Fronde

[F.]
(F. Hist.) A political party in France, during the minority of Louis XIV., who opposed the government, and made war upon the court party.

The civil wars that divided France from 1648 to 1653 are known as the Fronde (from the French for 'sling' or 'slingshot'). They erupted when Anne of Austria (1601–1666) was governing the kingdom as regent for her minor son, Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715). Although the various movements that formed the Fronde lacked clear unity, they had in common a defiance of the government of a foreign queen—Anne was Spanish by birth—and her principal minister, the Italian Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661). The Fronde was also a last attempt by some of France's leading political actors to bend the absolute rule established over their realm by previous monarchs.

The Fronde began, as did many revolts in the early modern period, for fiscal reasons. Louis XIII's death in May 1643 left France in a precarious financial situation. Since 1635 the kingdom had been involved in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), in which its principal enemy was Spain. This translated into the doubling of expenditures between 1630 and 1640, chiefly because of the exigencies of warfare, which, by the early 1640s, was consuming about 70 percent of revenue. To meet the military needs, Louis XIII and his principal minister, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), had borrowed money on the national and international money markets and dramatically increased taxes. The regent showed no intention whatsoever of adopting a different policy. Not only did her government continue to collect the usual direct impositions from the peasantry, it targeted some privileged groups by creating new indirect taxes. Unfortunately, the kingdom's financial apparatus was not able to raise the money needed by the government, which had to adopt exceptional measures in order to continue functioning. Many of the realm's future revenues were mortgaged far in advance: to give one example, in 1646 the receiver general of Poitou was asked by the king's council to forward 962,850 livres from the receipts of 1651! Moreover, the political situation after the deaths of both Louis XIII and Richelieu made governing the kingdom more difficult. First, the infant Louis XIV was not yet able to establish personal ties with members of the aristocracy, which were an essential part of the personal nature of power in France. Second, the patronage network constructed by Richelieu, in which the provincial governors played an essential role, simply disappeared after his passing. Third, many provincial institutions hoped that the centralization of power orchestrated by the late king and his predecessors would come to a halt. In short, the government had to be reconstructed in the middle of a war, at a time when the population was exhausted by the fiscal demands of the crown. And two foreigners, one of them a Spanish woman and the other an Italian ecclesiastic, inherited this enormous task.

Between 1643 and 1648, the situation in France worsened slowly but surely. In the provinces, local officers were fighting representatives of the central government—the intendants—for power. Nobles who asked for more personal benefits had to be silenced in 1643 by the arrest of their leader, the duke of Beaufort. Municipal revolts broke out over fiscal demands, and peasants took arms regularly to protest against taxes. Amid this chaos Paris was spared any discontent for several years. Anne had managed to gain the support of the principal institutions of the capital, especially the four sovereign courts, by adopting edicts in favor of their members. Everything changed in January 1648 when the regency held a lit de justice in front of the Parlement of Paris in an effort to force the adoption of new fiscal devices. The Parisian parlementaires thought of themselves as the people's representatives and their protectors from a—sometimes—arbitrary royal power. They rejected the fiscal edicts, arguing that the population was simply not able to produce the effort demanded by the government. In doing so, they also refused to adopt some new taxes that targeted them specifically.

The magistrates did not do anything revolutionary. In early modern France, everybody expected to see the parlement resist any new fiscal innovation more or less strongly in the name of the people. The magistrates never dreamed of establishing a limited monarchy instead of an absolute one, and they had no desire to change the way France had been governed for centuries. As such, it seems exaggerated to speak, as some historians have, of a revolutionary attempt or climate. But in 1648 the Parisians noticed and appreciated the magistrates' opposition to a new tariff on goods entering the capital. When the parlementaires voiced their opposition to the government's policies more loudly, they were able to count on the support of the population. In mid-May, the four Parisian courts established what became known as the Chambre Saint-Louis. The regent's opposition did not prevent them from writing twenty-seven articles to be submitted to the king, aimed at controlling Anne's regency, particularly her financial administration. The government had no other choice but to temporize, negotiate, and agree to some of these measures. But the pill was impossible to swallow for the queen and Mazarin, who waited for an occasion to humble the magistrates. It came in late August when Louis II de Bourbon, the prince of Condé, won a decisive battle at Lens over the Spaniards.

During the Te Deum celebrated in honor of this victory, some of the leaders of the parliamentary movement were arrested. When the crowd learned that Pierre Broussel, a senior judge respected for his honesty, was in jail, some 1,200 barricades were erected throughout the capital during the night of 26–27 August. The magistrates could not control the movement they had helped to nurture. Sent by Anne to pacify the city, the chancellor of the realm, Louis Séguier, narrowly escaped death at the hands of the populace. The parlementaires then asked the queen to free Broussel. When their delegation came back empty-handed, it had to face the Parisians' anger as well and was forced to go back to the Louvre and plead with the regent. Shaken by the people's reaction, the magistrates engaged in negotiations with the regent that led to an accord in which most of the parlementaires' grievances were met. The peace did not last long. On 5 January 1649, the royal family and Mazarin fled the capital. Troops led by Condé besieged Paris. Unexpectedly, some grandees sided with the Parisians. The peace of Rueil (March 1649) restored the situation to the status of October 1648, and those who had joined the revolt received a full pardon.

If the peace of Rueil settled the Parisian scene for some months, it did nothing to pacify the kingdom as a whole. In many provinces the situation was completely chaotic. For instance, in Provence a provincial civil war erupted between the parlement and the governor, the count d'Alais. Troops were raised, and murders were committed. It all ended with the arrest by the parlement's troops of d'Alais, the intendant and the commander of the royal Mediterranean Navy. In other parts of the kingdom the climate was not as explosive, but tensions were growing rapidly, fueled by the quarrels that were plaguing the king's council. Condé believed that he had saved the regent when his troops besieged Paris in the first months of 1649, and he expected to receive the fruits of his actions. His clients were also asking for more benefits. He started to threaten the authority of the regency by attacking Mazarin's hold on power more and more loudly. But his attitude did not serve him well. Not only did it isolate him at first from the other members of the king's council, it also led to his arrest in January 1650.

The Parisian events of 1648 were known as the Fronde of the parlement. The Fronde of the princes started with the jailing of Condé, his brother, the prince of Conti, and his brother-in-law, the duke of Longueville. The arrested nobles had many clients in the provinces. This was particularly true in Condé's governorship of Burgundy, where, according to the king's attorney general at the Parlement of Burgundy, every important officer and ecclesiastic was a client of the Condé family. Not surprisingly, a revolt started there as soon as the news of the prince's arrest reached Dijon. In Normandy it was Condé's sister, the duchess of Longueville, who raised the locality in defense of her brother. In other parts of France, in Guyenne for example, local feuds were incorporated into national ones. The governor there, the duke d'Epernon, was a loyal client of Mazarin. But as no one in his province loved him, he was quickly expelled from the region when the princely Fronde broke out. The patronage network of the aristocrats was instrumental in the spreading of the revolt.

Rebellions were quite frequent in seventeenth-century France. Nobles took arms in the name of their "right to revolt," arguing that it was their duty to protect the population against a government that gave the impression of becoming more and more authoritarian. Never was the king personally attacked. Their fury was directed against his ministers, who were accused of lying to him and of hiding from him his people's true situation. Many aristocrats who took part in the Fronde wrote their memoirs—which were not published until long after the events they describe—in which they reflected on their actions. The Cardinal de Retz, for instance, tried to explain that the princely frondeurs were attempting to restore the kingdom to its "authentic" sociocultural conditions after decades of ministerial absolutism. But the consequences of a rebellion could be dramatic. Louis XIII did not hesitate to send to the scaffold important members of the aristocracy who had plotted against Richelieu. The princely frondeurs therefore had to convince the population of the corrupt nature of Cardinal Mazarin. Thousands of pamphlets were written in which he was depicted as the sole source of France's misery. But Mazarin never lost Anne of Austria's confidence, and the young Louis XIV always trusted his mother. The king was the most powerful weapon in the government's arsenal. Louis was sent to many provinces between 1650 and 1652: Normandy, Champagne, Burgundy, Guyenne. Garrisons surrendered, and towns opened their gates. The effect of the king's presence in the provinces can be measured by what happened in Bordeaux. This city was governed by a coalition formed by the enemies of d'Epernon and his patron Mazarin, but this group collapsed when the royal army reached the region. The officers of the parlement could not envisage the consequences of refusing the king's entry into one of his towns. The common people were more willing to stay firmly behind the party of the princes, but the city finally opened its gate to the king on 1 October.

Bordeaux did distinguish itself the next summer when a group of merchants, lawyers, petty judges, and artisans took control of the city in the name of Condé. Their assembly was called the Ormée, after the elm grove in which it held its first meeting. To many, and especially to Mazarin, these radicals were republicans influenced by the recent events that had shaken England. While it is true that some pamphlets produced in Bordeaux presented vague democratic and republican sentiments, the Ormée's principal demand, voiced in its program (Les articles de l'union de l'Ormée en la ville de Bordeaux), was that its members receive a deliberative voice in the city's general assemblies. Once again, we are far from a revolutionary attempt. But the movement went too far for many and when the royal army came to besiege the city, many of its inhabitants helped its liberators. The leaders of the Ormée were executed. For having openly resisted the king, Bordeaux lost several of its privileges, and its parlement was sent into exile at Agen for many years.

The divisions that we have seen in Bordeaux plagued the Fronde all over France, even when it seemed that the movement was winning. In February 1651, pressed from all sides, Mazarin fled Paris for Germany. The frondeurs' many chiefs started to fight one another to see who would be acting as principal minister. Condé thought naturally that the place was his. But others, such as the coadjutor archbishop of Paris, the future Cardinal de Retz, had ambitions. Condé, whose character had not changed, slowly but surely lost many of his supporters. The proclamation of Louis XIV's majority on 5 September 1651 dramatically altered the political scene. The ending of the regency made the complaints against Anne of Austria superfluous, and Mazarin had been in self-imposed exile since earlier that year. Condé fled Paris for Bordeaux. Mazarin returned to France three months later and was reinstated in his former post as principal minister. This turn of events did not satisfy the Parlement of Paris and Cardinal Retz, who continued to plot against Mazarin. Moreover, it led to an alliance between the parlementary and princely Frondes.

The first half of 1652 was dramatic for the kingdom. The civil war caused extensive physical destruction and economic distress. The loathing of Mazarin, who, according to the pamphlets, had concentrated immense political power in his own hands, conducted a costly foreign policy that failed to secure peace with Spain, and amassed a fortune, was cementing the Fronde. But other elements were still dividing the frondeurs, the most important being the military and economic supports given to their party by the Spaniards. To resist the king or his minister was more and more perceived as fighting against France. There was only one way to end the crisis, and it was to send Mazarin out the kingdom again, which he reluctantly agreed to in August 1652. Now that the evil minister was gone, the rebels had no more credible reason to remain in arms. It took only a few weeks for the Fronde to collapse. Members of the parlement sought reconciliation with the king, Condé fled the country, and the princely Fronde disintegrated. Its members understood that they had to once again identify their own interests with those of the crown. Louis XIV made his entry into Paris on 21 October 1652. On 22 October, he issued a general amnesty in which he pardoned all but the most notorious frondeurs: Beaufort, Retz, La Rochefoucauld, Condé, and some other leading figures were excluded though the majority of them later received royal pardons. Condé himself, deprived in November 1652 of his governorships and other offices and proclaimed guilty of lèse-majesté in March 1654 by the Parlement of Paris, was allowed to reenter France after the Peace of the Pyrenees was signed with Spain in 1659.

Louis XIV's reign was deeply marked by the events that shook his youth. A conscious policy of reconciliation and stabilization had to be undertaken after 1652. As the religious and political practices of the time asked him to do, the king took the opportunity to humiliate publicly some of his former enemies in order to impress on them his greatness and his authority. Many aristocrats were not invited to his coronation, which took place on 7 June 1654, and Paris was deprived of the accustomed royal entry that followed every coronation; Louis did not formally enter the city until his wedding celebration in 1660. But the Sun King was to develop policies that were to show that the nobles, the parlement, and even the capital city were still major players on the political scene. Louis was able to adopt such policies, for it was now clear that the crown was the only possible focus for national unity in France.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Retz, Jean François Paul de Gondi de. Memoirs. 2 vols. London and New York, 1917.

Secondary Sources

Beik, William. Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1997.

Jouhaud, Christian. Mazarinades: La Fronde des mots. Paris, 1985.

Kleinman, Ruth. Anne of Austria, Queen of France. Columbus, Ohio, 1985.

Moote, A. Lloyd. The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652. Princeton, 1972.

Ranum, Orest A. The Fronde: A French Revolution, 1648–1652. New York, 1993.

——. Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay. Rev. and exp. ed. University Park, Pa., 2003.

Treasure, Geoffrey. Mazarin: The Crisis of Absolutism in France. London and New York, 1995.

—MICHEL DE WAELE

For other uses, see Fronde (disambiguation).

The Fronde (1648–1653) was a civil war in France, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The word fronde means sling, which Parisian mobs used to smash the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin.

The Fronde was divided into two campaigns, the Fronde of the parlements and the Fronde of the nobles. The timing of the outbreak of the Fronde des parlements, directly after the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War, was significant. The nucleus of armed bands under aristocratic leaders, which would soon terrorize parts of France, had been hardened in a generation of war in Germany, where the traditional latitude in decisions, and autonomy in troop movements and operations, characteristic of seventeenth-century warfare were still prevalent. Louis XIV, with the experience of the Fronde still fresh, would reorganize French fighting forces under a stricter hierarchy, whose leaders were ultimately made and unmade by the King. Thus the Fronde finally resulted in the disempowerment of the territorial aristocracy and the emergence of absolute monarchy.

Jules Cardinal Mazarin, French diplomat and statesman, by Pierre-Louis Bouchart.

Contents 1 Origins 2 The First Fronde, the Fronde Parlementaire (1648–1649) 3 The Second Fronde, the Fronde des nobles (1650–1653) 3.1 January 1650–December 1651 3.2 December 1651–February 1653 4 The Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659) 5 Publications 6 References 6.1 Sources

Origins

The original goal of the insurrection was not revolutionary; its aim was to protect the ancient liberties from encroachments by the royal power, to defend the established right of the parlements, which were courts of appeals rather than legislative bodies like the English parliaments, and especially the right of the Parlement of Paris to limit the king's power by refusing to register decrees that ran counter to custom. The liberties under attack were feudal, not of individuals, but of chartered towns, the rights of corporations or the prerogatives accorded to offices, the rights of provincial parlements to defend custom against legal encroachment, in the legal patchwork of local interests and provincial identities that was France. The Fronde provided additional incentive in France for the establishment of absolutism, since the disorders eventually discredited the older, feudal concept of liberty in France.

The pressure to erode these liberties came from the Crown's need to recoup expenditures in the recent wars, by extending and increasing taxation. The immediate cause for resistance was the imposition of added taxes amongst various grievances. The costs of the Thirty Years War constrained Mazarin's government to raise funds by traditional means, the impôts, the taille, and the occasional aides. The nobility refused to be so taxed, based on their old liberties, or privileges, and the brunt fell upon the bourgeoisie.

The movement soon degenerated into factions, some of which were attempting to overthrow Mazarin and reverse the policies of Cardinal de Richelieu that took power from the great territorial nobles, among whom were leaders of the Fronde, to concentrate it in the royal prerogative. When Louis XIV became king in 1643, he was only a child, and though Richelieu had died the year before, his policies continued to dictate French policy, under his successor Jules Cardinal Mazarin. It is probable that Louis's later insistence on absolutist rule and depriving the nobility of actual power was a result of these events in his childhood. The term frondeur was later used to refer to anyone who suggested that the power of the king should be limited, and has now passed into conservative French usage to refer to anyone who will show insubordination or engage in criticism of the powers in place.

Episode of the Fronde at the Faubourg Saint-Antoine by the Walls of the Bastille

The First Fronde, the Fronde Parlementaire (1648–1649)

In May 1648 a tax levied on judicial officers of the Parlement of Paris was met by that body not merely with a refusal to pay, but with a condemnation of earlier financial edicts, and a demand for the acceptance of a scheme of constitutional reforms framed by a united committee of the parlement (the Chambre Saint-Louis), composed of members of all the sovereign courts of Paris.

The military record of the first Fronde (the Fronde Parlementaire) is almost blank. In August 1648, strengthened by the news of the Prince of Condé's victory at Lens, Mazarin suddenly arrested the leaders of the parlement, whereupon Paris broke into insurrection and barricaded the streets. The noble faction demanded the calling of an États-généraux, which had not been convoked since 1615. The nobles were certain that in an États-général they could continue to control the bourgeois element as they had in the past. The royal faction, having no army at its immediate disposal, had to release the prisoners and to promise reforms, and fled from Paris on the night of October 22. But the signing of the Peace of Westphalia set free Condé's army, and by January 1649 Paris was under siege. The peace of Rueil was signed in March, after little blood had been shed. The Parisians, though still and always anti-cardinalist, refused to ask for Spanish aid, as proposed by their princely and noble adherents, and having no prospect of military success without such aid, the noble party submitted and received concessions.

The Second Fronde, the Fronde des nobles (1650–1653)

Thenceforward the Fronde becomes a story of sordid intrigues and half-hearted warfare, losing all trace of its first constitutional phase in a scramble for power and the control of patronage.

The leaders were discontented princes and nobles: Gaston of Orleans (the king's uncle); the great Louis II, Prince de Condé and his brother Armand, Prince of Conti; Frédéric, the Duke of Bouillon, and his brother Henri, Viscount of Turenne. To these must be added Gaston's daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La grande Mademoiselle); Condé's sister, Madame de Longueville; Madame de Chevreuse; and the astute intriguer Paul de Gondi, the future Cardinal de Retz. The military operations fell into the hands of war-experienced mercenaries, led by two great, and many lesser, generals.

January 1650–December 1651

The peace of Rueil lasted until the end of 1649. The princes, received at court once more, renewed their intrigues against Mazarin. On January 14, 1650, Cardinal Mazarin, having come to an understanding with Monsieur Gondi and Madame de Chevreuse, suddenly arrested Condé, Conti, and Longueville. The war which followed this coup is called the "Princes' Fronde". This time it was Turenne, before and afterwards the most loyal soldier of his day, who headed the armed rebellion. Listening to the promptings of Madame de Longueville, he resolved to rescue her brother Condé, his old comrade of Freiburg and the Nördlingen.

It was with Spanish assistance that he hoped to do so; and a powerful Spanish army assembled in Artois under the archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands. But the peasants of the countryside rose against the invaders; the royal army in Champagne was in the capable hands of Caesar de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, who counted fifty-two years of age and thirty-six of war experience; and the little fortress of Guise successfully resisted the archduke's attack.

However, Mazarin at this point drew upon Plessis-Praslin's army for reinforcements to be sent to subdue the rebellion in the south, and the royal general had to retire. Then Archduke Leopold Wilhelm decided that he had spent enough of the king of Spain's money and men in the French quarrel. His regular army withdrew into winter quarters, and left Turenne to deliver the princes with a motley host of Frondeurs and Lorrainers. Plessis-Praslin by force and bribery secured the surrender of Rethel on December 13, 1650, and Turenne, who had advanced to relieve the place, fell back hurriedly. But he was a terrible opponent, and Plessis-Praslin and Mazarin himself, who accompanied the army, had many misgivings as to the result of a lost battle. The marshal chose nevertheless to force Turenne to a decision, and the Battle of Blanc-Champ (near Somme-Py) or Rethel was the consequence.

Both sides were at a standstill in strong positions, Plessis-Praslin doubtful of the trustworthiness of his cavalry, Turenne too weak to attack, when a dispute for precedence arose between the Gardes Françaises and the Picardie regiment. The royal infantry had to be rearranged in order of regimental seniority, and Turenne, seeing and desiring to profit by the attendant disorder, came out of his stronghold and attacked with the greatest vigor. The battle (December 15, 1650) was severe and for a time doubtful, but Turenne's Frondeurs gave way in the end, and his army, as an army, ceased to exist. Turenne himself, undeceived as to the part he was playing in the drama, asked and received the young king's pardon, and meantime the court, with the maison du roi and other loyal troops, had subdued the minor risings without difficulty (March–April 1651).

Condé, Conti, and Longueville were released, and by April 1651 the rebellion had everywhere collapsed. Then followed a few months of hollow peace and the court returned to Paris. Mazarin, an object of hatred to all the princes, had already retired into exile. His absence left the field free for mutual jealousies, and for the remainder of the year anarchy reigned in France.

December 1651–February 1653

In December 1651 Cardinal Mazarin returned to France with a small army. The war began again, and this time Turenne and Condé were pitted against one another.

After this campaign the civil war ceased, but in the several other campaigns of the Franco-Spanish War that followed, the two great soldiers were opposed to one another, Turenne as the defender of France, Condé as a Spanish invader.

The début of the new Frondeurs took place in Guyenne (February–March 1652), while their Spanish ally, the archduke Leopold Wilhelm, captured various northern fortresses. On the Loire, where the centre of gravity was soon transferred, the Frondeurs were commanded by intriguers and quarrelsome lords, until Condé's arrival from Guyenne. His bold leadership made itself felt in the Bléneau (April 7, 1652), in which a portion of the royal army was destroyed; but fresh troops came up to oppose him. From the skillful dispositions made by his opponents, Condé felt the presence of Turenne and broke off the action. The royal army did likewise. Condé invited the commander of Turenne's rearguard to supper, chaffed him unmercifully for allowing the prince's men to surprise him in the morning, and by way of farewell remarked to his guest, "Quel dommage que de braves gens comme nous se coupent la gorge pour un faquin" ("It's too bad decent people like us are cutting our throats for a scoundrel")—an incident and a remark that displayed the feudal arrogance which ironically led to the iron-handed absolutism of Louis XIV.

After Bléneau, both armies marched to Paris to negotiate with the parlement, de Retz and Mlle de Montpensier, while the archduke took more fortresses in Flanders, and Charles, duke of Lorraine, with an army of plundering mercenaries, marched through Champagne to join Condé. As to the latter, Turenne manoeuvred past Condé and planted himself in front of the mercenaries, and their leader, not wishing to expend his men against the old French regiments, consented to depart with a money payment and the promise of two tiny Lorraine fortresses.

A few more maneuvers, and the royal army was able to hem in the Frondeurs in the Faubourg St. Antoine (July 2, 1652) with their backs to the closed gates of Paris. The royalists attacked all along the line and won a signal victory in spite of the knightly prowess of the prince and his great lords, but at the critical moment Gaston's daughter persuaded the Parisians to open the gates and to admit Condé's army. She herself turned the guns of the Bastille on the pursuers. An insurrectional government was organised in the capital and proclaimed Monsieur lieutenant-general of the realm. Mazarin, feeling that public opinion was solidly against him, left France again, and the bourgeois of Paris, quarrelling with the princes, permitted the king to enter the city on October 21, 1652. Mazarin returned unopposed in February 1653.

The Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659)

Main article: Franco-Spanish War (1635)

The Fronde as a civil war was now over. The whole country, wearied of anarchy and disgusted with the princes, came to look to the king's party as the party of order and settled government, and thus the Fronde prepared the way for the absolutism of Louis XIV. The general war continued in Flanders, Catalonia, and Italy wherever a Spanish and a French garrison were face to face, and Condé, with the wreck of his army, openly and definitely entered the service of the king of Spain. This "Spanish Fronde" was almost purely a military affair.

Louis XIV (1638–1715) by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1701

In 1653 France was so exhausted that neither invaders nor defenders were able to gather supplies to enable them to take the field till July. At one moment, near Péronne, Condé had Turenne at a serious disadvantage, but he could not galvanize the Spanish general Count Fuensaldana, who was more solicitous to preserve his master's soldiers than to establish Condé as mayor of the palace to the king of France, and the armies drew apart again without fighting. In 1654 the principal incident was the siege and relief of Arras. On the night of August 24–August 25 the lines of circumvallation drawn round that place by the prince were brilliantly stormed by Turenne's army, and Condé won equal credit for his safe withdrawal of the besieging corps under cover of a series of bold cavalry charges led by himself as usual, sword in hand.

In 1655 Turenne captured the fortresses of Landrecies, Condé and St Ghislain. In 1656 the prince of Condé avenged the defeat of Arras by storming Turenne's circumvallation around Valenciennes (July 16), but Turenne drew off his forces in good order. The campaign of 1657 was uneventful, and is only to be remembered because a body of 6,000 British infantry, sent by Cromwell in pursuance of his treaty of alliance with Mazarin, took part in it. The presence of the English contingent and its very definite purpose of making Dunkirk a new Calais, to be held by England forever, gave the next campaign a character of certainty and decision which was entirely wanting in the rest of the war.

Dunkirk was besieged promptly and in great force, and when Don Juan of Austria and Condé appeared with the relieving army from Fumes, Turenne advanced boldly to meet them. The Battle of the Dunes, fought on June 14, 1658, was the first real trial of strength since the battle of the Faubourg St Antoine. Successes on one wing were compromised by failure on the other, but in the end Condé drew off with heavy losses, the success of his own cavalry charges having entirely failed to make good the defeat of the Spanish right wing amongst the Dunes.

Here the "red-coats" made their first appearance on a continental battlefield, under the leadership of Sir W. Lockhart, Cromwell's ambassador at Paris, and astonished both armies by the stubborn fierceness of their assaults, for they were the products of the English Civil War, where passions ran higher and the determination to win rested on deeper foundations than in the deterioration of the feudal spirit in which they now figured after decades of war had sapped the main parties of all belief. Dunkirk fell, and was handed over to England, as promised, so flying the St George's Cross until Charles II sold it to the king of France in 1662.

A last desultory campaign followed in 1659—the twenty-fifth year of a conflict between France and Spain which had begun during the Thirty Years' War—and the peace of the Pyrenees was signed on November 5. On January 27, 1660 the prince asked and obtained at Aix-en-Provence the forgiveness of Louis XIV. The later careers of Turenne and Condé were as obedient subjects of their sovereign.

Publications

• Amable Guillaume Prosper Brugière, baron de Barante, Le Parlement de Paris et vie de M. Molé (Paris, 1859)
• James Breck Perkins, France under Richelieu and Mazarin (New York, 1888)
• Julia Pardoe, Louis XIV and the Court of France (1847; London, 1888)
• Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz
• George Stuart Gordon, The Fronde, (Oxford, 1905)
• Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin (Paris, 1878–1906)

References

Sources

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
• Richard Bonney, Society and Government in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661 1988 With 309 original documents

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