Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/657

Rh they are not children but mature men, and have a divine and inalienable right to govern themselves.

The Basis of Louis XIV.'s Power.—The basis of the absolute power of Louis XIV. was laid by Cardinal Richelieu during the reign of Louis XIII. (see p. 580). Besides crushing the political power of the Huguenots, and thereby vastly augmenting the security and strength of the royal authority, the Cardinal succeeded, by various means,—by annulling their privileges, by banishment, confiscations, and executions,—in almost extinguishing the expiring independence of the old feudal aristocracy, and in forcing the once haughty and refractory nobles to yield humble obedience to the crown.

In 1643, barely six months after the death of his great minister, Louis XIII. died, leaving the vast power which the Cardinal had done so much to consolidate, as an inheritance to his little son, a child of five years.

The Administration of Mazarin.—During the minority of Louis the government was in the hands of his mother, Anne of Austria, as regent. She chose as her prime minister an Italian ecclesiastic, Cardinal Mazarin, who, in his administration of affairs, followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Richelieu, carrying out with great ability the comprehensive policy of that minister. France was encouraged to maintain her part—and a very glorious part it was, as war goes—in the Thirty Years' War, until Austria was completely exhausted, and all Germany indeed almost ruined. Even after the Peace of Westphalia, which simply concluded the war in Germany, France carried on the war with Spain for ten years longer, until 1659, when the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which gave the French the two provinces of Artois and Roussillon, asserted the triumph of France over Spain. Richelieu's plan had at last, though at terrible cost to France and all Europe, been