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Upon reentering the royal council in 1622, Maria de’ Medici began to renew her attempts
to gain political control. Since the death in 1621 of Louis XIII’s favorite minister Charles
d’Albert, duc de Luynes, the ruling body had lacked a strong figure who wielded considerable
influence with the king. 109 The king’s significant loss gave the queen mother the chance to think
that she could fill this position. But as the papal nuncio Corsini recorded, Louis was “full of
suspicion that she wants to overpower him.” 110 Louis demonstrated his concern by postponing
until 1623 his request to Pope Gregory XV to make Maria’s advisor Armand-Jean du Plessis de
Richelieu a cardinal, a condition that was one of the terms of their latest reconciliation. He also
refused to invite Richelieu to join the royal council until 1624. By limiting the authority of his
mother’s advisor, the king hoped to limit Maria’s own passion for power.
In addition to the Queen Mother’s renewed search for authority, changing conditions on
the international landscape forced Louis XIII to alter his foreign policy. Spanish and Austrian
forces, aided by papal troops, were encroaching on the territory of French allies. Louis XIII had
initially felt conflicted about fighting fellow Catholic leaders, but by 1623 the expanding
Habsburg threat became too great for his religious conscience. 111 The most direct evidence of
the king’s shift in foreign policy comes from his actions over the crisis of the Alpine pass at Val
Tellina, where Spain aided by papal troops overthrew the Protestant Grisons, giving the Iberian
government easy passage from its territories in Milan to those in the Netherlands (fig. 25). 112
France, an ally with the Grisons, viewed the Spanish incursion as a threat. As a consequence
France sought renewed alliances with Venice and Savoy with the mutual goal of removing the
Spanish forces from the region. From this point on Louis XIII worked against Habsburg
interests during the first phase of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1630) and demonstrated that he
would no longer tolerate the expansion of other states in the name of a Catholic Europe. 113
The French stance against Spain was exacerbated by deception on the royal council.
Chancellor Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery, a dévot and long-time supporter of the French Oratory,
and his son Puysieux, who assisted his father on the council and favored reconciliation with
Spain, were at this time secretly diverting money intended for foreigners who could aid the
French against the Habsburgs. 114 Although these actions were only discovered in 1624, at which
time the Brûlarts were banished from the court, they must have been prompted by Spain’s
increasingly aggressive stance and intolerance of the Protestant faith.
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