Anne of Austria
(1601-1666)
BIRTH
September 22, 1601
PLACE
Valladolid, Spain
NAME
Ana María Mauricia
DEATH
January 20, 1666
PLACE
Paris, France
FAMILY
MOTHER
Louis XIV
(1638-1715)
HOMES
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
CHRISTIAN
CATHOLIC
MEMBERSHIPS
VAL-DE-GRÂCE CONVENT FOUNDER
AWARDS
Spanish Habsburg princess Anne of Austria, queen of Louis XIII and mother of Louis XIV, served as regent of France with Cardinal Mazarin from 1643 and weathered the revolts of the Fronde. She was raised in a devoutly Catholic court. She was suspected of involvement in court intrigues against him and was investigated for secret correspondence with Spain in 1637. She founded the church of Val-de-Grâce in Paris. Anne died in Paris on January 20, 1666.
EARLY LIFE
Anne was born on September 22, 1601, at Valladolid, then the seat of the Spanish court, the eldest daughter of Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. Although she was a Spanish princess, she was called Anne of Austria because she belonged to the House of Habsburg. She was raised in a devoutly Catholic court. Under a double marriage arranged between France and Spain, she married Louis XIII of France in 1615, when both were fourteen, while her brother, the future Philip IV, married Louis's sister Elisabeth. Anne's early married life in France was unhappy, and for years the couple had no surviving child.
Anne of Austria became queen of France through her marriage to Louis XIII in 1615, but her Spanish origins and strained relations at court limited her political influence. Richelieu suspected her loyalties during conflict between France and Spain. The birth of Louis XIV in 1638 gave her a secure dynastic position, and Louis XIII's death in 1643 transformed her from a frequently marginalized consort into regent for a young king.
She relied on Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister, sustaining a government that continued war against Spain. Her choice surprised people who expected the removal of Richelieu's associates. Anne's central objective was to preserve royal authority and transmit a secure kingdom to her son. Though Mazarin handled much of the daily direction of policy, his position depended on her support.
The Fronde, beginning in 1648, tested that partnership. Opposition came first from judicial and parliamentary bodies and then from princes and aristocratic factions, whose interests did not form a single consistent programme. Anne and the royal family had to leave Paris, and Mazarin temporarily departed France. She resisted attempts to make the monarchy permanently dependent on the rebels. The defeat and fragmentation of opposition enabled the royal government to recover control by 1653.
Her authority continued during Louis XIV's early adulthood, while Mazarin remained the leading minister. Peace with Spain in 1659 and the king's marriage to Maria Theresa brought a dynastic settlement to a long conflict. Anne also supported religious foundations, notably Val-de-Grâce in Paris, connecting royal motherhood with devotional patronage. After Mazarin died in 1661 and Louis began personal government, she withdrew from central political affairs. Her regency also demonstrated the political responsibilities available to a queen mother, whose influence rested on both her relationship with the sovereign and her choices of ministers and allies.
CAREER
DEATH
Anne of Austria died on 20 January 1666, aged 64, after a prolonged and painful illness generally identified as breast cancer. She had noticed a breast lump and pain by 1663, but the consulted account places the beginning of treatment in October 1664, when her condition had become more serious and jaundice had appeared. Her physician Antoine Vallot treated her within the medical framework of the seventeenth century, when explanations based on bodily humours guided care. Treatments described in the biography included bleeding, purging and topical preparations; an attempt to open a tumour beneath her arm was followed by a dangerous deterioration. Such measures could offer no reliable cure for advanced cancer. Reports that the disease had spread to the liver help explain the jaundice, although the detail of progression cannot be checked with modern pathology. Anne increasingly withdrew from political life and sought a more religious setting during her final period. Since Mazarin's death in 1661, her son Louis XIV had assumed personal control of government, so the illness developed after her own period of greatest authority had ended. Her final months were therefore marked by physical suffering and declining strength rather than another struggle for the regency. The evidence supports a long cancer illness, while exact bedside dialogue and a day-by-day sequence of symptoms remain less securely documented than the overall course and date of death.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
1. Anne of Austria: Queen of France — Ruth Kleinman. Find on Amazon
2. Anne d'Autriche: Mère de Louis XIV — Claude Dulong. [French-language biography] Find on Amazon
3. The Married Life of Anne of Austria, Queen of France — Martha Walker Freer. [Early biography, two volumes] Find on Amazon
4. The Regency of Anne of Austria, Queen Regent of France, Mother of Louis XIV — Martha Walker Freer. [Early biography of her regency] Find on Amazon
5. Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on the Life of Anne of Austria — Françoise de Motteville; Katharine Prescott Wormeley (translator). [Translated contemporary memoir] Find on Amazon
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