Prussia was trying to struggle away from a Catholic Austria. Richelieu
cared nothing for Catholics nor for Protestants. His aim was to weaken
the hands of the Hapsburgs. And if he joined the Protestant leader
Gustavus Adolphus in a religious crusade, it was with this end in view.

The marriage of Louis with the Infanta of Spain, known as Anne of
Austria, was doubtless a part of the same line of policy, and was the
beginning of many attempts to draw the Spanish peninsula under the
control of France.

When the end of all these schemings arrived, on the 4th day of
December, 1642, Richelieu calmly laid down to die in his princely
residence known at that time as the Palais Cardinal. But as it was his
dying gift to the king, the name was changed to the Palais Royal. Upon
the death of Louis XIII., which occurred in 1643, only a few months
after that of his minister, the widowed Queen Anne, with her infant
son, Louis XIV., removed from the Louvre to the Palais Royal, which
continued to be the residence of the Grand Monarch for some time after
his majority.

Anne was appointed regent for her son, not yet five years old, and, to
the surprise of everyone, immediately called to her aid as her adviser
not a Frenchman, as was expected, but an Italian, Cardinal Mazarin. So
the fate of the kingdom was in the hands of two foreigners, a Spanish
queen-regent and an Italian minister.

Richelieu's and Mazarin's methods were the opposite of each other. One
was direct, the other tortuous and indirect. In true Italian fashion
Mazarin overcame by seeming to yield; and what he said was the thing he
did not mean. Intrigue and bribery were his implements and weapons.

The situation awoke distrust. It was a time to recover lost
privileges, and to struggle out of the chains riveted by Richelieu. A
civil war known as the Fronde was the result.

As all classes had grievances, all were represented in this general
undoing of the last minister's great work. But as no two classes
desired the same thing, the miserable war, without genius and without
system, miserably failed. The royal cause triumphed; and Richelieu's
political structure was not even shaken. Mazarin stood inflexibly by
the work of his great predecessor. Turenne and Conde were the military
heroes of this, as well as of the subsequent foreign wars, resulting in
the acquisition of Alsace (1648) and other great territorial expansion.

When Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, t