Campaign of the Month: August 2011
Le Ballet de l'Acier
1615
- After assurances from the king and the queen mother that their issues would receive due attention, the deputies to the Estates General return home in March. Immediately the members of the Parlement de Paris, the highest court in the kingdom, exert pressure on the crown to continue the sale of offices. By May the promise to the deputies to end the sale of offices became a temporary extension through 1618 instead.
- In May the Parlement also brings complaints against Concino Concini, the marquis d’Ancre, and the queen regent’s governance, claiming that the regent’s favorite is ransacking the state’s treasury for offices and funds. The parlementaires also register their disapproval of the pending Spanish marriages of Louis and Elisabeth.
- The prince de Condé withdraws from court in June, retiring to his estates in the company of several dukes and peers, in effect declaring no-confidence in the queen regent. The prince’s allies publish pamphlets alleging that the deputies selected for the Estates General were disproportionally d’Ancre’s men. Condé also offers his opposition to Louis’ pending marriage to the Infanta Ana. The prince’s defiance crosses confessional lines as Huguenot grands such as the ducs de Bouillon and Rohan join Condé’s resistance.
- Over the summer Marie de’ Medicis realises that she cannot continue to buy the grands support, and by the fall she mobilizes the household army under the command of the duc de Guise to escort the king and the princess to the Spanish border for their respective weddings amidst the mobilized forces of Condé, Vendôme, and Rohan.
- On 18 October the royal weddings are held simultaneously in Burgos and Bordeaux, with noble proxies standing in for the respective grooms. The princesses are exchanged on 9 November, on an island in the river Bidassoa, the traditional boundary between the two kingdoms. The teenage king and queen of France meet for the first time on 21 November in Bordeaux. Skirmishes between the royal armies and the grands result in the court delaying its departure for Paris until December and proceeding by a circuituous route to avoid the heaviest concentrations of the nobles’ forces.
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Black_Vulmea
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