tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">141

VII The Eve of the War. II 167 VIII The Queen and the War. I 193 IX The Queen and the War. II 217 X The Queen of the Exiles 252 XI The Foundress of Chaillot 276 XII The End 302   Appendix 321   Index 331

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Henrietta Maria From the painting by Van Dyck at Windsor (From a photo by F. Hanfstaengl)	Frontispiece.
Henry IV From an engraving after the picture by Francis Pourbus	FACING PAGE 18
Cardinal Pierre De Bérulle From an engraving	32
Old Somerset House From an engraving after an ancient painting in Dulwich College	68
Charles I and Henrietta Maria From the painting by Van Dyck in the Gallerìa Pitti, Florence (From a photo by G. Brogi)	90
The Duchess of Chevreuse After the picture by Moreelse, once in the possession of Charles I	146
Cardinal De Richelieu From a portrait by Phillippe de Champaigne (From a photo by Neurdein)	168
The Queen's Departure from Holland From an engraving	200
Sir Kenelm Digby From an engraving after the painting by Van Dyck	232
Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans From an engraving	260
Henrietta Maria From an engraving	278
The Rue St. Antoine, Paris (Showing the Chapel of The Visitandines) From an engraving by Ivan Merlen	304

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INTRODUCTION

The woman to whose life and environment the following pages are dedicated was called upon to play her part in one of the most difficult and perplexing periods of our history: she lived just on the edge of the modern world, when the Middle Ages, with their splendid simplicity of all-embracing ideals, had passed away, and when even the ideals of nationality and religious freedom which the Renaissance and the Reformation had brought were becoming modified by the stirring of a new spirit of liberty. The two countries which Henrietta Maria knew were throughout her lifetime making their future destiny: the France which cherished her youth and sheltered her age was becoming the greedy France of Louis XIV, with its splendid Court, its attempts at territorial growth, its downtrodden, suffering people; the England of her happy married life was growing in political self-consciousness and in a stern and repellent godliness which was to mould the character of the nation, and to educate it to become in the next century the builder-up of the greatest empire which the world has ever seen.

Henrietta's life touches both England and France: by race, by education she was a Frenchwoman; by marriage she was an Englishwoman, and it is on English history that she has left the impress of her vivid personality; but the France which she never forgot coloured her thoughts throughout, and taught her in all probability those maxims of statecraft which she attempted to apply when the troubles of her life came upon her.

She was the daughter of Henry IV, the great restorer of the French monarchy, the champion of an unified France, embracing in wide toleration Catholic and Protestant alike: her youth witnessed the beginning of Richelieu's continuance of her father's work; under the auspices of the great Cardinal