X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Cardinal Mazarin


Battle of Herbsthausen

Cardinal Mazarin now found it necessary to commit d'Enghien (the later Great Condé) to the campaign to rectify the French position in Western Germany, which led to the Second Battle of Nördlingen in August, where Mercy was killed.

Bibliothèque Mazarine

The Bibliothèque Mazarine was initially the personal library of Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661), who was a great bibliophile.

Château-sur-Epte Castle

The castle's role declined in the 16th century and it was ordered to be dismantled by Mazarin in 1647.

Comte de Rochefort

Having been put into bad favor with Richelieu's successor Mazarin, he only comes out of the Bastille after five years.

La reine et le cardinal

The drama of the rumored love affair between the child king's widowed mother, Anne of Austria, and her prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, unfolds as intrigue and political discord ignite the Fronde.

Les deux journées

Bouilly claimed he took the story from a real life incident during the French Revolution but, for fear of censorship, he moved the action back to 1647 and the time of Cardinal Mazarin.

Powder of sympathy

He is then ordered by Cardinal Mazarin to spy on a secret English Pacific voyage to test an unknown application of the powder to solve the longitude problem.

Princess Louise of Savoy

This marriage was negotiated by none other than the famous Cardinal Mazarin and the Ambassador of the Margrave of Baden-Baden one Monsieur Krebs.

Richard Bonney

He submitted his D.Phil. on the intendants of Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin (1624-1661) in 1973, which was subsequently revised and published as Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661 by Oxford in 1978.

The History of the Nun

It contains an introduction which may suggest a romantic affair between the author and Hortense Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, one of the mistresses of Charles II and "adventuresses" of the 17th century.


Antonio Marziale Carracci

was one of Cardinal Mazarin’s most prized pictures, and influential for Poussin’s early Battle paintings as well as his paintings of the Seasons for Louis XIV 40 years later.

Charles de Lorme

Charles became wealthy in a medical practice of prescribing a concoction of antimony to Henry IV, Louis XIII, Cardinal Mazarin, and Madame de Sevigné as a health-preserving, health-restoring and life extending preparation.

Château de Ferrette

In 1644, at the Treaty of Munster in Westphalia, the Emperor of Austria yielded the county of Ferrette to the King of France, Louis XIV, who gave it to his minister, Cardinal Mazarin, who offered it to his niece.

Company of the Blessed Sacrament

In consequence of incidents that had occurred at Caen, it was vigorously attacked in a libel brought by Abbot Charles du Four, of the Abbey of Aulnay, and was denounced to Cardinal Mazarin by François Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Rouen.

Étienne Le Hongre

In 1670-74 Le Hongre provided sculptural decorations for the great doors and the high altar in the chapel of the Collège des Quatre-Nations, Paris, and was one of Antoine Coysevox's collaborators on the funerary monument of Cardinal Mazarin which was still in process of completion at Le Hongre's death.

Giovanni Battista Viola

Giulio Mancini commented in his writings that Viola was well respected for his landscape canvases, which were annotated as present in the collections of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Giustiniani, Cardinal Mazarin, and the Pamphilj.

Girolamo Graziani

In 1673, during the governance of Laura Martinozzi, who was the nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, he managed, as Este's ambassador, the diplomatic aspect of the marriage between Laura Martinozzi's daughter, Maria Beatrice d'Este (1658–1718), and James Stuart (who will become King James II of England).

Hôtel de Lauzun

The Hôtel de Lauzun passed on to the great-niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who fled from the convent of Chaillot with the Marquis de Richelieu and eloped him in London.

Stefano della Bella

In 1641 Cardinal Richelieu sent him to Arras to make drawings for prints of the siege and taking of that town by the royal army, and in 1644 Cardinal Mazarin commissioned four sets of educational playing cards for the young Louis XIV.

Sully-sur-Loire

King Louis XIV, his mother Queen Anne of Austria and prime minister Cardinal Mazarin sought refuge in the château of Sully-sur-Loire in March 1652 after being driven out of Paris during the revolt of the French nobility known as the Fronde.