Jules Mazarin

Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), French statesman and cardinal, who controlled the French government while Louis XIV was a minor and helped make France the predominant power in Europe.

Originally named Giulio Mazarini, he was born in Pescina, Italy, and became a protégé of the powerful Colonna family. Educated by the Jesuits, he rose to prominence in the diplomatic corps of the Roman Catholic church and was named papal envoy to France in 1634. There he came under the influence of Cardinal Richelieu, whom he secretly aided against the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648); in 1639 Mazarin became a naturalized French subject. Two years later King Louis XIII rewarded Mazarin's service to France by having the pope make him a cardinal. On the death of Louis XIII in 1643, his widow, Anne of Austria, chose Mazarin as her chief minister and tutor of the five-year-old Louis XIV.

Mazarin continued Richelieu's absolutist policies, trying to maintain royal authority in France and France's authority abroad. He brought the Thirty Years' War to a successful conclusion, weakening the Habsburg dynasty and gaining Alsace for France. At home, however, he was insensitive to popular discontent over food shortages and high taxes caused by the war. His clumsy arrest of a magistrate in 1648 sparked a Parisian revolt and triggered the civil wars known as the Fronde. Hatred of Mazarin united the people of Paris and the nobility in a five-year struggle against royal absolutism. The Fronde drove Anne, Louis, and Mazarin out of Paris; eventually Anne and Louis returned, but Mazarin fled to Germany, directing the suppression of the rebels from there. Returning to Paris victorious in 1653, he devoted himself to Louis XIV, instructing him in diplomacy, war, and kingship. An avid art collector and inveterate gambler, Mazarin amassed a huge fortune. He introduced Italian opera at court, founded the College of Four Nations (now the Institut de France), and opened his library to the public. The crowning achievement of his career was the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, which ended the war with Spain, won France the provinces of Artois and Roussillon, and gave Louis XIV a Spanish bride, thereby providing France with a claim on Spain's empire. Mazarin died at Vincennes, leaving Louis XIV with a clear understanding of absolutist rule, a corps of skilled advisers, notably Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and the outlines of a policy aimed at European dominance.