But then followed an epoch in which the interests of the dynasty began to be thrown into the background by the interests of the state. While Mary de’ Medici sought to maintain the former in her dealings with Spain, and to be just to that country, in spite of all other disputed questions, she fell out with Richelieu, who supported the principle of the power of the sovereign, to which he wished to give effect in France, by the principle of the exclusive ascendancy of that country abroad, in favour of which he enlisted the sympathies of Louis XIII. The mother of the King was obliged to give way to his minister. The ‘Day of Dupes,’ though it appeared like an act of a comedy, was nevertheless a great event both for France herself, and for all her relations with other countries. The quarrels between the Queen-mother and the Cardinal, her subsequent flight, and her attempt to return in [A.D. 1629.] conjunction with her second son and a strong native party, but at the same time with foreign aid as well, reacted upon those countries in the west and south, with whose reigning families she was allied, and on which she sought to support herself. Her daughters--who could wonder at it?--took part with their mother. The English court had scarcely attained a certain measure of domestic repose, when it was acted upon by these divisions of the French court, and even drawn into them. In the year 1629 the Marquess of Chateauneuf was ambassador-extraordinary at the English court. In public he attached himself to the policy of Richelieu, to whom he owed his advancement; and he sought to bring about an union between France and England against the house of Austria. He gave satisfaction to the Cardinal in the conduct of affairs, so that after the fall of Marillac the great seal was entrusted to him. But, as is mentioned in the instructions to the next French ambassador, Poigny, Chateauneuf at that time was already secretly labouring to poison the mind of the English Queen against the Cardinal[131]. He had succeeded in acquiring the confidence of Henrietta Maria: it was also affirmed that he had formed a connexion with the Chevalier Jars who stood, through the medium of a lady of the bedchamber, high in her favour, and that Henrietta had been estranged from the French policy of the time and from the Cardinal. But how much easier must it have become to produce an effect of this kind after the scenes at the Luxemburg and the flight from Compiègne? Chateauneuf carried on a correspondence which, being sometimes intercepted, revealed his unbounded ambition.