At the beginning of the seventeenth century France’s position appeared extremely weak. Struggling to recover from decades of religious civil war, France posed little threat to Spain’s predominance in Europe. Yet by the end of the century the countries’ positions were reversed.

Henry IV (r. 1589–1610) inaugurated a remarkable recovery by defusing religious tensions and rebuilding France’s economy. He issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing Huguenots (French Protestants) the right to worship in 150 traditionally Protestant towns throughout France. He built new roads and canals to repair the ravages of years of civil war and raised revenue by selling royal offices instead of charging high taxes. Despite his efforts at peace, Henry was murdered in 1610 by a Catholic zealot.

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Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) became first minister of the French crown on behalf of Henry’s young son, Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643). Richelieu’s domestic policies were designed to strengthen royal control. He acted to repress Protestantism, which he viewed as a divisive force in the realm. He also extended the use of intendants, commissioners for each of France’s thirty-two districts who were appointed directly by the monarch, to whom they were solely responsible. These officials recruited men for the army, supervised tax collection, presided over the administration of local law, checked up on the local nobility, and regulated economic activities in their districts. As the intendants’ power increased under Richelieu, so did the power of the centralized French state.

Richelieu’s main foreign policy goal was to destroy the Habsburgs’ grip on territories that surrounded France. Consequently, Richelieu supported Habsburg enemies, including Protestants during the Thirty Years’ War (see “The Thirty Years’ War”). For the French cardinal, interests of state outweighed religious considerations.

Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661) succeeded Richelieu as chief minister for the next child-king, the four-year-old Louis XIV, who inherited the throne from his father in 1643. Along with the regent, Queen Mother Anne of Austria, Mazarin continued Richelieu’s centralizing policies. His struggle to increase royal revenues to meet the costs of war led to the uprisings of 1648–1653 known as the Fronde. In Paris, magistrates of the Parlement of Paris, the nation’s most important law court, were outraged by the Crown’s autocratic measures. These so-called robe nobles (named for the robes they wore in court) encouraged violent protest by the common people. As rebellion spread outside Paris and to the sword nobles (the traditional warrior nobility), civil order broke down completely, and young Louis XIV had to flee Paris for his safety.

Much of the rebellion died away, however, when Louis XIV was declared king in his own right in 1651, ending the regency of his mother Anne of Austria. (French law prohibited a woman from inheriting the throne, so periods when a queen mother acted as regent for a child-king were always vulnerable moments.) The French people were desperate for peace and stability after the disorders of the Fronde and were willing to accept a strong monarch who could reimpose order. Louis pledged to do just that when he assumed personal rule of his realm at Mazarin’s death in 1661.