S5S FRANCE. 



©F the house of Austria ; for which purpose, it is said, he had formed 

 great schemes, and collected a formidable army ; others say (for his 

 intention does not clearly appear), that he designed to have formed 

 Christendom into a great republic, of which France was to be the 

 head, and to drive the Turks out of Europe ; while others attribute 

 his preparations to more ignoble motives, that of a criminal passion 

 for a favourite princess, whose husband had carried her for protec- 

 tion into the Austrian dominions. Whatever may be in these con- 

 jectures, it is certain, that, while he was making preparations for 

 the coronation of his queen, Mary of Medicis, and was ready to enter 

 upon his grand expedition, he was assassinated in his coach, in the 

 streets of Paris, by one Ravaillac, another young enthusiast like Cle- 

 ment, in 1610. 



Lewis XIII. son to Henry IV., was but nine years of age at the 

 time of his father's death. As he grew up, he discarded his mother 

 and her favourites ; and chose for his minister the famous cardinal 

 Richelieu, who put a period, by his resolute and bloody measures, to 

 the remaining liberties of France, and to the religious establishment 

 of the protestants there, by taking from them Rochelle ; though 

 Charles I. of England, who had married the French king's sister, 

 made some weak efforts, by his fleet and armies, to prevent it. This 

 put an end to the civil wars on account of religion in France. His- 

 torians say, that in these wars above a million ol men lost their lives j 

 that 150,000,000 livres were spent in carrying them on ; and that nine 

 cities, four hundred villages, two thousand churches, two thousand 

 monasteries, and ten thousand houses, were burnt or otherwise des- 

 troyed during their continuance. 



Richelieu, by a masterly train of politics, though himself bigoted 

 to popery, supported the protestants of Germany, and Gustavus 

 Adolphus against the house of Austria. After quelling all the rebel- 

 lions and conspiracies which had been formed against him in France, 

 he died some months before Lewis XIII. ; who, in 1643, left his son, 

 afterwards the famous Lewis XIV., to inherit his kingdom. 



During that prince's non-age, the kingdom was torn in pieces 

 under the administration of his mother, Anne of Austria, by the fac- 

 tions of the great, and the divisions between the court and parlia- 

 ment, for the most trifling causes, and upon the most despicable prin- 

 ciples. The prince of Conde flamed like a blazing star ; sometimes 

 a patriot, sometimes a courtier, and sometimes a rebel. He was op- 

 posed by the celebrated Turenne, who from a protestant had turned 

 papist. The nation of France was involved at once in civil wars and 

 domestic dissentions. But the queen-mother having made choice of 

 cardinal Mazarin for her first minister, he found means to turn the 

 arms even of Cromwell against the Spaniards ; and to divide the 

 domestic enemies of the court so effectually among themselves, that 

 when Lewis assumed the reins of government in his own hands, he 

 found himself the most absolute monarch that had ever sat upon the 

 throne of France. He had the good fortune, on the death of Mazarin, 

 to put the domestic administration of his affairs into the hands of 

 Colbert ; who formed new systems for the glory, commerce, and 

 manufactures of France, in all of which he was extremely successful. 

 To write the history of this reign, would be to write that of all 

 Europe. Ignorance and ambition were the only enemies of Lewis ; 

 through the former, he was blind to every patriotic duty of a king, 

 and promoted the interest of his subjects only that they might the 



