N the following account of the life of Anne of Austria I Wish at once to disclaim any idea of posing as a writer of history. The period embraced by the memoirs of this remarkable woman — one of the most important queens-regent who were ever called upon to act the part of a sovereign — is a very attractive one. The alliance of Bourbon and Hapsburg initiates a new era, in which dynastic considerations are all important, but the larger facts of the histories of France and Europe in the seventeenth century have been treated by many able historians, and do not enter into the scope or intention of these pages.