Cardinal Mazarin

Giulio Mazzarino, an Italian papal diplomat who became the French statesman Jules Mazarin, governed France for almost two decades as chief minister to the regent Anne of Austria and the young Louis XIV. He steered the country to advantageous peace settlements with the emperor in 1648 and with Spain in 1659, survived the Fronde rebellions that twice forced him into exile, and trained the king who would rule France for more than half a century. He died one of the richest men in Europe.

Mazarin was born on 14 July 1602 at Pescina, in the Abruzzo, to a family living in Rome in the service of the powerful Colonna clan. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Collegio Romano, studied law in Spain and Rome, and earned a doctorate in both civil and canon law in 1628. A charming gambler, he briefly served as a papal officer before Pope Urban VIII made him a diplomat.

His first mission was to head off a war between France and Spain over Mantua in northern Italy. On 26 October 1630, as the two armies faced each other outside Casale, Mazarin famously galloped between them waving a paper and shouting for peace, carrying terms that both commanders accepted. The settlement impressed Cardinal Richelieu, France's chief minister. As papal envoy in Paris and nuncio from 1634, Mazarin cultivated the French court with gifts. Increasingly identified with France, he moved to Paris in January 1640 to serve Richelieu and was made a cardinal in December 1641.

Richelieu died on 4 December 1642, and Louis XIII the following May, leaving a four-year-old heir. Anne of Austria had the late king's will overturned so that she could rule as regent, and named Mazarin head of her government. He continued the war against the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain, and victories by the generals Condé and Turenne helped bring the emperor to the Peace of Westphalia in October 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War in the empire and gave France Alsace, though not Strasbourg.

The war's heavy cost bred fury at the Spanish-born queen and her Italian minister, voiced in mocking songs and verses called mazarinades. In 1648 the Parlement of Paris demanded limits on taxation and arbitrary arrest, and when Anne had its leaders arrested Paris rose behind barricades. In January 1649 Mazarin smuggled the court out of the capital, and Condé's army blockaded it until a compromise was reached. A second Fronde, led by the princes and then by Condé himself, forced Mazarin to step down and govern from exile near Cologne. In July 1652 royal troops under Turenne trapped Condé's army against the walls of Paris; Condé soon withdrew to the Spanish Netherlands, the king returned that October, and Mazarin came back in triumph in February 1653.

In his last years Mazarin built French influence in Germany through the League of the Rhine of 1658, and allied France with Cromwell's England; Turenne's victory at the Battle of the Dunes the same year ended the threat from the Spanish Netherlands. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed on 7 November 1659, gave France Roussillon, Artois and part of Cerdanya, and arranged the marriage of Louis XIV to the Spanish infanta Maria Theresa in 1660. He had also personally supervised the king's education.

Mazarin left a fortune of about 35 million livres, far more than Richelieu's, including the "Mazarin" diamonds, which he left to the king. He brought Italian opera to Paris, assembled a vast art collection, much of it now in the Louvre, and founded a library that became the first true public library in France, the Bibliothèque Mazarine. He died on 9 March 1661. His will endowed the Collège des Quatre-Nations, where he is buried, now home to the Institut de France. After his death Louis XIV chose to rule without a chief minister.

Our 1650 map shows the Kingdom of France at the start of the Fronde, as Mazarin's wars with the Habsburgs went on.