of absolutist Austria. Under the influence of this public feeling, the
two Spanish marriages and the treaty which accompanied them were
unfavorably regarded by a great part of France: a remedy was desired;
it was hoped that one would be found in the convocation of the
states-general of the kingdom, to which the populace always looked
expectantly; they were convoked first for the 16th of September, 1614,
at Sens; and, afterwards, for the 20th of October following, when the
young king, Louis XIII., after the announcement of his majority, himself
opened them in state. Amongst the members there were one hundred and
forty of the clergy, one hundred and thirty-two of the noblesse, and one
hundred and ninety-two of the third estate. The clergy elected for
their president Cardinal de Joyeuse who had crowned Mary de' Medici; the
noblesse Henry de Bauffremont, Baron of Senecey, and the third estate
Robert Miron, provost of the tradesmen of Paris.

These elections were not worth much, and have left no trace on history.
The chief political fact connected with the convocation of the,
states-general of 1614, was the entry into their ranks of the youthful
Bishop of Lucon, Armand John dot Plessis de Richelieu, marked out by the
finger of God to sustain, after the powerful reign of Henry IV. and the
incapable regency of Mary de' Medici, the weight of the government of
France. He was in, two cases elected to the states-general, by the
clergy of Loudun and by that of Poitou. As he was born on the 5th of
September, 1585, he was but twenty-eight years old in 1614. He had not
been destined for the church, and he was pursuing a layman's course of
study at the college of Navarre, under the name of the Marquis de
Chillon, when his elder brother, Alphonse Louis du Plessis de Richelieu,
became disgusted yith ecclesiastical life, turned Carthusian, and
resigned the unpretending bishopric of Lucon in favor of his brother
Armand, whom Henry IV. nominated to it in 1605, instructing Cardinal du
Perron, at that time his charge d'affaires at Rome, to recommend to Pope
Paul V. that election which he had very much at heart. The young
prelate betook himself with so much ardor to his theological studies,
that at twenty years of age he was a doctor, and maintained his theses
in rochet and camail as bishop-nominate. At Rome some objection was
still made to his extreme youth; but he hastened thither, and delivered
before the pope a Latin harangue, whic