[1] Louis XIII, taciturn and suspicious, relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and then Cardinal Richelieu, to govern the Kingdom of France.

[3] Born at the Palace of Fontainebleau, Louis XIII was the eldest child of King Henry IV of France and his second wife Marie de' Medici.

She was not, however, able to prevent rebellion by nobles such as Henri, Prince of Condé (1588–1646), second in line to the throne after Marie's second surviving son Gaston, Duke of Orléans.

[6] In the meantime, Louis XIII decided, with the encouragement of Charles d'Albert (the Grand Falconer of France) and other advisers, to break with his mother and to arrest Concini.

On the other hand, Louis XIII had a strict Catholic upbringing, and his natural inclination was to support the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburg Ferdinand II.

The siege at the Huguenot stronghold of Montauban had to be abandoned after three months owing to the large number of royal troops who had succumbed to camp fever.

The 1622 campaign, however, followed the pattern of the previous year: royal forces won some early victories, but were unable to complete a siege, this time at the fortress of Montpellier.

It served as an important route to Italy for France and it provided an easy connection between the Spanish and the Holy Roman empires, especially in helping each other with armies if necessary.

[a] He therefore found a better servitor in his Superintendent of Finances Charles de La Vieuville, who held similar views of Spain as the king, and who advised Louis to side with the Dutch via the Treaty of Compiègne.

[12] However, La Vieuville was dismissed by the middle of 1624, partly due to his bad behaviour (during his tenure as superintendent he was arrogant and incompetent) and because of a well-organized pamphlet campaign by Cardinal Richelieu against his council rival.

Under Louis and Richelieu, the crown successfully intervened in the Thirty Years' War against the Habsburgs, managed to keep the French nobility in line, and retracted the political and military privileges granted to the Huguenots by Henry IV (while maintaining their religious freedoms).

In foreign matters, Louis organised the development and administration of New France, expanding its settlements westward along the Saint Lawrence River from Quebec City to Montreal.

In order to continue the exploration efforts of his predecessor Henry IV, Louis XIII considered a colonial venture in Morocco, and sent a fleet under Isaac de Razilly in 1619.

In 1632, Isaac de Razilly became involved, at the request of Cardinal Richelieu, in the colonization of Acadia, by taking possession of Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) and developing it into a French colony.

He took on military tasks such as taking control of Fort Pentagouet at Majabigwaduce on the Penobscot Bay, which had been given to France in an earlier Treaty, and to inform the English they were to vacate all lands north of Pemaquid.

[19] France-Japan relations started under Louis XIII in 1615 when Hasekura Tsunenaga, a Japanese samurai and ambassador, sent to Rome by Date Masamune, landed at Saint-Tropez for a few days.

In 1619, an armed expedition composed of three ships (275 crew, 106 cannon) and called the "Fleet of Montmorency" under General Augustin de Beaulieu was sent from Honfleur, to fight the Dutch in the Far East.

[21] Twice the king's younger brother, Gaston, Duke of Orléans, had to leave France for conspiring against his government and for attempting to undermine the influence of his mother and Cardinal Richelieu.

As another sign of gratitude, according to several interpretations, seven months before his birth, France was dedicated by Louis XIII to the Virgin Mary, who, many believed, had interceded for the perceived miracle.

[26] In gratitude for having successfully given birth, the queen founded the Benedictine abbey of the Val-de-Grâce, for which Louis XIV laid the cornerstone of its church, an early masterpiece of French Baroque architecture.

[27] His interests as a teenager were focused on male courtiers and he developed an intense emotional attachment to his favourite, Charles d'Albert, although some say there is no clear evidence of a sexual relationship.

A further liaison with an equerry, François de Baradas, ended when the latter lost favour fighting a duel after duelling had been forbidden by royal decree.

[29] Louis was also captivated by Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq-Mars, 19 years his younger, who was later executed for conspiring with the Spanish enemy in time of war.

According to his biographer A. Lloyd Moote, "his intestines were inflamed and ulcerated, making digestion virtually impossible; tuberculosis had spread to his lungs, accompanied by habitual cough.

Either of these major ailments, or the accumulation of minor problems, may have killed him, not to mention physiological weaknesses that made him prone to disease or his doctors' remedies of enemas and bleedings, which continued right to his death.

[36] This fashion spread in Europe and European-influenced countries in the 1660s and was a dominant style among men for about 140 years, until the change of dress in the 1790s which was affected by the French Revolution (1789–1799).