The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3)
by Julia Pardoe

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3)

Author: Julia Pardoe

Release Date: March 9, 2004 [EBook #11531]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF MARIE DE MEDICIS, V1 ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: MARIE DE MEDICIS, SECOND QUEEN OF HENRY IV OF FRANCE.]

THE LIFE

OF

MARIE DE MEDICIS

Queen of France

CONSORT OF HENRI IV, AND REGENT OF THE
KINGDOM UNDER LOUIS XIII

BY

JULIA PARDOE

AUTHOR OF

'LOUIS XIV AND THE COURT OF FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY,'
'THE COURT AND REIGN OF FRANCIS THE FIRST,' ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I

1890

TO

MR. AND MRS. CHARLES BECKET

(OF HEVER COURT, KENT)

These Volumes

ARE VERY AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

BY

THE AUTHOR

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

All the existing records of European royalty do not, probably, comprise
the annals of a life of greater vicissitude than that which has been
chosen as the subject of the present work. We find numerous examples in
history of Queens who have suffered exile, imprisonment, and death; but
we believe that the unfortunate Marie de Medicis is the only
authenticated instance of a total abandonment on the part alike of her
family and friends, which terminated almost in starvation. Certain it is
that after having occupied the throne of France, presided over its
Councils, and given birth to the ancestor of a long line of Princes, she
was ultimately indebted to the sympathy and attachment of a foreign
artist, of whom she had once been the zealous patron, for a roof under
which to terminate her miserable existence! The whole life of this
ill-fated Queen is, indeed, full of startling contrasts from which the
mind shrinks back appalled; and her entire career is so freighted with
alternate grandeur and privation that it is difficult to reconcile the
possibility of their having fallen to the share of the same individual;
and this too in an age when France, above all other nations, boasted of