Europe. France. Louis XIII. Aix-en-Provence. 1635. AV Ecu au soleil (3.34g, 3h). Mark of the master Lazare Gaultron (two tendrils in saltire). Clairand, Ganne & Schiesser 2018, 2-3. Very rare. Apparently the 3rd known. Good very fine. From a private collection

Louis XIII, sometimes called the Just, 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. Taciturn and suspicious, he relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and then Cardinal Richelieu, to govern the Kingdom of France. The King and the Cardinal are remembered for establishing the Académie française, and ending the revolt of the French nobility. They systematically destroyed the castles of defiant lords, and denounced the use of private violence. By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu had established "the royal monopoly of force" as the ruling doctrine. His reign was also marked by the struggles against the Huguenots and Habsburg Spain