while checking the separatist tendencies of the local authorities. [Sidenote: =The Regency of 1643.=] The value of the administrative system organised by Richelieu soon became evident, when in the year 1643 France found herself once more threatened by the minority of the king and the weakness of a regency. The great cardinal maintained after his death the social and political order to the preservation of which he had devoted his life. The strength of the bureaucracy and the memory of the government of Richelieu alone preserved the authority of the monarchy amid the follies and the treasons of the _Fronde_. Richelieu himself died on the 4th of December 1642, and Louis followed him to the grave on the 14th of May 1643, leaving the crown to his infant son only four and a half years old. It was an anxious crisis for France. Louis XIII. in his distrust of his wife, Anne of Austria, whose influence had been from the time of her marriage uniformly exercised against the policy of the king and Richelieu, had endeavoured to control her exercise of political power after his death by nominating in his will a council of state, without whose advice she was powerless to act. But Anne, whose character developed with her responsibilities, would have none of such restrictions. Going to the Parlement de Paris she asked them boldly to annul the will of her husband in the interests of herself and her son. The Parlement were by no means loth to add to their political privileges that of pronouncing a decisive word on the government of France. Without hesitation in their own interests they cancelled the will of the late king, suppressed the council of regency, and handed over the government of the country to Anne absolutely. It was an ominous thing that so soon after the death of Richelieu personal interests should again come to the front. But fortunately for France among those personal interests one was quickly seen to predominate over all others, which ensured the continuation of the policy of the great cardinal. [Sidenote: =Mazarin appointed chief minister.=] Ever since the death of the Père Joseph, Richelieu had intrusted the details of his foreign policy to the management of the astute Italian Giulio Mazzarini, who attracted his notice in the negotiations with the Pope in 1628, entered the service of France at his request in 1639, was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat in 1641, and was recommended to Louis by Richelieu as his successor in the prime ministership on his deathbed in 1642. By his cleverness, tact, and the gracefulness of his manners, Mazarin succeeded in making a deep impression upon the fastidious and loveless Anne of Austria. Surrounded by interested and selfish nobles, anxiously solicitous for the welfare of her son, she felt the necessity of a stronger arm on which to lean, and a sympathetic heart to which she might cling, and she chose Mazarin as the person whom she could intrust with the confidences of her womanly nature.