General Notes

Marie de Medicis, b.  Apr.  26, 1573, d.  July 3, 1642, was the second wife of
Henry IV of France and regent after his death. She was the daughter of Grand
Duke Francesco I of Tuscany and a member of the Medici family.  On her
marriage in 1600 she came to France with a large Italian retinue.  She and
Henry quarreled constantly, and Marie had to share the king's affections with
his mistresses.  She has been accused of knowing of the plot behind her
husband's assassination (1610), which occurred on the day after her coronation
as queen.  Her complicity, however, remains uncertain.

As regent during the minority of her son, Louis XIII, she reversed Henry's
anti-Habsburg policy.  She came to rely on the Italian statesman Concino
Concini, marquis d'Ancre, whom she made (1613) a marshal of France;  Concini
was the husband of her confidante, Leonora Galigai.  Although Louis came of
age in 1614, Marie's regency remained in effect until 1617, when Concini was
murdered at the king's direction.  Thereafter Marie frequently plotted armed
resistance to her son.  She regarded Cardinal Richelieu as her protege when he
entered the royal council in 1624, but he proved to be her implacable foe.
Soon after her unsuccessful effort in November 1630 to secure Richelieu's
dismissal, Louis banished her to Compiegne, but she fled to Brussels in the
Spanish Netherlands.