#claude mangot

[histoireettralala]

Aftermath of a coup: dealing with Marie's and Concini's creatures

Louis XIII dealt with Marie's and Concini's ministerial creatures exactly the way he wanted: according to his scale of political crimes and punishments. Mangot was the most innocuous of the triumvirs; hence, he was merely ordered peremptorily by the king's messenger to hand over the seals of his office, and was not allowed to see his monarch. In sharp contrast, Barbin was immediately jailed and his financial records seized. Ostensibly this action was to facilitate the trial against the Ancres, but it clearly reflected the king's belief that he was guilty of criminal negligence. Marie tried to intercede with Louis, first through Luçon, then at her own leave-taking with her son, and finally by letter from Blois. Barbin was kept in prison for sixteen months, then banished forever from France. Neither his own later appeals to Louis, nor those of Déageant and Luçon, succeeded in restoring his reputation and confiscated assets.

Luçon's fate was more complicated than that of the other triumvirs, reflecting a contest of wills between a hostile Louis XIII and a temporizing Luynes. From the king's perspective, the future cardinalminister Richelieu had three strikes against him: his closeness to Barbin, his indebtedness to Concini for his office, and his terrifyingly bright, authoritarian manner. The monarch revealed all his adolescent distrust on seeing the bishop of Luçon try to join the other secretaries of state after Concini's fall: "So! Luçon! I've finally escaped your tyranny."

Luynes immediately objected that Luçon was not all bad, pointing out the bishop's offer of loyalty before the coup. The king's favorite seems also to have suggested that the cleric's diplomatic skills and influence with the queen mother could help to keep her under control. Louis was sufficiently impressed to let Luçon act as Marie's temporary bargaining agent while she was incarcerated in the Louvre, and to let him accompany her to Blois. The bishop, however, departed soon after for his diocesan residence, probably in anticipation of royal disfavor. Explicit royal orders then sent him further away to the papal territory of Avignon.

These successive exiles undoubtedly reflected Luynes's second thoughts that Luçon was too dangerous a rival to leave with Marie. But they also bear the mark of a suspicious young Louis XIII, terrified of double manipulation by an imperious priest and an irrepressible mother. For his part, Luçon put the best face on his fall from secular grace in his memoirs, doctoring the sequence of events to suggest that the king bore him only good will.

A. Lloyd Moote - Louis XIII the Just

[histoireettralala]

Barbin, Mangot, Luçon

Condé's incarceration intensified the power struggle between two factions equally marred by political self-seeking. The rebels' new rallying cry of avenging their leader's arrest could not overcome their moral bankruptcy as a party aimed at transferring to themselves the power and patronage enjoyed by the queen mother's Italian favorites. On the royal side, the arrest was part of a new state policy of firmly resisting rebel demands. That policy shift stemmed from the appointment during the last months of 1616 of a vigorous ministerial triumvirate: Claude Barbin, Claude Mangot, and Armand-Jean du Plessis, bishop of Luçon. The triumvirs' effectiveness was hampered, however, by popular antipathy toward the couple who had put them in power, Concini and his wife, Galigaï.

Of the three "creatures" of the Ancres, Barbin had the most influence, and eventually suffered most severely from the king's wrath after the royal coup d'état of 1617. A shrewd manipulator of money and people, this private financier had advanced his career by leasing the collection of state fees to the profit of his friend, Leonora Galigaï, then became Marie's personal financial director and finally royal superintendent of finance. Barbin took the lead among the new ministers in boldly urging Marie to oppose princely disorder.

Mangot's background was somewhat less controversial. He had parlayed a brilliant law career and legal assistance to Concino Concini into acquisition of the top post in the Parlement of Bordeaux, then briefly served as a secretary of state, and finally as keeper of the seals, thereby assuming the judicial functions —but not the office itself— of chancellor, which post was always for life.

The minister who signed his name Lusson at this time was the last of the three to enter the council, and owed a great deal of his influence with the queen mother and her Italian favorites to the patronage of Barbin. Armand-Jean du Plessis, sieur de Richelieu, was the ambitious scion on his father's side of the petty noble Richelieu-du Plessis family, which had been prone to dueling and overspending, and on his mother's side of the hardworking La Porte - Meilleraye family of robe lineage. He had already come far as bishop of Lucon, orator of the clergy at the Estates General, almoner of young Queen Anne, and personal secretary to the queen mother. In November 1616, he became secretary of state for foreign affairs.

Sympathetic biographers have read more into the future cardinal-minister Richelieu's brief conciliar career of 1616-17 than the hard evidence proves. All we can say with certainty is that he showed himself to be bright and energetic in internal and external affairs. His surviving letters to Ancre were embarrassingly fawning, even for an era that assumed the way to become a favorite at court and stay there included a large dose of flattery and obsequiousness. Luçon also revealed his driving ambition and authoritarian bent to such an extent that, at his fall in 1617, the keenly observant young Louis XIII expressed relief to be rid of his tyranny.

The triumvirate was able to hold the military edge for the royal side against Condé's followers in the desultory fighting of the last months of 1616 and the beginning of 1617, but without finding a moral cause that would definitively tip the balance in this latest miniwar. To the contrary, the ever-escalating level of the Ancre couple's conspicuous privilege and power undermined everything Barbin was attempting to accomplish, and served also to make the queen mother more vulnerable as the Ancres' patroness.

A. Lloyd Moote- Louis XIII the Just