Louis never forgave his wife for her perceived betrayal; nor, till his dying day, did he believe her protestations of innocence. Gaston surrendered—for the time being—and permitted himself to be hastily married off to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who would die in childbirth the following year. As a wedding gift, he received the duchies of Orléans and Blois. For her suspected complicity in the conspiracy, Madame de Chevreuse was exiled to Blois. Instead, she managed to flee to Lorraine, where her husband’s cousin, the duc de Lorraine, gave her sanctuary.
Meanwhile, the communication between Anne and the Duke of Buckingham had continued. For Buckingham, the queen became a passion bordering on obsession. For the next three years he looked for reasons to be sent to France. He exchanged messages with Anne in the hope of being invited back in some sort of diplomatic role, kept a portrait of her, and publicly toasted her health at his own sovereign’s banquets.
For her part, Anne once confided to a friend that if it were possible for a virtuous woman to be in love with a man other than her husband, the Duke of Buckingham would be that man.
In 1626, having asked Lord Holland to assure Anne of his love, and discover whether it was reciprocated, Buckingham received Holland’s reply: “I have been a careful spy to observe intentions and affections towards you. . . . I find many things to be feared, and none to be assured of a safe and real welcome. For the [king] continues in his suspects . . . and is willing to hear villains say that [the queen] hath infinite affections, you may imagine which way.”
As for Anne’s feelings, Holland continued, “You are the most unhappy man alive, for [the queen] is beyond imagination . . . and would do things to destroy her fortune rather than want satisfaction in her mind.” The ambassador’s words seemed to encourage Buckingham to find a reasonable excuse for crossing the Channel. Yet later that year, he told his friend, “Do what you will, I dare not advise you. To come is dangerous. Not to come is unfortunate.” All too aware of Louis’ jealousy, and perhaps of the powerful Richelieu’s opinion that he was a madman, Buckingham chose to remain in England.
Although Louis continued to accuse Anne of treasonous thoughts, at least he recognized that they had to secure his succession. If the queen did not bear him a son, Gaston would not need to stage a coup to gain the throne; he would inherit it by law. In 1626, Anne became pregnant, although she lost the fetus. For the next decade, until 1637, she dwelled under a cloud of suspicion, primarily blaming Richelieu for her unhappiness, as it was the cardinal-minister, and not Louis, who was now selecting the members of her retinue.
The year 1628 was a banner year for Louis, but a dismal one for Anne. On August 23, 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated, stabbed to death by a naval officer named John Felton who was angry that the duke had passed him over for promotion. Buckingham had been responsible for England’s latest military failure: leading the campaign in the summer of 1627 to aid the beleaguered Huguenots of La Rochelle. Even then, Villiers had harbored the illusion of seeing his beloved French queen again! His cabin on board his ship was draped in Anne’s colors of yellow and black, her cipher was on prominent display, and a life-size portrait of her hung at one end of the cabin, backed by a drape of cloth of gold and surrounded by candelabra bearing flickering tapers. Even as he was sailing to aid her husband’s enemies, the Duke of Buckingham had created a shrine to Anne of Austria and didn’t care who saw it.
In November of 1628, starved by Louis’ siege, the city of La Rochelle opened its gates to his army, setting the stage for the king’s eradication of the last holdout of the Protestant “state within the state.” Although Louis had secured a major victory and demonstrated his capability to achieve his domestic policy agenda, his own family members continued to create problems for him. They were like bad pennies, continually turning up again after they had been turned out. Marie de Medici evidently learned nothing from her exile of 1617, or from the king’s willingness to allow her to return to court. In 1630, she orchestrated yet another coup against her own son and his chief minister, intending to have Richelieu murdered and replaced with a member of the council and keeper of the seals, Michel de Marillac, brother to the cardinal’s potential assassin.
But Louis discovered the plot in the nick of time. On November 11, in what would henceforth be known as the Day of the Dupes, or Fool’s Day, the king turned the tables on the conspirators. They were caught and punished. Forced to choose between loyalty to his mother or to Richelieu, the twenty-nine-year-old king chose the cardinal. Louis sneaked off to Versailles that day and never saw Marie de Medici again. She fled to Hapsburg territory, at first residing closely monitored in the Spanish Netherlands. She then traveled to London, and finally to Holland and to Cologne, where she died in obscurity on July 4, 1642, a few months before Louis met his own end. Over the years, Marie begged her son for permission to return to France, but as she was unrepentant, it would have been foolish and dangerous for him to relent.
With a mother who consistently betrayed him at the highest level, no wonder Louis didn’t trust women—including his wife. He expected Anne to respect and heed those who had gained his favor, and to shun and despise those who had lost it, even when those opinions were to be applied to the same person. For years she had to defer to her mother-in-law because Louis wished her to do so, but when Marie de Medici’s star at court fell, the king demanded that his wife reverse her feelings as well. Anne didn’t comprehend Louis’ caprices, his mood swings, and his coldness. Royal marriages were invariably political alliances, but Anne had optimistically hoped for less hostility and less disappointment from her union. Her suffering was not even private. Although the glowing notices in the Gazette de France in the early 1630s stated, “The affection their majesties have for one another is such that they can bear to be separated only when the king goes to make foreign conquests, and even then the queen wants to see them from the frontiers,” the newsletter’s readers, eager to catch up on the latest court gossip about the sovereigns, began to get the sense that all was not right with their marriage.
And by the mid-1630s, France still had no heir. Instead, Louis focused his attentions on his war against the Huguenots and spent an increasing amount of time in the company of his primary adviser, Cardinal Richelieu, who was made the king’s First Minister in 1624. In time, Anne came to view Richelieu as her political enemy. She allowed herself to be influenced by the factions at court that were opposed to his policies, and drawn into the intrigues against the minister-cardinal that were organized by the duchesse de Chevreuse, who continued to correspond with Anne in secret from her sanctuary in Tours.
Although the purpose of Anne and Louis’ marriage had been to solidify the alliance between Spain and France, to the king’s dismay, in the intervening years Spain had begun to ally itself with disenfranchised French Protestants. Yet Spain was also currently embroiled in conflicts with Germany’s Protestant princes. If Anne’s brother prevailed, the Hapsburg hegemony in Europe would be even more powerful. As it was, France was surrounded on all sides by Hapsburg territory. On May 19, 1635, when Louis declared war on Spain—a conflict that would end up lasting twenty-five years—Anne was placed in a hopeless position, caught between her allegiance to her homeland and that of her husband. She chose the former, secretly corresponding with her brother Philip IV of Spain. Cardinal Richelieu kept his eye on her. On August 17, 1637, having intercepted a file of letters written in Anne’s hand, he dared to force the queen of France to sign covenants regarding her correspondence, which from then on was subject to inspection.
The documents that Richelieu presented to Anne for her signature were in Louis’ handwriting. One was titled “Memoir of Things I Wish of the Queen.” Anne agreed to cease her clandestine communications and confessed her “bad conduct,” first, for hoping against an Anglo-French amity (obviously she desired a Hispano-French political alliance), and second, for corresponding with the enemy—her relations. The queen was also compelled to admit informat
ion she had previously denied—that a coup to depose and assassinate Louis would lead to her marriage with his brother Gaston, who would then become king. Anne further promised never to relapse into similar faults and to henceforth live with the king as someone who wished to have no interest other than in his person and in his State.
Louis penned a formal response to Anne’s confession, accepting it even as he forbade her any further communication with her usual correspondents, as well as any visits to convents, which had also been her custom. He coldly agreed to put the matter behind him, stating that he wished to live with the queen as a good king and a good husband. Countersigned by France’s secretary of state, it was as formal a treaty as their marriage contract.
With Anne in the role of the penitent and Louis the Just in the morally superior role of the forgiver, the king was finally in the mood to visit her bedchamber. Louis was happiest when he had his thumb on someone.
As with most royal marriages, what was good for the gander was not acceptable behavior for the goose. Although he might have had crushes on courtiers of both genders, the king expected complete fidelity from Anne, even in her heart, and even though her own infatuation for the Duke of Buckingham had gone no further than a courtly flirtation. In his romantic life, Louis XIII was an utter hypocrite. “Do as I say, not as I do,” would have been an apt catchphrase for this autocrat. Although his own passionate attachments engendered plenty of embarrassment, his wife was not permitted to degrade herself and dishonor him—and the House of Bourbon—with her affaires du coeur.
Throughout the 1630s, before, during, and after Anne’s pregnancies, Louis devoted himself to a string of royal favorites. De Luynes had been the first, a father figure and adviser, training wheels for the king’s political relationship with Cardinal Richelieu, but it’s unlikely there was any physical attraction between them.
However, in the spring of 1630, the king became utterly beguiled by a spirited fourteen-year-old named Marie de Hautefort. Louis sorely needed distraction, and was soon asking his mother for permission to visit the rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, yellow-haired Marie. Anne, however, was humiliated when her husband dressed up like a young gallant in brightly colored garments dripping with ribbons and bows, in a desperate attempt to secure Mademoiselle de Hautefort’s love. And yet he was too afraid to actually touch the girl. An anecdote handed down through history has Anne pinning Marie by the shoulders after they had hidden a note in her bosom, taunting the king to fetch it. Fearing any physical contact with Marie’s flesh, Louis tried to retrieve the note with a pair of silver tongs. The story is likely untrue, since it’s nearly impossible to imagine the maritally neglected Anne of Austria actively encouraging her husband to plunge his hands down the bodice of an adolescent girl with whom he was wildly infatuated. But it does serve to illustrate Louis’ discomfort with female sexuality. Nevertheless, Marie de Hautefort was not the only virginal girl to captivate him. He also fell for another teenager at his court, Louise Angélique de La Fayette, a dark-haired, blue-eyed angel. But he never had an adulterous relationship with either of them. Louise was so virtuous that she despaired of being in the same room with a man, let alone hearing the bawdy talk that was de rigueur at court.
Ultimately, Louis felt ashamed of the way he courted the incorruptible Louise. On May 9, 1637, with both of them in tears, the young lady-in-waiting parted from the monarch, leaving the dry-eyed queen’s chambers for a carriage that would convey her to the Vistadine convent at Chaillot, where she took the veil.
Before thus exiting stage left, Louise had long encouraged the sovereign to make an heir, for his own happiness and that of the realm. Louis may not have tried too hard during his infatuation with Mademoiselle de La Fayette because he was too focused on himself and on the notion of being in love with someone. After Louise joined the Sisters of the Visitation, on June 4, 1637, Louis replied to Richelieu’s reminder that, for the comfort of his soul, he needed a special friend like her in his life. The king wrote, “If I must love someone, I would rather try to get back with Hotefort [sic] than with any other girl at court. However it is not my intention to get involved with anyone . . . also because I have promised this to la Faiette (to whom I have never gone back on my word nor she to me). . . . I will try to live the best I can on earth in order at the end to win Paradise, which is the sole goal one should have in this world. . . . You should know that since I have been here [at Fontainebleau], I haven’t spoken to any woman or girl except the queen.”
The king did attempt to rekindle his passion for Marie de Hautefort, but the spark was no longer there. For the remainder of the year, Louis availed himself of every opportunity to visit Louise. He saw her for the last time on December 5, 1637. Right around that time, the king was persuaded by Louise and his male companions to sleep with Anne. He was fortuitously compelled to accept her hospitality when, caught far from home during a hunting expedition, a torrid rainstorm obliged him to abide for the night with the queen at Saint Germain. Nine months later—after twenty-three years of marriage—on September 5, 1638, at the remarkably old age of thirty-seven, Anne gave birth to a son, the dauphin Louis.
So much time had passed, especially considering the sovereigns’ long-standing cool relations, that the dauphin’s birth was considered a divine miracle. Consequently, Louis would forever be nicknamed “le Dieudonné”—the God-given. The miracle baby had arrived seven months after Louis XIII had vowed to place “our person, our estate, our crown, and our subjects” under the special protection of the Virgin Mary. However, not everyone was impressed with Louis’ dedication. The abbé de Saint-Cyran considered it a highly cynical gesture, stating, “There is nothing more capable of offending God than causing religion and piety to serve politics.”
France rejoiced in its heir. In the capital the cannon thundered, carillon bells pealed, and fireworks illuminated the night skies for days. Extravagant pageants were held throughout the provinces. Strangers greeted one another in the street with the exclamation, “Vive le Prince Dauphin, l’attente de la France”—“Long live the Prince-Dauphin, the expectation of France!”
And yet, the subject of the dauphin’s birth immediately became a scandal. French queens delivered their babies in the presence of a roomful of nobles, eyewitnesses who could attest to the infants’ legitimacy. Yet the king himself had not been present; nor had Cardinal Richelieu. And Marie de Medici did not appear to be overjoyed at the little boy’s arrival into the world. This information was enough for the pamphleteers to spin more than one fanciful tale about the birth of the dauphin. One popular story held that little Louis was one of a set of twins, and the other twin had mysteriously disappeared (a fiction that would inspire the film The Man in the Iron Mask, based on Dumas’ final installment of The Three Musketeers). Another rumor circulated that the dauphin could not possibly be the son of Louis XIII, for certain reasons that were well known to many. Even if these hints at Louis’ relationships with his mignons were meant to suggest that he was too fond of men to successfully perform his marital obligations, the king knew his duty (and had been equally fond of some of the young women at court). Moreover, he never disavowed his heir, nor gave the slightest doubt that the dauphin was not his son.
Anne was a devoted mother, often visiting the nursery to see her little boy, rare behavior for a royal in any era. In early April 1639, one of her attendants wrote, “The queen hardly leaves him. She takes great pleasure in playing with him and taking him out in her carriage whenever the weather is fine; it is the whole of her amusement.”
On Christmas night, 1639, Louis paid Anne another rare conjugal visit. The following year, on September 21, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, little Louis got a baby brother, Philippe, the duc d’Anjou. In 1661, Philippe would be given the title of duc d’Orléans; he was the founder of this cadet branch of the Bourbons (a “cadet” branch being a male line established by the younger sons of a monarch).
The Gazette de France reported that “. . . th
ree years ago it would have been difficult to persuade their majesties of what we see today: namely, that they would give us two princes like so many columns to assure our conquests. . . .”
Although Louis had seemed even more joyful at the birth of his second son—perhaps because the proverbial “spare” provided a bit of insurance if something befell the dauphin—Philippe’s birth failed to reconcile the royal couple. Instead, Louis continued to devote his romantic attentions to a series of young male courtiers. For all his prudishness around the young women who had previously captivated him, the king threw himself at these mignons, who were often in their teens when they became the objects of royal favor. At the time, because the Church accepted that royalty was divinely anointed and therefore more highly evolved than other mortals, clerics did not become as scandalized over same-sex attractions among kings and their mignons as one might imagine.
Back in 1624, Louis had become so smitten with François de Barradat that in order to retain the king’s good graces, Cardinal Richelieu was writing groveling letters to the new favori. Although his allegations could not be proven, Tallemant des Réaux, the king’s near contemporary, wrote that Louis loved this young man “violently; one accused him of committing a hundred indecencies [ordures] with him.” And yet, as starry-eyed as he could be over a courtier’s face and form, Louis was clear-eyed when it came to the governance of his realm. In 1626, when Barradat tried to meddle in politics, he was banished from court.
Three weeks later, Louis fell for another teen. His infatuation for Claude de Saint-Simon was a form of slumming, as Claude was not a sophisticated youth, but short and homely, with salty language and a way with horses. Claude’s relationship with the king was intriguing; the monarch invented a coded language in which the pair could send romantic correspondence. Evidently, after Louis involved Claude in a love triangle with Marie de Hautefort, the boy urged his sovereign to just go ahead and bed the lovely young girl. As with Barradat, there is no concrete proof of any physical sexual affair between Louis and Claude de Saint-Simon, who was heterosexual, and was often seen slipping away from Louis’ quarters in 1634 to rendezvous with one of his “wenches,” as Claude’s casual liaisons were described. Louis was just as jealous of his male favorites’ attachments to someone else as he was of the idea of Marie de Hautefort marrying anyone. At least Louise de La Fayette had become a bride of Christ—a different sort of rival for Louis’ love. The king remained enamored of Saint-Simon for a decade. As the years passed, he elevated him from a gentleman of the bedchamber to honorary councilor of state to governor of the town of Blaye in 1630 (the same year Louis fell in love with Marie de Hautefort), and in 1635, he made Saint-Simon a duke and a peer.
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