#louis: oh god you're the worst actually i should kick you out of france

[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