on est d'avis de France, which is the highest military honor in France that is possible.

But then he dies the very same year of disease, and that kind of puts an end to his ministry. Do you feel that there is anything during his ministry that could be regarded as evidence that the court was less important? Actually, I would say no. Léon is very much a man of the court. He emerges from the court as soon as his rise to power is accompanied with an aggregation of court offices. He understands very much the importance of being near and proximate to the monarch and controlling the different households. And of Austria, he controls also Gaston's household by putting relatives and supporters of him into their

households. He has a very clear supporters of him into their households. He has a very clear understanding of the importance of court. Okay, so many people may not have heard of him, Charles d'Albert, Duke de Ligne, but they will have heard of Louis' next chief minister. So 1624, after a short spell in which Louis has had a council, Armand-Jean Duplessis, Bishop of Luzon, becomes chief minister. Armand Jean Duplessis, Bishop of Lusson, becomes chief minister. Later, of course, he's Cardinal Richelieu. Can you tell us about Duplessis and how he came into this position? Richelieu is also a product of the court in many ways. His father was a fairly prominent courtier. He was both Henry III and Henry IV's grand provost of the household. In 1590,

he becomes captain of one of the four bodyguard companies of Henry IV. But then he dies in 1590, which kind of puts an end to his career, right? But Richelieu himself is also very involved in the court. He emerges actually from the entourage of Mary de' Medici. He is put in charge of Anne of Austria's chapel in 1616. He becomes later Grand Omnivore of Mary de' Medici as well. He becomes superintendent of her household. So he's also very much a product of the court.

What's interesting is that he doesn't emerge from Louis XIII's personal entourage. He emerges from Mary de' Medici's personal entourage. And when he's trying to become cardinal, it's Mary de' Medici who pushes that forward. She's the one who's lobbying very hard for it. And there's a lot of resistance from actually Louis and Rien as well, who don't want to upset Mary de' Medici, but they also aren't too keen on the idea of Richelieu becoming cardinal. It's actually really interesting to read the correspondence of the papal nuncio, the ambassador for the pope in France at this time, because he talks a lot about this question of will Richelieu

get the cardinal's hat. You know, whenever Louis or one of his ministers talk about possibly giving him the cardinal's hand, he's never sure whether it's coming from a place of honesty or just trying to appease Mary de' Medici. But by 1624, he gets put in charge of Louis XIII's council, and his power really consolidates in 1630, after the Day of the Dupes, which is basically a moment in time when Mary de' Medici and Richelieu had kind of fallen out. And she tried to get Louis XIII to dismiss Richelieu from the court. And it seemed that that was going to happen. And so everyone came to congratulate Mary de' Medici on being triumphant, but they were all duped because in the end, it was Richelieu who triumphed.

And it was Mary de' Medici who eventually went into exile instead. And from then on, he is the most powerful person at the French court until his death in 1642, a few months before Louis, actually. So I feel like we need to get a sense of Richelieu's character and who he was and also understand a bit more of that relationship with Louis then? It's kind of hard to really capture the personality of Rousselia. And it's also part of it because he's very much cultivated a certain persona. And there's so much that was written about him that was his own personal propaganda.

And then there's so much that's written about him that was his own personal propaganda. And then there's so much that's written about him that's by his political enemies. And so who's the real person is actually something that's really hard to pin down. It does seem that he was rather difficult to get along with. And I think we can arrive at that conclusion because he's often trying to place allies in Louis XIII's household, but many of these allies then subsequently turn against him. And this happens with, I think, enough frequency that it suggests that there was a problem with the way that Richelieu was relating to these people. It also seems that Louis XIII himself has a very difficult relationship with Cardinal Richelieu.

It does seem that there are a few moments in time when he suggests to some of his familiars and courtiers around him that he wouldn't mind if Richelieu was assassinated or gotten rid of. It's certainly the idea that his close favorite Saint-Marc had in the 1640s when he tried to organize a conspiracy against Richelieu. He was very much convinced that this was what Louis wanted, or that Louis had given him permission to do so. And so that's a very interesting dynamic because it's kind of different from the image that we usually have of favorites as being there because of the deep personal affectionate bond that they have with

the monarch. Now, I'd like to pick up on some of the things that this period is famous for. And one of those is revolts by members of the nobility, particularly in the 1620s, but there are periodic revolts thereafter, of course. And one of them is by Louis's own brother and his heir, Gaston du Deau-Lyon. And I wonder if you think that these revolts can be read as a sign of the waning power of nobility and the growth of the state and the growth of bureaucracy, this kind of grand idea about the advance of modernity, I suppose, that's often been imposed on it. Yeah, well, that's definitely the way that it has often been understood and portrayed. I tend not to approach it in these terms. I've always felt that it becomes a little bit

problematic because then, in a sense, each new rebellion and its wording becomes something to celebrate along the path of the development of the modern state. Like the state gets stronger and this is how our modern state is built. And so therefore it's actually great that there was this war against the Huguenots and Richelieu put them down at La Rochelle because this was necessary for the birth of the state.

And it's always struck me as odd that a reign like Louis XIII's, which was so wracked by a large string of different rebellions, conspiracies, is actually being portrayed as a strength. Because it's not just Gaston. Louis XIII, he went to war with his cousin Condé. He went to war with his mother. He went to war with his brother, Gaston. He went to war with his cousin, Soissons, as well. And then there are multiple rebellions by the Huguenots that he fights with. In what sense can we really be talking about this as greater stability and a stronger state? For me, this is actually a sign

of weakness. Yes. So in other words, this is actually a sign of weakness. Yes. So in other words, it's actually the exact opposite of the story has always been told. So do you feel like when we're telling the story, for example, of the crown's relationship with the Huguenots or the French Protestants, that actually the imposition of this as being about the growth of absolutism is just to get the wrong end of the stick? of this as being about the growth of absolutism is just to get the wrong end of the stick. It is, in a sense, the wrong end of the stick. I mean, it may be that along the way, certain tools get created, which are then useful for absolutism later on. But Louis XIII was not able to avail himself of those tools during his own reign. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. I perhaps rushed into that. Can you explain a bit of this conflict between the king and the Huguenots?

So basically, during the 16th century, there were very long wars of religion that culminated in first assassination of Henry III. And this was basically a big problem because his heir, Henry IV, was at the time a Protestant. And for, you know, much of Catholic France, this was unacceptable or really problematic. And he spent the first few years of his reign fighting a war, basically to take control of Paris and to take control of the French state. He converts to Catholicism eventually, and the wars of religion are supposedly put to an end with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which is an edict that allowed for toleration of Protestant practice in France. But only in certain places, very crucially.

Exactly. And also there were festering wounds that still remained between many communities, Catholic and Protestant communities where Catholic churches had been destroyed and turned into Protestant ones and vice versa, and communities who had been exiled. So even if you've got an edict of some kind of toleration, it doesn't end the types of disputes and anger that can remain between these communities. And one of the big issues that happened also was related to Louis XIII's other kingdom, which was the Kingdom of Navarre and the Principality of the Bayeuve, which had been Protestant

under Henry IV and continued to be Protestant in Louis XIII's reign. But Louis XIII wanted to reintroduce Catholic worship in the Kingdom of Navarre, in Bayeuve. And that kind of reignited a conflict with the Protestants in the early 1620s. And, you know, from one thing to another, there are also like important, powerful, noble interests that are involved as well. And then very famously, you get the siege of La Rochelle in 1627 and 1628, which is kind of the last big conflict with the Huguenots in Louis XIII's reign. I absolutely can see this from the point of the Huguenots. And I know that for them, the fact that although Henry IV had converted to Catholicism,

there was still a sense of toleration or hope whilst he was alive, perhaps. Or there was still hope that Protestantism could spread before the Edict of Nantes, but then that was quashed. And so for them, these years are an absolute disaster. but then that was quashed. And so for them, these years are an absolute disaster. But looking at it from Louis' point of view as well, he's fighting on many fronts. We've also got the Thirty Years' War, which has broken out in 1618. And Louis has that challenge to face as well. What response did he make to that conflict? And in what ways were his courtiers and nobles also involved? It's interesting because Cardinal Richelieu, in his own testament, political testament in his

memoirs, he kind of paints the conflict with the Huguenots as being the necessary precursor to an effective war with the Habsburgs. Because in the way that he talks about it, he thought it was impossible to really deal head on with the external Habsburg threat if you had not resolved the internal issues with the Huguenots. So he very much paints it as if he had always intended to oppose the Habsburg threat. And part of that plan was dealing with the Huguenots. But I think this is very much like a post-fact justification. And it actually has a lot to do with the internal politics that were happening at the time. Richelieu, as long as he was with the Queen Mother, was basically allied with the grouping that was commonly referred to as the bigots,

the bigots, which were like a group of Catholics that were for opposing the Huguenots and for war with the Huguenots rather than for external war. But when he actually decouples from the Queen Mother, suddenly, if he wants to have political allies, he's got to find allies elsewhere, because all of the bigos are in the entourage of Mary de' Medici. And so as a result, he finds himself having to ally with a lot of former opponents who were more interested in external war than they were in internal war with the Huguenots. And so I think that kind of puts a very different perspective from the way that we usually think about Cardinal Richelieu's intent in first taking on the Huguenots and then in taking

on the Habsburgs. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans.

Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. One of the other things that's associated with Louis XIII's reign that people may have heard of

is this notion that he banned duelling and carrying weapons. How does this fit into the story of the power of the court and the nobility? Is it evidence of Louis trying to be more autocratic? Louis is actually not the first to try and ban duelling. Henry IV had also put out edicts and ordinances banning dueling, and Louis XIV continued to do so as well. And in fact, you know, the fact that they were continually trying to ban it suggests that they weren't having much success in this endeavor. I think people underestimate the extent to which it was difficult to reconcile after disputes at the court. And sometimes

dueling was actually the only way in which a reconciliation could occur. You see a lot of duelers discuss about how they had this great conflict over a point of honor, and they're mad at each other. And then they go, and they have their jewel, and then afterwards, they go and drink, and they're best friends forever after that, right? And this is actually really important, because one of the stories that's really struck me, and this happens at Louis XIII's court in 1621, the Duke of Nevers, who is the future sovereign prince, Duke of Mantua, right? And he is having a longstanding legal dispute with the cardinal of Guise over inheritance and land and so on. And the cardinal of Guise gets offended

because Nevers publishes a pamphlet insulting him. And so the cardinal de Guise, with his brother, the future duke of Chevreuse, they come with 30 men and they find Nevers inside the office of his legal counsel. And so Nevers on his own with this legal advocate because Nevers' entourage has stayed outside. And Cardinal of Guise comes in with a bunch of men and Chevreuse stands at the door with a bunch of men to prevent Nevers' men from coming in and helping him. And basically, the Cardinal Guise takes off his cardinal's robes because, you know, he's going to behave in an unseemly way. And basically, they jump the Duke of Nevers. They punch him and beat him down to the ground. And the Cardinal Guise is like kicking him in the

face. And if you think of honor, and this is like the highest nobility of the realm, how do you recover politically from this? The only way is a duel. And so Nevers spent like the next three years trying to get the Cardinal de Guise to agree to a duel with him. And Nevers is only able to reconcile with the Chevreuse, the brother,

once the Cardinal de Guise has just died. But this is like a festering wound and there's no way for these people to reconcile. Yeah, you don't imagine the highest nobleman in the land, the highest churchman in the land, engaging in something that's basically a pub brawl, do you? Absolutely. This is a time when you still get this kind of violence that occurs in the proximity of the core. Wow, that's fascinating. On the wall behind you, you've got a rather wonderful map of early modern Paris. And I suppose because of the dominance of Paris as a city and later because of the dominance of Versailles as a concept, it's easy to overlook. In fact, I don't think I had fully appreciated this until I read your work, how itinerant Louis and his court was. Can you give us some sort of illustration of this and tell me what you think it reveals about the importance of his court?

Yeah, this is definitely something that I think has been underestimated, is just how itinerant Louis is. And in fact, I would go so far as to say that he is the most itinerant monarch since Francis I or Henry II. Okay, I was going to say Francis I is the one I have in my head as being someone who's always on the road, but that's interesting. Yeah. And Louis XIII, there's not a region of France that he's not visited. Also, he goes and fights a war in Savoy. He fights a war in northern Spain. He goes into Lorraine, which at this time is independent principality. So he really crisscrosses all of France. There was a year where he only spends a single day in Paris in the whole year. And yet traditionally, people have viewed the court as settling down during this period, which is very incongruous when you start to look at the reality

of Louis XIII's travels. I think one thing that people underestimate is that this is part of the nature of courts, that courts are structurally built with the idea of travel in mind. Courts employ a whole bunch of different harbingers who are there to spot houses in towns where the king can visit. There are rules about what the carpenters are meant to do to kind of reinforce the room where the king is going to stay in and whatever village they end up in. And everything is clearly delineated, like who gets to choose whose house first when they arrive in a new village. So this is an institution which is designed with travel in mind. There are a bunch of different reasons why Louis XIII needs to travel with his court. A lot of it is actually to do with security, unsurprisingly, because he is fighting these wars, whether it's internal wars

or external wars. This is still a time when there's this idea that the monarch can go to the battlefield and at least lead in person, and not necessarily in the battle himself, but at least be there. So he's going to travel with his whole entourage. And he also travels sometimes to put pressure on recalcitrant noblemen. So if it looks like a nobleman is getting uppity, perhaps, then he will come with his court. His court is a lot of people. It's a lot of noblemen who are all warriors. So it's basically descending with an army and he's coming with his bodyguards. So it's basically descending with an army and he's coming with his bodyguards.

So having the court descend on you can be a way of putting pressure on you to behave. He also travels to a certain degree to get seen and to meet some of the important urban figures and towns. You see him be godfather in baptisms for some local elites. You see him participate in some local festivals. When he comes to Marseille, for instance, they organize a giant fishing event where they use these kind of tridents called fishois. And they've instructed Louis XIII secretly on its use, but they haven't instructed any of his courtiers on how to use it. So everyone's delighted at Louis XIII being excellent at fishing these fish while all of the courtiers are flailing.

So there's a lot of interesting things that goes on during these travels of the court. But it remains very dangerous, actually. And I think that's another thing that can often be underestimated, because quality of the roads is still very poor. A lot of the rooms that he's staying in aren't designed for the large Congress of the court. So for instance, it's in Toul, there's the council that's being held in Mary Domenici's chambers and the floor collapses beneath them. And you have a whole bunch of the greatest nobility that get injured because they fall into the floor below. There's another instance when they're traveling in the southeast of France and the weather is really poor and a whole bunch of

people get swept away and the papal nuncio loses all of his money. A bunch of people die of the cold during this trip. The Queen's ladies almost drown. Travel in early modern France does not sound like something that we would want to jump at, giving the chance, does it at all? I mean, it sounds absolutely horrific. Dying of the cold, that sounds pretty awful to me. And yet you'd think as a king, he would have some level of protection from the elements, from the extremes of weather or from natural circumstances.

What's the point of being king if you can't be protected from those things at least? Well, yeah, that's the whole point, is that that's with the protection. It's as dangerous, you know, even though he has all of this protection. So you can only imagine what it could be like for ordinary travelers. So you can only imagine what it could be like for ordinary travellers. Now, one thing about Louis is that he is often judged, again, in a similar way to his counterpart across the channel, on the basis of his sexual behaviour. So contemporaries and historians have attacked him on all manner of things, really, whether it's accusations of fathering a secret love child who is imprisoned as the infamous man in the iron mask, or whether it's an accusation of homosexuality. What should we make of all of this chatter about Louis' personal life? I think there's actually a lot of different things that are going on in the way that people have approached this.

First and foremost, the people have been obsessed by the fact that Louis XIII didn't really have mistresses. When you think of most of the French monarchs, infamously, a lot of them had many mistresses. So Francis I, Henry IV was notorious for the number of mistresses that he had. I mean, even Louis XIV and Louis XV, they also had a lot of mistresses. So Louis XIII seems rather incongruous in that he did not really have any mistresses. And because he had these male favorites, people were quick to jump to the idea that he might have been homosexual. There's also the problem in that in the early modern period, homosexuality was often a way to kind of insult and to attack the honor of a monarch.

And so it's also interesting that the monarchs who are traditionally thought of as being weak are the ones who get accused of homosexuality. And so I think that as a historian can be, if you're looking for evidence of queerness amongst monarchs, I think that is a problem that people have to address more explicitly. Right. So effeminacy and weakness are kind of allied, and once sexual behaviour is supposed to be some sort of representation, as it often was in the early modern period, of your kind of interior reality. It's also interesting because historians in the past, they thought in a very binary way. Either you were straight or you were homosexual. There was no possibility that a monarch might be bisexual or that a monarch could be asexual. So as soon as you found a monarch who wasn't engaging

in a lot of heterosexual sex, then automatically they had to be a homosexual because those were the only two options that historians were thinking about back in the 90s. Yeah, and I suppose that says everything about the fight for homosexual equality, which meant digging deep into identities that were defined. And it's only been in recent decades that people have said, actually, we can consider that there might be other possibilities, apart from these two binaries. And I think it's very clear that Louis XIII had a difficult

relationship with his wife. It did take him a long time to consummate his marriage. In fact, this becomes like one of the main diplomatic goals of Spanish diplomats and ambassadors around 1617, 1618, to try and get him to finally consummate his marriage with Anne of Austria, because they're afraid that as long as that marriage has not been consummated, that he could dismiss her and send her back. It's interesting, later 13th, despite being 16, 17 years of age at this time, he says, oh, well, I'm still too young to consummate this marriage. That's his excuse at this time. But he does have sexual relations with her eventually. And even though she takes a very long time to give him airs, there were a number of earlier miscarriages,

which are an indication that they were having intimate relations. But that's the other reason why actually Louis XIII's sexuality has long been questioned. Because even though he got married very early on in his reign, his son was only born five years before the end. And that son, of course, regarded as something of a miracle because of the miscarriages and possibly stillbirths before that. So he's called Diodone, the God-given. Also something I'd like to pick up from the 1630s, which might sound like a completely other end of the spectrum from sexuality, but interesting because it prevails to this day. language, committed to kind of eliminating impurities. Have they now permitted le week-end? I don't know. But why was it important at this time to try and regulate the French language? What does that tell us about Louis and people around him like Richelieu and those on his council?

It's interesting because the idea of the Académie Française doesn't really originate with either Boudouillot or Richelieu. And in fact, Richelieu kind of jumps onto this circle of French thinkers and writers and institutionalizes meetings between them that were already happening. This is a time when it becomes rather fashionable to think about the French language. And so whether it's the Cercle Conrart, which is the one that becomes the Académie Française, or whether it's people in the entourage of the Salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet, there's a lot of interest in reforming the French language

and making it more civilized, I guess. Is there a sense in which, therefore, we see the court and the council piggybacking on the activities of scholars and intellectuals and kind of trying to bring them into the fold, making them part of the state as opposed to having these independent centres of thinking? I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janonaga and in Gone Medieval we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history we're talking vikings normans kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends murder rebellions and crusades find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval

from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I do think that from Richelieu's perspective as well, these are people that could then theoretically be used to write a lot of useful propaganda for him. So I think he does view things very much in that vein. Okay, so I have two questions I'd like to finish with, both of which are just trying to really get at what we should think of in the end as Louis' legacy. The first is, do you think that Louis' age marks the beginning of absolutism. Thinking back to your answer about this being really an age of instability, how should we think of this period? A lot of historians are just really interested in how did absolutism happen?

When did it originate? And a lot of people will start at having the fourth reign. Some people start that during the 13th reign. Other people during the the fourth reign. Some people start that directly to 13th reign. Other people directly to 14th reign. I think it's a very difficult question to answer, mainly because how we define an age of absolutism is, you know, a very nebulous idea to me, right? Traditionally, we've very much viewed absolutism as being kind of the triumph of the monarch or the state over a recalcitrant nobility. But actually, a lot of historians nowadays view absolutism through an idea of cooperation. And that actually absolutism succeeds because the nobility buys into it. And so then it's not so much about a conflict, and it's more about

a kind of shift in the nobility's culture and how they view themselves in relation to the state. And that's obviously a long process that takes a long amount of time. And so at which point did absolutism occur is, I think, a very difficult thing to establish in any meaningful way. Okay, so my second question then is about how we should think of Louis himself. And I'm aware that the popular defection of Louis, following in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, paints him as this kind of inferior, weak monarch who is manipulated by Rétulier. You've given us a really interesting picture of that relationship and of this taciturn

monarch who nevertheless is a person who is far more interesting than perhaps historians have thought. What do you think our judgment on him really should be? Well, the picture that we have of Louis generally is a weak, manipulated monarch. He's often shown as being stupid, which is absolutely not the case. He loved music. He even wrote his own ballet. This is a king who could be very intelligent, but it's true that he did find it more difficult to be effective in the sense that he doesn't have the gregariousness that all of his family members had. Henry IV was famously gregarious. He was able to use familiarity to really foster feelings of strong affection in a

lot of his nobility. By all reports, Louis XIII's brother, Gaston, has the exact same gregariousness, very charming and charismatic. Soissons, Louis XIII's cousin, again, is often depicted in this way. So somewhere along the line, maybe it does have to do with his speech impediment and finding it more difficult to talk. But Louis doesn't have that. And he also struggles. There's always been this debate. Is Richelieu a partner with Louis or is he dominating Louis?

Is this a partnership or is this like a kind of relationship of domination? But in many ways, I think the reality of that partnership is irrelevant because the image it projected to everyone was that he was being dominated by Richelieu. That is what the idea that people bought into at the time. And so as a result, decisions that are being made by Louis, perhaps, are seen as being illegitimate because they're coming from a favorite. And so Louis XIII has a real legitimacy issue in that sense. And I think that's the source of why a lot of courtiers and a lot of his family members felt comfortable in organizing either conspiracies at the court or military challenges to his rank.

Because the image of him as being weak, whether it was true or not, was the one picture that prevailed. Absolutely. And interesting that it continues to do so, has to this day. No, absolutely. And I think Louis XIII is still suffering, image-wise, from his decision to depend on favourites. Well, thank you so much for giving us

an introduction to this man and starting to set the record straight or at least alter it so that we can have another way of seeing him and that we recognize that he was a man with many challenges. Perhaps he didn't always make the best choices in response to those, but he certainly had a lot to face up to. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you to my producer Rob Weinberg and researcher Esther Arnott and thank you to you for listening to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. If you haven't already done so, do sign up to our weekly newsletter Tudor Tuesday, so that you never miss out on the history you love. There are details in the notes below this

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