Chapter VII: France Under Richelieu and Mazarin

Character of Richelieu--The principles of his government--Defects of his policy--Character of Louis XIII.--Position and organisation of the Huguenots--The rising of 1625--Edicts against the nobles--Conspiracy of Vendôme--War with England--Siege of La Rochelle--Destruction of the political power of the Huguenots--Administrative reforms--The Day of Dupes--Rising of Montmorency--Conspiracy of Cinq Mars--Centralising policy of Richelieu--The regency of 1643--Character of Mazarin--Outbreak of the Fronde--Constitutional claims of the Parlement--Unpopularity of the prime ministership--Weakness of the Parlement--The lead taken by the nobles--Factiousness of the movement--Flight of Mazarin--The Fronde in the provinces--End of the Fronde--Last years of Mazarin.

[Sidenote: =Character of Richelieu.=]

The well-known portrait of Richelieu in the gallery of the Louvre shows us the features of a man who under the outside of an aristocratic calm conceals a highly nervous and anxious temperament. There is not a trace of brutality, not a suggestion of coarseness, in the finely moulded features. At the first glance there seems almost a want of power in the delicate oval of the pale and attenuated face. Here is no Henry VIII. to trample on the laws alike of God and man in order to satisfy the demands of an imperious will, and rivet the chains of slavery on a panic-stricken people. Here is no Cromwell to march ruthlessly to his goal, over the constitution of his country, through the blood of his king, in the fervid enthusiasm of a divine mission. Here surely is no Napoleon to treat in callous selfishness human life and national faith as nothing in comparison to military glory and personal ambition. Yet the charges against Richelieu writ large on the page of history are precisely those which his portrait repudiates. Indiscriminate severity, ruthless barbarity, inordinate ambition, personal tyranny, such are the accusations levelled against him as a statesman and as a man. He is depicted as one who governed, and who preferred to govern, by terrorism and espionage, who struck down remorselessly and indiscriminately all who dared to oppose him, who established the ascendency of a gaoler over the weaker nature of the miserable king, who made France drink deep of the intoxicating potion of military glory in order that she might not feel the ever tightening chains of civil slavery. Even those who applaud his patriotism, and recognise him as the author of the greatness of France admit the charges of ruthlessness and barbarity made against his government by apologising for them.

[Sidenote: =Principles of his government.=]

The home policy of Richelieu, less perhaps than that of any other statesman, admits of palliatives and excuses. It is etched sharply on the plate of history in white and black. There are no neutral tints. He took for his motto that of the Romans of old, _Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos_, and if ever such a principle is admissible in human affairs it was admissible in France in the days of Richelieu. But it is clear the principle must be pronounced justifiable, not merely excusable, before the muse of history can smooth over the harsh black lines of the portrait which she has been accustomed to draw. A statesman may in the course of difficult affairs be betrayed into the commission of a great crime, as was Theodoric in his participation in the murder of Odoacer, and his character may yet stand out from among men noble and true, though his name must go down to posterity linked with a thousand virtues and one crime. But the conduct of a ruler, who deliberately from first to last acts upon an immoral principle of government, and steadily carries it out through his whole career, admits of no palliation. He may blunder perhaps into a noble and patriotic action as did Napoleon in the restoration of Christianity in France, but that cannot affect the general severity of the condemnation. So it is with Richelieu. We cannot pick and choose among his actions, admit that in one execution he was right, in another he was wrong. We cannot plead that a policy of terrorism is criminal, but in his particular case there was much to diminish the guilt. He will have none of such compromises and such excuses. Deliberately, unhesitatingly, in his lifetime he chose a policy stern, terrific, pitiless, and he carried it out relentlessly but not revengefully. Men accuse him of never sparing even the dupe and the fool, they do not accuse him of destroying the innocent. Not like Henry VIII. did he ever put men to death because they might at some future time prove seditious. Not like Charles II. did he permit innocent lives to be sworn away wholesale rather than face the danger of a popular tumult. No, all who suffered under him were legally guilty, but nearly all who were legally guilty suffered. It was a terrible policy--the extermination of the evil-doer, the establishment of the structure of firm government in the blood of its enemies,--but it is the policy which Richelieu adopted and defended in his lifetime, and for which for two centuries and a half he has stood at the bar of public opinion, pleading, as every line in his portrait shows, not palliation, not excuse, but the calm conviction of a man who knows that he is in the right.

[Sidenote: =Their justification.=]

There are times in the history of nations as in the history of individual man, when the only possibility of safety and health lies in the rigorous application of the knife. Such a state of disease the body politic had reached in France, as it seemed to Richelieu, in the seventeenth century. The poison of separation and anarchy had been imbedded too deep in the system by the civil wars of the last century, for the ordinary remedies of steady and firm government to have any effect. As long as the Huguenots were forming themselves into a political organisation in rivalry to the government of France, and as long as the nobles were bent upon making all government impossible in order that they might personally profit from the evils of anarchy, there was a cancer eating into the heart of France which made national death inevitable. The only hope of saving life lay in the unsparing excision of the malignant tissue. If only one fibre was left it would soon become a fresh root of the fell disease. For it must be remembered that Richelieu had to deal with a nation which had no power of defending itself against the evils which threatened to destroy it. There was too little cohesion among the various provinces seignories and towns, of which France was made up, to admit of any united action. Excepting so far as the royal authority made itself felt, the administration of the country districts was still feudal, in the hands of the seigneurs and their officers, and that of the towns was aristocratic, in the hands of the richer citizens and their officers. The whole of the local administration was thus absorbed by the aristocracy and the official classes. Intensely jealous both of the king above them and of the people below them, they were still too divided in rank and too narrow in sympathies to take the direction of affairs into their own hands. When they met together as in the States-General of 1614 they disclosed the most deep-seated rivalries. The days of the political triumphs of their natural leaders, the great nobles, had been the darkest and most miserable which France had ever experienced. Incapable of good they were potent only for evil. Their privileges, their authority, their prestige barred the way of the simplest administrative reforms. Equal administration of justice, equal taxation, free circulation of commodities within the country were impossible as long as the seigneurs held their special fiscal and judicial powers in their own districts. From classes whose one idea of government was the maintenance of personal and class privilege nothing could be hoped. They formed an impenetrable barrier of obscurantism in the way of good government. Interested in the maintenance, not in the suppression, of abuse, they kept the people down with one hand in misery and degradation, while with the other they sought to terrify the king into tutelage. Duller eyes than those of Richelieu might easily have seen that with such an enemy there was no middle course possible. Feudalism as a political power must be stamped out or it would kill France.

[Sidenote: =Limitations of his policy.=]

If Richelieu had lived three centuries earlier or a century later he might have endeavoured, as Edward I. or Burke would have endeavoured, to plant the roots of his new government deep in the affections of the people by enshrining it in permanent institutions. A wise and thoughtful statesmanship, which, in destroying the power of feudalism utterly, could have replaced it by an alliance of the powers of the Crown and of the people, would have been indeed an unique blessing not only for France but for Europe. Institutions which could have brought into mutual contact the interests of the peasant, the bourgeois, and the roturier, and could have combined them with the interests of the Crown, would soon have given a quick-witted people like the French what they most wanted--political education. An aristocracy as capable and as generous as the French noblesse would not long have sulked like Achilles in his tent, but would soon have been found in its proper place as the leader of the people, claiming the privilege of the post of danger by the right of truest worth. But a policy such as this was possible only for one who combined sympathy for the people with rare political foresight. Richelieu possessed neither, and was born in an age unfavourable to both. A clear sharp eye to the present and immediate future, indomitable courage, quick decision, inflexible will, such were the gifts he brought to the service of France. For her service he used them without a thought for any one else. He gave her national unity. He secured for her religious peace. He centralised all the forces of the nation under the Crown. He made that Crown the chief among the powers of Europe. He planted the seeds of a colonial empire, and nourished the budding germs of artistic and literary excellence. But he effected no financial or judicial reform. He stirred not a finger to relieve the social burdens of the people. He even increased their misery and would not listen to their complaints. Everything for the people and nothing by the people has been taken as the motto of beneficent despotism. Richelieu cannot lay claim even to that. For France collectively he had an intense and vivid love. For her greatness he willingly spent himself. For the French people considered as social units, as individuals, or as classes, he cared not an atom. He struck to the earth the political power of the nobles, because as long as it existed France could neither be great nor united. He never attempted to interfere with one of their social privileges, though it was by those that they made the lives of the bulk of the French peasants hideous and miserable. As a benefactor of the French people he is as infinitely below Sully and Colbert as he is above them in statesmanship. A wretched financier, an incapable administrator, prompt to demand the obedience of the people whom he governed, and careless of their happiness, without one spark of sympathy, without one touch of weakness, Richelieu stands before us as the embodiment of intellect and of will. His business was with _la haute politique_. That he understood. To that he devoted all his energies. In that he shone supreme. With unerring quickness of intellectual judgment he singled out at once the true obstacles to the greatness of France. He found them in the national disintegration brought about by the civil wars, and largely fostered by the Huguenots, and in the anarchical tendencies of the higher nobility. With true political insight he saw that with a professional army at his back and the sentiments of loyalty and national unity to support him, there was nothing which could stop the ultimate victory of the Crown, save the weakness of the Crown itself. For some years the struggle was intense, but his indomitable will in the end gained the day. When he had once won the confidence of the cautious and suspicious king the contest was practically over, and he was free to turn his attention almost wholly to foreign affairs. By a policy eminently skilful, if morally unjustifiable, he contrived to hide the scars of civil dissension by the lustre of military glory, and to provide a more congenial and patriotic sphere for the energies of a nobility whom he had deprived of political influence, by summoning them to win for France the victories which were to make her king the leader of Europe.

[Sidenote: =Character of Louis XIII.=]

The greatness of the reign of Louis XIII. begins with the ministry of Richelieu, and the death of the king followed so close upon the death of the minister that the fame of the master has become wholly overshadowed by the greatness of the servant. When Richelieu was on the stage there was indeed but little room for any one else. Yet it does not appear on closer inspection, that Louis was either the personal or political nonentity which he has often been described. His character was indeed singularly unlike that of his father or his son, and in so many respects different from the ordinary French type, that perhaps French historians have done him but scant justice. His temperament was cold, heavy, and passionless, his mind slow and reserved, but tenacious, and at times obstinate. A man of few friends and no intimates, hardly if at all susceptible to the influence of women, without strong desires or ambitions, without many interests, yet one who kept a shrewd and watchful eye upon the world. Very cautious and patient in making up his mind, suspicious of all but a very few, when his decision was taken he acted firmly, boldly, straightforwardly, and never went back. Strangely enough his real interests were in the more strenuous affairs of out-door life. Like James I. he was passionately fond of hunting, unlike him he was almost more fond of war. No mean soldier himself, he was a very good judge of military capacity in others, and was never so well and never so happy as when on campaign. Many of the officers who did so much to establish the credit of the French armies at the beginning of the next reign, like Fabert, owed their promotion to the skilled eye and firm friendship of Louis XIII. His relations with his mother Marie de Medici and his great minister show him to have been a man of more than ordinary tact. It was by no means easy to keep the peace between the two, when Marie believed herself to have been basely deserted, and Richelieu had not a friend at court save the king himself. It was still less easy to maintain the minister against the incessant and malevolent attacks of his enemies, and yet preserve the independence of action and reserve of judgment necessary to prevent the king from degenerating into the partisan. But in this he succeeded remarkably well. He trusted Richelieu far more sincerely than Richelieu trusted him, and it is interesting to notice in their correspondence at critical moments, that it is the king who becomes more calm, more collected, more dignified, as the intensity of the crisis increases, while Richelieu is torn by doubts and hesitations and seems overwhelmed by anxieties and fear. But in reality Richelieu never had any good reason to doubt the friendship or support of the king. Louis had the gift, rare in men in his position, of knowing when to act and when to remain quiet. He never suffered his minister to forget that he was a minister and not a king. Richelieu never assumed so large a part of the functions of royalty as did Buckingham in England. He was a Wolsey, not a _maire du palais_. But on the other hand Louis had the sense to see that if a king is fortunate enough to have a Richelieu for his minister he must give him a free hand. He held the scales of justice even between his minister and his court, he suffered no mean motives of jealousy to detract from the fulness of his confidence, and he was content to be classed by posterity among the makers of the French monarchy, because he had had the fortune to be the maker and master of the greatest of French ministers.

[Sidenote: =Position of the Huguenots, 1622.=]

The peace of Montpellier, concluded between Louis and the revolted Huguenots in October 1622, was one of those treaties which are not so much a conclusion of a struggle as a preliminary to its recommencement. It left the questions at issue not merely unsolved but intensified. Huguenotism, always quite as much a political as a religious movement, had derived its aspirations and drawn much of its strength from the desire of independence arising from the jealousy of the king of Paris, which was characteristic of the south of France, and from the jealousy of the French crown, which was characteristic of the French nobility. It was among the towns of the south of France and among the smaller nobility--the country seigneurs--that it spread with the greatest rapidity. Its strongly self-centred and individualistic creed fell in naturally with their passionate love for their privileges and their intense dread of the central government. Ever since the Huguenots became a power in the land, the tendency of their policy had been towards independence, all the more significant because it came about without any defined cry for separation. Aided by the weakness of the crown Huguenot towns, such as La Rochelle, Montauban and Nismes, during the civil troubles became self-governing communities independent of the French government, and had been practically recognised as such by various treaties during the wars, and by the Edict of Nantes. [Sidenote: =Their organisation.=] Huguenot organisations under the name of ‘circles’ parcelled France out into districts under regular officers for the purposes of defence and offence from end to end. In many parts of the country this organisation consisted merely upon paper, but in the north where the influence of the duke of Bouillon was great, and over large districts of the south it was a dangerous and menacing reality. In the strong words attributed to Richelieu, the Huguenots shared the government of France with the king. In the revolt of 1621, although the leaders probably never intended to do more than frighten the Crown and secure their own political position, many of the rank and file were openly fighting for independence. To the Crown therefore it had become essential to crush the power of the Huguenots if it wished to be supreme over France. To the Huguenots it was no less essential to conquer the Crown if they wished to secure their independence.

In such a state of affairs the treaty of Montpellier was obviously but a breathing space in the combat. Both sides saw that at that moment neither of them could win a decisive victory, and both were content to wait for a more favourable opportunity. [Sidenote: =Rising of the Huguenots, 1625.=] That opportunity seemed to have come to the hot-headed Soubise, the brother of Rohan and the head of the circle of La Rochelle in 1625. The new minister was hardly yet settled in his saddle. It was no secret that he was surrounded by enemies of all kinds, from the king’s brother Gaston of Orléans down to the pages of the royal household. He had just engaged the forces of France in the question of the Valtelline, and had incurred the enmity of the more strenuous of the Catholic party by making war upon the soldiers of the Pope. Surely a rising of the Huguenot organisations at such a moment could not fail to be successful at least in overturning the rash and unpopular minister. Since Richelieu had been in power he had been diligently forming a nucleus of a royal navy, and at the beginning of 1625 the six vessels of war, which were the outcome of his efforts, were gathered in the little port of Blavet in Brittany. Soubise by an act of happy daring seized the whole of them on the 17th of January 1625, and, establishing himself on the islands of Rhé and Oléron, prepared, now that he was undisputed master of the sea, to defy any attack which the royal forces might direct against the walls of La Rochelle. But Richelieu was not so easy out-generalled. He at once withdrew from the affairs of Italy, procured ships from Holland and England, after long and tortuous negotiations in which he completely outwitted Buckingham, and manning them with French sailors inflicted a crushing defeat upon Soubise in September 1626, and forced him to take refuge in England. The crisis had been, however, sufficiently acute to show Richelieu that it was not safe to undertake responsibilities abroad as long as his enemies at home were so watchful and unsubdued. He must establish his authority on a firm basis in France, before he could run the risk again of having to deal with foreign war and internal revolts together. On the 5th of February he put an end to the Huguenot rising by renewing the terms of the treaty of Montpellier. In March the treaty of Monzon relieved him for the moment of all danger from the side of Spain, and he felt that the time had then arrived when he might safely proceed to strike the first blow at the power of the nobles.

[Sidenote: =Edicts against duelling and private castles, 1626.=]

In the summer of 1626 two edicts were issued in pursuit of this policy. By the first all duelling was declared punishable by death. By the second the destruction of all fortified places not situated on the frontier was ordered. These two laws struck at two of the most cherished privileges of the nobles and the greatest dangers of the state. The right of an independent tribunal of arms, by which all personal questions arising in their own order should be adjudicated, was one incompatible with civilised and authoritative government. The fortified town and the fortified castle formed the natural home of both sedition and oppression, and Richelieu, in determining to sweep them away in France, was merely taking a course which all restorers of order in all countries had felt themselves obliged to take. Like Henry II. of England he found that fortresses in the hands of a territorial nobility were inconsistent with the power of the Crown. But the nobles were not going to submit to legislation of this sort without attempting a counter stroke. [Sidenote: =Suppression of the conspiracy of Vendôme and Chalais, 1626.=] Gaston of Orléans, the king’s brother, with the duc de Vendôme the son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrées, the comte de Soissons another prince of the House of Bourbon, the duchesse de Chevreuse a friend of the queen and a born _intrigante_ and tireless enemy of the cardinal, became the leaders of a plot to depose the king, to assassinate Richelieu, and put Gaston on the throne. It was soon discovered. Gaston to save his own life basely surrendered his friends and associates to the ruthless mercy of Richelieu. The comte de Chalais suffered for him on the scaffold, another of his associates, Ornano, in prison. The duc de Vendôme, the duc de la Valette son of the old duc d’Epernon, Madame de Chevreuse, the comte de Soissons were all banished, and Richelieu rid himself at one blow of the most dangerous of his enemies. The nobles were astonished at his audacity. They could not believe that any one would dare so to treat the noblest of their order, but in the following year they received a lesson which startled them still more. [Sidenote: =Execution of Montmorency-Bouteville, 1627.=] The comte de Montmorency-Bouteville, one of the famous family of Montmorency and a noted duellist, fought a duel in open day in the midst of Paris in disregard of the royal edict. Richelieu had him immediately arrested and put to death on the scaffold on the 21st of June 1627. The execution of one of the noblest of French subjects, for the exercise of one of the commonest and most cherished privileges of the French nobility, showed them more clearly than anything else had yet done, that the minister at the head of the government was determined to be their master.

[Sidenote: =War with England, 1627.=]

Hardly had Richelieu emerged in triumph from his first contest with the nobles, than he found himself involved in an unnecessary war with England and the Huguenots. The treaty between France and England on the occasion of the marriage between Henrietta Maria and Charles I. contained provisions which were absolutely certain to lead to mutual recriminations sooner or later. Charles had promised publicly to permit his wife to keep her French household, and have complete control over the education of the children till they were thirteen years of age. Privately he had bound himself to tolerate Roman Catholicism in England. But he very soon found that, in the excited and unreasonable temper of the English people, it was impossible for him even to pardon Roman priests condemned under the penal laws. Neither in the interests of his domestic life could he permit a band of mischief-making women to alienate from him the affections of his child-wife. In both these matters he found himself compelled to break his word. Louis on his side set at naught his own verbal promise to permit Mansfeld and the English contingent to march across France to attack the Palatinate, and so in the eyes of the English court became largely responsible for the terrible misfortunes of the year 1626 in Germany. When Richelieu in further pursuance of the treaty had demanded from Charles a loan of ships to use against Soubise and the revolted Huguenots, Buckingham had set his wits against those of Richelieu to avoid carrying out his obligation in fact, while he outwardly professed to be eager to do so, and even condescended to the trick of organising a sham mutiny on board the fleet. But in the end he was outwitted, and the spectacle of English ships in the French fleet, which defeated Soubise and the Huguenots, so exasperated the Protestant party in the English Parliament, that Buckingham from motives of self-defence as well as from those of wounded pride declared war against France in order to shift the odium from himself to Richelieu, and to pose before the world as the champion of the Protestant cause. [Sidenote: =Siege of La Rochelle, 1627.=] In July 1627 Buckingham, at the head of a large but ill-appointed fleet, appeared before La Rochelle, and occupying the island of Rhé besieged the fort of S. Martin. The Rochellois much against their will felt compelled to make common cause with the English, and the Huguenots in the south of France seized the opportunity once more to rise into revolt under Rohan. Richelieu found himself again threatened by a formidable combination of foreign and domestic enemies, and determined this time to have recourse to no half measures. In November Buckingham was obliged to withdraw from before the unconquered S. Martin and sail back to England for reinforcements. Richelieu himself formed the siege of La Rochelle. Recognising at once the impossibility of capturing a city open to the sea and surrounded by marshes by attack on the land side only, he began the gigantic work of building a mole right across the mouth of the harbour. Thus he hoped to cut off the city wholly from the possibility of relief from the sea, while the rigid lines of circumvallation drawn round the town prevented any attempt at introducing provisions from the land side. For five months the weary work went on. It was a race against time. All depended on the question whether the mole could be finished before the English fleet reappeared. Day and night in spite of many blunders and some misfortunes the huge mass slowly grew. The two wings approached nearer to each other, garnished with towers and palisades and batteries, until by the end of April 1628 the aperture between the two was small enough to be closed by a bridge of boats made into floating batteries, and fastened together by stout iron chains and defended by wooden stockades. It was hardly finished when the English fleet was sighted. For fifteen days the English hurled themselves with renewed and despairing vigour against the fortifications, but without success. On the 18th of May they sailed home and left La Rochelle to starve. [Sidenote: =Capture of La Rochelle, 1628.=] Victory was now but a question of time. Early in October the English fleet reappeared, but did not even dare to face the now impregnable defences of the besiegers. On the 28th the heroic Guiton worn out by famine accepted the inevitable. La Rochelle surrendered to the royal forces, its municipal privileges were abolished, its fortifications destroyed, its government placed in the hands of royal officials. Liberty of conscience was guaranteed to the citizens, but all vestige of independent authority was absolutely taken away.

[Sidenote: =Pacification of the south, 1629.=]

After the capture of La Rochelle it was a comparatively easy matter to crush out the rebellion in the south. Early in 1629 the king put himself at the head of his army, marched into Languedoc and the district of the Cevennes, capturing the towns and destroying the castles. Rohan and the Huguenot leaders finding they could get no material assistance from Spain were obliged to submit. By the peace of Alais concluded in June 1629 the Huguenots ceased to retain any political power in France. Their guaranteed towns were handed over to the royal government, their fortresses were razed, their organisation was destroyed, their right of meeting was taken away, but their liberty of worship remained unimpaired.

The peace of Alais marks the end of the first act of the great drama which was being played by Richelieu in the history of France, the completion of the first, if not the most difficult, of the tasks to which he had devoted himself. [Sidenote: =Destruction of the political power of the Huguenots.=] By it the policy of the Edict of Nantes was carried to a legitimate conclusion. Religious peace was ensured by the recognition of religious division, while the danger that religious division should impair the national unity was effectually removed. It was a policy of national unity not of national uniformity. Richelieu did not care that all Frenchmen should be made outwardly to profess the same religious or political creed, should wear outwardly the same religious or political dress, as long as they were whole-hearted in the service of the Crown, as long as their liberty was not a weakness to the state. That it could not fail to be a source not merely of weakness, but of serious danger, to the state, as long as it was based upon political privilege and defended by political organisation, had already been abundantly proved in the course of the reign of Louis XIII. Every time that France had been threatened by the hostility of her neighbours, whether of Spain or England, a rising of the Huguenots had turned a serious foreign war into an acute national crisis. Every time that the Huguenots had risen in revolt they had allied themselves with the national enemies. Twice already had Richelieu’s plans for the development of France been thwarted by the determination of the Huguenots to prefer their independence to their patriotism, and to look upon the foreign entanglements of the government merely as their opportunity. When a powerful political organisation deliberately sets itself to profit by the dangers of the nation, and to pursue its own interests to the detriment of those of the nation, it must either crush the government or be crushed by it. Richelieu enlisted the whole forces of the state in the campaign against the Huguenots, because he saw clearly that as long as their religious privileges were based on the possession of political power, the political exigencies of their position, and the fancied necessities as well as the inherent tendencies of their religion, must make them the enemies of France. The destruction of La Rochelle and the peace of Alais changed them at once from a formidable political party into a harmless religious sect. They ceased to be a danger to the state through their want of patriotism and desire for independence. They became a strength to France through their frugality, their manual skill, and their morality. Grateful for religious toleration and satisfied with it, in less than a generation they were found among the staunchest supporters of the monarchy, and effectually proved their gratitude by never stirring a finger to increase the embarrassments of the Crown in the perilous days of the _Fronde_.

[Sidenote: =Administrative reforms.=]

By the end of the year 1629 Richelieu might well look back with pride at the success which had attended his efforts to establish the unity of the nation by consolidating its forces under the power of the Crown. He had crushed a plot of the most formidable of his enemies at court. He had established his ascendency over the mind if not over the affections of the king. He had purified the financial administration so that a larger proportion of the taxes found their way into the treasury. He had put down a dangerous right of private war on a small scale under the guise of duelling. He had destroyed the castles and fortresses over large districts of France, notably in Brittany and the southern provinces. He had laid the foundation of the French navy. He had destroyed the political power and organisation of the Huguenots. But there was still much to be done. As long as the administration of the country and the raising and control of the army were in the hands or under the direction of the territorial nobility, all that he had hitherto accomplished was dependent upon his own precarious life and the still more precarious favour of the king. A successful court intrigue might destroy the whole structure at a blow, and throw France back into the slough of anarchy and peculation from which he had raised her. To obviate this danger he applied himself during the rest of his life, as far as internal politics were concerned, to two special objects, the establishment of a bureaucracy--a civil service under the direct control of the Crown--and the organisation of the army upon a professional basis. In carrying out this latter object he had to proceed very carefully, partly owing to financial considerations, and partly to the necessity he felt for providing in the army a sphere of activity for the nobility, whose political and administrative power he was taking away; and it was not till the time of Louvois that the French army became thoroughly professional. But the active and open warfare in which France became engaged after 1635, as well as the growing importance of the infantry, enabled him to do much in the way of raising and organising infantry regiments directly by the Crown, without the interposition of any noble as colonel, and of appointing and promoting officers such as Fabert and Catinat, who did not belong to the noble class. For many years the nobles considered it below their dignity to serve in infantry regiments, a fortunate prejudice which made it easier for the government to get direct control over that important department of the army.

[Sidenote: =Illness of Louis XIII., 1630.=]

The year 1630 saw a vivid illustration of the danger to which the new system of government was exposed from the possible success of a court intrigue or the death of the invalid king. On his way back from the army in Italy to Paris, Louis was taken suddenly ill at Lyons with dysentery. For some days he hung between life and death. On the 22d of September all hope was given up. Gaston hurried to Paris to secure the government. The queen and the queen-mother made arrangements for the arrest of the cardinal, while Richelieu himself, seeing the labours of his life at an end, prepared to fly. But the king’s constitution, much more vigorous than historians have supposed, triumphed not only over the disease but over the physicians. In spite of having been bled seven times in one week he still retained strength enough to rally, and Richelieu remained for the moment safe. His enemies had to alter their plans. [Sidenote: =The day of Dupes, 1630.=] Determined not to be baulked of their prey the queen-mother and the queen organised a plot against the minister, which was joined by the two Marillacs, Bassompierre, and Orléans. On the 11th of November Marie in the presence of the king poured forth a torrent of furious invective against Madame de Combalet the niece of the cardinal. On Richelieu’s entrance the storm was directed against him. Accusing him of treason and perfidy, she demanded from Louis his instant dismissal, and called upon the king to choose between his minister and her. For some hours Louis was in great doubt, and the fate of Richelieu hung in the balance. He even signed an order intrusting the command of the army to the maréchal de Marillac. All the courtiers thought the reign of Richelieu was over. Worn out and sick at heart, the king, to free himself from fresh importunities, retired to his hunting-box at Versailles; but once away from the pressure of the courtiers his good sense and patriotism reasserted their power, and he determined to support his minister even against his wife and his mother. Sending for Richelieu privately to join him at Versailles, he put himself entirely into his hands, and the Day of Dupes was over. The vengeance of the outraged minister was terrific. Gaston of Orléans fled to Lorraine, Marie to the Spaniards at Brussels, the maréchal de Marillac was executed, his brother the chancellor died soon afterwards in exile, Bassompierre was imprisoned, the duchesses of Elboeuf, and Ornano banished, and the household of the queen filled with the cardinal’s nominees.

[Sidenote: =Rising of Orléans and Montmorency, 1632.=]

But exile increased rather than appeased their hatred of their conqueror. Gaston of Orléans, who had married the sister of the duke of Lorraine strongly against the wishes of Louis, who would not recognise the marriage, organised a fresh plot against the cardinal in 1632. To bring about the ruin of his hated enemy, he did not scruple to ally himself with the enemies of his country. A combined force of Lorrainers and Spaniards was to invade France from the north-east, while the maréchal de Montmorency, the governor of Languedoc, raised the south. But Richelieu’s good fortune did not desert him. The Swedes defeated the Spanish force on the Rhine, before it had even reached the frontiers of France. Lorraine, instead of France, had to bear the brunt of invasion, and 25,000 men under Louis himself quickly overran the country, and brought it permanently under French administration, although it was not formally united to the French monarchy till a century later. Meanwhile, Gaston of Orléans, at the head of a few thousand horsemen, had made his way to Montmorency in Languedoc, endeavouring to raise the country as he went against the iniquities of the minister. Not a man stirred. France had begun to realise that, harsh and oppressive as the government of Richelieu might be, it was far more just and far more tolerable than that of the nobles. In Languedoc Montmorency had succeeded in collecting a small army through his own personal popularity and the support of the estates, but the people refused to move, and he was powerless in the face of Schomberg and the royal troops. At Castlenaudary, on the 1st of September 1632, he was defeated and captured. On the 30th of October the last representative of the most illustrious of the great territorial nobles of France bowed his head before absolute monarchy on the scaffold.

[Sidenote: =Suppression of the enemies of Richelieu.=]

A fresh proscription instigated by the implacable justice of the cardinal decimated Languedoc. The estates were dispersed, many of the nobility and gentry executed or sent to the galleys, five bishops deposed, the castles and fortifications of the towns destroyed. The hateful and miserable author of all this misery, Gaston himself, alone escaped. Protected by his birth and his readiness to betray his friends, he was permitted to take refuge in Brussels. There, in conjunction with the queen-mother and the Spaniards, he renewed his plots against France and the cardinal. But Richelieu now felt himself so thoroughly the master both of the nobles and of the nation, that Gaston was more dangerous to him as an open enemy than he would be as the leader of the disaffected at home. The promise of the king’s favour, and renewed gifts to himself and his friends, soon induced him to betray the queen-mother and his hosts. In October 1634 he left his wife and his mother, was formally reconciled to the king and the cardinal, and retired into private life at his castle of Blois. Marie took refuge with her daughter in London, and Richelieu, freed for the time from all anxiety as to revolts and court intrigues, was enabled to turn his whole attention to the aggrandisement of France. In the following year, 1635, he entered openly into the Thirty Years’ War.

[Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, 1642.=]

Once more but a few months before his death had Richelieu to defend himself against a court intrigue, but it was one which had its roots far more in personal ambition than in serious political rivalry. Cinq-Mars, the son of the marquis d’Effiat, the superintendent of finance, chafing under the stern and all-pervading masterfulness of the cardinal, abused his position of intimacy with the king, to try and poison his mind against his minister, who at that time was thought to be dying. Gaston, that veteran intriguer, and the duc de Bouillon the lord of the feudal dependency of Sedan, gave some political importance to the intrigue by lending it their countenance. The system of espionage established by Richelieu was far too good to permit intrigues of that sort to pass unnoticed. Still neither Richelieu nor the king interfered until they received proof that Cinq-Mars was actually in communication with the national enemy, the Spaniards. Then they struck, and as usual struck hard. The duc de Bouillon was compelled to surrender Sedan to France. Cinq-Mars and his friend de Thou perished on the scaffold, the last of a long list of victims, including five dukes, four counts, and a marshal of France, who were sacrificed by the pitiless cardinal to the genius of his country.

[Sidenote: =Centralising policy of Richelieu.=]

It is easy to fix the eyes so intently upon the destructive side of Richelieu’s war with the nobles as to forget that in his sight it was by far the least important part of his work. The execution of traitors and peculators, the banishment of conspirators and _intrigantes_, were necessary steps towards the abolition of their political power, not the satisfaction of private vengeance. As with the Huguenots, so with the nobles, he did not wish to root them out, but to make them powerless for evil. As long as they enjoyed in right of their birth political power, based upon personal privilege and territorial possessions, so long would they refuse absolutely to render themselves amenable to the new institution of the prime-ministership, and would be always in danger of preferring the interests of their order to those of the state. When once they had been deprived of territorial power, they would naturally become the foremost servants of that Crown of which they had before been the rivals. They would be eager to serve, where before they had been determined to rule. Throughout the government of Richelieu the work of centralisation goes steadily on. A powerful structure of royal government is gradually built up, and the abortive plots, and the subsequent executions, mark the chafings of those who felt that power was slipping steadily away from them, and by a sure instinct directed their efforts against the man who was identified with the system which they hated. The destruction of the feudal castles, the development of the professional army, the substitution of royal administrative officers for those of the territorial nobles in Brittany and Languedoc, after the rebellions of Vendôme and Montmorency, the administration by the Crown directly through its own officials of the Huguenot towns, after the peace of Alais, and of Lorraine and Sedan after their conquest, the establishment of a royal post throughout the kingdom, were all steps in the direction of undermining the political power of the nobles. [Sidenote: =Appointment of Intendants, 1637.=] Finally in 1637 came the greatest blow of all. For many years Richelieu had been in the habit of appointing royal commissioners, under the name of Intendants, to take cognisance of certain matters of local administration, usually of a judicial nature. In 1637 by a royal edict, he appointed Intendants in each province, and placed in their hands the whole financial, judicial and police administration. The effect of this was to concentrate powers, which had hitherto been enjoyed by the territorial nobility and the local administrative bodies, wholly in the hands of officials appointed by the minister and responsible to him alone. It created in fact a permanent civil service of professional men of the middle class, entirely dependent upon the royal favour, and thus did much to foster the growth of absolute power, and to give stability to the government, while checking the separatist tendencies of the local authorities.

[Sidenote: =The Regency of 1643.=]

The value of the administrative system organised by Richelieu soon became evident, when in the year 1643 France found herself once more threatened by the minority of the king and the weakness of a regency. The great cardinal maintained after his death the social and political order to the preservation of which he had devoted his life. The strength of the bureaucracy and the memory of the government of Richelieu alone preserved the authority of the monarchy amid the follies and the treasons of the _Fronde_. Richelieu himself died on the 4th of December 1642, and Louis followed him to the grave on the 14th of May 1643, leaving the crown to his infant son only four and a half years old. It was an anxious crisis for France. Louis XIII. in his distrust of his wife, Anne of Austria, whose influence had been from the time of her marriage uniformly exercised against the policy of the king and Richelieu, had endeavoured to control her exercise of political power after his death by nominating in his will a council of state, without whose advice she was powerless to act. But Anne, whose character developed with her responsibilities, would have none of such restrictions. Going to the Parlement de Paris she asked them boldly to annul the will of her husband in the interests of herself and her son. The Parlement were by no means loth to add to their political privileges that of pronouncing a decisive word on the government of France. Without hesitation in their own interests they cancelled the will of the late king, suppressed the council of regency, and handed over the government of the country to Anne absolutely. It was an ominous thing that so soon after the death of Richelieu personal interests should again come to the front. But fortunately for France among those personal interests one was quickly seen to predominate over all others, which ensured the continuation of the policy of the great cardinal. [Sidenote: =Mazarin appointed chief minister.=] Ever since the death of the Père Joseph, Richelieu had intrusted the details of his foreign policy to the management of the astute Italian Giulio Mazzarini, who attracted his notice in the negotiations with the Pope in 1628, entered the service of France at his request in 1639, was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat in 1641, and was recommended to Louis by Richelieu as his successor in the prime ministership on his deathbed in 1642. By his cleverness, tact, and the gracefulness of his manners, Mazarin succeeded in making a deep impression upon the fastidious and loveless Anne of Austria. Surrounded by interested and selfish nobles, anxiously solicitous for the welfare of her son, she felt the necessity of a stronger arm on which to lean, and a sympathetic heart to which she might cling, and she chose Mazarin as the person whom she could intrust with the confidences of her womanly nature. Whether they were eventually secretly married or not is one of the unsolved problems of history, but that during the rest of their lives they were united by the strongest bonds of mutual affection and respect is beyond a doubt. To the astonishment of all who were not in the secret, Anne signalised her assumption of power by confirming Mazarin in the position of chief minister to which he had been designated by Richelieu, by continuing the foreign and domestic policy of the great cardinal, and by exiling afresh the dukes of Vendôme Mercoeur and Guise and the duchess of Chevreuse who were already portioning out the vengeance they would take on the cardinalists.

[Sidenote: =Character of Mazarin.=]

Cardinal Mazarin was a very different character from his great predecessor. He was altogether of meaner mould. Richelieu was a man of original genius, who had made for himself his own position in the world, and had been the architect of his own fame. Mazarin would never have emerged from the ruck of mankind had not Richelieu led the way and given him a task to perform. It was his business to maintain, carry on, develop, that of Richelieu to create and establish. Soft and conciliatory in manner, graceful in address, tactful and considerate in business, deferential without being obsequious in conversation, he disarmed his opponents instead of conquering them, he persuaded instead of frightening them. Management not action was his strong point, finesse and diplomacy not the scaffold and the sword his weapons. An absolute master of dissimulation, he crept catlike through life, the outward picture of trustful innocence, concealing a callous heart and poisoned claws. It was a character as hateful to the open-hearted Frenchman as to the honest Englishman, and even if it had not been disfigured by the grossest avarice, could never have made itself tolerable to either. Italian to the backbone in his suppleness of character, his love of finesse, his courtly manners, his advancement of his relations, his art collections of rare books and sculptures, in the meanness of his avarice and in the prodigality of his display, he was looked upon by the French nobles and the bulk of the French people as a foreigner, who, having by unworthy arts made himself the master of the affections of a silly woman, a foreigner like himself, had fastened like a leech upon France and was sucking its lifeblood with insatiable voracity. Nothing can exceed the virulence of the hatred with which Mazarin was regarded. Not even the triumphs of the Thirty Years’ War and the peace of Westphalia, not even the battle of Rocroy and the intoxicating cup of glory which he offered to France could save him from the indiscriminating and loathsome abuse showered on him by that strange outburst of patriotism and selfishness, liberty and frivolity, known as the Fronde, of which hatred to him was the chief factor.

[Sidenote: =Outbreak of the Fronde.=]

Ever since the dissolution of the Estates General of 1614, the Parlement de Paris had been growing in political importance. The hereditary nature of the offices of its members, the increased consideration shown to the classes from which they sprang by Richelieu in his war against the nobility, the double appeal to them in 1610 and 1643 to settle the government of France had all done much to persuade them of their power. The success of the rebellions against the royal authority in Spain and in England no doubt stimulated their desire to strike a blow for themselves and for liberty. An ill-advised imposition of an _octroi_ duty upon all commodities entering Paris, issued in January 1648, gave them the opportunity of playing the part of constitutional leaders. The Parlement refused to register the edict. The court on this brought the boy-king down to the Parlement, and in a _lit de justice_ the registration was effected. [Sidenote: =Constitutional claims of the Parlement, 1648.=] But the absurdity of trying to settle a grave constitutional question by the intervention of a boy of nine years old was too patent even for lawyers to swallow, and on the 16th of January the Parlement solemnly pronounced the registration illegal and invalid. A compromise was arrived at with regard to the particular question at issue, but the Parlement, so far from surrendering its political claims, appointed a committee consisting of representatives of its three chambers to take the reform of the state into consideration. On the 29th of June this representative committee called the Chambre de S. Louis issued its programme. [Sidenote: =Its programme of reform.=]It demanded the suppression of the Intendants, the reduction of the _taille_ by a quarter, that every one arrested by order of the government should be brought before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of his arrest, and that the Parlement should have control over taxation. Here were the germs of a constitutional reform, which, if it could have been carried out, might have saved France from the worst evils of despotism without seriously impairing the royal authority. The establishment of a check on the financial administration, and of the principle of Habeas Corpus, even though lodged in an unrepresentative body like the Parlement, would have at least saved France from the collapse of the next century, and might have been the beginning of true constitutional life. But it was not to be. Mazarin appeared to yield to the storm, issued some of the decrees asked for, and waited his opportunity. The news of Condé’s victory at Lens seemed to be the opportunity he desired. [Sidenote: =Arrest and release of Broussel.=] Under cover of a Te Deum sung in Nôtre Dame for the victory, Broussel the leader of the agitation against the court was arrested and put into prison. When this became known all Paris was seized with uncontrollable excitement. The long suppressed hatred of Mazarin burst out in fury. Barricades were raised. The citizens were armed and the Parlement accompanied by a furious and enthusiastic crowd marched in a body to demand the release of Broussel. The court was again obliged to yield, and Broussel was set at liberty, but as before Mazarin only drew back in the hope of making his final spring more effective. The peace of Westphalia would shortly put a disciplined army at his disposal, and then the position of the government would be impregnable. Paris might rage as much as it liked, but the days had gone by when the caprice of Paris decided the fortunes of France. Never was politician more mistaken. On the 13th of September the court withdrew to Ruel to free itself from the constant danger of tumults. Paris was immediately in an uproar. [Sidenote: =Acceptance of the reforms by the court, 1648.=] Persuaded by the clever and unscrupulous Gondi, bishop-coadjutor of Paris, a man who had nothing ecclesiastical about him except his title, Condé the military hero of the hour declared for the Parlement, and the court once more following the favourite policy of Mazarin had to procrastinate. It returned to Paris, and on the 24th of October 1648 published an edict accepting and enforcing the whole of the demands of the Chambre de S. Louis.

[Sidenote: =Unpopularity of the prime-ministership.=]

Thus far the struggle had been in its main aspects constitutional. The Parlement de Paris, aided by the populace of the city, and taking advantage of the unpopularity of Mazarin, was endeavouring to curb the caprice of an irresponsible prime minister by assuming to itself control over the finances, and obtaining for all Frenchmen security against arbitrary arrest. Men felt vaguely that the constitution of France had altered in a way contrary to their interests of recent years. It was one thing to acknowledge the personal authority of the king as supreme, when it had to be exercised largely through local governors who were practically independent, and was from its very nature subject to the limitations which necessarily followed from the different characters of the supreme rulers. It was quite another thing to acknowledge that that personal supremacy could be delegated, and to be required to pay the same implicit obedience to a prime minister ruling through a bureaucracy of his own nominees when the king himself was a minor. The pressure of despotic rule had hitherto been little felt in France by the noble or the professional classes. They did not object to acknowledge and obey the will of a Henry IV., while a Henry III. hardly presumed to ask them to do so. It was quite a different thing when they were called upon to pay implicit reverence to a Mazarin following a Richelieu, when Louis XIII. seemed a _fainéant_ and Louis XIV. was a boy. And behind the actual revolt against the irresponsible will of the minister lay the old rivalry between local authority and centralised administration. All local authorities whether of the governors or of the estates or of the Parlements had suffered under the centralising hand of Richelieu. In many cases they had been rooted out. France was becoming a _tabula rasa_, on which the hand of the king, or, worse still, of the minister, was alone visible. [Sidenote: =Importance of the reforms.=] So the Parlement de Paris felt, when it embarked on the struggle with the Crown, that it had behind it not merely the turbulence of a great city, or the bastard enthusiasm produced by professional agitators, but also a mass of thoughtful public opinion, traditions which lay deep in French history, and the political instincts of a growing nation. The example of England was sufficient to show that if it could, by whatever machinery, put an effectual check on the power of arbitrary taxation and the power of arbitrary imprisonment enjoyed by the government, it would have planted a seed from which the tree of liberty would assuredly spring. Of the four chief points of the charter of reform wrung from the Crown in October 1648, two, the reduction of the _taille_ and the abolition of the Intendants, were merely passing remedies for special grievances of the time; the other two, the control over taxation and the Habeas Corpus, enunciated principles of government for the future, which if they could have been enforced, would have infallibly altered the whole history of France.

[Sidenote: =Weakness of the Parlement.=]

Unfortunately the Parlement itself was a body wholly unfit to lead a constitutional struggle. A close corporation of magistrates without representative character, without legislative or political rights, without traditions to which to appeal, without force on which to rely, was ludicrously unfit to stand forth as the champion of national interests against a Crown, which at that very moment had assumed the headship of European politics. Its ally the city of Paris was more unfit still. The close-fisted _bourgeoisie_, anxious for its privileges, and trembling for its money-bags, the turbulent populace of the streets intoxicated with its own importance, a small knot of interested agitators like Gondi, a larger body of selfish aristocrats and frivolous women, half fools, half knaves, like the duke of Beaufort and the duchesse de Longueville, were not the stuff of which successful constitutional revolutions are made. As a natural result the movement began at once to deteriorate. Hatred of Mazarin was a common factor between the constitutionalists of the Parlement, the populace of the streets, and princes of the blood-royal and the nobility. [Sidenote: =The lead taken by the nobility and the populace.=] To gain the support necessary to meet the forces of the Crown, the Parlement had to rely on the city and to appeal to the nobles. The latter eagerly joined the movement in order to recover their old political influence and to oust the hated minister. They cared not a sou for the Parlement. In their heart of hearts they hated and they dreaded the _noblesse de la robe_ and their constitutional ambitions. They wanted back the old days of private anarchy and public plunder. They loathed the very idea of constitutional reform and common right. From the moment that the nobles took the direction of the movement it loses its constitutional character, it becomes only the last and the basest act in the long drama of the struggle between the nobles and the royal authority, it has for its direct and most unmistakable object, not the amelioration of a down-trodden people, but the overthrow of an unpopular minister.

[Sidenote: =Factiousness of the movement.=]

From this point then the _Fronde_ loses its chief interest and its story may be briefly told. Seeing the weakness of the court, the nobles flocked to take the leadership of the movement out of the hands of the Parlement and Gondi. The prince de Conti, the duc de Bouillon, the duc de Beaufort the popular _roi des halles_, the due de Longueville and his intriguing fascinating wife, all rushed to Paris. Even Turenne, the patriot and the incorruptible, was for the moment seduced by the duchesse de Longueville to draw his sword against the court. Mazarin however succeeded in detaching Condé from the side of the rebellion. On the 6th of January 1649 the court fled secretly to S. Germain, and nominating Condé to the command of its army prepared to bring Paris to its senses by open war. But for the time both sides shrunk from so terrible an alternative, and through the intervention of Molé, the president of one of the chambers of the Parlement and a man of unblemished integrity, the peace of Ruel was arranged on the 1st of April 1649 on the basis of the _status quo_. [Sidenote: =The Peace of Ruel, 1649.=] For nearly a year quiet was restored, but it was a peace only in name, the intrigues, the libels, and the agitation continued as before. Condé in particular made himself odious to every one by the insolence of his pride and the theatrical ebullitions of his passionate nature. Even the patience of Mazarin became exhausted, and on the 18th of January 1650 he astonished France by suddenly committing Condé Conti and Longueville to prison. It was a gross blunder. [Sidenote: =Imprisonment of the princes, 1650.=] The imprisonment of the princes gave his enemies what they most wanted, a common rallying cry, while the arbitrary character of the proceeding disgusted moderate men. The feeling became general that France would never gain peace as long as Mazarin remained at the head of affairs. The provinces of Normandy Guienne and Burgundy declared against the court, and the _Fronde_ recommenced with a definite programme of the release of the princes and the banishment of Mazarin. [Sidenote: =The risings in the provinces.=] Like so many other risings against royal authority, it took the outward form of a rising in the true interests of the Crown to rid it of a bad and incapable minister. The revolts were put down in Normandy and Burgundy without difficulty, in Guienne by the capture of Bordeaux after a protracted siege by the queen-mother and the young king in person, but the flame continued to spread. Paris declared against the court. The duc d’Orléans joined the movement. Turenne invaded France at the head of a Spanish army, but was defeated by Duplessis near Rethel on the 17th of December. Mazarin, ever timid, determined to yield. [Sidenote: =Flight of Mazarin, 1651.=] In January 1651 he left France secretly, having ordered the release of the princes, and betook himself to Brühl in the electorate of Köln from whence he still directed affairs by correspondence with the queen-mother and the ministers, Lionne Letellier and Servien. On the news of the retirement of Mazarin, the _Fronde_ was beside itself with joy, the Parlement passed a decree of banishment against him, and sold his library and works of art. Paris treated the court as its prisoners, and received the princes in triumph on their return from prison in February 1651. But Condé soon made himself more intolerable to the leaders of the _Fronde_ by his rapacity and violence than he had been before to Mazarin; and Anne by a clever move was able to detach the _Frondeurs_ from him and drive him into open rebellion against the young king who had just been declared of age.

[Sidenote: =The movement a struggle between the nobles and the Crown.=]

The quarrel now openly appeared in its true light of a struggle between the nobles and the king. Condé, supported by Nemours, Le Rochefoucauld, La Tremouille and others of the nobles, raised the south in revolt. Anne and the king on their side put three armies in the field. Turenne came back to his allegiance, and Mazarin returned from his self-imposed exile and joined the court at Poitiers on the 28th of February 1652. For eight months civil war raged and France lay at the mercy of rival armies, while the foreign enemy took advantage of her misery to advance his frontiers in the north-east. It looked as if the very policy which Richelieu and Mazarin had carried out so ruthlessly at the expense of Germany was about to recoil on the head of France. But no sooner were the two sides definitely arrayed against each other as the party of Condé and the nobility against the party of Mazarin and the royalists, than it was seen that though Paris would fight to the death against Mazarin, France would not fight against the king. Condé found no adequate support in the country. Foiled by the superior military genius of Turenne near Blenau in April, he was defeated at the Faubourg S. Antoine in July, and must have been utterly destroyed, had not the energy and enthusiasm of Mademoiselle, the daughter of Gaston of Orléans, persuaded the citizens of Paris to admit him and his beaten army within the walls. [Sidenote: =Quarrel between Condé and Paris.=] But Paris had no love for Condé. It simply cherished an undying hatred for Mazarin, and a supreme conviction of its own importance. It was the only force in France still opposed to the court, and Mazarin found himself in consequence the only obstacle to peace. By a voluntary retirement to Sedan in August 1652, he built a bridge by which the Parisians could return to their allegiance to the king without compromising their opposition to the minister. They eagerly availed themselves of it. Condé, finding himself deserted on all sides, openly joined the enemies of France, and carried on for eight years more a foreign war against his country as the leader of the armies of Spain. [Sidenote: =Flight of Condé, and the end of the Fronde, 1652.=] On the 21st of October Louis entered Paris at the head of his army and the _Fronde_ was at an end. From that moment the royal authority shone out pre-eminent over all the forces of the country until the Revolution. Constitutionalism as well as privilege, local feeling as well as legal right lay helpless before the all-mastering Crown. The leaders of the _Fronde_ were exiled, many of its supporters put to death on various pretexts, none of them admitted even to the shadow of political power. The Parlement were forbidden to deal either directly or indirectly with the affairs of state. For a century it became but the registration office of the royal edicts and the channel of the royal justice, while the nobles, deprived of all political power and sadly weakened in local influence, accepted the service of a splendid court in willing exchange for the precarious dignity of half-independent feudatories.

[Sidenote: =Return of Mazarin to power.=]

When the triumph of the court was assured, Mazarin emerged from his retirement and again took up the reins of government. For the nine years that were left to him of life and power, he strove to repair the havoc wrought by the _Fronde_ in his private fortune and his public policy. His best efforts were directed to the maintenance of the war with Spain, which with the help of England was brought to such a successful issue by the peace of the Pyrenees in 1660. In domestic affairs he paid little attention to anything except the amassing of a prodigious fortune in the management of which Colbert received his first lessons of finance. He had none of Richelieu’s love for the greatness of France. He did nothing for her arts, her literature, or her sciences. He cared even less than Richelieu for the welfare and happiness of the people. His financial administration was corrupt to the core; offices were sold, revenue anticipated, state property alienated for the personal advantage of the cardinal. Had it not been that he was soon succeeded by the best finance minister that France ever produced, the world would not so lightly have passed over the fact that Mazarin on his death in March 1661 bequeathed to Louis XIV., not merely absolute power at home and the leadership of Europe abroad, but a home administration at once so oppressive and so corrupt, that had it lasted but a few years longer, France could hardly have escaped hopeless bankruptcy and irretrievable ruin.