Anne of Austria - Later Life

Later Life

In 1659, the war with Spain ended with the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The following year, peace was cemented by the marriage of the young King to Anne's niece, the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Theresa of Spain.

In 1661, the same year as the death of Mazarin, an heir to the throne was born, Anne's first grandchild Louis de France. Many other children would follow, but all would die in the legitimate line except for Louis. Some time after, Anne retired to the convent of Val-de-Grâce, where she died of breast cancer five years later. Her lady-in-waiting Madame de Motteville wrote the story of the queen's life in her Mémoires d'Anne d'Autriche. Many view her as a brilliant and cunning woman and she is one of the central figures in Alexandre Dumas, père's novel, The Three Musketeers and its sequels.

Read more about this topic:  Anne Of Austria

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Consider his life which was valueless
    In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
    Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
    Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
    On the death of one so young and so silly
    Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?
    Stephen Spender (1909–1995)

    What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.
    Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)