Maximilien de Béthune, born on on December 13th, 1559, was the second son of François de Béthune and Charlotte Dauvet; it belonged to a branch junior by the family of Béthune, relatively not very fortunate although of old nobility. His/her father had embraced the Reform. The death of his/her older brother, in 1575, made of him the heir to the title of baron de Rosny.

The Maximilien young person, who revealed excellent intellectual abilities very early, was attached as of the twelve years age to the service of Henri de Navarre, the future Henri IV. He belonged to the continuation of the Inhabitant of Béarn at the time of his marriage in Paris, in August 1572, and he escaped the massacre from the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre only while taking refuge in the college from Burgundy, where he continued his studies.

The soldier and the negotiator

After Henri de Navarre had fled of the court (1576), the Rosny young person served it in his various campaigns, showing his military qualities, initially as artillerist. He became ordinary chamberlain, then member of the Council of Navarre (1580). After having a time followed the duke of Anjou to the Netherlands and taken part in the Cambric catch (1580), it turned over near king de Navarre. This one charged it with negotiating with Henri III, to consider a common fight against the League; Henri III, however, by the treaty of Nemours (1585), had finally approached the Own way, at the expense of Henri de Navarre. The military campaigns intensified then, and, in 1587, Rosny took part in the victory of the Protestants with Coutras, where it ordered artillery.

After the assassination of the Own way in Blois (December 1588), it negotiated alliance between the kings of France and Navarre against the League. The assassination of Henri III (August 1st, 1589) made of his Master new king de France. Rosny took share with the victories of the Protestants with Arques (1589) and Ivry (1590). After the abjuration of Henri IV in 1593, it negotiated the conditions of the rallying of some of the main leaders of the League, in particular the marquis de Villars, who held Rouen, and the duke of Own way. In charge of artillery, he played a determining role at the time of the head office of Amiens (1597).

Official functions

Becoming the adviser more listened of the king, it accumulated dignities and functions consequently: to advise with Finances in 1596; superintendent of Finances in 1598 - the load had however been removed in 1594, with the death of François of O, the king fearing the exorbitant powers of the superintendent. Sully in addition obtained the load of large Master of the Artillery (1599), instead of grandfather of Gabrielle d' Estrées, and he was still superintendent of the Building industries and the Fortifications, and large voyer of France (1599) - i.e. charged with the Highways Departments. He bought the Sully-on-Loire in 1602, and Henri IV did it duke of Sully and par of France in 1606.

The scrupulous character of Sully made a very appreciated financier of it, at one time when the royal treasure left extremely decreased the wars of religion. Credit and devoted to the king, Sully showed in his functions a character hard and been obstinated, which attracted many enemies to him, but the support of the king was to appear decisive. If Sully did not innovate, it succeeds in nevertheless putting order in the royal accounts.

Finances

It gave up the ruinous practice of anticipations, and draws up a kind of budget. A Room of justice was instituted to seek and judge the embezzlements of the financial ones. Sully controlled in a way much more strict the public revenue, at the same time as it decreased the loads of the Treasury by removing certain offices, the fraudulent revenues, the unduly granted privileges, and while making restore with the king part of the royal field which had been alienated. All these measurements, allied the general prosperity which followed interior peace and the arrival to Europe of the American noble metals, made it possible Sully not only to balance the budget, but still to make economies. It was made appoint governor of the Bastille (1602), where it stored part of the royal treasure.

In 1604, the important reform of the paulette (of the name of the Paulet financier) instituted the heredity of the offices with the help of the payment of an annual right (one sixtieth of the value of the load). Initially, the paulette caused to gather around the king of the men resulting from the third by making sure of their fidelity of father as son, to the detriment of the nobility, first victim of this rise to power of the middle-class - thereafter, but well after the death of Sully, it is in the rows of these middle-class men nouveau riches that many deputies of the third to the general states of 1789 will recruit themselves.

In 1609, Sully sought to stop the escape of gold towards the foreign countries, where its foreign exchange rate compared to the money was more advantageous than in France, by establishing a new parity between metals, and while making strike new parts; however, the Parliament refused to record this edict, considered to be too authoritative.

Agriculture

Sully was also occupied to develop agriculture. There thought indeed that France, rural country, would owe primarily its prosperity with agriculture, from where its formula, remained famous: “Tilling and pasture are the two udders which nourish France, the true mines and treasures of Peru.” It was a question of producing a farm surplus which one could sell abroad, in Spain especially, that the “mines of Peru” enriched. Sully thus protected the peasants against the tax department offficials (prohibition to seize the instruments of ploughing, handing-over of the arrear of the sizes), made drain the marshes, extend the cultures (the vine, in particular), stopped the devastation of the forests, abolishes many tolls and created roads bordered of trees and channels (the channel of Briare between the Seine and the Loire was started in 1604).

On the other hand, it was not interested in the industry, which at the time occupied only one place restricted in the French economy. In this field, Henri IV trusted Barthélemy de Laffemas, general inspector commercial, in favor of the mercenary attitude.

The diplomacy

Conscious that a war with Spain appeared inevitable, Sully was also occupied to strengthen the places on the borders and prepared France with the conflict by diplomatic alliances. Thus, in June 1603, he was the ambassador extraordinary of Henri IV near new king d' Angleterre, Jacques Ier Stuart, and signed the treaty of Hampton Court (July 31st, 1603), by which France and England promised to assist the United Provinces, at one moment when the aimings of catholic Spain on this country let fear a rupture of European balance. He was also one of the negotiators of the marriage of Henri IV with Marie de Médicis, and occupied himself even thereafter to reconcile the husbands at the time of their many marital arguments - he was opposed thus to Concini, which were very listened of the queen.

In 1606, with the authorization of the king, Sully made build a protesting temple with Charenton, in contradiction with the edict of Nantes which excluded any building reformed inside a perimeter from ten miles around Paris. In same time, it agreed to become abbot various abbeys with the important incomes; not being catholic, it thus made name commendatory abbots, while perceiving the related incomes. Generally, Sully was always interested in its own fortune, which became considerable. In its important field of Boisbelle, it thus made build a new city, baptized Henrichemont.

After the death of Henri IV, Sully was named member of the Council of regency and prepared the budget of 1611, but, in front of the expensive policy followed by Marie de Médicis, who went to counter-current of his, he resigned into 1611 of his load of superintendent of Finances. He lived from now on far from the court, dealing of the ordering of his papers and with the drafting of his Memories (royal Economies, two volumes published in 1638; two others, posthumous, in 1662, in which it traces its autobiography, near to panegyric). It gave up any function in 1616 and exchanged, in 1634, its load of large Master of Artillery against the stick of Marshal of France. It did not take part in any the revolts caused under Louis XIII by the Protestants.

Of his first wife, Anne de Courtenay, Sully had a son, Maximilien, which succeeded to him in its load of superintendent of the Fortifications and obtained the survival of the great control of Artillery. Widower in 1589, Sully married in second weddings, in May 1592, Rachel de Cochefilet, widow of François de Chateaupers, who gave him nine children of which only three survived.