Louis XIII: The Making of a King (review)

Abstract

68 biography Vol. 12, No. 1 U.S. within the first decade of the nineteenth century to collect more plants, particularly forest trees with potential for reforestation and afforestation in France. Francois collected specimens of wood for testing and visited shipyards, furniture makers, home builders, and tanneries to learn more about the qualities of economically-important trees. Francois stressed the importance of studying the inter-relationships of plants and their biophysical environment, particularly with regard to understanding the distribution of species. Like his father, Francois decried the wanton destruction of American forests and the inefficient ways in which forest products were used. The Michauxs were clearly early ecologists and environmentalists. Fortunately, the Michauxs committed their research to writing. André wrote a superbly-illustrated natural history of American oaks and a flora of North America as well as useful articles, such as one on the date palm which is richly embellished with cultural notes. Francois's best known work is a treatise on North American forest trees. The high caliber of André and Francois's works was widely appreciated on both sides of the Atlantic, and Francois was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society. André and Francois André Michaux is a scholarly effort and a stimulating read. The authors interweave the currents of global politics and economics in their discussion of the lives of father and son Michaux. Their work and struggles are set in the context of Napoleonic wars and the fall of the monarchy in France. My only quibble with the authors concerns the total absence of maps and the omission of scientific names for animals. Nevertheless, the book is a solid contribution and will be appreciated by a wide audience. Nigel J. H. Smith University of Florida, Gainesville. Elizabeth Wirth Marvick, Louis XIII: The Making of a King. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. 272 pp. $31.50. Elizabeth Marvick firmly established her scholarly reputation with a psycho-historical biography of the young Richelieu. Some historians were intrigued, some reacted violently against the book. At first glance, this would seem to be the same type of book. It is not, but the reaction from historians should be similar. The author accurately describes the book as a history of the interaction between the inner and outer worlds of Louis XIII. The approach of the Richelieu book was similar , but the source material was very different. The core of Louis XIII is a Freudian analysis of a unique extensive document, the six-volume folio diary kept by Jean Héroard, Louis XIII's physician, from his patient's birth through his twenty-sixth year. Héroard's journal is well known to historians at least in its nineteenth-century twovolume summary form. Marvick is the first person to make such extensive use of the manuscript volumes, though Lloyd Moote and Madeleine Foisil, each of whom has views differing from Marvick (and from each other), have now used the diary and will soon be presenting books on Louis XIII. The resulting controversy will be of interest to all scholars interested in biography. Marvick says that in method her book is no different from a standard history of an institution. Just as the latter would be changed over time as a result of interaction with the exterior setting, "so the inner life of... a dauphin . . . was changed through time REVIEWS 69 by what was done to him by others" (p. xiv). In both cases the job of the historian, according to Marvick, is to find and explain these changes and their effects on the surrounding world. Most historians would agree with this methodology. There is no doubt that she has searched out and used many important sources, some of them never fully utilized before. To someone with only an informal acquaintance with psychological theory, she seems to have applied Freudian insights to her material in a responsible manner. But for this historian of the early seventeenth century there remain two significant problems. The political context is at times inaccurate , and more importantly the religious context is missing. An example of the problem with political history is the treatment of the Estates General of 1614. Marvick presents a capable summary of...