ABSTRACT
On 27 April 1617, Queen Maria de'Medici's favourite, Concino Concini, Marquess of Ancre, was ousted from power and allegedly shot while resisting arrest during a coup engineered by King Louis XIII and his own favourite, Charles d'Albert de Luynes. Concini's wife and partner in the favour of the Queen Mother was shortly thereafter put on trial and executed. On 20 June 1618, Cardinal Melchior Khlesl was taken prisoner at the behest of Archduke Maximilian and King Ferdinand II. He would spend nine years in various forms of captivity. Khlesl desperately sought a formula to disarm the Protestant Union and the Catholic League and thereby avert a religious war in the Holy Roman Empire. The League was considered a traditional ally of the dynasty and a potential counter-balance to the increasing dependency of the Iberian peninsula on Dutch shipping.
