LETTER ON PARCHMENT SIGNED BY KING LOUIS XIII - ORDER TO PAY 2 MILLION - 1629

CONTERSIGNED BY CLAUDE BOUTHILLIER THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Size: 16" x 12" (41 cm x 30 cm)

Order by LOUIS XIII King of France, to charge a huge sum of 2 million by Gabriel de Guénéraud Treasurer of his savings in favor of Sieur Texier.

"We want to all people that quittance ordinary faint that extraordinary .... of pay, quail cash or assign bearing our friend's receipt and seal advise of estate master

ordinary of our room of the accounts to pay the sir Texier of the sum of 2 million to which we have made him and donate .....signed by our hand in consideration of

the good and pleasant services he makes us in his charge ........

Claude Bouthillier, Sieur de Fouilletourte (1581 – 13 March 1652) was a French statesman and diplomat. He held a number of offices, including Secretary of State  and Superintendent of Finances, and distinguished himself in diplomacy throughout the 1630s, particularly in respect to France's entry into the Thirty Years’s War.

He was a shrewd diplomat who enjoyed exceptional favor with all factions of the French court, particularly Cardinal Richelieu and Marie de Medici. At the height of his power, he was the second most powerful man in France after Richelieu himself.

Louis XIII (27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who was King of France from 1610 to 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown.

Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de' Medici, acted as regent during his minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italian favorites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court.

Louis XIII, taciturn and suspicious, relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, Duc de Luynes and then Cardinal Richelieu, to govern the Kingdom of France. King and cardinal are remembered for establishing the Académie Francoise, and ending the revolt of the French nobility. They systematically destroyed castles of defiant lords and denounced the use of private violence (dueling, carrying weapons, and maintaining private armies). By the end of 1620s, Richelieu established "the royal monopoly of force" as the ruling doctrine. The reign of Louis "the Just" was also marked by the struggles against the Huguenots and Habsburg Spain.