Cardinal Mazarin is the Italian cardinal who governs Paris in 1648 as the chosen successor of Cardinal Richelieu. With no royal blood or local noble base, he rules through stacked offices.
| Type | Character |
| Era | 1648 |
| Spanish entry | Cardenal Mazarin |
Description
He is “a very handsome man of forty”, a foreigner without land or noble house in the realm. The great of the kingdom took him for a weak heir to Richelieu, “and he was not”. In Richelieu’s time even Gaston of Orléans “was afraid” of the cardinal.
Offices
- Dynastic: regent of the child king Louis XIV together with Queen Anne of Austria. “Many say” they are lovers; this is rumor, not established fact.
- Administrative: highest authority of the Council of State, where he sits with the finance minister.
- Church: in the region “there is a bishop supposed to answer directly to Cardinal Mazarin”.
- Armed: his own musketeers (“a musketeer, but the Cardinal’s”) and retinues patrolling the half-settled outskirts of Paris, seizing political enemies on their route.
He rarely appears in person; his men do, saying “the cardinal put them here”. The kingdom’s prisons and castles answer to him. At Vincennes his favor decides whether a prisoner “stays here indefinitely”, and it can be bought with “some pastries and some help”.
Opposition
“The true resistance of the princes and nobles” of the provinces backs the Frondeurs against him; Blancmesnil stands in the opposing pact. His troops are stretched by trouble “with Leopold there in the center”.
Open questions
- The spelling varies: Mazarin, Mazarino, Massalino.
- The number, dress and insignia of his musketeers.
- What the office called arquiprión, which grants indefinite stays at Vincennes, is.
- Which region the bishop covers; where and what the dispute with Leopold is.
- Which roads outside Paris his retinues work.