Mazarin, JULES (Giulio Mazarini), cardinal and chief-minister of France during the minority of Louis XIV., was born 14th July 1602, at Pescina in the Abruzzi. He studied under the Jesuits at Rome, and later at Alcalá in Spain, where he relieved the tedium of study with love-making. He next entered the military service of the pope, but his ability for diplomacy was early recognised. Having accompanied a papal legate to the court of France, he became known about 1628 to Richelieu, who divined his promise and engaged him to maintain French interests in Italy, which he did while still employed by the pope as vice-legate to Avignon (1632), and nuncio to the French court (1634-36). In 1639 he openly entered the service of Louis XIII. and was naturalised a Frenchman; and two years later he received a cardinal's hat through the influence of Richelieu, who before his death (4th December 1642) recommended Mazarin to the king as his successor. His position was one of great difficulty amid the intrigues and jealousies of the time, and the first necessity was that he should make himself indispensable to the queen, who became regent on her husband's death in May 1643. But Mazarin was one of the most supple courtiers that ever bowed the knee before a throne, and moreover he knew how to touch a woman's heart by his romantic devotion. So he kept his place as minister, and it is certain, from his famous carnets and many of the Brihl letters, that the queen gave him her love, if it cannot with certainty be proved that there was a private marriage between them. It should be remembered that this was perfectly possible, for M. Chéruel has discovered that the cardinal had never taken more than the minor orders, of which a man could easily divest himself. Mazarin possessed admirable faculty for affairs and so much personal charm that he ruled with greater smoothness than Richelieu, although with almost as unlimited a sway. The parliament, thinking to regain political power, resisted the registration of edicts of taxation; but Mazarin caused the leaders of the opposition to be arrested (August 1648), upon which the disturbances of the Fronde (q.v.) began. The court retired to St Germain, but at length tri- umphed by the aid of Condé, and the truce of Ruel, while it removed the obnoxious taxes, left Mazarin and his subordinates in office. The hatred against him, however, blazed out anew in the provinces, when at his instigation the queen-regent arrested Condé, Conti, and Longueville in January 1650. Mazarin triumphed at Réthel, but soon had to succumb to the strength of the combination against him and retire to exile at Brihl. Meantime the press teemed with pamphlets and satires against him—the famous Mazarinades, few of which, however, attained the dignity of literature. The cardinal now perceived the fatal consequences of his policy of isolating himself and the queen from every party in the state, and bent all his masterly powers of intrigue to form a new royal party. Turenne was gained over, and his military genius proved more than adequate as a counterpoise to the opposition of Condé. After one year's absence Mazarin returned to court in January 1652, but eight months later again retired to Sedan to admit of a reconciliation with the parlement of Paris. At length in February 1653 he returned in triumph to Paris, and thereafter his power remained secure, while he quickly regained all his popularity. Under his rule the influence of France abroad was greatly increased. He gained the alliance of Cromwell at the price of Dunkirk; secured the preponderance of French influence in southern Germany by the treaty of Westphalia (1648), and the league of the Rhine, formed in 1659; and by the treaty of the Pyrenees (November 7, 1659), and the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta Maria Theresa, brought the succession to the throne of Spain within the range of French ambition. Mazarin died at Vincennes, 9th March 1661, leaving an immense fortune, variously stated at from 18 to 40 million livres. His magnificent library, which had long been placed freely at the disposal of the public, was bequeathed to the Collège Mazarin. His name survives characteristically in the 'Mazarin Bible,' one of the most priceless treasures of Bibliomania (q.v.).
His celebrated nieces whom he brought from Italy to the French court present all the possible contrasts of character and destiny. The eldest of the seven, the virtuous Laura Mancini, married the Duc de Merceur, son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle, and died young. Anne-Marie Martinozzi, her cousin, married the Prince de Conti, an austere and gloomy lunchback, and also died young. Laura Martinozzi mounted a throne by marrying the Duke of Modena, and became mother of the second queen of James II. of England. Olympe Mancini, who became Comtesse de Soissons, was a woman formed for great crimes, whose true place would have been in the palace of the Cæsars or the Vatican of the Borgias. She plunged deep into a series of discreditable intrigues, and found herself obliged to flee from France to escape the punishment of a poisoner. After flitting awhile like an evil genius over the face of Europe, she died poor and obscure at Brussels. Hortense Mancini, the most beautiful of the seven, and her uncle's favourite, inherited his fortune, and was sought in marriage by the Duke of Savoy, the Prince of Portugal, and the King of England. The cardinal married her to the Duc de la Meilleraye, who took the name and arms of Mazarin. He was a gloomy bigot, who mutilated with the fury of a Byzantine iconoclast the magnificent antique statues which Mazarin had collected with all an Italian's love for art, shut up his wife, and treated her with a jealous severity which afforded in the morality of the time ample justification for her misconduct. She found at once a refuge from his pursuit in England, and a characteristic recreation in an intrigue with Charles II. Marie-Anne Mancini became Duchesse de Bouillon, and was the generous patroness of Lafontaine and other men of letters. Her reputation was not spotless, but her wit brought her off triumphant from an examination for sorcery before the Chambre Ardente which her sister could not face. Marie Mancini, the least beautiful of the seven, was beloved by Louis XIV., who would have married her but for the self-denying opposition of his great minister. She found shelter but not consolation in the arms of Prince Colonna, one of the jealous husbands of old Italian story. She fled from his severity to Provence, to Flanders, and to Spain, but was at length secured and subdued into submission.
See the Mémoires of such contemporaries as De Retz, Madame Motteville, La Rochefoucauld, Turenne, Grammont, and Bazin's Hist. de France sous Louis XIII. et sous le Card. Mazarin (4 vols. 1846); but especially the following works which have superseded all others: Chéruel's Hist. de France pendant la Minorité de Louis XIV. (4 vols. 1879-80), and its sequel, Hist. de France sous le Ministère de Card. Mazarin (2 vols. 1881-82), also Chéruel's edition of the Lettres du Card. Mazarin pendant son Ministère (6 vols. 1879-91). Other books that may be read are Cousin's Jeunesse de Mazarin (1865), Renée's Les Nièces de Mazarin (1856), and Gustave Masson's Mazarin (1886) in the 'Home Library' series. The Mazarinades were enumerated by Moreau in his Bibliographie des Mazarinades (3 vols. 1850-51; containing a list of no fewer than 4082), and collected in Choix de Mazarinades (2 vols. 1853).