Chapter XVIII: The Supremacy of Mazarin (2)

Two circumstances soon after occurred that much altered the views and shook the resolutions of the court. One was the defection of Turenne, who, won over by his brother the duke de Bouillon, promised to march the army, which he commanded on the Rhine, to the support of the Fronde; the other was the connection of the _frondeur_ nobles with Spain, and the public reception by the parliament of an envoy from that power. This savoured of the inveteracy of the league. The elder magistrates, and principally Molé the president, indignant at this alliance with the enemies of the country, began to exert themselves to frustrate the violent projects of the young noblesse, and to seek an accommodation with the court. The majority of the parliament, already disgusted with the froward, frivolous, and arrogant behaviour of the nobles, came so far into the same views, that Molé himself, with some of his brethren, was despatched to the queen at Ruel, to essay an accommodation. The court grasped at the opportunity, but still negotiated for advantages; whilst Bouillon stirred the populace of Paris against the moderation of the parliament, and urged the alliance with Spain. Molé, determined to disappoint the ambitious duke, signed a treaty with the court in haste, on the 11th of March, ere Turenne could arrive, or Spain despatch its aid.

Great was the indignation of the populace, and of the seditious leaders, at the news of this peace. All cried out treason. Bouillon was confounded, and De Retz perplexed. Molé knew that he risked his life by thus balking the seditious ardour of both the nobles and the mob; but the thought gave him courage, not hesitation. The critical moment was that of declaring the treaty to the assembled parliament. A ferocious crowd, crying “Treason! no peace! no Mazarin!” surrounded the Palais de Justice; and the throng within its walls was scarcely less hostile or less calm. Molé stood up and read the treaty; clamour instantly covered his voice. The prince of Conti exclaimed against a peace concluded without his knowledge, and that of the nobles his friends. “You, then, are the cause,” retorted Molé: “whilst we were at Ruel, you were treating with the enemies of France; you were inviting the archduke, the Spaniard, and the foe to invade the kingdom.” “It is not without the consent of several members of the parliament that we took this step,” replied the prince, not denying the charge. “Name them,” was Molé’s instant retort; “name the traitors, that we may proceed to try and judge them.”

The firmness of the president at once awed the nobles, and won over the majority of the assembled magistrates to support him. The only hope of the favourers of sedition was in the rabble, which, incensed and tumultuous, had penetrated into the passages and corridors of the palace. Some, with poniards and arms, demanded the head of the president. “Give us up the _grande barbe_” (long beard); so they called the venerable magistrate. Others shouted the word “Republic.” Molé heard them with unshaken courage. Those around besought him to make his escape by a postern. “Justice never skulks,” replied Molé, “nor will I, its representative. I may perish, but will never commit an act of cowardice, which would give hardihood to the mob.” Accordant to this magnanimous resolution, the chief magistrate walked boldly down the principal staircase through the mob, awing the most audacious by his firmness. Even De Retz[j] was lost in admiration; and has recorded that he could perceive in the countenance of Molé, then threatened by the fury of the multitude, not a motion that did not indicate imperturbable firmness, and at the same time a presence and elevation of mind greater than firmness, and every way supernatural. This is one of the noblest exhibitions of courage which history has recorded.

When the chiefs of sedition saw that they could not conquer, and that the treaty would pass in their despite, each hastened to make his private offers and demands of the court. Bouillon wanted Sedan; Turenne, Alsace; Elbeuf, the government of Picardy; Beaufort, to be admiral. They were not listened to. Angered and resolved to proceed to extremities, they wrote to Turenne to advance, and to the archduke to invade the north. But Turenne’s treason was defeated by Erlach, commander of the Swiss--himself obliged to fly; and the archduke, his support failing, retreated. Thus the moderate portion of the parliament, supported by the civic guard, succeeded in restoring peace with the court, despite the opposition of the nobles and the mob. The reader will not fail to remark how distinct these several classes kept from each other, even when in alliance and fighting the same battles; a state of society that has not ceased at the present day to characterise France: whilst in England, the blending of the lower ranks of the nobly born with the higher ranks of the industrious and unennobled, effected by the habits and institutions of the country, have rendered the pernicious line of demarcation betwixt castes and classes almost invisible to the historian.

SECOND ACT OF THE FRONDE; ARREST OF CONDÉ

[Sidenote: [1649-1650 A.D.]]

The scene now shifts, and another act of the Fronde commences, displaying the chief actors in altogether new characters and dresses. No sooner was the peace declared than the prince of Condé, jealous of the cardinal, united with the nobles whom he so lately combated: he visited his sister, Madame de Longueville, became reconciled to her and to La Rochefoucauld; the duke de Beaufort and the coadjutor being the only two that remained at the same time hostile to Mazarin and jealous of Condé. A few nobles, however, were not sufficient to give weight to the demands of the prince, and Mazarin resisted them. The prince, in consequence, saw the coadjutor, and planned, or pretended to form, an alliance with him and the violent members of the parliament. The court, terrified at the prospect of being so abandoned, and of seeing Condé at the head of the frondeurs, granted all the desires of the latter, who, ashamed to break with his new allies, yet left without a pretext to continue his quarrel with Mazarin, “changed his mind three hundred times in three days.” The haughty prince, who hated the parliament and the rabble, at last decided to disappoint the coadjutor; he became reconciled to Mazarin, and of course quarrelled with the frondeurs, whom he accused of an attempt to assassinate him. The same imprudence, the same haughtiness, petulance, and overbearing temper marked the prince to whichever side he leaned, and disgusted both. As a friend he was even more troublesome than as an enemy: Mazarin and the queen felt this; they could no longer tolerate his insolence; and the present moment, as he had left himself no friends in any party, seemed the best opportunity for being revenged on him.

To arrest and send the prince to prison was the old monarchic mode of treating the froward; but one of the articles stipulated by the parliament, and secured to them in the last treaty, was that every prisoner should be interrogated in four-and-twenty hours, and delivered over to his lawful judges. To infringe upon this law might rouse the parliament, and re-excite the rebellion of the Parisians. To secure himself against such an event, Mazarin leagued with--whom? The coadjutor himself, and the most violent of the frondeurs! They, the populace sharing their sentiments, hated Condé for his ancient enmity and his late desertion. De Retz and Mazarin, accordingly, had interviews, the former entering the Palais Royal by night in disguise. The consequence of this secret understanding soon appeared. The prince of Condé, the prince of Conti, his brother, and the duke de Longueville were arrested at the door of the council-chamber, and sent to Vincennes in January, 1650. The dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld, as well as the duchess de Longueville, succeeded in escaping; the princesses of Condé were ordered to retire to Chantilly. Bonfires, illuminations, and every sign of joy on the part of the Parisians marked this extreme measure. The popular hatred of Condé and confidence in De Retz lulled for the moment their dislike of the cardinal Mazarin.

Two events which mark the spirit of the time, and which occurred previous to the prince’s arrest, must not be passed over. The honour of a _tabouret_, or stool at court, was only granted to the ladies of princes of sovereign houses, or to the wives of dukes and peers. Exceptions, however, had been made in favour of the younger branches of the Rohans, the La Trémouilles, and the family of Bouillon. La Rochefoucauld pretended to the same distinction: the prince of Condé supported his claim. The noblesse instantly assembled to the number of eight hundred, and formed a protest against such pretensions, which went, they said, to destroy the natural equality that existed amongst all gently born. The dispute led to a discussion of political rights and principles, then the dangerous mania of the age, and some voices clamoured for the states-general. The French noblesse are entitled certainly to the credit of having demanded these national assemblies at a time when the judicial body or parliament, in whom the favour and confidence of the people were then centred, deprecated any such proposition. It may be asked why the chiefs of the judicature, and such upright lovers of liberty as Molé, were opposed to the convocation of the states-general. The answer is that the example of England, then in the mouths and minds of many, terrified them, and made them prefer their own body as a constitutional check, to such a representative assembly as that which, in the neighbouring kingdom, had begun with civil war, and ended in regicide and despotism. It must be owned they had some cause for fear. A revolution is bad enough; but an imitative revolution, a parody of such a great event, is to be deprecated tenfold, as incurring all the evils and few of the advantages of the convulsion.

Already the people of Paris talked of republics and liberty: the monarchy, they said, was too old, and it was time it should expire. Nay, the duke de Bouillon himself, adopting the revolutionary phrase, proposed on one occasion to purge the parliament. The taste for assembling and debating was general. The annuities charged on the Hôtel-de-Ville were suspended by the troubles: three thousand of these fund-holders, chiefly citizens of Paris, met, drew up resolutions, petitioned, and clothed themselves in black, the uniform of the tiers or third estate. Molé instantly rebuked them, as attempting to form a _chambre de communes_, a house of commons. The citizens were indignant at the comparison: and this very reproach, that they were imitating the commons of England, had great effect in dissipating their assembly.

RESISTANCE OF BORDEAUX (1650 A.D.)

Principles, however, were soon forgotten in the general sympathy which the misfortunes of Condé excited. The haughtiness, the imprudences of the hero of Rocroi and Lens were now forgotten; and the nobility began to rally to his cause as their own. The court were at first successful in reducing Normandy, the government of the duke de Longueville; but in Languedoc and the provinces on the Gironde, the dukes de la Rochefoucauld and de Bouillon soon gathered an army of adherents, and were joined by the wife and infant son of the prince.

Clémence de Maillé, princess of Condé, had hitherto commanded little respect either from the world or from her husband, who, having married her merely as the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, was ashamed of her humble origin and his own condescension. She now however displayed a heroism and an attachment worthy of the spouse of the Great Condé. The princess escaped with her young son, the duke d’Enghien, from Chantilly, and after some delay in a fortified place, joined the dukes de la Rochefoucauld and de Bouillon in the south. But the noblesse was not then the predominant order in the state, and she was obliged to seek more powerful protection in the parliament of Bordeaux. This provincial court of justice was highly incensed against the duke d’Épernon, governor of Languedoc; and consequently ill-disposed towards the queen and the cardinal, who seconded him. They of course embraced with ardour the new laws established by the parliament of Paris, which gave to the courts of magistracy power to control the measures of government, and which forbade arrests without bringing the accused to speedy trial. They could little comprehend the manœuvres by which De Retz and his violent party induced the parliament of Paris to overlook the imprisonment of Condé. They were eager to take his part and to admit the princess within their walls; but at the same time had considerable distrust of the nobles who supported her, and who were negotiating with Spain. To satisfy these scruples, the princess entered Bordeaux alone; but the popular clamour drowning the voice of the magistrates, she soon had the city at her command, and the dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld entered with their troops and took the command.

The queen and Mazarin led the young king and an army commanded by the marshal De la Meilleraie to reduce Bordeaux. Its first feat was to raze Verteuil, the famous château of the La Rochefoucauld family, a barbarous act, and inconceivable in Mazarin, who loved the arts. Bordeaux was then invested, and its suburb was carried after a valiant defence, in which La Rochefoucauld displayed remarkable gallantry. To gain footing in the town itself was soon found impossible, such was the obstinacy of the armed citizens. Whilst Mazarin and the court thus lay encamped before Bordeaux, Turenne had entered the north of France, and was marching without opposition towards the capital, intending to liberate the princes from Vincennes. Condé, confined in the donjon of that castle, whiled away his captivity by cultivating the few flowers that the terrace of his window could contain. “Who would have thought,” exclaimed he, in learning the resistance of Bordeaux, “that my wife should be fighting whilst I was gardening!” The princes were removed from Vincennes to the safer retreat of Marcoussis, and Turenne, who, fearing to indispose the parliament of Paris by appearing at the head of foreign troops, retired again towards the frontier.

DISGRACE AND EXILE OF MAZARIN (1650-1651 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1650-1651 A.D.]]

The coadjutor and the violent frondeurs grew weary of their alliance with Mazarin, into which their fear and hatred of Condé had alone induced them to enter. They not only found Mazarin ungrateful and insincere, refusing even to De Retz the cardinal’s hat that he demanded, but their popularity, which was their chief force, and their influence over the parliament, were rapidly diminishing from their union with the court. Mazarin, suspecting the intention of the frondeurs, and alarmed by the march of Turenne, granted peace to Bordeaux, concluding more a truce than a treaty with the princess of Condé, La Rochefoucauld, and Bouillon.

The minister then returned to Paris, where he found the parliament no longer silent as to the arrest of Condé, but prepared to expostulate, and demand his release. Mazarin caused the princes to be instantly conveyed from Marcoussis to La Havre, where they were still more in his individual power. La Rochefoucauld and Bouillon also returned to Paris; and a series of intrigues took place; these partisans of Condé negotiating at the same time both with the coadjutor and with Mazarin for his release. An alliance with either would effect this, and La Rochefoucauld was in doubt. The coadjutor, in the habit of a cavalier, came by night to the rendezvous at the house of the princess palatine. La Rochefoucauld went in equal secrecy to the Palais Royal. The over-caution of the cardinal lost his cause. La Rochefoucauld pressed him at once to conclude the alliance, and give orders that Condé should be set at liberty. Mazarin hesitated. Unprincipled as he was himself, he could not believe it possible that the friends of Condé could unite with De Retz. La Rochefoucauld warned the cardinal in parting that the morrow would be too late. Mazarin smiled incredulity and irresolution; and the duke, hurrying to the other place of rendezvous, concluded the agreement with the coadjutor. The effects of this alliance were immediately manifest. The majority of the parliament clamoured for the release of Condé, and addressed the queen on the subject. It was necessary to yield; and Mazarin saw that, deserted by all parties, he would infallibly be the victim.

In his rage he anathematised the parliament before the whole court, called it an English house of commons, compared the coadjutor De Retz to Cromwell and himself to Strafford, and declared that, in sacrificing its minister to popular clamour, the crown would, as in the case of Strafford, sacrifice itself. This conversation, being reported to the parliament by De Retz, raised a storm indescribable, and terminated in an address to the queen, desiring that Mazarin should be banished from her councils, and that the prince should be liberated. Nought was left the cardinal but flight. He took his departure immediately. It was agreed that the queen and young king were to follow him, and that, possessed of La Havre and the persons of the princes, they would be able either by open war or negotiation to bring the parliament and the frondeurs to more reasonable terms. This project however failed, through the cunning and activity of the coadjutor, who, learning the queen’s intention of departing, raised a mob round the palace, and made her virtually a prisoner there. Cardinal Mazarin alone found himself without authority. He could not even gain entrance into Havre unless unattended. He entered, nevertheless, saw the captive princes of Condé, Conti, and Longueville, endeavoured to cajole them, and set them at liberty, without receiving in return a single mark of gratitude or regard. Thus every way disappointed, Mazarin resigned himself to his disgrace, and left the kingdom.[103]

CONDÉ IN POWER (1651 A.D.)

The prince of Condé was now all-powerful--the parliament, the Fronde, the noblesse, the populace, had all rallied to him; the minister was in exile, the queen a prisoner. Many blamed him for not setting aside Anne of Austria, and assuming the regency; but he was totally without the qualities requisite for taking advantage of his position; he was too lazy, too confident, too generous, too rash: and, making not a single exertion, the several parties that had united to compel at once his release and the exile of the minister were allowed again to fall asunder, and abandon to the court the recovery of its ancient influence. The noblesse at this period were animated with a strong desire to imitate the magistracy, and, by remaining united, to restore or re-establish the influence of the aristocracy, in opposition both to crown and judicature. They assembled in the convent of the Cordeliers (afterwards doomed to hold a club of a very different kind, that of Danton), and formed a house of peers, discussing state affairs, and fixing the privileges of the nobles. The parliament took fire at this, and forbade the assemblies. The noblesse looked to Condé to head them; but he, without principle or aim, and deeming his interests, as prince of the blood, distinct from those of the aristocracy, held back at this crisis. The noblesse called the assembly of the church, then sitting, to their aid, who protested, and complained that the parliament had altered the ancient constitution of the kingdom, by adding themselves as a fourth and spurious estate to the three established ones of king, lords, and commons. Despite of this, the parliament had force and the popular feeling on its side. The noblesse were obliged to succumb, and dissolved their assembly; not, however, before they had recourse to the queen and the royal authority, who issued a declaration, promising to convoke the states-general for the following September.

Here the queen recovered consideration and authority sufficient to enable her to aim at and grasp more, by allying with the prince of Condé. One of the stipulations betwixt them was that the marriage should be broken off betwixt the prince of Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The coadjutor, connected by gallantry and friendship with the family of Chevreuse, was indignant at this, and a quarrel ensued betwixt Condé and the old party of the Fronde. Hence another scene in the drama, which represents Condé insulted by those very men who had been so instrumental in releasing him. De Retz and the prince nearly came to blows in the Palais de Justice; and the former had almost fallen a victim to the passion of La Rochefoucauld, who jammed the coadjutor betwixt two folding doors till he was almost suffocated: the duke at the same time called to one of his friends to stab De Retz, an injunction that was not obeyed, and perhaps not intended to be obeyed. It is, nevertheless, startling to the modern reader to find the courtly author of the _Maximes_ engaged personally in the office and using the language of the assassin.

The consequence of these dissensions was the recovery of her authority by Anne of Austria, who, in affecting to ally with Condé, was merely enticing him to disgust and desert the Fronde. This achieved, she flung off the mask, and Condé found himself as much detested by all parties as a few months back he was their favourite and their rallying word. The prince, thus deserted, endeavoured to make common cause with the noblesse, and clamoured for the states-general; but it was too late: the parliament united with the court in opposing their convocation, and Condé in despair retired from Paris, obliged to seek support in civil war and an alliance with Spain.

RETURN OF MAZARIN (1651 A.D.)

In September, 1651, Louis XIV, then approaching fourteen years of age, was declared to have completed his minority. The day was celebrated with great magnificence. The royal authority remained, however, as before, in the hands of the queen: her only thought was the recall of Mazarin. The attachment borne by Anne to this prelate-minister is inexplicable. She might have reigned supreme, and been the arbiter betwixt contending parties, could she have consented to leave Mazarin in exile. De Retz endeavoured to impress this necessity upon her; but power appeared to her worthless without the cardinal; and no sooner had Condé broken with the parliament, and burst into war against the court, than the minister prepared to return. He levied an army, made an attempt on Brissac, and soon after joined the court at Poitiers, taking as usual the chief seat in the council.[g]

At the first news of his return, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, who had demanded the removal of the cardinal, levied troops in Paris without knowing for what they would be employed. Parliament renewed its decrees; it proscribed Mazarin and put a price on his head. This proscription tempted no one to earn the 50,000 crowns, which, after all, would never have been paid. With another nation and in another age, such a decree would have found executors; but here it served simply to incite fresh pleasantries. The Blots and the Marignys, wits, who carried gaiety into the tumult of these troubles, caused to be placarded all over Paris a distribution of the 50,000 crowns--so much for whoever should cut off the cardinal’s nose, and so much for an ear, so much for an eye, so much to make him a eunuch. This ridicule was all the effect of the proscription against the minister’s person, but his furniture and library were sold by a second decree. This money was destined for the assassin’s pay, but it was dissipated by the depositaries, like all funds that had been raised hitherto. The cardinal on his side used against his enemies neither poison nor steel and, in spite of the bitterness and madness of so much partisanship and hatred, no great crimes were committed. The party leaders were less cruel and the people less furious than in the days of the league--this was not a war of religion.

The spirit of madness which reigned at this time so possessed the whole body of the parliament that, after having solemnly ordered an assassination which everyone ridiculed, it passed a decree by which several councillors should betake themselves to the frontier for information against the army of Cardinal Mazarin: that is to say, the royal army. Meanwhile the king interdicted the parliament of Paris and transferred it to Pontoise. Fourteen members attached to the court obeyed; the others resisted. There were now two parliaments, which, to cap the confusion, thundered against each other with reciprocating decrees, as in the days of Henry IV and Charles VI.

It was precisely at the time when this company was going to extremities with the king’s minister that it declared the prince of Condé, who had only armed himself against this minister, guilty of _lèse majesté_; and by a turn of mind which its preceding steps could alone make credible, it ordered the new troops of Gaston, duke of Orleans, to march against Mazarin and forbade at the same time any money from the public receipts to be used in maintaining them. We can expect nought else from a company of magistrates, thrown out of their proper sphere, knowing not their rights, their real power, political affairs, or war, assembling and deciding amid tumult, making decisions of which they had no thought the day before, and at which they themselves were afterwards astonished. The parliament of Bordeaux was then serving the prince of Condé, but it kept to a little more rational conduct, because being further removed from the court it was less agitated by opposing factions. More important matters were interesting the whole of France.

THE LAST PHASE OF THE FRONDE

[Sidenote: [1651-1652 A.D.]]

Condé, leagued with the Spaniards, was on a campaign against the king; and Turenne, having quitted these same Spaniards, with whom he had been beaten at Rethel, had just made his peace with the court and was in command of the royal army. The exhausted finances did not permit either of the two parties to maintain great armies, but small ones did not the less decide the fate of the state. Louis XIV, brought up in adversity, went with his mother, his brother, and Cardinal Mazarin from province to province, without having as many troops about his person, by a great deal, as he had afterwards for a single guard in times of peace. Five to six thousand men, some sent from Spain, others raised by the prince of Condé’s partisans, pursued him into the very heart of his kingdom.

Meanwhile the prince of Condé hastened from Bordeaux to Montauban, taking towns and everywhere increasing his party. All the hope of the court lay in Marshal Turenne. The royal army found itself near Gien on the Loire. The opposing force of Condé was some leagues away, under the orders of the dukes de Nemours and de Beaufort. The duke de Beaufort was incapable of commanding anything. The duke de Nemours was braver and more amiable than he was skilful. Both together had demoralised their army. The soldiers of Condé knew that their leader was a hundred leagues away and believed themselves lost, when, in the middle of the night, a courier presented himself at the outposts in the forest of Orleans. The sentinels recognised in this courier the prince of Condé himself, who had come all the way across France from Agen, with many adventures and always in disguise, to place himself at the head of his army.

His presence did much and his unexpected arrival still more. The royal army was divided into two corps. April 7th, 1652, Condé fell upon that which was at Bléneau, commanded by Marshal d’Hocquincourt, and his corps was dissipated as quickly as it had been attacked. Turenne could not even be warned. The terrified Mazarin hastened to Gien in the middle of the night to awaken the sleeping king and himself tell him the news. The little court was in consternation; they proposed to save the king by flight and to conduct him secretly to Bourges. The victorious Condé drew near to Gien; the desolation and the fear increased. Turenne reassured their spirits by his firmness and saved the court by his skill. With the few troops that remained to him he made such fortunate movements that he prevented Condé from following up his advantage. It is difficult to decide which won the more honours, the victorious Condé or Turenne who had robbed him of the fruits of victory.[104] It is true that in this fight at Bléneau not four hundred men were killed; but the prince of Condé was none the less on the point of making himself master of the entire royal family, and of having in his hands his enemy Cardinal Mazarin. It would be hard to find in history any smaller battle with greater interest and more pressing danger.

Condé, who did not flatter himself that he could surprise Turenne, as he had done Hocquincourt, marched his army towards Paris. He hastened to that city to enjoy his glory and the favourable disposition of a blind populace. The admiration they had for his last fight,--all of whose details had exaggerated the hate that was borne for Mazarin,--the name and the presence of the Great Condé, seemed at first to make him absolute master of the capital; but at the bottom all minds were divided. The coadjutor--now become Cardinal de Retz, reconciled in appearance with the court which feared him and which he defied--was no longer the master of the people and no longer played the principal rôle. He ruled the duke of Orleans and was opposed by Condé. Parliament wavered between the court, the duke of Orleans, and the prince. Although all were in accord in crying down Mazarin, each one was nursing his own particular interests in secret; the people were a stormy sea whose waves were driven at chance by many contrary winds.[i]

Condé hoped to find the parliament his ally against Mazarin: but the stern magistrates, though firm in their abhorrence of that minister, were not more favourable to Condé, and openly reproached him with his Spanish alliance. From the parliament he did not scruple to appeal to the people, whose lowest class rose in tumult, and threatened the magistrates. The very courts proved no refuge: councillors and judges were insulted and even beaten as “Mazarins.”

Condé, thus disappointed in the support of the parliament, and of the respectable citizens, could not cope unaided with the royal army. The Parisian rabble, very forward in a riot, could not be made to stand the fire of regular troops. The prince had recourse to the Spaniards, who, themselves busied in the sieges of Gravelines and Dunkirk, induced the duke of Lorraine to march into France and support Condé. The skilful strategy of Turenne, however, compelled this new auxiliary to retreat; and the prince, after a fresh attempt to raise sedition in the capital and control the parliament, was reduced to fight Turenne with far inferior forces. The latter drove him from St. Cloud, and Condé marched to take post at Charenton, when, his rival pressing him closely, as he defiled round the walls of Paris, the prince was obliged to throw himself into the faubourg St. Antoine, behind the entrenchments formerly raised for their defence by the inhabitants.

_Battle of St. Antoine (July 2nd, 1652)_

The gate of Paris called St. Antoine was then immediately under the Bastille, the cannon of which swept the three roads diverging from it. Condé, denied entrance into the city, was still secure from attack on this side; and, posted in the central position of the gate St. Antoine, he determined to make head against the royalists, who approached to attack him by the three roads. Mazarin and Louis XIV were on the heights, now covered with the cemetery of Père Lachaise, spectators of the ensuing action, the young monarch being most anxious to witness the destruction of this rebellious prince.

The triple attack commenced: that on the prince’s left, commanded by three sworn and personal enemies to him, was defeated by his valour, the chiefs all perishing. The hero then rushed to defend the central street: he met Turenne in person, and there the conflict was more doubtful. “Did you see Condé during the action?” asked someone of Turenne when the affair was over. “I must have seen a dozen Condés,” was the reply: “he multiplied himself.” On the right the action was most bloody: the nobles of the prince’s party were almost all slain or wounded there, amongst the rest La Rochefoucauld, who, struck on the head, was carried off by his wounded son. Turenne was the most powerful; and no chance appeared of Condé’s saving himself and the relics of his army, when the gate of St. Antoine unexpectedly opened to receive him, the cannon of the Bastille at the same time sending their fire up the three attacked streets, and thus effectually checking the progress of the royalists.

This well-timed succour came from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of the duke of Orleans, whose sympathy for the heroic Condé, now in distress, was aided by the clamours of the populace, enraged at beholding a rash and imprudent but still generous prince sacrificed to the detested Mazarin. She wrung from the municipal officers the orders for opening the gates; herself directed the firing of the guns of the Bastille; nay, her hand is said to have applied the match. Mademoiselle had aspired to the hand of Condé, to that of the king, and might hope at least to espouse a sovereign prince. But Mazarin observed, on seeing the fire of the Bastille, and knowing who commanded it, “That shot has killed the husband of Mademoiselle.”[g]

SECOND EXILE OF MAZARIN

After this bloody and useless combat of St. Antoine the king could not return to Paris; and the prince did not remain there long. Popular feeling and the murder of several citizens, for which he was believed to be responsible, made him odious to the people. [He fled from Paris and joined the Spanish army, October, 1652.] However, he still had his faction in the parliament. This body, now intimidated by a wandering court, and driven after a fashion from the capital to Pontoise, pressed by the cabals of the duke of Orleans and the prince, declared, by a decree, the duke of Orleans lieutenant-general of the realm, although the king was an adult. The two parliaments of Paris and Pontoise, contesting the authority one with the other and issuing contradictory decrees, agreed in demanding the expulsion of Mazarin--so much did the hatred of this minister seem the essential duty of every Frenchman. The court saw itself obliged once more to sacrifice Mazarin whom everyone believed the author of the troubles, but who was but their pretext. For a second time he left the country, and to increase his shame the king must needs make a public declaration dismissing his minister, the while praising his services and deploring his exile.

Charles I, king of England, who had just lost his head on the scaffold, had in the beginning of his troubles abandoned the blood of Strafford, his friend, to his parliament. Louis XIV on the contrary became the peaceful master of his realm by permitting his minister’s exile. Thus the same weakness bore different results. The king of England, in abandoning his favourite, emboldened a people that breathed war and hated kings; and Louis XIV, or rather the queen-mother, by dismissing the cardinal, removed all pretext for revolt from a people tired of war and who loved royalty.

While the state was thus torn at home it had been attacked and weakened abroad; all the benefits of the battles of Rocroi, Lens, and Nördlingen were lost; the important place of Dunkirk was retaken by the Spaniards (September, 1652); they drove the French from Barcelona, they retook Casale in Italy (October, 1652).

Scarcely had the cardinal left for Bouillon, place of his new retreat, when the citizens of Paris, of their own accord, sent to the king and asked him to return to his capital. Louis entered Paris October 21st, 1652, and all was so peaceful that it would have been difficult to imagine that a few days before all was in confusion. Gaston of Orleans, unfortunate in his undertakings, which he never knew how to carry out, was relegated to Blois, where he passed the rest of his life in repentance; and he was the second son of Henry the Great to die without much glory. Cardinal de Retz, as imprudent as he was audacious, was arrested in the Louvre, and after having been sent from prison to prison long led a wandering life which he finished in retreat, where he acquired virtues which his great courage had not known in the agitations of his fortune.

Several councillors who had most abused their ministry paid for their actions with exile; the others withdrew into the limits of the magistracy and others attached themselves the closer to their duties with an annual gratuity of five hundred crowns which Fouquet, attorney-general and superintendent of the finances, gave them surreptitiously. The prince of Condé meanwhile, abandoned in France by nearly all his partisans, and badly assisted by the Spaniards, continued a disastrous war on the frontiers of Champagne. There still remained factions in Bordeaux, but they were soon pacified.[i]

[Sidenote: [1652-1653 A.D.]]

Thus ended the Fronde. Voltaire dismisses it in a few pages, satisfied with recording its _bon mots_. He seems to have looked upon this civil war as merely a pastime, entered into by a few froward youths and their mistresses. He did not see in it the serious, the sanguinary and unhappy struggle of a nation for its liberty. Even later writers, more profound than Voltaire, have designated the Fronde as “the last campaign of the noblesse.” It was indeed so. But the noblesse formed not the prominent body. It was the parliament, the magistracy, that put itself forward to represent the commons, of which they claimed and established the privileges for themselves. This was, no doubt, an audacious and hopeless enterprise. The states-general, the ancient representative assembly of the nation, was the form to which they should have rallied. But the extravagance of the English parliament deterred them; and they fixed upon their own body, as a less democratic and dangerous assembly, to participate in legislative power. The scheme was new: it was conceived with boldness, and supported with courage; and if the legists failed in arriving at settled liberty by its means, they may plead that representative assemblies have frequently failed in the same endeavour.[g]

MAZARIN AGAIN IN POWER (1653 A.D.)

The calm in the kingdom was the result of Cardinal Mazarin’s banishment; however, scarcely had he been driven away by the general cry of the French people and the king’s decree, when the king made him come back. He was astonished to see himself re-enter Paris all powerful. Louis XIV received him like a father and the people like a master. He held a great reception at the Hôtel-de-Ville amid the acclamations of the citizens; he threw money to the populace, but it is said that in his joy for so happy a change he showed his scorn for the inconstancy or rather the folly of the Parisians. The officers of parliament, after having placed a price on his head like a public robber, sued, almost all of them, for the honour of asking his protection; and this same parliament a short time after condemned by contumacy the prince of Condé to lose his life. They saw the cardinal, who urged this condemnation of Condé, marry to the prince of Conti his brother, one of his own nieces--a proof that the power of the minister was going to be boundless.

The king reunited the parliaments of Paris and of Pontoise; he forbade the assembling of the chambers. Parliament wished to remonstrate, one councillor was sent to prison; several others were exiled: parliament kept quiet; the change had already come.[i]

[Sidenote: [1653-1655 A.D.]]

The events of Louis XIV’s youth were such as to inspire him not only with high ideas of his kingly rights, but to prove to him the necessity of absolute power in the monarch.[105] In the great English rebellion, and in the Fronde, he had seen freedom under its most hideous aspect, and followed by the vainest of results. We can scarcely then blame him personally for his despotic propensities, which, moreover, his manly and ambitious character tended to increase. The young king and his brother Philip, then called the duke of Anjou, were educated in the privacy of the palace. The nieces of the cardinal were their playmates; and Louis formed successive attachments for two of these young ladies, especially for Maria Mancini, afterwards the wife of the constable Colonna. So intimate was the connection betwixt Mazarin and Anne of Austria that many were persuaded of their marriage.[106] Certainly her attachment to him was personal and tender. Louis XIV always preserved for the cardinal a sort of filial reverence: he may be said to have learned in the school of implicit obedience how to be himself despotic.

At intervals, however, the imperious temper of the young monarch burst forth, and betrayed itself. In 1655, the parliament, after registering certain fiscal edicts, thought proper to re-examine them, to complain, and show symptoms of their ancient independence. Louis was at Vincennes, engaged in the chase, when he heard of their conduct. Instantly, without consulting the cardinal, or even tarrying to change his dress, the young monarch galloped to Paris, entered the Palais de Justice and the Hall of Parliament in his hunting habit, booted, and with whip in hand. “Gentlemen,” said Louis to the astonished legists, “everyone is acquainted with the ill consequences of your former assemblies. Their recurrence must be prevented. I command you instantly to cease busying yourself with my edicts. And you, Mr. President, I forbid either to call or suffer such assemblies.” This bold assertion of the royal will from the mouth of a stripling proved sufficient to crush the reviving spirit of the magistracy. It was silent, and obeyed.[g]

WAR WITH SPAIN CONTINUES

Condé, who had become general in the Spanish armies, was unable to revive what he had himself weakened at Rocroi and Lens. He was fighting with raw troops against the veteran French regiments that had learned to conquer under him, and that were now commanded by Turenne. The fate of Turenne and of Condé was to be uniformly victorious when they were fighting together at the head of the French and to be defeated when they were commanding the Spanish.

Turenne had with difficulty saved the wreck of the Spanish army at Rethel when, instead of a general of the king of France, he had been made the lieutenant of a Spanish general; the prince of Condé had the same fate before Arras (August 25th, 1654). He and the archduke besieging this city, Turenne attacked them in their camp and forced their lines; the troops of the archduke were put to flight; Condé, with two regiments of French and Lorrainers, sustained alone the attack of Turenne’s army; and, while the archduke was in flight, he defeated Marshal d’Hocquincourt, repulsed Marshal de la Ferté, and retired victorious, covering the retreat of the defeated Spaniards.

The relief of Arras, the forcing of the lines, and the rout of the archduke covered Turenne with glory; and it is to be observed that in the letter concerning this victory written in the name of the king to the parliament the success of the entire campaign is ascribed to Cardinal Mazarin and that Turenne’s name is not even mentioned. The cardinal had been in fact a few leagues from Arras with the king. He had even been in the camp at the siege of Stenay, which Turenne had taken before relieving Arras. Councils of war had been held in the presence of the cardinal. On this basis he ascribed to himself the honour of the events; and this vanity brought upon him a ridicule that all the authority of his ministry could not suppress. The king was not present at the battle of Arras. He had gone into the trenches at the siege of Stenay, but Cardinal Mazarin was unwilling that he should further expose his person, upon which the tranquillity of the state and the power of the minister seemed to depend.

Thus on the one side, Mazarin, absolute master of France and of the young king, and on the other, Don Luis de Haro, who governed Spain and Philip IV, continued in the name of their masters to carry on the war, but with little vigour.

These two men vied with each other in directing their policies towards forming an alliance with Cromwell, the English Protector, who for some time enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing himself courted by the two most powerful kingdoms of Christendom. The Spanish minister offered to help him take Calais; Mazarin proposed to besiege Dunkirk and restore that city to him. Cromwell had to choose between the key of France and that of Flanders. He was also much solicited by Condé, but he did not wish to negotiate with a prince who had nothing left but his name and who was without a party in France and without power in Spain.

ALLIANCE WITH CROMWELL (1655 A.D.); WAR IN FLANDERS (1656-1658 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1655-1657 A.D.]]

In May, 1655, the Protector decided in favour of France, but without making any special treaty or a division of conquests in advance. He wished to shed lustre on his usurpation by greater enterprises. His design was to wrest Mexico from the Spaniards, but the latter were warned in time. Cromwell’s admirals, however, took Jamaica from them. It was not until after the Jamaican expedition that Cromwell signed his treaty with the king of France, but without making any mention of Dunkirk. The Protector treated as equal with equal; he forced the king to give him the title of brother in his letters. In the copy of the treaty that remained in England his secretary signed before the French ambassador; but he negotiated really as a superior by forcing the king to drive out of his dominions Charles II and the duke of York, the grandsons of Henry IV, to whom France owed an asylum. A greater sacrifice of honour to fortune could not have been made.

While Mazarin was making this treaty Charles II asked for one of his nieces in marriage. The bad condition of his affairs that drove the prince to this step also brought upon him a refusal. It has even been suspected that the cardinal wished to marry to the son of Cromwell the niece whom he refused to the king of England. This much is certain--that when he afterwards saw the way to the throne more open to Charles II he wished to renew this marriage; but was refused in his turn.

The war continued in Flanders with varying success. Turenne, having besieged Valenciennes along with Marshal de la Ferté, suffered the same kind of reverse that Condé had sustained at Arras. The prince, assisted this time by Don John of Austria, who was more worthy to fight at his side than the archduke had been, forced La Ferté’s lines, took him prisoner, and relieved Valenciennes (July 17th, 1656). Turenne did what Condé had done in a similar rout. He saved the defeated army and opposed the enemy everywhere; a little later he even besieged and took the little town of La Capelle (September 27th). This was perhaps the first time that a defeated army had dared to make a siege.

This famous march of Turenne, which was followed by the taking of La Capelle, was eclipsed by an even finer march of the prince of Condé. Turenne had laid siege to Cambray when Condé, at the head of two thousand cavalry, forced a passage through the besieging army, and having driven back all who tried to stop him threw himself into the town (May 31st, 1657). The citizens received their deliverer on bended knees. Thus these two men, opposed to each other, exhibited the resources of their genius. We admire them in their retreats as well as in their victories, in their good conduct and even in their faults, which they were always able to retrieve. Their talents alternately arrested the progress of each monarchy; but the financial disorder in Spain and in France was a still greater obstacle to their success.

[Sidenote: [1657-1658 A.D.]]

The alliance with Cromwell finally gave France a more marked superiority. On the one hand, Admiral Blake was about to burn the Spanish galleons and cause the loss of the sole treasure with which the war could be maintained. On the other hand, twenty English vessels had just blockaded the port of Dunkirk and six thousand veterans of the English Revolution reinforced Turenne’s army. Then Dunkirk, the most important place in Flanders, was besieged by sea and land. Condé and Don John of Austria, having united all their forces, came forward to relieve it. The eyes of Europe were upon this event. Cardinal Mazarin brought Louis XIV near the scene of war without allowing him to get to it, although he was nearly twenty years old. The prince stopped at Calais, and hither Cromwell sent to him a pompous embassy, at the head of which was his son-in-law, Lord Falconberg. The king sent to him the duke de Créqui, and Mancini, duke de Nevers, a nephew of the cardinal, followed by two hundred noblemen. Mancini presented the Protector a remarkable letter from Cardinal Mazarin in which he said that he was sorry not to be able to pay him in person the respect due to the greatest man in the world.

Meanwhile the prince-marshal Turenne attacked the Spanish army, or rather the army of Flanders, near the Dunes. The latter was commanded by Don John of Austria, son of Philip IV and an actress, who two years later became the brother-in-law of Louis XIV. The prince of Condé was with this army but not in command; hence it was not difficult for Turenne to gain the victory (June 14th, 1658). The six thousand English soldiers contributed to the victory, which was complete.

The genius of the Great Condé was of no avail against the best troops of France and England. The Spanish army was destroyed. Dunkirk surrendered soon afterwards (June 23rd). The king came up with his minister in order to see the garrison pass out. The cardinal did not allow Louis XIV to appear either as warrior or as king. He had no money to distribute to the soldiers, and was poorly attended. When he was with the army he dined with Mazarin or with Marshal Turenne. This neglect of royal dignity was not in Louis XIV the effect of contempt for pomp, but of the confusion in his affairs and of the pains the cardinal took to unite splendour and authority in himself. Louis entered Dunkirk only to turn it over to Cromwell’s ambassador, Lord Lockhart. Mazarin tried whether by finesse he could not evade the treaty and not give up the place; but Lockhart threatened, and English firmness got the better of Italian subtlety.

Several persons have asserted that the cardinal, who had attributed to himself the victory of Arras, tried to induce Turenne to yield to him again the honour of the battle of Dunes. Du Bec-Crépin, count de Moret, it is said, came on behalf of the minister and proposed to the general to write a letter in which it would appear that the cardinal had himself arranged the entire plan of operation. Turenne received these hints with contempt and would not make a statement that would have brought disgrace upon a general of the army and ridicule upon a man of the church. Mazarin, who had been so foolish, now had the misfortune of remaining on ill terms with Turenne until his death.

[Sidenote: [1658-1659 A.D.]]

In the midst of this first triumph the king fell ill at Calais and for several days was near death. Immediately all the courtiers turned towards his brother, Monsieur. Mazarin lavished deference and flattery upon Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, the former tutor of this young prince, and upon count de Guiche, his favourite. A cabal was formed in Paris that was bold enough to write to Calais against the cardinal. He made preparations to leave the kingdom and to conceal his immense riches. An empiric of Abbeville cured the king with emetic wine that the court physicians called poison. This good man seated himself upon the king’s bed and said, “This is a very sick boy, but he is not going to die.” When the king became convalescent the cardinal banished all who had intrigued against him.