Mazarin acted as the head of the government for Anne of Austria, the regent for the young Louis XIV, and was also responsible for the king's education until he came of age.

In 1660 Mazarin arranged the marriage of Louis XIV to Maria Theresa of Spain, which ended the long and costly wars between the Habsburgs and France.

Mazarin, as the de facto ruler of France for nearly two decades, played a crucial role in establishing the Westphalian principles that would guide European states' foreign policy and the prevailing world order.

A notary who had advanced some cash to cover gaming debts urged the charming and personable young Mazarino to take his daughter as bride, with a substantial dowry, and Giulio accepted.

[12] In 1628 Mazarin was named the secretary to Jean-François Sacchetti, a senior papal diplomat, who was trying to prevent the impending War of the Mantuan Succession between the armies of France and Spain for dominance of that region of northern Italy.

It was Mazarin, carrying an agreement from the Spanish commander to evacuate their soldiers from the town if the French would leave Montferrat to Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.

[14] The result of Mazarin's first diplomatic efforts was the Treaty of Cherasco, 6 April 1631, in which the Emperor and the Duke of Savoy recognized the possession of Mantua and part of Monferrat by Charles Gonzaga and the French occupation of the strategic stronghold of Pinerolo, the gate to the valley of the Po, to the great satisfaction of Richelieu and King Louis XIII of France.

He tried to persuade Louis XIII to send a military expedition to capture Geneva, the fortress of the Protestant movement, but the King, who had good relations with the Swiss cantons, rejected the idea.

[16] In 1634 he was named nuncio extraordinary to Paris by Urban VIII, and entrusted with the mission of persuading Louis XIII to undertake a grand naval crusade against the Turks.

Then on 14 December 1639, he departed Rome for the port of Civitavecchia, boarded an armed French ship to Marseille, and then traveled from Lyon to Paris, where he arrived on 5 January 1640.

When was asked what it meant, he translated into French as Frère Coupechou, the term for a junior candidate monk who was assigned to chop cabbage in the kitchen of the abbey.

Cinq-Mars was arrested, Gaston was disgraced, and another conspirator, the Duke of Bouillon, was granted a pardon on the condition of revealing all the details of the plot to Mazarin, and surrendering the important fortress of Sedan to the King.

The victories of Condé and Turenne finally brought Austria to the bargaining table and ended the Thirty Years' War with the Peace of Westphalia (1646–48) Mazarin's policies also added Alsace (though not Strasbourg) to France.

He settled Protestant princes in secularized bishoprics and abbacies in reward for their political opposition to the Habsburgs, building a network of French influence as a buffer in the western part of the Empire.

Towards Protestantism at home, Mazarin pursued a policy of promises and calculated delay to defuse the armed insurrection of the Ardèche (1653), for example, and to keep the Huguenots disarmed: for six years they believed themselves to be on the eve of recovering the protections of the Edict of Nantes, but in the end they obtained nothing.

Resentment grew against the Spanish Queen and her Italian prime minister, and culminated in the Fronde, a rebellion against the government by members of the nobility and discontented citizens of Paris, which lasted from 1648 until 1653.

One measure caused particular resentment among the nobility; he imposed a special tax on all the nobles who served on the various royal courts and councils, amounting to four years of their fees.

It was a period of rebellion against monarchs across Europe; independence movements appeared in the Spanish provinces of Catalonia and Portugal, a revolutionary seized power in Naples, and Charles I of England, the brother-in-law of Louis XIII, was deposed and executed in 1649.

On the day that a special mass was held at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris to celebrate the victory, she gave orders to the Captain of her guards to arrest the leaders of the parlement, including the popular Pierre Broussel.

During the night of January 6, 1649, Mazarin secretly took the young Louis XIV, Anne of Austria and the court to the safety of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just west of Paris.

Within the ebony cabinets of his rooms at the Louvre his heirs found 450 pearls of high quality, plus quantities of gold chains and crosses, and rings with precious stones, altogether adding another 400,000 livres.

His acquisitions included works by Poussin, Rubens, Corregio, Van Dyck, Titian, and many others, as well as the famous Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione by Raphael, which had belonged to Charles I of England, and had been bought by Richelieu.

He commissioned François Mansart to add a garden wing with two superimposed galleries running north from the west end of the easternmost building, the Hôtel Tubeuf, where he could display his art collection, including paintings and antique sculpture.

Between 1645 and 1647 he commissioned the Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Romanelli to create scenes from the works of Ovid on the ceiling of the upper gallery (although much modified, now known as the Galerie Mazarine[51]).

(Grand metier du Roi)[59] The last years of Mazarin's life, between 1658 and his death in 1661, were marked by a series of major diplomatic victories, including the marriage of Louis XIV.

In 1658, after long and intense preparation, Mazarin unveiled the League of the Rhine, a new group of fifty small German principalities which were now linked by a treaty with France.

Their conferences, which continued for three months, were held on the French-Spanish border on the island of Faisans, midway between French Hendaye and Spanish Fuenterrabía, in the river Bidassoa.

It also provided for an even more important diplomatic event carefully arranged by Mazarin, the marriage of Louis XIV with Maria Theresa of Spain, the French celebration of which followed in June 1660 in nearby Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

[60] Mazarin, as the de facto ruler of France, played a crucial role in establishing the Westphalian principles that would guide European states' foreign policy and the prevailing world order.

Mazarin had also prepared a different will, which left a large sum for the establishment of the Collège des Quatre-Nations, which he had founded for students from the four new provinces which he had added to the territory of France by the Treaty of Westphalia.