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Updated: May 14, 2025
The King from the first felt and expressed a singular repugnance, a boding apprehension in regard to the coronation, but had almost yielded to the Queen's importunity. He told her he would give his consent provided she sent Concini to Brussels to invite in her own name the Princess of Conde to be present on the occasion.
It was a mere struggle of the great lords of France to wrest places, money, governments, military commands from the Queen-Regent, and frantic attempts on her part to save as much as possible of the general wreck for her lord and master Concini.
Thus, therefore, while Louis fondly believed that he had indeed become a monarch in fact as well as name, he was in reality more enslaved than ever. Enriched by the spoils of Concini and his wife, De Luynes next caused himself to be appointed lieutenant of the King in Normandy; and this was no sooner done than he entered into a negotiation for one of the principal governments in the kingdom.
Blinded by vanity, Concini, who was a soldier only in name, did not fail to listen with greedy ears to this unexpected proposition; and while his seeming friends were speculating upon his ruin, and calculating that during his absence they should have time to impress upon Marie de Medicis that, by the sacrifice of her favourite, she might reconcile the disaffected Princes.
Germain-en-Laye, and who could not in consequence be the solace of every weary hour, she found her only consolation in the society of her immediate household, and the zealous devotion of Madame de Concini; to whose first-born child she became joint sponsor with M. de Soissons, greatly to the annoyance of the King, who watched with a jealous eye the ever-increasing influence of the Florentine favourite.
The king ordered the captain of the guards to arrest Concini, and kill him if he resisted; and this was done. Concini was cut down on the steps of the Louvre, and Louis exclaimed, "At last I am a king." But it was not in him to be a king, and he never was one all his life. He only passed under the dominion of De Luynes, who was a high-spirited young noble.
Concini, as we have already shown, had long nourished the most bitter resentment against one whom he considered as a formidable rival in the good graces of the Queen, and he was consequently induced without difficulty to join in the conspiracy; his vanity suffering bitterly from the contempt with which he was ostentatiously treated by the Duke, who was, as the Italian asserted, a mere gentleman of fortune like himself, until raised to his present rank by the favour of Henri III, a favour as ill-gained as it was unbecomingly exhibited.
All these persons were instructed to excite the suspicions of the King against his mother and her ministers, a task in which it was by no means difficult to succeed; particularly when the treacherous Déageant had placed in his hands a number of forged letters, wherein Barbin, at the pretended instigation of Concini, was supposed to entertain a design against his life, in order not only to prolong the authority of the Queen-mother, but also to ensure the crown to her second and favourite son, Gaston d'Orléans.
"Foreigner!" he ejaculated, "Italian! that is their mean yet mighty byword of reproach the watchword with which they assassinated, hanged, and made away with Concini; and if I gave them their way they would assassinate, hang, and make away with me in the same manner, although they have nothing to complain of except a tax or two now and then.
The Prince de Condé and the Comte de Soissons having withdrawn from the capital, MM. de Guise and d'Epernon found themselves once more the principal personages of the Court, but their triumph was nevertheless greatly moderated by the jealousy of Concini, who began to apprehend that their ceaseless efforts to gratify the wishes of the Queen, and to flatter her love of splendour and dissipation, might ultimately tend to weaken his own influence; while the ministers, on their side, aware that the negotiations then pending with Spain for the marriage of the King could not be readily concluded without their aid and concurrence, however they might deprecate their return from other causes, also felt the necessity of securing their co-operation, for which purpose it was essential that such measures should be adopted as might render this concession acceptable to the royal malcontents.
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