1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the "Fronde" 019879746X, 9780198797463

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1652

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1652 The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde DAVID PARROTT

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © David Parrott 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931642 ISBN 978–0–19–879746–3 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

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To Roger Clark Three decades of friendship

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Acknowledgements This book originates in the opportunity provided by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship generously granted to me by the Trustees and held between October 2013 and September 2016. The Fellowship gave me the opportunity to undertake an entirely new project investigating the 1650s in France, those neglected years between the end of the Fronde and the advent of Louis XIV’s personal rule in 1661. In the course of researching the larger project, I came to realize that it was impossible to understand the forces driving the rest of the decade without a better appreciation of the importance of 1652, the last, most serious, and most dramatic year of the revolt of the Fronde which had begun in 1648. Moreover, understanding the pivotal significance of 1652 required a much more extensive reconstruction and analysis of personalities, events, and circumstances than could viably be incorporated into what was already growing into a substantial study of the ensuing decade. I would like to note with equally sincere thanks the characteristic graciousness of the Leverhulme Trustees, who not only accepted this current proposal for an additional, initial monograph that was not part of the original project description, but were entirely positive and encouraging about the change of plan. I look forward to honouring their confidence in my academic judgement with my subsequent book, which will offer a full account of the ‘Forgotten Decade’. While my primary thanks are due to the Leverhulme Trust, I am no less aware that my research leave could only have been taken because of the support of the Faculty of History and the Warden and Fellows of New College, who allowed me to absent myself from normal duties for three years. Specifically, I would like to thank the then Faculty Research Development Officer, Aileen Mooney, for her patience and invaluable advice in my application and management of the Leverhulme Fellowship, and my colleagues at New College at that time, Ruth Harris and Christopher Tyerman, who strongly encouraged me to take the research leave. Thanks as well to Jan Machielsen and Aaron Graham who replaced me so conscientiously in my teaching and other activities at New College and in the Faculty over these years. Sincere gratitude is owed to a most generous benefactor of New College, Eugene Ludwig, whose long-standing support for the Humanities within the College, and whose interest and engagement with a succession of colleagues’ research projects over more than a decade, has been hugely valuable and most warmly appreciated by all of the beneficiaries of his Fund. In the case of the present book, I would like to thank the Ludwig Fund for defraying the costs of professional assistance in drafting the dozen maps which illustrate the volume. I have acquired numerous intellectual debts in the course of researching and writing this book. In Oxford, I thank Robin Briggs, both for so many stimulating

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discussions of French history over more than three decades and for his particular advice and encouragement in initiating this project, and my other Faculty colleague in early-modern French history, Giora Sternberg, who has patiently and helpfully responded to flurries of questions about precedence and ceremonial, obscure personalities, and courtly politics. Hamish Scott has, as ever, been a generous, gracious, and perceptive source of advice in numerous discussions of the project, while talking and teaching with Peter Wilson has greatly helped to keep the wider European context in perspective. I also owe a considerable debt to two Oxford doctoral students, James Inglis-Jones and Charles Gregory. James’ 1994 thesis on Condé in exile stimulated my long-term interest in the neglected 1650s, while Charles’ 2012 doctorate on noble conspiracies in the last years of Richelieu’s ministry offered a thought-provoking alternative to typically étatist accounts of the cardinal. I am also grateful to a large number of other doctoral students whose work and whose discussions over the years have contributed so much to my thinking and approaches to the current project, and for discussion, advice, and encouragement from many other Faculty colleagues, above all, my fellow tutors at New College, Alexander Morrison and Christopher Tyerman. Outside of Oxford, my thanks go to Guy Rowlands, who read my initial proposals for the current book, and who has been a constant source of support and wellinformed feedback, and to Joe Bergin, Jeremy Black, Rafe Blaufarb, William Doyle, Antonia Fraser, Aaron Graham, Mark Greengrass, Tom Hamilton, Philip Mansel, and Frank Tallett. On the Continent my thanks in particular for discussion, sociability, and encouragement from Rainer Babel, Lucien Bély, Olivier Chaline, Emilie Dosquet, Hervé Drévillon, Arnaud Guinier, Charles-Edouard Levillain, Andrea Pennini, Olivier Poncet, Jean-Louis Quantin, Blythe Alice Raviola, Mario Rizzo, John Rogister, and Rafael Torres Sánchez. I am most grateful for the suggestions and feedback offered by the anonymous Oxford University Press readers on both the original proposal and the completed manuscript, and to my sister, Jane Parrott, for her readings and editorial suggestions. The digital camera has sadly narrowed the social world of archival research, transforming traditional, extended day-on-day work routines into much briefer photography sessions where less rapport can develop with fellow researchers and staff. But I would like to thank the archivists and staff especially at the Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, and the salle des manuscrits at the Bibliothèque Nationale, for their kindness and assistance during my numerous visits to both places. Particular thanks to the Oxford University Press editors Cathryn Steele and Stephanie Ireland for their support and patience in waiting for this volume, and their enthusiasm for the unconventional idea of a ‘one-year’ history. The company and sociability of Roger Clark and William Massey has been, as ever, much appreciated relief from too much book-related obsessiveness. David Parrott New College, Oxford 19 October 2019

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Contents Dramatis Personae in 1652 Bourbon Family Tree List of Abbreviations List of Maps

1. Rethinking 1652

xi xvii xix xxi

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2. Mazarin’s Fall

44

3. Condé’s Miscalculation and Mazarin’s Gamble

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4. Towards Stalemate

119

5. The Cost of Civil War

171

6. Autumn 1652: The Brink of the Precipice?

215

Conclusion: Transactional Politics and the Cankered Decade: France in the 1650s Bibliography Chronology Index

259 281 295 299

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Dramatis Personae in 1652 The Royal Family Louis XIV, king of France, majority declared on 7 September 1651, his thirteenth birthday Philippe, duc d’Anjou, younger brother of the king. Takes the title of Philippe d’Orléans on the death of his uncle in 1656 Anne of Austria, the queen mother, regent of France from 1643 to September 1651, and subsequently advisor to the king Orléans, Gaston duc d’, uncle of Louis XIV Montpensier, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de, sole daughter and heir from Gaston’s first marriage to Marie de Bourbon, duchesse de Montpensier Condé, Louis II de Bourbon-Condé, cousin of Louis XIV (until 1646 bearing title of the duc d’Enghien) Conti, Armand de Bourbon-Condé, younger brother of Condé Longueville, Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, duchesse de, sister of Condé

The Court Beringhen, Henri de, first equerry of the lesser stables (petite écurie) Bouillon, Frédéric-Maurice de La Tour d’Auvergne, duc de, elder brother of Turenne. Dies 9 August 1652 Châtillon, Isabelle-Angélique de Montmorency-Bouteville, duchesse de, courtier and negotiator, Condéen sympathiser and mistress of the duc de Nemours Créqui, Charles de, duc de Poix, first gentleman of the king’s chamber, lieutenant general Gonzague, Anne de Gonzague de Clèves, known as the princesse Palatine, courtier and negotiator La Ferté, Henri de Senneterre, marquis de, governor of Lorraine, maréchal de France Miossens, César-Phébus d’Albret, comte de, captain-lieutenant of the gendarmes of the king’s guard Montague, Walter, English exile and Benedictine abbot, courtier and confidant of Anne of Austria

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The Ministers Aligre, Etienne, director of finance, close ally of Le Tellier and heavily involved in the peace negotiations of September/October 1652 Châteauneuf, Charles l’Aubespine, marquis de, enemy of Mazarin, unreliable ally of the princes, repeatedly disgraced and re-appointed to offices of state until his death in 1653 Chavigny, Léon Bouthillier, comte de, secretary of state, disgraced by Mazarin in 1643 and recalled by Condé in 1651. Strong influence on both Gaston d’Orléans and Condé. Died suddenly in September 1652 La Vieuville, Charles de Coskaer, marquis de, reinstated as superintendent of finances in September 1651 after disgrace by Richelieu twenty-six years previously Le Tellier, Michel, secretary of state for war, fidèle of Mazarin Lionne, Hughes de, secretary (secrétaire des commandements) to the queen mother, nephew of Servien Longueil, René de, marquis des Maisons, superintendent of finances until September 1651 Séguier, Pierre, Chancellor of France, member of Condé’s ‘shadow government’ in Paris in August/September 1652 Servien, Abel, secretary of state, brought back from disgrace by Mazarin in 1643 and strongly committed to the cardinal; his brother, Ennemond Servien, was ambassador in Turin

Military commanders initially supporting Mazarin Aumont, Antoine, marquis de Villequier, maréchal d’, governor of the Boulonnais Broglio, comte Francesco, Piedmontese, governor of La Bassée Estrades, Godefroy, comte d’, governor of Dunkirk and Mardyck Fabert, Abraham, governor of Sedan

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Grancey, Jacques Rouxel de Médavy, comte de, governor of Gravelines Harcourt, Henri de Guise, comte d’, commander of the royal army in Guienne; abandoned his command to take control of Breisach in August 1652 Hocquincourt, Charles de Monchy, comte d’, governor of Péronne and Ham; commander of the forces led into France by Mazarin in January 1652 La Ferté-Imbault, Jacques d’Étampes, marquis de, governor of Clermont La Meilleraye, Charles de la Porte, duc de, governor of Brittany and grand master of the artillery L’Hôpital, François du Hallier, maréchal de, governor of Paris Manicamp, Achille de Longueval, marquis de, governor of St Quentin Mercoeur, Louis de Bourbon, duc de, married Mazarin’s niece, Laura Mancini (1651); in 1652 was being eased into the governorship of Provence Navailles, Philippe de Montaut de Bénac, duc de, commander of troops in northeast France, governor of Bapaume Palluau, Philippe de Clairambault, comte de, commander of forces engaged in lengthy siege of Montrond Plessis-Bellière, comte du, commander of expeditionary force prepared for Catalonia Turenne—Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de, finally decided to support Mazarin and the crown in 1652

Mazarin’s ‘allies’ (less than committed fidèles) Bussy, Roger de Rabutin, comte de, colonel and lieutenant-général of the Nivernais Candale, Louis-Charles-Gaston de Nogaret de La Valette, duc de, eldest son of duc d’Épernon, involved in negotiations to marry one of Mazarin’s nieces, took over command of the army in Guienne after Harcourt’s abandonment Épernon, Bernard de Nogaret de La Valette, duc d’, governor of Burgundy, colonel-general of the French infantry La Mothe-Houdancourt, Philippe, comte de, French viceroy in Catalonia since October 1651; unable to prevent the fall of Barcelona in October 1652 Vendôme, César de Bourbon, duc de, illegitimate son of Henri IV, admiral of France

Mazarin’s agents, confidants, and fidèles Auvry, Claude, bishop of Coutances since 1646, strong Mazarin loyalist based in Paris in 1652 Bartet, Isaac, agent and courier of Mazarin

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Bluet, avocat in the Parlement, key agent for Mazarin in Paris Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, financial intendant of Mazarin’s household and trusted confidant Fouquet, abbé Basile, younger brother of Nicolas Fouquet, Mazarin’s propagandist, agitator, and fixer Gaudin, Jacques, priest and fidèle, one of his most prolific writers and propagandists Millet de Jeure, Guillaume, courtier-fidèle Naudé, Gabriel, Mazarin’s librarian, author, and Paris agent for the cardinal Ondedei, Zongo, maître de chambre of Mazarin, and key agent. Nominated to the bishopric of Fréjus in 1655 Sainctot, Nicolas de aide des cérémonies, and part of a dynasty of aides and maîtres des cérémonies; an extensive informant of Mazarin especially while the cardinal was in exile during 1651

Condé’s family, allies, and fidèles Balthazar, Jean, professional soldier from the Palatinate, in service of Condé in Guienne Beaufort, François de Bourbon, duc de, second son of duc de Vendôme, commander of the princes’ army in the Loire; made governor of Paris in August 1652 Bouchu, Jean, premier president of Parlement of Dijon, a stalwart supporter of Condé Bouteville, François-Henri de Montmorency, comte de, governor of Bellegarde and the future maréchal de Luxembourg Chouppes, Aymar de Basse, marquis de, Condéen supporter in Guienne, but engaged in intense factional rivalry with Lenet and Marsin Coligny, Jean de, comte de Saligny, served Condé with his troops in Guienne Condé, Henri II de Bourbon-Condé, duc de, father of the great Condé (died 1646) Condé, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, princesse de, niece of Richelieu, wife of Condé Dognon, Louis Foucauld de St Germain Beaupré, comte de, vice-admiral of France, governor of La Rochelle and Brouage, fought with the princes’ party and settled with the crown in return for a marshal’s baton and 500,000 livres Girard, Abraham, trésorier de France and receiver of the Estates of Burgundy, agent of Condé Gourville, Jean de, maître de l’hôtel of the duc de La Rochefoucauld La Rochefoucauld, François VI, duc de, Condé’s closest companion, commander in south-west France. Temporarily blinded at battle of Faubourg St-Antoine La Suze, Gaspard de Champagne, comte de, governor of Belfort

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xv

Lenet, Pierre, Condé’s trusted secretary, procureur-général of the Parlement of Dijon, Condé’s key agent in Bordeaux Longueville, Henri II, duc de, prince of Neuchâtel, governor of Normandy Marigny, Jacques Carpentier de, poet and pamphleteer, Paris-based supporter of the princely cause Marsin, Jean-Gaspard-Ferdinand de, viceroy of Catalonia in 1651, from where he defected to Condé’s service with most of his troops Nemours, Charles Amédée de Savoie-, duc de, commander of Gaston d’Orléans’ troops; killed in a duel by duc de Beaufort Rohan, Henri de Chabot, duc de, governor of Anjou and city of Angers, which he surrendered, to Mazarin in February 1652 Sully, Maximilien François de Béthune, duc de, governor of Mantes Tarente, Henri-Charles de La Trémoïlle, prince de, substantial military ally of Condé Tavannes, Jacques de Sault, comte de, commander of Condé’s troops for much of 1652

The Old Fronde and supporters of the cardinal de Retz Gondi, François-Paul de, Cardinal de Retz, coadjutor to the Archbishop of Paris, made cardinal in February 1652 Angoulême, Louis-Emmanuel de Valois, duc d’, governor of Provence, opponent of Mazarin but tepid in support of Condé Brissac, François de Cossé, duc de, lieutenant general in Brittany, married into the Gondi family Bussy-Lameth, Antoine-François, comte de, governor of Mézières and ally of Retz Chevreuse, Marie Aimée de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de, legendary conspirator, at different times bitterly hostile to both Mazarin and Condé Noirmoutier, Louis de La Trémoïlle, duc de, governor of CharlevilleMontolympe and ally of Retz

The Parlementaires Bailleul, Nicolas de, president, superintendant of finance 1643–7; acting first President from November 1651 Broussel, Pierre, councillor, committed frondeur, created prévôt des marchands (lord mayor of Paris) by Condé in August 1652. His son, the marquis de La Louvière was governor of the Bastille at the battle of the Faubourg St-Antoine Fouquet, Nicolas, procureur-général, loyal to the crown and, in general, to Mazarin

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Fouquet de Croissy, Antoine, councillor in the Parlement, well-known frondeur and supporter of the princes Longueil, Pierre de, councillor in the Parlement, no strong allegiance Molé, Mathieu, first president, co-opted into the royal government as keeper of the seals from November 1651. Harsh critic of ministerial policy and of Mazarin, but essentially loyalist Nesmond, François-Théodore de, president, supporter of the princes Talon, Omer, avocat général, influential defender of right of remonstrance of Parlement, but like Molé (and Fouquet) strong monarchists and ultimately supporters of Mazarin Viole, Pierre, president, committed frondeur, and strong supporter of Condé in 1652

Outside France Charles IV, duke of Lorraine, duchy occupied by France since 1630s, commanding his private army in alliance with the Spanish throughout 1652 Clinchamp, Bernardin de Bourqueville, baron de, commanding the Spanish contingent in the army of the princes Fuensaldaña, Alonso Pérez de Vivero, count of, commander of the Spanish army of Flanders Leopold-Wilhelm von Habsburg, Governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands Pimentel de Prado y lo Bianco, Antonio, Spanish minister and negotiator in the Spanish Netherlands in 1651 Vatteville, baron de, comte de Corbiers, commander of the Spanish fleet supporting the Condéen party in Bordeaux Waldeck, Johann, Graf zu, mercenary commander in the service of the Brandenburg Elector, hired by Mazarin to raise a private army corps

Louis, duc de Mercoeur m. Laura Mancini

François, duc de Beaufort

Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans Duchesse de Montpensier (La Grande Mademoiselle)

Gaston d’Orléans m. Marie de Bourbon, duchesse de Montpensier

Armand de Conti m. Marie-Anne Martinozzi

Henri II de Condé m. Charlotte de Montmorency

Henri I de Condé m. Charlotte Catherine de La Tremoïlle

Louis I de Condé m. Eleanor Roucy de Roye

Louis II de Condé Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, (Le Grand Condé) duchesse de Longueville m. Claire-Clemence de Maillé-Brézé

Philippe d’Anjou

LOUIS XIII (1610–43) m. Anne of Austria

LOUIS XIV (1643–1714)

César, duc de Vendôme m. Françoise de Lorraine

Gabrielle d’Estrées (mistress of) HENRI IV (1589–1610) m. Marie de’ Medicis

Antoine, duc de Bourbon m. Jeanne, Queen of Navarre

Charles de Bourbon m. Françoise d’Alençon

THE ROYAL, CONDÉ AND VENDÔME BRANCHES OF THE HOUSE OF BOURBON

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List of Abbreviations Manuscript Sources AAE MD AAE CP AC AN BN Ffr SHD

Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires Étrangères, series Mémoires et Documents Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires Étrangères, series Correspondance Politique Archives Condé, Archives du château de Chantilly Archives Nationales, Centre de Recherches des Archives Nationales, Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, Collections Manuscrits, Fonds français Service Historique de la Defence, Centre historique des archives, Vincennes

Printed Primary Sources Chéruel

Clément

A. Chéruel and G. Avenel (eds), Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin pendant son ministère (9 vols; Paris, 1872–1906), in Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France—histoire politique. P. Clément (ed.), Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert (10 vols; Paris, 1861–82).

Dubuisson-Aubenay

N-F Baudot, Sr du Buisson et d’Aubenay, Journal des guerres civiles, 1648–52 (2 vols; Paris, 1883–5)

Michaud/Poujoulat

J. Michaud and J. Poujoulat (eds), Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la France depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe. 3e série (10 vols; Paris, 1838).

Petitot/Monmerqué

C. Petitot, L. de Monmerqué (eds), Collection des mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France. 2e série (52 vols; Paris, 1824–9).

Ravenel, Mazarin

J. Ravenel, ed., Lettres du cardinal Mazarin à la reine, à la princesse Palatine, etc, écrites pendant sa retraite hors de France, en 1651 et 1652 (Paris, 1836).

Turenne

Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, maréchal de Turenne, Mémoires, ed. P. Marichal (2 vols; Paris, 1909–14).

Vallier

Jean Vallier, Journal de Jean Vallier, maître d’hôtel du roi, ed. H. Courteault (4 vols; Paris, 1902–18).

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Secondary Works Aumale, Condé

Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, Histoire des princes de Condé pendant les XVIe et XVIIe siècles (7 vols; Paris, 1893–6).

Chéruel, Ministère de Mazain Chéruel, Minorité de Louis XIV: Cosnac, Souvenirs

A. Chéruel, Histoire de France sous le ministère de Mazarin (1651–1661) (3 vols; Paris, 1882). A. Chéruel, Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (1643–1651) (4 vols; Paris, 1878–80). Comte G-J de Cosnac, Souvenirs du règne de Louis XIV (8 vols; Paris, 1866–82).

References to the Parlement—will be the Parlement de Paris. Provincial Parlements will be referred to with full title unless the context is obvious.

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List of Maps Chapter 2 Mazarin’s Exile: March 1651 to January 1652

67

Chapter 3 South West France, 1651–52 The campaign in South West France, November to January 1651–52 The Loire Valley, March/April 1652 and the battle of Bléneau, 5/6 April

82 108 116

Chapter 4 The French Provinces and Key Governors in 1651–52 The campaigning around Étampes, April–June 1652 Condé’s passage round Paris and the battle of the Faubourg St-Antoine, 1/2 July 1652

129 137 142

Chapter 5 The North-Eastern Frontier in 1652 North Italy in 1652 Roussillon and Catalonia in 1652

172 182 185

Chapter 6 The Eastern Frontier in 1652 The campaigns from mid-July to mid-October 1652

216 221

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1 Rethinking 1652 Introduction: Legacies, Contingency, and Climate In Le Côté de Guermantes the young Marcel makes his first visit to the salon of Mme de Villeparisis and is introduced to M. Pierre, historien de la Fronde, who has been invited to look at some portraits of her family’s ancestors. Proust knew his readers, and could assume that they would not only understand the reference to the Fronde, but also appreciate the comic juxtaposition of the timid, bourgeois historien de la Fronde—as he is identified throughout this lengthy scene—with the social mores of the latter-day French aristocracy, heirs to the frondeurs of the midseventeenth century.¹ The characters and events of the Fronde have occupied an enduring role in French perceptions of their history. In 1836, Jules Ravenel explained his decision not to provide an account of the rebellion in his introduction to a volume of cardinal Mazarin’s correspondence ‘because no event in the history of France is so universally familiar down to its smallest details’.² In 2016, Jean-Marie Constant could speak of ‘that mysterious event, which has generated continuous, passionate debate ever since the seventeenth century’.³ Yet the reasons for the powerful and enduring persistence of the Fronde in collective historical memory are perhaps not immediately obvious. The Fronde describes the revolt between 1648 and 1653 against the government of cardinal Jules Mazarin, first minister and favourite of the queen regent who was ruling in the name of her young son, Louis XIV. Mazarin was seeking to maintain the political legacy of his ministerial predecessor, Armand du Plessis, cardinal de Richelieu. Both had used coercive government to impose unprecedented fiscal burdens on the country in the teeth of opposition across the social spectrum. In 1648 this opposition erupted into an outright rejection of these policies, led by administrative and judicial institutions, and most notably the supreme court of appeal, the Parlement of Paris. Their resistance enjoyed substantial popular support in the cities, while grievances against the regime also stirred up large sections of the traditional country and court nobilities. The initial wave of unrest ¹ M. Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (3 vols; Paris, 1954), ii. 189–283. ² J. Ravenel, Lettres du cardinal Mazarin à la Reine . . . (Paris, 1836), xv: ‘Nous avons considéré, d’une part, que de toutes les époques de l’histoire de la France, nulle n’est plus universellement connue dans ses moindres particularités que l’époque des troubles de la Fronde.’ ³ J-M Constant, C’était la Fronde (Paris, 2016), 381.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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2  resulted in a compromise between the crown and its officials, but the nobility, and especially factions amongst the great aristocracy, remained implacably hostile to Mazarin in person and to the policies he represented. In manoeuvres of an intricacy and unpredictability that bewildered even the participants, supporters of Mazarin and adherents of various aristocratic factions fought a political and then a military struggle for supremacy, which climaxed in open civil war and royalist victory in 1652. In Bordeaux an urban uprising generated a surge of political and social radicalism before the city finally surrendered to the crown in July 1653. Taken out of their broader seventeenth-century context, it might appear hard to see why these events, which after all ended in victory for the French crown, should have generated as much enduring public interest as, say, the British Civil Wars of 1641–9. The name Fronde would seem to emphasize the triviality of the episode: adopted by both the frondeur enemies of Mazarin as well as those who condemned their actions, it derived from the small slings used by street boys in Paris to flick mud or stones at the carriages, houses, or persons of the respectable. The verb fronder entered French vocabulary at that time, meaning to conspire subversively, but with undertones of pettiness and inconsequentiality. Yet despite this dismissive label, the grip of the Fronde on the historical imagination has lasted—a grip owed to three distinct strains of historical thinking and interpretation. In the broadest terms these strains are sequential, but in practice examples of each have coexisted from at least the nineteenth century onwards. Does each generation recognize its own Fronde? It is probably more accurate to say that different interpretations have consistently appealed to varying political and cultural affiliations or allegiances, and will probably continue to do so. The anarchic Fronde. The earliest readers about the Fronde were fascinated, above all, by its transgressive character, a belligerent rejection of the outwardly orderly, disciplined world of seventeenth-century France. Initial interest came from the remarkable series of memoirs composed by those who took part in or witnessed the Fronde. Many were elegantly written, extensive narratives, full of political and psychological insight, and the memoirs of figures such as cardinal de Retz, Mme de Motteville, La Rochefoucauld, Marie-Louise d’Orléans (‘Mademoiselle’), Henri-Auguste de Brienne, Pierre Lenet, and Olivier d’Ormesson have enjoyed an undiminished reputation both as works of literature and history. Early fascination was encouraged from the eighteenth century by new histories, such as Jean-Baptiste Mailly’s L’Esprit de la Fronde, based on compilations of memoirs, administrative documents, and political tracts and libels.⁴ The story of the Fronde was appealingly transgressive on a number of levels. Initial, ⁴ Mailly, L’esprit de la Fronde (5 vols; Paris, 1772). An earlier work exploiting the interest in memoirs was L. Rustaing de Saint-Jory, Mémoires secrets de la cour, contenant les intrigues du cabinet pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (3 vols; Amsterdam, 1733).

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honest attempts to legislate a constitutional monarchy into existence in 1648–9 were subverted by the devious policies of royal ministers, who created the absolutism that achieved its apotheosis under Louis XIV, yet also paved the way to its crisis and collapse in 1789.⁵ In contrast, the later Fronde was dominated by courtier aristocrats, whose aims and actions seemed motivated by little more than mercurial combinations of personal ambition, arrogance, and nihilism. Their pursuit of what they considered the imperatives of individual liberty involved a rejection of the ‘state-building’ values of collective duty and discipline, shaped through unconditional obedience to the crown. Action also subverted expected gender roles: the enthusiastic participation of numerous high-born women—les amazones de la Fronde—in the political and even military activities of the civil war was extensively chronicled in memoirs, numbers of which were themselves written by women. The Fronde could be read and enjoyed as an account of carnival, a short period in which the norms and values of responsible government were subverted in a last, futile but colourful, display of resistance and reaction. Characteristic of this work, from a precursor such as Voltaire’s Siècle de Louis XIV through to Jules Michelet’s mid-nineteenth century Histoire de France, was the depiction of the Fronde as an essentially anarchic episode in French history, in which little or no moral distinction should be drawn between the competing sides.⁶ Not all historians acquiesced in this narrow picture of the Fronde played out by characters competing with each other in their unrelenting pursuit of self-interest. The pioneering work of Alphonse Feillet, La misère au temps de la Fronde, emphasized that the bill for the collective irresponsibility of the governing class was paid by the ordinary people of France.⁷ Feillet’s work had a considerable influence on other historians, not least Michelet, whose descriptions of the inept and self-interested actors in the Fronde are interspersed with anger at the violence, disruption, and death inflicted on the French people by their manoeuvres.⁸ The political Fronde. Historians who felt uneasy at studying what seemed an example of all-embracing political irresponsibility found a response in the progressivist historiography of the later nineteenth century. Ideologies of nationalism and the nation-state were powerfully articulated during the Revolution and Empire, and had gathered momentum thereafter. Typically, these had been

⁵ That sense of the constitutional potential of the Fronde is captured in the work of two impressive nineteenth-century historians, both, perhaps significantly, descended from the ancien régime nobility: L-C de Beaupoil, marquis de Sainte-Aulaire, Histoire de la Fronde (3 vols; Paris, 1827); comte G-J de Cosnac, Souvenirs du règne de Louis XIV (8 vols; Paris, 1866–82). ⁶ Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV (2 vols; Paris, 1830), i. 295: ‘Les français se précipitaient dans les séditions par caprice, et en riant . . . ’; A-M Cocula, ‘Regard sur une décadence: La Fronde vue par Voltaire’, in Décadences et Décadence—Actes du colloque (Bordeaux, 1979), 65–77. J. Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. xi, Richelieu—La Fronde (Paris, 1858). ⁷ Paris, 1862; Michelet, Histoire, cites a preparatory article by Feillet in the Revue de Paris of 1856. ⁸ Michelet, Histoire, xi. 503–76.

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4  coupled with a narrative of political and institutional development from France’s origins to the Third Republic. In this interpretation, the Fronde had a distinct role: it was a necessary step in the construction of the French absolute monarchy, and through that the French nation-state. The reinterpretation of the events of 1648–53 into one more suited to this narrative is substantially owed to the efforts of one historian, Adolphe Chéruel. Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Chéruel was a prolific author, but is principally known today for the seven volumes of his history of cardinal Mazarin’s government of France from 1643 until his death in 1661, and for editing the nine-volume collection of Mazarin’s correspondence, published as part of the state-sponsored Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France—histoire politique.⁹ For Chéruel, Mazarin’s role in the Fronde was not an embarrassing episode to be passed over quickly, but a demonstration of his statesmanship and moral fortitude. Drawing on the extensive source material that he had encountered, and in many cases edited and published, Chéruel set out to demonstrate that, rather than just the self-seeking favourite of the queen mother with a certain flair for diplomacy, Mazarin was the saviour of the French monarchy, and his work the foundation of its absolutist triumphs after 1661. In looking more broadly at the actors and events of the Fronde, Chéruel entirely rejected any assumption of rough moral (or immoral) equivalence between the frondeurs and the supporters of the crown. Instead he substituted a Manichean distinction between the self-interest, irresponsibility, and recklessness of the supporters of revolt, and the behaviour of what was seen without hesitation as the party of the monarchy: the queen mother, Mazarin himself, and their adherents in court, government, and country. With self-conscious paradox, the Italian Mazarin and the Spanish queen mother, Anne of Austria, were painted as the true French patriots and monarchists, while the traditional French aristocracy were narrowly self-seeking, and in many cases treasonable in their willingness to ally with France’s declared enemies. This version of the Fronde set patriotism against treason, but it also pitched rational and responsible policy-making against the fecklessness, poor organization, and self-interested contradictions of the crown’s opponents. The defeat of the frondeurs was not just morally justifiable but historically necessary, since they represented forces that were retrograde and harmful to the growth of the French nation-state through its absolute monarchy. This sense of historical determinism lies at the heart of the lengthy and largely unquestioned survival of Chéruel’s interpretation of the Fronde and his

⁹ Divided into two works: the four-volumed Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (1643–1651) (Paris, 1878–80), and the three-volumed Histoire de France sous le ministère de Mazarin (1651–1661) (Paris, 1882); Lettres du cardinal Mazarin pendant son ministère (9 vols; Paris, 1872–1906).

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uncompromising rehabilitation of Mazarin. It neatly resolved the previous problem in the seventeenth-century narrative of French absolutism. Instead of a directionless hiatus between the ministry of cardinal Richelieu and the fully fledged absolute monarchy of Louis XIV, Chéruel and his successors offered a seamless interpretation of the rise of the French state. The Fronde thus came to assume its familiar twentieth-century interpretation, both in French historiography and more widely: it was the critical moment in the development of French absolutism, when the forces opposed to the ‘modernization’ of the French state gathered for a final attempt to derail the process and to challenge the principles of absolute monarchy and ‘reason of state’. Mazarin’s political dexterity and statesmanship in defeating these forces and saving the monarchy facilitated his own triumphant resumption of ministerial power in early 1653. Under his uncontested direction, France could resume its progress towards European hegemony up to and following the final defeat of Spain in 1659; the concomitant internal strengthening and centralization of the state to meet the renewed demands of war could continue without serious resistance. At Mazarin’s death, the reins of power passed seamlessly to his master, the well-apprenticed Louis XIV, who took control of a state in which the principle and practice of absolute monarchy had been thoroughly vindicated. The revolutionary Fronde. Interest in the Fronde during the ancien régime was piqued by its politically and culturally transgressive character; but from 1789 historical interest could assume a very different form, with the events of the Fronde depicted as an abortive forerunner of the various constitutional and revolutionary upheavals of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whether attention was fixed on the potentially radical constitutionalism of the Parlementaires and the assemblies of the nobility, or on the evidence of social radicalism and even class conflict seen on the streets of Paris and especially in the successive risings in Bordeaux known as the Ormée, the Fronde could be linked to preoccupations with the forces of political and social revolution. Historians moreover had long been interested both in the practicalities of radical political action and in the language of radicalism, whether the writing and publishing of political theory or the use of tracts and pamphlets responding to immediate political circumstances in order to agitate opinion and acquire support. Canonical political thought may be reinforced, or more often challenged, by studying this literature of political persuasion and justification. The Fronde provides an exceptional case study in this language of politics thanks to the existence of around 5,500 (discovered to date) printed pamphlets, the so-called mazarinades. These constitute a tidal wave of invective and debate battering against Mazarin, ministerial rule, unaccountable government, and even the monarchy. For a few years France possessed a public sphere in which the virtually unrestrained discussion of politics could take place, a situation that would not recur until the mid-eighteenth century.

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6  The first major published collection of the mazarinades was edited by Celestin Moreau in 1850–1.¹⁰ Local and literary historians became intrigued by the existence of these texts, and sought to assemble and edit their own collections. Political historians had initially regarded the mazarinades with puzzlement or disdain, bemused by the trivializing, coarse, or downright obscene content of many pamphlets, and dismissive of the apparently crude or naïve political ideas advanced in others. Given that the Fronde ‘failed’, they were seen as little more than an anthropological curiosity, an aspect of popular culture.¹¹ A further upsurge of interest in the mazarinades during the later twentieth century massively vindicated those early historians such as Moreau who argued for their significance. It established the mazarinades’ centrality to seventeenth-century political debate, and to justifications and critiques of political action. Historians such as Marie-Noëlle Grand-Mesnil and Henri-Jean Martin started to explore the wider political implications of pamphleteering, publication, and the dissemination of political debates.¹² The next generation of historians of the mazarinades, notably Christian Jouhaud and Hubert Carrier, have developed this further. They have authored or edited a substantial corpus focused on an interpretation of the Fronde shaped through published evidence of political thinking, whose interaction and interplay with political action and opinion is at the forefront of the discussion.¹³ Carrier is uncompromising in asserting the importance of political ideas during civil war: ‘It is not the quality of troops which counts, not the ability to fund the armies or the quality of the generals. It is primarily public opinion which determines the outcome, as all the civil wars across history have proved.’¹⁴ One remarkable aspect of the Fronde of the mazarinades, compared to other ‘pamphlet wars’ or broader attempts to sway public opinion, is the overwhelming imbalance between those few writers making arguments on behalf of and justifying the actions of Mazarin and his government, and the main body of printed material expounding the political ideas, opinions, and justifications of the frondeurs.¹⁵ In consequence, the burgeoning interest in the political language of the

¹⁰ Moreau, Bibliographie des Mazarinades (3 vols; Paris, 1850–1); Choix de Mazarinades (2 vols; Paris, 1853); Les Courriers de la Fronde en vers burlesques (2 vols; Paris, 1857). ¹¹ This initially tepid reception is examined in more depth in Hubert Carrier, La presse de la Fronde (1648–53): Les Mazarinades (2 vols; Paris, 1989/1991), i. 1–6. ¹² M-N. Grand-Mesnil, Mazarin, la Fronde et la presse (Paris, 1967); H-J. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle (2 vols; Geneva, 1969). ¹³ Notable works include C. Jouhaud, Mazarinades: la Fronde des mots (Paris, 1985); ‘Écriture et action au XVIIe siècle: sur un corpus de mazarinades’, Annales ESC 38 (1983), 42–64. Carrier, Presse de la Fronde; Le Labyrinthe de l’État. Essai sur le débat politique en France au temps de la Fronde (1648–53) (Paris, 2004); ‘Journalisme et politique du XVIIe siècle: Théophraste Renaudot pendant la Fronde’, in F. Barbier (ed.), Le Livre et l’historien. Études offertes à Henri-Jean Martin (Geneva, 1997), 421–37. See also S. Haffemayer, L’information dans la France du XVIIe siècle. La Gazette de Renaudot de 1647–1663 (Paris: Champion, 2002). ¹⁴ Carrier, Presse de la Fronde, i. 22. ¹⁵ Carrier, Presse de la Fronde, i. 149–55; J. Sawyer, Printed Poison: Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics and the Public Sphere in Early Seventeenth-Century France (Berkeley/Oxford, 1990);

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Fronde has brought about a renewed focus on the political opposition who generated the overwhelming mass of the printed libels, tracts, and propaganda of these years. Mazarin’s opponents, hitherto easily dismissed as collective losers in their struggle against the forces of progress, have benefited from a revival of historical interest. The diversity and often the sophistication of their political understanding and their responses to actions and events, the intensity of the debates, rejoinders, and conflicts between different parties of frondeurs, all challenge the idea of an undifferentiated, crudely reactionary opposition.¹⁶ This has been evident not just in studies of the mazarinades, but in a continuing interest in the Ormée of Bordeaux, and in the assemblies of the nobility not just during the Fronde but extending into the later 1650s.¹⁷ The results of this focus on printing, circulation, and debate are clearly visible in recent general studies of the Fronde. Those by Orest Ranum and Jean-Marie Constant are both influenced by awareness of the richness and diversity of the printed debate that surrounds the actors and events. Both make heavy use of political tracts and pamphlets, and recognize the continuous—and changeable— public sphere in all the political debates from 1648 to 1653.¹⁸ Ranum’s declared purpose was to explore ‘how the Fronde became an intense revolutionary force’. If the political opposition in the Fronde had previously suffered too much from the condescension of posterity, marginalized into pre-determined irrelevance, recent writing would seem to have rehabilitated its distinctive voices.

So what might be added to the abundance of writing and thinking about these events? What perhaps especially from someone who stands outside of the French historical, political, and cultural traditions in which the Fronde is embedded? My own, certainly presumptuous, claim to say something new about a territory traversed by so many distinguished historians rests on three different perspectives. The privilege of a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship granted me the time and opportunity to return systematically to archival research and to lay the foundations for a large-scale project re-examining the period after the Fronde, the years from 1653 to 1661. The decision to focus this present book on 1652 H. Duccini, Faire voir, faire croire. L’opinion publique sous Louis XIII (Paris, 2003); J. Klaits, Printed Propaganda under Louis XIV: Absolute Monarchy and Public Opinion (Princeton, 1977); C-E Levillain, Le Procès de Louis XIV: Une guerre psychologique (Paris, 2015); J. Schillinger, Les pamphlétaires allemands et la France de Louis XIV (Bern/Berlin/Frankfurt, 1999); S. Rameix, Justifier la guerre: Censure et propaganda dans l’Europe du XVIIe siècle (France-Angleterre) (Rennes, 2014). ¹⁶ An early example in R. Bonney, ‘Cardinal Mazarin and His Critics: The Remonstrances of 1652’, European Studies Review 10 (1980), 15–31. ¹⁷ S.A. Westrich, The Ormée of Bordeaux: A Revolution during the Fronde (Baltimore, 1972); E. Bernstiel, Die Fronde in Bordeaux, 1648–53 (Bern/Frankfurt, 1984); H. Kötting, Die Ormée (1651–1653): Gestaltende Kräfte und Personenverbindungen der Bordelaiser Fronde (Münster, 1983). ¹⁸ O. Ranum, The Fronde: A French Revolution (New York/London, 1993); Constant, C’était la Fronde, offers an analytical approach in which the four chapters of part three—‘La parole libérée’—are devoted to the contest of ideas and propaganda.

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8  reflects my detailed interest in this later period, thereby viewing the Fronde from a vantage point more concerned with its outcomes than its origins. Such an approach has proved difficult in the past, since the course of cardinal Mazarin’s ministerial regime between 1653 and 1661 has typically been depicted in the most general and impressionistic terms.¹⁹ Apart from the emphasis placed on Mazarin’s 1659 negotiation of the Peace of the Pyrenees with the Spanish crown, these years can seem little more than a self-effacing prelude to the great decades of Louis XIV’s absolute monarchy after 1661. A few specific studies of institutions and events in the 1650’s have indicated that there may have been rather more continuities with the years of the Fronde.²⁰ Yet these have not shifted a consensus that 1648–53 sees the high-water mark of a movement of resistance to the cardinal ministers, after which the road to Louis Quatorzian absolutism lies open and clear. Starting an analysis with the year 1652 and looking forward gives a different perspective. It refocuses attention on the latter part of the Fronde, which in general has received short weight and short change from historians. This is not because the events of 1652 are intrinsically unimportant; many of the contemporary memoirs focus with exhaustive, partisan detail on the events of these months. But the frame of reference, which sees the events of the Fronde as a reaction to the politics of the 1630s and 1640s, inevitably casts the final descent into civil war as the predictable denouement to actions and decisions taken much earlier in the struggle. By 1652 the office-holders had made their peace with the crown and its system of government; the respectable bourgeois in Paris and elsewhere had ended their protests and were weary and cautious of inciting unrest; the king’s legal majority, declared in September 1651, removed the constitutional ambiguities of regency government and delegitimized opposition; ideologically bankrupt opponents signalled their essential weakness by turning to France’s enemies to prop up their position. It is hard to avoid the sense that the story has all but ended before 1652 opens, and that apart from assessing the human and material cost of the last year of large-scale civil war, little of fundamental political significance was at stake. Yet the events of 1652 are not just a pallid terminus to an earlier confrontation, but a distinct historical moment with decisive and lasting consequences. And this distinct historical moment is probably most closely akin to what medieval historians—and indeed some early modernists—would regard in its main features as a ‘baronial war’,²¹ that is to say, an all-out civil war fought by rival elite factions ¹⁹ The last extensive account of the years 1653–61 was provided in the latter two volumes of Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin. Two earlier accounts were provided by M. A. Bazin, Histoire de France sous le ministère du cardinal Mazarin (2 vols; Paris, 1842), ii. 339–610, and J-B. Capefigue, Richelieu, Mazarin, la Fronde et la règne de Louis XIV (8 vols, Paris, 1835–36), viii. 157–398. ²⁰ R. Golden, The Godly Rebellion. Parisian Curés and the Religious Fronde, 1652–62 (Chapel Hill, 1981); A. Hamscher, The Parlement of Paris after the Fronde, 1653–73 (Pittsburgh, 1976); A. Jouanna, Le Devoir de Révolte: La noblesse française et la gestion de l’État moderne, 1559–1661 (Paris, 1989). ²¹ For another case study of early-modern baronial war, see J. Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (London, 2007).

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capable of mobilizing substantial military support in order to establish lasting control over the mechanisms of government at the centre and in the provinces. Fighting this type of conflict requires the mobilization of resources through the creation of parties. But these in turn are made up of alliances with individuals or kin-groups, whose own investment in the struggle was based on calculations of rewards and benefits that were likely to be gained from adherence. Another, still more important frame of reference in this respect—which contemporaries would have recognized without hesitation from their classical education as the best known case of civil or ‘intestinal’ war—was the course and character of the great struggle marking the end of the Roman Republic and leading to the establishment of the Imperial regime of Augustus. In studying 1652 I have found the comparative frame of reference provided by that greatest study of the Roman civil wars, Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution, more illuminating than any other work.²² Syme’s terse and brilliant account—itself shaped by Tacitus— with its constant awareness of the contingent, but also of the practicalities of keeping and holding parties together, echoes time and again the confusing and swiftly changing power-play, the tensions and dilemmas that characterized the struggle of 1652. Syme places at the centre of the Roman civil wars the networks of families and amicitia, the economic and social impact of private warfare, the friability of purely political alliances. And above all, he shows how Augustus and his allies, and no less their opponents, systematically hollowed out the values and ideas of the Republic, maintaining only a veneer of outward constitutional forms under which factional and personal interests dominated political decision-making and the allocation of power and resources. Probably the most radical proposal in the present book is that we need to look at the ways in which the period after 1652 was shaped from the perspective of this year of civil war. The return of Mazarin from his second period of exile and the decision of his rival, the prince de Condé, to withdraw his forces to the frontiers, might appear to stabilize the political situation at the end of 1652; this is the impression that Mazarin’s supporters certainly wished to create. Yet the political legacy of the struggle had been—partly by necessity, partly by conscious decision—the creation of parties whose actions were justified overwhelmingly by overt calculation, and by the open expression of hardened and unapologetic selfinterest in the pursuit of aims, alliances, and services. Mazarin, in order to survive, had both provided the example of, and underpinned at every opportunity, a system of cynical political management—we could call it transactional politics— which allowed him, like Condé, to build up a party of calculating and selfinterested allies. Moreover, the situation was not in fact stabilized, and the constant need to sustain alliances and buy support remained. The 1650s, as

²² R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939/2002).

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I suggest in my conclusion, was a ‘cankered decade’, and Mazarin’s ‘second ministry’ continued to be shaped in its political discourse and actions by a language of interests, transactions, and bargaining, from which the recourse to service, loyalty, and obligation was notably absent. Mazarin’s supporters and agents, and subsequent historians, have insisted that what grew up after 1653 was a triumphant vindication of a royalist victory in the civil war. Propaganda and persuasion were employed to celebrate the restoration of the absolute monarchy. But Louis XIV’s coronation, some royal ballets, and the return of a semblance of courtly ceremonial do not compensate for the frenetic deal-making which underpinned the re-establishment and renewed operations of a system of ministerial government best described as a fiscal–military régime de l’extraordinaire of widely perceived illegitimacy. The decisions and the outcomes of the struggle for power in 1652, the compromises and, equally, the failed compromises, the costs in terms of political credibility at home and across the frontiers, were to shape the remainder of the decade. And it is important in this respect to detach 1652 from the preceding years of the Fronde. While these earlier years had imposed a heavy human cost and some serious political disruption, and generated some radical political ideas, the lasting consequences down to the end of 1651 could have been contained a lot more easily. A crucial bridge was crossed in 1652 with many consequences, and it is important to show how and why that was the case. The second motivation for studying the year 1652 reflects a preoccupation with the contingent and with contingency in history.²³ We are creatures of our times, and it is perhaps obvious to see this study as a contemporary response written in a world which seems notably shaped by the consequences of contingent actions and events. As a result we are more than usually suspicious of narratives that seem to assume a predictable sequence of events leading to expected outcomes. To this mindset, the last year of the Fronde is a powerful case study in the role of chance and circumstance, the ‘forked way’ of alternative outcomes. Engagement with historical contingency has present-day political resonance, but the interest can equally be seen as the slow rebound from a twentieth-century historiography dominated by preoccupations with the deep structures of societies, and of economic, political or climatic determinism; above all in the early modern context, a focus on the study of l’histoire immobile. Fernand Braudel’s well-known assertion that the significance of history lies beneath the surface ‘froth’ of individual human actions and events rapidly conquered French academic history and its methodologies from the 1950s, and stifled academic interest in subjects that had traditionally been explored through narrative and from the perspective of

²³ For recent works on contingency and its role in historical methodology, see K. Sterelny, ‘Contingency and History’, Philosophy of Science 83 (2016), 521–39, and I. Shapiro and S. Bedi (eds), Political Contingency: Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental, and the Unforeseen (New York, 2009).

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political history.²⁴ The return of the event has not been an overnight process, though methodological support for its importance has been gathering since Le Roy Ladurie’s famous article of 1972 which diverged so surprisingly from his previous work on the longue durée of the peasant economy and society of Languedoc.²⁵ However, this revival of interest in ‘event-history’, seen for example so strikingly in the revisionist historiography of the British Civil Wars, has not hitherto been applied in any systematic way to the study of the Fronde.²⁶ Here the agenda has largely remained in the hands of historians, whether nationalist/ political determinists or their social/economic successors, whose work has relegated the contingent play of events and circumstance to a secondary status.²⁷ A fortiori they have regarded the year 1652 as of relatively minor importance in the history of the Fronde. By then all the important cards in the struggle for power have already been dealt out, and the game proceeds in predictable stages to its obvious and pre-determined outcome: the triumph of ministerial government and absolute monarchy. By returning in the chapters of the present book to an account of the unfolding political and military events of 1652 seen from multiple perspectives, a picture emerges of just how easily the course of the last year of the Fronde could have been different, and how most contemporaries assumed that it would be. This was not the last gasp of bankrupt and ineffectual resistance, predestined to fail in the face of a progressive monarchy and its ministerial agents. It was a series of events whose outcome was far from predictable at any point through the year. Indeed, insofar as contemporaries anticipated likely outcomes, they expected a settlement in which Mazarin and Condé would be brought to agree to some kind of political compromise and subsequent cohabitation. And it was for contingent reasons that this most likely of outcomes did not happen. There was no inevitability at work; the ‘hidden hand’ of the ascendant nation-state was not ensuring that victory for Mazarin and an absolutist crown was inevitable, any more than victory for

²⁴ F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (2 vols; London, 1972), ii. 901–3, 1239–44; Braudel, ‘History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée’, in Braudel, On History (Chicago, 1980), 25–54. T. Stoianovich, French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca NY, 1976), 204–31. ²⁵ ‘The “Event” and the “Long Term” in Social History: The Case of the Chouan Uprising’, in E. Le Roy Ladurie, The Territory of the Historian (Chicago, 1979), 111–31; originally published in French in Communications 18 (1972); A. Suter, ‘Histoire sociale et événements historiques. Pour une nouvelle approche’, Annales HSS 3 (1997), 543–67; A. Farge, ‘Penser et définir l’événement en histoire. Approche des situations et des acteurs sociaux’, Terrain: Anthropologie et sciences humaines 38 (2002), 67–78; F. Dosse, Renaissance de l’événement. Un défi pour l’historien: entre sphinx et phénix (Paris, 2010). ²⁶ Though see, notably, R. Descimon, ‘Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville (4 Juillet 1652). Paris et la “Fronde des Princes” ’ Annales ESC, 54 (1999), 319–51. ²⁷ The exception to this general trend was the radically perceptive study by Ernst Kossmann: La Fronde (Leiden, 1954). Kossmann’s narrative stresses the stumbling incoherence of all parties in the face of events whose outcomes they had not foreseen and had almost no capacity to control. His description of 1648–50 is straightforwardly described as ‘the anarchy’ (117–50).

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Parliament in the British Civil Wars was certain because it was retrospectively seen as the route to the achievement of constitutional monarchy. The present study returns to detailed sources, looks at rival and conflicting narratives, even seeks to reconstruct events on a day-by-day basis where this shows just how uncertain or balanced various outcomes were. One result is to affirm the importance of individuals in the decision-making process, and above all, the role of Mazarin and Condé. Of course, their ability to act, and their choice of actions, were, as Ronald Syme would insist in the context of the Roman civil wars, shaped by their adherents and the requirements of maintaining their parties. But at another level, a detailed event-by-event account can demythologize assumptions about individuals. In this case it challenges the view that Mazarin’s actions throughout the struggle were informed by clear-sighted pursuit of the best interests of the state, even when this simply entailed his own re-establishment in power. The misjudgements, contradictions and wrong turnings made by individuals matter too, as does their palpable failure to anticipate the consequences of unfolding sequences of events. From a complex fabric of decision-making, actions, and events it is possible to structure an account of 1652 whose basic contours may be familiar, but whose detail shows up different and unfamiliar processes of decision-making and action, and opens up vistas of very different potential outcomes. The third perspective on 1652 might at first sight appear to reject this concern with the contingent, and with individual actions and decisions. Since the influential mid-nineteenth century study of Alphonse Feillet, it has been widely recognized that the political struggles of the Fronde took place against a background of subsistence crisis and high mortality brought about by a sequence of poor or failed harvests.²⁸ These circumstances were linked at the time to acute climatic conditions: contemporary accounts pointed to cold and lengthy winters, especially in 1650/1 and 1651/2; to continuous rainfall and catastrophic flooding; and to cool, sunless summers. Since the mid-twentieth century, historians have fitted this sequence of extreme climate conditions into a much larger climatic pattern, that of the Little Ice Age. While the detailed chronology is still subject to scholarly and scientific debate, a large body of evidence points to a lowering of mean average temperatures, certainly in the northern hemisphere, from the late sixteenth century until the late nineteenth century. Within that long period of overall cooler temperatures can be located several shorter periods of more extreme cold, often accompanied by other abnormal weather conditions: the second half of the sixteenth century, the period from the late 1640s to the 1690s, that from the 1770s through to the 1810s, and several decades after 1850. While not every year

²⁸ Feillet, La Misère au temps de la Fronde. For a prescient call to a renewed socio-economic history of the Fronde, see P. Goubert’s review ‘Ernst Kossmann et l’énigme de la Fronde’, Annales ESC 13 (1958), 115–18.

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in these sequences was characterized by crisis-inducing climatic conditions, short cycles of years could prove abnormally extreme.²⁹ The essential characteristic of pre-modern agriculture was its vulnerability to climatic variation.³⁰ Even if soil and crop types had made it possible to increase agrarian yields across Europe, the challenges and costs of distribution and transportation would have discouraged overproduction of grain. The proximity of large population centres, ideally serviced by water-borne transport, could permit some degree of agricultural specialization and intensive production, but in general the patterns of cultivation, land rotation and labour remained static and underdeveloped.³¹ When conditions deteriorated—through less than optimal weather conditions, or human interference or destructiveness—agrarian output fell quickly towards shortage and dearth. Peasants would struggle to meet the demands of rent, royal taxes, tithes, and other local impositions from any small surplus that they could allocate to the market.³² A pattern of worsening climatic conditions and regular sub-optimal harvests, combined with increased fiscal burdens and pressures, especially from state fiscality, led to what Jean Jacquart characterized as the irreversible transformation of a large part of the peasantry of France from at least partly independent landowners into economically marginalized tenant-labourers.³³ This remorseless process of pauperization through land transfers was the background socio-economic development stemming from worsening climatic conditions. But these conditions could produce even more disastrous immediate circumstances. A single bad harvest brought about by abnormal weather would dramatically reduce crop yields; a succession of bad harvests brought a subsistence crisis, malnutrition, and a dramatic upward spike of mortality, as weakened peasant and urban populations, unable to feed themselves or buy food, starved to death or, greatly weakened, fell victim to a lethal range of contagious diseases.³⁴ Two or more successive years where cold weather, drought, or flooding kept the ²⁹ E. Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire humaine et comparée du climat (3 vols; Paris, 2004–9); R. Bradley, P. Jones, Climate since  1500 (London, 1992); J. Grove, The Little Ice Age (London, 2001); J. Eddy, ‘The “Maunder Minimum”: Sunspots and Climate in the Reign of Louis XIV’ in G. Parker, L. Smith, eds, The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1978), 226–68. ³⁰ J. Meuvret, ‘Les crises de subsistances et la démographie de la France d’Ancien Régime’, Population 1 (1946), 643–50; J. Jacquart, ‘La production agricole dans la France du XVII siècle’, XVIIe siècle 70–1 (1966), 21–46. ³¹ J. Landers, The Field and the Forge: Population, Production and Power in the Pre-industrial West (Oxford, 2003), 19–122. ³² P. Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 (Paris, 1960), 45–59, 349–56; E. Le Roy Ladurie, The French Peasantry, 1450–1660 (Aldershot, 1987), 267–358; G. Roupnel, La ville et la campagne au XVIIe siècle, étude sur les populations du pays Dijonnais (Paris, 1955), 199–326. ³³ J. Jacquart, La crise rurale en Île de France (1550–1670) (Paris, 1974), 681–715, 723–48; Jacquart, ‘Immobilisme et catastrophes (1560–1660)’, in G. Duby, A. Wallon (eds), Histoire de la France rurale, vol 2. De 1340 à 1789 (Paris, 1975), 159–341. ³⁴ J. Dupâquier, La population rurale du Bassin Parisien à l’époque de Louis XIV (Paris/Lille, 1979), 248–66; P. Deyon, Étude sur la société urbaine au XVIIe siècle: Amiens, capitale provinciale (Paris, 1967), 17–33.

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crop yields well below average would raise levels of death and debility to catastrophic proportions.³⁵ Between 1648 and 1652, France suffered four successive years of appalling climatic setbacks, culminating in the terrible winters of 1650–1 and 1651–2. If 1651 was not quite a ‘year without a summer’, it came close to being so: in April 1651 the governor of the Spanish Netherlands rejected a proposal for a suspension of arms while peace negotiations were being initiated, on grounds that the winter and spring had been so bitterly cold that there would be no grass to graze horses—an essential requirement for campaigning—until late June at earliest.³⁶ Individuals in their correspondence regularly noted the extreme conditions in both winters, consistently described as beyond anything in their previous experience.³⁷ One part of the human catastrophe of the years of the Fronde can thus be linked to climate and climate change, acting on an inflexible and vulnerable agrarian system that nonetheless determined the survival chances of the great majority of the population in every European society. But the vital addition to our understanding of the demographic catastrophe that occurred in 1652 is the intersection of climate change and political events and actions, above all the direct impact of warfare on the existing fragility of the economic system. In 2013, Geoffrey Parker revisited on an epic scale a subject that had engaged his attention since the 1970s. In his study Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, he explores the simultaneity of dramatic political and economic crisis and collapse across the globe in the course of the seventeenth century, above all during its middle decades. One particularly contemporary preoccupation of Parker’s is the way in which human action compounds the effects of climate change to worsen the conditions, and in most cases the survival chances, of local populations. Awareness that warfare created crushing burdens and bred calamities was nothing new. In 1660 Jean-Nicholas de Parival coined the subsequently popular notion that the seventeenth century was an age of iron, unparalleled in its harshness. His Abrégé de l’histoire de ce siècle de fer, contenant les misères et calamitez des derniers temps, avec leurs causes et pretexts . . . jusques à la conclusion de la paix entre les Roys d’Espagne et de France was an extended narrative of how the ambitions, fears, and blunders of decision-makers had led to one catastrophe after another, consigning populations to the destructiveness of war and the violence and extortion of soldiers.³⁸ A special place in his and others’ accounts was reserved for the destructiveness of ‘intestinal’, civil, war, where the treatment of the civil populations, especially those ³⁵ M. Lachiver, Les Années de misère: la famine au temps du Grand Roi (Paris, 1991); B. Frenzel, C. Pfister (eds), Climactic Trends and Anomalies in Europe (1675–1715); J. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis (1816–17) (Baltimore, 1977). ³⁶ AAE CP Espagne 31, fo. 16–21, Proposition for a suspension of arms . . . (printed), 2 April 1651. ³⁷ See below, chapter 5, War and the Subsistence Economy. ³⁸ Parival (2 vols; Brussels, 1660).

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deemed rebel or hostile, would be deliberately punitive rather than incidentally destructive. Parker’s account certainly does not diminish an account of devastation brought about by the impact of relentless and seemingly universal war, but he also seeks to show how the burdens of war are economically and demographically destructive precisely because they impact upon the already unstable and vulnerable relationship between population, climate, and food supply. At the heart of the work is the confrontation between the forces of climate change and the impact of waging, financing, and sustaining war.³⁹ The year 1652 is perhaps the archetypical example of how the background cooling of the Little Ice Age combined with a decisive short-term worsening in weather conditions. This short-term worsening had compounded itself for four years after the winter of 1648, peaking in the winter and spring of 1652. This then coincided with the most devastating form of human activity in that already crisis-prone context, the waging of large-scale civil war. Just as the climatic catastrophe progressed by stages to reach its summit in 1652, so the military struggle of the Fronde reached its climax in the same year. France in 1652 stands at the ‘cutting edge’ of the argument for the consequences of a drastic worsening of climate and the most intensive type of warfare. While this intersection is an inseparable aspect of the crisis of 1652, two issues merit particular investigation. One is to ask more detailed questions about the scale and type of military activity during 1652, and why it should have had such a devastating impact.⁴⁰ The second is to turn the question back on itself, and to look at the struggle to keep armies fed and paid in the midst of the worst subsistence crisis of the century, and how far this had an impact on military operations and the feasibility of attaining objectives. These problems will be examined in the particular context of the collapse of France’s earlier military achievements across the frontiers, culminating in the triple loss of Dunkirk, Casale-Monferrato, and Barcelona in the closing months of 1652. This study of 1652 therefore offers a different, ‘forward-facing’ perspective on the last year of the Fronde, and draws attention to its impact on the ensuing decade of the 1650s. It explores the role of contingency in what has often been regarded as a series of events pre-determined by the inexorable triumph of the centralizing absolute state and its administrators, and the predestined failure of any political alternative that might have adjusted or transformed this outcome. Finally, it will explore in detail the decisive interaction of climate variability and human intervention through waging war, which places 1652 at the storm centre of a European, or indeed global, crisis of the seventeenth century.

³⁹ Parker, Global Crisis, 55–76. ⁴⁰ And the particular significance of civil war in this situation: J. Black, Rethinking Military History (London, 2004), 132–3.

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The remaining part of this introduction will sketch the historical context from the rise of cardinal Richelieu as first minister of France through to 1650, the midpoint of the Fronde. For many contemporaries who witnessed the events of 1648–1652 the remarkable thing about the challenge to ministerial government was not that it happened, but that it had taken so long to emerge. This was all the more surprising since it had been prefigured in a large number of previous political conspiracies, in popular revolts with their regular hints of elite complicity, and in a public and private literature of dissent and opposition.

Richelieu, Mazarin and the Origins of the Fronde, 1624–51 Albeit for different reasons, contemporaries and later historians have both agreed on the significance for France of the year 1624. The establishment and consolidation of the ministerial power of cardinal Richelieu was a decisive moment in the history of the French monarchy. For historians it was the event which placed France on course to effective government after more than a decade of weakness and instability following the 1610 assassination of Henri IV. Richelieu’s selfdeclared four-point plan to destroy the political and military power of the Huguenot ‘state within a state’, to abase the arrogance of the great nobles, to reduce all the king’s subjects to obedience, and to raise the name and reputation of the king amongst foreign powers, is frequently cited as a foundational blueprint for French absolutism.⁴¹ The longevity of his ministry established continuities, and bred an acceptance of the new normality of strong, centralized government. And by the nineteenth century, Richelieu was increasingly depicted as a revolutionary administrator, seeking to replace traditional structures of authority and government with more accountable or professional administrators and agents. His system of rule, associated above all with an emphasis on authority granted under particular and revocable commission rather than held through patrimonial officepurchase or in recognition of social status, was presented as the cornerstone of subsequent ancien régime administration.⁴² In particular, the emergence of the system of commissioned intendants in both the civil and military spheres has been taken as synonymous with political modernization.⁴³ Richelieu’s rule embodied a new conception of the state. From the 1630s the professionalism of the government was to be tested by the unprecedented scale and burden of warfare: a massive increase in fiscal pressure on the population required both interventionist ⁴¹ Richelieu, Testament Politique, ed. F. Hildesheimer (Paris, 1995), 43. ⁴² R. Mousnier, La vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII (Paris, 1971). ⁴³ R. Mousnier, ‘État et commissaire. Recherches sur la création des intendants des provinces (1634–48)’, in Mousnier, La plume, la faucille et le marteau. Institutions et société en France du moyen âge à la Révolution (Paris, 1970), 179–99; R. Bonney, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661 (Oxford, 1978).

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initiatives against the existing, unresponsive administrators and a range of assertive policies to tackle tax evasion, fiscal resistance, and open revolt. From this traditional perspective on Richelieu and his role in building a powerful, centralized state, the eruption of the Fronde five years after his death might point to awkward questions about his legacy and the thoroughness of the process of state-building. In fact it was easily accommodated into the positive narrative. The breakdown occurred during a royal minority, notoriously a period of ambiguity and uncertainty about the location of authority. Moreover, it developed under Richelieu’s successor, cardinal Mazarin, whose grip on the levers of power was considered to be less assured; as an outsider his understanding of French society was poor, and he could become a focus for xenophobic resentment, as was revealed by the mazarinades. Above all, such accounts insistently remind the reader that the Fronde was defeated, and defeated for good reasons. Not only were the frondeurs divided by particularism and the crudest self-interest, but they lacked any alternative ideology to set against the absolutist doctrine of the royalists; the latter appeared a bulwark against internal disorder and external encroachment, both abundantly demonstrated during the unrest itself. So when Mazarin returned to power in 1653 it was to encounter a chastened and compliant political elite, far readier to cooperate in the state-building project and to accept the constraints of an absolute monarchy and its ministerial agents. The problem with this traditional account is that it bears little relation to the political situation in France either in the two decades before the Fronde, or in the years afterwards. Above all, the assumed desirability of the political outcome—the creation of a centralized French nation-state—predetermines judgements about the actions, motives, and attitudes of the contemporary participants. All of these are placed into an anachronistic narrative, which asks none of the questions that would most concern the actors and their contemporaries. Richelieu’s exercise of power as first minister from 1624 was not seen as a providential gift of strong leadership in difficult times. France was a monarchy, and one political issue about which there was overwhelming consensus in early modern France was that kings alone ruled. Their right to rule was ordained by God, who had established kings and princes as His direct representatives on earth. They might delegate some of their executive authority to subordinate agents, but this was strictly constrained by the need for the king actively and visibly to take all political decisions—for he alone was accountable to God for these. If French kings were to be advised, and there was plenty of precedent and tradition for taking advice, then there were constitutionally desirable forms in which this advice should be given: meetings of the Estates General, the most recent one having been held in 1614 to advise the queen mother and the young Louis XIII; assemblies of notables; the constitutional opinions and judgements of the Parlement of Paris, and to some extent the lesser Parlements. Above all, regular counsel should be sought through the members of the royal family and princes of the blood, all of

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whom were considered natural advisors in royal decision-making. More formally, of course, an adult king attended meetings of his Conseil d’en Haut, and listened to the advice of his senior ministers before making his decisions.⁴⁴ In this political world dominated by consensus about the king’s indivisible sovereignty, the existence of a first minister posed a considerable problem. In what would be understood as normal political circumstances there was no dominant minister, least of all one whose power and patronage might overshadow the ruler’s. There would be a group of government ministers of relatively equivalent standing in terms of political experience, clients, and royal favour, even if their particular offices—chancellor, keeper of the seals, superintendent of finances, secretary for foreign affairs—implied varying status in governmental and court hierarchies. These figures would vie for the king’s favour in pursuit of particular policies or actions. Though individually they might have great authority to make policy and distribute favour within their own administrative fiefs, there was little possibility that any one of them could consistently shape overall crown policy. During the reign of Henri IV (1589–1610), which in the 1630s and 1640s was increasingly seen as the model for virtuous royal government, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, might enjoy considerable royal favour and confidence, and directly control the king’s finances, but he was never first minister. He was flanked by high-status figures such as Pomponne de Bellièvre and Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy, who enjoyed the king’s confidence, controlled their own parts of the government, and were as likely to influence the king by their policy proposals as Sully was.⁴⁵ The apparent re-establishment of such a system under Louis XIV’s personal rule in 1661 signalled a return to this style of traditional royal government that was certainly not lost on contemporaries.⁴⁶ Government by a dominant first minister, in contrast, had to be carefully finessed; it was likely to be seen as rule by a ‘minister-favourite’, with all the pejorative implications of undue influence and personal and financial advancement.⁴⁷ The strength of first-ministerial rule was determined by the ability to replace or marginalize other figures of authority in the government, by appointing clients or allies to other, now subordinate, ministerial positions, and by constructing mechanisms to ensure a monopoly of access and advice to the ruler. Both Louis XIII and Richelieu had early and first-hand experience of such rule by ⁴⁴ A. Jouanna, Le prince absolu. Apogée et déclin de l’imaginaire monarchique (Paris, 2014); C. Maillet-Rao, ‘Mathieu de Morgues and Michel de Marillac: The Dévots and Absolutism’, French History 25 (2011), 279–97; F. Cosandey, R. Descimon, L’absolutisme en France. Histoire et historiographie (Paris, 2002), esp. 51–82; 138–47; S. Hanley, ‘L’idéologie constitutionelle en France: le lit de justice’, Annales ESC 37 (1982), 32–63; R. Mousnier, ‘Comment les français du XVIIe siècle voyaient la constitution’, in Mousnier, La plume, 43–56. ⁴⁵ J-P. Babelon, Henri IV (Paris, 1982), 709–18. ⁴⁶ For one of many cases during the Fronde when the ideal model of Henri IV’s government was cited: AAE MD 882, fo. 98, text of the remonstrances of the Parlement to the king, Paris, 23 Mar. 1652. ⁴⁷ J. Elliott, L. Brockliss (eds), The World of the Favourite (New Haven/London, 1999), 1–25.

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minister-favourite in the rapid rise and fall of Concino Concini during the later regency government of queen Marie de Médicis.⁴⁸ Concini appointed his client Richelieu as secretary for foreign affairs, and was murdered in 1617 by a coterie around the young Louis XIII, who in turn seized power from the regent, Louis’ mother. The young Louis XIII was thus presented as an enemy of over-powerful ministerial rule, and créatures like Richelieu who had risen as one of Concini’s ministerial team were summarily dismissed.⁴⁹ Louis’ own favourite and architect of Concini’s fall, Albert de Luynes, was more concerned to consolidate power at court and in the army.⁵⁰ Subsequent groupings of ministers, none of whom enjoyed outright control of government, and various destabilizing rifts and rapprochements between king and queen mother, unfolded against a background in which France seemed to be losing status and influence in international relations.⁵¹ Marie de Médicis had gambled on achieving a dynastic rapprochement with the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, but Habsburg successes in the early stages of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) had encouraged Spanish military assertion in the Rhineland and in the north Italian passes connecting Spanish Milan with the Austrian Tyrol. Louis XIII grew frustrated with what seemed the appeasement of Spain by his ministers in the early 1620s.⁵² He was prepared to abandon previous antipathies and to consider appointing a minister with a known record of antiSpanish pronouncements, who had positioned himself within a hawkish faction in debates about French foreign policy. Sponsored by the queen mother, in whose party he had established himself by default, cardinal Richelieu made his return to the royal council in 1624.⁵³ Richelieu’s intention to remove those ministers who might be able to challenge his influence with the king was clear from the outset: the disgrace of Charles de La Vieuville, superintendent of finances, followed in short order, and the next few years were spent building up a group of client-ministers who would be subordinate to the cardinal in both the royal council and their conduct of administration.⁵⁴ Meanwhile he sought to consolidate his standing with Louis XIII. The young king considered Richelieu under probation, and tolerated the extension of his power and dominance of the council only because of his frustration with the failures of previous ministers. The first military campaign to dislodge Spanish troops from the Alpine Valtelline pass proved a predictable failure, given the challenges of ⁴⁸ J-F. Dubost, Marie de Médicis: La reine dévoilée (Paris, 2009), 475–541; H. Duccini, Concini. Grandeur et misère du favori de Marie de Médicis (Paris, 1991). ⁴⁹ J. Bergin, The Rise of Richelieu (New Haven/London, 1991), 145–213. ⁵⁰ S. Kettering, Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621) (Manchester, 2008), 149–65; 191–216. ⁵¹ Dubost, Marie de Médicis, 571–650; G. Zeller, Richelieu et les ministres de Louis XIII de 1621 à 1624 (Paris, 1880). ⁵² V-L. Tapié, La politique étrangère de la France et le début de la Guerre de Trente Ans (1616–1621) (Paris, 1934). ⁵³ Bergin, Rise of Richelieu, 214–59; Dubost, Marie de Médicis, 677–703. ⁵⁴ O. Ranum, Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII (Oxford, 1963).

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supply and coordination that were entailed; an attempt to broaden the war effort by a joint attack, in alliance with the duke of Savoy, on the Spanish-aligned Republic of Genoa, proved even more ill-judged.⁵⁵ Meanwhile Richelieu’s diplomatic initiatives directed towards the protestant enemies of the Habsburgs began to stir up what would become a growing wave of concern among many French Catholics. Richelieu’s opponents did not argue that the interests of Catholicism were served simply by accepting Habsburg universal monarchy, but they did question his justification for war, and proposed that France should act as an arbitrator in European politics, thereby maintaining both her own interests and those of the Catholic church.⁵⁶ The enforced decision to go to war against the French Protestant rebels, focused on the lengthy siege of La Rochelle and the 1629 campaign in Provence and Languedoc, averted this crisis. Richelieu could both count on the king’s support and present himself as the successful exponent of a policy that enjoyed massive support from the Catholic elites in France. Yet for Richelieu defeating the Huguenots in France was essentially a distraction from the process of justifying his position to the king as the architect of an aggressive anti-Habsburg foreign policy. Unlike Mazarin, who was to prove dangerously complacent about ‘selling’ his policies to the French political class, Richelieu spent time and money acquiring writers who would defend the necessity of France’s struggle against Habsburg ‘encirclement’ and ‘universal monarchy’, and who vaunted Richelieu’s ability in the conduct of affairs. Yet despite this attempt to shape political opinion, criticism of Richelieu’s direct assumption of power, of his use of his créatures to manage the king, and his exclusion of alternative sources of counsel was widely shared and well articulated. Already the argument was gathering weight that Richelieu’s position represented an illegitimate, abusive seizure of power from the king.⁵⁷ Opposition coalesced around the king’s brother, Gaston d’Orléans, and his ill-treatment by the cardinal, who feared that Gaston and then his possible male heirs were likely to succeed to the throne in the absence of children from Louis XIII’s marriage.⁵⁸ The disgrace and exile of Marie de Médicis after her failure to dislodge Richelieu in the November 1630 ‘Day of Dupes’ worsened this perception, in which it seemed

⁵⁵ R. Pithon, ‘Les débuts difficiles du ministère du cardinal de Richelieu et la crise de la Valteline’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique 74 (1960), 298–322. ⁵⁶ C. Maillet-Rao, La pensée politique des dévots: Matthieu des Morgues et Michel de Marillac (Paris, 2015), 151–61, 321–60. A more traditional interpretation of dévot policy as simply favouring Catholic interests over national is in W. Church, Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, 1972), 103–72; E. Thuau, Raison d’état et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu (Paris, 1966), 103–52. ⁵⁷ Jouanna, Devoir de révolte, 212–78; J-M. Constant, Les Conjurateurs: Le premier libéralisme politique sous Richelieu (Paris, 1987); Constant, La folle liberté des baroques (1600–1661) (Paris, 2007), 181–239. ⁵⁸ G. Dethan, La vie de Gaston d’Orléans (Paris, 1992), 73–88, 163–71; C. Bouyer, Gaston d’Orléans. Le frère rebelle de Louis XIII (Paris, 2007), 42–84; J-M. Constant, P. Gatulle (eds), Gaston d’Orléans. Prince rebelle et mécène (Rennes, 2017), 29–67.

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that Richelieu was intent on eliminating and replacing the royal family as ‘natural’ advisors to the king.⁵⁹ French intervention in the Mantuan succession dispute in 1629/30 was depicted by Richelieu’s enemies as another instance of the cardinal’s undue control over the king. The costs of raising armies to intervene in north Italy and to protect the eastern frontier, coming after the massive expenses of the war against the Huguenots, was seen as an irresponsible, high-risk policy. It was likely to plunge France into domestic chaos as tax demands and troop movements provoked unrest and revolt.⁶⁰ But the Mantuan intervention, largely because the Spanish were not prepared to escalate the conflict, proved short and successful in terms of accruing strategic benefits, diplomatic prestige, and, for Richelieu, credit with the king. The French occupation of Casale-Monferrato was to last until 1652, and Richelieu’s success in upholding the rights of Charles de Nevers to his territories in north Italy gave France considerable standing with the Italian princes and with other enemies of the Habsburgs.⁶¹ Richelieu was able to reap the benefits of success at the Treaty of Cherasco, both to eliminate his domestic enemies and to project French power in Italy and into territories up to and across the Rhine. The duchy of Lorraine was invaded and by 1634 had been all but annexed; protection had been offered to a number of princes from the Elector of Trier down through Alsace to Montbéliard, entailing the garrisoning of their key fortresses by French troops.⁶² France was operating on the sidelines of the continuing Thirty Years’ War, in which the Habsburg powers of Spain and the Emperor were fully occupied by the struggle against the Dutch and those German protestant princes grouped under the imposing military leadership of Sweden. Richelieu could thus offer a relatively low-cost, apparently low-risk enhancement of the king’s prestige and influence. Despite the failed rebellion in 1632 led by the duc de Montmorency, these years were notably less preoccupied with the problem of ministerial ‘tyranny’. As was to be the case for cardinal Mazarin in the mid-1640s, foreign policy success could mute at least some domestic political pressure. The king’s satisfaction with Richelieu’s achievements on his behalf sent a message to those who opposed both the principle and the practice of first-ministerial rule. Richelieu himself was convinced that the execution of the duc de Montmorency, who, until his alliance with Gaston

⁵⁹ Dubost, Marie de Médicis, 744–83; P. Chevallier, Louis XIII: roi cornélien (Paris, 1979), 359–407. ⁶⁰ K. Malettke, Richelieu. Ein Leben im Dienste des Königs und Frankreichs (Paderborn, 2018), 456–82; D. Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624–42 (Cambridge, 2001), 93–100. ⁶¹ S. Externbrink, Le Coeur du Monde. Frankreich und die norditalienischen Staaten (Mantua, Parma, Savoyen) im Zeitalter Richelieus 1624–1635 (Münster, 1999), 133–201; T. Osborne, Dynasty and Diplomacy in the Court of Savoy. Political Culture and the Thirty Years’ War (Cambridge, 2002), 143–72. ⁶² Malettke, Richelieu, 602–76, 717–69.

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d’Orléans in 1632, had been a committed servant of the monarchy, had sent a clear message about the king’s commitment to his first minister.⁶³ It is impossible to predict how long this situation might have continued, with France able to stand on the margins of the Thirty Years’ War, accruing piecemeal but incremental territorial and political gains, and keeping both her military and financial commitments relatively contained. But habituation to rule by a first minister who was perceived to exercise an ever tighter control over the king’s policies, and a monopoly over appointments and favour, was not the same as lasting acceptance of such a system. There remained a fundamental tension between the sovereign’s right to delegate executive powers to whoever he chose, and the legitimacy of a minister who was usurping legislative and prerogative authority that could only belong to the king.⁶⁴

Richelieu and the système de l’extraordinaire The year 1634 arguably deserves as much attention as 1624 in the shaping of the ministerial regime. For in September 1634, thanks to the entirely unanticipated annihilation of the main Swedish campaign army at the battle of Nördlingen, the character of the ministerial government of Richelieu, and subsequently of Mazarin, underwent drastic change. Now that the two Habsburg powers were relieved of their most formidable military opponent, they had the opportunity to confront France. Frustrated by French subsidies underpinning Swedish and Dutch war efforts, by attempts to draw the Italian princes into aggressive anti-Spanish leagues, and by the annexation of Lorraine and French encroachment up to and beyond the Rhine, the Habsburgs decided on a pre-emptive military strike. Veteran Habsburg armies would be thrown into a multi-fronted assault on France; rapid military success would force Richelieu into a settlement affirming a European political order based upon the 1635 Peace of Prague, a pro-Habsburg settlement of the Thirty Years’ War.⁶⁵ Before September 1634, and despite his later unconvincing assertions, Richelieu had no good reason to prepare for such an eventuality, and now found himself on the brink of an unexpected all-out war against both Spain and the Emperor.⁶⁶

⁶³ Richelieu, Testament Politique, 67. ⁶⁴ For a Spanish perspective on this delegation of royal authority to ministers, see A. Malcolm, Royal Favouritism and the Governing Elite of the Spanish Monarchy, 1640–1665 (Oxford, 2017), 17–38. ⁶⁵ D. Parrott, ‘The Causes of the Franco-Spanish War of 1635–59’, in J. Black (ed.), The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh, 1987), 72–111. ⁶⁶ Notably in his Testament Politique, 74–5, and his Mémoires (Petitot/Monmerqué), xxix. 212–13. The notion that Richelieu always anticipated shifting from a clandestine ‘guerre couverte’ to open war remains a staple interpretation of his ministry, despite plentiful evidence that the events of September 1634 were unanticipated and there was no long-term plan to wage all-out European war.

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Military survival was to shape the next few years. Richelieu pre-empted Spanish preparations for an invasion of France by a formal declaration of war in May 1635, but the French were far less prepared for this escalation of conflict than the Habsburg powers. Spanish and Imperial invasions of France in 1636, ‘the year of Corbie’, brought enemy cavalry to the outskirts of Paris; these invasions just failed to achieve their main objective of gaining a permanent foothold in the French frontier provinces. After this debacle, the rest of Richelieu’s ministry was characterized by the mostly lacklustre performance of French armies and their commanders on the battlefield and on campaign.⁶⁷ Yet the war effort required raising and funding a military establishment at least twice as large as any forces raised by France in previous conflicts.⁶⁸ France was in crisis, and Richelieu’s ministry was forcibly transformed from being a constitutionally problematic but politically successful government into an embattled système de l’extraordinaire, which was to be its defining—and arguably fatal—feature until 1659.⁶⁹ Up to 1634/5 the extent to which Richelieu’s regime went beyond permissible boundaries in the exercise of delegated authority had been tempered by a foreign policy that in retrospect looked like the pursuit of limited ‘wars of choice’, that was cost-efficient in enhancing royal prestige, and that could afford a relatively light touch in confronting provincial autonomy and fiscal privilege. All this now changed. Royal policy was driven by necessity—the overriding need to secure military survival. Customary and legal tradition accepted that a generally perceived state of necessity could increase what could legitimately be demanded by the ruler. In normal circumstances the extent to which the French king held rights over his subjects’ liberties and property was limited, whether in levying taxes on those who had been granted or had acquired privileges, overruling claims of office-holders to exercise authority, or interfering with legal process and verdicts.⁷⁰ But an accepted state of necessity, the protection of his subjects (salus populi), could offer the king much greater latitude to abrogate existing rights and privileges. Equally, though, the ‘necessity’ needed to be generally recognized, the king’s direct role in these extraordinary actions and processes needed to be visible, and the situation should have an end-point: a permanent state of necessity was simply tyranny or despotism.⁷¹

⁶⁷ Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 110–63. ⁶⁸ Ibid, 182–222. ⁶⁹ The concept of the régime or système de l’extraordinaire to describe the informal and dubiously legal mechanisms by which ministerial power was justified seems to have originated in the short overview by R. Descimon and C. Jouhaud, La France du premier XVIIe siècle, 1594–1661 (Paris, 1996), 104–23, but has subsequently been used by other historians who wish to emphasize the extent to which this was an informal—and supposedly temporary—system of rule: J-F. Dubost, ‘Anne d’Autriche, reine de France: mise en perspective et bilan politique du règne (1615–1666)’, in C. Grell, ed., Anne d’Autriche: Infante d’Espagne et reine de France (Paris, 2009), 59–62; H. Drévillon, Les rois absolus, 1629–1715 (Paris, 2011), 131–67—‘Le système de l’extraordinaire’. ⁷⁰ Jouanna, Le Prince Absolu, 58–71; Cosandey, Descimon, L’absolutisme, 51–82. ⁷¹ Carrier, Labyrinthe de l’état, 166–91.

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To Richelieu’s critics, the cardinal’s provocative foreign policy had precipitated the war, while his handling of the crisis of 1635–6 revealed his recklessness and poor judgement.⁷² Moreover, as Richelieu sought to tighten his control and that of his clients and créatures over the government, the perception grew that even if he had not provoked the war, he certainly sought to perpetuate the state of necessity that it justified. For this allowed him to consolidate his own authority and the king’s dependence on him. The needs of war justified the increasing array of powers claimed by Richelieu to override traditional administrative procedure, to ignore financial and legal safeguards, and to pursue and destroy his opponents. Whether these extraordinary powers could be deployed by a servant of the crown rather than the king in person was one source of intense debate and a compelling justification for resistance in the years after 1635.⁷³ The other was the conviction that the military emergency, the salus populi which justified the cardinal’s seizure of control, by definition must be temporary: as the years wore on, hostility to a permanent state of emergency grew.⁷⁴ It is important to recognize that the establishment of a régime de l’extraordinaire by Richelieu after 1635 to facilitate his seizure of greater powers did not involve creating the apparatus of a centralized, bureaucratic, administration. The notion that Richelieu responded to the pressures of unprecedented warfare by institutional transformation, conveniently sustains the social-science nostrum that ‘war made the state’.⁷⁵ In fact the structures of government remained largely unchanged; on the back of these structures the ministers sought to sustain and finance the war effort by increasingly radical and provocative fiscal measures, and dealt with opposition either by the capricious dismissal of institutional remonstrances and grievances, or by extra-judicial process and, in the provinces, arbitrary assertiveness and martial law. The handful of short-term appointments of intendants and others holding authority under commission had a role, but it should not be exaggerated; they could neither replace nor systematically bypass established administrators, judges, and local figures of authority.⁷⁶ The essence of the regime was the management of allies and clients within the political establishment to concentrate power and influence, creating a commitment to support ministerial policies on the basis of shared political and material ⁷² Amongst contemporary memoirists, see Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, Petitot/ Monmerqué, li. 350; Henri-Auguste de Loménie, comte de Brienne, Mémoires, Petitot/Monmerqué, xxxvi. 54; Montglat, Mémoires, Petitot/Monmerqué, xlix. 76–7. ⁷³ Constant, Les conjurateurs, 102–45; Jouanna, Devoir de révolte, 281–340; Maillet-Rao, Pensée politique des dévots, 132–51. ⁷⁴ For Richelieu’s incursions into the judicial system, Maillet-Rao, Pensée politique des dévots, 239–52. ⁷⁵ With apologies to the late Charles Tilly, whose aphorism surmounts a subtle argument about war and state formation, but has been used to launch too many simplistic equations of ‘war’ and ‘absolutism’. ⁷⁶ F. X. Emmanuelli, Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien, L’intendance du milieu du XVIIe siècle à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Aix-en-Provence, 1981).

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interests. This network of alliances started at the top of society: the occasionally fraught but long-lasting alliance between Richelieu and Henri II, prince de Condé, brought great political benefits to Richelieu, primarily by legitimizing his regime via the adherence of a prince of the royal blood.⁷⁷ Beneath the rapport with Condé, a sporadic network of ministerial alliances descended down through tiers of the great nobility, and were in some cases secured by matrimonial alliances: Bernard de La Valette, second duc d’Épernon; Henri de Guise-Lorraine, comte d’Harcourt; Antoine de Gramont, comte de Guiche.⁷⁸ The network extended through families and groupings within the noblesse de robe with power and influence in key judicial and financial institutions. It could include families whose members, holding the office of maître des requêtes in the Paris Parlement, might be commissioned to act as intendants with instructions to try to impose or collect taxes in provinces, neutralize opposition, or satisfy the various financiers that outstanding revenues or debts would be collected. But many other members of the network of clients were themselves part of the provincial elites—nobles, churchmen, or officeholders, tasked with trying to break down resistance to tax demands, overseeing unpopular legislation, and buying off or intimidating opponents of Richelieu’s policies in the provinces and within local institutions.⁷⁹ An essentially personalized network linked a nexus of ministerial supporters across court, central government, provinces, and institutions. What bound them to ministerial policies was not ideological commitment to Richelieu’s priorities in foreign policy, still less a belief that Richelieu’s rule was synonymous with political modernization or state-building. What motivated and maintained their adherence was an alignment of interests. As the burdens of sustaining the war effort grew heavier, the task of selling and maintaining ministerial policies became harder and generated more antagonism between the exponents of ministerial policy and their opponents. Yet the benefits of adherence to a powerful patronage network could provide a range of advantages in terms of appointments for relatives and friends, career advancement, political influence, and judicial protection. For many of those in the higher reaches of ministerial clienteles, or the political allies of Richelieu and, later, Mazarin, involvement on favourable terms in the financing of the war effort became one of the largest attractions of cooperation with the regime. ‘Exploitative finance seems the glue which held together the Mazarinist regime’, as William Beik bluntly summed up this mechanism.⁸⁰ The perception was widely shared that the only access to the king and royal favour lay through the minister ⁷⁷ C. Bitsch, Vie et carrière d’Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé (1588–1646) (Paris, 2008) 271–341. ⁷⁸ D. Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands and the French Army’, in J. Bergin, L. Brockliss (eds), Richelieu and His Age (Oxford, 1992), 135–73. ⁷⁹ Classic studies are W. Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985), esp. 223–41; S. Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford, 1986). ⁸⁰ Beik, Absolutism and Society, 338; a sentiment echoed by D. Dessert in his delineation of the ‘système fisco-financier’: Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle (Paris, 1984), passim.

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and his clients, and this was indeed a situation that Richelieu wished to create, even if he was not wholly successful. Moreover, the king’s decisions in matters of favour were perceived as subordinate to those of the cardinal-minister. The claim that the ‘king counted for nothing’ in appointments and promotions to military office, though demonstrably not true, became a regular and bitter complaint in the officer corps, which was split between those who enjoyed advancement because they were the cardinal’s clients, and those marginalized or excluded despite their services.⁸¹ A lot of resentment and hostility was generated by this essentially informal regime through which the cardinal and his allies gained control of the mechanisms of government and used them to short-circuit the ‘ordinary’ system of royal authority based on established institutions and traditional rights. This hostility should be emphasized. Distinguished mid-twentieth century studies of political ideology during the ministry emphasized Richelieu’s successful deployment of the notion of ‘reason of state’ to justify his policies.⁸² Richelieu used the concept of ‘reason’ in his own writings as a general guiding principle for statecraft, while writers and publicists in his service certainly used ‘reason of state’ to justify actions and policies that involved going beyond the law in matters of concealment, preemptive action, or dubiously legal procedures. They were drawing on a rich and diverse seam of writing which first emerged in Italy as part of the postMachiavellian debates about the scope of political action and its justification.⁸³ The anachronistic hazard here is that an apparently progressive, multi-faceted, and usefully malleable concept of ‘reason of state’ can seem a realistic and compelling justification for action in the face of what is taken to be ‘necessity’: an existential threat posed by Habsburg ‘encirclement’ of France. It is assumed that the forward-looking conduct of foreign policy based on these principles must have won the battle for public opinion. Compared to the rival position based on what is seen as a residual, dysfunctional corporatism and a naïve approach to a ‘Catholic’ foreign policy, these ‘new’ ideas must naturally and rightly have been embraced by all but a recalcitrant minority of the French political elites.⁸⁴ Yet these political elites, even those who rejected the dévot prioritizing of a confessional foreign policy, were less impressed by arguments for ‘reason of state’ and more concerned about the apparently arbitrary extension of ministerial authority based on the claims of ‘necessity’ and the creeping tyranny of ‘extraordinary’ government. A widely shared conviction that France was engaged in an ⁸¹ Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 320–8; H. Drévillon, ‘ “Publier nos playes et valeurs”. Le fait d’armes et sa notoriété pendant la guerre de Trente Ans (1635–48)’, in J. Pontet, M. Figeac, M. Boisson (eds), La noblesse de la fin du XVIe au début du XX siècle. Un modèle social? (2 vols; Biarritz, 2002), i. 289–308. ⁸² Thuau, Raison d’état, 351–419; Church, Richelieu and Reason of State, 283–460. ⁸³ ‘Miroirs de la raison d’état’, special edition of Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques, 20 (1980), featuring a series of articles in response to M. Gauchet, ‘L’État au miroir de la raison d’État: la France et la chrétienté’, in Y-C. Zarka (ed), Raison et déraison d’état, (Paris, 1994), 193–244. ⁸⁴ But see Maillet-Rao, Pensée politique des dévots, 321–60.

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unnecessarily protracted and excessively burdensome war chiefly to sustain the regime of the cardinal-ministers was a constant refrain in criticisms of Richelieu’s ministry and after. It is a sentiment that underlies the great explosion of indignation in so many of the mazarinades from 1648. It is clear that even those who might have acquiesced in Richelieu’s policy aims did not see this style of ministerial rule as a permanent new basis for the government of the state. Even its exponents and beneficiaries conceded that the ministerial régime de l’extraordinaire was justified by particular circumstances, and had no lasting legitimacy. And for many others, nothing that Richelieu or Mazarin undertook or introduced to enhance ministerial power could have permanent status because it was based on the usurpation of authority and prerogatives which were properly, and could only be, those of the king.⁸⁵ The most fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of Richelieu’s régime de l’extraordinaire did not, though, come from within the arena of ideological debate. For Richelieu the most damaging concern was the reluctance of Louis XIII to provide him with the unconditional support that was vital to the legitimacy of his status and his claims to authority. Much has been written about the relationship between Louis and his cardinal-minister, some of it blatantly anachronistic and psychohistorically speculative. It is however clear that Louis, whether through his own judgement or through the prompting of those around him, grew ever more aware of the distortion of royal authority implied by his dependence on, and apparent subservience to, his ministerial servant. A major factor behind the literature of opposition, the fevered plotting and the organized conspiracies of the period after 1636 was Louis’ own, frequently declared hostility to Richelieu’s excessive power and control of the state. Many of those conspiring against Richelieu did so in the conviction that they were serving the king, rescuing him from subservience to an overbearing and manipulative minister.⁸⁶ Yet Louis remained fundamentally ambiguous in his attitudes: partly because Richelieu sold him a vision of dynastic prestige and territorial gains built on the undermining of Habsburg power; partly because Louis recognized the sheer complexity of government, policy-making, and organization over which Richelieu and his subordinates presided, and felt no confidence that he could easily be replaced. Opponents of the cardinal’s pretensions found a further, even more widely supported, motive after 1638. Following the birth of the future Louis XIV and his brother, the conviction grew that Richelieu planned to seize control of the regency in order to secure the continuation of his own power and policies. Louis XIII’s health started to deteriorate from 1640, and it was expected that Richelieu would ⁸⁵ Kossmann, Fronde, 1–29; J. Cornette, La mélancholie du pouvoir. Omer Talon et le procès de la raison d’état (Paris, 1998), 267–306. ⁸⁶ Jouanna, Devoir de révolte, 232–7; Constant, Folle Liberté, 209–39; C. Gregory, ‘The End of Richelieu. Noble conspiracy and Spanish treason in Louis XIII’s France, 1636-1642’, Oxford University DPhil thesis (Oxford, 2012), 17–55.

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survive his master. Before the birth of Louis’ sons the succession had rested with the king’s brother, Gaston d’Orléans, and Richelieu had no illusions that his own position would survive into the reign of King Gaston. But a royal minority opened a very different prospect. Customary arrangements in a regency would give power either to the queen mother and/or to a council of princes of the royal blood; custom and traditional expectation determined what could and could not be enacted before the king came of age. To subvert this, to remove the queen from involvement in the regency and to establish a regency council dominated by Richelieu, would require substantial political leverage. In pursuit of this objective Richelieu was fortunate that Louis XIII may have distrusted his first minister’s motives, but was even more concerned that his Spanish wife, Anne of Austria, would betray his legacy and make a concessionary peace with Spain. Changing the customary arrangements for the regency would inevitably provoke resistance from the Parlement of Paris, which had long claimed the right to pronounce and legislate on matters pertaining to sovereignty and the fundamental laws of the monarchy. In February 1641, therefore, king and cardinal forced the Parlement to register an edict forbidding the judges of the chambers to take cognizance of affairs of state, fiercely reminding them that they were a judicial not a legislative body. Usually cited by historians as a step towards the construction of French ‘absolutism’, contemporaries well understood its purpose, which was to clear the way for the establishment of a regency in Richelieu’s hands.⁸⁷ This knowledge and concern underpinned the frantic conspiracies of the last two years of Richelieu’s ministry. In fact, the final conspiracy, fronted by the king’s favourite, Henri Coeffier de Ruzé, marquis de Cinq Mars, achieved momentary success in separating Richelieu from the king in May/June 1642, and driving him out of the court into a form of internal exile.⁸⁸ The cardinal was saved from disgrace by the discovery of the secret treaty incriminating the conspirators in negotiations with Spain, which was enough to rehabilitate Richelieu and send Cinq Mars to the scaffold. Few expected that Richelieu would predecease his master by a few months, and of course this resolved the particular anxiety about a ministerial regency. What Richelieu’s death did not resolve was the debate about the legitimacy of government by first minister, and the pent-up resentment that this had generated since 1635. The vituperative denunciation of Richelieu’s rule by Jean Le Boindre in the Parlement as ‘destroying the liberty of France . . . [which lay] oppressed under the weight of his own ambition’ was widely echoed in memoirs and correspondence.⁸⁹ ⁸⁷ M. Laurain-Portemer, Une tête à gouverner quatre empires. Études Mazarines II (Paris, 1997), 268–74, reveals the extent that contemporaries recognized and discussed the ‘sens caché’ of the edict. ⁸⁸ Gregory, ‘End of Richelieu’, 251–70; A. Jouanna, La double mort du roi Louis XIII (Paris, 2011), 13–28. ⁸⁹ J. Le Boindre, Débats du Parlement de Paris pendant la minorité de Louis XIV, texts presented by Isabelle Storez-Brancourt (2 vols; Paris, 2002), i. 28–30.

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But Louis XIII remained committed in his last months of life to the war with Spain, and resisted the blandishments of those who, now freed from Richelieu’s overbearing presence, urged him to consider again the immense burdens the war imposed on his people and the strategic rationale for continuing it. Louis, moreover, was still deeply suspicious that Anne of Austria, granted unrestricted powers of regency, would use these to end the war on favourable terms for the Spanish. Louis’ testament therefore stipulated that the regency of his sons should be in the hands of a council in which the queen mother was flanked by the princes of the blood, Gaston and Condé, and by the surviving members of Richelieu’s ministerial team—Léon Bouthillier, comte de Chavigny; his father, Claude Bouthillier; the new appointee as secretary for war, Michel Le Tellier; the chancellor, Pierre Séguier; and Giulio Mazzarini, who had been playing the role of additional foreign secretary without portfolio.⁹⁰

Mazarin, the Regency and the Road to the Fronde The story of how Mazarin came to the attention of Richelieu is well known. A Neapolitan from the Abruzzi, Mazarin was descended from minor noble families established in Rome. The young Giulio Mazzarini built his career initially through the patronage of his father’s employers, the Colonna family, but then transitioned to the service of the Sacchetti, where his skills as a diplomat were tested in his assignment to Milan, where he acted in the entourage of the nuncio, Gian-Francesco Sacchetti.⁹¹ Mazarin’s dramatic personal intervention both prevented a pitched battle between Spanish and French armies outside the walls of Casale-Monferrato in 1630 and smoothed the way to a French diplomatic triumph in the war of the Mantuan succession.⁹² Richelieu was certainly cognizant of the extent that Mazarin had served French interests in the winding-up of the succession conflict, and Mazarin’s usefulness was further enhanced as he entered the service and confidence of the papal, Barberini, family. Sent to Avignon in 1634 as vice-legate and right-hand man to the legate, Antonio Barberini, he began direct correspondence and made his first contacts in Paris with Richelieu.⁹³ Richelieu provided the vice-legate, then extraordinary nuncio, with a series of benefices and other inducements to encourage Mazarin to commit himself further to his service. But it was not until 1639 that Mazarin formally established himself in France and

⁹⁰ Hildesheimer, Double mort, 49–112, 155–66. ⁹¹ V. Cousin, La jeunesse de Mazarin (Paris, 1865), 1–29; S.Tabacchi, Mazzarino (Rome, 2015), 19–47; O. Poncet, Mazarin l’Italien (Paris, 2018), 23–56. ⁹² Cousin, Jeunesse de Mazarin, 483–605; Laurain-Portemer, Études Mazarines II, 379–400. ⁹³ G. Dethan, Mazarin. Un homme de paix à l’âge baroque, 1602–61 (Paris, 1981), 105–48; P. Blet, ‘Richelieu et les débuts de Mazarin’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 6 (1959), 241–68, 241–8; Laurain-Portemer, Études Mazarines II, 431–542; Tabacchi, Mazzarino, 48–69.

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entered Richelieu’s team of créatures as an extraordinary diplomat, charged with a range of thorny negotiations, including the difficult relationship with Louis XIII’s sister, Christina, duchess of Savoy.⁹⁴ The mutually beneficial relationship with Richelieu peaked in December 1641 when French diplomatic influence in Rome won Mazarin a cardinal’s hat.⁹⁵ Richelieu on his deathbed seems to have regarded Mazarin as his most capable créature. He recommended Mazarin to Louis XIII as a fitting successor to his own rule: ‘he has a mind sufficient to govern four empires.’⁹⁶ In later years when Mazarin was regularly dismissed as the mere favourite of the queen mother, his response was that he had been maintained in favour and position by the late king, who had followed Richelieu’s advice that he should use Mazarin’s services. If Mazarin had counted on sustaining his position in French government as a member of the projected council of regency following the death of Louis XIII, he underestimated the widespread dislike with which the late king’s provision for the regency was regarded. Defying the edict of 1641, and calling on the Parlement to uphold her customary rights as mother of the new king, Anne of Austria formally annulled the regency council and had her unrestricted authority as regent affirmed.⁹⁷ Memoirs and other contemporary sources are contradictory about whether from the outset Anne intended to draw upon the support of Mazarin as minister-favourite. A convincing case has been made that close relations between Anne and Mazarin had been initiated while Richelieu was alive, and that the selection of Mazarin to carry the burden of government for Anne had been a foregone conclusion.⁹⁸ Yet other contemporary accounts indicate that Mazarin saw himself as tainted in the queen’s eyes by association with Richelieu and his ministers, and the suppression of the regency council was the means by which Anne intended to rid herself of the leftovers from the regime that had previously made her life in France humiliating and marginal. Mazarin was certainly prepared, at this stage, to retire to Rome—or convincingly claimed that he was.⁹⁹ Whether Anne had always intended both to rid herself of the Council and establish Mazarin as an all-powerful first minster, or whether she was intent on achieving the first objective and the second decision followed more contingently, the result was the same: within months of the queen mother’s assumption of the regency, Mazarin had emerged as first minister in succession to Richelieu.¹⁰⁰ Those ministers of Richelieu’s epoch who were potentially Mazarin’s rivals ⁹⁴ Dethan, Mazarin, 149–61; Laurain-Portemer, Études Mazarines II, 607–52. ⁹⁵ Blet, ‘Débuts de Mazarin’, 248–68; Laurain-Portemer, Études Mazarines II, 680–93. ⁹⁶ Laurain-Portemer, Études Mazarines II, vii–viii. ⁹⁷ Dubost, ‘Anne d’Autriche’, 54–9; R. Kleinman, Anne of Austria, Queen of France (Columbus, 1985), 144–57; V. Cousin, ‘Des carnets autographes du cardinal Mazarin conservés à la Bibliothèque impériale’, Journal des Savants (1854), 753–73 (fifth article). ⁹⁸ Dulong, Mazarin, 51–60. ⁹⁹ Classic account of this episode in Brienne, xxxvi. 80–94. ¹⁰⁰ G. Dethan, ‘Mazarin avant le ministère’, Revue Historique, 227 (1962), 33–66; Hildesheimer, Double mort, 221–92.

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were disgraced—the fate of Bouthillier and his son Chavigny—or marginalized, like Pierre Séguier. New products of Mazarin’s patronage such as Michel Le Tellier; Henri-Auguste de Loménie, comte de Brienne; and Michel Particelli, Sr d’Hémery were installed as a new team of client-ministers. Mazarin, respecting but also shaping and articulating Anne of Austria’s wishes, was equally determined on continuing the war against Spain to obtain maximally advantageous terms in whatever peace settlement finally emerged from the pan-European congress that had just established itself in Münster and Osnabrück. Meanwhile the necessity of continuing the war effort entailed maintaining in place all the methods and expedients of the régime de l’extraordinaire. This of course provided the mechanisms to squeeze financial and military resources from the crown’s subjects, but also justified whatever high-handed administrative and judicial measures the ministerial government might find it expedient to adopt. The Parlement, in annulling Louis XIII’s provisions for the regency, had certainly not anticipated replacing one first minister with another. Aristocratic circles in the court were more actively provoked. With the end of Richelieu’s ministry, they had expected an opening up of the structures of patronage and access to the royal family; they wanted to accelerate the peace process, and to end rule by extraordinary financial and judicial expedients. Instead they encountered not merely the determination of the queen mother to continue the war with Spain to consolidate her son’s inheritance, but the establishment of another ministerfavourite bringing a consequent narrowing of channels of influence and advancement. Yet the failure of the ‘cabale des importants’ in 1643 in its attempt to remove Mazarin and to open up court and government was predictable, and not just for its incompetent planning and execution.¹⁰¹ Despite widespread frustration, the crown could still count on the support of key aristocratic figures, most notably the prince de Condé, and numbers of other families and individuals who had benefited from alliances with Richelieu and wished to maintain the status quo. Moreover, in what was to be a defining moment for the next five years of the regency, Condé’s son, the young duc d’Enghien, had led a French army to overwhelming victory against a Spanish invasion force at Rocroi on 19 May. The psychological impact of the victory was critical: had French forces suffered another defeat on the Flanders frontier comparable with the debacle at Honnecourt a year earlier, the impact on the regency government would have been shattering. Hostility to continuing the war would surge, and any political regime would have been vulnerable to demands for broader involvement in policy-making and government. But Enghien and Condé now represented a formidable pillar of the regency, just as they had previously derived huge political advantages from supporting Richelieu. The leading figures in the cabal against ¹⁰¹ Dulong, Mazarin, 67–81; though see the reconsiderations in J-M. Constant, ‘Langue de bois et lutte pour le pouvoir: la Cabale des Importants de 1643’ in Constant, Noblesse en liberté, 265–77.

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Mazarin were the Vendôme family, whose courtly pretensions to rank as ‘legitimized princes’ descended in a bastard line from Henri IV were consistently challenged by Condé. Their disgrace under Richelieu following an earlier conspiracy had been wholeheartedly supported by the prince.¹⁰² As long as the Condé and their networks of allies and clients considered that their interests were served by propping up this latest version of the régime de l’extraordinaire, they were a formidable obstacle to malcontent elements in court circles gaining the upper hand. Mazarin’s own position was paradoxical. He enjoyed the kind of public and unconditional support from the queen mother in the years after 1643 that Richelieu never received from Louis XIII. In that respect the perennial problem of the perceived illegitimacy of rule by an over-powerful first minister could be confronted by the insistence that obedience to the royal will trumped any constitutional distaste for the way in which the ruler had chosen to delegate their authority. But of course this was not the affirmation of an adult male king, but of a queen regent. The extent that it was permissible to delegate authority at all during a regency was open to legal debate, and to an array of assumptions and opinions shaped by custom and precedent.¹⁰³ Insofar as the queen mother took advice from those immediately around her, the consensus, echoed repeatedly during the Fronde, was that this advice should come from the princes of the blood.¹⁰⁴ Such a perception of the regency left no obvious legitimate space for a first minister, a servant of someone who was herself a servant of the young king.¹⁰⁵ What saved Mazarin, at least for a time, from the emergence of further opposition was a factor that has been insufficiently stressed in most accounts, but which was certainly not lost on contemporaries. The period from the victory at Rocroi through to the battle won at Lens in August 1648 was one of outstanding French military success. Rocroi was followed by the capture of Thionville in summer 1643, by further progress in consolidating a grip on Roussillon and the bolstering of the Catalan revolt, and by the capture of Trino, securing the French position in Monferrato. The 1644 campaign produced further gains in Flanders, including the siege and capture of Gravelines, and turned a tactical defeat inflicted by the Bavarian army near Freiburg-im-Breisgau into a strategic success through an adroit manoeuvre that allowed the French army to take the fortress of ¹⁰² J-P. Desprat, Les bâtards d’Henri IV: l’épopée des Vendômes, 1594–1727 (Paris, 1994), 223–38, 265–91. ¹⁰³ A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652 (Princeton, 1971), 71–3. ¹⁰⁴ In the debates in Parlement following the release of the princes, the key role of the princes of the blood in the royal council was emphatically affirmed: AAE MD 878, fos 75–76, 27 Feb 1651: they are ‘the trunk of the government of the state’; the view was shared by the princes: AAE MD 875, fos 280–81, report on proceedings in Parlement, 24 June 1651. ¹⁰⁵ These issues were strongly asserted in the mazarinades and the writings of the memoirists during the Fronde: Carrier, Labyrinthe de l’état, 243–87; H. Sée, ‘Les idées politiques à l’époque de la Fronde’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 3 (1901/2), 713–38.

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Philippsburg on the Rhine, quickly followed by Mainz and Landau. The campaign of 1645 yielded the capture of Béthune and numbers of other places on the Flanders frontier of limited significance individually, but together indicating the crumbling of the Spanish defensive barrier. After an initial heavy setback at the hands of the Bavarian army at Mergentheim, Turenne and Enghien went on to win a decisive victory over the Imperial/Bavarian army at Nördlingen II (Allerheim). The French army in Catalonia took the fortified port and city of Rosas after a hard-fought siege and consolidated control of Catalonia. In 1646, a breakthrough across the Flanders frontier brought the surrenders of Mardyck, Courtrai, and finally Dunkirk. These important gains were matched by combined operations in which French and Swedish armies devastated Bavaria and forced the duke to agree a ceasefire, withdrawing from his alliance with the Emperor to sign the truce of Ulm in January 1647.¹⁰⁶ Though the pace of military success slowed in 1647, the French did manage to capture La Bassée, Landrecies, and Lens. In Italy the French broke with the pattern of previous years and attacked into the Milanese from the east, campaigning towards Cremona, which they reached and unsuccessfully besieged in 1648. Under pressure as well from the Neapolitan revolt which broke out in 1647, the Spanish military system in Italy might soon prove unsustainable. In 1648 Spanish hopes that, liberated from the need to maintain troops on the border with the Dutch, they could turn their forces in the Spanish Netherlands against France were crushed by their battlefield defeat at Lens. Bavaria’s re-entry into the war on the Imperial side was followed by the defeat of their joint forces at Zusmarchausen by a Franco-Swedish army commanded by Turenne and Karl-Gustav Wrangel.¹⁰⁷ The French record was not entirely one of success. The winter of 1643 saw the surprise and total defeat of the French army of Germany which had moved prematurely into winter quarters around Tuttlingen; the campaigns of 1645 and 1646 were essentially wasted in Italy as Mazarin squandered resources on a failed bid to intimidate the Papacy by launching an amphibious operation against the Spanish presidio of Orbitello on the Tuscan coast. The operation collapsed and the subsequent capture of the smaller and more vulnerable presidio of Piombino in autumn 1646 was limited compensation. Successive campaigns by the comte d’Harcourt and then by Condé to capture Lérida and consolidate the Catalan revolt failed in both 1646 and 1647. But there could be no denying that the war effort looked vastly favourable in comparison with the earlier years of the war, where the notable captures of Arras (1640) and Perpignan (1642) were counterbalanced by some crushing defeats in the field, and by a great deal of expensive, ¹⁰⁶ D. Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of Westphalia, 1643–1648 (Selinsgrove, 1999), 196–255; P. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War (London, 2009), 709–25. ¹⁰⁷ Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 726–47; E. Höfer, Das Ende des Dreißigjährigen Krieges. Strategie und Kriegsbild (Cologne, 1997).

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stagnant, and inconclusive campaigning. The perception that the new reign had been blessed with a new and successful foreign policy was widely shared even by those who had no liking for Mazarin. The royal government was not slow to trumpet these successes and attribute them to the skill and work of the first minister. As late as August 1652 a royal declaration in favour of Mazarin made the specific point that ‘the five years [of 1643–8] could be compared with the most fortunate years in French history’.¹⁰⁸ This foreign policy success deserves emphasis: it is the most obvious explanation for the relatively muted hostility to Mazarin’s regime after 1643, despite fundamental questions about its legitimacy. Moreover, its reliance, like its predecessor, on narrow factional support, control of access to the crown, and close links between involvement in government and immoderate private profiteering, were all calculated to provoke anger and resentment amongst the rest of the political class. The military success itself could bring problems. For if the French armies were sweeping all before them, if the Spanish monarchy was visibly crumbling under the strain of France’s military actions and the revolts within her own territories, why then was it not possible to achieve a secure peace and end the financial misery and disruption caused by the war effort? What was preventing the achievement of a ‘good peace’, given that a general European congress in which French was well represented was already in progress, and that from 1645 France and her allies held the upper hand militarily? To many the answer seemed obvious: it was neither in the political nor the financial interests of Mazarin and his clientele to conclude a settlement. To make peace would bring to an end the justification for the système de l’extraordinaire on which the ministry’s claim to power and legitimacy rested: without war it would be impossible to justify such narrow ministerial control of the regency. Léon de Bouthillier, comte de Chavigny—no friend of Mazarin’s after his disgrace in 1643, but an intelligent and astute observer—was clear that Mazarin could have made a good settlement that would have validated the war effort at any point from 1645. He held out, in Chavigny’s opinion, because he knew that once a settlement had been concluded his services would be dispensable.¹⁰⁹ Mazarin’s actions certainly give some credence to Chavigny’s charge. By 1646 he was convinced that France’s successes looked so formidable in both sustaining the Catalan revolt and encroaching on the Spanish Netherlands that the Spanish could be persuaded to trade France’s abandonment of support for the Catalans against an outright concession of the Southern Netherlands to France.¹¹⁰ The self¹⁰⁸ AAE MD 888, fo. 253, [Pontoise], Aug. 1652. ¹⁰⁹ Léon de Bouthillier, comte de Chavigny, Mémoire collected in the papers associated with Olivier d’Ormesson, Mémoires (ed. Chéruel) (2 vols; Paris, 1862), ii. 746–69. ¹¹⁰ P. Sonnino, Mazarin’s Quest: The Congress of Westphalia and the Coming of the Fronde (Cambridge MA, 2008), 66–80; A. Tischer, Französische Diplomatie und Diplomaten auf dem Westfälischen Friedenskongress. Außenpolitik unter Richelieu und Mazarin (Münster, 1999), 322–34.

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deception and wishful thinking that emerge in Mazarin’s discussions of this project, and his conviction that it would be acceptable to allies and enemies, still astonishes today from a minister typically regarded as an early exponent of ‘balance of power’ diplomacy.¹¹¹ Such self-delusion was a significant augury of Mazarin’s behaviour in 1651/2 when his personal interests were at stake. The news of these negotiations reached the Dutch, already frustrated by French intransigence in the peace congress; the prospect of a Franco-Dutch frontier catalyzed the Dutch determination to make a separate peace with the Spanish, duly concluded as the first Peace of Münster in January 1648.¹¹² In a final act of folly Mazarin instructed his plenipotentiaries to reject outstandingly generous peace terms proffered by Spain in January 1648, the most extensive that France was to receive down to and indeed in 1659.¹¹³ During the spring and summer of 1648, the domestic situation in France became dangerously volatile: finally it seemed to Mazarin that a settlement with Spain would, after all, be desirable, and the French returned to the negotiating table hoping to receive the same terms that they had rejected in January. By this time the Spanish had digested the implications of the settlement with the Dutch, while revolts in Sicily and Naples were being brought under control, and they had no reason to trust Mazarin’s good faith merely because France was encountering some local financial and political difficulties. They pulled out of all negotiations with France, and allowed the main Münster settlement to go ahead as one involving all the other parties except France and Spain.¹¹⁴ Naivety about his main enemy was only one part of the problem that was evolving for Mazarin in the 1640s. In retrospect it is easy to see that the military achievements of France were based on the shifting sands of ever more stretched financial resources. By the 1640s some of the earlier staples of extraordinary finance had been exhausted: sales of judicial and administrative office had declined to a fraction of their yield in previous decades. Exploitation of established office-holders was still an option, but brought high risks of non-cooperation and political conflict from the officials.¹¹⁵ The main direct taxes weighing principally on the unprivileged majority had been successively trebled and quadrupled since the 1620s, but their actual yield had peaked relatively early in the war years, and it

¹¹¹ Mémoire of Mazarin to Longueville, d’Avaux and Servien, Paris, 20 Jan. 1646, printed in Acta Pacis Westphalicae, vol. 3i, Die französische Korrespondenzen 1645–46, ed. L. Goronzy, E. Jarnut, R. Bohlen (Münster, 1999), 266–77. Substantive reply of the plenipotentiaries to Mazarin, Münster, 3 Feb. 1646, ibid, 351–6. Although Chéruel was familiar with these volumes of the CP Allemagne series, none of Mazarin’s letters relating to these negotiations is printed in his collection of Mazarin’s correspondence. ¹¹² Sonnino, Mazarin’s Quest, 154–5; Tischer, Französische Diplomatie, 397–410. ¹¹³ Malcolm, Royal Favouritism, 187–8. ¹¹⁴ Sonnino, Mazarin’s Quest, 157–63. ¹¹⁵ R. Bonney, The King’s Debts. Finance and Politics in France, 1589–1661 (Oxford, 1981), 310–13, especially table V.B; J-P. Charmeil, Les trésoriers de France a l’époque de la Fronde (Paris, 1964), 226–447.

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proved very difficult to increase overall income from these sources.¹¹⁶ This was not least because massive areas of France were now dominated by communities owing taxes that were many years in arrears; unable to pay these or their current assessments, they had lapsed into a state of permanent tax rebellion.¹¹⁷ Orchestrated by Mazarin’s superintendent of finances, Particelli d’Hémery, whose maxim was ‘once embarked there should be no turning back’, the ministry chose the least disruptive option of embarking on an orgy of direct borrowing against ever more distant tax revenues.¹¹⁸ Gaps in funding as the expected revenues failed to materialize were either rolled over into even longer-term debts, or paid with flurries of short-term loans contracted at even higher rates of interest.¹¹⁹ Behind this fiscal scrabbling, the fundamental calculation was simple: ending the war was within France’s grasp and peace should be only a few years away. All of these desperate expedients could be accumulated to maintain a degree of liquidity and meet some of the demands of a war effort which was in its last stages. In fact the situation was much more dangerous, since what had been constructed by the mid-1640s was not so much a mechanism for funding the war effort, but more a complex fiscal juggling act, where new sources of income and alienated future taxes were used to acquire new loans in order to service a huge existing burden of debt contracted at extortionately high rates of interest. Although it was justified by the needs of war, this chaotic edifice was not primarily to do with funding the armies. It was widely perceived that existing taxes and fiscal innovations were yielding huge profits to a circle of financiers who were exploiting the fiscal system with the collaboration of the ministerial government and its allies, who were no less heavily involved themselves in these exploitative financial practices.¹²⁰ This perception was the background to the successive waves of hostility which greeted each of the ministry’s attempts to institute new taxes in the 1640s. Acting under Mazarin’s aegis, d’Hémery recognized that the introduction of taxes on the wealth of the privileged, above all in the cities, was the only practical way to tap new resources. The policy ran into trouble as early as 1644 with the toisé, a tax to be levied on all Paris property built within 400 metres of the city walls in disregard ¹¹⁶ Bonney, King’s Debts, 196–202; J. Collins, The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism: Direct Taxation in Early Seventeenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1988), 98–163; A Guéry, ‘État et société en France au XVIIe siècle. La taille en Languedoc et la question de la redistribution sociale’, Annales ESC 39 (1984), 1270–98. ¹¹⁷ Bonney, Political Change, 214–37. ¹¹⁸ BN Ffr. 20,861, fo. 175, (letters and memoirs of Robert Aubery); Lloyd Moote, Revolt, 77–84. ¹¹⁹ F. Bayard, Le monde des financiers au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1988), 228–66. ¹²⁰ C. Dulong, La Fortune de Mazarin (Paris, 1990), 57–64; Dulong, ‘L’affaire Contarini’, in Dulong, Mazarin et l’Argent. Banquiers et prête-noms (Paris, 2002), 9–64; D. Dessert, ‘Pouvoir et finance au XVIIe siècle: la fortune du cardinal Mazarin’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 23 (1976), 161–81; D. Richet, ‘Carrière et fortune du chancelier Séguier’, in Richet, De la Réforme à la Révolution: études sur la France moderne (Paris, 1991), 307–16.

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of a long-ignored edict.¹²¹ Elite and popular resistance erupted, and the Parlement was drawn into the confrontation. The judges raised what was to become the fundamental political question surrounding financial innovations in these years: did a regency government have the authority to impose new taxes? The toisé opened up an uncomfortable alliance between the supreme law court with its pretensions to adjudicate on matters of sovereignty, and popular urban agitation fuelled by opposition to additional fiscal demands. The commitment of the Parlement to the absolute authority of the crown was not in question; indeed it was that authority which they believed they were defending against the capricious and illegitimate policies of its servants.¹²² In September 1645 d’Hémery and Mazarin deployed the royal ceremony of the lit de justice in the Parlement, using the king’s presence in person and his explicit insistence on registration to force through nineteen new fiscal edicts. The avocat-général, Omer Talon, denounced this action as a trivializing of the majesty of royal power by using the ‘great and ancient ceremony’ of the lit de justice for the narrow and partisan task of forcing the registration of fiscal edicts which would simply add to the burdens on the people.¹²³ Subsequent attempts to draw in more revenues by targeting the capital, such as the tarif of 1646 which increased duties on incoming goods, including food and wine, entrenched this uneasy cooperation between Parlement and people. The Parlement resisted registering the edict for the new tax as long as possible, and then excluded grain, wine, coal, and wood from the taxed goods. D’Hémery’s response was to attempt to divide his opponents by targeting or exempting different groups, using fiscal expedients such as the non-payment of officeholders’ salaries, and a range of new, narrowly focused taxes.¹²⁴ The climax to this fiscal offensive came with the possibilities opened up by the renewal of the ‘paulette’ or droit annuel: the opportunity, re-granted every nine years, for all office-holders to pay an annual charge to the crown to guarantee succession to their offices. The most recent nine-year period was to expire at the end of 1647. Mazarin wished to use the opportunity to persuade the Parlement to register a series of fiscal edicts concerning new taxes and the creation and sale of more offices, including twelve maîtres des requêtes in the Parlement itself. Despite the obvious bribe of renewal of the droit annuel, the Parlement resisted the pressure to register the edicts. These were forcibly registered on 15 January 1648 by another lit de justice which was condemned in much the same terms by Omer Talon as that of 1645: an abuse of royal authority by the regency government and, implicitly at this stage, the ministerial regime of Mazarin.¹²⁵ The news of the separate peace agreed

¹²¹ ¹²³ ¹²⁴ ¹²⁵

Constant, C’était la Fronde, 267–8. ¹²² Cornette, Omer Talon, 307–32. Omer Talon, Mémoires (Petitot et Monmerqué) lx. 451–6. Lloyd Moote, Revolt, 71–3, 98–107; Kossmann, Fronde, 36–40. Omer Talon, Mémoires, lxi. 114–21; Kossmann, Fronde, 40–7; Lloyd Moote, Revolt, 107–18.

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between Spain and the Dutch cast a first chill over the long-running rhetoric that peace was within grasp and a last financial effort would secure it. Attempting to divide the opposition and extract what additional financial benefits it could from the renewal of the droit annuel, d’Hémery proposed suppressing one year of salaries for all the sovereign courts except the Parlement. This produced precisely the opposite effect to that intended: the lesser sovereign courts in Paris, notably the Cour des aides and the Chambre des comptes, had always resented the pretensions of the Parlement, but now all three courts were prepared to work together to resist what they saw as the exploitative and arbitrary initiatives of the regime. On 13 May an act of union was signed, and the courts met for the first time in the Chambre-Saint-Louis in the Palais du Parlement. The situation was now out of control: the assembly in the chambre defied royal orders for its dissolution, and started to draft remonstrances hitting at a wide range of policies associated with the ministerial regime. A further ratcheting-up of pressure came when the premier président of the Parlement, Mathieu Molé, delivered a speech to the regent and others on 27 June. Molé drew a sharp distinction between the absolute authority of the king and those around him in the regency whose policies and interests were dragging the country into disorder, and weakening the true authority of the crown while seeking to criminalize the judges for their attempts to restore the standing of the monarchy.¹²⁶ Unprepared and unable at this point to block this development, the government permitted the Chambre-Saint-Louis to propose twenty-seven articles for the reform of the realm. These constituted, if not a complete dismantling of the régime de l’extraordinaire, the radical curtailment of its financial and administrative operations. The chambre demanded the suppression of commissaires, the revocation of all existing loan contracts and restrictions on future rates of interest, a cut of 25 per cent in the main direct taxes (representing the assumed profits from illegal interest of the financiers), and the re-establishment of all the officials within the ordinaire administration.¹²⁷ In a bid to maintain support and to avoid implementing the demands of the chambre, on 9 July Mazarin dismissed d’Hémery. But this simply worsened matters for the crown’s financiers, who saw d’Hémery as a fixer who might just keep the finances flowing, and doubted the ability of the ministry to face down the protests. The supply of credit dried up, leaving the government insolvent in the face of its current unsecured expenditure—a situation confirmed by a decree of bankruptcy a couple of weeks later.¹²⁸ Mazarin was torn between concessions to the judges and trying once again to deploy royal authority to shut down their ¹²⁶ Mathieu Molé, Mémoires (Paris, 1855), iii. 225–30; Kossmann, Fronde, 47–61; B. de Barante, Le Parlement et la Fronde. La vie de Mathieu Molé (Paris, 1862), 89–128. ¹²⁷ Constant, C’était la Fronde, 275–7; Ranum, Fronde, 121–3. ¹²⁸ Bonney, King’s Debts, 206–8; F. Bayard, ‘Les financiers et la Fronde’, XVIIe siècle, 36 (1984), 355–62.

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discussions in the chambre. On 31 July he decided once again to use a lit de justice in an attempt to close down the meetings and discussions of the sovereign courts. In the debates and discussion that followed, the parlementaires moved onto the offensive, proposing not just the confiscation of the ‘illegitimate’ gains of the financiers, but a full investigation of the financial administration to discover evidence of corrupt practices—a process which would swiftly reach up, through his clientele, to the cardinal himself. Moreover, unrest that had started in Paris had now spread to numerous provincial cities, while news of the demands for tax reductions and suspensions had incited popular protests across the country.¹²⁹ News of the victory of the duc de Enghien (who had inherited the title of prince de Condé in 1646) at the battle of Lens on 20 August provided a desperate Mazarin and his embattled ministry with what seemed another opportunity to seize the initiative. This led to the attempt to arrest three leading parlementaire critics of the regime’s financial measures following the ceremony at Nôtre Dame to mark the French victory. Notoriously of course, the action triggered the Parisian revolt of the ‘day of barricades’ (27 August) and is usually treated as the opening salvo of the Fronde. The release of the imprisoned parlementaires avoided an immediate crisis in the capital, but the radicalization of many of the judges vied with a now volatile urban protest movement determined to see the financial reform proposals implemented. The pent-up, intense hostility to Mazarin, his ministerial government, and the intransigent queen mother was stunningly demonstrated by the waves of published mazarinades which started to appear in Paris and provincial centres from the summer onwards.¹³⁰ The delegitimization of Mazarin’s authority had now assumed a far more explicit and permanent form. Although the events of late summer 1648 ensured that first-ministerial rule would remain the subject of explicit public discussion, in the months immediately following the debacle of the ‘day of barricades’ Mazarin had the potential to regain the political initiative. Although it had become clear that there would be no peace with Spain, the rest of the Westphalian negotiations were now settled, even though the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster would not be formally sworn and signed until 24/25 October. Mazarin’s plenipotentiaries had secured a settlement with the Emperor, giving France a scattering of territorial holdings in Alsace.¹³¹ Though the military ‘peace dividend’ would be marginal, given the continuing multitheatre war with Spain, it did free up what was probably the best of the French army corps, the force that had been operating under Turenne’s command in Germany. And although the système de l’extraordinaire and its financial troubles

¹²⁹ Kossmann, Fronde, 117–50. ¹³⁰ Carrier, Presse de la Fronde, i. 219–72; Ranum, Fronde, 152–71; M. Pernot, La Fronde (Paris, 1994), 83–98, 203–43. ¹³¹ D. Croxton, Westphalia: The Last Christian Peace (London, 2013), 237–42.

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had alienated some of Mazarin’s aristocratic supporters, the prince de Condé and his resources, family, clientele, and allies at this point remained committed to the regime.¹³² The relationship had not been easy since 1646, and episodes such as the inheritance of the Admiralty after the death of the marquis de Brézé, and what Condé considered inadequate support for his siege of Lérida, had caused considerable friction.¹³³ But Condé was not about to commit to the protests of the parlementaires or the Parisian bourgeois, and his support for the crown would outweigh whatever doubts he had about the ministerial regime. Finally, the unfettered attacks of the Chambre-Saint-Louis on the financiers both as a group and individually, had convinced some of them that their best chances of survival and ultimate recompense would come through propping up Mazarin’s system. Crucially for Mazarin’s survival, key financiers such as Thomas Bonneau and Denis Marin would continue to stick with the ministry through the ensuing troubles, for which they would be extravagantly rewarded from 1653 onwards.¹³⁴ The ministry hesitated between concessions and hawkishness in autumn 1648, knowing that either could threaten the viability of the regime. The besetting problem was the failure to gain peace with Spain, and its implication for the whole rickety edifice of deficit financing. In October Mazarin decided to try to win the support of the sovereign courts by agreeing to implement most of the reforms proposed in the summer. Implementation raised profound questions about the financing of the war with Spain, since most of the means to raise extraordinary funds were now shut off. Moreover it did not silence the attacks by the judges and a wider political class on the mechanisms and personalities involved in the crown’s finances—a witch-hunt that would undoubtedly lead to Mazarin himself.¹³⁵ Recognition now dawned that, rather than lowering the political temperature, the concessions had created an impossible situation: the principles and practice of ministerial action would be placed under permanent checks and scrutiny. Mazarin grew steadily more attracted to a coup de main that would reassert ministerial authority by force. On the night of 5/6 January 1649 the royal family with Mazarin were discretely escorted by troops out of Paris to establish themselves at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. A delegation of parlementaires sent out to Saint-Germain to request the return of the king to Paris was summarily dismissed, as was any indication that the court was now prepared to negotiate with its subjects in the capital. The Parlement responded by fuelling what was now a widespread perception of the cardinal’s responsibility for illegitimate and selfinterested misgovernment, by declaring Mazarin a perturber of the peace, and ordering his exile from France within eight days. By 21 January the Parlement had

¹³² K. Béguin, Les princes de Condé. Rebelles, courtisans et mécènes dans la France du Grand Siècle (Paris, 1999), 102–3. ¹³³ See Rising Tensions, 1646–1650, in Chapter 2. ¹³⁴ Bonney, King’s Debts, 213–14. ¹³⁵ Bonney, King’s Debts, 209–10.

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publicized a full indictment of Mazarin and his policies: the obstruction of peace, his role as war-profiteer, his illicit influence over the queen mother, and his usurpation of the crown’s authority.¹³⁶ Within days of the departure of the royal family, Condé, with troops from the Flanders theatre, moved to block food supplies into Paris and to restrict movement in and out of the capital. Inside Paris the Parlement mobilized military resources, gaining the support of many great nobles, including Condé’s younger brother, Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, and their brother-in-law, the duc de Longueville. For the most part, lack of effective cooperation and planning, and the amateur quality of the recruits raised in Paris, allowed Condé to rebuff the military threats to his blockade. The one real challenge came with Turenne’s declaration of support for the frondeurs and the fear that he would be able to bring the army of Germany across to his side. However, bribery organized by Mazarin kept the troops loyal, and Turenne’s defection proved containable.¹³⁷ By late February the effects of food shortages and high prices in Paris were fuelling dangerous levels of popular discontent.¹³⁸ The situation would soon have become critical, but on 11 March the judges came to terms with the crown and its ministers at the Peace of Reuil, the blockade ended, and the king and his mother returned to Paris to popular acclaim that was conspicuously not extended to Mazarin.¹³⁹ Unrest which had been ignited by the confrontation in Paris continued elsewhere in France, notably Bordeaux, but a mixture of threats and compromises were deployed to bring these rebellions under control. At one level, the unrest of 1648/9 demonstrates the extent to which in any confrontation the crown and its ministers still held a large number of winning cards. Condé and others might despise Mazarin’s origins and position as an outsider meddling in French politics; they might regard the régime de l’extraordinaire as dangerous and potentially despotic, and not working in ways that best served their interests. Yet their commitment to the authority of the crown rendered them still more hostile to Mazarin’s frondeur opponents, whom they saw as propounding a limited monarchy, even a republic. The execution of Charles I by the republican/military government in England on 31 January 1649 reinforced this hostility to the power-sharing and restrictions on royal power implied by the frondeurs and their reform programme.¹⁴⁰ The vast majority of the experienced forces in the army remained loyal to the crown and its royalist generals, and therefore upheld the ministerial regime. As long as this was so, the

¹³⁶ Dulong, Mazarin, 123–4. ¹³⁷ Dulong, Mazarin, 128–30. ¹³⁸ Dubuisson-Aubenay, i. 170 (mid-Feb 1649), i. 180–1: 28 Feb., who noted popular discontent that grain which was being bought for 20–24 livres per septier in the surrounding villages was being sold for 45–50 livres in Paris. ¹³⁹ Ranum, Fronde, 182–214. ¹⁴⁰ P. Knachel, England and the Fronde: The Impact of the English Civil War and Revolution on France (Ithaca, 1967), 18–111.

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possibility that the crisis in France would develop into a protracted military struggle comparable with the British Civil Wars was small. Where a temporary threat to the military balance was posed by the army of Germany, Mazarin could draw on another source of resilience, a tight-knit group of financiers who recognized that they had so many eggs already in the basket of maintaining the régime de l’extraordinaire that so long as they could access new financial resources they could not afford to abandon it. Hence when it came to bribing the army of Germany, Barthélemy Hervart, long-serving banker within Mazarin’s networks, was prepared to raise the 1.65 million livres to preserve the ministry’s military advantage.¹⁴¹ Yet any hope that fundamental issues about the legitimacy of extraordinary finance and Mazarin’s ministerial regime could be swept under the carpet now that the immediate crisis had been reduced to apparently manageable proportions was illusory. The successive waves of published mazarinades had raised in the most direct and inflammatory way issues about the status and legitimacy of Mazarin’s status as first minister. This had been compounded by successive printed and widely circulated acts of the Parlement and its provincial counterparts, decreeing Mazarin’s banishment from France for a range of crimes from peculation to lèse majesté. None of this could easily be suppressed, and all further political confrontations would be conducted in the context of exhaustively articulated rejections of the legitimacy of his rule. Above all, it was to become clear that Condé, having rescued the crown and its minister from defeat at the hands of the frondeurs, considered that the dynamic of the political relationship had been fundamentally changed. The chapters that follow aim to balance a detailed narrative of the decisions, actions, and events that constitute the unfolding crisis of 1652 with analysis of its implications. Chapter 2 briefly examines the circumstances leading up to the imprisonment of the princes of Condé, Conti and Longueville, and then the unravelling of Mazarin’s position during the year when the princes were in captivity. It focuses on the period of Mazarin’s own exile from February 1651, and the pressures that the cardinal exerted on the already fragile political system in successive attempts to facilitate his return. Chapter 3 engages with the narrative from the autumn of 1651, starting from the opening of Condé’s revolt and the rapid descent into civil war. It focuses especially on Mazarin’s decision to force his way back into France at the head of an army corps in January 1652, and the decisive effects of this in catalyzing resistance and salvaging the position of the prince de Condé. Chapter 4 takes the account through some of the most convoluted and dramatic shifts in military fortune and bargaining potential, looking especially at the impact of foreign military involvement in the civil war. It runs ¹⁴¹ C. Dulong, ‘Un magnat de la finance: Barthélemy Hervart’, in Dulong, Mazarin et l’argent, 149–211, 165–6.

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from Condé’s victory at Bléneau in April 1652, through the near annihilation of Condé’s army in early July outside the walls of Paris at the Porte-Saint-Antoine, and concludes with Mazarin’s less than willing decision to return to exile in August. Military manoeuvres, combat, and negotiations must be set against the price that was being inflicted on France by this year-long civil war. Chapter 5 returns to some of the issues signalled earlier: the intersection of military activity with an already terrible subsistence crisis generated by four successive bad harvests. The nature of the military system and the mechanisms it depended upon to provide for its subsistence are examined as well in the context of the other heavy price paid during the year of civil war: the collapse of France’s military position beyond her frontiers. Chapter 6 resumes the narrative through the last months of conflict, as military fortunes again fluctuated wildly, and a peace settlement between Condé and Mazarin seemed tantalizingly close through much of September and October. The final break, which takes Condé to the frontiers with his troops and then into Spanish military service for the next seven years, coincides with the return of the young Louis XIV to the capital, without Mazarin. The overall conclusion offers some reflections on the consequences of this for the rest of the 1650s. Far from the stable uplands anticipating the post-1661 absolute monarchy of Louis XIV, this is the ‘cankered decade’, years indelibly shaped by the politics that had emerged in their most extreme form during 1652. Mazarin’s restored regime was steeped in the language of interest and a wholly transactional view of service, obedience, and loyalty. Against a background of a stagnant foreign policy that struggled to make good the losses of 1652 and faced a redoubtable enemy in Condé, the tone of domestic politics was set by the ministry’s overt manipulation of the political and fiscal systems for factional advantage and enrichment. This tone was readily echoed in the cynicism, bargaining, and pursuit of self-interest of those whose power and influence in state and society involved them in dealings with Mazarin and his regime.

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2 Mazarin’s Fall The Prince versus the Cardinal By April 1649 Mazarin had survived the biggest challenge so far to his ministerial rule. A political revolt had briefly united popular unrest with the discontents of the bourgeoisie, the most senior judicial officers, and a large group of the court aristocracy. A combination of military threats and wide-ranging concessions had apparently calmed the situation; most significantly perhaps for Mazarin’s future calculations, it had demonstrated that his opponents would find it extremely difficult to militarize their opposition in any effective way. But relief was premature. For Mazarin’s new problem was that the military support he had drawn upon in early 1649 had cost him his previous near-monopoly over power and influence. Condé’s blockade of Paris had set him, as the defender of absolute royal authority—and thereby Mazarin’s ministry—directly against his own relatives and much of the great nobility. Hitherto idolized as the young military hero, he was now execrated by all those who had regarded the uprisings since August 1648 as a justified attempt to overthrow ministerial tyranny. Setting aside his personal ambitions, it was essential to his reputation that he should demonstrate as publicly and as vigorously as possible that he was no lackey of the first minister, and that his actions had been on behalf of the crown, not Mazarin. Who then was Louis II de Bourbon-Condé, who was to become Mazarin’s nemesis for a decade from 1649? The duc d’Enghien, as he was titled until his father’s death in 1646, was no stranger to the realities of ministerial power. His father, Henri II, had rebuilt the material and political fortunes of the cadet branch of the Bourbon family on the basis of a close alliance with cardinal Richelieu after 1626. Henri de Condé provided Richelieu and his regime with the legitimizing support of a prince of the blood, and Condé in return benefited from a spectacular flow of political and territorial rewards.¹ The benefits of the alliance were so great that he was ultimately cajoled into marrying his son, Louis II, to Richelieu’s niece, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé.² The marriage, celebrated at the Palais Cardinal on 9 February 1641, was a spectacular mésalliance for the duc d’Enghien, wished upon him by his father’s ambitions. Enghien, who until 1638 had stood only three lives from the throne, shared with his father an authoritarian ideology of an ¹ Bitsch, Henri II de Condé, 388–93; Béguin, Princes de Condé, 26–55. ² Aumale, Condé, iii. 423–8, 439–41; Bitsch, Henri II de Condé, esp. 393–5.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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absolute monarchy mediated only by the king’s ‘natural advisors’, the princes of the blood. But the association with Richelieu and his family brought him into a close, stakeholder’s connection with the ministerial regime. Through this channel would flow the financial opportunities, patronage, and influence that had been enjoyed by his father over and above what would have been his as a prince of the royal blood. Enghien would have been an important figure in the politics of the 1640s, just as his father had been in the previous decade. But the decision in 1643 to grant him the overall command of the army operating on the north-eastern frontier was not just a reflection of his status and political connections, but a remarkable act of confidence in a young man of twenty-three with no previous experience of overall military command. Enghien was surrounded by experienced lieutenants—most notably Jean, comte de Gassion—yet much would still depend on his untested ability to demonstrate qualities of leadership and decision-making. The French army faced a Spanish invasion, poised to take the town of Rocroi, and previous encounters in the field with the veterans of the Spanish army of Flanders had not ended well for the French.³ Enghien and his lieutenants took the decision to engage the Spanish army in an all-or-nothing bid to try to save Rocroi. Around 7.30 am on 19 May 1643 Enghien led a cavalry charge from the right flank of the French army which shattered the Spanish horse opposing him and left the infantry centre of the Spanish army exposed to his well-executed flanking attack. The magnitude of the victory over the best troops in the Spanish monarchy was unprecedented.⁴ The young duc d’Enghien became a legend overnight, a status that he never lost in the eyes of contemporaries. Enghien’s successive military achievements through the 1640s in different campaign theatres were not just about heroic, charismatic leadership and calculated risk-taking. There was real tactical skill, partly learnt and partly intuitive, in his military deployments, his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his own and enemy positions, and, above all, his ability to exploit surprise, shock, and speed to devastating advantage.⁵ Like his great contemporary, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, he recognized the fundamental importance of keeping his troops fed and equipped, and was free with his own resources to maintain supplies.⁶ Unlike Turenne, who had the well-regarded reputation of being thrifty with the lives of his own troops, Condé was unconcerned by heavy

³ Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 136–61. ⁴ Aumale, Condé, iv. 1–133 remains a superb account of Rocroi, though see also M. Blancpain, Le mardi de Rocroi (Paris, 1985); H. Drévillon, ‘Rocroi, 1643’ in H. Drévillon, Batailles. Scènes de guerre de la Table Ronde aux Tranchées (Paris, 2007), 119–39. ⁵ C. de Saint-Évremond, Condé, Turenne et autres figures illustres, ed. S Guellouz (Paris, 2003), 49–63; H. Pujo, Le Grand Condé (Paris, 1995), 59–137. ⁶ BN Ffr. 20,861, fo. 233, additions to letters and memoirs of Robert Aubery, which reject charges of avarice against Condé, and stress that he will spare nothing to provide for his troops and his enterprises.

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casualties in pursuit of his strategic objectives.⁷ Yet soldiers serving under his command recognized his remarkable talent for victory. On the eve of the battle of Bléneau in April 1652, one of Condé’s lieutenants wrote of the effect of the prince’s arrival, pulling the army together through the belief, above all among the common soldiers, that he was invincible.⁸ The charisma of a young, brilliant general extended beyond the armies: in the 1640s contemporaries noted that he was regarded with both awe and considerable fear. Madame de Motteville wrote that, even after Mazarin had arrested him, ‘the reputation of M. le Prince imposed itself on everyone, and generated a curious veneration for his person, such that sightseers would go to visit the chamber where he had been imprisoned at Vincennes’.⁹ Numerous accounts confirmed that even powerful and well-established individuals found it difficult to stand up to Condé in any face-to-face confrontation, and his anger had an unpredictable character that few wished to test. The legend gained further weight from the fictional, centre-stage representation of Condé in Madeleine de Scudéry’s best-selling novel Le Grand Cyrus, published between 1649 and 1653.¹⁰ The very particular danger Condé posed to Mazarin, or to any government which sought to control him, was the intractable nature of his own ambitions. His father had been manageable because he was rebuilding the Condé inheritance after its devastation in the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion, and was rehabilitating his own political reputation after rebellion and imprisonment.¹¹ By the 1640s the Condé had become the wealthiest aristocratic family in France, and more territorial grants, positions, and financial rewards, though demanded, were no guarantee of further tractability. Moreover, a family strategy that aimed to consolidate the pre-eminence of the Condé-Bourbon over any other aristocratic family in France would lead Condé to target further desirable assets, especially lands and governorships, whose possession would challenge the hegemony of the crown in areas of the kingdom. Yet at base the prince was more interested in power and influence at the centre of the state than in local power and quasi-monarchical status built up across the provinces. This desire for influence did not mean that he wished to take over government, to oust Mazarin or supplant the role of ministers in general. Indeed, the detailed, procedural business of government, the workings of the executive, would have been considered by Condé to be beneath his status, and appropriate to (interchangeable or dispensable) professionals of modest birth like Mazarin. What ⁷ J. Revol, Turenne. Essai de psychologie militaire (Paris, 1910), 139–40. ⁸ AAE MD 889, fo. 222, Croissy to Chavigny, 4 April 1652: the effects of Condé’s arrival can be seen in the faces of ‘tout le monde, mais particulièrement sur celle du simple soldat qui le croit invincible’. ⁹ Françoise Bertaut, Mme de Motteville, Mémoires, Petitot/Monmerqué, xxxix. 88–9. ¹⁰ M. Bannister, Condé in Context. Ideological Change in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford, 2000), 9–36; Bannister, Privileged Mortals. The French Heroic Novel, 1630–1660 (Oxford, 1983), 14–34, 168–81. ¹¹ Bitsch, Henri II de Condé, 388–93.

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Condé wanted for himself was a decisive influence in the formulation of royal policy, the ability to oversee and, where necessary, shape decision-making without negotiation or compromise with other parties. During the regency he considered that this was his right by virtue of his blood, and by his acquired status as the military paladin of the young monarch. He would expect to maintain this privileged role of high-status advisor and intimate councillor after the king came of age, with the assumption that his voice would naturally outweigh others in royal decision-making. Despite the charges variously made against him by Mazarin and the court, all on the basis of notably scant evidence, Condé was far too deeply committed to the principle of divinely ordained absolute monarchy to wish to replace the king. Such an act of usurpation would radically challenge his own ideology, which linked his own status to a God-given hierarchy headed by the sovereign. Indeed, his hostility to both the Parisian frondeurs and to Mazarin was precisely because they sought to trespass upon what were the fundamental prerogatives of the monarchy. In seeking to unravel Condé’s personality and his motivation, it is no less necessary to retrieve him from the condescension of posterity. Equipped with hindsight which sees the defeat of the Fronde as a triumph for ministerial government and its modernizing, state-building initiatives, Condé’s fate becomes a facile metaphor for the fate of the traditional ‘sword nobility’ as a whole. His reckless and inappropriate ambitions for political autonomy, personal glory, and immoderate reward were vanquished by the agent of state power, cardinal Mazarin. Defeated, forced into exile and into the service of Spain at the end of 1652, Condé was required to make a humiliating submission to Louis XIV in 1659 as the price of his ‘pardon’. After this he was reduced to an obedient vassal of the monarch.¹² This supposedly parallels the traditional nobility as a whole, whose last irresponsible and doomed act of self-assertion was the Fronde. After this final defeat they were reduced to well-ordered servitude in the court and army of the Sun King, whose powerful, centralized state represented the triumph of bourgeois administrators, the heirs of Mazarin’s victory over the frondeurs. On this interpretation, Condé’s chief crime, if he is relieved of the charge of attempted usurpation, is setting up an ideal of autonomous political action and individual liberty in defiance of the ‘modern’ requirement for disciplined, collective obedience to the crown imposed by its faithful ministers. Indeed, even by the standards of the collective ideal of aristocratic liberty, it is suggested that Condé went too far in pursuit of uncompromising self-assertion, and helped to undermine the very values that he sought to uphold.¹³

¹² In T.K. Rabb’s memorable phrase, ‘Condé, still treasonous during the Fronde, ended his days rowing ladies on the lake at Versailles’: The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1975), 65. ¹³ Bannister, Condé in Context, 135–53.

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The real problem posed by Condé for Mazarin and his regime was not Condé’s uncontrolled individualism, his ‘folle liberté’, but the perception of contemporaries that he held more legitimate right to participate in the decision-making of a regency by virtue of his blood than did a ministerial appointee of the queen mother. Indeed, it is a remarkable triumph of a well-entrenched historiography that Condé’s actions are perceived as illegitimate attempts to challenge what is treated as the legitimate royal government personified in its first minister. By conflating Mazarin with the authority of the crown, the crucial dynamic of the conflict building up from 1643 and climaxing in the Fronde is misunderstood. Mazarin’s attempts to resist Condé’s claims to involvement in the political decisions of the regency did not deny the essential legitimacy of those claims. His approach most frequently relied on alarming both the queen mother and the king’s uncle, Gaston d’Orléans, that Condé would squeeze them out of the decision-making which was no less their right by family. Mazarin hardly needed to be reminded, and the mazarinades would have done the job for him, that his own position enjoyed no such legitimacy. This is not to deny that Condé possessed serious, and ultimately selfdestructive, weaknesses amidst his personal strengths. But these were largely independent of his position at the apex of a traditional ‘sword nobility’, singlemindedly obsessed by a cult of personal honour. As many of those who knew him closely and served with him noted, he seemed incapable of moderation or restraint in his actions. Hard-hitting decisiveness contributed to his distinctive military genius, but was a liability in the intricate play of factional politics. Left unchecked by others he would drive situations to extremes; as his ally, président Pierre Viole, wrote despairingly, Condé would never settle for an accommodation until he was either the most powerful actor in the game or had been left ‘sans resource’.¹⁴ This essential flaw was linked to other weaknesses. Gaston d’Orléans pointed out that much of Condé’s action was determined by impulse, not careful calculation. He operated best when confronting narrow and specific military problems; he was illsuited to large and complex political projects which required building coalitions of allies around flexible policy goals.¹⁵ Related to his inability to show moderation or compromise was Condé’s other character liability, his almost complete lack of empathy with the aspirations and commitment of others, specifically those who fought for him or were his allies. It is of course exceptionally difficult to enter into the mindset of a person whose sense of pre-eminence and social superiority was so profound and uncompromising. But his casual dismissal, for example, of the pretensions of important allies like

¹⁴ AAE MD 889, fo. 140, Viole to Chavigny, [Paris] 3 Mar. 1652. In this letter of March, Viole also raised the concern that Condé might cross the frontiers to enter the service of the Spanish. ¹⁵ BN Ffr 6891, fo. 180, Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 26 Oct. 1652, reported Orléans’ comment that Condé was only good for ‘une action brusque’.

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Turenne and Henri-Charles de La Tremoïlle to princely status; his crushing humiliation of the Chevreuse-Rohan family over the projected marriage between Mlle de Chevreuse and the prince de Conti; and, as will be seen, the gratuitous contempt, even before Condé’s imprisonment, shown in his treatment of Mazarin. All these argue for a personality which, even when the advantages of self-restraint were self-evident, was still viscerally incapable of adopting them. It was Mazarin’s misfortune, and the single factor most shaping the events and outcome of 1652, that he confronted the figure of Condé as his opponent, who embodied simultaneously the unchallenged right of a prince of the blood to participate in government, and the military genius responsible for the great successes of France after 1643. Had the young Condé been a mediocre military commander like his father, the political dynamic would have looked very different. The military paladins of the regency would have been Turenne and Henri, comte d’Harcourt, from a cadet line of the House of Guise. Both were capable military commanders, but political minnows in comparison with Condé. Mazarin could have bought the adherence of both with territories and titles, and in all probability neither would have made a serious attempt to assert themselves against the queen mother and her minister. Instead Mazarin faced someone for whom no political or territorial bribe would be sufficient, except the concession of powers that would effectively deny overall political control to Mazarin. Yet it was also Condé’s misfortune—and that of France—that he encountered the real Mazarin, rather than the self-sacrificing servant of monarchy and state celebrated in hagiographic accounts of his ministry from the nineteenth century onwards. The Mazarin who had discreetly demonstrated his diplomatic and administrative abilities to Richelieu in the 1630s, and insinuated himself into the team of Richelieu’s ministerial fidèles, did not intend to spend his career as a lowkey political figure operating behind the scenes. His accumulation of rich benefices before 1640, and his ability to persuade Richelieu—who was normally intensely hierarchical in such matters—to nominate him for a cardinalship, might indicate a different agenda. Another hint may have been his cultivation of Anne of Austria at a time when most of Richelieu’s ministers regarded the queen as politically toxic.¹⁶ Whatever Mazarin’s real ambitions before 1643, he had prudently confined his role to that of faithful subordinate of Richelieu and then part of Louis XIII’s ministerial team during the king’s last months. But with the death of Louis XIII, the assumption of control by the queen regent, and Mazarin’s achievement of the status of unchallenged minister-favourite, the restraint which had previously characterized his personality and actions was thrown off. To understand Mazarin and his motivation, it is necessary to abandon a superficially plausible notion that he saw himself as an outsider, a foreigner relying

¹⁶ Dulong, Mazarin, 48–54.

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on cleverness and charm to climb the ladder of power and status in France. On this reading he was inhibited by his second-rank Italian background, in awe of, and not properly understanding, French grandees such as Condé, Longueville, or Vendôme. And indeed to Condé, Mazarin always remained the upstart ‘gredin de Sicile’, or the ‘illustrissimo signor facchino’, constantly seeking a political role far above his social status.¹⁷ Mazarin seemed in some respects to confirm this view of himself as upstart and outsider: he combined the ingratiating qualities of a favourite—using his foreignness to cement the complicit relationship with that other ‘foreigner’ at court, Anne of Austria—with an understanding of diplomacy and Realpolitik honed from his early career in Rome.¹⁸ Moreover, apart from the queen mother’s favour, Mazarin’s primary qualification for the role of first minister was his distinctly un-aristocratic administrative energy and capacity. The recognition customarily given to Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Louis XIV’s omniscient administrator, with his extraordinarily detailed grasp of every aspect of his government portfolio and a capacity to maintain a mountainous correspondence, may be seen as a tribute to the even more impressive working habits of his previous employer.¹⁹ To find someone who could equal Mazarin’s mastery of detail, his ability to range over domestic and foreign policy—whether supply of the galleys at Toulon or factional politics in Brittany—all with the same detailed knowledge and the ability to resume a subject months or years after he last discussed it, we would need to turn to Napoléon Bonaparte. Certainly Mazarin’s grasp of affairs and work-rate surpassed cardinal Richelieu, no laggard in his capacity for administrative graft. But Richelieu acknowledged his lack of knowledge in key areas, and delegated with far greater willingness than his successor. Indeed, a besetting weakness of Mazarin’s entire ministry, and a cause of much tension with his subordinate ministers, was his obsessive reluctance to delegate even practical executive authority to others.²⁰ Yet while this prodigious ability, which is certainly greater than that of any of his likely rivals in the years after 1643, is clearly relevant in explaining Mazarin’s success as a minister, it nonetheless misses the key point. Mazarin did not see himself as a backroom facilitator of effective government, aware that his foreign background and modest social status required discretion and reticence. On the contrary, he regarded himself as the primary architect of the greatness of the French monarchy. In passage after self-promotional passage in his correspondence, Mazarin celebrated the first six years of the Regency as the most glorious ¹⁷ Dulong, Mazarin, 140–1. ¹⁸ Poncet, Mazarin l’Italien, 63–76. ¹⁹ The nine volumes of Mazarin’s correspondence edited by Chéruel are the tip of an iceberg of his total correspondence, measured only in terms of surviving letters in the AAE, BN, and other major archival collections. Moreover, very many of Chéruel’s selections are heavily abridged in order to focus on what the editor considered politically important. ²⁰ Apart from the overwhelming evidence of Mazarin’s correspondence itself, see for example AAE MD 882, fo. 335, letter from another [Italian] ecclesiastic to Zongo Ondedei, 16 May 1652, which complains of Mazarin’s unwillingness to delegate responsibility in any administrative matters.

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years in the history of the monarchy—a succession of military victories and diplomatic triumphs that had realized the great project to ensure France’s prestige and hegemony in Europe.²¹ It might come as a surprise to those who envisage Mazarin as a créature and disciple of cardinal Richelieu that in Mazarin’s opinion the six years from 1643 far surpassed any comparable period in Richelieu’s ministry.²² And it was on what he regarded as his incomparable personal achievement that Mazarin’s deep sense of public and private entitlement rested: the monarchy and the kingdom owed him much, in terms of both gratitude and recognition, and a continued monopoly of power and influence. If the great French families initially looked down on Mazarin, he certainly did not regard himself as their inferior; his apparently ingratiating and obliging language masked a ruthless sense of self-importance and his primacy within the state.²³ He believed himself to be indispensable, and his language to the queen mother, to his supporters, and even to his enemies reflects that conviction. Both past achievements and promises of benefits and advantages to come created obligations, especially on the part of the crown, and from those ministers and other appointees who owed their positions and prestige to Mazarin’s success. Perhaps this conviction that his deeds could speak louder than words partly explains Mazarin’s reluctance to enter the ideological battle after 1648. It certainly underpins the poorly improvised attempts to justify the arrest of the princes in January 1650: in Mazarin’s eyes such high-handed actions were an element of his understanding of ragione di stato, necessary to preserve a superior direction of the affairs of state. This of course played to a massive literature of criticism in the mazarinades, for whom Mazarin’s policies were inspired by the tyrannical maxims of his fellow Italian, Machiavelli.²⁴ There is little doubt that well before 1650 the figures of Condé and Mazarin were set on a political collision course which would have required exceptional restraint on one or both sides to avoid. The fundamental difference, however, was that Condé could probably live with the political survival of Mazarin, whose role had been cut back to that of essentially executive first minister, accountable to a royal family dominated by Condé. In contrast, by late 1649 Mazarin’s assumptions

²¹ His self-representation as the greatest servant the French crown has ever possessed is widespread in Mazarin’s correspondence, though assumes an especially strident mode during his months of exile: Chéruel, iv. 92–107, Mazarin to Brienne, Bouillon, 24 Mar. 1651 (and sequence of letters) ²² Ravenel, Mazarin, 254, Mazarin to the queen mother, Brühl, 12 Sept. 1651: both Blanche of Castile and Marie de’ Médicis re-established a cardinal in power, and neither cardinal (i.e., including Richelieu) ‘had served the crown as well as me’ (‘n’avoient pas servi à l’égal de moi’). ²³ For Mazarin’s deliberate cultivation of an aura of obsequiousness and humility, see the sardonic character sketch in Cardinal de Retz, Mémoires, Petitot/Monmerqué, xliv. 157, 186–7. ²⁴ C. Vicherd, ‘Les Frondeurs, Machiavel et la monarchie française’, in L. Ciavaldini Rivière, I. Taddei, etc (eds), Entre France et Italie. Mélanges offerts à Pierrette Paravy (Grenoble, 2009), 199–205; C. Vicherd, ‘Mazarin ou la tyrannie: le rejet des pratiques politiques “italiennes” par les Frondeurs’, in J. Serroy, ed, La France et l’Italie au temps de Mazarin (Grenoble, 1986), 55–65; Poncet, Mazarin l’Italien, 70–6.

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about his own position were wholly incompatible with the political power and influence of Condé. Mazarin might be forced into political cohabitation with the prince, but it would delegitimize and disempower his ministerial position and all those associated with him.

Rising tensions: 1646–January 1650 Well before the first crisis of the Fronde, Condé had plenty of reasons to balance the favours that he had received from the crown with resentment about others that had been denied to him and other members of the Bourbon-Condé clan. The conviction that the first minister rather than the regent was responsible for these rejections was strong, most obviously when the actual beneficiaries of posts and favour were Mazarin and his clients and allies. As early as 1643 the victor of Rocroi and the conqueror of Thionville was encountering regular rejections of his requests for favours on behalf of his loyal military subordinates—an expected prerogative of commanding officers. But Mazarin was already concerned that granting the young duc d’Enghien unrestricted rights to military appointment would both antagonize the other generals and undermine one of the vital supports of Mazarin’s own regime: the ability to favour his own clients and allies.²⁵ Haggling over Condé’s demands for patronage and rewards for his military entourage and clientele continued through the years of campaigning after 1643. But a more critical confrontation came in 1646 following the death of the admiral and grand master of French navigation, Jean-Armand de Maillé-Brézé, in action against the Spanish fleet off the coast of Tuscany during the abortive attempt to conquer Orbitello. Condé’s wife was Brézé’s sister, and since Brézé’s death had occurred in active royal service there was a strong expectation that the admiralty would stay in the family. The old prince de Condé took the lead, strongly supported by his son, in demanding the charge for Enghien in the name of his own young son, Brézé’s closest male relative. Mazarin however decided to make an issue of this succession, informing Condé and Enghien that the queen mother had decided to keep the office of admiralty for herself (the grand mastership generated a substantial income from a percentage levied on the sale of all prizes taken by French privateers).²⁶ In the direct confrontation which followed, Henri de Condé walked out of the royal council in a public rejection of the decision. He died shortly afterwards, though not before reputedly having urged his son to use command of the army to put military pressure on the court.²⁷ The new prince de Condé resisted this advice, but Mazarin nonetheless judged it prudent to offer him

²⁵ Béguin, Princes de Condé, 99–101, notes a significant percentage of rejections, especially when Condé was requesting the governorships of fortified places. ²⁶ Aumale, Condé, v. 109–27; Béguin, Princes de Condé, 92–5. ²⁷ Aumale, Condé, v. 116–17.

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the governorship of the Clermontois as belated compensation for the Brézé inheritance. This did little to mollify Condé, since holding these frontier places in the face of the hostile actions of the duke of Lorraine was more of a burden than a source of income. The admiralty issue did not disappear: Mazarin’s complicity in the decision to deprive Condé of the inheritance became even starker when the queen mother gifted Mazarin a percentage of the income from the grand mastership.²⁸ In 1650/1 control of the admiralty would reappear in an even more incendiary form when Condé learnt that Mazarin proposed to offer the duc de Vendôme the charge; it would be transferred from the queen mother to Vendôme as an inducement to accept the marriage alliance between Vendôme’s elder son, the duc de Mercoeur, and Laure-Victoire Mancini, the first of Mazarin’s nieces to be earmarked for a series of socially advantageous and highly political marriages.²⁹ Relations between Condé and Mazarin were further worsened during 1647 by the abandonment of Condé’s siege of Lérida in Catalonia. Having been brought into the Catalan theatre to make good the failure of his predecessor and fidèle of Mazarin, Henri, comte d’Harcourt, his own inability to take the place proved the first unconditional setback of his military career.³⁰ Condé’s sense that he had been set an impossible task with the resources available, and the widespread rumours that Mazarin was not entirely disappointed at his failure, both festered.³¹ In Catalonia, for the governorship of Flix, and Flanders, for that of Ypres, Condé’s candidates were overruled by Mazarin and the secretary for war, Le Tellier. Condé wrote directly to Mazarin after the rejection of his nomination for Ypres complaining of the ‘successive petty mortifications inflicted on him during each campaign’. He added, as Mazarin well knew, that the inability to guarantee favour to his followers would weaken the ties of clientage and fidélité among his supporters.³² Yet despite the friction and the growing incompatibility of interests and aspirations, the alliance held. In the great crisis of late 1648 Condé weighed his dislike of Mazarin against his contempt for the opponents of absolute royal government, and chose to support the crown. He was the military facilitator of the plan to remove the royal family from Paris and the blockade of the city. Condé had initially favoured a rapid military resolution of the crisis through artillery bombardment of Paris followed by a military assault and occupation, but this had been rejected by Mazarin and the other ministers as too politically damaging.³³ The blockade proved sufficient to force the Parlement and the other sovereign

²⁸ Motteville, Mémoires, xxxvii. 200–1. ²⁹ R. Oresko, ‘The marriages of the nieces of Cardinal Mazarin’, in R. Babel (ed), Frankreich im europäischen Staatensystem der frühen Neuzeit (Sigmaringen, 1995), 109–51, 115–19. ³⁰ Aumale, Condé, v. 132–85; S. Bertière, Condé. Le héros fourvoyé (Paris, 2011), 250–6 ³¹ Béguin, Princes de Condé, 97–8; Madame de Montpensier, Mémoires, ed. Chéruel (2 vols; Paris, 1858), i. 149–52. ³² Quoted in Béguin, Princes de Condé, 98. ³³ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 138–40.

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courts to terms with the crown and to end the immediate political crisis by midMarch 1649. However, as Mazarin was well aware, the underlying issues were far from resolved. Although the judges and office-holders had seized upon the opportunity to extract themselves from open opposition to the crown, this was by no means the case with all of those who had taken up arms in Paris and the provinces since 1648. In Paris, popular unrest could still be exploited by aristocratic agitators. Figures such as Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, coadjutor to his uncle, the archbishop of Paris; the duc de Beaufort; and the duchesse de Chevreuse all had ambitions that would be served by maintaining political tensions. They had enough in common to form a faction, the ‘Old Fronde’, which maintained a hostile distance from both the cardinal and the prince. Above all, of course, Mazarin had incurred a debt to Condé for saving his regime from the frondeurs which would inevitably have consequences for the future balance of power at court and in government. Mazarin had a number of choices in dealing with this new situation. His response was to carry on much as before, while trying to play off the Condéen faction and members of the ‘Old Fronde’ against each other. He continued to justify himself by claiming credit for the French military and diplomatic successes since 1643, though the prospect of open-ended war with Spain had considerably tarnished that reputation. And a continuing flow of mazarinades through the rest of 1649 enabled pro-Condéen commentators to point out that the credit for the military victories of the previous five years lay more properly with the great military commander, serving the crown in the field with his troops, than with the cardinal-minister. Mazarin’s attempt to confront this by seizing control of military policy in the campaign of 1649 resulted in another humiliation. The cardinal insisted that the priority for the campaign on the Flanders frontier should be the recapture of Cambrai, lost to the Spanish army in the previous year. Condé regarded this as wasting resources on another project which had more to do with vanity and reputation than real strategic purpose; he proposed instead a strike into Flanders that would follow up the victory at Lens the previous year, and seek to divide the Spanish troops from their reluctant ally, the duke of Lorraine. When this was vetoed by Mazarin and the queen, Condé refused to take command of the Flanders army. Mazarin seized the opportunity to give authority to his trusted ally, the comte d’Harcourt, whom he considered more reliably anti-Condéen than Turenne. But hopes that a success for Harcourt would overshadow Condé were dashed when he was forced to abandon the siege of Cambrai on 3 July. The rest of the 1649 campaign was wasted in hesitant manoeuvring and the loss of the initiative to the Spanish.³⁴ For a ministerial regime that was already struggling

³⁴ Aumale, Condé, v. 340–8.

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to reassert its legitimacy, this inept attempt to seize the military initiative and to marginalize France’s two leading generals was another significant blunder. Mazarin’s discomfiture gave the initiative at court to Condé. When Mazarin first sought in 1649 to elevate the status of his family and secure a potentially valuable aristocratic family as allies by negotiating the marriage between the duc de Mercoeur, Vendôme’s son, and Laure-Victoire Mancini, he encountered the brick wall of Condé’s refusal to permit the marriage.³⁵ Condé’s veto took the form of a public humiliation of Mazarin for having sought the marriage alliance, and, significantly, the cardinal received no support from Anne of Austria, who was herself initially uncomfortable at such mésalliances.³⁶ This became entangled with another confrontation: Condé’s demand on behalf of his brother-in-law, Longueville, that the latter should receive the governorship of the strategically important fortified town of Pont-de-L’Arche, promised to Longueville as part of the April settlement with the frondeurs. Once again Mazarin was cornered by the threat that Condé would mobilize both his own clan and wider support of many of the ex-frondeur nobles, and forced to concede the governorship to Longueville. The final humiliation came in early October, when Mazarin was forced to sign a declaration for Condé’s benefit in which he agreed to consult Condé in making all appointments to offices, benefices, and honours; not to seek marriages for his nieces without consulting Condé; and to discuss all matters of state with him.³⁷ By late 1649 Mazarin considered that he faced an intolerable future in which his monopoly of influence and decision-making, secured by his relationship with the queen mother, had been jeopardized. Yet it is important to decouple Mazarin’s perspective here from the historians’ sleight of hand which equates the person of Mazarin with the interests and needs of the French state and monarchy. Despite Mazarin’s strident assertions of his own indispensability, it was not necessarily an intolerable situation for the French crown or the wider interests of the French state. Indeed, for much of the political class this situation was a reassertion of a normal political balance, brought about by a figure who had a far more obvious claim to a legitimate role by birth and military service in a regency government than a minister-favourite.

The ‘Fatal and Unfortunate Day’ At 2 pm on 20 January 1651 a group of deputies from the Parlement filed into the bedchamber of the queen mother at the Palais Royal. Their spokesman was the first president, sixty-seven-year old Mathieu Molé, known as ‘the medal’ to his fellow parlementaires for his two-sided attempts to balance support for the ³⁵ Aumale, Condé, v. 361–5. ³⁷ Aumale, Condé, v. 365.

³⁶ Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 277–9, 286–7, 335–7.

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political supremacy of the crown with outspoken defence of the prerogatives and political role of the Parlement. The delegation was received by Anne of Austria in her bed, and by the twelve-year-old Louis XIV seated in an armchair next to her; other members of the court and government, including cardinal Mazarin; the king’s uncle, Gaston d’Orléans; maréchal de l’Hôpital, the governor of Paris; and Châteauneuf, the keeper of the seals, stood around the king and queen mother. The purpose of the delegation was deeply resented by the queen and her entourage: another appeal for the release of the three imprisoned princes—the king’s cousins, Condé and Conti, and their brother-in-law, the duc de Longueville. Recognizing that pressure for the release of the princes was mounting on all sides, the queen mother, advised by Mazarin, reluctantly granted an audience to the parlementaires. In a setting calculated to intimidate, most of those present assumed that Molé would confine himself to a deferential plea for the crown to consider the princes’ release. But Molé had come to the view that the detention of the princes had no legal base, and was concerned to assert leadership over the Parlement in the midst of a heated internal dispute about rival jurisdictions.³⁸ The royal party was subjected instead to the obverse face of the ‘medal’, delivered with Molé’s formidable gravitas. Addressing his remarks to the young king rather than his mother, the president’s remonstrance was an extended crescendo of denunciations concerning the present state of France: the misery and hardship borne by the population; the conquered towns and territories that had been lost after so much expenditure of blood and money; the entry of enemy armies into the kingdom; and the hostilities and conflicts that had sprung up everywhere across the realm. All of this misfortune, Molé now thundered, could be dated back to the ‘fatal and unfortunate day, 18 January 1650’, when the decision was taken to seize and imprison the princes. Skilfully knitting together the injustice of the action itself with a larger view of bad and unaccountable government, the target of Molé’s denunciations shifted unmistakably towards Mazarin. Parlement, he declared, had a duty to the king and posterity to speak out against bad counsel exercised through the enemies of the state, who are seeking to deprive the king’s true servants of the opportunity of serving the king.³⁹ The queen, recognizing the seriousness of what had just occurred, restrained her habitual anger in the face of insubordination, and replied that she would consult her council and then provide the Parlement with her reply. It was left to the keeper of the seals, after the deputies’ departure, to venture that Molé’s speech ³⁸ The dispute concerned claims by the maîtres des requêtes to take legal cognizance of an impending appeal to the Parlement, a claim vigorously denied by the garde des sceaux and by the other chambers of the Parlement: AAE MD 878, fos 17–20, 21 Jan. 1651. ³⁹ Full text in BN Ffr. 4235, fos. 25–28. AAE MD 878, fo. 22v, 23 Jan. 1651, report of the delegates to the assembled parlementaires; the meeting and Molé’s harangue also reported in Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii.5, and Vallier, ii. 260–1.

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was ‘insolent’; this was followed by the more genuine indignation of the twelveyear-old king, who announced to the assembled courtiers that ‘if he had not thought it would annoy maman, he would have ordered the first president to be silent and to leave the room at least three times during his speech’.⁴⁰ Molé’s harangue revealed a political situation about which cardinal Mazarin had been in denial. The political tide was flowing overwhelmingly in favour of the imprisoned princes; the crown and Mazarin had lost both the battle for public opinion and the struggle to maintain an alliance of factions opposed to their release. Moreover, the anger that now led to demands for the immediate freedom and full and public exoneration of the princes was also turned towards the person seen as responsible for their imprisonment. The arrest and imprisonment of the princes in January 1650 had been a reckless gamble by Mazarin in the face of challenges to his ministerial and personal authority that had been gathering momentum during 1649. The finesse with which the arrest itself was conducted had not been matched by any comparable acumen in managing its consequences. Despite the legal and political gravity of the action, there was no coherent strategy to justify the arrests: it was going to be possible neither to keep the princes in permanent confinement, nor to put them on trial with any likelihood of getting a guilty verdict that could justify further action against them.⁴¹ The insubstantial allegations of treason against Condé were cloaked in obscurantist rhetoric that necessity and secrets of state dictated the action.⁴² This was a bad start in a battle for public opinion where the crown might at least have enjoyed an initial advantage, given that Condé was still seen by many as the author of the blockade of Paris and enemy of the Fronde. No one by late 1650 could doubt the potency of public debate and the impact of pamphleteering: the flood of mazarinades since 1648 had shown the struggle required to challenge their comprehensive blackening of Mazarin’s character, his motives, and the legitimacy of his regime. But Mazarin and his apologists fell back on generalized arguments about necessity of state, rather than engaging in a detailed war of words to make the crown’s case more strongly. Mazarin did respond to the situation, but in a ‘Roman’ manner that echoed the account of the Triumvirate in Syme’s Roman Revolution: on the one hand, royal progresses through the provinces to assert authority, supported with military force provided by troops redeployed from the frontiers; on the other, a determined bid to enlarge Mazarin’s network of factional and aristocratic alliances in the court and the provinces. This was to be achieved partly by bringing in new supporters, usually through bribery, but more importantly by seeking to win back existing

⁴⁰ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 6; Barante, Mathieu Molé, 256–64. ⁴¹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, i. 208. ⁴² Lettre du Roy sur la detention des princes de Condé, et de Conty, et du duc de Longueville, (Paris, 1650); the attempt was dismissed by A. Wicquefort: Chronique discontinue de la Fronde (ed R. Mandrou: Paris, 1978), 145–6.

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factions, above all the Old Frondeurs and those surrounding the duc d’Orléans. By the time the princes were finally released, Mazarin hoped that the balance of factional support would have tipped sufficiently in his own favour that the CondéLongueville and their remaining die-hard supporters would be permanently eclipsed. However, the imprisonment of the princes had personalized the political struggle far more intensely than hitherto. The Parisian conflict of 1648–9 had been, at least in part, a war of constitutional principle: it had set the assertion of royal authority against the counter-claims of established institutions and political elites who were concerned by the actions and assumptions of the régime de l’extraordinaire. The struggle in 1650 became one of rival political actors seeking to create and reinforce alliances and build networks of factional supporters. And in this situation, Mazarin underestimated the tenacity of support for the princes, and the difficulties that he would have in winning over much of the unaligned political elite to his own cause at a time when the royal family had been fragmented and the government’s commitment to peace negotiations with Spain was unclear. Militarily, the situation remained fluid. Condé’s established clients in Burgundy and elsewhere proved less resilient and committed than the princes hoped, and the governors in Dijon, Bellegarde, and other places surrendered after little more than token resistance to royal forces.⁴³ In Normandy, the comte d’Harcourt was installed as acting governor and resumed the task of pacifying the province which he had begun when trying to suppress pro-frondeur unrest in the early months of 1649.⁴⁴ But in Bordeaux, which welcomed the princesse de Condé and her young son, the resistance was much more determined: support for Condé was bolstered by general hatred for the governor of Guienne, Bernard de Nogaret de La Valette, duc d’Épernon, who had already been the object of an armed revolt in Bordeaux during 1649.⁴⁵ Bordeaux, and indeed Guienne, offered troubled waters in which Condéen supporters, including Turenne’s elder brother, the duc de Bouillon, could profitably fish.⁴⁶ Above all, the government was threatened by the actions of Turenne himself, who had resumed his earlier frondeur sympathies, but this time on behalf of the imprisoned princes. In January 1650, Turenne showed that he had learnt from his experience a year earlier when Mazarin had managed to buy off most of the army of Germany before he could lead it into revolt. This time Turenne withdrew to the north-eastern frontier, where he assembled a force based on the family’s house regiments and joined by units raised and maintained by the Bourbon-Condé. ⁴³ Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 118–22. ⁴⁴ P. Logié, La Fronde en Normandie (3 vols; Amiens, 1951–52), iii. 44–71. ⁴⁵ Chéruel, iii. 424–6, 431–7, Mazarin to Épernon, [Paris], 22 Nov./19 Dec. 1649: it would be better to negotiate a settlement with Bordeaux than to employ more violence. ⁴⁶ J. Bérenger, Turenne (Paris, 1987), 290–1.

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After an initial, abortive attempt to draw his Swedish comrade-in-arms, FieldMarshal Wrangel, and the Swedish army into the struggle on behalf of Condé, he instead made a military agreement with the Spanish.⁴⁷ The Spanish agreed to place a force of 10–12,000 infantry and 6–7,000 cavalry at Turenne’s disposal, which together with the Turenne/Condéen loyalists represented a formidable campaign army. Despite terrible weather conditions, Turenne pushed into France and Mazarin was threatened by an advance which had taken La Capelle by early August and seized grain across Picardy from an already mediocre harvest. Faced with an uprising in Bordeaux and the challenge on the north-east frontier, Mazarin gambled on quickly resolving the situation in Guienne, and committed much of the royal army and the court to the south-west. Resistance in Bordeaux proved stubborn in the face of a full-scale royalist siege, and only when the prospect of Spanish relief receded were the defenders prepared to consider a settlement. Mazarin in turn was panicked by the progress of Turenne’s forces in Picardy and by the situation in Paris, where he feared that Gaston d’Orléans was aligning himself with members of the Old Fronde.⁴⁸ The threat posed by Gaston appeared more redoubtable because Le Tellier, fearing that cavalry from Turenne’s army would sweep down on the château of Vincennes to liberate the princes, had ordered their transfer deep into France to confinement in the fortress of Marcoussis, which was within Gaston’s apanage of Orléans. The danger of placing this card in Gaston’s hands might be mitigated by his dislike of Condé and fear of his influence at court if released. But Mazarin was correct to fear that hostility in Paris was coalescing into factional alliances against him. Influential figures such as Anne de Gonzague, known as the princesse Palatine following her 1646 marriage to a younger son of the ill-fated ‘Winter King’, Frederick of the Palatinate, had realigned themselves on the side of the princes and were now using their negotiating skills and prominent position at court to build coalitions of supporters against Mazarin.⁴⁹ These concerns influenced Mazarin’s decision to agree a settlement with Bordeaux: the siege was abandoned and the city’s privileges confirmed, together with a general amnesty.⁵⁰ In the north, Turenne might have been thwarted in the plan to release the princes from Vincennes, but his army had consolidated its position on French territory by the capture of Château-Porcien and Rethel. Not for the first or last time, Mazarin had been overconfident of winning a quick and decisive military success over his opponents.⁵¹ The royal progresses through Normandy, Burgundy, and Guienne earlier in the year had indicated popular enthusiasm for the king, and the surrender or flight of opponents; but by

⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹ ⁵¹

Ibid, 289–90. Brienne, Mémoires, xxxvi. 167, describes Mazarin as suffering a ‘terreur-panicque’. Chéruel iii. 823, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bourg, 28 Sept. 1650. ⁵⁰ Bérenger, Turenne, 294–5. La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 48.

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the early autumn that support had withered away. Immediately alarming for Mazarin on the route back from Guienne in late October was the serious illness of the queen mother.⁵² Mazarin suddenly had to take into account Gaston d’Orléans’ presumptive right to assume control of the regency if the queen’s health deteriorated further.⁵³ The danger had passed by early November, but the fear seems to have crystallized Mazarin’s determination to move the imprisoned princes from the fortress of Marcoussis out of Gaston’s jurisdiction to the citadel of Le Havre, where Mazarin believed he would have more control.⁵⁴ It was a mistake on two counts: not only did Gaston now become openly hostile to Mazarin at court, considering that he had been bullied into conceding this transfer, but the cardinal had obligingly relieved Gaston of any apparent complicity in the imprisonment of the princes. The transfer of the princes dramatically heightened tensions in the capital. Printed tracts attacking Mazarin had appeared in ever greater numbers and outspokenness since the summer, and attempts to censor and restrict circulation were half-hearted.⁵⁵ Demands for the release of the princes and attacks on Mazarin’s government were becoming a regular feature of debates in the Parlement.⁵⁶ Yet in late 1650 Mazarin’s thoughts were focused on the planning and resourcing of a late-season military campaign conducted by his military client, the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin. The target was the recapture of the fortified town of Rethel in Champagne, one of the gains of Turenne’s summer and autumn campaigning with his Spanish and princely army. Control of Rethel, together with other conquests during 1650, would make it possible for the Spanish army to quarter itself in Champagne through the winter. Mazarin left Paris in early December to oversee the supply operations for the army that had now laid siege to the Spanish-held town.⁵⁷ Not only did Plessis-Praslin manage to retake Rethel on 13 December after a four-day siege, but two days later a relief force commanded by Turenne which had marched to break the siege was convincingly defeated a few miles outside the town.⁵⁸ Paradoxically, this victory over Turenne could hardly have come at a worse moment. Mazarin’s determination to take full ownership of the military success ⁵² Chéruel, iii. 897/903, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Poitiers, 23 Oct./Amboise, 27 Oct. 1650; see also Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 82–3. ⁵³ Guy Patin, Lettres, ed. J-H. Reveillé-Parise (3 vols; Paris, 1846), ii. 55–6; Patin to Charles Spon, 4 Nov. 1650, identifies Mazarin’s concern that Orléans will remove him if the queen dies and Orléans becomes regent. ⁵⁴ Chéruel, iii. 902, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Châtellerault, 24 Oct. 1650. ⁵⁵ Dubuisson-Aubenay, i. 256–337; Vallier, Journal, ii. 214–15; Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 86–90; Carrier, Presse de la Fronde, i. 236–40. ⁵⁶ Chéruel, iii. 921, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Damery, 4 Dec. 1650; Guy Joly, Mémoires, Michaud/ Poujoulat, ii. 40. ⁵⁷ Vallier, ii. 240, writes directly of his admiration for Mazarin’s organizational capacity demonstrated in this operation; Plessis-Praslin, Mémoires, Petitot/Monmerqué, lvii. 342–55. ⁵⁸ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 256–9.

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entirely dominated his correspondence from 15 to 20 December, and led him to neglect the dangers closing in on him.⁵⁹ He remained convinced that he could now weather the upsurge in hostility, and reassured himself that his success on the frontier made the case for his indispensability to the crown.⁶⁰ Only in response to the frantic concerns of his correspondents did he finally acknowledge the seriousness of the situation, worrying that the protests of the Parlement might lead to a wider union of sovereign courts across the realm.⁶¹ Mazarin’s first impulse was to raise the stakes. Faced with protests and challenges, Mazarin mused, the army in Champagne—some 22,000 men including 2000 officers—might be used to reassert royal and ministerial authority.⁶² But a second military action against Paris was, as he was well aware, a high-risk strategy, and Mazarin weighed this against the less confrontational plan of working with the queen mother to dissuade the duc d’Orléans from joining the growing movement for the princes’ release. A choice was required: Mazarin could stay with the army and use it to confront his opponents if they crossed some yet to be decided red line; or he could return to Paris to stiffen the queen’s resolve to treat with Orléans and to keep him at all costs separate from the forces of Mazarin’s enemies.⁶³ On 31 December Mazarin returned to the court.

The Crisis: January/February 1651 Despite his decision to return to Paris, Mazarin was ill prepared mentally or physically for the forthcoming struggle. He had been suffering from intense and debilitating attacks of gout through December, and remained as self-assured as ever that he was the indispensable servant of crown and state. Yet at the beginning of January all was not necessarily lost for Mazarin and the crown. Suspicions between the adherents of the ‘Old Fronde’—especially the coadjutor, Paul de Gondi, and Mme de Chevreuse—and the party of the imprisoned princes remained just below the surface, and could still be exploited by a well-disciplined royal party.⁶⁴ There was still time to offer inducements to carefully targeted individuals to stay away from the princes’ faction, and an obvious candidate was ⁵⁹ See the run of correspondence in Chéruel, iii. 938–56, Rethel, 14–21 Dec.1650. For Mazarin’s complacency: Montglat, Mémoires, l. 260–1; Chéruel, iv.l, Mazarin to Paulo Maccarani, Paris, 6 Jan. 1651. ⁶⁰ Points made forcefully by Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 39; duchesse de Nemours, Mémoires, Michaud/ Poujoulat, ix. 636. ⁶¹ The maréchal du Plessis-Praslin, one of Mazarin’s unconditional supporters, considered the absence from Paris in December to have been Mazarin’s gravest mistake: Mémoires, 357. ⁶² BN Ffr. 4208, fos 489/90, Mazarin to Le Tellier, [Reims], 22 Dec. 1650. ⁶³ Vallier, ii. 249–50. ⁶⁴ The princesse Palatine claimed that she met with Mazarin to tell him in guarded terms of the plans to release the princes and urged him to act pre-emptively by releasing them himself: Anne de Gonzague, Mémoires (Paris, 1786), 171–3.

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Gondi. Earlier in 1650 Mazarin had strongly backed the queen mother in an outright and public refusal to consider Gondi for the cardinal’s hat that he coveted as the price of his political support.⁶⁵ Realizing that he had made a tactical error, in late November Mazarin attempted to bribe Gondi with some compensatory abbeys, the payment of debts, and the post of grand aumônier to the crown, all of which were disdainfully rejected.⁶⁶ The situation worsened, but Mazarin was unwilling to go further and to promise his support for the cardinalcy. Mazarin would show himself less fastidious later in the year, but in the face of the gathering storm of January 1651, he simply relied on his intuition that the hatred between the coadjutor and Condé was sufficiently engrained to prevent any alliance between them.⁶⁷ Mazarin’s wishful thinking was carefully manipulated by the coadjutor and by Mme de Chevreuse, who negotiated clandestinely with the princes’ party throughout December and January, largely through the mediation of the princesse Palatine.⁶⁸ In a second crucial blow to Mazarin’s position, they had also managed to draw Gaston d’Orléans from inchoate hostility to Mazarin and the queen mother into explicit support for the princes’ party.⁶⁹ In this rapidly changing situation, the cardinal’s own lack of self-restraint considerably helped his enemies. Tensions were running high after Molé’s haranguing of the king and queen mother on 20 January, and on 30 January the queen mother received the deputies from the Parlement again and, in terms that specifically rejected any claim that they had a political role, nonetheless conceded that their prompting had encouraged her to reconsider the case of the imprisoned princes.⁷⁰ Yet two days later, and among a throng of people leaving a meeting of the king’s council, Mazarin remarked to the young king that he was deeply worried about Louis’ future, comparing the hostile behaviour of the Parisians with the English revolutionaries who hated and had killed their monarch. The duc d’Orléans intervened, responding to these inflammatory—and cruelly insensitive—remarks by reassuring Louis that the Parlement and the people of Paris were not hostile to their king, but only to a bad minister who had brought them so much suffering. Mazarin fired back that this was precisely the excuse Cromwell and Fairfax had made when they began their ⁶⁵ R. Chantelauze, Le Cardinal de Retz et l’affaire du chapeau (2 vols; Paris, 1878), i. 148–9; ii. 151–2: Colbert to Le Tellier, Bourg, 28 Aug. 1650, reporting on Mazarin’s absolute refusal to consider the coadjutor for a cardinalcy; ii. 166: Colbert to Le Tellier, Amboise, 2 Nov. 1650, reaffirms the outright refusal of both the queen mother and Mazarin to consider the promotion of the coadjutor. ⁶⁶ Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, i. 149. ⁶⁷ Anne de Gonzague, Mémoires, 179–80; Chéruel, iii. 971–2, Mazarin to Le Tellier, [Reims], 26 Dec. 1650. ⁶⁸ Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, i. 149–55; AAE MD 878, fo. 11, Croissy to Chavigny, Paris, 15 Jan. 1651: Croissy notes that Mazarin is too preoccupied to notice the manoeuvrings of the frondeurs; Anne de Gonzague, Mémoires, 160–71; see the excellent account of women’s role in these events: S. Vergnes, Les Frondeuses. Une révolte au féminin (1643–1661) (Paris, 2013), 203–7, 227–36 on the role of the princesse Palatine. ⁶⁹ AAE MD 880, fo. 9, Mazarin to Mme de Chevreuse, 18 Jan. 1651; fo. 10, additional memoir by Mazarin on reliability of Chevreuse; Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 42–3. ⁷⁰ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 8; AAE MD 878, fos 29–30, 30 Jan. 1651.

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rebellion.⁷¹ Overheard by enough people, Mazarin’s remarks raced out across Paris to general outrage and ferocious denunciations in the Parlement, where the coadjutor gave a full account of the confrontation.⁷² In terms of the balance of power at court and in government, Mazarin’s incendiary remark probably made no difference—for on 30 January the party of the princes and the duc d’Orléans, supported and facilitated by the Old Frondeurs, had formally united round a series of clandestine treaties which were intended to seal Mazarin’s political fate as well as securing the prisoners’ release.⁷³ Mazarin had systematically misread the political situation, had prevaricated over the release of the princes, and was now isolated and dependent on his only remaining support, the queen mother.⁷⁴ Where Mazarin’s provocation had drastically worsened his situation was in draining the last vestiges of sympathy and support among the people and the bourgeois of Paris. The political struggle was unfolding against a background of terrible hardship. The winter of 1650/1 was the coldest in memory; in Picardy and Champagne the devastating incursions of enemy troops since the summer of 1650 were compounded by the freezing temperatures from November.⁷⁵ When in December hungry soldiers started seizing bread in the villages that normally supplied the capital, there was concern that the resulting unrest would be used as further ammunition against the first minister.⁷⁶ The bitter cold and food shortages were overtaken in January by another catastrophe, the flooding of the Seine, which peaked on 22 January two feet above the previous highest level, reached in 1649.⁷⁷ The atmosphere of crisis, economic dislocation, and demands on charity; the streets full of temporarily homeless residents—all of this heightened a political confrontation which may have begun with the perceived injustice done to the princes, but was turning into a campaign focused on hatred of Mazarin. The pressures for the dismissal and exile of Mazarin grew steadily through the first days of February. A body of opinion inside and outside Parlement asserted that stable and effective government would only be achieved by reuniting the royal family and excluding the person seen as chiefly responsible for bringing about its disunity.⁷⁸ Abandoning hope of drawing key figures back into his network, Mazarin seized on the idea that his own involvement in the release of the princes might serve as the basis for a new alliance with Condé. This was clutching at straws, but Mazarin had received advice from various quarters to suggest that the

⁷¹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 10. ⁷² Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 12; AAE MD 880, fo. 14, 2 Feb. 1651. ⁷³ P. Lenet, Mémoires, Michaud/Poujoulat, ii. 521–3; Anne de Gonzague, Mémoires, 173–5. ⁷⁴ Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 44: after his earlier successes, Mazarin believed that he would be able to outmanoeuvre his opponents simply by attaching himself to one faction or the other. ⁷⁵ AAE MD 878, fo. 44: ‘Nouvelle relation du mois de Janvier 1651, contenant l’estat des pauvres de Champagne et Picardie.’ ⁷⁶ Vallier, Journal, ii. 255–6. ⁷⁷ Feillet, La Misère, 302–4. ⁷⁸ AAE MD 878, fos 37–40, 1 Feb. 1651, speech to Parlement by the avocat général, Omer Talon, bringing together these themes.

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princes might offer their support in return for release.⁷⁹ Mazarin havered once again between courses of action. He withdrew to St Germain, and his initial plan was to get the royal family to follow him out of Paris as soon as possible, evidently aiming to replay the 1649 blockade of the capital with troops from Champagne.⁸⁰ But the queen mother did not intend to leave Paris, nor at this stage was it clear that she would be able to do so, given the levels of suspicion about Mazarin’s whereabouts.⁸¹ So Mazarin moved to his final remaining option: a dash northwards towards Le Havre to reach the princes before the arrival of the official delegation authorized by the queen mother to secure their release.⁸² Recognizing that this was his last card seems to have stimulated his wildly optimistic belief that a rapprochement would be easy to achieve.⁸³ On his arrival it should have become clear that this hope was as illusory as the information that Mazarin had earlier received that Condé would be prepared to treat with him.⁸⁴ Affecting gratitude only so long as was necessary to formalize the release, Condé declined to discuss any subsequent political arrangements with Mazarin; the three princes shared a meal with the cardinal before they left for Paris, during which the mask of amicability was dropped and they started to treat Mazarin with open contempt.⁸⁵ Left at Le Havre, Mazarin began rewriting the political past and present to explain away his miscalculations and to treat the threat of exile as a mistake soon to be rectified. A series of self-delusionary letters addressed to Le Tellier, Hugues de Lionne, and Mazarin’s closest confidant, Zongo Ondedei, asserted that the meeting with the princes had been a success and would be followed by their intervention at court on his behalf and by widespread petitioning for his reinstatement.⁸⁶ Unwilling to remain at Le Havre, and still apparently assuming that the intervention of Condé would result in his recall to Paris, Mazarin and his detachment of guards and staff moved eastwards into Picardy. It was at Doullens on 25 February that Mazarin learnt that Condé and his allies at court had combined with the frondeurs, the Parlement, and Parisian bourgeois to demand that Mazarin and his family should be banished from France forever and with immediate effect.⁸⁷

⁷⁹ Nemours, Mémoires, 638; AAE MD 874, fo. 24; La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, ii. 56. ⁸⁰ Chéruel, iv. 8–10, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Villarceaux, 8 Feb. 1651. ⁸¹ AAE MD 878, fos 58–59, 9 Feb. 1651: queen mother confirms to a delegation of the Parlement the formal exile of Mazarin and the unconditional release of the princes; on the queen’s refusal to leave Paris: Brienne, Mémoires, xxxvi. 176. ⁸² A piece of coordinated stalling on the part of Mazarin’s sympathizers among the ministers prevented the official delegation leaving for Le Havre before 11 Feb: AAE MD 878, fo. 71v. ⁸³ AAE MD 874, fos 58–59, 12 Feb. 1651, ciphered letter [from Le Tellier?] advising Mazarin that in the present circumstances it would be mistaken to travel to Le Havre in person, and he should merely give the orders for the officiers at Le Havre to release the princes. Chéruel, iv. 18; Mazarin to Le Tellier, Cailly, 12 Feb. 1651, Mazarin dismisses Le Tellier’s scepticism about an agreement with the princes. ⁸⁴ Vallier, Journal, ii. 289; Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 162–4. ⁸⁵ Vallier, Journal, ii. 289–90; Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 46; full account in Aumale, Condé, vi. 56–7; 480–1. ⁸⁶ Chéruel, iv. 21–2, 13 Feb. 1651; iv. 24, 15 Feb; iv. 23–4, 15 Feb. ⁸⁷ Chéruel, iv. 32–5.

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One practical problem, for which no contingency had been made, was finding a suitable place of exile. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mazarin was better at uncovering reasons for eliminating possible locations than at finding a viable refuge. The obvious allies of France, especially Sweden and the United Provinces, were Protestant and Mazarin claimed he had no wish to cross these confessional lines. Though a Catholic Swiss canton might serve as refuge, Mazarin ruefully noted that as the majority of Swiss troops in French service were heavily in arrears with their pay, settling in Switzerland might be the beginning of still more troubles for him.⁸⁸ South of the Alps, he recognized that his poisonous relations with the Pamphili pope, Innocent X (1644–55), made settlement in Rome impossible. The Pope’s hatred for him would also make any appeal for asylum in other Italian states unwelcome, while in Savoy-Piedmont, where Mazarin’s good relations with the queen regent, Christina of France, went back two decades, there was a strong faction hostile to Mazarin.⁸⁹ On 27 February Mazarin had written about the possibility of seeking refuge in Poland, ‘for to be frank, I think that getting exile anywhere else will be a doubtful proposition’.⁹⁰ Even at this stage Mazarin had not given up all idea of challenging his expulsion from France. On 9 March he wrote urging Servien to do all possible to persuade the king and queen mother to leave Paris and put themselves in the hands of Mazarin’s supporters, providing the basis for a potential counter-coup.⁹¹ This was an insanely reckless proposal, yet is seemingly supported by documentary evidence—apparently a draft of a royal order by which the king, on the advice of his mother, and ‘explicitly repudiating the wishes of Orléans, Condé and all the other members of the Council’, would invite Mazarin to return to serve as first minister in return for Mazarin’s ‘total fidelity’. The document goes on to state that the king and queen mother were supposed to have left Paris for St Germain the previous Wednesday, but this had been prevented.⁹² Aside from this inchoate project, Mazarin also briefly considered taking refuge with one of the half-dozen or so senior officers, his appointees or allies, who held military governorships of fortified places along the frontier. From there he would coordinate military resistance by this group to try to force some kind of political settlement.⁹³ Mazarin finally resolved to comply with the terms of his banishment, and to request permission to take up exile in the territories of the archbishop-elector of Cologne, the recently (1650) installed Maximilian Henry of Bavaria.⁹⁴ Mazarin ⁸⁸ Chéruel, iv. 69–70, Mazarin to Lionne, Clermont, 11 Mar. 1651. ⁸⁹ Chéruel, iv. 41, Mazarin to Gramont, Péronne, 27 Feb. 1651; Dulong, Mazarin, 156–7. ⁹⁰ Chéruel, iv. 40, Mazarin to M. Bartet, Péronne. ⁹¹ Chéruel, iv. 65, Mazarin to Servien, Clermont, 9 Mar. 1651: Servien should ‘think continually’ of persuading them to abandon Paris. ⁹² AAE MD 880, fo. 33, [no place or addressee], Mar. 1651. ⁹³ Chéruel, Minorité, iv. 285–6: Chéruel’s sources are the partisan history by Priolo, and Mazarin’s own claims, made retrospectively in a letter of 18 June: Chéruel, iv, 287–8, fn 2, Mazarin to Lionne, Brühl. ⁹⁴ Chéruel, iv. 71, Mazarin to Lionne, Clermont, 11 Mar. 1651; he received another letter from the queen on 14 March also urging him to seek asylum in the Rhineland: Dulong, Mazarin, 154–5.

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assumed that he could draw on the Elector’s goodwill, grateful to France for having protected the interests of the Wittelsbach family at the Westphalia negotiations. Escorted across Spanish territory by a detachment of Spanish troops led by a councillor from Brussels, Antonio Pimentel, and treated with lavish hospitality, Mazarin finally arrived at the Elector’s château of Brühl on 11 April. A country residence, it was by Mazarin’s own account ‘well-furnished’, with some staff left in place by the Elector.⁹⁵ There was enough space to accommodate Mazarin’s nieces and nephew, and his personal retinue of guards and staff. On 22 April Mazarin wrote that he had taken delivery of sixteen sets of livery for household servants, and provided extensive detail of the arrival of silverware, furniture, more material to make clothing for servants, and a few tapestries.⁹⁶

‘They know not what they do . . . ’ Mazarin had not expected to be banished; his dilatory progress along the French frontiers whipped his opponents into a frenzy of indignation.⁹⁷ Indeed, the trial in absentia of Mazarin decreed by the Parlement, which lumbered into motion via a decision on 11 March, adopted as one of its main charges that Mazarin had not complied with the order to leave France.⁹⁸ None of this changed his own perspective: Mazarin’s letters continued obsessively to recount the view that he had been the victim of accident and malice. He was entirely unprepared to accept that his exile might reflect changes which had transformed the situation in France and marginalized him politically. Understandably, one part of his reluctance to accept the new situation was a consequence of practical and physical challenges and threats. But the other, as important in Mazarin’s decision-making and actions, reflected a deeper psychological rejection of his exile. The quotation which introduces this section, from a letter written by Mazarin to Le Tellier, was surely a conscious allusion to Christ’s words on the cross, while the language of the letter refers to Mazarin’s ‘persecutors’ and their ‘rage and (unreasoning) passion’, and to his own suffering innocence and selfless devotion to the service of the crown and the state.⁹⁹ This was by no means an isolated instance of Mazarin’s ⁹⁵ Chéruel, iv. 123, Mazarin to Lionne, Brühl, 11 April 1651. ⁹⁶ AAE MD 880, Mazarin to Sr Uzonat, Brühl, 22 April 1651. ⁹⁷ The information about Mazarin’s movement was published in Renaudot’s Gazette, so was freely and provocatively available to his detractors: Gazette, vols 32–40. AAE MD 878, fo 90, 11 Mar: Parlement concerned that M has failed to abide by terms of the banishment; BN Ffr. 6888 fo. 4, 16 Mar: procès verbal brought against Mazarin by the commissaire of the Parlement, charging him with contravention of the arrêts of the previous month; Vallier, Journal, ii. 306–7. ⁹⁸ BN Ffr. 6888, fos 128–200v, with a summary of the findings by the commissioners, fos 221–48. ⁹⁹ Gospel according to Luke 23, verse 34: Jésus pria: Père, pardonne-leur, car ils ne savent pas ce qu’ils font; Chéruel iv. 17 Mazarin to Le Tellier, Cailly, 12 Feb. 1651: ‘mes persecuteurs ne scavent pas ce qu’ils font . . . ’ The letter continues in terms that are perhaps suggestive of Mazarin’s impending ‘resurrection’: ‘they (my persecutors) will soon discover that it is not so easy to destroy (“ecraser”) a man of my substance.’

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self-representation—and self-perception—in these months. His determination to return to France reflected a profound conviction of his entitlement to power and authority that went well beyond any rational assessment of the utility of his contribution to the crown or the state. The psychological challenge posed by exile should not entirely overshadow Mazarin’s practical reasons for wanting to get back to France. One of these was straightforward insecurity. The château of Brühl was an unfortified princely residence, and Mazarin’s personal bodyguard even when at full strength would not be sufficient to fight off substantial raiding parties.¹⁰⁰ The release of the princes had allowed Turenne to make his peace with the crown and return to France in early May, extricating him from the Spanish alliance and removing the threat that he would deploy his own troops against Mazarin.¹⁰¹ But the forces of the duke of Lorraine were at war with France so long as the ducal territories were occupied, and conspicuously disrespectful of neutrality.¹⁰² Mazarin and his nieces offered enticing prospects for ransoms; despite Mazarin’s frequent pleas of extreme poverty in Brühl, few believed that the cardinal did not continue to have access to financial resources that he had allegedly extracted from France while he was first minister.¹⁰³ A new threat was identified in autumn 1651, with the possibility that Condé, in rebellion against the crown, might take the opportunity, in conjunction with his Spanish allies, to launch a pre-emptive strike against Brühl to take Mazarin hostage.¹⁰⁴ Such military threats to Mazarin’s exile were paralleled by mounting diplomatic pressure. In July and August a series of allegations were published against him: he was interfering with the Emperor’s authority among the German princes, trying to draw the Rhine Electorates into a closer alliance with France, and involving himself in the quarrels between the Elector of Brandenburg and the duke of Neuburg. Mazarin rigorously denied all this, but believed that the rumours emanated from Brussels, where the intention was to pressure the Elector of Cologne, via the Emperor, to expel him.¹⁰⁵ On 12 September, Mazarin wrote to the queen that ‘for an infinity of reasons’ it was impossible to stay in Brühl’;¹⁰⁶ however, the unwelcome response of the ministers around the queen was to ¹⁰⁰ Mazarin’s personal bodyguard was by now no more than twenty men, headed by the ‘real’ d’Artagnan: J. Bourelly, Maréchal de Fabert (2 vols; Paris, 1881), i. 362–3. ¹⁰¹ Vallier, ii. 344–5. The letters of abolition, reconciling Turenne and the duchesse de Longueville to the crown were registered by the Parlement on 19 May: Vallier, ii. 353. ¹⁰² Chéruel, iv. 289, Mazarin to Lionne, 19 June 1651: with 300 cavalry the Spanish or Lorrainers could seize and carry him away as a prisoner within 24 hours, frightening off any local resistance from the Elector’s men. Navailles, in his memoirs, asserts that Mazarin was in constant fear of kidnap at Brühl, which he mistakenly writes as ‘Bruxelles’: Mémoires, ed. M. Moreau (Paris, 1861), 62. ¹⁰³ Transporting money out of the realm was one of the charges levelled against him in the 11 March declaration: Vallier, ii. 306–7. ¹⁰⁴ Chéruel, iv. 453, Mazarin to Colbert, Brühl, 30 Sept. 1651. ¹⁰⁵ AAE MD 878, fo. 258, Mazarin to Brienne, Brühl, 23 July 1651. ¹⁰⁶ Ravenel, Mazarin, 255.

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propose that Mazarin be sent to Rome to represent French interests at what was thought to be an imminent papal conclave. Mazarin angrily rejected the suggestion, convinced that it was a plot by his enemies to get him still further from the court, and that he would be despatched without any regard for his safety or adequate provision for his subsistence once he was in Rome.¹⁰⁷ It was no less true that aside from physical danger or eviction, the relatively cramped quarters, discomfort and access to only a fraction of his wealth were another constant spur for Mazarin to get back to France. We should not overplay the poverty of Mazarin in exile, remembering that in letter after letter he had every reason to exaggerate it. But there is no doubt that life in the château at Brühl was a very far cry from the baroque opulence of the Palais Mazarin. His agents, Colbert and Zongo Ondedei, had been removing valuables and furnishings from Mazarin’s hotel in Paris since March, but the expense and risks of loss in moving them to Brühl were considerable, and Mazarin certainly did not contemplate permanent exile in Cologne. Another immediate problem arose in maintaining a steady flow of communication with the queen, supporters at court and fidèles in the provinces. If the physical distance between Brühl and Paris was shorter than between Paris and many of the French provinces, the problems of crossing Spanish and Liègeois territory, the circuitous routes required to avoid detection by Mazarin’s enemies at home, and the risks of interception or severe delay, turned the maintenance of a regular correspondence into a hugely challenging process.¹⁰⁸ Urgent letters were sent in multiple copies by different routes, while ciphering and deciphering were time-consuming and subject to error.¹⁰⁹ As with all wartime communication in this period, the unpredictability of transit times produced a fractured correspondence in which crucial letters went unanswered or replies were made redundant by the arrival of new or changed information.¹¹⁰ Mazarin’s suspicions of the loyalties of his ministerial fidèles and allies were aggravated still further by intermittent communication. Yet all of these material issues relating to the exile detract from a more profound issue, and one which has been largely downplayed by historians, despite the ready availability of sources.¹¹¹ Confronted with Mazarin’s correspondence in 1651, it is hard to maintain belief in the cardinal’s wholehearted and self-sacrificing devotion to the monarchy or the state. The immediacy of his ¹⁰⁷ Brienne’s letters to Mazarin suggests that the Council had thought about security: AAE MD 876, fo. 302, 25 Aug. 1651; Chéruel, iv. 449–51, Mazarin to Ondedei, Brühl, 27 Sept. 1651; Ravenel, Mazarin, 257, Mazarin to the queen mother. ¹⁰⁸ Excellent discussion of these issues in Dulong, Mazarin, 163–5. ¹⁰⁹ For example, AAE MD 879, fo. 67, Mazarin to Gravelle, 24 Nov. 1651, Mazarin explains that he has sent two copies of this letter, one via Cologne and one through Maastricht ‘despite the expense’; Ravenel, Mazarin, 199/258, Mazarin to queen mother, 20 July/12 Sept. 1651. ¹¹⁰ See for instance, a letter of Mazarin to Colbert: Chéruel, iv. 428–9, Brühl, 14 Sept. 1651. ¹¹¹ Aside from the profusion of manuscript material, there are the two substantial printed collections of Mazarin’s correspondence for 1651 in volume 4 of the Chéruel edition and in Ravenel, Mazarin.

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personal interests easily overwhelmed a rhetoric of sacrifice, and formulaic protests that Mazarin had removed himself from the political arena for the good of the crown were counterbalanced by the stress on his unique ability to reverse the unfolding political conflict.¹¹² Time and again his letters reveal a measure of exaggeration, even cynicism, in deploying arguments for his selfless service. It is hard to imagine Richelieu writing to one of his fidèles in the terms that Mazarin wrote to Colbert, urging him to prepare his financial accounts so as to do ‘all possible to show that I have been the most self-sacrificing servant of the state who has ever lived’.¹¹³ If the language of service sounds forced and contrived, the language of personal ‘interest’ is an all-pervasive presence in Mazarin’s letters; a heckling, monotonously assertive subordination of all political possibilities to a single objective: Mazarin’s own return to France and to ministerial power. The advice and counsel in his letters to the queen, whether about alliances or rewards or initiatives, is all subjected to the litmus test of whether it would help achieve Mazarin’s restoration. His letters to Anne, both those crafted with clear intent and his more spontaneous outpourings, return constantly to the theme of possible ways to secure his return to France. Only months into this correspondence, on 29 August, does a letter of Mazarin consider a wider issue, the Spanish deputation led by Antonio Pimentel which had come to Brühl to talk to Mazarin about matters relating to a general peace.¹¹⁴ This was however a momentary eclipse, and the issue of Mazarin’s return immediately resumed its dominant position. As counterpoint to his compliments to the queen on her loyalty and support came shrill assertions that she was not doing enough to facilitate his restoration, that she should be ‘more decisive’ in putting Mazarin’s return at the centre of negotiations, and that she ‘lacks great warmth’ for the project.¹¹⁵ All of Mazarin’s courtly fidèles were enlisted not only in the various plans and projects for restoration, but also to place continuous pressure on the queen mother by reminding her of the miseries of Mazarin’s exile, and the priority of obtaining his return.¹¹⁶ Of course, from a perspective on early modern history which sees Mazarin, like Richelieu, as synonymous with the orderly power of the centralizing state, Mazarin’s palpable obsession with the pursuit of his own interests requires no explanation or excuse: his return to power was the precondition for resuming the

¹¹² Innumerable examples of this trope can be found in the letters, but see for example: Chéruel iv. 67–8, Mazarin to Lionne, Clermont, 10 Mar. 1651; Chéruel, iv. 343, Mazarin to Milet, Brühl, 18 July; Ravenel, Mazarin, 44–8, Mazarin writes to the queen both that he would not wish to see himself restored to France at the price of excessive concessions to Condé (44), but that he is also the only person capable of opposing Condé’s inordinate ambitions, which will drive the queen from power (45–8); Ravenel, Mazarin, 137, Mazarin to Bartet, 6 July 1651. ¹¹³ Chéruel, iv. 268, Brühl, 13 June 1651. ¹¹⁴ Ravenel, Mazarin, 236–7, Mazarin to queen mother. ¹¹⁵ Ravenel, Mazarin, 32, 135, 196. ¹¹⁶ For example: Chéruel, iv. 132, Mazarin to Milet, Brühl, 19 April: ‘to speak often to the queen’; Chéruel iv. 332, Mazarin to Ondedei, Brühl, 14 July: to speak to the queen ‘on all occasions.’

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essential path towards the building of the modern state, temporarily blocked by the Fronde and its deluded and reactionary supporters. Great historical forces were working through the cardinal’s dogged pursuit of his ‘interests’ by all the means at his disposal.

‘A muertos y a idos no ay amigos’ It was one thing for Mazarin to believe passionately and unquestioningly that his exile was unjust and that his restoration was a duty laid upon all those who supported royal authority; it was quite another to neutralize all the pressures and alliances that had forced Mazarin across the borders, and then to stage-manage his full return to power. There were four possible routes out of Brühl and back into France. The first was to convince or cajole the queen mother to use her authority and influence to create the political climate for a restoration. The second method would be for Mazarin to deal directly with the various factions and parties that had been evolving since his departure into exile: support for his restoration would be bought in return for political concessions to individuals or factions. The third approach conceded that Mazarin would not achieve a political restoration in the foreseeable future, but recognized the obligation that the crown and France owed to Mazarin; this option would allow him to retire to a fortified ‘secure place’ within France, or more probably on the French frontiers. This solution, more intended to protect Mazarin’s material interests than to facilitate his service to the crown, was discussed surprisingly frequently and extensively in the course of 1651. When these three expedients had been attempted and had failed to produce the desired breakthrough, Mazarin was to turn to the fourth and final option—the one that was to precipitate the crisis of 1652. This was to raise a private army on behalf of the king, and to fight his way back into France and into the court and government. Of these options, the first initially seemed the most propitious. If the queen mother had been, in Mazarin’s eyes, bullied and intimidated into conceding his exile, she could revoke her agreement and recall him.¹¹⁷ The main concern for Mazarin was his perception that he stood on shifting sands when it came to assessing the commitment and readiness of Anne and those around her to work for his return. The question of the queen mother’s relationship with Mazarin has been the stuff of historical speculation since the mazarinades first spread notions of illicit sexual relations, secret marriage, and the cardinal’s ‘bewitching’ of the queen.¹¹⁸ Since then, slightly more decorous historical discussion has sought to establish the

¹¹⁷ See for example, Ravenel, Mazarin, 132, 196, Mazarin to queen mother, Brühl, 5/16 July 1651. ¹¹⁸ J. Merrick, ‘The Cardinal and the Queen: Sexual and Political Disorders in the Mazarinades’, French Historical Studies, 18 (1994), 667–99.

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nature of the relationship, with the obvious underlying question of how emotionally dependent Anne was on Mazarin. Much of this relies on reading meanings into letters from Mazarin to Anne whose tone and expression could encompass the possibilities of frustrated physical passion, heightened seventeenth-century notions of sentiment and friendship, calculated emotional manipulation, and a great deal in between these three.¹¹⁹ The relevant question in this context is whether the queen mother could contemplate abandoning Mazarin and leaving him in permanent exile, either because the emotional ties were less strong than Mazarin wished to believe, or because Anne calculated, on behalf of her son, that the political price—or political risk—of restoring the cardinal was too high. Here the only real source, given the queen’s own silence, are the memoirs of contemporaries around her at court, and opinions in these are divided. If some of these writers assert that Anne would never abandon Mazarin, others were quite prepared to argue that the queen’s affections were conditional and perceptibly diminishing as Mazarin’s absence continued.¹²⁰ A third group did not doubt Anne’s affection for the cardinal, but were more sceptical of her resolution and commitment to him in the face of persuasion and contrary arguments advanced by those in her entourage and in the council. Some of the shrewdest commentary can be found in the memoirs of Marie d’Orleans, duchesse de Nemours, who was not an intimate of Anne like Mme de Motteville, but no enemy of the queen either. Nemours’ memoirs assert that commentators had been so obsessed with the notion that the queen was entirely controlled by Mazarin that they had failed to note just how little correspondence there was between the two of them, and the amount of mutual misunderstanding that grew up during Mazarin’s exile.¹²¹ The queen mother, she argued, had little taste for the work of government and little confidence that she could handle it well; despite this, Nemours adds, she had a good sense of political judgement based on scepticism about the motives of everyone.¹²² So it suited the queen to allow Mazarin to take responsibility for government, but when he was not present she was prepared to take the advice of others around her, even when this cut across the actions and policies that she had previously agreed with the cardinal.¹²³ This interpretation of the queen’s motivation was not good news for Mazarin’s aim to shape Anne’s actions on the basis of his intermittent correspondence. And it was echoed by two of Mazarin’s strongest advocates at court: his nephew by marriage, the duc de Mercoeur, and his military ally, the maréchal du PlessisPraslin.¹²⁴ Both stressed that the queen was, in Mercoeur’s words, ‘susceptible to ¹¹⁹ No more than a handful of Anne’s letters to Mazarin survive from this period, and these are not in direct response to Mazarin’s letters. ¹²⁰ Mailly, L’Esprit de la Fronde, iv. 679–83. ¹²¹ Nemours, Mémoires, ix. 639. A view corroborated by the frustrations expressed by Mazarin about Anne’s replies, which he chose to attribute to difficulties with handwriting or the cipher—or inattentive reading: Ravenel, Mazarin, 38, 196, 258. ¹²² Nemours, ix. 638: ‘La reine, par cette meme prévention de ne se croire jamais sur rien . . . .’ ¹²³ Ibid ix. 639. ¹²⁴ AAE MD 876, fo. 311, Mercoeur to Mazarin, Paris, 25 Aug. 1651.

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being pressured’ by those ministers and courtiers with whom she was more immediately in contact.¹²⁵ These pessimistic judgements were not fully accepted by Mazarin, but he was certainly concerned that Anne might get used to managing affairs of state without him.¹²⁶ It was not possible to insulate the queen mother from those around her, and many of them were either his undeclared enemies or those who believed that Mazarin’s return would complicate an already precarious political situation. His response, as we have seen, was to keep his return as the unremitting focus of all his letters, while simultaneously expecting his allies and appointees in the council and at court to maintain the pressure on the queen by stressing the miseries of his exile and the benefits that would be brought by his presence. All of this took its toll: Mazarin was prepared to confront the queen directly about the extent of her commitment to him, and his replies suggest that he received some written reassurances from Anne in return. But he was no less aware that even the most detailed and painstakingly written account of the political situation and the role she should play was less immediately influential than direct conversation with the queen.¹²⁷ Unless he could count on those around Anne to remain ‘on message’, his letters could easily be forgotten; and many of these courtiers saw Mazarin’s stock as having fallen to the point where his concerns could be ignored with impunity.¹²⁸ An additional hazard in trying to build up a group of cheerleaders around the queen came from Anne’s suspicions that Mazarin’s letters to others in the court circle may have offered different perspectives and information from those sent to her personally. The duc de Mercoeur explained in a letter to Mazarin that the queen insisted that all those at the court who received letters from Mazarin should read them out to her in her apartments. Mercoeur recognized that this had the potential to embarrass Mazarin, if not worse, and suggested that the cardinal should send information that he did not want disclosed to the queen in separate, additional notes that could be kept apart from the letter for public consumption.¹²⁹ Dependence on others at court fed a rich seam of paranoia in Mazarin. And some of the accusations levelled at those he considered most indebted to him, his ministerial appointees Michel Le Tellier, Hughes de Lionne and Lionne’s uncle,

¹²⁵ AAE MD 877, fo. 56, Mercoeur to Mazarin, Paris, 30 Sept. 1651; echoed in Plessis-Praslin’s Mémoires, 375–6. ¹²⁶ Chéruel iv. 428, Mazarin to Colbert, 14 Sept. 1651: Mazarin still believes that he has great credit with the queen, but that his advice could easily be dismissed by those around the queen as being irrelevant to an ever changing political situation. ¹²⁷ See for example the extended, shrewd memoir written by Mazarin to Anne on 12 May: Ravenel, Mazarin, 41–64, a tour d’horizon of all the threats that if not well-handled, will prevent Mazarin’s return. ¹²⁸ A situation expressed with delicate ruthlessness by Mme de Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 171. ¹²⁹ AAE MD 877, fo. 56, Mercoeur to Mazarin, Paris, 30 Sept. 1651. Plessis-Praslin, Mémoires, 375, described Mazarin as his own worst enemy in his writings to the court, full of damaging commentary that Plessis-Praslin was concerned would reach those anxious to destroy the cardinal’s reputation with the Queen.

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Abel Servien, contained an element of truth. All three were involved in a rapidly changing political environment in which written instructions from Mazarin could be outdated and even potentially damaging to the cardinal’s own interests. Lionne and Servien were found to have pursued political negotiations with Condé but without discussing the restoration of Mazarin, which in the latter’s eyes was a non-negotiable precondition.¹³⁰ So convinced was Mazarin of the perfidious behaviour of ‘his’ ministers that even when Condé successfully demanded that all three be disgraced and dismissed from the king’s council, Mazarin maintained with wild improbability that this was a subterfuge intended to avert attention from their cooperation with the prince.¹³¹ Another, more general, consequence of the obsession was to ensure that the possible return of Mazarin, with or without royal permission, never left the world of gossip and speculation at court and in the wider world. In July, Mazarin received an outspoken letter from his fidèle, the bishop of Coutances, emphasizing how acutely damaging to Mazarin’s reputation was the constant public discussion of his possible or imminent return to France. The letter did not hesitate to lay the blame on Mazarin’s own activities and politicking, which had contributed to this mass of rumour and had been a gift to the cardinal’s enemies.¹³² That this was indeed the case can be seen in the final and disastrous unravelling of Mazarin’s strategy of relying directly on the queen mother’s initiative and intervention. Suspicion that the queen was not sincere in accepting Mazarin’s perpetual banishment was shared by all his enemies during his exile.¹³³ In August, in response to local unrest, a declaration was sent to all the provincial governors and sovereign courts, reiterating the king’s intention that Mazarin’s exile should be permanent, that he was ‘exclus pour jamais’ from the kingdom.¹³⁴ Mazarin nonetheless placed his hopes on the formal declaration of the royal majority in September, when Louis reached the age of thirteen and assumed direct control of the kingdom; the queen mother could remain as his advisor, if Louis chose, but the regency would end. And Louis, speaking as ruler of France, could decree the restoration of Mazarin the day after his majority.¹³⁵ Mazarin’s stunned response still echoes through his correspondence after he learnt the reality. The ceremony of the lit de justice on 7 September, where the king’s majority had been proclaimed by the Parlement, had been preceded by the registration of a letter from the king, reiterating Mazarin’s perpetual banishment ¹³⁰ Chéruel, iv. 192, Mazarin to Lionne, Brühl, 20 May 1651. ¹³¹ Chéruel, iv. 350, Mazarin to Ondedei, Brühl, 18 July. Days earlier Mazarin had launched another tirade against Lionne to the queen, attacking his alliance with Condé: Ravenel, Mazarin, 185, 11 July. ¹³² AAE MD 880, fo. 104, 15 July 1651 [no signature, but handwriting and style is recognizably that of Claude Auvry, bishop of Coutances.] ¹³³ Seen for example in Guy Patin’s correspondence with Charles Spon and André Falconet, Lettres, ii.70, 586, 21 Mar/27 June 1651. ¹³⁴ AAE MD 878, fo. 290, Declaration of the King, 18 Aug. 1651. ¹³⁵ Ravenel, Mazarin, p. 254, Mazarin to queen mother, Brühl, 12 Sept. 1651.

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for the crimes that the Parlement had imputed to him, and stipulating that he would be guilty of lèse majesté if he tried to return to France.¹³⁶ A more comprehensive failure of Mazarin’s entire strategy to influence the queen on his behalf would be hard to imagine. Writing to Anne, Mazarin described the ‘mortal blow that I have just received’: the king and queen ‘by an authentic, voluntary act, have declared me a traitor, a public thief . . . an enemy of the peace. The declaration of my exile has been spread throughout Europe, and the condemnation is universal.’¹³⁷ The letter, like others written by Mazarin around the same time, displays genuine pathos: someone hardened to the constant game of manipulation and dissimulation was betrayed by the person he had seen as both his patron and the most obligated to him by his past services.¹³⁸ No matter that both Anne and the young Louis XIV were to write privately to Mazarin in the weeks after the declaration to express their personal satisfaction with Mazarin and reassure him of their affection.¹³⁹ For Mazarin it was clear that the train of politics, like the lavish procession that had formed part of the king’s ceremony of majority, had moved on: the absent have no friends.¹⁴⁰

¹³⁶ Vallier, iii. 5. It is unclear why it took so long for Mazarin to discover the content of these letters; on 19 Sept. he had written of his pleasure at the news of the declaration of the majority: Chéruel, iv. 430, Mazarin to Ondedei. ¹³⁷ Ravenel, Mazarin, p. 292, Mazarin to queen mother, Brühl, 26 Sept. 1651; see also Mazarin’s letter to Colbert of 30 Sept., where it is clear how hard the queen’s action has hit him: Chéruel, iv. 452–3. ¹³⁸ See for example the letter of Mazarin to Bartet, 27 Sept. 1651; Ravenel, Mazarin, 301–12. ¹³⁹ None of these letters survive, so the assumption by many historians that they warmly endorsed Mazarin’s return to France is supposition. Mazarin’s letter of 3 October to the queen mother acknowledges receipt of two letters, one dated 17 and one 23 September, in which it seems that Anne sought to ameliorate the terms of the declaration, but it is notable that Mazarin thanks her in very general terms, and moves on to discuss Gondi’s support: Ravenel, Mazarin, 319. Interestingly, a later letter, written by the queen on 29 Sept., seems to have aroused a more ambivalent reaction from Mazarin: ibid, 333, Mazarin to queen mother, Brühl, 10 Oct. 1651. Had she returned to the subject of sending Mazarin to Rome? The letter from the king is even more elusive: Chéruel cites Motteville’s Mémoires, claiming that Ondedei was sent by Anne on 2 October to convey—by word of mouth—the king’s ‘promise of a quick return’, though Motteville is more precise and actually states ‘an order to return to the court’: Mémoires, xxxix. 300. This assertion does not appear in any other memoirs or journals for 1651, and is not echoed in any of Mazarin’s letters immediately following the apparent invitation: indeed, in a letter of 10 October Mazarin is specifically testing the waters to see if the queen and king could be persuaded to support his armed intervention in France: Ravenel, Mazarin, 329–30. Chéruel then points to a letter of Mazarin to d’Estrades, dated 8 October, where Mazarin simply speaks of having received an ‘extremely obliging letter’ in the king’s own hand, but without any indication that it included an invitation to return to France: Chéruel, Minorité, iv. 424, fn 1. ¹⁴⁰ Ravenel, Mazarin, 382, letter of Mazarin to Bartet, Brühl, 19 Nov. 1651 (‘The dead and the absent have no friends’).

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3 Condé’s Miscalculation and Mazarin’s Gamble The summer and autumn of 1651 brought a series of shattering setbacks to Mazarin’s hopes of getting himself restored to power in France. Gravest of these was the royal letter, registered by the Parlement on 6 September, which reasserted in the most forthright terms that Mazarin’s banishment was perpetual and confirmed all the charges that the Parlement had laid against him of embezzlement, abuse of authority, and disturbing the peace.¹ The experience smashed Mazarin’s confidence that the queen mother had either the will or the ability to act decisively on his behalf when he was not present to guide her decision-making. The second line of his strategy—seeking to manipulate or form alliances with factional groupings beyond the court—had proved no more successful. Aside from the crown itself and those who presented themselves as exclusively royal ministers or court servants, there were three major parties/factions. The first of these was the ‘princes’ party’, those who had fought openly for Condé, Conti, and Longueville’s release during 1650 and who were now expecting recompense following the princes’ return. Initially united with the princes’ party, but quickly falling into disagreement and confrontation, were the members of the ‘Old Fronde’—those who had led the Parisian opposition in 1649. These included stalwarts such as Paul de Gondi, coadjutor to his uncle, the archbishop of Paris; the duchesse de Chevreuse; some of the parlementaires, such as presidents Viole and Perrault; and some quasi-adherents, notably the keeper of the seals, Châteauneuf. Though hostile to Mazarin, they were no friends of Condé, whom they had not absolved of responsibility for the 1649 blockade of Paris, even if they had been prepared for tactical reasons to support his release from Le Havre. Lastly there was the king’s uncle, Gaston d’Orléans, and a group of civil and military figures gathered around him: a much more fluid association, but they were prepared to support Gaston in calculated displays of independence both from the crown and the other political factions. That, however, is to sketch out a model that was far too neat. Some figures were genuinely unaligned with any faction or party, waiting on the outcome of political clashes and competition. Some of the unaligned were tacitly or actively supporters

¹ See ‘A muertos y a idos no ay amigos’ in Chapter 2.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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of Mazarin, and saw their interests best served by his restoration. A significant group of generals and governors on the north-eastern frontier had either been appointed by Mazarin or had benefited from his favour and support; they saw in the ascendency of other parties the potential risk of military marginalization or removal from their governorships.² Yet even amongst this group, loyalties were potentially divided. Abraham Fabert, governor of Sedan, was seen as the most ostentatiously loyal of Mazarin’s military supporters. Yet he was also a firm ally of Léon de Bouthillier, comte de Chavigny, Richelieu’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, who had been excluded and disgraced by Mazarin in 1643 but was returned to the council in March 1651—as an ally of Condé and the princes’ party. Fabert’s letters to Mazarin reassured the cardinal that his close association with Chavigny was a means to temper the latter’s hostility to Mazarin, but suspicions remained that Fabert’s loyalties, like those of many others, were not exclusive.³ Others, such as the princesse Palatine, deliberately confused their allegiances in order to move easily between parties. Personal interest could dictate adherence to more than one of these factions, especially given the great disparities in size and power between, for example, the Condéen or princely party and the much smaller and less cohesive group associated with Gaston d’Orléans. Moreover, many of those involved in political life drew a clear distinction between adherence to the crown and adherence to Mazarin or his fellow ministers. Many of those in the royal government or the court could also have links and allegiances to Condé, the cause of the ‘Old Fronde’, or might divide loyalties with a commitment to Gaston’s ‘court’ at the Palais Luxembourg. And these were not just divided but shifting allegiances, subject to change according to calculations of benefit, loyalty to individuals, perceived slights or injuries. This was truly the Fronde en mouvement notably described by Robert Descimon and Christian Jouhaud.⁴ In seeking to manipulate this shifting body of adherences and interests, Mazarin’s physical exile was undoubtedly a disadvantage. But this was compounded by another issue that leaps out from a detailed reading of Mazarin’s 1651 correspondence: the pursuit of his political re-establishment at all costs appears to have led him into errors of personal judgement and statesmanship that were not just palpably bad with hindsight, but which Mazarin’s contemporaries recognized as crass and self-deluding. One example, already touched upon, was Mazarin’s settled belief that his arrival at Le Havre and release of the princes

² In an unprecedented but astute move, in January 1651, and following the victory at Rethel, Mazarin had created five marshals of France from among his appointees to important fortified places on the north-east frontier: AAE MD 878, fo. 8, Croissy to Chavigny, Paris, 7 Jan. 1651; Montglat, Mémoires, l. 264. ³ Bourelly, Fabert, i. 337–53; see for example awareness of Mazarin’s discomfiture about Fabert’s closeness to Chavigny in AAE MD 889, fo. 162, Fabert to Chavigny, Blois, 15 Mar. 1652. ⁴ R. Descimon, C. Jouhaud, ‘La Fronde en movement: le développement de la crise politique entre 1648 et 1652’ XVIIe Siècle 36 (1984), 305–22.

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had cemented an unwritten ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with Condé.⁵ Mazarin’s misjudgements did not reflect an inherent lack of political understanding. His assessment of the coadjutor, Paul de Gondi—his cleverly ironic summing-up of Gondi’s bad, weak, and treacherous qualities by inverting them to show the coadjutor’s ‘obvious’ suitability as replacement first minister—is a masterpiece of character assassination.⁶ Yet the prospect that an alliance with Gondi would be the key to Mazarin’s re-establishment transformed his attitude to a figure he had hitherto regarded with suspicion and distaste.⁷ In July/August 1651 he agreed to a treaty with Gondi, Mme de Chevreuse, and the keeper of the seals, Châteauneuf, stipulating that in return for support for Mazarin’s return, Mazarin would do all possible to facilitate Gondi’s nomination to a cardinalcy.⁸ The explicit terms became embarrassingly clear when a copy of the treaty fell into the hands of the princes’ party and was printed and disseminated across Paris. To fulfil his part of the agreement Mazarin duly shifted his position on the ‘gross unsuitability’ of Gondi as cardinal, and on 12 September wrote to the queen to propose that she nominate him with all speed to the Curia in case the death of the current pope delayed the process of selection.⁹ Under Mazarin’s instructions, the queen had already been required to temper her own even greater aversion for Gondi, and to conduct clandestine negotiations with him—for Mazarin, the future cardinal de Retz had become his great ally, whose efforts would be deployed on his behalf to facilitate his return.¹⁰ Gondi however joked privately that he acknowledged absolutely no obligation to Mazarin and denied that there was any accommodation between them.¹¹ He was not discreet in these assertions, which reached as far as Brühl: Mazarin wrote to his agent, Isaac Bartet, on 27 September that he had heard it reported that Gondi had declared that ‘he would be the biggest fool in the realm’ if he did anything advantageous for Mazarin. Yet Mazarin declared that he simply would not believe this, an assertion he made again to both the princesse Palatine and the queen mother on 3 October, stressing that he had ‘entire ⁵ For Chéruel, editor of Mazarin’s correspondence, the cardinal’s bad judgement required explanation: his footnote appended to a letter written by Mazarin to one of his fidèles affirming that Condé was reconciled and cooperative observes that of course ‘Mazarin was too astute (clairvoyant) not to have recognized the true sentiments of Condé’. But perhaps recognizing the difficulties with this claim, Chéruel is then drawn back to asserting that Mazarin’s own account of his apparently amicable meeting with Condé at Le Havre should correct all those memoirists who insisted that the encounter was tense and that Condé barely masked his animosity: Chéruel, iv. 23, fn. 3, Mazarin to Ondedei, Le Havre, 14 Feb. 1651. ⁶ Chéruel, iv. 41–2, Mazarin to Marshal Gramont, Péronne, 27 Feb 1651. See in general Mazarin’s assessment of those he considered responsible for his exile: ‘Mémoire de Mazarin: contre le Cardinal de Retz, Mme de Chevreuse, et autres partisans des princes, Brühl, 10 April 1651’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France 1 (1834), 229–52. ⁷ See ‘The Crisis: January/February 1651’ in Chapter 2. ⁸ Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, ii. 198–202, includes the full text of the treaty. ⁹ Ravenel, Mazarin, pp. 262–3. ¹⁰ Chéruel, iv. 424, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, Brühl. 8 Sept. 1651, Mazarin already surprised that Retz has done so little to support M’s cause at court and with the QM, but remains hopeful. ¹¹ Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, ii. 3–4: Gondi to l’abbé Charrier, Paris (beginning of Oct.).

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confidence’ in Gondi.¹² Mazarin continued to be persuaded of Gondi’s alliance throughout November, despite the mounting evidence that Gondi had done nothing positive to assist Mazarin’s campaign.¹³ Mazarin waited with eagerness for the advocacy of Gondi and the emphatic support of the frondeurs, but in vain. Excuses and evasions were provided until Condé’s open revolt from October pushed the Old Fronde and their influence into the background. Another avenue to Mazarin’s return had proved fruitless. Amidst these setbacks to his primary goal, the third strategic option, that of achieving a ‘secure place’ on the borders of France for a notional—and armed— retirement from public life, proved no more successful. After considering both Metz and Sedan, Mazarin’s own favoured option was to obtain full proprietorship of the Rhine fortress of Breisach.¹⁴ This became the subject of intermittent discussion from April 1651.¹⁵ Yet the local difficulties about determining who was actually in control of the place, and the queen mother’s reluctance to make a grant which would inevitably cause a furore amongst Mazarin’s enemies, led to procrastination and evasion by the crown and the ministers. It was anyway not clear how useful the simple grant of Breisach would have been to Mazarin without guarantees that at least some of his emoluments and income flows from France would be resumed, and the climate of opinion in the autumn of 1651 made this equally contentious. The latter concern, that Mazarin did not trust the crown to ensure that he received income and benefits to live in an ‘appropriate style’, also blocked serious discussion of the project of the secretary of state, Loménie de Brienne, to send him to Rome specifically under royal protection, to take part in the next conclave and to serve as an extraordinary ambassador.¹⁶ Meanwhile, Mazarin believed his situation in Brühl was becoming ever more insecure. He was acutely aware of Habsburg pressure on the Prince Elector to expel him, and he feared the prospect of an incursion by Spanish or Lorraine troops who from October might seek to kidnap him in support of their military alliance with Condé.¹⁷ Mazarin moved back to the moderately more secure,

¹² Ravenel, Mazarin, 310–11: ‘plus grand coquin du royaume’; 313; 320. ¹³ Ravenel, Mazarin, 458, Mazarin to princesse Palatine, Bouillon, 21 Dec. 1651; see the extensive correspondence between Gondi and his agent in Rome, abbé Charrier: Cardinal de Retz, Oeuvres completes, ed. J. Delon (10 vols; Paris, 2005–18), vol. 3: ‘Correspondance, affaire du cardinalat’. On 10 Nov., Retz wrote to Charrier that ‘regarding the matter of Mazarin’s return, you should make it clear that he is mad to wish to undertake it, but that my promotion to the cardinalcy will make it easier for me to oppose it with vigour’ (iii. 198); Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, i. 361–5. ¹⁴ It had initially been considered by Mazarin as a location for his exile: Chéruel, iv. 56, Mazarin to Lionne, [near] Bar, 7 Mar. 1651. ¹⁵ AAE MD 875, fos 72–73, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Paris, 20 May 1651; by late May Mazarin was discussing Breisach in detail ‘pour avoir une retraite qui fust seure et honorable’: Chéruel iv. 235, Mazarin to Lionne, Brühl, 29 May; Ravenel, Mazarin, 116, Mazarin to Bartet, 30 June 1651. ¹⁶ AAE MD 878, fo. 298, Mazarin to Colbert, 28 Aug. 1651—part transcribed in Chéruel iv. 402–5. ¹⁷ Chéruel, iv. 453, Mazarin to Colbert, Brühl, 30 Sept. 1651; Mazarin’s concern at the threat posed to him by the duke of Lorraine’s army: Chéruel, iv. 458, Mazarin to d’Estrades, Brühl, 8 Oct. 1651.

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fortified town of Huy in October, and thence on to Dinant in Liège in early November.¹⁸ What remained to the cardinal was a final ‘nuclear’ option: fighting his way back into France to re-establish his position at court and in government. Such a step, an invasion of France at the head of an army—even if he could obtain some sort of invitation for this from the crown—was at first sight a suicidally reckless notion. No action could be more calculated to unite even hitherto committed royalists against Mazarin than a naked bid to regain power at the head of foreign mercenaries. For his enemies it would offer conclusive evidence of Mazarin’s tyrannical intentions and his aim to seize the king and queen mother as hostages to enable his own power grab. Moreover, raising an army of any size would involve heavy expense, much of which would have to be met while the troops were being assembled outside of France. The failure of such a project would not merely destroy Mazarin’s political reputation, but would wreck his private credit and leave him without financial resources in a way that, for all his complaints about his present poverty, had been far from the case during these months of exile.

Condé’s Failure to Consolidate His Position What changed the situation in order to render this final option thinkable, if still extremely risky, was Condé’s move into active revolt during October 1651. Condé’s progress through the six months following his triumphant entry into Paris in February had been a sequence of missed opportunities, miscalculations, and gratuitous mistakes, which betray as much about his personality and its role in decision-making as do the actions of Mazarin in the same period. It was widely assumed that the triumphant return of the princes from Le Havre to Paris would be followed by the removal of the queen mother from the regency, her confinement in a convent, and a rapid and definitive purge of all of her own and Mazarin’s close supporters from the royal household and the court. The reestablishment of a council of regency, as prescribed in the will of Louis XIII, would seem the most modest price that Condé would exact for thirteen months of arbitrary imprisonment.¹⁹ Yet Condé managed to follow an initial failure to act decisively and ruthlessly in this way with further miscalculations: his loud but often ineffectual assertiveness antagonized his enemies without destroying them, and alienated allies whose support he needed. Most notable amongst these misjudged actions was his public repudiation of the marriage between his brother

¹⁸ New passports from the Spanish were required and were evidently forthcoming: AAE MD 879, fo. 6, Mazarin to Fabert, 1 Oct. 1651; Chéruel, iv. 477, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, Huy, 30 Oct. 1651. ¹⁹ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 59–61; Chéruel, iv. 190–4, Mazarin to Lionne, Brühl, 20 May 1651.

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Conti and Mlle de Chevreuse, daughter of a key member of the Old Fronde. This action was carried out in a way that deprived him of support from a still important aristocratic faction built around the extended Guise-Lorraine family.²⁰ Condé, rather than trying at least to pretend that he would support Gondi’s ambitions to the cardinalate, made it publicly clear that he regarded Gondi’s claim as directly usurping the right of the Condé-Bourbon to hold the next available French cardinalcy. The nomination should be for his younger brother, Conti, who had been so recently and abruptly removed from the marriage market. This ensured Paul de Gondi’s renewed animosity towards the Condéens, even if this had not already been stimulated by the public humiliation of his allies, the duchesse, and Mlle de Chevreuse—all the more provoking for Gondi, who had until recently maintained the younger Chevreuse as his mistress.²¹ As Gondi also enjoyed influence over Gaston d’Orléans, it further jeopardized the obvious selling point of Condé’s position: the ability to reunite the immediate royal family around the young king. To these major miscalculations could be added a number of missed lesser opportunities to buy friends and to avoid creating enemies. And behind all this was the crucial paradox that while Condé behaved with what seemed like intolerable arrogance and bullying self-assertiveness to all those around him, he was himself nervous to the point of panic and flightiness about possible pre-emptive action against him by his enemies. The unresolved case of what may have been an attempted assassination, and Condé’s decision not to appear at the ceremony for the king’s majority were in part motivated by such concerns.²² Condé’s final decision to take up arms against the crown, made at the conference held in the family stronghold of Montrond on 15 September, was not the product of a careful and strategic calculation of means and ends. It reflected both Condé’s inchoate personal ambitions and frustrations and his more well-defined fears, especially that of being seized and imprisoned again. Moreover, in what was to become a familiar pattern in which the interests of party proved at least as strong as that of its leader, the decision was considerably shaped by the ambitions and interests of those relations and allies assembled at Montrond, a majority of whom favoured military confrontation rather than negotiation.²³ Once Condé had made the decision for war he faced the challenge of both raising and deploying troops.²⁴ The prince relied in the first instance on the family’s standing regiments, the units of some of his closest allies such as Dognon and Marsin, and otherwise the promises of others involved—La ²⁰ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 66–70; Aumale, Condé, vi. 69–70. ²¹ S. Bertière, La vie du Cardinal de Retz (Paris, 1990), 102–3. ²² Aumale, Condé, vi. 75–93. ²³ The emotional rather than rational decision-making at Monrond and the extent to which Condé felt pressured into the decision for war is captured by the account in Jacques de Saulx, comte de Tavannes, Mémoires (ed. Moreau; Paris, 1858), 96–9. ²⁴ Aumale, Condé, vi. 95–6.

Map 2 South West France, 1651–52

Cadillac

Bordeaux

Ga r on

ne

D ord o g n e

Libourne

Jonzac

Blaye Bourg

de

Agen

Villeneuve Lo t d’Agen

Bergerac

Périgueux

Angoulême

Nérac

St-Jean d’Angély

Taillebourg

Brizambourg Saintes Cognac Royan Brives-sur- C h a r en Charente t Rouffiac e Talmont

Brouage

TonnayCharente

La Rochelle

G ir o n

Bayonne

Bay of Biscay

Île d’Oleron

Île de Ré

Poitiers

Toulouse

Montauban

Cahors

Sarlat

Brive-laGaillarde

FRANCE

Limoges

Albi

ClermontFerrand

Montrond

Bourges

Cher

Loir

Nevers e

Nîmes

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Rochefoucauld, Nemours, Tavannes, Tarente—to deploy regiments that they already maintained in royal service and bring them to join a collective force under Condé’s command.²⁵ Beyond these existing units, a broader base of new regiments also needed to be raised. There was plenty of support for Condé in Bordeaux and across Guienne generally; his replacement of the hated duc d’Épernon as governor in May had been extremely popular, and the Condé family already had territorial holdings in the province. But even if soldiers were prepared to serve as volunteers, they still needed to be provided with food and munitions. Pierre Lenet, Condé’s private secretary, describes how in the first weeks of mobilization in Bordeaux Condé distributed 200–300,000 livres to meet the costs of recruitment by his supporters.²⁶ Over and above the private resources—cash, and money raised on credit—that the Condé family and its allies could commit to military operations initially, the two major sources for a longer conflict were the sequestering of the crown’s tax revenues and foreign—Spanish—subsidies. Appropriated tax revenues probably represented the most stable basis on which to fund protracted military operations: but setting up mechanisms to gather taxes, pressuring the financial officiers to collect on the princes’ behalf rather than the central authority, and ensuring that these revenues reached the princes all required organization and time.²⁷ The more immediate financial support from Spain negotiated in the treaty finally signed at Madrid on 6 November was vital. The Spanish promised a total of 500,000 patagons (worth around 450,000 livres) to be paid to Condé in Bordeaux in three instalments, the first of 300,000 with immediate effect.²⁸ But in what was to be a long and embittered story running through 1651 and 1652, the Spanish were lavish with promises of financial aid, a great deal more parsimonious when it came to meeting these promises.²⁹ What the Spanish did offer more immediately was naval support, with part of their Atlantic fleet under the command of the baron de Vatteville despatched to coordinate action with Condé from a port and operational base that Condé granted them at Bourg.³⁰ Negotiations also began to transport some additional troops, mainly Irish mercenaries in Spanish service, to Guienne to assist Condé.

²⁵ Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 314–17, 345–7; Béguin, Princes de Condé, 126–9; Condé’s own correspondence at Chantilly contains a number of formal treaties for military support drawn up with these allies: AC, Lettres de Condé, vol XII, fos 41 (Daugnon), 83 (Bordeilles), 110 (Nemours). ²⁶ Lenet, Mémoires, ii. 528. ²⁷ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 97, stresses that the appropriation of taxes in Bordeaux was undertaken immediately; Lenet, Mémoires, ii. 527–8 on appropriating taxes (while lowering the total demand) and distributing regimental commissions. ²⁸ AC, Lettres de Condé XII, fo. 69; Lenet had already allocated this first instalment of Spanish subsidy in anticipation of its arrival: AC, Lettres de Condé XII, fo. 118. The patagon was a Spanish coin principally used for paying troops in the army of Flanders, worth around eighteen sols. ²⁹ Lenet, Mémoires, ii. 532: Mémoire pour le sieur de Saint-Agoulin, allant en Espagne . . . ³⁰ H. Thiéry, ‘À la découverte d’un acteur de la Fronde à Bordeaux. La mission du baron de Vatteville (1649–53)’, Annales du Midi 121 (2009), 37–56; Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 321.

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Apart from raising money and troops, if war actually came Condé needed a strategy to exploit the immediate strengths of his position and to strike hard, ideally on several fronts, to force the military issue before being drawn into a protracted conflict where the advantage would probably lie with the royal forces. His initial plan turned the division of his forces to advantage: the ‘household’ regiments of the family were mostly still on the north-east frontier, mixed together with forces that were royalist, if not mazarinist, in sympathies. Under Condé’s orders, his lieutenant general, the marquis de Tavannes, drew these units out of their positions and concentrated them as a small but high-quality force in and around Condé’s strongpoint of Stenay. Careful not to engage directly with much larger royalist forces, they would await the opportunity to join up with Spanish troops acting on behalf of the alliance.³¹ Meanwhile, Condé himself mobilized the forces available in the south-west to create his main army. This would be capable of offensive operations, but also able to provide defence in depth through a network of garrisoned strongpoints: Bordeaux itself, La Rochelle and Brouage, Agen, Bergerac, giving Condé control over the Charente and the Garonne. From this well-defended resource base, Condé could expect to raise more troops and money, enabling an offensive to be pushed into the Loire valley, linking up with potential supporters such as Rohan in Anjou, and, ultimately, he hoped, Longueville in Normandy.³² All of these preparations, though brought together quickly and dependent on some shaky and short-term credit, amounted to a credible threat to the priorities and resources of the court and government. In what was to be the typical dynamic throughout the later months of 1651, there emerged a strong body of opinion which favoured a negotiated peace rather than permitting the descent into civil war.³³ Mazarin never entirely abandoned his conviction that a political deal with Condé would be a means, if not to regain his ministerial status, at the very least to return from exile into provincial or ecclesiastical semi-obscurity in France.³⁴ Indeed, only six days after Condé had left Paris, Mazarin had written to one of his secretaries that he could not understand why the queen mother was so reluctant to negotiate a settlement with the prince.³⁵ In late October Nicolas de Sainctot wrote to Mazarin that it was widely considered at court that if Condé had been offered the terms for a settlement now being made available, he would never ³¹ Aumale, Condé, vi. 96; The rather remarkable military manoeuvre, which involved slipping past the royalist forces of the maréchal d’Aumont, is described by Tavannes himself in his Mémoires, pp. 100–4. The threat posed by this force acting in coordination with the Spanish and the Lorrainers was recognized more widely: Vallier, iii. 20. ³² Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 314–15. ³³ See for example the account of the initiatives in early October in Tavannes, Mémoires, 96–9. ³⁴ Chéruel, iv. 278–80, Mazarin to Lionne, Brühl, 14 June 1651: Condé’s ‘true interests’ lie in cooperating with Mazarin; AAE MD 880, fo. 119, Mazarin to [xxx (in text)], Brühl, Aug. 1651: conviction that it is in Condé’s interests to work with Mazarin, and not to oppose his return to France. ³⁵ Chéruel, iv. 427, Mazarin to Roussereau, 12 Sept. 1651.

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have moved into revolt.³⁶ Only when it became clear through Condé’s statements and manifestos that he would never accept Mazarin’s return did the cardinal’s position shift decisively against compromise.³⁷ Yet amidst the military preparations and the peace initiatives, Condé’s position was dangerously weakened by three critical figures who stood aloof from his revolt, any one of whom could have tipped the balance decisively in his favour. Henri, duc de Longueville—Condé’s earlier companion in prison—had been restored as governor of Normandy, and owned land across the province which gave him a large clientele and decisive influence in key institutions. He was married to Condé’s sister in what was one of the most powerful dynastic linkages of the period. This was of course complicated by his estrangement from the duchess, whose intense relationships with various members of the Condéen faction have provided one of the key themes for popular histories of the Fronde. He hated Mazarin for his imprisonment and the expulsion from his governorship, but now that Mazarin was banished Longueville was sedulously cultivated by most of the royal ministers, who reassured him that the crown had no intention of weakening his power in Normandy.³⁸ Whether intimidated by Condé’s personality and presence when visited in person by the prince, or simply behaving in character with his nickname of ‘wily old fox’, Longueville gave the impression that he would stand by his brother-in-law. Condé’s military preparations went ahead on the assumption that Longueville would raise Normandy in revolt, muster the substantial forces that his resources and his standing in the province would allow, and create an intractable dilemma for the crown’s military planning. Instead of this, Longueville busied himself reassuring the crown’s ministers that he had no intention of taking part in the revolt, and otherwise kept a low profile within the province. Marshal Turenne’s past form during the Fronde certainly gave reason to think that he would once again join the rebels: he had after all been the most stubborn supporter of the princes during their imprisonment in the 1650s, had negotiated a military treaty with the Spanish, and had fought directly against French troops on the frontier in that campaign—demonstrating every bit of the commitment that Condé was to show after 1653 while serving with the Spanish. Turenne’s commitment to the princes’ cause was partly of course self-interested: he and his brother, the duc de Bouillon, had an extensive shopping list of territorial and status-linked ambitions for the future of their family, the Tour d’Auvergne. Aware of the desirability of buying off the two brothers while Condé was imprisoned, Mazarin began the negotiations that would eliminate the resentments that had ³⁶ AAE MD 880, fo. 231, Sainctot to Mazarin, Paris, 20 Oct. 1651. ³⁷ AAE MD 880, fos 193–95, Sainctot to Mazarin, Paris, 14 Oct. 1651: Sainctot writes to explain the impact of Mazarin’s written opinion that the edict declaring Condé guilty of lèse-majesté should be expedited. ³⁸ Logié, Fronde en Normandie, iii. 94–6, 103–10.

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fuelled Turenne’s active opposition in 1649 and 1650. These negotiations were continued after Mazarin’s exile and reached a first settlement in March 1651. The terms that the crown offered for a settlement were generous: the potent combination of the status of prince étranger for the family, together with a belated pay-off to compensate for the surrender of their sovereign territory of Sedan to the crown back in 1642—the duchies of Albret and Château-Thierry, and the counties of Auvergne and Évreux.³⁹ But further negotiations continued throughout the year, and the arrangements were not finally ratified until February 1652, by which time various additional financial benefits had been extracted by the Tour d’Auvergne.⁴⁰ The reluctance to formalize the settlement might suggest that Turenne and Bouillon were still weighing up their loyalty.⁴¹ But disenchantment with their treatment by Condé proved a key factor in persuading the brothers to accept the crown’s offer and to remain loyal not just through the rest of the upheavals of the Fronde, but in Turenne’s case (his brother died in July 1652) until his death in royal service in 1675.⁴² Condé took Turenne’s earlier commitment to his cause for granted, provoked him by favouring his more recent and family associates despite a comradeship-in-arms with Turenne extending back to 1644, and disregarded his requests for support in matters such as allocating troops to good-quality winter quarters.⁴³ He was equally brusque with Bouillon, and fatally indicated that he considered that the claim to prince étranger status was an inappropriate ambition for the Tour d’Auvergne.⁴⁴ Perhaps as important, but in a less immediately material way, was the third setback, the failure to gain the active support of Gaston, duc d’Orléans. Most fundamentally, Orléans’ importance lay in uniting the adult princes of the blood against the queen. The regency was over; in theory the king’s choice of advisors and those round the throne was absolute. Yet the political ideal of the united royal family composed of all the princes of the blood remained a strong and emotionally charged concept, with considerable popular appeal as well as a potential constraint on the king’s freedom to pick and remove the princes from the inner circle of

³⁹ J. Labatut, Les ducs et pairs de France au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1972), 352–4; for the scale and strategic value of the duché d’Albret see C. Blanquié, ‘Le prix de la pairie: les évaluations du duché d’Albret (1655–1657)’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 50 (2003), 5–26. Discussion of the court rank and status of the princes étrangers, in G. Antonetti, ‘Les princes étrangers’, in J-P Bardet, D. Dinet, J-P Poussou, M-C Vignal (eds), État et société en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Mélanges offerts à Yves Durand (Paris, 2000), 33–62. ⁴⁰ AAE MD 889, fo 92, King’s declaration of their status as princes étrangers, 15 Feb. 1652; fo 132, letters establishing Albret and Chateau-Thierry as a duché-pairie, Feb. 1652. ⁴¹ AAE MD 878, fo. 156, Stenay, 25 April 1651; La Rochefoucauld suggests that the decision hung in the balance, and that Turenne genuinely contemplated joining Condé’s revolt: Mémoires, i. 97–8. ⁴² Turenne to duc de Bouillon, 24 Feb. 1652, in S. d’Huart (ed.), Lettres de Turenne extraits des archives Rohan-Bouillon (Paris, 1971), 481–72; Aumale, Condé, vi. 96–7. ⁴³ Turenne, i. 170–5 plays down the sense of grievance against Condé, but plays up the irresponsibility of the prince’s action in Turenne’s thinking; Montglat, Mémoires, l. 304; Mailly, Esprit de la Fronde, iv. 470–1 are more explicit. ⁴⁴ Mailly, Esprit de La Fronde, iv. 470–1.

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government. It was echoed in numerous pamphlets throughout the Fronde years, and underpinned countless charges against Mazarin, whom the authors claimed had deliberately divided and poisoned relations within the royal family to further his own ambitions.⁴⁵ Without Orléans’ explicit and visible support, the revolt would remain a containable, factional rebellion by the lesser branch of the princes of the blood. Though legitimacy was the main consideration, the material resources that Orléans could add to the struggle were considerable, potentially as significant as Longueville’s contribution. Orléans had access to men and money from his substantial appanage in the Loire basin, and could draw upon his clients and supporters in the immense and wealthy province of Languedoc, where he was governor.⁴⁶ Finally, Orléans enjoyed a much less ambiguous relationship with both the Parlement and the people of Paris. Condé’s role in directing the 1649 blockade of Paris would not be forgotten, but he also possessed a haughtiness and harshness of manner, and no gift for speaking in public: he commanded admiration but not much affection. In contrast, Orléans was widely regarded as likeable and an excellent speaker who understood how to play to the expectations of his audience.⁴⁷ His besetting weakness throughout his entire career, the precise opposite of Condé, was his indecisiveness and weakness of purpose: Jean Vallier, admittedly no admirer of Orléans, spoke of his ‘ordinary and natural irresolution’, the reason why he was popularly known as the ‘the incomprehensible’.⁴⁸ In 1651 those who were more sympathetic recognized that some of Orléans’ own interests were compatible with an irenic concern to try to negotiate away the approaching military crisis, and that on occasions he was prepared to use his interventions in debate to try to calm tense and potentially violent situations in the Parlement and on the streets of Paris.⁴⁹ Whatever his motivation, the main characteristic of Orléans’ role in the early autumn of 1651 was a studied political ambiguity that makes it hard to blame Condé for assuming that Gaston would support his revolt. But insofar as Orléans had any coherent plan, rather than reacting to events, his concern was both to keep Mazarin out of France, yet at the same time avoid being marginalized in the king’s council.⁵⁰ This meant that he would also oppose any development that might allow Condé to gain outright control of policy and patronage. Orléans wanted to resolve the antagonism between the queen mother and Condé so that neither gained an outright victory over the other. He certainly did not want to see Condé defeated and squeezed out of political influence, even perhaps imprisoned ⁴⁵ Carrier, Labyrinthe, 249–50. ⁴⁶ Bouyer, Gaston d’Orléans, 111–18. ⁴⁷ Carrier, Labyrinthe, 62–71. ⁴⁸ Vallier, iii. 25. ⁴⁹ Carrier, Labyrinthe, 67, cites Mme de Motteville’s good opinion of Gaston’s statesmanship during 1651: ‘Dieu lui avait donné de l’esprit et de la raison’; Dethan, Gaston d’Orléans, 261–77. ⁵⁰ AAE MD 881, fo. 218, François de Valavoire to Mazarin, [Paris] 4 Feb. 1651, highlights the Leitmotiv of all Gaston’s actions throughout his career, the search for personal ‘security’.

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again—for with Condé out of the way, Orléans could envisage the return of Mazarin and a situation in which he was once again marginalized and vulnerable. The situation was further complicated, since Orléans relied for political advice on both Gondi and Chavigny, one pretending to help Mazarin in return for his nomination as cardinal, the other loathing Mazarin for his betrayal in 1643, and anxious not just to exile the cardinal but to destroy his reputation beyond any possibility of a return to France.⁵¹ Both of these recognized that a rapprochement between Condé and Orléans would serve as the best means to ensure that Mazarin never returned, leaving both Gondi and Chavigny the possibility of advancing their own role as replacement first minister. With these two figures applying their persuasion and pressure, Orléans undertook various initiatives both to support Condé’s position and to work towards a reconciliation between Condé and the queen mother. Notably, after a strong attack on Condé drawn up by the queen and council in mid-August, Orléans sent a detailed letter to Parlement, providing a point-by-point defence of Condé’s behaviour, which was immediately published and disseminated.⁵² On 8 October, the crown drafted the letter formally condemning the behaviour of Condé and his associates and declaring them guilty of lèse majesté if they persisted in their armed rebellion. To the obvious frustration of Mazarin and his allies, Orléans spearheaded the opposition to registering this declaration in Parlement; he argued that it would close the door to a political compromise, and blocked registration until 4 December.⁵³ Yet none of this meant that Orléans was prepared to throw in his lot with Condé’s military operations. Had Condé been prepared to seek a compromise in October or November 1651, then Orléans’ support in brokering a deal with the crown might well have been significant.⁵⁴ But Condé had chosen his path: he would only negotiate from the vantage point of a military victory which circumstances were pushing further and further from his grasp.

Condé’s Situation Deteriorates With Longueville, Turenne, and Orléans hostile or neutral, Condé had lost three potential trump cards in assisting his rebellion. He might still have been able to succeed against a poorly organized and fractious coalition of self-interested supporters of the crown. Given that the royalist response in the event proved

⁵¹ See Chavigny’s ‘manifesto’ against Mazarin, in appendices to Ormesson, Mémoires, ii. 745–58. ⁵² Both printed in Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 245–51, 252–4. ⁵³ Vallier, iii. 61–2, 70–1, 77–8, for Orléans’ obstruction of the process in Parlement in the second half of November; AAE MD 880, fo 311, Sainctot to Mazarin, 15 Nov. 1651. ⁵⁴ A point noted with anxiety in a letter to the queen mother on 30 Oct.: Ravenel, Mazarin, 346, where Mazarin asserts that the ‘power of neutrality’ asserted by Orléans in negotiations plays entirely— in his view—to the advantage of Condé.

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coherent and effective, it has of course been tempting to historians for whom Mazarin is the only serious actor in the Fronde to assume that the campaign was being managed backstage by Mazarin, from Brühl and then Dinant. This is given credibility by his contemporary detractors, including both Orléans and Condé, who asserted—when it suited their purposes—that Mazarin might be physically absent but that he still governed France.⁵⁵ The steady flow of letters and policy documents provided detailed instructions for the doting queen and his team of ‘sub-ministers’, who naturally, it is assumed, pursued all of Mazarin’s wishes in formulating policy. Indeed, these assertions about Mazarin’s underhand control had been the basis on which Condé had demanded the dismissal from the council of the three key ‘sub-ministers’, Le Tellier, Servien, and Lionne, on 18 July.⁵⁶ But while Mazarin would sincerely have liked to exercise such control, his own letters reveal how far he was from having that day-to-day influence on decisions in council.⁵⁷ Receiving and replying to letters from the court, even when it was based in Paris, operated at best over a two-week cycle, and the impact of military operations, diplomatic difficulties, and the time-consuming business of ciphering and deciphering could extend that cycle considerably. Mazarin’s stormy relations with all three of his sub-ministers reflected not just suspicion of their basic loyalties, but exasperation that they were failing to send him sufficient news, were delaying replies, or were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear. On more than one occasion Mazarin voiced his frustration, and then admitted that he knew he could not micro-manage the complexities and rapid shifts in the political environment within France, and would have to leave choices and decisions in the hands of those he hoped would pursue his interests for him.⁵⁸ He could still put pressure on the queen to support nominations to posts and appointments which would favour and maintain his own clientele, though during the months of exile the outcome of this pressure was less frequently a foregone conclusion. In reality, the crown depended on advice and policy-making from those in the immediate circle of the council and the court, and, as the military events of late 1651 unfolded, on the initiatives and decision-making of its military commanders and their subordinates. Immediately after the declaration of the king’s majority, ⁵⁵ For example, AAE MD 875, fos 280–81, Proceedings in Parlement, 24 June 1651, Condé claims that ‘the spirit of Mazarin still governs’. ⁵⁶ AAE MD 880, fo 103, Louis XIV to d’Aiguebonne, Paris, 21 July 1651, notifying the governors of the removal of Mazarin’s ministers from the royal council. ⁵⁷ See for example, Ravenel, Mazarin, 308, Mazarin to Bartet, 27 Sept. 1651, concerned that the regular flow of couriers to and from Brühl simply ‘renews the rumour’ spread by his enemies that Mazarin is directing affairs from exile. ⁵⁸ Chéruel, iv. 428–9, Mazarin to Colbert, Brühl, 14 Sept. 1651: Mazarin even goes so far as to suggest that he will not get involved in domestic politics in future! Ironically, this appears to be the time when Mazarin’s sources of information about the political situation in Paris and at court had considerably improved thanks to the addition of regular and extremely detailed correspondence from Nicolas de Sainctot, aide des cérémonies.

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on 8 September, three new appointments were made to the inner council. René de Longueil, marquis des Maisons, the superintendent of finances, was replaced by Charles de Coskaer, marquis de La Vieuville. His re-appointment as surintendant des finances after a gap of 26 years was favoured by Mazarin, partly because Mazarin believed that he would be more inclined to consider the cardinal’s innumerable claims on state revenues than his predecessor, Longueil. It also reflected the apparent willingness of La Vieuville and the financial nexus around him to offer Mazarin a bribe of 400,000 livres to secure the surintendance for Vieuville—if so, a helpful boost to Mazarin’s financial circumstances while in exile.⁵⁹ Yet once in office he does seem to have prioritized the needs of military campaigning and the rentes, and both Mazarin and his household intendant, JeanBaptiste Colbert, complained that La Vieuville was a great deal less complaisant than they had expected.⁶⁰ La Vieuville was flanked with two other appointments: the re-establishment of Charles l’Aubespine, marquis de Châteauneuf, after his temporary dismissal in April 1651, and of the premier président, Mathieu Molé, who now returned to displace Pierre Séguier as keeper of the seals. Séguier remained chancellor, but with a deliberately reduced status. Châteauneuf was nominated chef du conseil des dépêches, in effect the first minister.⁶¹ The average age of this ministerial trio was impressively high, and the nickname of les barbons, first used to describe a similarly venerable team of ministers who dominated government during the minority of Louis XIII, was disinterred.⁶² One of Mazarin’s confidants, Jacques Gaudin, was concerned at the re-appointment of Châteauneuf, who had been consistently hostile to Mazarin. However he thought that the team was unlikely to last to the end of the year, given the antagonism of d’Orléans and his refusal to attend the council, compounded by the impression the ministers gave of being pedantic and ineffectual.⁶³ This was an impression that Mazarin certainly wished to reinforce, making the case that his return would provide the restoration of competent ministerial rule; it would replace divided, inept, and self-interested policy-making with ‘gens capables’, or more precisely, with one capable person.⁶⁴ But the new team, eventually ⁵⁹ No circumstantial evidence for this payment appears in Mazarin’s correspondence or Colbert’s financial accounts, but C. Dulong considers that the balance of evidence supports the payment: Mazarin et l’argent, 146. Discussions of this bribe and the plan to replace Maisons with Vieuville date back to 24 July and emerged again on 8 Aug.: Clément, Colbert, i. 109, Colbert to Mazarin; Chéruel, iv. 745, Mazarin to Colbert. ⁶⁰ Clément, Colbert, i. 148–9, Colbert to Mazarin, 15 Oct. 1651; Ravenel, Mazarin, 383, Mazarin to Bartet, 19 Nov. 1651. ⁶¹ Chéruel, Minorité, iv. 421. ⁶² AAE MD 880, fo. 131v, Gaudin to Mazarin, Paris, 12 Sept. 1651. Molé had popularly been known in Paris as ‘le barbon’ for his large and defiantly unfashionable beard. ⁶³ Ibid; the view was echoed by another of Mazarin’s informants in a letter without signature of 20 Sept: AAE MD 880, fo. 133. ⁶⁴ Ravenel, Mazarin, 349, Mazarin to queen mother, 8 Nov. 1651.

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afforced by Le Tellier who was reinstalled in December, in fact belied its age and its indifference to fashion by proving effective and quick off the mark in organizing the resources and troops required for the campaign against Condé.⁶⁵ Faced with a debate about whether to deploy military force against the smaller Condéen forces in the north-east or to move against the revolt in the south-west, Châteauneuf spoke out decisively in favour of the second strategy. The decision was quickly taken not just to deploy military force, but to move the king and the court southwards, by stages, to Bourges, and then to establish a base of operations at Poitiers. Having decided to focus resources on the south-west, the council made a series of decisions to draw good-quality, experienced troops out of other campaign theatres to ensure that the blow against Condé and his supporters would be heavy and would come from several directions.⁶⁶ Military command was given to Henri de Lorraine, comte d’Harcourt. Despite his flashes of resentment at high expectations and poor treatment from the ministry, he was regarded—until August 1652—as the safest pair of hands available, an unwavering supporter of the ministry. The first few royalist successes did not require any fighting at all. The city of Bourges simply opened its gates to the king and the court on 8 October.⁶⁷ In a pattern that would be characteristic of these months of warfare, decisions to resist or surrender were made as a result of local tensions and pre-existing competition for influence and control, adding further uncertainty to the military situation.⁶⁸ Following the success at Bourges, Châteauneuf and other councillors urged a rapid move to Poitiers, where control of the city was threatened by a local Condéen faction, and by Condé’s wider strategy of seeking to extend his control northwards by securing cities and fortified places. They arrived at Poitiers on 31 October, and the city was to serve as the—rather cramped—base for the court and the direction of military operations until the beginning of February 1652. The court’s untroubled entry into Poitiers did not check Condé’s aim of securing a series of fortified cities in and beyond Guienne. Vatteville’s Spanish fleet of eight warships and supporting vessels sailed down the Gironde, occupying Talmont and Bourg in January 1652, and safeguarded Bordeaux from any royalist blockade.⁶⁹ Taillebourg, a massive fortress on the Charente, passed into Condé’s control with the adherence of the prince de Tarente, son of the duc de La Trémoïlle, who also brought his troops into Condé’s service: two regiments of experienced troops and other levies from Poitou. Angoulême was held by ⁶⁵ Mailly, l’Esprit de la Fronde, iv. 680: ‘leur bonne intelligence, leur activité dans l’expedition des affaires.’ ⁶⁶ See, for example, AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 183, 25 Nov: royal order to redeploy troops from army of Italy against Condé; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 136, 3 Dec. 1651, report that 4,500 troops from the Flanders frontier commanded by Castelnau-Mauvissière have reached the army commanded by Harcourt in the South West. ⁶⁷ Vallier, iii. 32–3. ⁶⁸ Mailly, L’esprit de la Fronde, iv. 653–5. ⁶⁹ Lenet, Mémoires, ii. 536.

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Condéen supporters and on 31 October his forces occupied Saintes, and began a siege of Cognac. Agen was given an ultimatum to join the revolt, and Condé began negotiations with the Protestants in Montauban to explore the possibility that they might combine forces. In fact the tide was already turning against Condé. What should have been the easy capture of Cognac by a force under La Rochefoucauld and Tarente turned into a fiasco when the Condéen faction inside Cognac, with the support of the governor, the comte de Jonzac, became locked in conflict with royalists in the city. The situation was compounded by the swollen river Charente following weeks of heavy rain, which had swept away the bridge that would have allowed Condé’s main forces to support Tarente and La Rochefoucauld.⁷⁰ The impasse continued, giving Harcourt time to arrive with a much larger royalist relief force, defeating one part of the besieging troops and driving off the rest. Condé watched helpless to intervene as Harcourt’s troops entered the town on 15 November.⁷¹ Condé, with around 4,000 cavalry and 2,000 infantry, then pulled back to Tonnay-Charente. As Harcourt’s much larger army pressed down on him, the prince weighed the options of whether to risk an engagement with Harcourt which might reverse the apparent slide in his fortunes, or instead to fall back further. Many who knew Condé as a military commander and who recognized his present dilemma thought that he would choose his terrain, gain whatever advantage he could from surprise, and then bet his fortunes on a decisive engagement.⁷² But the odds in seeking such an engagement were overwhelmingly tipped against him: not only were Harcourt’s forces more numerous than the troops with Condé, but the royal forces were overwhelmingly ‘veteran, experienced troops’, including 2,000 infantry from the elite gardes françaises and gardes suisses, while Condé’s were a mixture of old troops and new levies.⁷³ Rather than gamble everything on an uncertain outcome, Condé withdrew his troops across the Charente, using a pontoon bridge that he then ordered deconstructed. The order was badly executed: the pontoon boats were simply cut loose, and Harcourt’s forces, in close pursuit, recovered the boats, re-assembled the bridge, and bore down on Condé’s forces, who had assumed that they had gained substantial breathing space. At last Condé’s leadership came into play in a ferocious rearguard action led by the prince in person, which held up Harcourt’s army long enough for Condé’s entire force to withdraw and to

⁷⁰ Brienne, Mémoires, li. 186; various writers commented on the terrible weather conditions, especially the continuous rain, and the effects of the swollen rivers on the campaign: Vallier, iii. 63. ⁷¹ Mailly, L’Esprit de la Fronde, iv. 620–7; Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 336–9. ⁷² AAE MD 879, fo 60, [Beringhen?] to Chavigny, Poitiers, 22 Nov. 1651: weighing up whether Condé will risk a battle to prevent the capture of La Rochelle. ⁷³ AAE MD 879, fo 106, Beringhen to Chavigny, Poitiers, 3 Dec. 1652: ‘vieilles et bien aguerries’; CS. de Quincy, Histoire militaire du règne de Louis le Grand . . . (8 vols; Paris, 1726), i. 144.

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entrench themselves in a strongpoint above the Charente, one capable of holding off the royalist army for the next three weeks.⁷⁴ However, this tactical success was rapidly followed by another failure outside of Condé’s control. The population of La Rochelle, alienated by the extortion and military rule of their governor, the comte de Dognon, had joined with 600 gentlemen raised and led by La Rochefoucauld’s uncle, Barthélemy, baron d’Estissac, in a loyalist revolt against the garrison of the absentee Dognon. Driving the garrison into the three towers forming the isolated elements of La Rochelle’s fortifications, they had already more or less forced the troops, Swiss soldiers hired by Dognon, to surrender when some of Harcourt’s army, moving on from their success in pushing Condé out of Tonnay-Charente, arrived to help finish the job on 27 November.⁷⁵ La Rochelle was another setback indicating how limited was the control that Condé could exercise over his subordinates and allies: Dognon was a key ally, but he had refused to accept any of Condé’s troops in either of his key strong points at La Rochelle or Brouage, largely to keep his political options open.⁷⁶ Harcourt’s own position, reinforced at the beginning of December by another 4,500 experienced troops drawn from the north-eastern frontier, seemed certain to improve as the weeks passed.⁷⁷ These military setbacks helped to tip still further a political balance in Paris which had already been turning against Condé. The absence of the Condéen political heavyweights from Paris had left the field open to the coadjutor, Gondi, who had consolidated his position with Gaston d’Orléans. Gaston had initially shown his sympathy with Condé and his willingness to offer mediation with the crown that many mazarinists suspected would be strongly favourable to the prince. Now, however, encouraged by Gondi, Orléans was taking a far more detached position as the royalist successes in the south-west mounted. The Parlement seemed no more sympathetic to the Condéen cause, and royalist councillors were encouraged by first president Molé, now keeper of the seals, who had returned with La Vieuville to Paris, leaving Châteauneuf with the court at Poitiers. This was not an atmosphere in which Condé’s military setbacks would get an easy ride.⁷⁸ Each of Condé’s defeats and Harcourt’s successes was extensively reported, printed, and distributed as pamphlets.⁷⁹ As early as 24 October ⁷⁴ Aumale, Condé, vi. 115–16; Aymar de Basse, marquis de Chouppes, Mémoires (Paris, 1861), 133–40 provides the most detailed account of this period of campaigning, albeit with an emphasis on the success of his own actions which nuances an otherwise uninterrupted series of defeats for Condé. ⁷⁵ Aumale, Condé, vi. 114–15; Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 340–2. ⁷⁶ G. Berthomier, Louis Foucauld de St Germain Beaupré, comte de Dognon . . . (Montluçon, 1890), 30–4. ⁷⁷ AAE MD 879, fo. 60, [Beringhen?] to Chavigny, Poitiers, 22 Nov. 1651; the same writer suggests that Condé had around 12,000 troops in total across all the territory he controlled, half good, half poor. Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 136, for the reinforcements from Flanders. ⁷⁸ Vallier, iii. 83–4, is damning about Condé’s comprehensive failure. ⁷⁹ Véritable journal de ce qui s’est passé pendant le siège de Cognac . . . Relation véritable de ce que s’est passé à la prise de la tour de Saint-Nicolas à La Rochelle . . . Relation véritable de la défait de cinq cens

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Jacques Gaudin had written to Abel Servien about Condé’s activities that ‘it must surely be the case that there has never been a party in a civil war so badly assembled nor so weakly coordinated, since it still doesn’t know what it wants to achieve’.⁸⁰

Mazarin’s Panic Open civil war was Mazarin’s opportunity. In early October he wrote to Godefroy, comte d’Estrades, governor of Dunkirk and a Mazarin loyalist, that his own situation ‘was getting worse by the day’, and he was still clearly shaken by the implications of the declaration of 6 September. In his letter Mazarin makes it clear that he was considering the private levy of a force of mercenaries to move into France to assist the crown, and was looking to the support of allies and clients in the frontier provinces, like d’Estrades.⁸¹ The Holy Roman Empire after 1648 was a vast recruiting ground from which experienced and unemployed professional soldiers could be raised, but this was not a process which could be completed overnight. Providers had to be chosen, contracts agreed, some down payments probably made; once assembled the troops would need to be held—and fed—until they could march across the frontiers.⁸² In a letter of 22 October to Fabert, governor of Sedan, Mazarin informed him confidentially that three weeks earlier he had opened negotiations to hire troops sourced by Johann, Graf zu Waldeck, an experienced military enterpriser who had served in both the army of the Brandenburg Elector and the United Provinces.⁸³ Waldeck would raise 4,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, which would cost an initial 330,000 livres. There might be difficulties in obtaining the various permissions and passports that would be required to get them to the French frontiers, and at this point, Mazarin explained, the negotiations had been paused. Nearly two weeks before writing to Fabert, the cardinal had tested the waters in a letter to the queen mother, suggesting that in the event of a resumption of civil war he should receive an order from the king to re-enter France with foreign troops. If neither she nor the king wanted to give such permission via a public

chevaux de l’armée de Monsieur le Prince, lui present, et de la prise de Tonné-Charente . . . All separately published by the imprimeurs ordinaires du Roi, Paris, 1651. ⁸⁰ AAE MD 880, fo. 251: ‘Il est vray que l’on na jamais veu un party de guerre civile si mal formé, ny si mal fondé car il ne scait encore ce qu’il veule.’ ⁸¹ Chéruel, iv. 459–62, Mazarin to d’Estrades, Brühl, 8 Oct. 1651. ⁸² D. Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2012), 101–36; T. Helfferich, ‘A Levy in Liège for Mazarin’s Army: Practical and Strategic Difficulties in Raising and Supporting Troops in the Thirty Years War’, Journal of Early Modern History 11 (2007), 475–500. ⁸³ Chéruel, iv. 468–9.

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command, they could let him know in secret that he had their permission. Mazarin sensed the need for persuasive arguments; the door to his return was far from wide open. So he stressed that in a situation where Condé had taken up arms against the crown, who could reasonably object if the crown turned to all possible means of support? Moreover, if the queen felt that it would be unwise to march to join her at the court, Mazarin could maintain himself and his troops in Picardy and Champagne to undertake action against the princes’ forces there.⁸⁴ By the time that he wrote to Fabert, Mazarin claimed that the queen had given a secret and apparently purely verbal permission, via Mazarin’s fidèle, Ondedei, to raise troops and re-enter France.⁸⁵ The lack of a clear, written order from the crown was to become a considerable problem as Mazarin pressed forward with his military planning. Once he started to pursue this course of action, Mazarin wrote insistently to the queen and his ministerial allies and fidèles, urging them to reject any steps towards a settlement with Condé; he was equally concerned that the court and the Parlement were proving recalcitrant in registering the letter of lèse majesté against Condé and his supporters.⁸⁶ With an eye to validating his own intervention in the north-east, he also sought to promote a more activist military policy against the strongholds held by Condé’s supporters in this area. On 27 October he proposed to Fabert that he and maréchal de La Ferté should consider a surprise attack on Mouzon, for as Mazarin put it, quite apart from the advantage that the recapture of Mouzon would bring to the king, it would be ‘very glorious for me, on returning into France, to begin with an action of this nature’.⁸⁷ Though Mazarin had appeared to put the contracting of Waldeck’s troops on hold in his letter to Fabert of 22 October, the hesitation did not last long. On 31 October a set of secret instructions were sent to Robert de Gravel, previously a secretary to Mazarin and now the French resident in Cologne.⁸⁸ Gravel’s instructions gave him the means to access some 30,000 riksdalers (around 150,000 livres) from letters of change that Mazarin had established in Cologne and Liège, payable on monies in Paris. If this was not enough to fund the recruitment—and it was under 50 per cent of the original figure of c. 330,000 livres quoted by Waldeck— then Gravel was to assure the contractors that the additional money would be paid to them from cash reserves held at Sedan on Mazarin’s behalf as soon as the troops entered France.⁸⁹ Above all, Mazarin stressed the need for secrecy: the levies

⁸⁴ Ravenel, Mazarin, 329–30, 10 Oct. 1651. ⁸⁵ Chéruel, iv. 469. ⁸⁶ AAE MD 880, fo. 193, Sainctot to Mazarin, 14 Oct. 1651; Ravenel, Mazarin, 330–1, Mazarin to queen mother, 10 Oct. 1651, where Mazarin directly informs the queen of his concern that any settlement made with Condé will reiterate his banishment from France; Chéruel, iv. 471, Mazarin to Mercoeur, Huy, 28 Oct. 1651: the Queen is very ill-advised not to send the declaration against Condé to the Parlement. ⁸⁷ Chéruel, iv. 470–1. ⁸⁸ Chéruel, iv. 480–4, Mazarin to Gravel; Dulong, Mazarin, 190. ⁸⁹ Chéruel, iv. 482–3.

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should be concealed as much as possible, and Mazarin’s name must be kept entirely out of the negotiations. However, behind all his planning, Mazarin perceived a looming crisis. Beneath the formulaic praise of Harcourt’s military successes and the effectiveness of the council in focusing resources on a quick and decisive outcome to the civil war, the anxiety in Mazarin’s letters through October and November is palpable.⁹⁰ Quite simply, Mazarin’s whole justification for re-entering France with a large force of foreign mercenaries was that the crown confronted an existential crisis in Condé’s revolt. Yet now that the revolt seemed not just contained by the existing forces of the crown, but on the point of collapsing altogether, the redundancy of Mazarin’s possible intervention was growing ever more apparent.⁹¹ The new nightmare for Mazarin was that Condé, seeing that there was no future in continuing his resistance, would negotiate terms with the crown and council, and these terms would reiterate the permanent exclusion of Mazarin from France. As this was a concession that Châteauneuf would certainly favour, and it was a point of absolute agreement between Orléans and the Old Fronde to block any return by Mazarin, even at the price of making concessions to Condé, the risk was very real. The crucial concern for Mazarin was that the queen mother, exposed to the arguments of those immediately around her, might once again decide that Mazarin was dispensable if that facilitated the ending of the civil war. Mazarin’s worry about an accommodation of this sort was made abundantly clear to the queen: it was explicitly and extensively raised in his letters to her on 10, 29, and 30 October and 8 and 17 November.⁹² And the letters to the queen mother were simply the tip of the epistolary iceberg when it came to discussing this matter with all of those he considered his allies, or who might be able to exert influence over Anne. Mazarin’s decision to ‘take up an empirical remedy’ to his exile alarmed many of those at court and in the government who believed that Mazarin’s return would catastrophically derail a situation that was moving rapidly in the crown’s favour.⁹³ It seemed to both Mazarin’s allies and his enemies that a settlement with Condé was imminent; a minor courtier, Jacques de Souvré, wrote to Chavigny in a matter-of-fact tone that ‘it was certain’ that a settlement with Condé would be made, and that ‘everyone favours an accommodation apart from the cardinal and a few others who cannot gain any advantage except through the (continued) troubles of the state’.⁹⁴ Defeat would not necessarily mean that the terms of a

⁹⁰ AAE MD 879, fo. 77, Mazarin to Harcourt, Dinant, 28 Nov. 1651; Ravenel, Mazarin, 414, Mazarin to princesse Palatine, Dinant, 27 Nov. 1651. ⁹¹ Brienne, Mémoires, li. 187. ⁹² Ravenel, Mazarin, 330, 343, 345, 373, 381. ⁹³ Ravenel, Mazarin, 336, Mazarin to Princesse Palatine, Brühl, 24 Oct. 1651; see also Chéruel, iv. 497, Mazarin to Millet, 15 Nov. 1651, where Mazarin suggests that his ‘illness is incurable unless he undertakes a prompt remedy’—to return to France. ⁹⁴ AAE MD 879, fo. 48, Paris, 20 Nov. 1651.

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settlement with Condé could now be made harsher; indeed, the military and political advantage which the crown now enjoyed made leniency and concessions easier. In the eyes of clients and allies of the Condé family, the prince’s capacity to assert outright hegemony in court and government, and thus to satisfy their aspirations, would be decisively weakened. It did not much matter that Condé would walk away from the revolt with his governorships of Guienne and Berry, and an array of court offices and pensions; his ability to behave in the overbearing way seen in late 1649 or from February 1651 would be curtailed. This had happened without the presence of Mazarin, and it was obvious to many that such a settlement would be far better and more easily achieved if the cardinal and his own demands remained excluded from the negotiations. Unsurprisingly, therefore, some of Mazarin’s closest allies echoed Châteauneuf in agreeing that the moment was entirely wrong for Mazarin’s return. In late November, Mazarin’s animosity targeted the duc de Mercoeur, his nephew by marriage, and the maréchal de La Ferté-Senneterre for having counselled him not to re-enter France.⁹⁵ Mazarin was well aware that Châteauneuf, Villeroy, and Brienne at court were explicitly opposed to his return, and on 19 November he confided to Bartet, his less than reliable courier and agent, his fear that the rumours of his return had lost him the support of Mathieu Molé, recently a staunch anti-Condéen in debates in the Parlement.⁹⁶ Mazarin recognized that these suspicions might be building up a party that was explicitly opposed to his return, and was concerned that Gondi, whom he continued to believe was acting in his interests, had not done more to talk down the rumours.⁹⁷ The likely reaction to Mazarin’s return was seen on 20 November when Gaston d’Orléans was attending a session of the Parlement, and still throwing his weight behind obstructing the registration of the king’s declaration against Condé on precisely the grounds that it would impede the developing negotiations for an accommodation. Waiting until the councillors made ready to leave, Orléans announced that he had just heard that the archduke Leopold-Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, had sent Mazarin a passport to pass through Spanish territory and to make his way to France. The result, as Orléans undoubtedly anticipated, was uproar in the Parlement, with councillors demanding an immediate re-affirmation of the declarations against Mazarin.⁹⁸ Mazarin would not receive notice of this hostile reaction for another week after the despatch of Sainctot’s report, but he was already growing more concerned at the likely response to his move into France at the head of a force of German mercenaries. On 18 November he had written to Abraham Fabert, asking his

⁹⁵ Chéruel, iv. 516. ⁹⁶ Ravenel, Mazarin, 383. ⁹⁷ Ravenel, Mazarin, 365, Mazarin to Bartet, Huy, 15 Nov. 1651. ⁹⁸ AAE MD 880, fo. 323, Sainctot to Mazarin, Paris, 20 Nov. 1651; also reported in Vallier, iii. 62–3, who nonetheless suppresses mention of the uproar that followed Orléans’ announcement.

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opinion whether he should cancel the negotiations to raise Waldeck’s troops, since he realized that this descent of foreign mercenaries would be highly unpopular in France. But Mazarin’s principal concern was financial: if he abandoned the levy at this point he would lose 150,000 livres of advances—money which should perhaps have been used to raise troops inside France.⁹⁹ A day later he wrote a lengthy memoir for the king, queen mother, and court, discussing his own options if a settlement with Condé was imminent.¹⁰⁰ Mazarin of course worked hard to play up the bad and dangerous consequences of negotiating with the party of the princes. But in the event that the only attainable terms for an accommodation with Condé involved excluding Mazarin from involvement in government, he asked that the crown should hold out for a recognition of his formal innocence of the charges laid against him in the declaration of banishment, and for the right to employ him in royal service outside of France. In the event that the hostilities continued, Mazarin again proposed that the crown could legitimately seek his return to provide military and political support. In this event, and reflecting the concerns that he had already voiced to Fabert, he proposed either the option of returning to France with a full corps of mercenaries, or abandoning that project and making his way back to the court with ‘just seven or eight persons’.¹⁰¹ In fact Mazarin was moving remorselessly down the road to military intervention even as further news of Harcourt’s successes filtered through to him in Liège. On top of the substantial advances that he had already made for the levy of Waldeck’s troops, on 19 November, the same day he had written his memoir to the queen mother and the king, Mazarin confirmed in a letter to Bartet that payments had been made to a series of supply contractors in Cologne and further afield for munitions and other materials for the soldiers, and that all these would be ready ‘within two to three weeks’.¹⁰² Mazarin had mobilized his funds and his credit to set this military operation in motion; were it to be stood down, it was unlikely that he would again be in a position to repeat the operation from his diminished resources. But even as his path appeared ever more irrevocable, Mazarin’s main concern was the absence of any specific and formal invitation from the king or queen mother to return to France. What was the attitude of the queen mother to Mazarin’s return at this point? Historians who draw no distinction between the wishes of the crown, the interests of the state, and the return of Mazarin to active government are quick to dismiss the comments of Mme de Motteville and the Duchesse de Nemours about the queen.¹⁰³ Both explicitly present Anne of Austria prevaricating about any return of the cardinal. Nemours reported the queen as saying to one of Mazarin’s supporters that ‘affairs are going well in the hands of those directing policy’, ⁹⁹ Chéruel, iv. 500, Mazarin to Fabert, Dinant, 19 Nov. ¹⁰⁰ Chéruel, iv. 501–14, Dinant, 19 Nov. 1651. ¹⁰¹ ibid, iv. 510–12. ¹⁰² Ravenel, Mazarin, 378–81. ¹⁰³ See especially, Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 38–9.

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and that any question of his return would require a prior resolution to the problem of Condé.¹⁰⁴ Much preferred are the memoirs of the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin, constructed to demonstrate his unwavering loyalty to Mazarin, which present the queen as fundamentally committed to securing Mazarin’s return, but distracted and at times led astray by the manipulation of those around her, especially Châteauneuf. Recognizing this, Plessis-Praslin describes how he persuaded her to keep to her real convictions.¹⁰⁵ Whatever the queen’s views, it is clearly the case that Mazarin was getting increasingly panicked about the absence of any substantive, published instruction to re-enter France, with or without the levies of troops being assembled. On 8 November Mazarin wrote to the queen that he was still awaiting the ‘lettres de faveur’ recalling him to the court.¹⁰⁶ Concerned to expedite the despatch of these letters, Mazarin wrote two days later to Lionne, with whom he had reached an uneasy understanding, that he had prepared a letter or manifesto for the king, to be published in the event that ‘their majesties make known their wish that I should re-enter France’.¹⁰⁷ Mazarin went on, biting back his previous resentment and denunciations of Lionne, to ask him to work on this manifesto in secret, altering or reshaping it in whatever ways he considered best, so it ‘will have the most impact on opinion’. The manifesto, finally published as an open letter to the king on 23 December, was a lengthy rehearsal of Mazarin’s past services and future fidelity to the crown, and unlikely to persuade anyone except those already well disposed to his return.¹⁰⁸ But this, and steps to try to press the registration of the edict of lèse majesté against Condé and his followers, did little to relieve Mazarin of his concerns about the implications of raising foreign levies and leading these into France without an explicit and well-publicized royal authorization. On 26 November he wrote once again to one of his courtier-fidèles, Guillaume Millet, to ask him to use all his persuasive powers to get the queen to send him an order (for him to move into France and come to court) ‘in accordance with the order that I asked for when I was at Brühl’.¹⁰⁹ Even if he received the necessary formal invitation from the crown, Mazarin was beginning to recognize just how hostile the reaction to his return was likely to be. On 9 December he wrote again to Fabert, confiding his concern at the gathering opposition at court and the strength of his enemies around the duc d’Orléans and in the Parlement. His concern with growing opposition in France

¹⁰⁴ Nemours, Mémoires, 652; a similar statement in Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 306–7. For Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, this merely demonstrated the queen’s capacity for ‘profound dissimulation’. ¹⁰⁵ Plessis-Praslin, Mémoires, lvii. 371–7. Even Plessis-Praslin concedes that persuading the queen to embrace her best instincts about Mazarin’s return was a struggle that needed frequent reiteration (377). ¹⁰⁶ Ravenel, Mazarin, 350. ¹⁰⁷ Chéruel, iv. 496–7, 10 Nov. 1651. ¹⁰⁸ Chéruel, iv. 565–75, Mazarin ‘to the king’, Bouillon, 23 Dec. 1651. ¹⁰⁹ AAE MD 879, fo. 71, Mazarin to Millet, Dinant.

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was by no means misplaced: the secretary of state, Henri-Auguste de Brienne, wrote a few days later of rioting that had occurred in Paris at rumours of his return.¹¹⁰ On 11 December Mazarin laid the entire vulnerability of his situation on the line for his fidèle the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin. It is, he wrote, of the utmost urgency that the king write him a letter, counter-signed by the secretary of state, ordering him immediately to join the crown and court with all the troops that he had levied. It is absolutely essential, Mazarin continued, that it should not appear that he had entered France against the wishes of the king. If the queen were prepared to order Brienne to write the letter, he would do so with good grace ‘and will keep the secret’.¹¹¹ According to Brienne’s own account in his memoirs, this does appear finally to have spurred the crown to act: Brienne describes how, ‘whether by the generosity of the king and queen, or at his (Mazarin’s) solicitation’, he was instructed to write the letter of recall with such urgency that he had time neither to think about the best ways of expressing the summons, nor to raise any concerns about the content.¹¹² The decision formally to summon Mazarin back to France was thus taken almost a month after Mazarin had despatched his own draft for such an order to the crown, and considerably longer since he had first begun importuning the crown for an invitation to return. It may be, as numbers of historians have asserted and Plessis-Praslin claims in his memoirs, that the crown had informally invited Mazarin to re-enter France at the head of a force of mercenaries weeks before, indeed that Plessis-Praslin had written to him to that effect.¹¹³ But the content and tone of Mazarin’s correspondence gives little reason to think that Mazarin considered that he had received anything before mid-December that could justify his proposed course of action. On 11 December a further letter from Mazarin to Brienne makes it clear that he was still waiting for his summons, and he urged Brienne to send the crown’s letter by express courier as soon as it had been prepared. It was, he wrote to Brienne, unnecessary to stress how urgent the matter was, especially in the present situation.¹¹⁴ An irritable letter of the same date to Plessis-Praslin was concerned that the courier has not brought the necessary orders for the routes and supply arrangements to advance his troops into France.¹¹⁵ By now Mazarin was far too advanced down his chosen path to pull back, yet his letters continue to maintain a defensive tone, concerned at the reactions of those in France; he was even prepared to enter

¹¹⁰ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo 200, Brienne to E. Servien (ambassador in Turin), 13 Dec. 1651. ¹¹¹ Chéruel, iv. 534, Dinant, 11 Dec. 1651. ¹¹² Brienne, Mémoires, 192–3. ¹¹³ Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 88, fn 2, assures the reader that this was so, but without asking why in that case the letter from Brienne dated 13 Dec. was needed, and why it had been requested by Mazarin with mounting urgency through the preceding weeks. ¹¹⁴ AAE MD 879, fo. 130. ¹¹⁵ AAE MD 879, fo. 135, Mazarin to Plessis-Praslin, 13 Dec. 1651.

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into negotiations again about a settlement in which Mazarin would simply receive a secure place in France to which he could retire.¹¹⁶ As Mazarin sensed the window of opportunity closing and the crown being less than enthusiastic about publicly supporting his return, he encountered another set of problems closer to hand. Hopes that his recruitment agent, Robert de Gravel, would complete a swift set of negotiations and that the troops would be quickly en route were soon dashed. Gravel had been unable to realize a letter of change for 12,000 riksdalers in Cologne against funds supposedly held in Paris. In order to reassure the Cologne bankers, Mazarin instructed Gravel to offer them 6000 écus in cash and the jewels that Mazarin had previously set aside for this contingency. There were similar difficulties in Liège, where the bankers were equally unconvinced by the letter of change drawn on monies in Paris.¹¹⁷ As the financing of the levy got increasingly bogged down, so the scale of the recruitment was also reduced. Mazarin reported to Fabert that the total numbers recruited would be 1,200 infantry and 300 cavalry, though Gravel had given Mazarin assurances that the infantry could still be recruited up to Mazarin’s base-line of 2,000.¹¹⁸ As this force, considerably smaller than originally envisaged, was brought together in the Brandenburg Elector’s territory of Kleve, Gravel realized that it would not be possible to march the troops across the intervening territories to reach France via the shortest route, meeting up with Mazarin near Sedan.¹¹⁹ A huge rise in water levels following the extraordinarily heavy and continuous rains of the autumn of 1651 had raised the Rhine and other rivers, swept away or submerged bridges, and made the direct route impassable. Moreover, the heavy presence of soldiers from the army of Lorraine in both Luxembourg and Alsace raised a further danger that the force would simply be picked off and destroyed en route. Gravel proposed instead placing the troops on boats at Wesel, and moving them down the Rhine out into the North Sea and thence to Dunkirk. Mazarin, who was evidently less than happy about this lengthy and expensive diversion, wrote to d’Estrades, governor of Dunkirk, on 26 December asking him to provide the troops with food and accommodation before sending them into the Boulonnais to meet up with Mazarin.¹²⁰ Given Mazarin’s anxiety to return to France before Condé’s revolt had been defeated, this was a real setback. But in fact his earlier, financially constrained decision to scale down the numbers of mercenaries had already led him to devise plans for an intervention that would rely more heavily on troops recruited or contributed by his supporters and appointees in various military commands, ¹¹⁶ AAE MD 879, fo. 159, Mazarin to marquis de Senneterre, Dinant, 15 Dec. 1651; Chéruel, iv. 548, Mazarin (to Colbert), Bouillon, 20 Dec. 1651. ¹¹⁷ AAE MD 879, fos 67–69, Mazarin to Gravel, Dinant, 24 Nov. 1651. ¹¹⁸ Chéruel, iv. 521, Mazarin to Fabert, Dinant, 29 Nov. 1651. ¹¹⁹ For Mazarin’s original hope that the troops could pass quickly through the territory of the Rhinegrave and down into France via Liège: AAE MD 879, fo 69, Mazarin to Gravel, Dinant, 24 Nov. 1651. ¹²⁰ Chéruel, iv. 576, Mazarin to d’Estrades, Sedan, 26 Dec. 1651.

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fortresses, and towns on the frontiers. Arguably one of the shrewdest of Mazarin’s actions following the 1650 arrest and imprisonment of the princes had been the systematic packing of important places in Picardy and Champagne with his own clients or known loyalists. Mazarin ensured the promotion of comte Francesco Broglio as governor of La Bassée; Philippe, marquis de Navailles, at Bapaume; Achille de Longueval, marquis de Manicamp, at St Quentin; and Godefroy d’Estrades as governor of Dunkirk and Mardyck. To these could be added Guy de Bar at Doullens, whose previous commitment to Mazarin had been demonstrated by acting as gaoler for the princes during 1650, and Abraham Fabert at Sedan. In addition, the unprecedented simultaneous creation of five marshals of France in January 1651 was targeted towards Mazarin’s allies: Charles de Monchy, comte d’Hocquincourt, governor of Péronne and Ham; Henri de La Ferté-Senneterre, governor of Lorraine; Jacques d’Étampes, marquis de la Ferté-Imbault, governor of Clermont; Jacques Rouxel de Médavy, comte de Grancey, governor of Gravelines; Antoine d’Aumont, marquis de Villequier, governor of the Boulonnais. This was an impressive and concentrated network, carefully assembled from the mid-1640s. Condé had failed to use the summer of 1651 to try to root out Mazarin’s governors and local commanders; in any case, buying out governorships would have been a slow and complex process. This powerful nexus of Mazarin’s clients and supporters was still intact when Mazarin chose to draw on its resources at the end of 1651. As early as 9 November, Mazarin was considering using this network to skim off 2,000 infantry and 500–600 cavalry from garrisons in Picardy to build up his expeditionary force.¹²¹ This suggestion was predictably unpopular with garrison commanders, but the alternative, raising additional troops during the winter quarter, proved difficult and slow. Mazarin wrote on 1 December to Hocquincourt, Manicamp, Navailles, and Broglio with further instructions to raise additional troops, and offered some help with the funding of these levies.¹²² By now, of course, it was impossible to keep the levying of troops on this scale from public knowledge.¹²³ Marshal d’Hocquincourt, carrying out troop levies in Champagne, was belatedly ordered to do all possible to conceal the plan to use these combined forces to escort Mazarin to Poitiers.¹²⁴ The irony was that Mazarin’s plans attracted heaviest criticism from his enemies because rumours circulating in France presumed that he was about to ‘invade’ France with foreign mercenaries.¹²⁵ Yet the deadline for getting the German troops to France slipped further, until finally Mazarin decided he could ¹²¹ Chéruel, iv. 494, Mazarin to Fabert, Dinant. ¹²² AAE MD 879, fos 97–98, Mazarin to d’Hocquincourt, Dinant. ¹²³ AAE MD 880, fo. 314, Sainctot to Mazarin, Paris, 16 Nov. 1651, reports rumours current in Paris that Mazarin is trying to raise troops in Brandenburg. ¹²⁴ AAE MD 879, fo. 108, Mazarin to d’Hocquincourt, Dinant, 3 Dec. 1651. ¹²⁵ See for example the Manifeste de la Ville de Paris, contre le retour du Cardinal Mazarin (Paris, 1652), in which Mazarin is denounced for invading France ‘with corrupt turncoats, men who like him are traitors to their country and their honour’: AAE MD 890, fo. 106. Even Montglat, usually well

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no longer wait for his expensively recruited veterans.¹²⁶ On 16 January, more than three weeks after he had entered France, Mazarin wrote to Le Tellier that Waldeck’s 1,800 infantry and 400 cavalry were meant to have arrived at Boulogne, but Mazarin was concerned that he had heard nothing of them.¹²⁷ Four days later, Le Tellier wrote back to resolve the mystery, but in a way that highlighted the risks of the early modern soldier-trade. The soldiers had been assembled at Wesel as arranged, and were then conducted by Gravel northwards, crossing the territory of the United Provinces, but without having gained passports beforehand from the Estates General, nor having shown the Dutch officials and military authorities any evidence that the French king ordered this levy of troops. As a result of being held up without pay—and presumably supplies—the units ‘completely disbanded’. Worse, the Spanish authorities in Brussels heard of this debacle and sent money to the governor of Gueldres to recruit the troops and incorporate them into the Spanish forces, providing both valuable reinforcements and a propaganda coup against France.¹²⁸ Even drawing on troops borrowed and recruited from the frontier provinces and strongholds, the process of gathering his army took longer than Mazarin anticipated. A letter to the princesse Palatine stressed that he had expected to enter France on 20 December, but had delayed his departure for a further four days while waiting for the formal orders from the crown to move to Sedan.¹²⁹ He crossed the frontier on 24 December, and was received by the governor, Fabert, in what could technically be seen as a treasonable act, since none of the legislation proscribing Mazarin had been formally annulled by the crown. Sedan was the pre-arranged assembly point for Mazarin’s military supporters, and he was joined in the next few days by Hocquincourt, Navailles, Broglio, de Bar, and Joachim de Quincé.¹³⁰ Between them they had mustered, much as Condé’s followers had done in the south-west, an army of around 5,000–6,000 troops. Mazarin was preceded by 2,000 of the best veterans drawn from winter quarters and commanded by d’Hocquincourt, and a further 3,000–4,000 mostly newly levied troops escorting Mazarin himself.¹³¹ The force reached Rethel on 30 December and moved to Épernay on 2 January.

informed about military matters, believed that a significant part of Mazarin’s force was composed of foreign mercenaries: Mémoires, l. 315. ¹²⁶ The absence of the German mercenaries is confirmed by the anonymous author of the account of the Fronde in BN Ffr. 25,025, fo. 528v, who states that Mazarin crossed into France only with troops levied in Picardy and Champagne. ¹²⁷ Chéruel, v. 8–9, Mazarin writing from Châteauregnard. ¹²⁸ AAE MD 881, fos 8–9, Le Tellier to Mazarin, 20 Jan. 1651; confirmed in a letter from Sr Rolet to Mazarin, sent from Brussels, 1 Feb. 1652: AAE MD 881, fo. 209. ¹²⁹ Ravenel, Mazarin, 460, Mazarin to the princesse Palatine, (Sedan). ¹³⁰ Bourelly, Fabert, i. 386–90, describes Fabert as the ‘soul of the military preparations on behalf of Mazarin’. ¹³¹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 142; Vallier, iii. 114, specifies 2,000 cavalry, 3,000 infantry and four cannon; Bourelly, Fabert, i. 394.

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Reactions At the time, and in many subsequent accounts, Mazarin’s partisans sought to play down the unrest provoked by the cardinal’s return to France. Immediately following the news of Mazarin’s advance through Champagne, his supporters in Paris, such as Bluet, Sainctot, Ondedei, and Naudé, wrote to express their pleasure at his return and stressed the calm across the capital and the reluctance of the bourgeoisie to take any steps to oppose Mazarin’s return or to offer active support to his opponents.¹³² His supporters at court and across the country expressed their confidence that, at the head of a significant army corps and given the present disposition of Condéen forces, there was nothing to stop him marching unhindered to join the court at Poitiers.¹³³ But Mazarin’s action in returning to France, while it did not produce the spontaneous universal uprising that some of his enemies—and allies—feared, was nonetheless of huge significance in the struggle to establish and legitimize a sustainable opposition. Mazarin’s return may have been regarded with weary passivity by the majority of the French people, who had no wish to see war waged within France, and who were crushed by the cumulative impact of an unparalleled climatic and subsistence crisis entering its final and most deadly phase in the winter of 1651/2. ‘Better 500 Mazarins than civil war’, one group of Rouen merchants allegedly shouted outside the Parlement of Rouen.¹³⁴ But defying the declaration of banishment and entering France at the head of an army for reasons that, for all his protestations, looked like naked self-interest tipped the delicate balance of those whose commitment had lain hitherto with the crown or in neutrality. It created a moral equivalence in many eyes between Mazarin’s behaviour and that of Condé: both appeared as warlords of factions, threatening the peace of France for their sectional interests.¹³⁵ The cardinal’s return came as no surprise: rumours had been building up in Paris and throughout the country ever since Mazarin had abandoned Brühl on 12 October.¹³⁶ The violence of the reaction in Parlement when verified reports of Mazarin’s movement into Champagne were received was nonetheless intense. On 29 December the judges promulgated their notorious declaration against Mazarin. Making explicit reference to the royal declaration against Mazarin of 6 September, the Parlement reminded all those who read the declaration that by re-entering France, Mazarin was guilty of lèse majesté, and that they were to pursue him as an outlaw. Moreover, those who hunted down the cardinal, dead or alive, would ¹³² Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 94–5. ¹³³ AAE MD 881, fo. 55, Seyron to Mazarin, Poitiers, 10 Jan. 1651. ¹³⁴ AAE MD 881, fo. 89, [Bluet? Sainctot?] to Mazarin, [Paris], 16 Jan. 1651. ¹³⁵ See, for example, the comments in Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 66. ¹³⁶ The Parlement had been informed by the duc d’Elbeuf, governor of Picardy on 15 Dec. of Mazarin’s intention to enter France with a force of troops: Talon, Mémoires, iv. 455.

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receive a reward of 50,000 écus to be raised from the sale of Mazarin’s library and the furnishings from his palace. All those who favoured or supported the passage of Mazarin and his troops were no less guilty of lèse majesté and would be subject to the same penalties. The declaration was to be enforced under the authority of the duc d’Orléans and the king.¹³⁷ Earlier in December two petitions from the Parlement against Mazarin and a proposed delegation to the see the king and queen in person had been brushed off by the crown as inappropriate in the present circumstances.¹³⁸ Yet as we have seen, and ominously for Mazarin, the crown did not come forward in response with any explicit and public defence of a decision to recall him. This silence, as one of Mazarin’s supporters suggested in early January, lay behind the extremism of the declaration of 29 December.¹³⁹ At the same time, two other factors had undoubtedly contributed to the atmosphere of radicalism in the Parlement. The first was the decision to summon the first president back to the court in Poitiers to act in his other capacity as keeper of the seals.¹⁴⁰ While, as we have seen, Mathieu Molé sought to balance concern for royal authority with what he saw as the constitutional role of the Parlement, he had undoubtedly been a moderating influence in debates and actions during 1651. His seat was taken at the debate on 29 November by the president Nicolas de Bailleul, commanding less authority in the Parlement, and tainted with mazarinist associations for having served as joint superintendent of finances between 1643 and 1647.¹⁴¹ Molé left Paris on 27 December in the company of the surintendant, La Vieuville, also summoned to court together with other financial officials.¹⁴² The sight of key figures in the government withdrawing from Paris did nothing to allay anxieties about the good faith of the crown and its advisors, already heightened by Mazarin’s movement across the frontier.¹⁴³ The second vital factor was the transformation of the political stance of Gaston d’Orléans. Uncertainty about Orléans’ political alignment had misled Condé on at least two occasions during 1651. If the essential motive for most of Orléans’ action or inaction had been to try to guarantee his own status and security in a rapidly shifting world of factions and alliances, his anger at the news of Mazarin’s re-entry into France was altogether more transformative. Orléans considered that his good faith had been traduced by the queen and her advisors. He had taken the crown at its word that Mazarin had been permanently banished, and had also assumed that, as the senior member of the king’s council, he would be consulted on any issue as ¹³⁷ Full text in Vallier, iii. 99–100; detailed discussion of the occasion also in Talon, Mémoires, iv. 458–9. ¹³⁸ Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 66–7; Vallier, iii. 88–9, 92–6; Talon, Mémoires, iv. 456; DubuissonAubenay, ii. 144–5. ¹³⁹ AAE MD 881, fo. 29, Paris, 8 Jan. 1651. ¹⁴⁰ Vallier, Journal, iii. 97–8. ¹⁴¹ Talon, Mémoires, iv. 457: ‘homme foible et sans vigueur’. ¹⁴² Talon, Mémoires, iv. 456. ¹⁴³ Talon, Mémoires, iv. 456–7, reported that in Paris it was rumoured that Mazarin had made an accommodation with Condé, and both, having withdrawn the government from Paris, would come back with a joint army of 25,000 to besiege the capital.

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fundamental as reversing the decision for banishment.¹⁴⁴ Not only would the return of Mazarin threaten Gaston’s share of patronage and favour to distribute to his clients and supporters, but it would undermine his status in government, which he continued to enjoy even after the king’s majority. Moreover, Gondi, who exercised the greatest influence over Orléans, was no less hostile to the return of Mazarin, which he had secretly worked to block throughout 1651. As a result, far from acting as a restraint on the parlementaires, Orléans and Gondi—both of whom attended the debates in the Great Chamber—incited their extremism.¹⁴⁵ The sale of Mazarin’s library to raise money for the ‘blood price’ on his head is a small indication of this ferocity: not so much the sale itself, but the determination of some of the most outspoken parlementaires to see the library broken up and the books sold piecemeal. The process can be followed through letters in the elegant but outraged handwriting of Mazarin’s librarian Gabriel Naudé, who pointed out that the sale of the complete library would fetch a larger sum than multiple ad hoc sales of the individual items. But the destruction of what became a symbol of Mazarin’s wealth and power was more important than maximizing the proceeds of the sale: the commissioners charged with the process intended to move on to the furnishings of the Palais Mazarin to make good any shortfall in raising the 50,000 écus.¹⁴⁶ A matter of no less concern to the ministers was how the uncompromising response of the Parlement would play out in the various provincial institutions, and how many would explicitly endorse the condemnation of Mazarin. The stance of the other sovereign courts would be complicated by inter-provincial rivalries and tensions between the various groups of officiers, but there was a strong possibility that numbers of the sovereign courts would soon declare against Mazarin.¹⁴⁷ Dismay was no less apparent in and around the court itself. The observant courtier Henri de Beringhen, first equerry of the lesser stables (petite écurie), wrote to Chavigny on 30 December that a handful of courtiers were pleased to hear of Mazarin’s entry into France, but the great majority were in despair, foreseeing how this would throw the existing political and military situation into confusion.¹⁴⁸ The author of the manuscript history of the Fronde describes the queen as being visibly surprised by the vehemence with which Brienne expressed his concern at the development, and by the general ¹⁴⁴ Talon wrote that the action ‘touched him (Orléans) to the heart’: Mémoires, iv. 455; Dethan, Gaston d’Orléans, 280–90. ¹⁴⁵ Retz avoided open expressions of hostility in the Parlement, but managed the reaction to Mazarin with no less vehemence: Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, i. 435. ¹⁴⁶ Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 101–2. ¹⁴⁷ AAE MD 889, fo. 11, [Jan. 1652] Printed concordat and union between the Parlement and city of Bordeaux and the princes against the enemies of the state. The document contains extensive detail about alliances and adherents, and a programme for the government of France once Mazarin has been sent back into exile. ¹⁴⁸ AAE MD 879, fo. 266, Poitiers, 30 Dec. 1651; the same comment is echoed in the Mémoires of the strongly royalist maréchal du Plessis-Praslin, lvii. 381–2.

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consternation of the courtiers.¹⁴⁹ However ambiguous the queen’s attitude to Mazarin’s return may have been in the preceding months, her evident satisfaction at the new turn of events made her the target of forthright criticism from those who would otherwise have been loyalists.¹⁵⁰ Jean Vallier was sympathetic to both royal authority and Mazarin, yet he launched an embittered attack on the shortsighted behaviour of the queen, whose determination to recall Mazarin was the cause, he considered, of all the subsequent problems.¹⁵¹ Other memoirists and writers were no less prepared to blame her actions in allowing Mazarin to take this step, while Mazarin’s confidant, Bluet, reported to Mazarin that in early January songs lampooning the queen mother were being sung across Paris.¹⁵² That Mazarin’s return had destabilized a political situation that was moving towards a resolution was a commonly shared opinion amongst France’s ambassadors: Argenson, for example, writing on 10 April from Venice to his fellow ambassador, La Haye, at Istanbul, made plain his view that Mazarin had unleashed an avoidable storm, above all by antagonizing Orléans and driving him into armed opposition.¹⁵³

Actions The change in circumstances could not have been more welcome to Condé and the princes: Mazarin’s action had transformed an apparently irrevocable outcome into a game where all the options remained open.¹⁵⁴ The war in the south-west had continued to bring setbacks at the hands of Harcourt’s army, while Condé received the dispiriting news that his client, the governor of Dijon, had been forced to surrender the citadel to the provincial governor, the duc d’Épernon, leaving only Bellegarde as a Condéen stronghold in Burgundy.¹⁵⁵ In late December, carefully keeping the river between himself and Harcourt, Condé moved his army westwards to Brisembourg, near Saint-Jean-d’Angély. While this position could potentially threaten the communication lines of the royal army, its main benefit was to leave a clear line of retreat down towards the

¹⁴⁹ BN Ffr. 25,025, fo. 528. ¹⁵⁰ The duchesse de Nemours explicitly suggested that the queen’s joy at Mazarin’s return was ambivalent: any short-term satisfaction Anne may have felt was quickly dissipated by Mazarin’s highhanded behaviour and neglect of her interests: Mémoires, ix. 653. ¹⁵¹ Vallier, iii. 102–3. Others, such as Guy Patin, blamed Mazarin directly: ‘on parle fort du retour du cardinal Mazarin. La male peste eût-elle bien estouffé ce faquin, qui est cause de tant de desordres’: Lettres de Guy Patin à Charles Spon, 1449–1655, ed. L. Jestaz (2 vols; Paris, 2006), ii. 802, Paris, 22 Dec. 1651. ¹⁵² AAE MD 881, fo. 10, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 5 Jan. 1652. ¹⁵³ AAE CP Venise 70, fo. 137. ¹⁵⁴ BN Clairambault 437, fos 71–4, 4 Jan. 1652: manifesto of Condé against Mazarin’s return into France, ‘with no purpose other than to foment civil war’. Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 65–6; Montglat, Mémoires, l. 318–19. ¹⁵⁵ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 316.

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Poitiers

te

3 Saintes 4

5

Bay of Biscay

2

ren

TonnaySt-Jean Charente d’Angély Taillebourg Brizembourg Brouage

ha

Île d’ Oleron

La Rochelle

C

Île de Ré

Cognac Brivessur-Charente

6

G

ir o

Rouffiac

nd e

1 7

Angoulême Condé’s army advances northwards to try to secure Cognac (1). Harcourt’s army successfully relieves Cognac (2), and Condé retreats westwards and across the Charente to establish a base at Brizembourg (3). Harcourt’s army advances on Condé’s positions around Brizembourg (4), and Condé falls back across the river towards Brive and Rouffiac (5). Some of his troops are surprised and defeated by an attack from Harcourt’s cavalry (6). Condé’s entire army move southwards towards Agen (7), and Harcourt is left to overrun the remaining princely strongholds at Taillebourg and Saintes.

Bourg

Bordeaux

Agen

Map 3 The campaign in South West France, November to January 1651–52

important fortress of Taillebourg and the town of Saintes, held by the princes. Condé’s defensive posture allowed Harcourt to seize the initiative again: a force of experienced cavalry units under the marquis de Bougy pushed southwards from Harcourt’s main forces, and surprised part of Condé’s army in its quarters at Brives-sur-Charente and Rouffiac, destroying four regiments. It was not the major pitched battle that Harcourt had hoped to provoke, but was psychologically even more devastating since it was a major setback imposed by a small number of royalist troops on an army which could not afford the losses.¹⁵⁶ Despite managing to defeat an additional royalist force levied in Languedoc which was threatening to conduct joint operations with Harcourt, the bulk of Condé’s forces were driven back towards Agen. The inhabitants were reluctantly persuaded to open the gates to the remaining infantry of his army, now reduced to around 1,500 of Marsin’s ¹⁵⁶ Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 378–9; Relation du succès emporté sur les trouppes de M. le Prince par M de Bougy sur les ordres de M le comte d’Harcourt, avec la défait de cinq cens chévaux, Paris, imprimeurs du roi, 1652.

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veterans from the army of Catalonia and the Condéen house regiments.¹⁵⁷ Bottled up in Agen, Condé was unable to prevent Harcourt’s forces eliminating successive pockets of resistance by taking Saintes on 10 March, and then the La Trémoïlle fortress of Taillebourg on 25 March. The royal army supported itself by imposing punitive financial contributions across a swathe of territory in Saintonge, Angoumois, and the Agenais.¹⁵⁸ Faced with the prospect of a siege, the population of Agen revolted against the garrisoning of their town by Condéen troops.¹⁵⁹ Condé and Conti, both present in the town, were forced into a humiliating negotiation with the urban authorities, by which, and in return for some token concessions, they and their troops abandoned the city.¹⁶⁰ The verdict on the war of Guienne down to March 1652 is clear: all of Condé’s abilities and occasional successes could not prevent the steady erosion of the princes’ military position. Even Bordeaux’s commitment was in question, and Conti left Agen to return directly to the princely ‘capital’ to confront a resurgence of factional fighting.¹⁶¹ There is little reason to doubt that the imminent military defeat of the princes would have been followed by a settlement; whatever the actual terms accorded by the crown, such a settlement would have reflected the predominance of the victorious royal government and its adherents. But Mazarin’s return had changed all of these assumptions, and had ensured that although the situation in the south-west may have looked dire, the wider prospects for the rebellion now appeared massively improved: indeed, on 17 January the committed ally of Condé, president Viole, could write of the ‘marvellous joy about all that has happened recently . . . the best possible news’.¹⁶² The crown’s initial response to Mazarin’s return had been weak and ambiguous. On 2/3 January royal letters sent to the sovereign courts adopted what could be interpreted as a neutral stance: they simply forbade the courts to debate or take action on the news of Mazarin’s return, pending a decision that would soon be taken by the crown about this development.¹⁶³ Partisans of Mazarin at court called in frustration for an explicit declaration of support; the queen mother was bitterly criticized for her indecisiveness and weakness in not making a commitment to her

¹⁵⁷ BN Ffr. 6707, fo. 48: the muster of Condé’s own infantry regiment conducted on 2 March recorded a total of 256 men in 11 companies; La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 123–5. ¹⁵⁸ BN Ffr. 6707, fo. 64, Condé to Lenet, 18 Mar. 1652: Condé despairs at the loss of Saintes given its strong garrison and supplies of food and munitions; La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 117–18. ¹⁵⁹ BN Ffr. 6707, fo. 53, Condé to Lenet, Agen, 6 Mar. 1652: Condé reports the arrival of a trumpeter from Harcourt’s army demanding the surrender of Agen. ¹⁶⁰ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 125–6. ¹⁶¹ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 116–17, 130–1. ¹⁶² AAE MD 889, fo. 55, Viole to Chavigny, Paris, 17 Jan. 1652; Guy Patin wrote to Charles Spon on 15 January to say that the return of Mazarin had changed the game for Condé: ‘voilà la chance tournée pour luy’, Lettres, ed. Jestaz, ii. 815, 15 Jan. 1652. ¹⁶³ AAE MD 889, fo 2, draft of this letter from King to Parlement of Dauphiné, Poitiers, 2 Jan. 1652; MD 888, fos 2, 6, further drafts of the royal edict, 3 Jan. 1652.

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favourite, even while she was visibly pleased at the prospect of his return.¹⁶⁴ Only on 12/13 January did the crown finally give explicit sanction to Mazarin’s entry into France at the head of his troops, in a series of circular letters to governors, sovereign courts, and other authorities across France which simultaneously reiterated the condemnation of Condé of 8 October.¹⁶⁵ Yet this hardening of the crown’s position could do little to stop a situation that had already veered dangerously out of control. Gaston d’Orléans’ anger over what he perceived as a direct attack on his standing at court and in government had led him to side explicitly with Parlement after Mazarin’s return. Swearing that he would rather ‘turn Turk’ than accept the return of the cardinal, he affirmed his authority over the Parisian garde bourgeoise and began to mobilize troops on his own account.¹⁶⁶ The only question to many was how long it would take Orléans to link his cause directly to Condé, and what political and military implications this would have.¹⁶⁷ The Condéen party were already printing and distributing manifestos in which they explicitly referred to the duc d’Orléans’ previous undertakings to join Condé in arms if Mazarin were once again to disturb the peace of France.¹⁶⁸ Mediated by Orléans’ confidant, Chavigny, who was also Condé’s strongest advocate in Paris, a formal treaty of alliance was signed on 24 January.¹⁶⁹ Chavigny saw in the alliance both the final destruction of Mazarin’s standing in France, and a means to pave his own path to the role of first minister on the back of Condé’s support. Orléans’ total military establishment was of around 3,000 troops at the beginning of January, but it was rightly assumed that the effects of the formal treaty between the two princes would catalyze further adherents and military support.¹⁷⁰ New adherents had already been emerging in the wake of Mazarin’s return. Henri de Chabot, duc de Rohan, had been a nominal ally of Condé in late 1651, but had refused to make any substantial military commitment.¹⁷¹ Given his territorial holdings and the family’s influence across Anjou, his active military support was of considerable importance.¹⁷² The duc de Sully, governor of Mantes,

¹⁶⁴ AAE MD 881, fo. 29, bp of Coutances to Mazarin, Paris, 8 Jan. 1652; MD 881, fo. 35, Millet to Mazarin, Paris, 8 Jan. 1652. ¹⁶⁵ AAE MD 888, fo. 11, letter of instruction for Sr Ruvigny, sent by the king to the duc d’Orléans, 12 Jan. 1652; MD 889, fo. 4v, Circular letter from the king to governors, sovereign courts, etc., 13 Jan. ¹⁶⁶ Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 96. ¹⁶⁷ Chéruel, v. 4–5, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, Epernay, 11 Jan. 1652: Mazarin already anticipating the alliance between the princes, facilitated by Chavigny. ¹⁶⁸ BN Clairambault 437, fos 61, 67, letters from Condé to Orléans, 4 Jan. 1652, printed; 437, fos 71–74, Condé’s general manifesto on the invasion of Mazarin, 4 Jan. 1652 (printed); other copies and a more extensive version of the manifesto: AAE MD 889, fos 19–23. ¹⁶⁹ AAE MD 890, fo. 146, Minute du traitté d’union de SAR avec M le Prince, ND (Jan. 1652); MD 881, fo. 136, formal copy of treaty. ¹⁷⁰ BN Ffr. 25,026, fo. 3r, 5 Jan. 1652: 2,400 infantry and 500 cavalry. ¹⁷¹ Vallier, iii. 143–4. ¹⁷² AAE MD 889, fo. 76, Letter of Rohan to Orléans concerning the enterprises undertaken by Mazarin against Angers, 3 Feb. 1652, printed Paris, Chez Jean de la Caille, Imprimeur ordinaire du Roy, par ordre de Son Altesse Royale.

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also moved into active opposition, bringing a strategically important base to the west of Paris under princely control. Mazarin’s return and the formal treaty between Condé and Orléans also reopened the possibility of commitment by the duc de Longueville, that key recruit to the princely party who had previously resisted the blandishments of Condé. In late January Longueville seemed ready to commit to the princes’ cause: he agreed in principle to adhere to the treaty that was being drawn up between Orléans and Condé, and adjustments were made to the text to take his interests into account.¹⁷³ No less concerning was the possibility that Mazarin’s return might throw the settlement gained with Turenne and his brother, Bouillon, back into question. There was alarm that Turenne conspicuously did not meet Mazarin during his military progress across France, and only finally appeared at the court in Poitiers on 2 February, two days after Mazarin’s own arrival.¹⁷⁴ Throughout January rumours and counter-rumours circulated about whether Turenne would throw aside the—extremely favourable—offer of status and territory made by the crown, and join forces with the princes.¹⁷⁵ The biggest shift in the military position of the princes came not from new and illustrious adherents at home, but from a substantial ramping-up of the commitment to foreign military alliances, in particular with the Spanish forces in Flanders and the army of the duke of Lorraine. Whether Orléans still occupied the status of Lieutenant General of the realm now that the king had attained his majority was debatable: the king had not formally revoked the title in early 1652. But Orléans’ commitment gave further authority to the activation of foreign military alliances, which, apart from Vatteville’s fleet anchored in the Gironde, had not played a major part in the struggles of late 1651. The opening up of a second, and for a time even a third, front in the civil war was the most drastic change in the character of the struggle waged from early 1652, and explains both the resurgence of the princely cause and the vastly more destructive character of the conflict in this last full year of the Fronde. By early February the troops belonging to or raised by the duc d’Orléans, paid for with 100,000 livres raised on the credit of his household officers, formed an army corps of 4,500 troops, mostly made up of experienced veterans.¹⁷⁶ They were placed under the command of Orléans’ ally and cousin, the duc de Beaufort, and their first objective was to try to break the royalist siege of Rohan’s city of Angers.¹⁷⁷ At the same time, the duc de Nemours had been sent to Flanders to take charge of the military support that had been promised by the Spanish in their treaty with Condé of 6 November. Nemours combined the remaining Condéen ¹⁷³ AAE MD 889, fo. 57, full text for the treaty as extended to Longueville. ¹⁷⁴ AAE MD 881, fo. 1, Gauville to Mazarin, [Paris] 1 Jan. 1652, concern about Turenne’s aloofness and prickliness. ¹⁷⁵ AAE MD 881, fo. 47, Gauville to Mazarin, 9 Jan. 1652; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 159. ¹⁷⁶ BN Ffr. 25,026, fos 20r, 22r/v, 9 Feb. 1652. ¹⁷⁷ AAE MD 881, fos 85–86, news [from Bluet?] to Mazarin, 13 Jan. 1652.

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troops in the north-east that had been placed under the command of Tavannes, some 1,000–1,200 soldiers, with around 6,000 troops and 4 cannon drawn from the Spanish army under the command of Bernardin de Bourqueville, baron de Clinchamp.¹⁷⁸ Joined with Beaufort’s troops, the princes’ party now had a significant second army operating within France. The situation was further changed by the prospect of enlisting the army of duke Charles of Lorraine. Forced from his territories by Richelieu’s incursions in the early 1630s, he had been living in exile while the French occupied his duchy, though hoping that a Franco-Spanish peace settlement would obtain his restoration. Meanwhile he built his political role around possession of his army, a longserving, autonomous military force.¹⁷⁹ In early 1652 the prospect of acquiring the services of Charles’ army (and preventing opponents acquiring it) became a high priority for Mazarin as well as for Orléans and Condé. The actual direction of Lorraine’s commitment was made clear in early February, when Bluet reported to Mazarin that the duke had apparently agreed to provide Nemours with 3,000 cavalry from his army.¹⁸⁰ The military consequences of this strengthening of the princes’ party were not immediately apparent. Rohan’s revolt in Anjou was a classic instance of bad timing. As noted earlier, Mazarin had ordered his loyalist commanders and governors to take 5,000–6,000 troops out of the forces based in Champagne and Picardy and had marched them across France as his military escort. Having arrived in Poitiers on 31 January and established himself at the court, he now needed to decide what to do with these troops. A series of earlier transfers of troops from the Flanders front to Harcourt’s army had raised its strength far above anything it would face from the collapsing Condéen resistance in Guienne. The obvious new target was the insurgency in Anjou, and in particular the personal power grab that Rohan had made in the city of Angers. Under the command of Hocquincourt, Mazarin’s troops and various elite units from the court made their way north-eastwards from Poitiers towards Angers. Rohan began preparations for a siege and called upon the princes for military assistance. Orléans’ troops commanded by Beaufort moved westwards, and Nemours was instructed to move across France with his Condéen-Spanish army to support Beaufort.¹⁸¹ The court itself moved from Poitiers to Saumur to bring further pressure to bear on Rohan and his supporters, while Charles de la Porte, duc de ¹⁷⁸ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 169–70, 18 Feb. 1652. Another report, from Saint-Quentin, gave the force at 2,500 infantry, 7,000 cavalry and 4 cannon: BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 159, 20 Feb. 1652. ¹⁷⁹ F. Des Robert, Charles IV et Mazarin, 1643–1661, d’après des documents inédits (Nancy, 1899), 1–419; C. Leestmans, Charles IV, duc de Lorraine (1604–1675). Une errance baroque (Lasne, 2003), 107–35. ¹⁸⁰ AAE MD 881, fo. 235, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 9 Feb. 1652; this loan of troops had earlier been confirmed: MD 881, fo. 123, 22 Jan. 1652. ¹⁸¹ AAE MD 889, fo. 100, Beaufort to Chavigny, 19 Feb. 1652: according to Beaufort’s information, Hocquincourt’s army corps was composed of 2,400 infantry and the same number of cavalry.

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La Meilleraye, governor of Brittany and grand master of the artillery, was ordered to despatch siege guns down the Loire from Nantes.¹⁸² Rohan, already pressed by near mutiny amongst the city population, seized the opportunity presented by the threat of an artillery bombardment to make terms, surrendering the city on 28 February when Beaufort was just fifteen leagues away.¹⁸³ The rapid fall of Angers was a setback for the princes as great as any of the disasters around Guienne. It revealed the cracks in the recently formed alliance, and seemingly demonstrated that despite the reinvigoration of the opposition since the return of Mazarin, the military advantage still lay with the royalists. There were some immediate consequences: after the fall of Angers, Longueville’s distancing of himself from the princely cause was rapid and seemingly definitive.¹⁸⁴ The readiness of Rohan to surrender the city had not been entirely unexpected, but it still caused incredulity in Paris, and a massive lowering of morale amongst the hitherto optimistic supporters of the princes.¹⁸⁵ The surrender of Angers combined with another factor whose impact would be less immediate but potentially still more dangerous: on 19 February Pope Innocent X announced the promotion of twelve new candidates for the cardinalcy, amongst whom was Paul de Gondi, now the cardinal de Retz.¹⁸⁶ The achievement of Gondi’s most immediate ambition freed him from an alliance with the princes which had never been anything other than expedient.¹⁸⁷ His twin aims to destroy the political career of Mazarin and that of Condé remained relatively evenly balanced, but he no longer had to support the princes to avoid them blocking his cardinalcy. The promotion of Retz would have fractured the alliance against Mazarin in any case, but coming together with the fall of Angers, its potential to disrupt the alliance was even greater.¹⁸⁸ The loss of Angers was a blow to the morale and political credibility of the princes’ party. Its military consequences were less significant: the troops commanded by Nemours had marched across northern France and joined up with Beaufort’s smaller corps, creating an army which was at least comparable in numbers and experience with the forces that the royalists could field against them.¹⁸⁹ The ease with which Nemours’ army had been able to push past the royalist troops in the frontier provinces raised damaging questions about the ¹⁸² Montglat, Mémoires, l. 323–4. ¹⁸³ AAE MD 889, fo. 136, Beaufort to Chavigny, 2 Mar. 1652. ¹⁸⁴ Vallier, iii. 174–5; AAE MD 881, fo. 395, 1 Mar. 1652, a strong plea to Longueville in the aftermath of the princes’ setbacks not to join the alliance; MD 882, fo. 21, Croissy-Fouquet to Condé, Paris, 10 [20?] Mar. 1652, revealing Longueville’s havering and obstructiveness. ¹⁸⁵ Beaufort had expressed scepticism that Rohan would put up a robust defence: AAE MD 889, fo. 100, 19 Feb. 1652; MD 882, fo. 12, Nouvelles de Paris [to Mazarin?], Paris, 9 Mar. 1652. ¹⁸⁶ Chantelauze, Cardinal de Retz, i. 457–9. ¹⁸⁷ AAE MD 881, fo. 398, News from Paris, 1 Mar. 1652. ¹⁸⁸ AAE MD 889, fo. 168, 18 Mar. 1652, concerns of Condé and Conti since the news of Retz’s promotion. ¹⁸⁹ La Rochefoucauld gave the joint army as 7,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry: Mémoires, lii. 114.

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priorities of Mazarin and his military clients. The royal council had adopted a kind of Schlieffen plan for the allocation of military resources: overwhelming force should be concentrated for what it was hoped would be a quick, knockout blow in the south-west. After this, the troops would be redeployed back to the eastern frontiers to meet the threat from the Spanish and the apparently small numbers of princely troops based there.¹⁹⁰ Criticism of these decisions and their effects on the security of the frontier were quick to pile up against Mazarin, whose 5,000–6,000 troops had been the largest single corps withdrawn from Picardy and Champagne. Bluet reported that Mazarin’s enemies in Paris were spreading the story that all the garrisons on the frontiers had been denuded of their best troops to produce his private army.¹⁹¹ Mazarin indignantly denied that his decisions had compromised the frontier defences, but both hostile and sympathetic contemporaries acknowledged that the frontier had been weakened.¹⁹² The consequence was no less evident: the princes’ combined army was now established in the heart of France between Blois and Orléans, standing between Paris and the royal army and court. These developments were pushing Condé towards a crucial decision. So far his presence in south-western France had sustained resistance that would probably have collapsed sooner without his leadership and—for the most part—his tactical acumen. But the odds even against Condé’s successful resistance were overwhelming: he relied on a small core of veteran troops which was steadily being eroded by successive encounters with Harcourt’s forces; the replacements were low-quality, inexperienced recruits, whom even Condé could not inspire.¹⁹³ If Guienne was to be saved, the military impetus would come from elsewhere and that, arguably, was where Condé’s qualities of leadership should now be deployed. In Paris, Condé was reasonably confident that Gaston d’Orléans remained hostile to Mazarin, but was concerned that Gaston would fall even further under the influence of cardinal de Retz; he feared that the new cardinal would persuade Orléans to abandon the princely alliance to pursue an alternative political agenda which would lead to a settlement with the crown at Condé’s expense.¹⁹⁴ The dilemma for Condé was not so much whether he should leave Guienne, though there were obvious problems in delegating both military and administrative authority, but whether his priority should be to return to Paris or to take command of the army that was now established in the area around Orléans. The army presented attractions: it was made up of around 10,000 mostly veteran troops, including a substantial corps of experienced German and Lorraine ¹⁹⁰ Chéruel, v. 11, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Châteauregnard, 16 Jan. 1652. ¹⁹¹ AAE MD 881, fo. 131, Bluet to Mazarin, 24 Jan. 1652. ¹⁹² Vallier, iii. 166, does not blame Mazarin specifically, but was clear that the frontier provinces had been ‘dégarnies de gens de guerre’. ¹⁹³ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 129. ¹⁹⁴ AC, 12, fo. 173, Croissy-Fouquet to Condé, 21 Feb. 1652: reassures Condé that Orléans still has ‘the same aversion’ to Mazarin; but Chavigny’s letters to Condé were increasingly strident about the need to return directly to Paris.

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soldiers. Whereas Orléans wanted to maintain this army as a barrier between the royalist forces and Paris, Condé envisaged a bolder plan that would advance the army to relieve the Condéen fortress of Montrond, and would then move down towards Guienne, trapping Harcourt between the two princely armies.¹⁹⁵ Aside from this strategic issue, reports of the worsening relations between Nemours and Beaufort were a cause for concern, and Condé’s authority was the one sure way to override such tensions amongst high-status aristocratic commanders.¹⁹⁶ It was these arguments that prevailed over the urging of Chavigny, in particular, that Condé should come directly to Paris. With a handful of followers, Condé slipped away from Agen on Palm Sunday, 24 March 1652, evaded the various royalist governors and forces that might have intercepted the small party, and passed round a wide arc which brought him, despite near discovery and capture, to join up with the army of Nemours and Beaufort around Montargis on 3 April.¹⁹⁷ Taking control of the army, Condé had been kept well informed about the state of his royalist opponents. He knew that Turenne had been despatched to Burgundy to collect an additional corps of cavalry, and was shortly to rejoin and reinforce the royal army commanded by marshal d’Hocquincourt. Hocquincourt’s force was still largely made up of the troops that had escorted Mazarin across France and forced the surrender of Angers. This army was now grouped around the royal court, which had moved by stages from Blois to Gien, arriving in Gien on 2 April. Knowing that he had a limited opportunity to strike at the royal army before reinforcements and a considerably more able commander shifted the odds against him, Condé planned the daring attack which was to breathe new life into the princes’ opposition, and turn the political and military situation away from a compromise settlement which otherwise seemed inevitable.

Bléneau, 6/7 April 1652 Condé acted quickly once he had assumed command: on 3 April the arrival of the princes’ army, with Condé at its head, achieved the bloodless surrender of Montargis, which had been provisioned as a supply depot for the royal forces. This gained Condé both food and munitions for the army and a substantial propaganda success. Meanwhile, however, Turenne returned with his cavalry reinforcements, and brought these together with other troops under his command to form a second army corps; between them the two royalist generals had around

¹⁹⁵ La Rochfoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 127–8. ¹⁹⁶ Vallier, iii. 186–7; Tavannes, Mémoires, 113–18; Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 77–8. ¹⁹⁷ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 134–40; another set-piece first-hand account, though written decades after the events, by Jean Herault de Gourville, maître de l’hôtel of La Rochefoucauld: Mémoires (2 vols; Paris, 1894), i. 60–71; Aumale, Condé, vi. 130–1; La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 134–40.

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4,000 cavalry and 4000 infantry.¹⁹⁸ Turenne did not join his forces to those of Hocquincourt, partly because this would raise contentious issues of military precedence: Hocquincourt jealously guarded his position as overall commander of the royal army around the court, though it was common knowledge that Turenne was a far superior tactician and leader of troops. Partly as well, the area where the various forces were located was unsuited to any concentration of forces: Turenne’s forces stood at Ouzouer, about five leagues away from Hocquincourt’s extended encampment, and the two were separated by rough, waterlogged countryside and virtually non-existent roads. Turenne rode across to meet his co-commander on 6 April, and found Hocquincourt convinced that after the fall of Montargis Condé would move eastwards, marching towards Paris. Knowing well Condé’s hallmark combination of tactical aggression and surprise, Turenne noted with concern that Hocquincourt had made little attempt to set his army in any state of readiness for a possible attack. Turenne returned to his own forces and, acting on his own initiative, started to ready them to move closer to Hocquincourt’s military camp. The surprise was almost total when Condé launched his army in a rapid night attack on 6/7 April against Hocquincourt’s unprepared and dispersed troops, and only hours after Turenne had returned to his own forces. Having accurately established the relative positions of the two royalist corps, Condé forced a passage across the Briare canal and brought his column round from a direction that Hocquincourt’s troops had no reason to expect, cutting them off from support by Turenne.¹⁹⁹ Initially Hocquincourt’s outnumbered and surprised cavalry units put up strong resistance: Nemours was wounded and the elite units of Condé’s cavalry found themselves engaged in tough hand-to-hand melées against Hocquincourt’s own squadrons of horse. Only when Condé managed to turn the flank of the royalist cavalry did the advantage fall clearly to his troops, who drove the remaining cavalry into a chaotic and fragmented rout. By now, Turenne had received desperate messages from Hocquincourt that he was under attack, and had encountered fleeing royalist cavalry as they collided with his own troops. He was soon able to hear the sound of musketry and see the flames from the buildings in the vicinity set alight by Condé’s troops. This initial success posed a dilemma for Condé: Hocquincourt’s infantry had been left largely unscathed by the initial attack, and were now drawn up in and around the village of Bléneau itself. These were elite units, effectively the king’s bodyguard, and it made sense to pick these off one by one now that Conde’s army commanded the surrounding area. Yet an even higher priority would have been to exploit the same element of surprise in an attack on the army corps of Turenne,

¹⁹⁸ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 83; Turenne to Le Tellier, Gergeau, 27 Mar. 1652 in A de Menditte, ed., Lettres oubliées ou inédites de Turenne pour l’année 1652 (Vincennes, 1975), 7. ¹⁹⁹ Gourville, Mémoires, i. 73–4.

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tentatively moving up towards the positions where the marshal believed that Hocquincourt’s troops should be located, unaware of the scale of their defeat.²⁰⁰ Condé chose to defeat and secure the surrender of the infantry first, and gave Turenne the opportunity to discover what had happened and time to deploy his own troops in order of battle against a Condéen attack. As a result Condé realized that he could not risk an immediate assault on Turenne’s well-prepared line; he regrouped his troops over the following day without any further action.²⁰¹ The news of the victory over Hocquincourt caused panic in the court, lodged nearby at Gien. Aware that only Turenne’s small army now stood between them and Condé’s victorious troops, the courtiers prepared to abandon the town and to escape southwards towards Bourges. In the event that Turenne was defeated or pushed aside, the only remaining royalist army would be Harcourt’s, deep in Guienne. In fact, the danger had passed: Condé’s troops had come under sustained artillery fire from Turenne’s forces while regrouped in and around Bléneau on 7 April, and the following day Condé decided to withdraw his forces eastwards towards Étampes, abandoning the threat to the court.²⁰² The opportunity to seize the royal family together with Mazarin, and to transform the political landscape at a single stroke had been lost; the pressure now mounted on Condé to return to Paris to deal with the threat posed by the cardinal de Retz, and the signs that the duc d’Orléans was weakening in his commitment to the union of the princes.²⁰³ Bléneau falls into that category of battles where the real strategic fruits of victory are limited. Jacques de Sault, comte de Tavannes, who fought beside Condé in the engagement, suggested that it could hardly be dignified by the name of a battle because Turenne had so effectively contained the collapse of Hocquincourt’s troops and achieved a military stand-off.²⁰⁴ But at the same time Tavannes recognized that, above all in times of civil war, reputation could be more important than material advantage.²⁰⁵ Condé entered Paris on 11 April in triumph, to the acclamation of a population who had hitherto been lukewarm and uncommitted to either crown or princes, and back in October and November 1651 had celebrated the defeats of Condé’s troops in the south-west of France with public rejoicing and fireworks.

²⁰⁰ Tavannes, Mémoires, 125–7, who is explicit that Condé made the wrong decision in dealing with the infantry first; Montglat, Mémoires, l. 332–4. ²⁰¹ Full account of this defence in Turenne, i. 181–5. ²⁰² Tavannes, Mémoires, 128–9; Montglat, Mémoires, l. 334–5. ²⁰³ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 334–7. ²⁰⁴ Gourville was also present at the battle, though writing decades later in a different political climate he does not actually describe Bléneau as a Condéen victory: Mémoires, i. 73–4. ²⁰⁵ Tavannes, Mémoires, ii. 129–31; Vallier, iii. 197–8, was outraged that the engagement was presented by the supporters of the princes in Paris as the complete annihilation of the royalist army.

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4 Towards Stalemate Condé’s victory at Bléneau had neither destroyed the royal army nor captured the royal family and the court. But it demonstrated very clearly that the prince’s military touch had not deserted him: he was still unrivalled in his capacity to assess military situations, to probe for weaknesses and opportunities, and to exploit surprise in order to maximize the effects of aggressive tactics. The victory was not just symbolically important: Condé had validated his decision to abandon Guienne, where the princes’ army was slowly but remorselessly being forced back onto Bordeaux and a last, probably hopeless stand against superior royalist forces. The military situation was now intensely fluid, while Condé’s imminent return to Paris would overturn assumptions that the alliance between Gaston d’Orléans and Condé brought together by Mazarin’s return was fragmenting.¹ The effects of all this could be seen in the capital, not only in the outburst of popular joy and the hero’s welcome given to Condé, but in the rapid demoralization of Mazarin’s supporters and confidants.² Bluet, avocat in the Parlement, whose correspondence with Mazarin had hitherto offered accounts calculated to appeal to the cardinal with their stress on paralyzing factionalism, resentment of military burdens and violence, and collective longing for the return of the king and his first minister, took a sudden, darker turn. Bluet dismissed the first news of Bléneau on 9 April as mere rumours, ‘puffed-up with all sorts of ridiculous details’.³ But a few hours later, and after various better substantiated accounts of the battle had circulated, the upbeat tone changed completely: his subsequent letters focused on the gross disloyalty of the king’s subjects, the triumph of particular and selfish interests, and the fact that those who might have been loyal hitherto now believed that ‘everything is lost’.⁴ Yet it would be mistaken to see all this as evidence for a fundamental shift in the underlying assumptions of the various contending parties. Bluet reported that Gaston had responded to the news by proposing that though Bléneau had been a great triumph, it should serve as the basis for building a lasting political ¹ AAE MD 882, fo. 148, baron de Pennacors to Retz, Paris, 2 April 1652: suggested that if Condé had not thrown everything into uncertainty by abandoning the south-west, Retz would have been able to draw Orléans into a settlement. ² Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 201. ³ AAE MD 882, fo. 186, Bluet to Mazarin [Paris], 9 April 1652. ⁴ AAE MD 882, fos 189, 196, 209, 211, 9/12/15/16 April, Bluet to Mazarin. An anonymous author wrote to Mazarin on 21 April that any attempt now by the King and Mazarin to enter Paris would provoke another ‘day of barricades’: AAE MD 882, fo. 238.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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settlement.⁵ The essential aim of both sides throughout the breakdown of civil order remained the achievement of a negotiated peace that would restore the unity of the extended royal family, axiomatically regarded as fundamental to the wellordered polity.⁶ The settlement would also need to reach some agreement regarding the status and political role of Mazarin, and some ‘accommodation’ of the interests of his partisans and those of the princely parties. Even before Bléneau, negotiations were gathering momentum and increasingly flexible: at least one project, dated to March 1652, proposed a semi-exile for Mazarin as the basis for settlement.⁷ The sense that a settlement was within reach, and that Mazarin was heavily and personally invested in the negotiations, was widely shared, and certainly pervades diplomatic correspondence in these months. ⁸

The War Intensifies: From Bléneau to the Combat at the Porte Saint-Antoine Further wide-ranging negotiations for a settlement within France, together with an intensified deployment of external supporters, were both to play a major role in the next phase of the struggle between Mazarin and his opponents. For Bléneau had settled one thing: no one now assumed that the princely revolt, which had already been reanimated by Mazarin’s decision to re-enter France, was going to collapse in the near future.

Condé, Paris, and the Princes’ Army Following the stand-off between Condé’s and Turenne’s forces, Condé pulled his troops back towards Montargis.⁹ The prince, together with Nemours, Beaufort, and the duc de La Rochefoucauld, then moved on to Paris, leaving the army positioned around Châtillon. The capital had been awash with rumour and

⁵ AAE MD 882, fo. 189, 9 April, Bluet to Mazarin. ⁶ For instance, even when the président of the Paris Cour des aides, Jacques Amelot, berated Condé for his alliance with the Spanish and his illegal levies of troops in Paris, he ended his harangue with an appeal to Gaston d’Orléans to do all possible to restore the union of the royal family on which the public good depended: Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 119–20. ⁷ AAE MD 889, fo. 205, Project for the pacification of the present troubles, March 1652: the tone and the reassurances (for Mazarin) of the document suggests that it emanates from court circles. See a slightly different, more pro-princely version in MD 890, fos 142–5, Projet d’accommodement, ND 1652. ⁸ In one example of these assumptions, Gianettino Giustiniani, agent for French interests in Genoa, had received reports that the internal unrest in France was on the verge of being entirely accommodated: CP Gènes 8, fo. 233, 14 Mar. 1651. See also: CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 252, 23 Mar., in which the ambassador in Savoy, Ennemond Servien, notes Brienne’s comment that a settlement of the civil wars was in sight. ⁹ Turenne to Le Tellier, Saint-Privé, 15 April 1652, in Menditte, ed., Lettres de Turenne, 12.

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speculation since the beginning of April, not just that Condé had left Guienne and was about to arrive in Paris, but that Mazarin and his army was also moving towards the city in a pre-emptive move to besiege and subjugate it.¹⁰ Encouraged by partisans of the princes, violent mobs demonstrated against the activities of those deemed mazarins, and occupied the Pont Neuf and streets around the river.¹¹ When the assemblies and protests got out of hand and turned into riot, intimidation, and plunder of the Parisian bourgeois and nobility, the garde bourgeoise stepped in, clearing the Pont Neuf and the surrounding streets and imposing an uneasy peace in the following days.¹² The uneasiness was certainly not lessened by a near total (eighty-five per cent) solar eclipse that darkened the skies above Paris for two hours on the morning of 8 April: the Parisians were sharing in what was the most dramatic eclipse of the seventeenth century.¹³ Writers and commentators were quick to read portents into the event, few of which were, in the circumstances, likely to calm the tensions in the city.¹⁴ Condé and the other military leaders arrived in Paris on 11 April, and he quickly re-established contact with the network of his own supporters and the wider opposition party in the city.¹⁵ The next day he appeared in the Parlement to thank the members of the sovereign court for refusing to register the crown’s condemnations of his actions since he left court in 1651.¹⁶ In reply, the acting premier président¸ Nicolas de Bailleul, denounced Condé for having waged war on the king and having the ‘blood of the king’s subjects on his hands’. This has subsequently been read as evidence that the mood in Parlement and the city was shifting back towards unconditional royalism. But as Bluet pointed out in his report to Mazarin, Bailleul was shouted down throughout his speech, and seconded by no one else in the chambre; those who followed hastened to assure Condé and the duc d’Orléans of their support.¹⁷ The mood in Parlement was further intensified against Mazarin by the report that the deputation that they had sent to the king to present their remonstrances against the cardinal had been treated with disrespect, and not accorded the customary right to read out the remonstrances.¹⁸

¹⁰ AAE MD 882, fo. 155, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 2 April 1652. ¹¹ AAE MD 882, fo. 148, Pennacors [to Retz], Paris, 2 April 1652; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii.193–5; Vallier, iii. 190–3, suggests that the mob around the Pont Neuf quickly increased to 5,000–6,000 people. ¹² Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 197–9. ¹³ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 199. ¹⁴ Moreau, Bibliographie de Mazarinades, which is by no means comprehensive, lists three published tracts that use the eclipse to pursue a political argument that was either anti-Mazarin or more generally apocalyptic, arguing that the eclipse presaged disaster for 1653: i. 138–9,140, 142–3; 301. ¹⁵ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 201. ¹⁶ AAE MD 882, fo. 200, journal of the Parlement, Paris, 12 April 1652. ¹⁷ AAE MD 882 fo. 201, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 12 April 1652: Bluet added that Omer Talon, avocat général and one of the ‘men of the king’ in the Parlement, ‘spoke of Mazarin with all imaginable acerbity’. Bluet’s account is echoed in the Histoire de la Fronde, BN Ffr. 25,026, fo. 61r. ¹⁸ AAE MD 882 fo. 196, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 12 April 1652: Bluet made the reasonable point that instead of dismissing the remonstrances out of hand, the public argument needed to be won through a

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With hindsight it is easy to ask why, after re-establishing contact with his allies in Paris, and consolidating the alliance with Orléans, did Condé not return to take command of the army? Condé’s biographer, Aumale, saw this as a decisive error: it sacrificed the prince’s pre-eminent military leadership to his much less certain touch as a political manager.¹⁹ Yet at the time the decision looked less straightforward. The situation in Paris was complex and needed Condé’s presence; in contrast, the situation with the princes’ army appeared relatively secure. Although enthusiastically welcomed on his entry into Paris, Condé and his supporters were aware that the situation across the capital required careful handling. Condé remained a privileged guest of the city: he did not control any of its governing institutions, and at this point he had very limited means to impose his will apart from persuasion. Large majorities in the sovereign courts and amongst the urban elites shared his desire to see Mazarin exiled from France, but the two most influential figures in the city government—the prévôt des marchands, the elected mayor of the city, and the governor of Paris—were committed royalists and supporters of Mazarin; they would do as much as possible to obstruct the princes’ attempts to mobilize the city.²⁰ Concerned by the implications of popular unrest, the respectable bourgeois and the civic elites were attracted to a middle path of remonstrance and negotiation. To move them into outright resistance to the government and its first minister, they needed to be persuaded either that a royal government directed by the cardinal would wage open war against the city as it had done in 1649, or that the crown would reject all peaceful persuasion to send Mazarin back into exile. Drawing on and developing these concerns required careful and attentive management by Condé and Orléans. Incensed by the crown’s dismissal of their remonstrances against Mazarin, members of the Parlement proposed that the city should join with the courts in drawing up a further set of remonstrances, and this should be undertaken by a full assembly of the city’s representatives at the Hôtel de Ville. The assembly was called promptly, meeting for its first session on 19 April, and brought together the ‘notables bourgeois’ of the quartiers, the representatives of the six guilds, and delegates from the sovereign courts, the clergy, and university.²¹ The princes only attended the opening session at the Hôtel de Ville, then withdrew to leave some 300 representatives of the city to debate the next course of action. What emerged from a spectrum of widely disparate views, point-by-point refutation of their claims. Full text of the remonstrances given in MD 882, fo. 98, Paris, 23 Mar. 1652; see also Bonney, ‘Cardinal Mazarin and His Critics’, passim. ¹⁹ Aumale, Condé, vi. 153–5. ²⁰ Antoine Lefèvre, prévôt des marchands, Aug. 1650–July 1652; François de l’Hôpital, duc de Rosnay, maréchal de France, governor of Paris, Dec. 1649–Jan. 1657; AAE MD 882, fo. 172, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 7 April 1652: stand-off between the garde bourgeoise on the Pont Neuf and Orléans’ representatives. ²¹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii, 205.

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repetitively and acrimoniously expressed over three days, was less helpful to Condé and Orléans: the assembly finally agreed to draft another set of remonstrances urging the king to exile Mazarin and to supplicate the monarch to return to Paris.²² Influenced by a moderate, royalist faction, the assembly also resolved that the city should not be drawn into any league, union, or association binding it to a larger national movement, nor would the city authorize the levy of any additional taxes to support the costs of military levies or other activities.²³ This was certainly no blank cheque for the princes’ military struggle: the obvious conclusion to be drawn was that without more direct influence and pressure the city was unlikely to offer the level of support that could sustain the princes’ efforts. That pressure could only come from being present and influencing decisionmaking. It had been a mistake to retire from the debate at the Hôtel de Ville, allowing the moderates to gain ground and to shape the final decisions, and it should not be repeated. Further constraints arose surrounding military recruitment and the presence of troops in the capital. A month previously the city had declared that no soldiers from any of the parties in France should approach within 10 leagues of the city.²⁴ This declaration was grudgingly accepted by the crown: although it appeared to infringe upon the king’s sovereignty in all military matters, on balance it seemed more of a hindrance to the princes’ troops than to the royal army.²⁵ The city authorities intended to uphold this restriction on Condé’s troops as on any others, and any notion of bringing the bulk of the princes’ army into Paris or the immediate suburbs would incite massive hostility. Recruitment also required careful handling: the princes needed more soldiers, and a dense, impoverished urban population was an excellent source. But one of the representatives at the Hôtel de Ville assembly had expressly denounced the recruiting activities of some of Condé’s officers, citing the sensitive case of a Spanish officer in the prince’s service seeking to raise recruits in the city.²⁶ Condé sought to deflect some of this criticism by assembling the new recruits outside the city, at Saint-Maur, and recruitment itself was scaled back to avoid local provocation.²⁷ In the event, the irksome restrictions of the 10-league ruling brought an advantage for the princes, when news reached them that royalist forces had themselves set up advanced bases and garrisons at Saint-Denis, Corbeil, and then Saint-Cloud. Presenting this as the first stage in a concerted plan by Mazarin to launch an attack on the city offered the means both to break down

²² Vallier, iii. 204–8; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 207–9. ²³ AAE MD 882, fo. 241, [Bluet?] to Mazarin, Paris, 22 April 1652: the final compromise was agreed by 127 votes to 67 who favoured more radical action. ²⁴ AAE MD 882, fo. 68, [Sainctot to Mazarin], Paris, 17 Mar. 1652. ²⁵ AAE MD 882, fo. 325, Gaudin [to Mazarin?], Paris, 15 May 1652. ²⁶ AAE MD 882, fo. 242, Bluet to Mazarin, 23 April 1652; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 206. ²⁷ AAE MD 882, fo. 238, [Sainctot?] to Mazarin, Paris, 21 April 1652.

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resistance to large-scale recruitment and billeting of troops, and to gain a significant financial commitment from the city.²⁸ Condé and Beaufort conducted what was almost a levée en masse in the city, raising an inexperienced force of 8,000–10,000 volunteers. Led by Condé and a small force of professionals, the advance of this large force westwards persuaded the royalists to withdraw from their position at Saint-Cloud, moving back to join the main royalist forces at Saint-German-en-Laye. Flushed with this success, Condé saw the opportunity to maintain momentum by targeting another outpost of royalist troops, some 200 Swiss at Saint-Denis. Despite initial disarray and weakness, Condé’s leadership gave the volunteers the confidence to push the Swiss out of their positions, cementing Condé’s good relations with the city.²⁹ The demoralizing recapture of Saint-Denis twenty-four hours later by a force of elite troops from the royal army was not entirely a setback: it maintained the sense of an imminent threat to the city which required a heavy presence of troops in Paris itself, and more recruitment and financial support.³⁰ On 12 May, the duc de Damville wrote of the project by Condéen supporters to raise and finance the levy of 6,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry across the city.³¹ The bourgeois were described by one of Mazarin’s correspondents as being deeply suspicious of the crown’s intentions, and concerned that the king was trapped by ‘100 Mazarins’ who intended to take their revenge on the capital.³² A few days earlier Etienne Aligre, directeur des finances, had written to Le Tellier that the city was on the point of declaring for Condé, while the so-called mazarins were trapped and powerless.³³ The process of drawing the Parisians into a military commitment had required Condé’s presence in Paris; it is hard to see that anyone else in the princes’ party could have catalyzed the will to resist the forces of the crown so effectively.³⁴ Arguably, however, there was an even greater prize at stake in the management and potential mobilization of bourgeois support in the capital. Condé’s arrival in Paris brought him into a protracted but volatile dispute between the crown’s ministers, the Parisian elites, and the sovereign courts. The rentes on the Hôtel de Ville, dating back to the reign of François I, were the most important mechanism by which the crown raised long-term loans.³⁵ Guaranteed by the city of Paris, investment in the rentes was popular across France as a secure source of investment income. The attractiveness of rentes tempted the crown’s ministers into ²⁸ AAE MD 882, fo. 244, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 23 April 1652: the princes argued that these were the vanguard of forces which would seek to blockade the city. ²⁹ Vallier, iii. 228–33; Valentin Conrart, Mémoires, Petitot/Monmerqué, xlviii. 61–4. ³⁰ A few days earlier, Bluet had warned of the dangers of moving royal troops too close to Paris since it provided the princes with the opportunity to unite the population in a common defence: AAE MD 882, fo. 293, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 7 May 1652. ³¹ AAE MD 882, fo. 306, Paris, 12 May 1652; also discussed in Vallier, iii. 237–9. ³² AAE MD 882, fo. 307, (report from Paris) to Mazarin, 15 May 1652. ³³ BN Ffr 6889, fo. 161, Paris, 5 May 1652. ³⁴ Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 326–7. ³⁵ K. Béguin, Financer la guerre au XVIIe siècle: la dette publique et les rentiers de l’absolutisme (Paris, 2012); Ranum, Fronde, 290–5.

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financial manipulation not unlike the way in which they treated the salaries of the various groups of office-holders. Ministers saw payment of the interest on rentes as a lower priority than high-interest, short-term loans provided by powerful creditors who were more closely entwined with the regime.³⁶ And as always, repayment of interest and debts in this system depended on the reliability of the revenues to which these had been assigned. Manipulating revenue assignations had been the main business of the superintendent and the bureau des finances, particularly following the exponential increase in expenditure from the 1630s.³⁷ Such manipulation was primarily an attempt to sustain the régime de l’extraordinaire, but it could also have political objectives. During the Fronde the threat to cut or delay payment of interest on the rentes was potentially a means to impose pressure on the frondeurs, and to create divisions. Back in 1649 the crown had threatened the right of the Hôtel de Ville and the Paris frondeurs to draw revenues from the gabelle, or salt tax, the traditional and relatively secure source against which the rentes were assigned. The crown took the farmers of the salt tax under its protection, an obvious threat to cut off this income stream unless the Parisian rentiers demonstrated their political loyalty.³⁸ Claude Joly, one of the syndics appointed following a massive, unauthorized meeting of the rentiers, pointed out that no other action could have united and galvanized the Parisian bourgeoisie against the crown more effectively.³⁹ The lesson that financial threats against the rentiers were a double-edged sword had not been learnt when the crown again confronted Parisian resistance in early 1652.⁴⁰ The pressure initially came from the superintendent of finances, Mazarin’s supposed ally, Charles de La Vieuville. Vieuville looked at the chaos of the royal finances, the non-payments from numerous provinces, the incremental effects of the subsistence crises of the previous three years, and announced in January 1652 that the only way to save the crown from the catastrophe of a bankruptcy (that is, a wholesale debt rescheduling) was to reappropriate the reliable crown revenues allocated to the payment of the rentes.⁴¹ The arrêt to sequester these revenues was promulgated on 8 January, and produced an immediate and uncompromising reaction from the judges of the Parisian sovereign courts, who were both heavily invested in rentes and feared that diminution or suspension of interest would be followed by similar measures against their salaries.⁴² They began arrangements to ³⁶ The essence of the système fisco-financier delineated by Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société. ³⁷ Bonney, King’s Debts, 159–92; Bayard, Monde des financiers, 19–74. ³⁸ Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 26–7. ³⁹ ibid; Béguin, Financer la guerre, 85–7. The politics of this crisis over the rentes is explored in a pamphlet seeking to justify the actions of the Cardinal de Retz: AAE 890, fos 18–27, Le Vray et le Faux de Monsieur le Prince et de Monsieur le Cardinal de Retz, Paris, 1652. ⁴⁰ BN Ffr. 6889, fo. 62, advis de Paris to Le Tellier, Paris, 16 Jan. 1652: Condéen supporters were already spreading the rumour that the crown intended to default on the payment of the rentes to bring the city to heel. ⁴¹ AAE MD 881, fo. 72, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Poitiers, 15 Jan. 1652. ⁴² AAE MD 881, fo. 170, comte de l’Hôpital to Mazarin, Paris, 29 Jan. 1652.

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hold a collective assembly in the Chambre-Saint-Louis, ostensibly in order to discuss the issue of the non-payment of the rentes and salaries. Behind this was the tacit threat that the chambre would revert to its role during 1648–9, and become a wide-ranging forum for attacking all aspects of crown policy.⁴³ The government ministers’ readiness to confront this prospect evaporated, and La Vieuville was forced to revoke the plan to seize the revenues allocated to the rentes. The decision was timely: correspondents in Paris were clear that the revocation of the January arrêt had narrowly averted the meeting of the rentiers, and had prevented Mazarin’s opponents establishing a united front round the issue of the rentes.⁴⁴ The issue of management of the rentes did not go away. Concern that the crown would renege on the commitment continued to be widely shared.⁴⁵ Even moderate bodies like the lower-ranking sovereign court, the Chambre des comptes, conceded that if the ministers could be proven to be delaying the payment of rentes and salaries, they would collaborate in a common forum.⁴⁶ Lacking firm reassurance that the rentes were safe, on 20 March the threat was activated and a first meeting of the three main sovereign courts took place in the Chambre-Saint-Louis.⁴⁷ The main aim of the judges was to find a means of placing the payment of the rentes under their own control by giving orders directly to the farmers of the taxes of the aides and the gabelles, removing this from the normal jurisdiction of the bureau des finances and the ministers.⁴⁸ As the discussion gained momentum, arguments coalesced around the view that a larger meeting should be held at the Hôtel de Ville to draw on representatives of all the Parisian rentiers. It was this meeting that finally took place on 19–21 April in very different circumstances. Thus by the time Condé arrived in Paris, the rentes had become a crucial area of potential conflict with Mazarin and his fellow ministers; these latter could not accept the decision of the Chambre-Saint-Louis to sequester royal revenues to pay the rentes and officials’ salaries, and were anyway deeply concerned at the possibility that the chambre would extend the political remit of its discussions. On the princely side, a clash between the Paris bourgeois and the court and ministers on the subject of the rentes could potentially be managed to broaden

⁴³ AAE MD 881, fo. 235, Bluet [to Mazarin], Paris, 9 Feb. 1652; Vallier, iii. 171–2. ⁴⁴ AAE MD 881, fo. 324, bp of Coutances to Mazarin, Paris, 19 Feb. 1652: the revocation of the arrêt for the rentes has delighted the supporters of the crown; MD 881, fo. 341 [Sainctot?] to Mazarin, Paris, 21 Feb. 1652: confirms that Orléans was counting on the assembly of the Chambre-St-Louis ‘to change everything’, and that it would certainly have discussed ‘bien d’autres choses’. ⁴⁵ AAE 882, fo. 46, [Sainctot?] to Mazarin, Paris, 13 Mar. 1652: discussion about assembling a wider group of parties interested in the payment of the rentes and government policy at the Hôtel de Ville; BN Ffr. 6889, Etienne d’Aligre, directeur des finances, to Le Tellier, Paris, 3 Mar. 1652: Aligre had been instructed to stay in Paris until the issue of the rentes was settled. ⁴⁶ AAE MD 882, fo. 58 (another copy fo. 61), Resolution of the Chambre des comptes concerning the proposal to establish the Chambre-Saint-Louis, Paris, 16 Mar. 1652. ⁴⁷ AAE MD 882, fo. 81, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 20 Mar. 1652. ⁴⁸ AAE MD 882, fo. 91, [Sainctot?] to Mazarin, Paris, 20 Mar. 1652; same in MD 882, fo. 94, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 21 Mar. 1652.

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the basis of their own support. In fact, thanks to external events, the inability of the various parties in Paris to agree on a mechanism for sequestrating the monies paid by the farmers of the aides and gabelles, and the reluctance of the crown’s ministers to force the issue, the rentes stayed in the background until July. But Condé was well aware that another mis-step by the ministers and court had the potential to provoke a response in the city that could be exploited.⁴⁹ In contrast to these issues determining Condé’s presence in Paris, the military situation following Bléneau seemed under control. Time would appear to be on the side of the princes’ army: it was still early in the campaign season, with plenty of opportunity to exploit military circumstances through the spring/summer. The army was numerically superior to the royalist forces of Turenne and Hocquincourt, and contained most of Condé’s and Orléans’s best troops deployed in their family regiments, buttressed by veterans from the Lorraine and Spanish armies. The royal army could be strengthened only by drawing more troops away from the army of Harcourt, reducing pressure on Guienne; or from the forces on the frontiers, both of which could rebound in criticism of Mazarin. Most importantly, Condé had used what money he had received from the Spanish and his own resources to fund supply contracts, recognizing that the Loire basin had been ruined by military operations and by the last year of dearth, and he would not be able to support his army from local exactions.⁵⁰ Both the ducs de Nemours and Beaufort had accompanied Condé back to Paris; this helpfully removed the damaging effects of their mutual antipathy from the army. Instead, the troops had been left in the hands of the comte de Tavannes and the marquis de Clinchamp, not great commanders but reliable and experienced professionals.⁵¹ The first news, moreover, was encouraging. Tavannes was anxious not to be outflanked by Turenne and Hocquincourt, who had moved their army through the forest of Fontainebleau and out towards Arpajon, blocking the route to Paris. Checking the threat that Turenne might pose to Paris, Tavannes moved the army from Châtillon to Étampes. As he explained, the advantage of Étampes, in a year ‘where there was good reason to fear food shortages’, was that the town had stockpiled supplies: large amounts of grain and other foodstuffs had been brought in from the surrounding territory to preserve them from pillage by the troops. Tavannes calculated that there was enough to sustain the princes’ army in bread alone for four months.⁵² The royal army then faced precisely the logistical problems that Tavannes had avoided—moving through territory that had been stripped of grain and other foodstuffs, and where shortages of supplies proved a constant concern.⁵³ ⁴⁹ Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 68. ⁵⁰ AAE MD 882, fo. 208, Gaudrin to Mazarin, Paris, 14 April 1652. ⁵¹ Tavannes, Mémoires, 131–2. ⁵² Ibid, 133–4; confirmed in Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 324. ⁵³ Turenne to Le Tellier, Choisy-sur-Ecolle/Palaiseau, 23 April/20 May 1652; in Menditte, Lettres de Turenne, 16–17, 29–31.

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While the princes’ army sustained itself on the supplies stored at Étampes, Condé could look to obtaining a heavier military commitment either from Lorraine or from Spain. Their intervention could generate another army corps operating to the east of Paris, creating the potential for coordinated military action against the main royalist army. This still left the situation in Guienne, but thanks to Condé’ move northwards the timetable for Mazarin’s ‘Schlieffen plan’ to try to force a quick settlement in the south-west had already slipped. The situation was to worsen considerably as the capacity of Mazarin to antagonize and alienate the comte d’Harcourt, commander of the army in Guienne, became apparent.⁵⁴ So in the circumstances of mid to late April, Condé’s prioritizing made sense. His own position seemed strong, and for the time being so did his dominance over the rest of the princes’ faction; the cardinal de Retz, his main rival seeking to influence Gaston d’Orléans, was on the defensive. From Paris, it seemed a propitious moment to launch negotiations to try to get a favourable settlement. Why risk combat—and indeed unnecessary death and destruction—if it was possible to parlay the present position into a permanent and satisfactory settlement? This not only made sense from the position of the princes, allowing them to negotiate from strength; an assessment of Mazarin’s position would also suggest that the time was good to push for a settlement.

Provincial Unrest Apart from being back in France and strongly re-established in the favour of the Queen Mother, Mazarin had little cause for optimism. Quite apart from the situation in and around Paris, he was well aware that the situation in many key provinces stood on a knife-edge. Normandy, one of the largest and richest provinces in France, was described by one of Mazarin’s correspondents as a great ‘nursing mother’ in the midst of the desolation elsewhere, a huge source of troops and untapped supplies.⁵⁵ The stance of the governor, Henri de Longueville, was crucial. If he acted in support of Condé, his brother-in-law, he had the potential to tip the military and political balance decisively against the crown.⁵⁶ The failure of the princely party to relieve Angers in late February had seemingly pulled Longueville back from any commitment to the ⁵⁴ See ‘The September Campaign’ in Chapter 6. ⁵⁵ AAE MD 882, fo. 289, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 4 May 1652: ‘mère nourrice’; for an extensive account of the military potential of Normandy, see AN KK 1083, fos 351–4, Mémoire sur les affaires de Normandie, [Mar.] 1652. ⁵⁶ AAE MD 881, fo. 232, Bluet to Mazarin, 7 Feb. 1652, on rumours that Longueville is holding back until the situation in Anjou becomes clear; AN KK 1083, 337, [NA], 20 Feb. 1652, reports on Longueville’s vacillations; MD 881, fo. 395, letter of advice [NA] to Longueville, 1 Mar. 1652: urges him not to join the princes’ party. Yet also MD 889, fo. 144, Longueville to Chavigny, Rouen, 3 Mar. 1652, which confirms links to the princes.

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1

Pays Boulonnais

Artois

2

Picardy

Metz & Verdun Soissonnais

4

3

Normandy

20

Île de France

Toul

Champagne

22

Lorraine

21

5

Alsace

Brittany

Maine

7 Orléanais

6

Anjou

8

Touraine

10

Aunis

19

Nivernais

9

Burgundy

Berry

Saumurouis

Bourbonnais

Poitou

Île de Ré

Bresse

Marche Île d’Oléron

11

Saintonge

17

Angoumois

Lyonnais Limousin

18

Auvergne

16 Dauphiné

12

Guyenne

15

Provence

14 Languedoc

13

Comtat Venaissin

Béarn and Navarre Navarre Foix Roussillon

1 Pays Boulonnais: Antoine, duc d’Aumont

12 Guyenne: Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé

2 Picardy: Charles III de Lorraine, duc d’Elboeuf

13 Béarn and Navarre: Antoine III, duc de Grammont

3 Île de France: François-Annibal I d’Estrées, duc d’Estrées

14 Languedoc: Gaston, duc d’Orléans

4 Normandy: Henri d’Orléans, duc de Longueville

15 Provence: Louis Emmanuel de Valois, duc d’Angoulême

5 Brittany: Anne of Austria. Lieutenant General: Charles de la Porte, duc de La Meilleraye

16 Dauphiné: François de Bonne de Créquy, duc de Lesdiguières

6 Anjou: Henri de Chabot, duc de Rohan

17 Lyonnais: Nicolas V de Neufville, marquis de Villeroy

7 Orléanais: Charles d’Escoubleau, marquis de Sourdis

18 Auvergne: Louis-Charles de Nogaret, duc de Candale (Épernon’s son)

8 Touraine: César d’Aumont

19 Burgundy: Bernard de Nogaret de La Valette, duc d’Épernon

9 Berry: Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé

20 Champagne: Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti

10 Poitou: François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld

21 Alsace: Henri de Lorraine, comte d’Harcourt

11 Saintonge: Charles de Sainte-Maure, duc de Montausier

22 Lorraine: Henri de Senneterre, duc de La Ferté

Map 5 The French Provinces and Key Governors in 1651–52

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princes’ cause. But as the royalist situation looked more vulnerable in late March and into April, so Longueville’s stance started to shift again.⁵⁷ For Mazarin, one catastrophic scenario following Bléneau would be for Longueville to mobilize troops in Normandy and link up with Condé’s main army to the west of the Paris basin, outflanking the limited royalist forces stretched into the Loire.⁵⁸ Throughout May, Mazarin and the court received mixed signals from Normandy: bland reassurances that everything was under control were interspersed with alarmist accounts of Longueville’s hostile activities.⁵⁹ Towards the end of the month the Parlement of Rouen drew up its own set of remonstrances for the king calling for the exile of Mazarin; Mazarin’s correspondent had no doubt that Longueville was behind the open combativeness of the frondeur agenda.⁶⁰ Normandy was by no means the only, nor the most volatile, of the French provinces. Despite the duc d’Orléans’ governorship and clientele, Mazarin had initially hoped that Languedoc would remain calm, both because of the efforts of loyalists amongst the provincial elite, and the presence of Harcourt and his army in Guienne.⁶¹ But concerns were soon voiced about the loyalty of the second city, Montpellier, and by the end of April the picture looked considerably more threatening, with reports that the supporters of Orléans, especially Antoine Fouquet de Croissy, had been making considerable advances in winning over the province to the princes.⁶² Particularly concerning, although in the event it proved a false alarm, were indications that the Protestants in Languedoc might be drawn into the princes’ party.⁶³ The news steadily worsened through May and June, with reports that Nîmes was at risk of joining the revolt after Orléans’ supporters gained control of the Hôtel de Ville.⁶⁴ Then came news of the threat within Toulouse itself, where the frondeurs now far outnumbered the committed

⁵⁷ AAE MD 882, fo. 21, Fouquet de Croissy to Condé, Paris, 20 Mar. 1652: concerns Croissy’s mission to persuade Longueville to accept the treaty with the Princes; MD 882, fo. 94, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 21 Mar. 1652: princes speak as though Longueville has already committed to their party; MD 882, fos 264, 265, news from Rouen, 27/28 Mar. 1652: Longueville has double-crossed the royalists, and is supporting the princes’ party. ⁵⁸ AN KK 1083, fo. 387, Jacques Rouxel de Médavy, comte de Grancey, to Mazarin, 17 Mar. 1652: concern that Longueville is in the process of raising twelve regiments of cavalry and seven or eight regiments of infantry in Normandy, and refuses to make any commitment to the crown; KK 1083, fo. 405, Grancey to Mazarin, 31 Mar: urgent need to entrust more authority to the loyalist Matignon. ⁵⁹ AAE MD 882, fos 264, 265, Rouen, 27–29 April 1652: Longueville was playing entirely false with his insistence that he is loyal to the court, and that he has ‘lifted the mask’ in his dealings with the Parlement of Rouen (to show that he supports the princes). MD 882, fo. 323 [Bertaud?] to Mazarin, Rouen, 15 May 1652: generally upbeat; MD 882, fo. 331, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 16 May 1652: strong concern about the situation in Rouen. ⁶⁰ AAE MD 882, fo. 365 [Bertaud?] to Mazarin, Rouen, 25 May 1652. ⁶¹ Chéruel, v. 82, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, Gien, 14 April 1652. ⁶² AAE MD 1636 (Languedoc), fo. 31, Mondevergue to Mazarin, [Montpellier,] 21 April 1652; MD 1636, fo. 40, [Maugiron?] to Mazarin, Montpellier, 29 April 1652. ⁶³ AAE MD 1636, fo. 40. ⁶⁴ AAE MD 1636, fos 42, 44, Abbé Calvaire to Mazarin, Nîmes, [early May 1652].

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royalists amongst the judges in the Parlement.⁶⁵ Much of the aggressive proprincely behaviour of the Toulouse Parlement was directed against the Estates of Languedoc, over whose claims and assertions, especially concerning taxation, they had clashed violently in 1651.⁶⁶ But that struggle took on a more dangerous dimension now that these provincial rivalries could be linked into the struggle across France. In mid-May both the Parlement and the Hôtel de Ville in Toulouse voted against providing supplies and recruits to support Harcourt’s military operations, and declared themselves neutral in relation to the events in neighbouring Guienne.⁶⁷ Concerned about the deteriorating situation, one writer warned that a new Fronde could spring up in Toulouse that would be ‘more malign than either that of Paris or Bordeaux’.⁶⁸ Scarcely more reassuring was the situation in Provence, where there was not even the initial appearance of loyalism or calm. An acrimonious and violent dispute between the city of Toulon, which had rebelled briefly in early 1651, and Marseilles, where the crown subsequently decided to relocate the galley fleet, had placed the administration of both cities under great strain. If a key problem in Languedoc was a power vacuum at the topmost level of provincial government, the problem in Provence was the reverse: too many grandees with a real or assumed claim to the governorship and direction of affairs. The prince de Conti sought the governorship for himself as one of the terms for a potential settlement with the crown. But the ambition to gain control over Provence was also shared by Henri de Lorraine, duc de Guise. His ambitions in the Fronde had been curtailed by his capture and imprisonment by the Spanish after his chaotic involvement in the failed Naples revolt of 1647/8. However, Condé used his treaty with the Spanish crown to ask for Guise’s release. Well aware of the long-standing Guise connection to Provence, Condé calculated that he would be a useful, and suitably grateful, ally of the princes, while the duke’s ability to draw on the Guise affinity both in Provence and in north-east France would be a welcome contribution to military resources.⁶⁹ Condé’s intervention was only partially successful: the footdragging of the Spanish ministers delayed Guise’s release until August, and when he finally gained French soil the political situation had considerably changed.⁷⁰

⁶⁵ AAE MD 1636, fo. 48, Maugiron to Mazarin, Toulouse, 8 May 1652: Maugiron produced an elaborate coding against the names of all the parlementaires, extending from AA (super-loyalty to Mazarin as well as the Crown) down to F (incorrigible frondeur). The F’s considerably outnumbered the other categories. ⁶⁶ Beik, Absolutism and Society, 211–14. ⁶⁷ AAE MD 1636, fo. 51, Frezas to Mazarin, Toulouse, 13 May 1652; MD 1636, fo. 59, Maugiron to Mazarin, Toulouse, 23 May 1652. ⁶⁸ AAE MD 1636, fo. 59, Maugiron to Mazarin, Toulouse, 23 May 1652. ⁶⁹ AAE MD 881, fo. 24, père Léon (Léon Macé) to Mazarin, 7 Jan. 1652. ⁷⁰ AAE CP Espagne 31, fo. 230, King of Spain to Condé, Madrid, 29 June 1652: finally agreeing to release the Duke of Guise.

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The situation in Provence was rendered still more volatile since the established governor of the province, Louis-Emmanuel de Valois, duc d’Angoulême, was suspected of covert support for the princes’ party, and was certainly behind the attempt by Toulon to regain its status as the principal galley port.⁷¹ During the first few months of 1652, Angoulême became increasingly compromised as governor of Provence by his open association with opponents of Mazarin and the crown. Arguing that the deteriorating situation required a firm but independent authority in the province, Mazarin chose his nephew-in-law, Louis de Vendôme, duc de Mercoeur. While the match was initially vetoed by Condé in 1649, Mercoeur had finally married Laure-Victoire Mancini in 1651 during Mazarin’s exile—the first of Mazarin’s nieces, who were all to make high-ranking matches in due course.⁷² That Mercoeur was the elder brother of the duc de Beaufort indicates the cynical nature of this family policy pursued by the house of Vendôme: Mercoeur expected a substantial pay-off for his mésalliance, while Beaufort ensured that the opportunities that might come from a Condéen victory could be secured by his wholehearted commitment to the princes’ cause. The possibility of ousting Angoulême to provide Mercoeur with the governorship of Provence had been noted by Mazarin in 1651 as an appropriate ‘dowry’ for his new nephew-by-marriage, but from his exile this proved impossible to manage. However, Angoulême’s involvement in local opposition politics seemingly provided the opportunity to slide Mercoeur into the governorship as soon as Mazarin was back in power in 1652.⁷³ Initially the introduction of Mercoeur was presented as a temporary measure to restore order to the province: the duke was sent to represent the authority of the king and to try to pull together the loyalist forces: in April Mazarin disingenuously wrote to one of his agents in Provence that Angoulême’s authority needed to be supported (by Mercoeur) against the disruptive forces that threatened control of the province.⁷⁴ But for Angoulême and his allies the motive was glaringly obvious: Mazarin intended to reward his nephew-in-law with the governorship.⁷⁵ Whatever military and leadership skills Mercoeur brought to the task of imposing authority in Provence, the challenge was made incomparably greater by the irreconcilable hostility of Angoulême. By 4 June, Bidault reported to Mazarin that the situation in Toulon was dangerously out of control, and Angoulême was strengthening his ⁷¹ BN Ffr. Clairambault 438, fo. 8, Angoulême to Brienne, 2 Mar. 1652: Angoulême indignantly denied that he has been behind the unrest in Toulon. ⁷² Oresko, ‘Marriages of the nieces’, 115–21. ⁷³ AAE MD 269, fo. 41, Mazarin to Consuls of Aix, Saumur, 19 Feb. 1652: notifies the consuls of the authority given to Mercoeur. ⁷⁴ Chéruel, v. 85–6, Mazarin to Père Léon, Gien, 15 April 1652. ⁷⁵ AAE MD 881, fo. 191, Père Léon to Mazarin, 10 April 1652; MD 882, fo. 266, Mercoeur to Mazarin, Lyon, 28 April: reports that the partisans of Angoulême are stirring up trouble in the province preparatory to Mercoeur’s arrival. Aiguebonne, a major power broker in Provence, wrote to Brienne in late April about the rumour that Mercoeur had been sent to the province as governor: BN Ffr. Clairambault 438, fo. 183, Tour d’Aigues, 23 April 1652.

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military presence there with the intention of treating Toulon as his principal base of resistance.⁷⁶ Normandy, Languedoc, and Provence all represented major threats to Mazarin’s fragile position; open support for the princes by any one of them could tip an already uncertain balance heavily against the crown. These were just the three biggest problems moreover. Burgundy was uneasily governed by another of Mazarin’s lukewarm allies, Bernard de La Valette, duc d’Épernon. Épernon had been replaced as governor of Guienne by Condé in 1651 as one of the terms of the crown’s peace settlement with the province. Épernon, whose rapacious and authoritarian government had made him universally hated in Guienne, was now transferred to Burgundy, held by the Condé since 1631, and whose institutions were massively dominated by Condéen clients and his diehard supporters.⁷⁷ That holding and governing the Condéen province would be a challenge became predictably clear during 1652. Épernon fought a heavy-handed struggle against Condéen clients’ domination of the Parlement of Dijon and the provincial Estates, both of which were unrelenting in their efforts to obstruct his policies and provide covert support for the princes’ party. By February the battlelines were clear, as the Parlement, headed by the premier président, Jean Bouchu, a long-standing Condé client, refused to register the royal declaration against Condé.⁷⁸ Letters from Épernon and the two loyalist avocats généraux beleaguered in the Parlement rose in a crescendo of frustration from April to July about the impossibility of rooting out the phalanx of Condéen loyalists upon whom Bouchu and other leaders relied.⁷⁹ To add to his problems, Mazarin’s working relationship with Épernon, like many of the other grands who remained loyalists, was poisoned because of Épernon’s jealousy at the promotion of the duc de Bouillon and Turenne to the court status of princes étrangers.⁸⁰ All of the above were major frontier provinces, mostly pays d’états with a degree of governmental autonomy. A different set of problems was emerging in the provinces in the centre of France, where there were fewer established institutions that could register elite grievances. These provinces saw a wave of spontaneous assemblies by the local nobility. Using as their justification the crown’s various promises since 1649 to summon an Estates General, groups of mostly lesser ⁷⁶ AAE MD 889, fo. 260, Marseilles, 4 June 1652. Earlier letter from Mercoeur on same subject, stating that Angoulême is acting directly in alliance with the princes: BN Ffr. Clairambault 438, fo. 272, Mercoeur to Brienne, Avignon, 7 May 1652. ⁷⁷ Béguin, Princes de Condé, 318–28; AAE MD 885, fos 6–8: Épernon’s report on his problems in governing Burgundy since 1651 [early Oct. 1652] made the telling comment that ‘M le Prince s’estoit vanté qu’il luy avoit laissé ceste province comme un cheval nud, duquel il gardoit le frein et la selle pour s’en servir a sa volonté. ⁷⁸ AAE MD 1491 (Bourgogne), fo. 368, de La Margerie (avocat général in the Parlement, a royal appointee) to Mazarin, Dijon, 28 Feb. 1652. ⁷⁹ AAE MD 1491 (Bourgogne), fos 387, 396–7, 413, 415, La Marguerie, Roncerolles, Épernon to Mazarin, Dijon, 29 May–4 Aug. 1652. ⁸⁰ See ‘Condé’s Failure to Consolidate his Position’ in Chapter 3.

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provincial nobles started assembling at various local centres such as Tours, Chartres, Châteaudun, Dreux, Senlis, Rocheguyon, Saumur, Magny, La Flêche, Melun, Nogent-le-Roy, and many others.⁸¹ There had been similar gatherings in the previous year: indeed, the assemblies of the nobility in Paris in the first months of 1651 are the best studied of these gatherings. The demands of the nobles in these 1651 assemblies were characterized by calls both for peace at home and abroad, the restraint of violence and disorder—especially against nobles— committed by soldiers, and the summoning of the Estates General.⁸² The concerns of the noble assemblies a year later were broadly similar, but they took place— during the spring and summer of 1652—in a very different political and military situation. To what extent were the assemblies infiltrated by supporters of the princes? How overtly political were the calls for the summoning of the Estates General? Were the assemblies neutral about the political survival of Mazarin, or did they regard his renewed exile as a precondition for a peaceful settlement?⁸³ The crown’s hostility to unauthorized assemblies of any kind was consistent, though there was some ministerial recognition that the nobles could justify their actions as preparation for the long-promised Estates General. Amongst the provincial elites the attitude was considerably more ambivalent. César d’Aumont, governor of Touraine, welcomed seven delegates from a noble assembly who came to discuss their grievances with him. Though he was concerned that such assemblies gave a signal to the ordinary people about the legitimacy of organized protests, d’Aumont was nonetheless sympathetic to the nobles’ grievances and their desire for representation; he asked that in exchange for dispersing after the representatives had met with him ‘they should receive the same treatment as the noblesse of Poitou’.⁸⁴ A similar ambiguity can be seen in a report by François de Choiseul, marquis de Praslin, concerning noble assemblies in Champagne. Praslin was both irritated and suspicious that these assemblies had been held when he has been absent from the province, but sympathetic to their basic principle of representing noble grievances and their desire to find ways to get a peace settlement and to curb troop disorders by all parties.⁸⁵ Yet the concern

⁸¹ BN Ffr. 10,458, fos 22–53, 161–214: documentation related to noble assemblies held in 1652. ⁸² A. Jouanna, ‘Valeurs et identité nobiliaires: le journal de l’Assemblée de février-mars 1651, par Charles d’Ailly, siegneur d’Annery’, in J.P. Bardet, D. Dinet, J-P. Poussou, M-C Vignal (eds), État et Société en France XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Mélanges offerts à Yves Durand (Paris, 2000), 347–56; J-M Constant, ‘La troisième Fronde. Les gentilshommes et les libertés nobiliaires’, in Constant, La noblesse en liberté, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Rennes, 2004), 239–52; Constant, ‘l’assemblée de noblesse de 1651: une autre conception de la monarchie française’, in R. Duchêne, P. Ronzeaud (eds), La Fronde en questions (actes du 18e colloque du CMR), (Marseilles, 1989), 277–86. ⁸³ Mazarin’s exile had been demanded by the assemblies of 1651: BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 116, account of the assembly of the noblesse in Paris, Feb. 1651. ⁸⁴ AAE MD 882, fo. 219, d’Aumont [no addressee], Tours, [c. 16 April 1652]; a similar assembly of the noblesse of the Touraine took place with d’Aumont present in June: BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 214, 26 June 1652. ⁸⁵ BN Ffr. Clairambault 438, fo. 22, Praslin to Brienne, Praslin, 5 Mar. 1652.

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about the affiliations of such assemblies remained, and exactly what they might propose in search of peace: when, for example, local noble assemblies in Normandy were appealing to the protection of the duc de Longueville, the ministers had good reason to be apprehensive.⁸⁶

Military Breakthrough? All this suggests that, in contrast to Mazarin, Condé and the princely party now held the advantage, and could play for time in a situation that was likely to develop in their favour. They held key advantages in a capital that was still overwhelmingly hostile to Mazarin. They could look to allies and clients in major provinces to maintain pressure on supporters of the Cardinal. Condé and his allies were still in possession of a substantial army, made up of experienced veterans concentrated in a well-provisioned base around the town of Étampes.⁸⁷ The bargaining position of the princes might also be strengthened by the support of the duke of Lorraine. Under the terms of his treaty with the king of Spain, Lorraine had already provided 2,000 cavalry to support Nemours’ army in its advance across France in February/March. But in early April Lorraine’s entire army of around 9,000 men moved into France and positioned itself around La Capelle.⁸⁸ The looming military threat this posed for Mazarin was initially averted by diplomacy.⁸⁹ Lorraine was a notoriously duplicitous negotiator, but Mazarin was less interested in an enduring settlement, more in simply bribing the duke to avert the conjunction of his forces and the princes’ army.⁹⁰ The deal struck by Mazarin’s agent in early May involved conceding the restoration of the duchy at a general peace settlement, but also agreed Lorraine’s demand for the three border fortresses of Clermont, Stenay, and Jametz, at present held by Condé. More immediately the French crown would provide Lorraine’s army with supplies and support to allow the troops to lodge themselves, pending a more general settlement, in the French-occupied Barrois.⁹¹ The (intermittent) supply of bread in no

⁸⁶ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 58, ‘Coppie des actes de l’assemblée de la noblesse de Falaise’, 6 May 1652, which specifically asks for the approbation of the duc de Longueville; AAE MD 883, fo. 63, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 14 June 1652: reports that Longueville is sponsoring assemblies in Normandy; Logié, Fronde en Normandie, iii. 125–6. ⁸⁷ This confidence was echoed in the Mémoires of Orléans’ daughter, Anne-Marie, duchesse de Montpensier, ed. Chéruel (4 vols; Paris, 1858–60), ii. 57. ⁸⁸ AAE MD 882, fo. 175, Pennacors to Mazarin, Paris, 8 April 1652. ⁸⁹ Chéruel, v. 74–6, Mazarin to Jossier, Gien, 13/14 April 1652; AAE MD 882, fo 262, Brégy to Mazarin, Châlons, 27 April 1652. ⁹⁰ AAE MD 882, fo. 270, Beaujeu to Mazarin, 28 April 1652; MD 882, fo. 295, Brégy to Mazarin, Châlons, 8 May 1652: Lorraine is an ‘esprit incertain’, and Brégy wishes that the duke would return to Brussels so that he could deal with his senior officers instead. ⁹¹ AAE MD 882, fo. 295, Brégy to Mazarin, Châlons, 8 May 1652; fo. 322, Bregy to Lorraine, [Châlons] 14 May 1652.

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way restrained the Lorraine troops’ customary violence and pillaging, and it was quickly apparent that the negotiations had bought no more than a few weeks of immobility. By early June Lorraine’s army had marched into France as far as Lagny, seemingly intending to support the princes’ army.⁹² On 2 June, Lorraine made his entry into Paris to confer directly with the princes while publicly asserting, to much acclaim, that his only aim was to work for a peace settlement between the warring parties.⁹³ What transformed this situation was the contingent impact of military events, which by the end of June had created the potential for the outright defeat of the princes’ forces. As the royal court moved by stages from Gien on 18 April to SaintGermain-en-Laye ten days later, Turenne and Hocquincourt’s army moved east as well, keeping between the court and the princes’ army. Turenne’s forces established themselves between Arpajon and Palaiseau, blocking the route both to Saint-Germain and the western and southern approaches to Paris. Here Turenne received some reinforcements, both new levies of troops and, as Montglat sourly noted, further experienced troops from the frontier garrisons, which were ‘left prey to the Spanish’.⁹⁴ None of these movements disturbed Tavannes and Clinchamp, who remained well fortified and well provisioned in Étampes. Indeed, complacency about the strength of their position led to the fatal mistake. Gaston d’Orléans’ daughter, Madame de Montpensier, planned to return from her mission to represent her father in the city of Orléans, where she had ensured that the city government remained in the hands of princely loyalists.⁹⁵ Her route back to Paris would take her past Étampes, then Arpajon and Palaiseau. Montpensier asked for safe conduct from Turenne, who replied that he would not merely provide her with safe conduct, but arrange for a guard of honour along the highway through Palaiseau. Tavannes and his officers, not to be outdone by this apparent gallantry on Turenne’s part, decided to deploy their troops in turn as a guard of honour along the earlier part of the duchess’s route through Étampes.⁹⁶ But while allocating a handful of troops to this assignment, Turenne secretly withdrew a substantial strike-force the previous night (3/4 May), which he led in person by a circuitous route behind Étampes. Waiting until the princes’ troops were deployed along the route and until Montpensier had passed through their parade, he then fell on the unsuspecting and unprepared forces assembled in the outskirts of the town. The surprise was as great as Condé’s attack at Bléneau, and the

⁹² AAE MD 883, fo. 2, Brégy to Mazarin, [Châlons], 1 June 1652. ⁹³ AAE MD 883, fo. 12, L’Hôpital to Mazarin, Paris, 3 June 1652; MD 883, fo. 22, Raulin to Brégy, Lagny, 4 June 1652: Lorraine claimed that he would have achieved the general peace within eight days. ⁹⁴ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 337. ⁹⁵ Montpensier, Mémoires, ii. 1–18. ⁹⁶ There are various different accounts of how the princes’ army came to be drawn up for Mademoiselle’s appearance at Étampes. Montpensier’s own account claims that Turenne first proposed the guard of honour: Mémoires, ii. 48–52.

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damage greater, since the troops fought hard but were unable to coordinate their resistance. The princes’ army suffered some 1,500–2,000 dead and prisoners, a very high proportion from amongst Clinchamp’s German veterans who had borne the brunt of the attack: all were experienced troops whom the princes could ill afford to lose.⁹⁷ The defeat was important psychologically: news of the battle was quickly published and disseminated in Paris and amongst the provincial elites.⁹⁸ Bluet reported that the people of Paris had gone from initial disbelief in the defeat, to vocal criticism of Condé for not having been with the army in person, to a realization that the military balance might have tipped against the princes.⁹⁹ Mazarin and Turenne saw the success as an opportunity to seize the military initiative, pressing forward with the entire army to blockade the remainder of the princes’ forces in Étampes.¹⁰⁰ There remained considerable risk: even after the losses of 4 May the princes’ army in Étampes still amounted to around 3,000–4,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry. They were defending themselves against Turenne’s army which, with recent reinforcements, was of around 6,000 infantry and 4,000 horse.¹⁰¹ Moreover, the obvious hazard of an over-large garrison—that it would deplete its supplies and munitions too quickly—did not apply to the forces in Étampes. Turenne was explicit, therefore, that he was not conducting a formal siege: he intended to blockade the princes’ forces and threaten them with defeat in open country if they tried to break out of the town. Meanwhile he anticipated that the blockade would facilitate the normal processes of attrition through disease, desertion, and shortage of forage for the cavalry.¹⁰² Turenne’s concerns about the operation proved well justified after the blockade began around 25 May. The defenders proved tough and resilient, launching numerous sorties and even firing on the young king himself when he was brought too close to the town in what was evidently a move to test the loyalty of the defenders.¹⁰³ Meanwhile, Turenne himself wrote of the difficulty of keeping his ⁹⁷ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 163–6; Tavannes, palpably embarrassed in his Mémoires, is unconvincingly wise after the event: 135–8; Turenne, i. 188–90, makes the point that the struggle was hard-fought, despite the element of surprise; see also Grimoard, Collection des lettres et mémoires . . . du maréchal de Turenne (2 vols; Paris, 1782), i. 215–20 ‘relation du combat d’Étampes’. ⁹⁸ Lettre du roi envoyée au maréchal de l’Hôpital, gouverneur de Paris, sur ce qui s’est passé entre les deux armées ès environ d’Étampes, de Saint-Germain, 6 mai 1652 (Paris, Imprimeurs ordinaires du roi, 1652); AAE MD 888, fo. 88, relation de la journée d’Étampes, 4 mai 1652. ⁹⁹ AAE MD 882, fo. 291, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 5 May 1652; the duchesse de Montpensier describes the impact that the news had on the duc de Nemours: Mémoires, ii. 57. ¹⁰⁰ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 175–7, letter of Turenne to Le Tellier, Palaiseau, 20 May 1652: provision of artillery and food for his army, stressing that the defenders in Étampes have abundant grain supplies. Turenne, i. 191. ¹⁰¹ Turenne, i. 191–2. ¹⁰² Ibid. ¹⁰³ Tavannes, 138–49, offers an heroic, unapologetic, and detailed account of the siege, prickly only about the stray cannon shot fired at the king which he claims was exaggerated by his enemies and ruined his post-Fronde career.

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own army supplied from a surrounding territory which had been thoroughly pillaged and devastated by earlier troop movements: shortages of everything from entrenching tools to munitions beset the encamped army.¹⁰⁴ It was already starting to appear that Turenne’s gamble might not pay off when news was received that Charles of Lorraine had thrown over his treaty with the king. Or rather, without formally abrogating his agreement with the king and Mazarin, he proved willing to make an additional deal with Orléans and Condé when he met them in Paris on 2 June. In the course of entertainments and military revues a deal for the relief of the princes’ army was struck. Under its terms the duke agreed to advance his army from Lagny to the outskirts of Étampes to lift Turenne’s blockade. This of course transformed the situation: Lorraine’s army numbered around 6,500 cavalry, 3,500 infantry, and 8 field cannon.¹⁰⁵ From the moment news of this treaty was received, the substantial forces inside Étampes had every incentive to intensify their resistance, and Turenne’s army ran the risk of being trapped in a pincer-grip between the two armies. When Lorraine’s army crossed the Seine and established themselves at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, the danger became imminent, and Turenne decided to abandon the blockade in order to confront Lorraine’s army.¹⁰⁶ Another round of frantic diplomatic negotiations launched by the court led to an even more generous territorial deal offered to Charles, with substantial further compensation in cash and jewels. In return Charles agreed to withdraw his forces from France, but also that a ten-day ceasefire would come into force, during which the princely and royal armies would disengage from around Étampes.¹⁰⁷ A suggestion from Mazarin that Turenne’s army could launch a knock-out assault on the princes’ army in Étampes before the ceasefire came into force was abruptly dismissed by Turenne as completely unfeasible.¹⁰⁸ On paper, this might be seen as a triumph for the princes: Turenne had been forced to abandon Étampes after 11–12 days of intensive fighting with the besieged forces, who had inflicted heavy casualties on his infantry.¹⁰⁹ But while they had evened up the military odds, this came at a high diplomatic and strategic cost. It seemed that the duke of Lorraine and his army had finally abandoned the princes’ cause, and from 16 June Charles began to withdraw his army across France in accordance with his treaty with the crown.¹¹⁰ Moreover, without

¹⁰⁴ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 204–5: letter of Turenne to Le Tellier, 30 May 1652. ¹⁰⁵ Aumale, Condé, vi. 169–72; des Robert, Charles IV et Mazarin, 458–63. ¹⁰⁶ Turenne, i. 195–8; Tavannes, Mémoires, 147–9. ¹⁰⁷ AAE MD 883, fos 36–8, Châteauneuf to the queen mother, and transcription of the terms for the settlement with Lorraine, [Saint-Germain], 6/7 June 1652; Chéruel, v. 119–20, Mazarin to abbé Fouquet, Melun, 5 June 1652; Des Robert, Charles IV et Mazarin, 464–5. ¹⁰⁸ AAE MD 883, fo. 40, Turenne to Mazarin, 6 June 1652. ¹⁰⁹ BN Ffr. 6707, fo. 181, Condé to Lenet, Paris, [c. 12 June 1652]. ¹¹⁰ AAE MD 883, fo. 86, comte de Quincy to Mazarin, 20 June 1652, reporting on how apparently successfully Lorraine had been bought out of his alliance with the princes.

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Lorraine’s support, and outnumbered by Turenne’s forces, it was not practical to hold the positions at Étampes, whose grain supplies and munitions were finally starting to run short. Condé took the inevitable decision, and on 16 June ordered Tavannes to march the entire army towards Paris.¹¹¹ Without any obvious strategy, Condé then simply lodged the army in the suburbs of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes. For the next couple of weeks Condé had breathing space, since Turenne’s instructions were to use his army to shadow Lorraine and to make sure that his army retreated along the prescribed route.¹¹² Shadowing Lorraine’s army took Turenne’s forces across to the other side of Paris, where they eventually established a camp at Dammartin. From here Turenne could again shelter the court, which had moved eastwards and then north from Melun to Lagny. At Lagny on 28 June the king received an additional 3,000 troops which, after repeated orders, had finally been brought out of the duchy of Lorraine by the governor, La FertéSenneterre. A few hours later the court moved on to Saint-Denis on the northwestern outskirts of Paris, where they were joined by the main body of Turenne’s army. With the duke of Lorraine seemingly out of the way, and with substantial numerical superiority, Turenne and La Ferté could think about confronting Condé’s army near Saint-Cloud; La Ferté took the first initiative, planning a route with his troops that would take him north of the city and over the Seine via a pontoon bridge, which he started to construct in the last days of June. For Condé the military situation which, a few weeks previously, had seemed overwhelmingly favourable had collapsed with the departure of Lorraine’s army. His own forces numbered around 6,000 troops, while the joint forces of Turenne and La Ferté were closer to 12,000.¹¹³ Aside from counting on some tactical misjudgement by the two royalist commanders, there were two other grounds for hope in this situation. One of the attempts to achieve a settlement currently in progress might offer a satisfactory compromise which could be seized to end the civil war. Charles of Lorraine might once again change sides, and/or the Spanish high command in Flanders might decide upon active intervention in France. Up to this point the Spanish had maintained the struggle in France by providing a small auxiliary force—Clinchamps’ Germans—and by subsidizing Charles of Lorraine to intervene on Condé’s behalf. The time had arguably come for a more wholehearted intervention by the army of Flanders, especially as the archduke Leopold-Wilhelm and his senior military commander, Alonso Pérez de Vivero, count of Fuensaldaña, had now achieved their first campaign objective, the recapture of Gravelines.¹¹⁴ Since then they had made preparatory moves in the ¹¹¹ Tavannes, Mémoires, 150–1. ¹¹² Turenne, i. 200–1; this was not a token gesture: the army was ordered to respond to the reports that Lorraine’s troops were ravaging Brie in defiance of their treaty with the crown: AAE MD 888, fo. 168, King’s declaration against the disorders of the (foreign) troops, 22 June 1652. ¹¹³ Aumale, Condé, vi. 182. ¹¹⁴ See ‘Dunkirk’ in Chapter 5.

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area around Dunkirk, but had not committed the army to a siege. As early as 1 June, Jacques Gaudin, one of Mazarin’s agents, had raised the concern that the Spanish would intervene directly to save the princes from defeat, and that the archduke had stated that he was prepared to leave a skeleton force to threaten Dunkirk so that the rest of the army of Flanders could enter France.¹¹⁵ By the middle of June this threat began to materialize as the Spanish army pivoted away from Dunkirk and moved down into Picardy, occupying the area around Honnecourt and Cambrai.¹¹⁶ Rumours immediately started to grow that the Spanish would move on Paris in support of Condé, and that a large force of cavalry was within days of arriving to change the military situation.¹¹⁷ Given the imminent prospect of Spanish support, Condé had every incentive to avoid an engagement with larger royal forces until the political and military situation had taken another turn. One way to avoid an unwanted combat would be to take his army within the gates of Paris; but at this stage Condé accepted that occupation of the capital would be a step too far. The prospect of another royal siege of the city, with an undisciplined princely army on the inside acting as the garrison, would appal the bourgeois of Paris and drain all remaining support from the princes’ cause. Entering the city did not seem viable, but by 1 July Condé was convinced that his army would be trapped if it remained at Saint-Cloud. La Ferté’s pontoon bridges and advance westwards would allow him to pin down the princes’ army in the suburbs. Meanwhile Turenne’s much larger force would work its way behind Condé’s positions via a much wider northerly arc round Paris. The princes’ army would be overwhelmed by a two-pronged assault in a location that offered little scope for retreat or defence in depth.¹¹⁸ Condé’s response, discussed at a council of war, was to propose moving the entire army eastward, past Paris, and over towards Charenton. Strategically located between the Seine and the Marne, Charenton was more easily defensible and would offer greater security; above all it would open the way towards the north and east, from where it was hoped Spanish relief forces would come.¹¹⁹ There were two possible routes around Paris, the first of which was more secure and involved marching to the south round the edge of Paris, through the suburbs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Marcel. The alternative was to the north, keeping close to Paris through the suburbs of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin. This was appealing both because it was more direct and because it allowed the troops to use the bridge at Saint-Cloud to cross the

¹¹⁵ AAE MD 883, fo. 5. ¹¹⁶ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 318, [interleaved note, no author or addressee], 11 June: Spanish army of 9,000–10,000 troops is around Cambrai. ¹¹⁷ Aumale, Condé, vi. 180; Grimoard, Lettres de Turenne, i. 522–3, King to Turenne, Melun, 21 June 1652. ¹¹⁸ Tavannes, Mémoires, 150–4. ¹¹⁹ Aumale, Condé, vi. 182–3.

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Seine and then destroy it behind them. This second route was duly chosen, and on the evening of 1 July the troops started to defile across the bridge at Saint-Cloud, and along the edge of Paris, past the firmly closed gates of the city. The fatal error in the plan was Condé’s excessively high opinion of Turenne’s generalship. He had convinced himself that the marshal would see the weakness of Condé’s position at Saint-Cloud and would move his troops round to exploit this—exactly as he had done when he ambushed the princes’ forces outside Étampes. Whether or not Turenne envisaged such a manoeuvre, he had not taken any steps to set it in motion by the evening of 1 July, when the bulk of his forces were still dispersed around the court at Saint-Denis. By the time that Condé discovered this, it was too late to avert disaster: his army had been advancing through the suburbs of Paris, and now ran into the numerically superior army of Turenne—exactly what he had attempted to avoid by leaving Saint-Cloud.¹²⁰ Any idea of reaching Charenton was now out of the question, and the best of the bad options for Condé was to draw up his army in front of the Porte Saint-Antoine, on the east side of Paris and overshadowed, behind the walls of the city, by the

¹²⁰ Tavannes, Mémoires, 155–8.

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Bastille. The location’s modest advantage—though in the event it saved many lives—was that the army could occupy a series of earthworks that had previously been constructed outside the gate to guard against the anticipated assault of the duke of Lorraine’s troops. These offered some potential to hold the square immediately in front of the gate against the three bifurcating roads that led outwards from Saint-Antoine. Behind Condé and his army stood the firmly closed gates of the city, and all that he had time to do after choosing the location was to deploy his infantry and cavalry within and around the earthworks before being blocked in by Turenne’s forces, who had deployed themselves across and between the three roads by 7 am, waiting for the order to attack. The situation on the morning of 2 July 1652 demonstrated the dramatic consequences of an individual’s actions. Twenty-four hours of panicky decisionmaking by Condé had created the possibility of total military defeat for one side in the civil war. If Condé and the entire leadership except Gaston d’Orléans, together with the rest of the princes’ army, were killed or captured outside the Porte SaintAntoine, then Mazarin could have achieved the kind of clear-cut, decisive triumph that so signally evaded him later in 1652. As expected, Condé and his troops put up a desperate and heroic struggle against the numerical advantage possessed by Turenne.¹²¹ Condé’s extraordinary leadership and tactical sense was never in question: he played a difficult hand with consummate skill, well aware that if the army was to survive it had to take the offensive. Turenne argued against an early assault on Condé’s positions, preferring to await the arrival of La Ferté’s substantial additional corps and the eight medium-weight artillery pieces which had the capacity to render Condé’s positions untenable.¹²² However, he was overruled by the court, in conjunction with many of the officers, who saw an opportunity for a heroic triumph in front of the king before additional troops arrived to share the glory. But though badly timed and costly, the successive assaults had steadily weakened Condé’s forces in the hours before the arrival of La Ferté rendered total defeat seemingly inevitable. The unpredictable twist to the account was of course the role of Orleans’ daughter, the duchesse de Montpensier. Heavily invested in the princes’ party, she was exasperated by her father’s weakness and indecisiveness, which had rarely been so evident in his entire morally compromised life as at this moment on 2 July. Gaston was nowhere near the princes’ army, but indisposed and inaccessible in his Luxembourg palace. He was well aware that the destruction of his own and Condé’s army would be followed by a settling of scores by the mazarinists and

¹²¹ The best and most detailed account remains that of Aumale, Condé, vi. 185–98, who suggests that the balance of advantage by midday still lay with Condé’s defence of the remaining earthworks; see also the lengthy account in Montglat, Mémoires, l. 348–52. ¹²² Turenne, i. 204–5; Tavannes, Mémoires, 161–2.

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the crown which would deprive him of status, power, and security, but this seems to have paralyzed his decision-making all the more decisively.¹²³ His daughter’s celebrated action in hectoring him to draft a letter ordering the opening of the Porte Saint-Antoine shaped a situation in which Orléans himself would not have acted.¹²⁴ More significantly, as Orest Ranum notes, the order was obeyed by the prévôt des marchands although it countermanded his previous instruction to the garde bourgeoise to keep the gates closed at all costs.¹²⁵ This necessarily casts doubt on the information regularly sent to Mazarin by his agents that Paris was on the verge of a royalist uprising by summer 1652.¹²⁶ Between unconditional victory for the still richly hated Mazarin or accepting the remnants of the princes’ army within the city walls, it seems clear that enough of the political class actively preferred the latter option. Less doubt surrounds Mademoiselle’s even more notorious action as an ‘Amazon of the Fronde’, her taking control of the gun batteries of the Bastille to ensure that they provided a last round of covering fire while Condé’s troops filed into the city through the Porte Saint-Antoine. The governorship of the Bastille had been held by the parlementaire hero of the 1648 Fronde, Pierre Broussel, who had demitted the post to his son, the marquis de La Louvière. La Louvière needed little encouragement to fire on the royalist troops, and to provide the opportunity for Condé to withdraw.¹²⁷ Saved from death or surrender, the survivors of Condé’s army passed through the streets of Paris, crossing the Seine by the Pont Neuf, then exited Paris by the Porte Dauphiné. The bulk of the forces were settled in the suburb of Saint-Marcel, adequately defended against another royalist attack and with the troops effectively free to move in and out of the city.¹²⁸ Losses from the engagement had been high on both sides: around 800 dead from Turenne’s army, including very heavy casualties amongst the elite regiments of the gardes françaises and the gardes suisses, and about 1,000 dead among the princes’ army.¹²⁹ Indicative of the

¹²³ Mademoiselle claimed that it was only her argument that it was too late to save himself by making a separate treaty with the court that finally persuaded Orléans to act: Montpensier, Mémoires, i. 92. ¹²⁴ Vergnes, Frondeuses, 152–5, for the most recent discussion of Montpensier’s role. ¹²⁵ Ranum, Fronde, 328. ¹²⁶ The arguments that the city was on the verge of a royalist uprising in the second half of June are speculative and unspecific, and seem more designed to elicit favour from Mazarin and the court: see for example AAE MD 883, fo. 101, anonymous, but seems likely to have come from the ever fertile imagination of the abbé Basile Fouquet, Paris, 23 June 1652; similar in Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 201. ¹²⁷ Aumale, Condé, vi. 206, makes the point that the volley from the guns of the Bastille was very late in the engagement, and had little military significance; its main effect was to signal the city’s hostility to the royal army. One eyewitness account of the battle even suggests that the story was a fabrication, and the fire came from Condé’s retreating troops: AAE MD 883, fo. 128, anonymous account ‘pour M. Dugas’, Paris, 3 July 1652. ¹²⁸ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 252; Tavannes, Mémoires, 163; AAE MD 888, fo. 177, L’Hôpital to Brienne, Paris, 3 July 1652: describes city as occupied by the princes’ troops. ¹²⁹ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 252.

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intensity of the fighting, an exceptional number of those who survived had been wounded. Amongst the casualties in Turenne’s army was Mazarin’s nephew, Paul Mancini, who died of his wounds on 18 July, wrecking Mazarin’s best hope for his own succession.¹³⁰ The attritional price of the battle for Condé’s limited military resources was high. But in all other respects the situation looked far better for Condé than for the royalists. The princely forces were scarred and battered, but certainly not demoralized: they had acquitted themselves against the king’s elite troops with distinction, and had retired in good order. Moreover, the battle had achieved what months of careful diplomacy and management would probably not have done, bringing about the entry of the princes’ army into Paris and a direct complicity between city and princes against Mazarin and the royal army. The likelihood of foreign support was growing by the day, and the news of the royalist failure to crush the princes’ army could have unpredictable effects across the provinces. On the royalist side, there was a sense of stunned dismay; the window of opportunity that Condé’s miscalculation opened had been slammed shut a few hours later. A battle which took place in full view of the court at St Denis, and had seemingly brought Mazarin and his faction within a hair’s breadth of outright victory, had been abruptly snatched away. Especially disconcerting was the hard evidence that Paris had not just acquiesced in the opening of the gates, but had joined in resisting the royal army. It is a gross misrepresentation to argue that the failure of 2 July ‘merely prolonged for a few months the struggles which desolated France’.¹³¹ The innumerable compromises on which a settlement was finally achieved in October, and still later in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace, and across the state, looked nothing like the pacification that would have been achieved by an outright military victory in early July. Everyone knew that an opportunity had passed, and the necessary consequence was a return to negotiation. This was, after all, why the bourgeois of Paris had acquiesced in permitting Condé and his army to enter Paris: not because they wished to facilitate an outright victory for the princes, but to work towards the compromise settlement that was judged the only satisfactory resolution to the conflict. This had been the widely shared assumption and objective before the events of the Porte Saint-Antoine, and became the principal concern again as the summer continued. The difference was that these negotiations continued in a situation that grew ever closer to a military and political stalemate.

¹³⁰ Conrart stressed Paul Mancini’s excellent personal qualities, and speculates that Mazarin had hoped to establish him as a favourite of the young king: Mémoires, xlviii. 155–6. The other nephews, Philippe Mancini, born 1641, and Alphonse, born 1644, were too young for Mazarin to have a sense of their character and capacities. ¹³¹ Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 218.

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The Peace that Failed How had matters come to this bloody combat in July 1652? Between the battle of Bléneau and the Porte Saint-Antoine, the number of initiatives to achieve a peaceful settlement of the conflict launched by Mazarin himself, the crown, the princes, and innumerable third parties was unprecedented. The stakes for all the parties in obtaining a settlement were sufficiently high that few if any of these initiatives can be dismissed as empty gestures, public relations operations, or simply a product of Mazarin’s wily ability to distract and divide his enemies by weaving tangled skeins of insincere and empty negotiations. Many—probably most—of the political class remained convinced that a military and political settlement was on the verge of being concluded, whether domestically or as part of a larger ‘general peace’ with Spain.¹³² In the aftermath of Bléneau back in April, the position of the princes was clear: from a position of strength, but aware of the fragility of their good fortune, this was the moment to pursue negotiations vigorously. What became the main issue at this stage was the shared conviction of the princes and their party, backed by the sovereign courts in Paris, that they were strong enough to demand the unconditional exile of Mazarin as the basis of any settlement. The princes gave further cause for concern to Mazarin’s faction with their assertions, made in Parlement, that they wished to deprive ‘all Mazarin’s adherents’ of power as well; the significance of this formulation was recognized at the time, whether as a bid to ensure the end of unaccountable ministerial rule from any source, or as a potential licence for a witch-hunt of all those previously associated with Mazarin.¹³³ It was therefore the princes’ party who took the first initiatives in contacting the court with opening proposals for a settlement; as ever, of course, success would depend not just on the proposals but upon those who were charged with the negotiation. The choice of the comte de Chavigny, whose own desire to replace Mazarin as first minister was notorious, and the duc de Rohan, who was inconsequential, tepidly supported by the duc d’Orléans, and generally despised for his surrender of Angers, was not propitious. The third member of the delegation— Orléans’ perceptive and capable secretary, Nicolas Goulas—could have been a better choice from the outset, but was outranked by his two fellow negotiators. Having travelled to the court at Saint-Germain on 25 April, the negotiators were shown into the presence of the king, the queen mother and Mazarin. This immediately produced consternation, since their instructions were explicit that ¹³² The references to the imminence of a settlement are far too numerous to be listed, but those who spoke confidently of negotiations that were about to bear fruit included diplomats, ministers, all the factions in Paris, provincial agents, courtiers, and Condé and Mazarin themselves. ¹³³ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 476, records that even in the Parlement many were exercised by this notion of ‘adherents’, which could potentially extend as far as the queen mother. See also Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 325; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 202; Vallier, iii. 200–1.

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they must simply stipulate the cardinal’s exile and not deal with him in any way. The consternation increased when the king and queen abandoned them to a discussion with Mazarin. In fact, the ensuing discussion lasted four hours, and quickly abandoned the exile of Mazarin as a precondition of talks.¹³⁴ Instead, Chavigny was won over by the proposal that government should be restored to a council similar to that stipulated in 1643 by Louis XIII for the regency, in which Chavigny of course would hold a key position, although so also would the princes of the blood. In addition Mazarin proposed that the coterminous peace negotiations with Spain should be pursued jointly by Mazarin and Chavigny. Jean Vallier’s journal records that immediately following this meeting Mazarin reported optimistically to the king, queen, and royal council, and that no one doubted that peace was either already settled, or at least far advanced. Vallier certainly casts doubt on the view that the negotiations were no more than Mazarin’s cynical attempt to set Chavigny against the princes.¹³⁵ In fact the problems lay with the princes’ camp: stirred up by the cardinal de Retz, who was deeply concerned at the prospect of a peace settlement reached without his involvement and likely to favour Chavigny in the role that Retz coveted, Gaston d’Orléans was incited to reject the terms on the grounds that the negotiators had defied their essential instruction, which was to hold firm on the exile of Mazarin.¹³⁶ Once Orléans adopted this stance, Condé was forced to toe the line or appear to be double-crossing the parlementaires and the anti-Mazarin party in Paris. Moreover, enough hostile speculation was thrown up about Chavigny’s motivations to cause a considerable cooling of relations between him and Condé.¹³⁷ Yet even these concerted efforts to discredit the proposals did not prevent rumours sweeping across Paris that a settlement was near to conclusion; Jacques Gaudin wrote to Mazarin, reporting that Retz and his party were in despair at the prospect. He added plaintively, in what would become a regular complication to the pursuit of a settlement, that he hoped ‘loyal supporters’ of the crown and Mazarin would receive some consideration in whatever peace settlement was achieved.¹³⁸ The main utility of these negotiations came from recognizing the ineluctable truth that the queen mother, having again become used to having Mazarin by her side as her minister-favourite, would never willingly consent to his permanent exile. Whatever harsh feelings Mazarin may have felt about his neglect and marginalization by the queen during his exile, he dissimulated well, and by April/May he had rebuilt his impregnable position as Anne’s indispensable, ¹³⁴ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 213. ¹³⁵ Vallier, iii. 216–17; see also BN Ffr. 17,470, fo. 162v-163, Troubles de France sous la Regence de la Reyne Anne d’Autriche (ND). ¹³⁶ Vallier, Journal, iii. 217–18: who presents it as a conspiracy between Retz, the duchesse de Chevreuse, and Châteauneuf. ¹³⁷ Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 193–4. ¹³⁸ AAE MD 882, fo. 268, Paris, 28 April 1652.

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solicitous and flattering advisor—the minister whom she would risk her son’s state to preserve.¹³⁹ Subsequent attempts at negotiations acknowledged that beneath the familiar anti-Mazarin rhetoric, the key to a deal lay in proposing a formula that might imply exile but with an assurance of return at some point a few months later, whether to resume a role in the royal council or to be sent off to hold a place de sûreté or a bishopric.¹⁴⁰ This was the assumption behind Jean Hérauld de Gourville’s subsequent mission from the princes to the court. He carried a lengthy and detailed shopping list of demands by the princes for themselves and their allies, including the governorship of Provence for Conti, and for Orléans and Condé to be the negotiators in a treaty with Spain. In return Condé agreed to lay down his arms, to renounce treaties with foreign powers, and for Mazarin to return to France after a token exile of three months or as soon as a treaty with Spain had been negotiated.¹⁴¹ The impediment here was not generated by Mazarin, since although the price of the settlement was high, these were all demands for place, pensions, and compensation that Mazarin would take seriously, haggle over, and very substantially accept in later negotiations; essentially he was not concerned by the material cost of a settlement provided it guaranteed his continued position. It was the duc de Bouillon, like his brother Turenne now firmly aligned with Mazarin’s party after their controversial promotion, who voiced the demands of the loyalists: if the princes’ followers were to be so extravagantly rewarded for disloyalty, what about Bouillon’s claims on the duchy of Albret, which he had been promised as part of the deal to settle the claims of the Tour d’Auvergne? As Albret needed to be bought out from Conde’s possession, and Condé’s relations with the brothers were now poisonous, there was no chance that the prince would agree to a concession in that direction.¹⁴² A further round of negotiations was pursued through the mediation of IsabelleAngélique de Montmorency-Bouteville, duchesse de Châtillon, working from the same assumptions that Mazarin’s exile would be negotiable in return for enough concessions to consolidate the position of the princes’ faction against any subsequent revanchisme. The failure of Châtillon to make any immediate progress seems largely to do with the after-effects of Turenne’s success at Étampes on 4 May, and Mazarin’s belief for a few weeks that it might be possible comprehensively to defeat the princes’ army through Turenne’s blockade.¹⁴³

¹³⁹ See the reported conversation with the queen mother in Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 164–5. ¹⁴⁰ AAE CP Venise 70, fo. 137, Argenson to de La Haye, Venice, 10 April 1652, reporting rumours that Mazarin is going to become a priest, and will then obtain the bishopric of Metz ‘pour s’y retirer’. ¹⁴¹ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 150–3; Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 328–30. ¹⁴² La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 153–4. La Rochefoucauld does not argue that Mazarin invoked Bouillon merely to block the negotiations, but places this in the context of the general difficulty of balancing demands on both sides. ¹⁴³ Ibid, lii. 157–8; in contrast, Châtillon’s role is treated disdainfully by Mme de Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 330–2, who judged her mission a vanity project, inspired by her rivalry with the duchesse de Longueville.

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Châtillon’s role in the negotiations was part of an evolving phenomenon, much remarked upon by contemporaries, of using courtly women as intermediaries.¹⁴⁴ These could be aristocratic grandees like Châtillon, the duchesse d’Aiguillon, the Princesse Palatine (Anne de Gonzague), or that familiar intriguer, the duchesse de Chevreuse.¹⁴⁵ But they could also come from a lower courtly rank—women like Mme d’Ampus¹⁴⁶ and Mme de Puisieux.¹⁴⁷ The advantage of such intermediaries was that they had a lower political profile, and were less likely to be key power brokers in their own right. The role certainly gave them a great deal of political influence and agency to advance their own interests, but crucially they were recognized as having a less direct role in the post-settlement political order, and were more likely therefore to broker the demands and expectations of both sides neutrally. A further complication in the peace process—by no means intractable, but which could not be avoided at least in the initial stages of the negotiations—was that Condé’s treaty with Spain formally bound him not to make any settlement in France unless this were part of a general peace between France and Spain. In return, the king of Spain had undertaken not to make peace with France until Condé’s domestic demands had been satisfied. This of course brought the additional requirement that all negotiations for a settlement in France had to be accompanied by a formula for an international settlement between the two monarchies in which Condé would need to feature. That it was an encumbering piece of additional negotiating baggage not carried by the duc d’Orléans heightened concern that the court might seek to strike a separate deal with Gaston. Condé’s great biographer, Henri, duc d’Aumale, described the Spanish treaty as a poisoned ‘shirt of Nessus’: once Condé had made the alliance it proved impossible to shed, and all of his subsequent scope for manoeuvre, the possibilities of negotiation or escape, were hindered by its deadly embrace. Yet the impediment that the treaty posed should not be exaggerated. The example of Turenne in both 1649 and 1651 shows how such foreign commitments could be shrugged off. At a certain point in the negotiations with the crown and Mazarin, Condé would be able to abrogate his commitments to Spain. But to be seen to do so early in the negotiations by dropping the requirement that the two settlements be pursued conjointly would be fatal; his enemies would make immediate

¹⁴⁴ Vergnes, Frondeuses, 190–273. ¹⁴⁵ Chéruel, v. 115, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, 25 May 1652, on the role of Chevreuse in negotiating a settlement with the Duke of Lorraine; Vergnes, Frondeuses, 219–27 on Chevreuse. ¹⁴⁶ AAE MD 881, fo. 232, Bluet to Mazarin, 7 Feb. 1652: Mme Ampus was involved in negotiations with Gaston d’Orléans through her friendship with the duchesse d’Orléans. ¹⁴⁷ Charlotte d’Étampes-Valençay, widow of the vicomte de Puisieux, sécretaire d’état under Louis XIII: first began acting as an intermediary between Mazarin and Condé in October 1651: Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 22–34; deployed in negotiations again in summer 1652: AAE MD 883, fo. 78, Puisieux to Mazarin, 18 June 1652.

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political capital out of the omission and Condé would jeopardize any future Spanish support.¹⁴⁸ This account should not imply that the princes were actively seeking a settlement while Mazarin and the court were simply the passive recipients of these initiatives, which for one reason or another failed to develop. The court was also actively engaged. Mazarin, once it became apparent that his unconditional exile was merely a first base for the princes, was certainly keen to maintain the momentum of negotiations. Following generalized hopes that the duke of Lorraine might broker a settlement,¹⁴⁹ a series of figures were despatched with more specific briefs from the court to Paris and back during May in an elaborate and multi-faceted shuttle-diplomacy. Those involved included Richelieu’s niece, the duchesse d’Aiguillon; the duc de Damville; the English exile-courtier Lord Montague; Mme de Puisieux; and Henri de Beringhen, first equerry of the king.¹⁵⁰ That these initiatives were well advanced can be seen from an informative correspondence between Chavigny and the courtier and royal councillor, marshal Plessis-Praslin. A settlement was being discussed not only in fine detail, but with surprising frankness. Chavigny doubted, for example, that Condé and Mazarin could remain in agreement for long after a treaty, but at the same time emphasized that both had a lot personally invested in making a settlement work, quite apart from the obvious public benefits of reuniting the royal family, restoring the king’s authority, and bringing peace to the realm.¹⁵¹ The growing flexibility amongst the princes themselves about the need to accept the return of Mazarin stood in contrast to the continued hard line pursued by deputations of the Parlement and from Paris. On 6 May the deputies of the Parlement returned to Saint-Germain formally to read out remonstrances containing the same condemnation of Mazarin and demand for his perpetual exile.¹⁵² Further deputations, carrying much the same uncompromising message, continued through May. Even here the court’s response suggests a willingness to try to win round the parlementaires and the city to an eventual settlement. A printed response from the king of 4 June stressed the need to reunite the royal family and bring peace, and that the best means to achieve this was the establishment of a conference, involving Orléans and Condé, and deputations from the Parlement and other bodies, the king, and his council.¹⁵³ Vallier reported that ‘there was no

¹⁴⁸ Aumale, Condé, vi. 161–6: Aumale emphasizes the dead weight of the Spanish treaty, but does demonstrate (163) that the Spanish were anyway growing suspicious of Condé’s commitment. ¹⁴⁹ Chéruel, v. 97, Mazarin to Beaujeu, Saint-Germain, 28 April 1652. For Lorraine’s attitude to peace: AAE MD 883, fo. 22, Raulin to Brégy, Lagny, 4 June 1652. ¹⁵⁰ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 219, 222, 224, 225; AAE MD 883, fo. 78, Puisieux to Mazarin, 18 June 1652; MD 889, fo. 266, Beringhen to Chavigny, ND, but refers to Chavigny’s letter of 31 May 1652. ¹⁵¹ AAE MD 889, fo. 272, Chavigny to Du Plessis, Paris, June 1652. ¹⁵² Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 217; Vallier, iii. 225. ¹⁵³ AAE MD 889, fo. 262, Reply made to the Deputies of the Parlement of Paris, by the King, at Melun, 4 June 1652.

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one of good intention in Paris who did not receive the proposal with great joy’, but then described the response in Parlement on 10 June, where the line was maintained, even amongst the great majority of moderates who wanted a settlement, that the precondition of any such conference should be the perpetual exile of Mazarin.¹⁵⁴ This, Vallier noted, ‘did not please the princes’; they and their negotiators had regularly moved beyond this uncompromising rhetoric during May, and Mazarin’s conditional return had tacitly been accepted as a necessary part of a much more wide-ranging settlement. Pragmatism amongst the main actors was gaining momentum: an anonymous draft of a proposal for a settlement, dated 4 June, stipulated that Mazarin would absent himself from court for six weeks. Meanwhile Condé would ask Madrid to despatch a minister empowered to negotiate a general peace. Mazarin would return after six weeks and if the Spanish had refused to agree peace preliminaries by then, Condé would formally abandon his treaty with them, and the details of the domestic settlement would be agreed.¹⁵⁵ The military uncertainties and confusion of the second half of June slowed the pace of negotiations, above all as the court briefly contemplated the prospect of an outright military victory.¹⁵⁶ But certain patterns were becoming evident in the peace-making process. It was now clear that the princes would in practice accept Mazarin’s continued presence in France—after a token exile—in return for enough concessions to embed their own power and that of their party.¹⁵⁷ The besetting problem of negotiating a solution had now become the matter of rewarding supporters. This was not primarily because of the resources involved, though Mazarin might baulk at the political implications of a few of the demands made by the princes. Mazarin’s main concern was the impact that such a buying off of his opponents would have on his own party, allies, and clients. And it was not just about how the cake of rent-seeking opportunities should be divided between enemies, friends, and those intending to bargain over their support. The most dangerous issue, and the cause of formidable problems that were to continue long after Condé had left France and entered Spanish service, was that of relative status, and the disruption caused to existing hierarchies and expectations by massive hand-outs of military office, provincial and high-ranking governorships, and, above all, titles at ducal and princely level. Mazarin was trapped between a rock and a hard place in this matter: gaining a settlement was vital, ¹⁵⁴ Vallier, iii. 258–60; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 234–5. ¹⁵⁵ AAE MD 883, fo. 27, no author or addressee, 4 June 1652. ¹⁵⁶ Chéruel, v. 131, 135, Mazarin to abbé Fouquet, Melun, 21/29 June: the princes’ demands are now excessive and prejudicial to the king, and can never be conceded. ¹⁵⁷ For example, AAE MD 882, fo. 325, Gaudin to Mazarin, 15 May 1652; MD 1636 (Languedoc), fo. 72, Maugiron to Mazarin, Toulouse, 12 June 1652; MD 883, fo 66, François Rouxel de Médavy, bp of Séez, to Mazarin, 15 June 1652; AAE CP Venise 70, fo. 150, Argenson to de La Haye, [Venice], June 1652, assuming that king and deputies from the Parlement have accepted Mazarin’s exile as the basis of the next stage in achieving a settlement.

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but the implications of rewarding one side immoderately threatened to alienate precisely those people whose loyalty he still needed, and who could not be adequately compensated when their primary concern was about preservation or advancement of status, not material gain. Mazarin was no stranger to this dilemma, but since his return in January the situation had intensified. This was notably because of his decision to buy the loyalty of the Tour d’Auvergne brothers with the package of territorial compensation, and their elevation to the rank of princes étrangers, placing them in status above all those ranked as ducs et pairs.¹⁵⁸ This was especially provoking to the established ducs et pairs since they had already suffered a loss of status from the surge of ducal creations that had been going on since 1648: twenty-one new duchies had been erected in favour of those whose political or military support was sought—as many as in the previous twenty-five years.¹⁵⁹ Buying off Bouillon and Turenne was a decision which probably saved Mazarin, since without it Turenne would have joined Condé’s revolt.¹⁶⁰ But the volatile legacy of dissatisfaction continued to grow through the year, shaping Mazarin’s relations with key allies such as the duc d’Épernon and his son Candale, with Mercoeur, and with the comte d’Harcourt. The disruptive cost of obtaining a settlement gave Mazarin cause for concern, but it was no less a problem for Condé. The princes were equally trapped by the expectations of their followers and allies, aware that cutting a deal with the court that excluded a large proportion of supporters from the rewards of a settlement would poison relations with people whose backing they would continue to need after the peace. All of this complicated the process of peace-seeking, but certainly did not lead to its abandonment. Quite the contrary: as the military stalemate between the two parties hardened, so the collateral damage from the continued unresolved strife became ever more terrible. The price paid both in terms of the subsistence and survival of the French people, and in the outright collapse of France’s legacy of foreign policy success, was too high to ignore the urgent need for a settlement before even worse befell. Indeed, negotiating positions and demands that had seemed irreconcilable in April and May were being considered in detail by September and October; the sticking points had been reduced to a handful of

¹⁵⁸ The title duc et pair indicated that the original grant of a dukedom had subsequently been registered as a ‘peerage’ by the Parlement of Paris. This registration raised the status of the duchy above the (small number) of simple dukedoms; moreover, the date of registration established the seniority of the duché-pairie. See Labatut, Ducs et pairs, 41–88. ¹⁵⁹ Mazarin and the queen encountered a well-entrenched argument that such registrations could not take place during a royal minority; in the event they persuaded the Parlement to register eleven of the new titles: C. Levantal, Ducs et Pairs et duchés-pairies laïques à l’époque moderne (1519–1790) (Paris, 1996); J-F Dubost, ‘Anne d’Autriche’, 84. ¹⁶⁰ See ‘Condé’s Failure to Consolidate His Position’ in Chapter 3.

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essentially symbolic issues, seemingly requiring just one more round of concessions by both sides.

Stalemate and Mazarin’s Second Exile In mid-June, and after Lorraine had abandoned his support for the princes, the possibility of crushing Condé’s army may have encouraged the court to put the process of negotiation on hold. Three weeks later, and the day after the battle outside the Porte Saint-Antoine, a different mood reigned. Turenne, though already under attack from ill-informed courtiers for not pressing the attack on Condé’s troops harder, was brutally realistic about the situation in which the royalist party now found themselves.¹⁶¹ He wrote in his memoirs that his advice to the royal council was explicit: it was essential to make peace immediately, and ‘provided that the king’s own authority emerged intact from the negotiations . . . then we cannot give him (Condé) too much in order to extract ourselves from this affair.’¹⁶² Turenne was already thinking of the Spanish advance into France to prop up Condé’s position, and was aware that once Condé had confirmation of the substance of this intervention, his attitude to negotiations would certainly harden. In reality, the opportunity was probably always narrower than Turenne had anticipated. Indeed, with some irony, it had been on 3 July, the day after the battle at the Porte Saint-Antoine, that news of the Spanish advance towards Paris was confirmed. That evening Condé wrote to Marsin in Bordeaux that the main Army of Flanders, some 17,000 troops, would be in France within 8–10 days.¹⁶³ Even more alarming to Turenne was Longueville’s refusal to permit the royal army and the court to move into Normandy. The move would offer considerable advantages: it removed the court from the immediate danger of being trapped between Condé’s forces in Paris and the Spanish advance down through Champagne. On the other hand, it did not abandon the north-east of France to enemy invasion, and could threaten a Spanish advance with a flanking attack. Moreover, Normandy remained a rich source of recruits, resources, and money, which could be used to rebuild the royal army quickly and effectively. The duc de Longueville, however, asserted that the population of Normandy could not and would not sustain the presence of the royal army in the province. As for moving the court to Rouen, Longueville pointed to the strength of frondeur sentiment and argued that the presence of Mazarin would make it impossible to guarantee the

¹⁶¹ Aumale, Condé, vi. 211; criticism that was also voiced by Vallier, iii. 312–13. ¹⁶² Turenne, i. 207. ¹⁶³ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 21, Condé to Marsin, [Paris] 3 July; AAE MD 883, fo. 128, ‘pour M. Dugas’, 3 July 1652: the archduke was now only a few days away from Paris with 10,000 troops.

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safety of the king in Rouen.¹⁶⁴ The crown could force the issue, subjecting the province to military occupation and requisitioning, but Longueville calculated that public outrage across Normandy, combined with continued uncertainty about his own political stance and his attitude to the princes, would make this unlikely. Meanwhile, Longueville offered the sop of raising additional revenues on behalf of the crown, and even permitting some recruitment to take place in Normandy.¹⁶⁵ Longueville’s refusal to offer Normandy to the court and army as an operational base was a serious blow. Apart from Normandy, the options for the court were limited. Events in Paris ruled out any attempt to regain the capital; another possibility was to move south with a small part of the army though Burgundy and on to Lyon.¹⁶⁶ But Turenne’s military arithmetic made this option no more attractive than remaining at Saint-Denis: the royal army was of around 8,000 men, that of the princes since the battle around 5,000, but the Spanish, who seemed certain to be joined by the army of the duke of Lorraine, brought at least another 20,000 troops into the frame.¹⁶⁷ The collective view was that for the court to withdraw to Lyon would leave the whole of north-east France open to the Spanish—precisely what relocating to Normandy had sought to avoid. After further debate which sought to reduce the court’s vulnerability without removing the army from the theatre of operations, the decision was made on 17 July to move the court to Pontoise, to the north-west of Paris, while the bulk of the army would move forwards to Compiègne to try to block the expected Spanish advance.¹⁶⁸ The mood at the court was grim and demoralized, and events in Paris offered no relief. The day after the arrival of Condé’s army in the city saw an even more violent upsurge of anti-Mazarin sentiment. Fears of a bread shortage if the royal army were to block the supplies from Gonesse led to increased prices on 3 July. This in turn generated disorder: rowdy and violent supporters of the princes threatened violence against anyone who was not wearing a badge or bouquet of straw to denote their allegiance.¹⁶⁹ Although the bourgeois had saved the princes’ army by opening the city gates, the princes now needed to persuade them to provide the material support to feed and pay the existing troops and to permit recruitment to restore the army.

¹⁶⁴ Turenne, i. 206–7. ¹⁶⁵ Recognized gratefully by Mazarin: Chéruel, v. 127–9, Mazarin to La Croisette, Melun, 18 June 1652; Logié, Fronde en Normandie, iii. 116–18, 127–8: he proposed 400,000 livres. ¹⁶⁶ Turenne, i. 206. ¹⁶⁷ Turenne, i. 206; BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 156, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 31 July 1652: calculated the combined forces of the Spanish, the duke of Lorraine, and the troops of the princes together as around 24,000 effectives. ¹⁶⁸ Turenne, i. 207–9: Turenne’s language speaks much of the state of mind of the court, with its repeated use of phrases like ‘only remaining recourse’, ‘lost if we don’t’, ‘no other way to save the state except’. ¹⁶⁹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 246.

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On 4 July, Condé and Orléans proposed to address the assembled city authorities at a meeting which had already been proposed by the prévôt des marchands, but deferred from 1 July because of the dramatic events of the last few days. The assembly was to take place at the Hôtel de Ville on the afternoon of 4 July, and twelve deputies from the respectable bourgeois and the sovereign courts from each quarter were to be elected. Condé was well aware that last time he entered Paris, a similar assembly at the Hôtel de Ville (19–21 April) was allowed to pass into the hands of moderates who wanted to maintain the city’s neutrality and loyalty to the king, and that as a result no explicit commitment had been made to support the princes.¹⁷⁰ No chances were to be taken this time. Condé was clear that he and his followers had committed themselves to defend the city, at heavy cost, against the ‘tyranny of Mazarin’, and it was now for the city to reciprocate this commitment with proper support for the princes’ party and an explicit distancing from disruptive third parties like the duchesse de Chevreuse and the cardinal de Retz.¹⁷¹ Condé and Orléans did not attend at the opening of the meeting, but arrived some four hours later. Meanwhile the delegates had raised their concerns about the disorder of the soldiery and the miseries to which the capital had been reduced, and then moved on to the reading of a letter officially delivered from the king during the afternoon. The letter condemned the princes in general, and the city in particular, for having opened the Porte Saint-Antoine, while conveniently but improbably attributing that action to the Paris mob. It stressed the king’s goodwill for the city nonetheless, and affirmed his willingness to allow the passage of grain and bread into the city. The letter got a mixed response, and led to some fractious assertions and counter-assertions amongst the deputies. The only consensus was that the king should be humbly supplicated to return to Paris, though with the explicit proviso that this did not include an invitation to Mazarin.¹⁷² Outside in the streets of Paris, the unrest that had started the day before was growing more intense and menacing, and large numbers of the princes’ supporters were gathered in the place de Grève outside the Hôtel de Ville. These, it later became apparent, included armed soldiers from some of the princes’ House regiments. The crowd had been standing in intense summer heat for up to five hours and had passed the time drinking wine, so that most were dangerously inebriated by the end of the afternoon. When, to the cheers of this mob, Orléans, Condé, and Beaufort arrived at the Hôtel de Ville around 6 pm it was ostensibly to thank the citizens of Paris for their action on 2 July; however, it was also to assess the mood of the meeting, and to discover whether they had committed to a ¹⁷⁰ See Condé, Paris and the Prince’s Army in Chapter 4. ¹⁷¹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 246–7; Vallier, iii. 314–16; AAE MD 883, fo 136, Full account of the proceedings at the Hôtel de Ville, 4 July 1652. ¹⁷² Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 247–8; E. Maugis, ‘La journée du 4 juillet 1652 à l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris. Relation de Pierre Lallemant’, Revue historique 133 (1920), 55–72, pp. 64–6, stresses that the strongly anti-Mazarin sentiment extended to the moderates.

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political and material union with the princes.¹⁷³ Orléans made a brief statement about their determination to force the crown to agree to the exile of Mazarin by whatever means necessary, and trusted that the city would cooperate fully in this aim; this speech was briefly seconded by Condé. The princes then left, and shortly afterwards the attack on the Hôtel began, both by the mob in the place de Grève and from the muskets of well-positioned soldiers in the surrounding buildings. There was broad consensus amongst contemporaries and later historians that the subsequent ‘Massacre of the Hôtel de Ville’ was an action premeditated and organized by the princes; the only real question was whether the extent of the violence and destruction was planned, or whether Condé, Beaufort, and Orléans simply set a general movement in motion which, even without fatalities, would have increased the level of threat to their opponents in the city.¹⁷⁴ The evidence from the positioned musketeers and the incitement of the mob suggests that the princes were prepared to strike ruthlessly, and expected fatalities from uncontrolled violence.¹⁷⁵ Contemporary accounts leave no doubt of the terror and intimidation unleashed, not merely for those trapped in the Hôtel de Ville but amongst all those members of the bourgeois who had reason to fear being identified as mazarins. And whether by calculation or random violence, many of those killed, wounded, or assaulted in trying to escape from the Hôtel were actually supporters of the princes.¹⁷⁶ The total number of dead was around 100, and the event evoked immediate comparisons with the trauma of the late 1580s and the Catholic Ligue in Paris.¹⁷⁷ The massacre has frequently been evoked as a turning point in the civil war of the princes: the moment at which the respectable bourgeois of Paris woke up to the violence and radicalism of their second flirtation with rebellion against the crown and its minister. Just as Condé’s blockade of Paris on behalf of the crown had forced the office-holders and Parisian notables back into the acceptance of royal authority in 1649, so, in an ironic reversal, Condé’s revolutionary terrorism of July 1652 brought them back to the crown a second time.¹⁷⁸ From this point, it is argued, the failure of Condé became inevitable because he had driven a wedge between his own ambitions and those of the capital; while both had sought to drive Mazarin back into exile, Condé had demonstrated a willingness to resort to extremes that threatened the most fundamental interests of the urban elites in ¹⁷³ The most extensive and detailed account of the ‘massacre of the Hôtel de Ville’ is in Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 113–47. But see also Vallier, iii. 319–25. ¹⁷⁴ Motteville, Mémoires, iv. 346–7. ¹⁷⁵ Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 146–7. ¹⁷⁶ Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 75: Joly cites Le Gras, Ferrand, de Savery, Le Fèvre, and Miron ‘tous ennemis déclarés du Cardinal Mazarin’. The problems of interpreting the violence are perceptively explored in R. Descimon, ‘Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville (4 juillet 1652): Paris et la “Fronde des Princes” ’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 54 (1999), 319–51. ¹⁷⁷ The comparison is expressly made in royal ordinances: AAE MD 888, fo. 198, royal edict addressed to bourgeois of Paris, St-Denis, 15 July 1652; see also, for example: AAE CP Venise 70, fo. 152, 6 July, Argenson to St-Ange, Casale, 6 July 1652: worse than anything since the guerres de Paris. ¹⁷⁸ Descimon, ‘Autopsie’, 340 et seq.

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maintaining order, property, and security. They had never abandoned their loyalty to the crown, but had sought to achieve a settlement which would reunite the royal family on the basis of Mazarin’s exile. But if the price of this was the collapse of orderly government, then they would, grudgingly at first, accept the authority of the crown, even if this meant the return to power of the despised first minister. With hindsight, elements of this picture are easy to maintain. Quite apart from the justified fear of social disorder and breakdown, the centrality of the rentes and the officers’ salaries to the financial interests of both the Parisian elites and the moderately well-off bourgeois was a strong incentive to work by managed political pressure, keeping open lines of communication with the court and royal government. But this emphatically did not mean willing acceptance of the return of Mazarin: the Parisian institutions had been consistently more hard-line and inflexible in insisting upon the cardinal’s permanent exile than had the princes’ party. The furthest any assembly of moderates in Paris would go towards compromise was to call for the king’s ‘unconditional’ return to the capital, one of the positions advocated at the Hôtel de Ville on 4 July, but usually made with the firm hope—or assumption—that this would not mean the king accompanied by the cardinal. No one in the capital, or for that matter anywhere else, considered that Mazarin’s rule and system of government had been validated by the events of 1652. Moreover, hindsight ignores the two issues that shaped Condé’s behaviour and assumptions on 4 July. First, Condé was not fundamentally interested in gaining the active support of the bourgeois of Paris to facilitate consensual policy-making. Condé’s experiences of gaining cooperation by consent had been largely negative: his arrogant and unflattering requests for finance and supply were usually counterproductive, and his presence incited complaints about troop disorder, recruitment, and economic disruption. The only time he had managed to exercise some direct leadership over the Parisians was in leading the large bands of volunteers in April/May in attempts to recapture Saint-Cloud and Saint-Denis from royalist garrisons; not only had these achieved no lasting results, but had left Condé and his military professionals contemptuous of the military qualities of these enthusiasts for his service, and sceptical of the benefits of using them in any combat role.¹⁷⁹ Condé did not think of actively enlarging his ‘network’ of supporters and allies by consciously seeking to draw in members of the Parisian judicial and administrative elites. He saw his struggle with Mazarin as essentially military, and a matter that would ultimately be decided by the strength and commitment of his military clientele. The main purpose of the city of Paris, in Condé’s view, was to provide

¹⁷⁹ Gourville, Mémoires, i. 75–7.

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the resources—money, munitions, and food—which would allow his military forces to be deployed, to keep them at effective strength and their officers in service. Unconvinced that the Paris bourgeois would ever be brought voluntarily to contribute adequately to these military costs and demands, the arrival of the army in the heart of the city, and the opportunity presented by the assembly at the Hôtel de Ville, allowed Condé and those around him to force the issue. Inciting indiscriminate violence against the Parisian elites regardless of their previous allegiances might nonetheless seem a crude and probably self-defeating initiative. But Condé was in a hurry. As we know from his correspondence, the night before the massacre he was aware that Spanish assistance—some 17,000 troops—would be crossing the French frontiers within 8–10 days. He wanted to intimidate the city rather than win its support, because he was thinking, logically enough, within a short time-frame. His aim was to crush resistance, or at least drive it underground; and this was as much directed at adherents of the ‘Old Fronde’ as against those officials and notables who were diehard loyalists and would never voluntarily be drawn into an alliance with the princes. As a means to achieve the short-term goal of silencing the independent voice of the city and enforcing a degree of cooperation, the massacre made some tactical sense. It caused impassioned outrage, and it undermined any remaining moral high ground that Condé might have been able to occupy in respect of his arrest without trial and his intermittently shabby treatment by Mazarin and the queen. But it left him and Orléans with unprecedented control in the capital: in return for rescuing both the prévot des marchands and the governor, l’Hôpital, from the Hôtel de Ville on the evening of 4 July, Beaufort extracted their ‘voluntary’ demission from office. On 6 July a special meeting of representatives of the city was summoned by Condé. For obvious reasons it was sparsely attended, but it confirmed the appointment of Beaufort to replace l’Hôpital as governor of the city, while Broussel, the ‘elder statesman’ of the Fronde, was elected the new prévôt des marchands.¹⁸⁰ From their position of dominance, Condé and Orléans followed this up from 20 July onwards by creating a shadow-council in Paris. This originated with the reappointment of Orléans as lieutenant-general of the realm, an appointment justified via an arrêt of Parlement which asserted that the king was being unlawfully held in custody (‘détenue’) by Mazarin. Orléans was therefore acting ruler until the king regained his liberty, and Orléans in turn appointed Condé as the commander of all armed forces in the realm to secure that liberty.¹⁸¹ A council was gathered around the duc d’Orléans, including the prestigious catch of the ¹⁸⁰ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 251. ¹⁸¹ Full text in Talon, Mémoires, vi. 500, and Vallier, iii. 340–2, who considered it ‘the most blatant violation of royal sovereignty for twelve centuries’, and noted that even in the cowed Parlement sixtyfive judges voted against the arrêt. AAE MD 883, fo. 219, Gaudin to Mazarin, Paris, 27 July 1652: concern that an alternative power base is being created here under this legal pretext.

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chancellor, Pierre Séguier, who was asked to act as the president of the new body. Séguier’s career had not been overly encumbered with ideological or moral baggage, and he was aggrieved at having been deprived by the queen mother of the keepership of the seals, which for a brief period he held concurrently with the great office of chancellor. Seemingly unperturbed by the enormity of the legal fiction on which this shadow council was based, but more impressed by what appeared the winning hand of the princes, he accepted, as Vallier reported, ‘with alacrity’.¹⁸² The council also contained the prévot des marchands, the new governor of Paris, two presidents of the Parlement, and the princes, ducs et pairs, marshals, and other senior officers of the princes’ party; it was to consider all matters related to war and to maintaining good order in the city.¹⁸³ The council was born under an evil star: the first major event in its life was a quarrel over precedence between the two long-term rivals Beaufort and Nemours, which led to a duel in which Nemours was shot dead.¹⁸⁴ Jacques de Marigny, propagandist and writer for Condé, wrote to Pierre Lenet in Bordeaux that ‘at a time when it seems that our fortunes could hardly be more prosperous, the fatal outcome of the duel has troubled all of our happiness’.¹⁸⁵ The ability to form a governing council against the council of the king, with the cooperation of a majority of the Parlement, demonstrated an impressive grip on the capital. Those who opposed this coup d’etat remained out of sight: Omer Talon, whose political and moral reputation had been built on his scorching critiques of Mazarin’s government, stayed away from the Parlement after 1 July, pleading indisposition, but ‘knowing well that all form of resistance or contradiction would be futile’.¹⁸⁶ The parlementaires, in the words of one memoirist, had been reduced from their recent status as ‘Roman senators’ to being mere lackeys of Condé.¹⁸⁷ In other respects too, matters seemed to favour the princes: Condé had worried continually about the situation in Guienne, and the seemingly inevitable collapse of the resistance led by his brother Conti, Pierre Lenet, and other supporters such as Marsin and Baltazar. The principal problems were, as ever, shortages of troops and of money. Condé had written with regret on 3 July that, but for the duke of ¹⁸² Vallier, iii. 347; Omer Talon drily commented that people judged Séguier’s decision as not ‘bien judicieux’: Mémoires, vi. 501. Y. Nexon, Le Chancelier Séguier (1588–1672): ministre, dévot et mécène au grand siècle (Paris, 2015), 104–7. It was an action conveniently recalled by Nicolas Fouquet at his trial in 1662, when the long-since rehabilitated chancellor tried to establish Fouquet’s own ‘treason’: V. Pitts, Embezzlement and High Treason in France: The Trial of Nicolas Fouquet (Baltimore, 2015), 133–4. ¹⁸³ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 501–2; Motteville, Mémoires, xxxix. 347–8. ¹⁸⁴ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 172–3. ¹⁸⁵ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 156, Paris, 31 July 1652 (‘Dans un temps où il sembloit que nos affaires ne faisoient que prospérer’). Full letter printed in Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 396–403, but misdated as 12 July. ¹⁸⁶ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 501. Government officials like Etienne Aligre who remained in Paris also kept a low profile, not venturing into the streets for fear of being identified as mazarins: BN Ffr 6889, fos 189, 191, Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 5/10 July 1652. ¹⁸⁷ Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 162.

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Lorraine’s betrayal, additional troops would already be en route for Guienne. He was nonetheless hopeful that once the Spanish army moved into France, it would again be possible to spare some troops from the army near Paris.¹⁸⁸ But in an upbeat moment a few days later, Lenet heard from don Luis de Haro, Spanish first minister, that the silver fleet had docked at Cadiz on 2 July.¹⁸⁹ The excuse of the Spanish throughout May and June for failure to honour any of their financial commitments to the princes’ party was the need to wait for credit to be released by the arrival of the flota. At the end of July, de Haro wrote to Lenet of the imminent despatch of two shipments of 250,000 écus each, to be transported from SaintSébastian directly to Bordeaux.¹⁹⁰ Two other matters would come to shape military and political events in the south-west: one was the relationship that Conti needed to establish with one or more of the rebellious movements in Bordeaux calling themselves the Ormée; the other was the potential opportunity opened up in August by the decision of the comte d’Harcourt to abandon the royal army. But even in July, Condé was discussing with Conti and Lenet the issues involved in associating with factions in Bordeaux, while the trouble that finally erupted with Harcourt had been brewing since February.¹⁹¹ The crown was indignant at the massacre of the Hôtel de Ville and the highhanded behaviour of the princes in Paris thereafter. Crown propagandists, strongly abetted by the Old frondeurs, whose power in Paris had been shattered by the coup, did their best to make the most effective use of the outrageous behaviour of the princes and their faction.¹⁹² A hard-hitting pamphlet like Arnauld d’Andilly’s ‘La vérité toute nue’ could both attack the constitutional excesses of the princes’ actions and point out Condé’s willingness to compromise over Mazarin’s exile to secure his own interests.¹⁹³ But the situation in July 1652 would not be changed by appeals, however adroit, to public opinion. The attitude of the court and crown was shaped by Turenne’s dire warning about the need for a quick—and generous—settlement with Condé. In pursuit of this settlement, the court was prepared to take the initiative in proposing the exile of Mazarin. Negotiations were pursued on two fronts, both with the princes themselves and with the Parlement. The latter proved easier to engage since a formulaic process had been established since May/June by which delegations of Parlementaires would travel to the court to deliver remonstrances before the king, which in turn would be answered by written replies from the king’s council. Indeed, a deputation, headed by the respected president François-Théodore de Nesmond, ¹⁸⁸ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 21, Condé to Marcin, [Paris], 3 July 1652. ¹⁸⁹ Lenet, Mémoires, ii. 557, letter of 9 July; BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 45 for 2 July. ¹⁹⁰ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 139, Madrid, 28 July. ¹⁹¹ See for example, BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 68, Condé to Lenet, Paris, 15 July 1652. ¹⁹² H. Carrier, Presse de la Fronde, i. 262–72: emphasizes both the harshening stance of pamphlets directed against the court, but also identifies some of the royalist pamphlets which built on the princes’ recent actions. ¹⁹³ Moreau, Choix de mazarinades, ii. 406–38.

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had been trailing the court since it had moved from Melun to Saint Denis on 28 June, waiting for a chance to deliver a new set of remonstrances. However, on 7 July the delegates wrote back to the Parlement that they had been invited to attend a meeting with members of the king’s council the next day, with the hope of negotiating an accommodation.¹⁹⁴ These discussions were intended to give a positive impression of the court’s desire for a settlement, duly passed back as rumours and hopes to Paris. On 10 July, the king wrote formally to the princes that, having listened to the deputies of the Parlement, he was now minded to adopt the proposal that had been made by cardinal Mazarin to serve the king ‘in an employment outside of France at a level appropriate to his rank’. Mazarin’s departure would follow immediately after the publication of a royal declaration for the pacification of the present troubles. This would revoke the criminal charges laid against the cardinal, as well as those against the princes for taking up arms against the king. The letter asked the princes to send their own deputies to the king immediately so that the details of a peace proposal could be discussed.¹⁹⁵ While waiting for representatives from the princes, the delegates from the Parlement were summoned before the king and council at Saint-Denis on 11 July, and received the same proposal in response to their remonstrances.¹⁹⁶ President Nesmond asked the obvious question: was this simply another iteration of the familiar demand that if the princes disbanded their troops, renounced their foreign alliances, and submitted fully to royal authority, then the crown would act on the agreement to exile Mazarin? In reply, Nesmond was assured by the council’s spokesman, keeper of the seals Mathieu Molé, that the king was sincere in his willingness to dismiss Mazarin as a preliminary, and that this would be triggered by the arrival of the delegation from the princes, following which a full accommodation would be negotiated.¹⁹⁷ This offer had not been reached without considerable soul-searching on the part of the court. According to Dubuisson-Aubenay, the royal council pushed Mazarin, urging that there was no other way to save the king and the realm except through his exile.¹⁹⁸ The news that Mazarin was prepared to leave France was common knowledge a day later, when Bluet wrote to Mazarin’s fidèle, Zongo Ondedei, that Mazarin’s imminent exile was being gossiped everywhere, and that Bluet had no reason to disbelieve the news.¹⁹⁹ Bluet deeply disapproved of this step, and his own alternative was to propose that the king should force his way

¹⁹⁴ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 252. ¹⁹⁵ AAE MD 888, fo. 187, Saint-Denis, 10 July 1652. ¹⁹⁶ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 254; AAE MD 888, fo. 193, arrêt concerning the deputation from the Parlement, Saint-Denis, 13 July 1652: stresses the apparent consensus behind the renewed exile of Mazarin. ¹⁹⁷ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 497: Nesmond questioned the formula in the agreement stipulating that Mazarin will retire ‘lorsque les ordres necessaires auront été donnés’. ¹⁹⁸ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 254. ¹⁹⁹ AAE MD 883, fo. 159, Paris, 12 July 1652.

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into Paris at the head of the army, on the assumption that his appearance would spark a royalist uprising in the capital. He tetchily anticipated Ondedei’s likely response that this proposal would seem far too risky to the court; the court, Bluet retorted, should just wait until Condé’s troops had joined up with the Spanish army and think about the situation then.²⁰⁰ A few days later, Nicolas Fouquet, the procureur général of the Parlement—who, like Talon, had absented himself from the proceedings since 4 July—wrote directly to Mazarin. If, Fouquet suggested, Mazarin did not think that he was strong enough to face down the princes, and was indeed contemplating exile again, then the court must negotiate immediately with the princes to gain a deal before Condé became too arrogant or before the situation in Paris deteriorated further.²⁰¹ In a situation where the court seemed finally to be prepared to offer the exile of Mazarin as the first stage in talks about a full settlement, agreement might have seemed close: this was a larger concession than any previously offered by the court, and would heal the potential difference of opinion between the princes and the Parlement about Mazarin’s exile. Beringhen wrote from the court to his old associate, Chavigny, on 16 July that matters seem ‘well-disposed to an accommodation’.²⁰² Though Orléans was prepared to accept the proposal and to send delegates to the court, Condé stalled. It is not clear whether he simply did not believe the concession of an unconditional departure of Mazarin into service abroad, or whether he considered that present circumstances could only improve his bargaining position. The particular issue of Condé’s treaty with the Spanish may have played a part in this refusal: if Mazarin’s ‘suitable employment abroad’ was to be that of the king’s plenipotentiary in negotiations with the Spanish for a general peace, that placed Condé in an awkward position regarding his treaty obligation with the Spanish. At very least he needed to act as co-negotiator or some sort of broker if he was not unilaterally to break the treaty with Spain and to jeopardize his future support.²⁰³ Whatever the reason, he persuaded Orléans that both of them should publicly reiterate the arrêts against Mazarin of 6 September and 29 December 1651. At the full session of Parlement on 13 July both Orléans and Condé denounced Mazarin and stipulated that he must be dismissed and exiled as a precondition for any subsequent settlement, but also without revocation of the criminal charges against him, or any royal employment outside of France. The crown had come as close to conceding Mazarin’s exile as it could with some honour, but Condé held out for the maximally humiliating demand.²⁰⁴

²⁰⁰ AAE MD 883, fo. 150, Bluet to Ondedei, Paris, 8 July 1652. ²⁰¹ AAE MD 883, fo. 170, Fouquet to Mazarin, Paris, 15 July 1652. ²⁰² AAE MD 889, fo. 284, Saint-Denis, 16 July 1652. ²⁰³ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 499, argued that Condé would never permit Mazarin to assume this role of crown plenipotentiary. Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 255, writes that the main rumour in Paris around 11/12 July was that Mazarin was to go into exile at Turin or Pinerolo. ²⁰⁴ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 498; Vallier, iii. 332–3.

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The most obvious reason for the obstructionism was the extent to which the princes’ military position seemed to be improving. Late in the evening of 8 July, Condé had received a courier from Fuensaldaña, acting commander of the army of Flanders, reporting that a vanguard of some 5,000 of his troops had reached Beauvais. By 12 July the same troops were menacing Noyon, and on the 14th they laid siege to the strategic fortified town of Chauny on the Oise, which surrendered on terms on 17 July.²⁰⁵ Indeed, the concern amongst some of the princes’ party was that the Spanish army was making such impressive progress that Mazarin might see no choice but to open up negotiations in the name of the king, conceding swathes of places and territory to draw the Spanish into a highly favourable general peace which would require them in return to abandon the princes.²⁰⁶ But no such negotiations were forthcoming; the court seemed paralyzed apart from its decision on 17 July to move to Pontoise, taking itself out of the path of the Spanish troops. As agreed with the ministers, Turenne and his numerically much inferior army advanced north-east to Compiègne to hold a position well forward of Paris. On 28 July, the drily efficient military administrator, Bernard du Plessis-Besançon, provided a detailed report: the Spanish army had crossed the Aisne and had joined up with some of Lorraine’s troops; the combined forces, he noted, were now marching along the Marne towards Fismes, and ultimately towards Dammartin, where these 5,000–6,000 men would join with the troops of Condé.²⁰⁷ This sounded like more bad news for Mazarin and the court, but there was a sting in the tail. The pace of the advance had slackened dramatically since the relatively swift envelopment and capture of Chauny. Ten days to move a few dozen kilometres southwards from Chauny to Fismes suggested that the imposing Spanish advance had stalled.²⁰⁸ This had attracted the attention of Mazarin’s correspondents: on 19 July, Broglio, governor of La Bassée, wrote to Mazarin that Fuensaldaña was still at Chauny, and seemed to have no other plan than to negotiate with Condé. The general opinion, Broglio reported, was that he would provide Condé with some troops, but that they would not act together in any campaigning.²⁰⁹ The inertia grew more apparent as the month wore on: Jacques Gaudin wrote to Mazarin on 29 July that he was astonished by the slowness of the Spanish army, given that it faced no effective opposition east of Compiègne.²¹⁰ For the shrewder of Condé’s followers, the answer was obvious: Jacques Marigny wrote on 28 July of his suspicions that the Spanish never intended to help the

²⁰⁵ Vallier, iii. 334–5; BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 102, Caillet to Lenet, 22 July 1652. ²⁰⁶ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 82, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 14 July 1652. ²⁰⁷ AAE MD 883, fo. 221, Plessis-Besançon to Mazarin, Riom, 28 July 1652. ²⁰⁸ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 130, Condé to Lenet, Paris, 28 July 1652: concerned that the army of Flanders, which was forty miles away, had not advanced any further for the last month. ²⁰⁹ AAE MD 1685, fo. 93, La Bassée. ²¹⁰ AAE MD 883, fo. 229, Gaillon, 29 July 1652: Gaudin gives the total enemy forces at 10–12,000.

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princes’ party, but merely sought to maintain the state of civil war. They would act to prevent Condé being destroyed, but in turn would not allow Condé to destroy Mazarin and the court party.²¹¹ Subsequent events suggest that Marigny’s verdict was not entirely justified, or at least that the Spanish high command had a clearer conception of the fragility of Condé’s military position than might have appeared. Nonetheless, the last two weeks of July dissipated the looming threat that a large Spanish army would roll unstoppably down towards Paris. Condé had meanwhile rejected the possibility of an accommodation that might well have been agreed in extremis by the court. As the situation stabilized and the court established itself at Pontoise, it started to take its own initiatives. Chief amongst these was the decision to encourage loyalist members of the Parlement voluntarily to exile themselves from Paris and to form part of a ‘royalist’ Parlement at Pontoise.²¹² Initially Mazarin’s agents in Paris, such as Bluet, were dismissive of the suggestion, claiming that the parlementaires would never be prepared to leave the capital.²¹³ Although in terms of numbers of judges the ‘royal’ Parlement at Pontoise had a limited impact, its utility to the royal government was considerable as the ‘legitimate’ mechanism to verify and promulgate royal edicts following the princely coup d’état in Paris.²¹⁴ At the same time, its very existence and the resentments that it generated between those in Pontoise and the great majority of judges who remained in Paris became a further impediment to an easy settlement.²¹⁵ Indicative of these changing perceptions was a more familiar style of negotiation emerging between Condé and Mazarin, in which the princes’ ‘shopping list’ of demands was again set against a notional exile for Mazarin. In this case the text, which is undated, but addressed in Mazarin’s hand and signed from Pontoise, proposes a period of exile of one month. In return for allowing Mazarin’s reinstatement in the court and royal council after this token exile, the princes were accorded a full range of demands for themselves (including Condé’s role in the peace negotiations) and for their allies. The document amounted to twentytwo articles and a substantial addendum.²¹⁶ The choking volume of these demands is indicative of the obligations that a large—and successful—faction of clients and allies would generate.

²¹¹ BN Ffr. 6708, fo. 138, Marigny to Lenet, Paris. ²¹² AAE MD 888, fo. 233, (printed) declaration of the king ordering the transfer of the Parlement to Pontoise, 31 July 1652. ²¹³ AAE MD 883, fo. 146, Bluet to Ondedei, Paris, 7 July 1652. ²¹⁴ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 505, notes that it assembled for the first time on 6 August with two judges, eleven councillors, and Fouquet the procureur général. ²¹⁵ Further orders were sent to Paris on 19 August for the transfer of the Cour des aides, Chambre des comptes and the trésoriers de France to Pontoise: Talon, Mémoires, vi. 506. ²¹⁶ AAE MD 883, fo. 272, document addressed in Mazarin’s hand as ‘mémoires pour l’accommodement de M le Prince’. Pontoise, (ND). Talon refers to what seems a very similar negotiation: Mémoires, vi. 506.

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It is easy to assume with hindsight that these negotiations were no more than a cynical ploy by Mazarin to draw out and publicize the outrageous demands and self-interest of the princes’ party. But such a tactic, launched by a minister whose own and whose supporters’ immoderate greed had been the subject of an extraordinary five years of no-holds pamphleteering, would not necessarily achieve the desired effect. It is moreover not clear that the conception of government as a spoils system was widely questioned, or that the simple fact of demanding extensive rewards could excite politically useful revulsion against the princes and their party. The only people whom we reliably know to have been thoroughly outraged by Condé’s demands were Mazarin’s own loyalists. This of course returns to the perennial problem of factional leaders trapped in negotiations that had to be seen to satisfy the demands of their supporters. Two other factors influenced Mazarin’s decision to discuss proposals for a settlement. The first was the awareness of war-weariness and the need to be seen publicly to be seeking a peace that was desperately desired. The second was the growing concern of Mazarin himself not to be sent back into indefinite exile, even if this was linked to a well-funded and ‘status-worthy’ diplomatic role. He and those around him all suspected that a second exile would mark his final departure from France.²¹⁷ As the dangers of early July appeared to recede, Mazarin could return to the earlier negotiating stance of bargaining with his enemies to remain in France (albeit after some token period of exile), knowing that this concession would be expensively bought. Unlike many of those around him, he never questioned whether the price was worth paying. Condé had been prepared to take initiatives himself in negotiating with Mazarin, and as a goodwill gesture in early August Condé had even released Francesco Broglio, one of Mazarin’s military clients who had earlier been captured, to act as an emissary for another round of negotiations.²¹⁸ But these renewed initiatives nonetheless fell flat. Omer Talon commented of the weeks of late July and August that all things seemed to be in a state of lethargy: the king was at Pontoise and the princes in Paris; neither army attempted action against the other; rather, both simply spent their time pillaging the countryside.²¹⁹ Both parties had their problems. The princes needed to find support for their army from within Paris. Without pay or the money to undertake new recruitment, the numbers of troops started to melt away: Etienne Aligre, councillor of state and a reliable source, wrote that the army was of around 2,500 infantry and 1,500 cavalry in early August.²²⁰ And the unpaid soldiers’ pillaging and extortion within the city grew steadily worse; placards forbidding soldiers from looting and

²¹⁷ Mazarin himself said as much: Chéruel, v. 107, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, Saint-Germain-enLaye, 7 May 1652. ²¹⁸ AAE MD 883, fo. 156, Broglio to Mazarin, Paris, 9 July 1652. ²¹⁹ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 504. ²²⁰ BN Ffr 6889, fo. 203, Aligre to Le Tellier, 3 Aug. 1652.

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plundering on the outskirts of Paris were displayed across Paris on 29 July.²²¹ But threats and occasional exemplary punishments had no obvious success, especially given the substantial complicity of the unit officers in these disorders.²²² Finding money both to fund the cost of new levies and to pay some of the wages of the troops was the obvious priority. Immediate recruitment costs and wages were calculated at 800,000 livres. On 29 July it was proposed to Parlement that this would be met through a tax on houses with carriage porches (portes cochères). The intention was to avoid a tax which would provoke lower-class unrest, but in fact the tax extended down from the carriage entrances of imposing hôtels to more modest gates and the entrances attached to small shops, and the one-off burden was heavy.²²³ The princes were shying away from any broader-based financial contribution, but the tax on gateways and doors was cumbersome to collect, and inevitably failed to raise the total anticipated.²²⁴ Much worse, a tax explicitly targeted at the propertied classes was competing with the inevitable consequence of shutting the king and his government out of Paris. For the first time since April, the payment of the rentes again became an issue. As Aligre pointed out, not only was non-payment of the rentes causing great uncertainty amongst the bourgeois of Paris, but dissatisfaction could spread across the entire country as the local trouble between the capital and the crown froze up the payment of rentes everywhere.²²⁵ In Paris the primary concern was to keep the city supplied with its daily needs for food—not just bread and grain, but also meat, vegetables, and fish. So far the princes had relied on the calculating goodwill of the crown in allowing the free passage of foodstuffs into Paris. The royal army was in no position to blockade the capital, and so it made more sense to conserve a good reputation amongst the citizens, who saw that the king remained concerned for their wellbeing.²²⁶ But the royal policy could change, and by late July the princes had already begun to consider billeting their troops in various nearby towns which, because of their positions near the main rivers, were key to the Paris food supply: Lagny, Corbeil, Melun, Mantes, Gonesse, Pontoise.²²⁷ Yet, as the princes’ council ruefully noted, allowing the underpaid and ill-disciplined troops to dominate the main supply arteries would be a response to the problem of supply at least as damaging as accepting the chance that the crown might in future try to impose a blockade. The princes’ council in Paris created problems, generating hostility from the Parlement which resented its exclusion from a governing role in Paris that it had taken for granted since 1648; there was real fear of a paralyzing stand-off between ²²¹ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 263. ²²² Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 171–2. See ‘War and the Subsistence Economy’ in Chapter 5. ²²³ Vallier, iii. 350–1; AAE MD 883, fo. 241, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 30 July 1652: Bluet anticipates discontent and alienation among the bourgeois of Paris. ²²⁴ AAE MD 889, fo. 312: it was hoped to raise 400,000 livres from the tax. ²²⁵ BN Ffr. 6889, fo. 203v, Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 3 Aug. 1652. ²²⁶ AAE MD 883, fo. 117, [news from Paris to Mazarin], 29 June 1652. ²²⁷ AAE MD 883, fo. 235, anonymous letter to Mazarin, Senlis, 29 July 1652.

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the two institutions.²²⁸ The fractiousness was increased by the angry fulminations of the Parlement against the rival institution at Pontoise, which made the parlementaires even less willing to see their powers eroded in Paris.²²⁹ The princes’ plan to dominate the city by violence and intimidation would only work on the assumption of a quick resolution to the civil war. The new council could impose taxes, but could not easily collect them without cooperation from the urban elites; in general they would find it harder to ensure that day-to-day functions of justice and civic administration continued to operate normally. The slowing of the Spanish advance into France in the second half of July had saved the court from a dire strategic situation. But it was not the end of the story. The Spanish at this point did not intend—indeed, they had seemingly never intended—to march down towards Paris in a reprise of the notorious invasionyear of 1636, ‘the year of Corbie’. But nor were they planning to abandon Condé, as many of his followers feared.²³⁰ Back in Brussels archduke Leopold Wilhelm had decided that from August the bulk of the army of Flanders would undertake the reconquest of Dunkirk.²³¹ Yet although most of the Spanish troops started to fall back towards the Flanders frontier, the Spanish had agreed to leave 6,000 troops to reinforce Lorraine’s army, and Lorraine would in turn remain in France to assist the princes.²³² The army of Lorraine was still of around 8,000 troops, so even allowing for heavy attrition amongst Condé’s troops, the reassembled forces would heavily outnumber Turenne’s army.²³³ As ever, negotiating with Charles of Lorraine was opaque and frustrating: he maintained simultaneous diplomatic relations and negotiations with the princes— sometimes separately from each other; with the French court, as well as a separate correspondence with Mazarin himself; and with the Spanish, who were his ultimate if irregular paymasters. And if second-guessing Lorraine’s intentions was difficult for Condé, it was a lot more alarming for the court, and the evidence of late July did not encourage the belief that Lorraine could again be bought off so easily.²³⁴ By 29 July it was being rumoured that the duke, who was at present only

²²⁸ BN, Ffr 6709, fo. 38, Viole to Lenet, Paris, 11 Aug. 1652. ²²⁹ Marigny reported the huge anger in Parlement against their colleagues who had left to serve in the ‘bailliage de Ponthoise, soi-disant Parlement’: BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 94v, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 11 Aug. ²³⁰ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 38, Viole to Lenet, Paris, 11 Aug: ‘our desperate state of affairs has been chiefly brought about by the retreat of the Spanish.’ ²³¹ Chéruel, v. 142, Mazarin to d’Aumont, Pontoise, 7 Aug. 1652: Mazarin believes the Spanish are feigning an interest in St Quentin and Arras, but will in fact besiege Dunkirk. ²³² BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 25v, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 4 Aug. 1652: Clinchamp has said the Spanish are willing to provide Condé with 6,000 men from amongst the ‘meilleurs trouppes du monde’. ²³³ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 94v, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 15 Aug. 1652. Bluet, who wanted the court and army to force their way into Paris, improbably suggested that the army of the princes consisted of only 1,200 mutinous troops: AAE MD 884, fo. 38, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 11 Aug. 1652. ²³⁴ Turenne to Le Tellier, Monlignon, 31 July 1652, in Menditte (ed), Lettres de Turenne, 54.

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some 6 miles from Reims, was hoping to launch a surprise attack on the much besieged strongpoint of Rethel, and was concentrating his forces with that aim.²³⁵ So in a military situation which continued to be volatile, and where there seemed to be neither a clear path to any outright royalist victory nor movement towards a mutually satisfactory accommodation, the notion of Mazarin’s exile was reprised at the court. The project had of course been pressed in rather more desperate circumstances at the beginning of July, while projects for Mazarin’s return to exile had been mooted by his erstwhile supporters at least as far back as March. Both in contemporary correspondence among members of the court and government, and in subsequent memoirs composed from essentially royalist perspectives, there is a palpable irritation with Mazarin’s determination to stay in France. They considered that Mazarin’s reluctance to return to exile was a primary cause of the disasters overwhelming the kingdom; indeed, for many of these writers the ‘original sin’ had not been Condé’s revolt in September 1651, but Mazarin’s unilateral decision to fight his way back into France in January 1652.²³⁶ Mazarin recognized that, despite his own reluctance, he might in the near future be pushed into some form of exile by the court, even by the crown, to facilitate the accommodation that everyone regarded as essential. When being nudged towards exile in May and June, he had gradually and reluctantly shifted from a flat rejection that he should abandon the court to a grudging acceptance that he might absent himself for ‘a few days’ if that would assist the peace process.²³⁷ A detailed draft for a possible settlement with the princes in June reduced the original proposal of three months of token exile to one month.²³⁸ If renewed exile was on the cards, would it not then make sense to act preemptively, to enter exile on his own terms and in a way which deprived the court and government of any freedom of movement to act independently in subsequent negotiations? Rarely has a ‘spontaneous’ decision been so carefully stage-managed at every point. The establishment of the Parlement of Pontoise on 30 July seems to have had a particular initial purpose: on 7 August it petitioned the crown in carefully chosen language to exile Mazarin in the interests of public peace.²³⁹ The remonstrances were reiterated by President Novion, the most senior judge present, on 10 August. Two days later this generated a carefully drafted edict from the king which granted the request of the Pontoise Parlement for the exile of Mazarin, ²³⁵ AAE MD 883, fo. 262, extract of a letter from M. Berthemet et Du Base [to Mazarin?], Paris, 29 July 1652. ²³⁶ Simply to cite memoirists who were strongly royalist and not writing overtly against the cardinal: Brienne, Conrart, Montglat, Motteville, Talon, Turenne, and Vallier. ²³⁷ Though with considerable ill will: Nemours, Mémoires, ix. 656. ²³⁸ Chéruel, v. 123, Mazarin to La Croisette, Melun, 12 June 1652; AAE MD 883, fo. 272: document addressed in Mazarin’s hand as ‘mémoires pour l’accommodement de M le Prince’. Pontoise, (ND); Mazarin again uses the phrase ‘for a few days’ on 24 August, referring to his stay in Bouillon: Chéruel, v. 158, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Château-Thierry. ²³⁹ Talon, Mémoires, vi. 505, is scathing about the ‘mummery’ of these remonstrances against Mazarin, and the enormity of creating the new Parlement simply in order to facilitate this scheme.

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but in terms which, as Omer Talon commented, involved another full enumeration of the cardinal’s qualities and services, presenting him as little less than the single-handed saviour and restorer of the monarchy. Yet despite this panegyric, Talon sardonically observed, he was apparently to be sent into exile for a second time.²⁴⁰ In case the message of the terms under which Mazarin was returning to exile had been missed, especially by foreign courts, a second ‘Declaration of the King in favour of Cardinal Mazarin’ was printed and promulgated on 17 August. Once again it rehearsed Mazarin’s services, affirmed his complete innocence of all the calumnies heaped against him, and explained that the decision to ask him to go into exile was purely to bring about peace on the terms that his enemies had so long demanded.²⁴¹ Mazarin was acutely conscious of the risk that in accepting exile, he might find that political circumstances could be turned against him to make return impossible. He certainly intended to ensure that his place of exile did not, as at Brühl, entail extended and easily disrupted lines of communication to the court and with his informants elsewhere. He had also left the council much more firmly in the hands of clients and his allies than on the previous occasion of exile; and he created as many obstacles as possible to the emergence of any policy choices or decisions that he had not himself sanctioned.²⁴² The cardinal left the court at Liancourt on 19 August, although expectations that he was about to go into exile had been rising ever since the first remonstrances of the Parlement at Pontoise.²⁴³ He made leisurely progress with a substantial military escort towards the frontier, stopping at Château-Thierry to have a meeting with the duke of Lorraine on 23/24 August.²⁴⁴ By 27 August Mazarin had only reached Reims; on 30 August he settled at Sedan, staying there until 9 September, when he finally crossed the frontier and established himself at Bouillon, on the frontier of the archbishop of Cologne’s territory of Liège. What was this exile about? The conventional story, propagated from the outset by Mazarin’s party, was that it combined both characteristically subtle political manoeuvring and temporary self-sacrifice to wrong-foot his enemies. Mazarin’s biographers and plenty of the available evidence confirms that the exile was to be entirely provisional and involved no sacrifice of control or influence.²⁴⁵ Yet the very obviousness of the manoeuvre deprived it of any real utility as a negotiating ²⁴⁰ Ibid, vi. 506; copies of the printed edict were immediately despatched to Paris: AAE MD 889, fo. 314, Response du Roi, faicte aux Députez de son Parlement de Paris séant à Pontoise, 12 Aug. 1652— printed at Pontoise, Julian Courant, ordinary printer of the king. Draft version MD 889, fo. 51. ²⁴¹ AAE MD 889, fo. 328, Royal Declaration, Pontoise, 17 Aug. 1652. ²⁴² Dulong, Mazarin, 204. ²⁴³ Contacts of Mazarin such as Bluet had learnt of Mazarin’s planned departure by 9 Aug: AAE MD 884, fo. 34, to Mazarin, Paris; Beringhen wrote of the exile on 13 August: MD 889, fo. 318, to Chavigny, Pontoise; Condé himself assumed that Mazarin went into exile on 12 August: BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 117, to Lenet, Paris, 15 Aug. ²⁴⁴ Chéruel, v. 155–6, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Chateau-Thierry, 24 Aug. 1652. ²⁴⁵ Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 244–5; Bertière, Mazarin, 574–5.

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counter with the princes and their faction. Condé and Orléans had already priced in Mazarin’s pseudo-exile as part of the negotiating process, his return being part of the deal which would be struck to settle the conflict. But while the princes’ political behaviour was not likely to be modified, would the people of Paris, even the population nationally, be won over to the royalist side? For these, it was hoped, Mazarin’s magnanimous withdrawal would reveal that the princes’ position was motivated by self-seeking opportunism: blame for the continuation of the war would henceforth fall on them. Yet given the widespread hatred of Mazarin, the effectiveness of the manoeuvre would depend on believing that the crown was sincere in exiling Mazarin from France with no possibility of return. Correspondence between Etienne Aligre and Le Tellier may get closer to the truth, when Aligre wrote that of course the princes will immediately argue that Mazarin’s departure is a feint, but ‘if we are to do anything to prevent a worsening of our position this may help, since the aversion here towards Mazarin is so intense’.²⁴⁶ It is conceivable that the exile strengthened a loyalist movement in Paris to petition the king to return to his capital, since—at this point, at least—he would be without his first minister. The one remaining area where the departure of Mazarin made some difference was in the politics of the court. Securing this necessary albeit probably short-term departure to facilitate the subsequent negotiations, may have been a lot more important than scoring a transient propaganda point against the princes. Perhaps the only person who seriously doubted whether Mazarin would be restored after this pseudo-exile was the cardinal himself.

²⁴⁶ BN Ffr 6889, fo. 201, Paris, 2 Aug. 1652.

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5 The Cost of Civil War

Numerous examples will make it plainly evident how mutable are human affairs, not unlike a sea whipped by winds; and how pernicious, almost always to themselves but always to the people, are those ill-advised measures of rulers.¹ With the political and military situation deadlocked by August 1652, Mazarin’s renewed exile offered little immediate possibility of bringing about a breakthrough in negotiations. Neither the court and the cardinal nor the princes believed their situation was desperate enough to require further concessions, and as we shall see in the next chapter, the immediate response of both sides was to double down into more uncompromising stances. Yet alongside these political and military calculations was unfolding a more catastrophic set of circumstances precipitated by the conflict. In the first case, the late summer and autumn saw a collapse in France’s military positions beyond her frontiers. In the second, the massive damage that had already been inflicted on the demographic and economic base of France since 1649 now reached apocalyptic proportions, bringing death, devastation, and misery on an unprecedented scale. While recognition of these costs did not necessarily determine the individual decisions and actions of the primary belligerents, the scale of both catastrophes as they unfolded made commentators and active participants aware of the price of continuing the internal struggle. Pressure mounted to seize upon any settlement that could halt this slide into disaster.

The Military Collapse beyond the Frontiers during 1652 The collapse of France’s military position outside her frontiers had taken a surprisingly long time to unfold. This was despite the disruptive impact of short periods of civil war before the full-scale conflict from late 1651; the uncertainties about the location of political power; the virtually continual crisis of credit under which the crown and its ministers laboured; and the sharp deterioration of direct control over the provinces. Yet the strategic goals achieved and consolidated ¹ Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, in: Francesco Guicciardini: Selected Writings, trans. and ed. C. Grayson (Oxford, 1965), 7.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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during the 1640s largely held in the face of this disarray at home, as well as a crescendo of concern about unpaid troops, abandoned programmes of fortification repair, and growing difficulties in fielding and maintaining campaign armies. The French forces were on the defensive from 1649, and the operational goals of the campaign armies were mostly unambitious and reactive; a collapse of individual unit strength underpinned an overall decline in army size.² A handful of places were lost during and after the 1649 blockade of Paris, notably Saint-Venant, as well as Ypres, which surrendered to the Spanish on 10 May.³ Rather more cracks appeared in the course of 1650: June saw the loss of Câtelet in Picardy, though the subsequent Spanish siege of Guise was lifted by French forces. More serious tremors occurred in August, when news was received of the Spanish recapture of the presidios of Porto Longone and Piombino, enclaves on the coast of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.⁴ More importantly, in the same month the Spanish, assisted by Turenne and other supporters of the imprisoned princes, made a sequence of gains on the north-east frontier: La Capelle, Vervins, Marle, and Château-Porcien. The defeat of the maréchal d’Hocquincourt’s small force near Fismes a few days later spread alarm in Paris.⁵ Remarkably, given the intensity of the winter cold in 1650–1, the military pace was stepped up again when the Spanish army pressed an unsuccessful siege against Guise in November 1650, and then went on to take Mouzon and Rethel.⁶ Some ground was retrieved by France during the same brutal winter when Rethel and Chateau-Porcien were recaptured, and the Spanish relief force led by Turenne was convincingly defeated by a French army commanded by Plessis-Praslin.⁷ During 1651 the situation remained relatively stable, despite rapidly shifting domestic politics. Turenne slipped out of his alliance with the Spanish and resumed his military role under the crown. The unprecedented cold weather lasting into the summer bolstered an essentially defensive French position. Brienne could write to the French ambassador in Turin in August that although the French had not achieved anything on the Flanders frontier, they had nonetheless prevented the enemy from making any further gains.⁸ When the Spanish armies finally began military activity they succeeded in taking only Furnes and Bergues, which fell to them in early October.⁹ Overall, the French sustained their ² B. Kroener, ‘Die Entwicklung der Truppenstärken in den französischen Armeen zwischen 1635 und 1661’, in K. Repgen (ed.), Forschungen und Quellen zur Geschichte des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (Münster, 1981), 161–220, 178–85. ³ Vallier, i. 338–9. ⁴ Chéruel, Minorité de Louis XIV, iv. 130. ⁵ Chéruel, Minorité de Louis XIV, iv. 136–8. ⁶ Guy Patin recognized the interconnected nature of the struggles when he noted that the war in Guienne had ruined Champagne by allowing Spanish troops to capture Mouzon, which they could use as a base for their raids into the province: ‘and so war nourishes war.’ Lettres, ed. Jestaz, ii. 751, Patin to Spon, 18 Nov. 1650. ⁷ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 256–9; Vallier, ii. 236–41. ⁸ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 147, Brienne to E. Servien, [Paris], 11 Aug. 1651. ⁹ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 297–8.

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military position surprisingly effectively. There were certainly some alarming indications of vulnerability. French forces had been on the back foot in Catalonia since 1650, when they lost Tortosa, and in July 1651 the Spanish crown began what started as a low-key blockade of Barcelona, but whose grip would be steadily tightened through the winter of 1651/2.¹⁰ The situation for the garrisons in the key French fortresses in North Italy, Pinerolo and Casale, was reported as dire throughout 1651.¹¹ On the Flanders frontier, the security of Dunkirk and Mardyck was presented in equally bleak terms.¹² But none of these concerns seemed to have reached crisis point. What accounts for this resilience across the frontiers in the face of internal disorder and breakdown? Certainly one factor was the military weakness of Spain and the real difficulties in deploying the troops and means properly to exploit France’s financial weakness and dysfunctional politics. The 1648 peace with the Dutch Republic may have freed up Spanish resources, but the monarchy was still reeling from the debt rescheduling of 1647, the possibility that the revolts of Palermo and Naples might erupt into a long-term challenge to Spanish control, and the continued, draining impact of the revolts of Catalonia and Portugal. The Spanish crown’s ability to maintain the monarchía through the vicissitudes of 1647–8 was remarkable in itself. In this context it is less surprising that it took time to amass resources to strike sustained blows against the French conquests in Flanders, North Italy, Catalonia, and Roussillon.¹³ No less important in explaining French tenacity was the survival of the evolved system of financing troops through local cash levies during the winter months. From 1639 the crown started to draw up contracts with the individual officers at the end of the campaigning season, obliging them to make good and ‘refresh’ their units over the months of the winter quarter. In return for this they would be allocated specified sums of money from the towns and localities in France where their troops were to be billeted for the winter months. In theory, these were not additional military taxes, but substantial advances made against the direct tax assessments on these communities, mostly the taille and the taillon. In practice, however, and given that so many areas were already years in arrears with their tax payments, this was an extra tax, imposed under threat of military enforcement. The troops did not collect the taxes themselves, but the money was allocated directly to meet both the subsistence needs of the troops, while a larger proportion funded the contracts with the unit officers to make up the strength of their units

¹⁰ AAE CP Espagne 31, fo. 80, 15 July 1651. ¹¹ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 279, de Pienne (governor of Pinerolo) to Mazarin, 21 April 1651; 45, fo. 282, Ennemond Servien to Abel Servien, Turin, 30 April 1651, on ‘deplorable state’ of Casale. ¹² Chéruel, iv. 457–8, Mazarin to d’Estrades, Brühl, 8 Oct. 1651. ¹³ Malcolm, Royal Favouritism, 181–97; R. Stradling, ‘A Spanish Statesman of Appeasement: Medina de los Torres and Spanish Policy, 1639–1670’, Historical Journal 19 (1976), 1–31; D. Maffi, En defensa del Impero. Los ejércitos de Felipe IV (1635–1659) (Madrid, 2014), 99–141, 428–99.

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and replace horses, weapons, and equipment. The crown and its ministers had effectively reversed the ‘logical’ prioritization for meeting military costs. On campaign the armies were subjected to delays, shortfalls, and inadequate payments from the centre; in winter quarters the physical presence of the troops ensured regular and substantial local payments, enough both to maintain the troops and to channel large sums into the pockets of the unit officers.¹⁴ The months of the winter quarter had become a means by which the crown reimbursed the officers for the expenses that they had sustained during the past campaign, the result of revenue shortfalls and supply failures. The survival benefits of this arrangement were never so clear as in the opening years of the Fronde. In each successive year the winter quarters offered the opportunity for officers to replenish funds, recover debts incurred, and even build up resources for the campaign ahead. Moreover, the weakening of central government in 1648–9 and again in 1650–1 allowed the officers and their troops far greater de facto licence to exceed the already generous allowances that had traditionally been made under the traités for the winter quarter. In 1650/1 the cost of the payments had been estimated at 7–8 million livres, but in reality the troops had demanded some 24 million livres.¹⁵ The line between legitimate exactions against future tax revenues and wholesale extortion from the local populations was regularly crossed. This generated mounting resentment amongst local elites, seen notably in the early noble assemblies, which denounced both the burdens imposed on the general population—from whom they themselves drew rents and dues—and the readiness to extend these burdens onto the privileged.¹⁶ Moreover, the exactions—and outright extortion—by the troops and their officers inside France fell upon an economy which was steadily being driven into crisis: the sequence of harsh winters from 1648 and the lowering of mean temperatures throughout these years had a disastrous impact on a population dependent on subsistence agriculture. Military demands on local communities were being ratcheted upwards at a time when they were least able to meet such demands. But if the priority was to satisfy enough of the financial needs of the armies to keep them operational during the campaigning seasons, then the exactions seem to have done their work. In consequence, during 1649, in 1650, and in the first half of 1651, it was still possible to allocate troops to the campaign theatres, maintain garrisons, and sustain a military presence over the frontiers, even if large-scale offensive ¹⁴ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 53, maréchal de La Mothe-Houdancourt to Le Tellier, [NP], Feb 1652, speaks of the sum of five montres (over half a year’s pay) being provided through the winter quarter in past years; Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 355–60. ¹⁵ Bonney, King’s Debts, 225. ¹⁶ BN Ffr. 10,458 contains numerous petitions from assemblies of the nobility concerning both the behaviour of troops and the fiscal exactions of government and financier-traitants, e.g.: fos 60–82, demands from the nobles of Senlis, 1651; fos 116–33, nobility assembled in Paris, Feb. 1651. Constant, ‘l’assemblée de noblesse de 1651’; Jouanna, ‘Valeurs et identité nobiliaires’.

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operations were out of the question. As we have seen, there were vulnerabilities and some losses; had the Spanish been able to push harder at these vulnerable points the verdict on 1650/1 might have been less upbeat. The situation that developed from autumn 1651 tells an altogether different story. In October 1652 a Spanish minister boasted that Spain had made more gains against France in one year by taking advantage of her internal problems than would have been possible otherwise with 50,000 troops over six years.¹⁷ Spanish optimism by the end of that year seemed justified. The recent fall of Dunkirk, Barcelona, and Casale-Monferrato mattered much more than the simple loss of the three places. All represented a vital part of the military policy that France had pursued since the 1630s, and the fall of each was accompanied by concern that it was the first domino in a likely sequence of losses. Casale would be followed by Spanish incursions into Piedmont, directly threatening Turin and France’s other crucial fortress in North Italy, Pinerolo. Dunkirk would weaken France’s ability to hold the line across the North East frontier from Calais to Arras, so that none of the acquisitions since the late 1630s would be safe. Meanwhile Dunkirk itself would resume its role as the Spanish privateering ‘capital’, from which French shipping in the Channel and to the Baltic would fall victim as it had before its capture in 1646.¹⁸ The fall of Barcelona, as everyone accepted, would signal the end of the Catalan revolt: its real and symbolic significance was immense.¹⁹ But the French were no less concerned that the collapse of the revolt would leave earlier conquests in Roussillon vulnerable, above all Perpignan and Salses.²⁰ France’s ambassador in Venice was quick to point out that the end of the Catalan revolt would have a major effect on Spanish resources and policy-making in North Italy.²¹ The fall of all three places was a slow-motion process: none of them was taken by surprise by the Spanish, and in all cases their loss had been preceded by lesser setbacks and surrenders earlier in 1652 which had left no doubt about the threat to their survival. Frantic attempts were made throughout 1652 to save all three places, but the resilience of the military system had now been lost. This loss of resilience was owed above all to the sustained burden of civil war, beginning with the Condéen revolt in the south-west in October 1651. Large-scale civil war sucked in the military resources that would otherwise have been devoted ¹⁷ AAE CP Espagne 31, fo. 252, Recueil des discours tenu à la table du comte de Fuensaldaña, [avec] le prince de Ligne . . . le comte de Garcies . . . , [Madrid], 6 Oct. 1652. ¹⁸ R. Stradling, ‘The Spanish Dunkirkers, 1621–48: A Record of Plunder and Destruction’, in J. Glete (ed.), Naval History 1500–1680 (Aldershot, 2005), 481–98. ¹⁹ The French believed, with some justification, that the reconquest of Catalonia was perceived by the Spanish crown as its highest priority: AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fos 128–3, Ennemond Servien wrote to Brienne that ‘Catalonia matters more (to the Spanish) than Naples, Sicily and Milan put together’, Turin, 15 July 1651. ²⁰ AAE CP Espagne, 31, fo. 277, Mazarin to maréchal de La Mothe, camp de Bar, 22 Dec. 1652, concerning security of Roussillon. ²¹ AAE CP Venise 70, fo. 189, d’Argenson to Valançay, Venice, 16 Nov. 1652.

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to the French war effort across the frontiers. But this was not the immediate reason for the problems that beset the French army. Given the timing and intensification of the struggle within France, a large proportion of French troops were drawn into fighting over the months of the winter quarter. Mazarin’s decision to invade France in January 1652, which sparked a massive military backlash, was perfectly timed to reinvigorate active warfare across the first 3–4 months of the year. Before Mazarin’s reappearance at the head of his army, Condéen resistance in the south-west was already contained and being pushed back on Guienne. This operation did not require a heavy commitment from troops otherwise committed to frontier campaigning and garrisons, who could have expected the customary winter-quartering allocations and financial arrangements. Instead, as we have seen, Mazarin’s inability to assemble a force of German mercenaries in time to launch his invasion meant that he turned to his clients amongst the garrison commanders on the frontier. He required them to provide a portion of the regular troops out of their garrisons to form the core of his army of 5,000–6,000 men.²² In response to this challenge, the princes’ party mobilized troops from willing supporters across France. Military activity in these months spread stain-like across north-east France, and then into central and western France from the Île de France to Brittany. Condé’s treaty with the Spanish generated military support both from Spain and the duke of Lorraine as Spain’s ally. In turn, the crown started to funnel troops returning from Italy and Roussillon directly into the royal forces operating in France rather than into winter quarters; the frontier garrisons in the east were again ordered to provide troops for the royalist field army.²³ Condé’s own military activities contributed no less to this disruption of the patterns of winter quartering; both princely armies continued military operations through the early months of 1652, seeking to exploit their new-found strength on the ground and the general militancy of the hostility to Mazarin. This wholesale failure to get troops into winter quarters, where they would have received regular subsistence and their officers would have gained the cash-in-hand from the recruitment traités, was compounded by the overall financial weakness of the crown and its inability to provide support for military operations. The superintendent of finances, La Vieuville, had been prepared to declare a formal debt rescheduling (that is, a bankruptcy) in early February, cutting payments to all the crown’s creditors in order to maintain a trickle of financial support to the armies. La Vieuville’s concern reflected the precipitously declining yields of almost all the crown’s sources of income as the country moved into its fourth year of

²² See ‘Mazarin’s Panic’ in Chapter 3. ²³ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 183, Louis XIV to E. Servien, (Poitiers), 25 Nov. 1651: use of the troops returning from the army of Italy against Condé in Haute Guienne; AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 219, maréchal d’Aumont to Mazarin, 16 Feb. 1652; 32, fo. 260, d’Estrades to Mazarin, Dunkirk, 5 May 1652.

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terrible weather and bad harvests. Yet the superintendent was forced to revoke a key element of this plan, his arrêt suspending interest payments on the rentes.²⁴ This retreat further worsened the plight of the troops, and made realistic funding of operations, even negotiation of basic bread contracts, still more unattainable. Around March 1653 a hard-hitting report on the state of the royal finances during the previous year anatomized the collapse of funding mechanisms. It left no doubt that the fall of key places to the Spanish during 1652 was a function of financial weakness and decisions about the prioritization of revenues, and that this remained a grave threat to what remained of France’s positions over her frontiers.²⁵

Dunkirk General warnings about the parlous state of the garrison at Dunkirk had been given throughout 1651 by the governor, Godefroy d’Estrades, but these intensified markedly in the early months of 1652, with pleas from the governor and his senior officers that they had exhausted their own money and credit, and that the garrison was on the point of mutiny.²⁶ The situation worsened, and in April d’Estrades decided to abandon neighbouring Mardyck on the grounds that his resources would not extend to garrisoning and supporting both places.²⁷ A more immediate reason for abandoning Mardyck was to transfer part of its garrison into Gravelines, now under siege by the Spanish. Gravelines, it was generally agreed, was vital to ensuring the security of Dunkirk, but the Spanish siege and naval blockade steadily tightened in the last weeks of April.²⁸ Attention had also been distracted by concerns about a plot to exploit the dissatisfaction of the garrison in Béthune to surrender the place to the Spanish, and by further security concerns about Arras, judged the most strategically important of all French gains in Flanders.²⁹ The fall of Gravelines on 18 May duly opened the route to Dunkirk for the Spanish and the question became not whether a siege would take place, but when.³⁰ A few days before the final surrender of Gravelines, the Spanish army of around 8,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry had already started to redeploy to block

²⁴ See ‘Condé, Paris and the Princes’ Army’ in Chapter 4. ²⁵ AAE MD 891, fo. 73, Mar. 1653: the assignment of revenues to purposes other than military needs had detracted from a priority ‘si importante à la réputation de l’estat’ ²⁶ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fos 202, 209, d’Estrades to Mazarin, Dunkirk, 6/30 Jan. 1652. ²⁷ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fos 234, 240, d’Estrades to Mazarin, Dunkirk, 1/4 April 1652, which also give a full account of the impact of financial shortages. ²⁸ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, maréchal d’Aumont to Mazarin, 28 April 1652. ²⁹ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 223, d’Aumont to Mazarin, [Arras], 17 Feb; fo 244, Mondejeux (governor of Arras) to Mazarin, Arras, 2 April 1652. ³⁰ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 280, d’Aumont to Mazarin, 19 May 1652.

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landward access to Dunkirk, and the new siege was under way by late May.³¹ From the outset d’Estrades worried that his officers, who had received no pay since the previous year, would be unable to continue drawing on their own credit; on 14 May he reported that the captains of some of the French and Swiss companies had simply stopped paying for the provision of food to their troops.³² By early July d’Estrades was forced to quell a mutiny among the ordinary soldiers, who had assembled in Dunkirk’s main square to demand food and to urge surrender, since the alternative was to die of disease or hunger.³³ Finally in August the governor received 40,000 livres, raised on a Dutch loan by Henri Brasset, French Resident in the United Provinces. This allowed him to purchase and stockpile food and some basic medical supplies to try to staunch the losses through sickness and mortality; in the week that he was writing d’Estrades reported that there had been more than 100 deaths amongst the garrison.³⁴ Frustrated by the absence of replies from Mazarin to his regular letters, d’Estrades became convinced that he had been abandoned to face the siege. But Mazarin’s efforts at persuasion had been devoted not to d’Estrades, bottled up by Spanish land forces, but to the duc de Vendôme, admiral of France, present with the Atlantic fleet at La Rochelle. Mazarin believed that the only means to save Dunkirk was a naval expedition bringing supplies and troops into the port by sea, and that such an expedition required the direct involvement of Vendôme both to provide the warships and to assemble the supplies and troops. Vendôme prevaricated throughout August, aware that the financing of this expedition would fall on him, and complaining that his resources had already been heavily overstretched by the campaign against Dognon around La Rochelle and Brouage.³⁵ Only when he learnt that a separate initiative was being taken to stockpile supplies at Boulogne which could then be collected by his fleet did Vendôme show more enthusiasm for the relief operation.³⁶ On 29 August the Spanish army opened its trenches before Dunkirk, and a week later d’Estrades made an agreement that unless relief arrived the garrison would surrender on 16 September. It had been hoped that Dunkirk would be able to hold out for forty days, but that overestimated the morale and physical capacity of the garrison, mutinous again through neglect and hardship.³⁷ The capitulation agreement left the arrangements for a relief operation by sea desperately short of

³¹ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 278, d’Estrades to d’Aumont, Dunkirk, 14 May 1652. ³² Ibid. ³³ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 322, Estrades to Mazarin, Dunkirk, 5 July 1652. ³⁴ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 330, d’Estrades to Mazarin, Dunkirk, 13 Aug. 1652. ³⁵ BN Msfr. 23,203, fo. 140, Vendôme to Brienne, Brest, 20 July; AAE MD 884, fo. 106, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 23 Aug. 1652. ³⁶ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 336, Bosquet to Mazarin, 21 Aug; BN Ffr. 4212, fos 9, 18, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 23/29 Aug. 1652; AAE MD 884, fo. 89, copy of the ‘Estat des Victuailles’ that Mar. d’Aumont has provided for the transports to relieve Dunkirk [11 Sept]—a total of 30,370 livres. ³⁷ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 338, Broglia to Mazarin [La Bassée], 1 Sept. 1652; MD 884, fos 79–80, Vendôme to Le Tellier, Dieppe, 12 Sept. 1652.

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time. The consequent haste may have led to the critical failure to notify and reach an agreement with the English navy. Brasset had written to Brienne in late July about the dangers of failing to concede precedence to English warships, and the need for careful handling of English sensibilities in the Channel.³⁸ Despite this, the hastily assembled combination of seventeen warships and troop/supply transports sailed up the Channel with 1,200 additional infantry.³⁹ Reports that the English had 25–30 warships in the Channel had been ignored in the rush to bring in the relief.⁴⁰ The French ships reached Calais on 14 September at 5 pm, but an English fleet of fifteen warships descended on them and destroyed or captured all but one ship of the fleet.⁴¹ With no possibility now of getting additional troops and supplies to Dunkirk, the garrison surrendered and marched out as agreed. The immediate concern following the fall of Dunkirk was the security of other places held by the French. Marshal d’Aumont identified Béthune, La Bassée, and Ardres as the most obvious targets, partly because of the interconnecting canal network that would facilitate moving and then supplying the Spanish troops. At the same time d’Aumont sent a clear warning about the depletion of his own credit: he itemized a series of debts to merchants that had been used to purchase grain and other foodstuffs, while a further 10,000 livres had been borrowed to remount his own cavalry regiment.⁴² This was also the experience of the individual garrison commanders, and they waited with apprehension for further Spanish initiatives which would not merely threaten their cities, but stretch their credit to breaking point. The cost of losing Dunkirk also extended to the loss of the warships from the failed relief expedition, now held by the English supposedly in retaliation for earlier French piracy against English merchant shipping. Quite apart from Mazarin’s growing conviction that this was the first step in a deliberate English escalation of tension into open warfare, admiral Vendôme was now even more reluctant to commit to further expensive naval operations.⁴³ Le Tellier wrote in frustration to Mazarin that the next step should be to transfer the remaining naval resources to a relief expedition for Barcelona. He feared, however, that Vendôme was too concerned with trying to compensate himself for his expenditure on the

³⁸ BN Ffr. 22,203, The Hague, 25 July 1652. ³⁹ AAE MD 884, fo. 78, Vendôme to Le Tellier, Dieppe, 12 Sept. 1652. ⁴⁰ AAE MD 884, fo. 90, d’Aumont to Le Tellier, Boulogne, 11 Sept. 1652. ⁴¹ AAE MD 884, fo. 83v, d’Aumont to Le Tellier, 15 Sept; CP Angleterre 61, fo. 84, Gentillot to Servien, Calais, 15 Sept. 1652; for the English context to the attack, see S. R. Gardiner, ‘Cromwell and Mazarin in 1652’, English Historical Review 11 (1896), 476–509; C. L. Grose, ‘England and Dunkirk’, American Historical Review 39 (1933), 1–27, 6–9. ⁴² AAE MD 884, fos 87–89v, Boulogne, 11 Sept. 1652; MD 881, fo. 281, Gentillot to Mazarin, Calais, 14 Sept., concerned about the threat to Calais. ⁴³ For Mazarin’s fears of an unwanted and unsought conflict with England, see Chéruel, v. 306–8, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 30 Sept., and the anonymous memorandum from late 1652 proposing a pre-emptive alliance with the Dutch: AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fos 350–1; C. Korr, Cromwell and the New Model Foreign Policy. England’s policy towards France, 1649–1658 (Berkeley/London, 1975), 37–40.

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Dunkirk expedition. By the time he might finally be pushed into action it would be too late to save Barcelona.⁴⁴ The fall of Dunkirk had consequences for the wider defensive system.

Casale-Monferrato A similar series of warning signs that the campaign would be different in 1652 were evident in the north Italian theatre. Here the equivalent of Gravelines was the fall of Trino to the Spanish on 20 May after a short siege.⁴⁵ Control of Trino now rendered Casale-Monferrato more vulnerable, as the Spanish could intercept munitions and support sent to Casale through Piedmont.⁴⁶ This had further demoralized the officers and soldiers of the garrison, who already considered themselves to have been forgotten by the French authorities. Back in August 1650 Jacques de Cominges, sr de Montpezat, the governor of Casale, had written to Mazarin following an account of the weakness and financial neglect of the city, stating that all his officers now wanted to demit from service; only with difficulty had he persuaded them to be patient and wait for some recognition of their commitment.⁴⁷ The challenge faced by Montpezat was not just neglect from Paris, but local political sensitivities. The neighbouring Spanish were playing what was ultimately to prove their winning card in 1652. Rather than occupying Monferrato themselves with troops from the Milanese, they insisted that their military operations sought only to secure the territory for the duke of Mantua. They wanted to drive the French out of Casale in order to restore this, his second capital city, to Carlo II Gonzaga. French diplomats and ministers initially scoffed at these Spanish protestations as self-evidently insincere. But not only was this the real Spanish game plan; it also had another unwanted consequence. While the French did not intend to make any similar renunciation of Casale to Carlo II, it forced them to be circumspect about not abusing the territory surrounding Casale and not extracting contributions from the local population, which would fuel the perception of an abusive and exploitative French soldiery.⁴⁸ The garrison specifically could not live, as did many of those on other French frontiers, on locally requisitioned resources: the choice was between funds from central government or the credit of the garrison officers. ⁴⁴ AAE MD 884, fo. 369, Le Tellier to Mazarin, [Monchy], 19 Sept. 1652. ⁴⁵ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 288, 11 May, Queen-Regent Christina to Mazarin, Turin, 11 May 1652; BN Ffr. Clairambault 438, fo. 303, E. Servien to Brienne, Turin, 18 May 1652. ⁴⁶ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 299, E. Servien to Le Tellier, Turin, 25 May 1652. ⁴⁷ AAE CP Mantoue 8, fo. 66, Casale, 19 Aug. 1650, plus fo. 72, mémoire pour ce quy regarde Cazal. ⁴⁸ See, for example, one of the formal safeguards signed by Montpezat and the governor of Milan, agreeing not to impose contributions of any kind on the peasantry and to respect the integrity of the territory: AAE CP Mantoue 8, fo. 67, 27 June 1650.

Susa

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Vercelli

Po

Pavia

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REPUBLIC OF GENOA

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DUCHIES OF Parma PARMA & PIACENZA

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CONFEDERATION Lake Maggior e

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Verrua

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Pinerolo

Rivoli

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Aosta

Map 9 North Italy in 1652

Nice

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HELVETIC

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By early 1652 the complaints and pleas from Montpezat and his colleague Saint-Ange, governor of the formidable citadel on the edge of the city, had become desperate. Montpezat travelled in person to try to meet with Mazarin to plead for some allocation of resources, while Saint-Ange wrote further last-ditch letters about the plight of the garrisons.⁴⁹ Both the Mantuan ambassador in Paris and the French ambassador in Venice were enrolled in the bid to persuade the royal government of the plight of the garrison of Casale and the danger that it would simply disintegrate in the face of any Spanish attack.⁵⁰ However, the north Italian problems for France did not stop with the security of Casale. The fall of Trino was followed by fears of a collapse across Piedmont as the Spanish pressed forward their advantage. There seemed nothing to stop a cascade of surrenders, since there were only enough Savoyard troops to garrison 3–4 of the 8–10 crucial strong-points in Piedmont. Savoy-Piedmont, France’s one consistent ally south of the Alps, was on the verge of being lost, and with it France’s ‘reputation, allies and any chance of influencing affairs in Italy in the future’.⁵¹ But the French troops which had been pulled out of Italy in the winter of 1651/2 and should have returned, refreshed, for the campaign of 1652 did not go into winter quarters; instead they were drawn into the operations of the royalist armies within France. In 1652, for the first time since 1635, there might not be a French army corps in Italy. In the absence of this support, the Savoyard garrison of Crescentino surrendered to the Spanish in late June, and it was feared that Verrua would fall within weeks.⁵² The threat to Piedmont ratcheted up the tension considerably further. Spanish incursions into Piedmont threatened the security of France’s other key fortified place in Italy, Pinerolo. The governor, the marquis de Piennes, justifiably alarmed that a rapid advance by the Spanish army into Piedmont could lead to a surprise siege of Pinerolo, shut down all strategic cooperation with Turin and Casale in order to retain troops that would strengthen his own garrison. When the Spanish forces turned away from the siege of Verrua and back towards Casale at the beginning of September, this failure to reinforce the garrison with troops from Pinerolo was seen as an irrevocable error. In a letter to Le Tellier filled with fatalism about the imminent loss of Casale, ambassador Ennemond Servien lamented both the lack of command structure in Italy that could have forced de Piennes to comply with an instruction to release the troops from Pinerolo, and the absence of other French forces in Piedmont which could have tipped the

⁴⁹ AAE CP Mantoue 8, fo. 158, 7 Mar. 1652. ⁵⁰ AAE CP Mantoue 8, fo. 164, Priandi to Mazarin, Paris, 16 Aug. 1652; CP Venise 70, fo 152, Argenson to St Ange, Venice, 6 July 1652. ⁵¹ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 308, Saint-Croix [to Le Tellier], Turin, 1 June 1652; fo 316, E. Servien [to Brienne], Turin, 15 June 1652. ⁵² AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 324, [Turin], 29 June 1652.

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balance.⁵³ The following day the princess regent, Christina of Savoy, wrote to explain why it would be pointless to risk the Savoyard cavalry in a bid to break through the Spanish siege lines outside Casale.⁵⁴ The city, and finally on 22 October the detached citadel, surrendered to the Spanish amidst a swirl of conspiracy rumours that threw suspicion on both SaintAnge and Monpezat, and led to enquiries that dragged on through 1653.⁵⁵ The immediate reasons for the surrender appear more prosaic: a garrison that was at the end of its endurance, demoralized and forgotten. Above all, the remaining troops in Casale were aware that the French crown had neither the forces in Piedmont to organize relief, nor, given the domestic circumstances, the capacity or the will to dispatch further troops into Italy.⁵⁶ No less problematic for the French position in Italy was that the Spanish kept their word to the duke of Mantua and, once the French garrison had marched out of Casale, they handed city and citadel over to Mantuan troops. Decades of French propaganda directed at the Italian princes about the unrestrained territorial and political ambitions of the Spanish now looked embarrassingly misplaced.⁵⁷ By December ambassador d’Argenson was reporting from Venice concerning rumours of an alliance between Savoy and Spain, and of marriage proposals between the young duke of Savoy and the Infanta.⁵⁸ Bernard du PlessisBesançon, despatched on a diplomatic mission in 1653 to the Italian princes to try to shore up France’s reputation and to offer terms for renewed collaboration, commented that the biggest obstacles to any renewed engagement remained the general opinion that France would never escape from her civil wars, and the moderation shown by Spain over Casale.⁵⁹

Barcelona As 1652 progressed, the situation in Catalonia was no less cause for concern. The French had been both supporting and supplying the citizens of Barcelona, under

⁵³ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 342, Turin, 1 Sept. 1652. De Piennes wrote a ferocious reply to Mazarin on 19 Oct, angrily refuting the charges that his withholding the companies had been responsible for the fall of Casale: Sardaigne 45, fo. 373, Pinerolo. ⁵⁴ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 344, Madame Royale to Le Tellier, Turin, 2 Sept. ⁵⁵ AAE CP Mantoue 8, fos 181–90, Mémoire sur la perte de Cazal and accompanying depositions (early 1653). ⁵⁶ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo. 358, E. Servien to Mazarin, Turin, 28 Sept. 1652, on the total demoralization of the garrison; fo. 378, E. Servien to Le Tellier, Turin, 25 Oct. 1652, reporting the surrender of Casale and the citadel. ⁵⁷ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fo 378, E. Servien to Le Tellier, Turin, 25 Oct. 1652, who identifies the backlash against France that the Spanish transfer of Casale will cause. CP Venise 70, fo. 183, Argenson to E. Servien, 26 Oct., rumoured Spanish attack on Pinerolo, and aim to drive French out of Piedmont. ⁵⁸ AAE CP Venise 70, fo. 195v, Argenson to E. Servien, Venice, 27 Dec. 1652. ⁵⁹ AAE CP Mantoue, 8, fos 262–64, Plessis-Besançon to the King, Casale, [mid-June] 1653.

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LANGUEDOC Salses Salses

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VALENCIA V A LE AL E NC NCIA

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Tortos rtosa toss Tortosa

Map 10 Roussillon and Catalonia in 1652

Spanish siege since August 1651, and trying to assemble a military force that could march down from France to break the Spanish encirclement. Reports of the dire state of the garrison and the desperate need for supplies and reinforcements became a monotonous litany from early 1652.⁶⁰ As Mazarin and Le Tellier recognized, simply sending relief to Barcelona by sea would not break the siege, though it could provide vital supplies of food and munitions and raise morale. Only by sending troops overland to engage the besieging army could the siege be broken.⁶¹ But any project to save Barcelona and keep the Catalan revolt alive posed huge challenges to a government in France that was locked in its own struggles.⁶² Getting troops across the Pyrenees and into Catalonia depended on Harcourt’s calculations about the forces that he needed in order to bring the situation in Guienne under control. And here the crown and its ministers

⁶⁰ AAE CP Espagne 32, fos 55–57, 73, Mérinville to Mazarin, Barcelona, 7 Feb./12 Mar. 1652. ⁶¹ AAE CP Espagne 31, fo. 221, Mazarin to Harcourt, Melun, 3 June 1652; Chéruel, v. 170–1, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Reims, 27 Aug. 1652. ⁶² AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 60, (La Mothe-Houdancourt) to Mazarin, 10 Feb. 1652: fate of the rest of Catalonia hangs on the siege of Barcelona.

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encountered the same problem which would prove fatal to the defence of both Dunkirk and Casale: military forces that had not enjoyed their months of winter quartering in 1651/2, and the virtually complete financial incapacity of the crown through 1652. Even supplying Barcelona by sea was dependent on holding at bay the turbulent situation in Provence, where Toulon was now at the centre of a power struggle between the ducs de Mercoeur and d’Angoulême, while the loyalty and effectiveness of the newly established naval base at Marseilles was untested.⁶³ In response to this situation in Provence, and the crown’s shortage of ready funding, Mazarin himself initiated what was to be a misjudged arrangement with an entrepreneurial naval officer, the commandeur de La Ferrière. Ferrière was contracted to organize and fund a seaborne expedition to carry grain supplies to Barcelona and then support the besieged population, his costs to be reimbursed against assigned revenues.⁶⁴ The agreement was drawn up in mutual suspicion, and matters did not improve as the supplies and galleys were slowly assembled and delays and obstruction mounted.⁶⁵ The relief expedition, which combined transports and a substantial force of galleys and sailing ships, was finally equipped and ready to sail in mid-July.⁶⁶ In addition to this naval effort, Mazarin and his fellow ministers needed to juggle the various demands for troops in the south-west of France to try to facilitate the creation of a force large enough to break the Spanish siege of Barcelona. Philippe de La Mothe-Houdancourt, since October 1651 re-appointed as viceroy of Catalonia and no friend of Mazarin, had successfully slipped through the Spanish lines outside Barcelona in April with a small number of troops to reinforce the garrison.⁶⁷ But despite the upbeat presentation of the operation, it did little more than make good the losses that had been sustained when the previous viceroy, the comte de Marsin, had abandoned Barcelona in October 1651 to join his patron, Condé; Marsin had taken over a thousand of the best quality troops with him to join the prince’s army in Guienne. Moreover, MotheHoudancourt had been badly wounded while forcing the siege lines, and was ⁶³ The authorities at Toulon refused to allow any ships to leave the port for most of March and April: AAE MD 889, fo. 176, Ferrière to Mazarin, 20 Mar. 1652. ⁶⁴ AAE MD 889, fo. 231, Bidault to Mazarin, Marseilles, 23 April 1652. ⁶⁵ AAE MD 889, fo. 238, Ferrière to Mazarin, 1 May 1652; CP Espagne 31, fo. 220, Ferrière to Mazarin, Marseilles, 2 June 1652: Ferrière complained that 200,000 livres previously advanced was given on worthless assignations, and asked for formal recognition that he has committed his private funds to the operation. MD 889, fo. 260, Bidault to Mazarin, Marseilles, 4 June 1652: further reasons for delays. ⁶⁶ AAE MD 889, fo. 281, Ferrière to Mazarin, à la mer, 15 July 1652; maréchal de camp, Louis d’Aligre, writing to Le Tellier of the failure of the expedition, cites 22 galleys and 18 sailing ships: AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 113, Gerona, 22 Aug. 1652. ⁶⁷ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 88, Merinville to Mazarin, Barcelona, 29 April 1652. For the longmaturing antipathy that Mothe-Houdancourt held for Mazarin, see L. André, ‘Le maréchal de la Mothe-Houdancourt: son process, sa rebellion, sa fin’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 12 (1937), 5–35, 97–125.

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unable to take charge in person of the city’s defence until well into July.⁶⁸ The priority remained putting together a larger force that could actually engage the entrenched Spanish siege army of around 10,000 men. Finding the troops and a commander who would be prepared to undertake the operation would drag on until the autumn, and meanwhile the Spanish grip on Barcelona tightened. Ferrière’s expedition, after it finally set sail, demonstrated all the limitations of an operation that had been privately financed by a commander who had no confidence that his investment could be recovered from the crown. Moving hesitantly along the Mediterranean coast, the fleet finally came within sight of Barcelona. On 10 August Ferrière, seconded by his captains, met the intendant d’armée, Michel d’Aligre, on his ship and demanded a payment of 92,150 livres from Barcelona within three days, otherwise the fleet, which he claimed had supplies only for another six days, would weigh anchor and abandon the city. In exchange for this immediate payment, the fleet would remain for another month to break the Spanish naval blockade. Frantic efforts were made to persuade Ferrière to accept a smaller down-payment or a delay, and to recognize the impossibility of raising such sums from either the city or from surrounding territory that had already been ruined by the siege and the exactions of Spanish and French troops.⁶⁹ All that the negotiations achieved was to defer the departure of the fleet until the end of the week. Even the landing of four transport ships loaded with grain specifically intended for the city was subject to negotiation, with Ferrière demanding a separate payment for the 16,000 septiers of grain before it was delivered. Aligre and La Mothe’s frustration was not simply about the lack of long-sought military support, but the devastating impact this had on FrancoCatalan relations: the Catalans, Aligre reported, considered with justice that they were being ransomed by the French fleet, and drew the obvious conclusion that the French intended to abandon them.⁷⁰ Ferrière duly carried out his threat and the fleet sailed back to Provence. St-André-Montbrun, commander of a small French expeditionary force trying to reach Barcelona, bitterly pointed out that if the French fleet had remained just another two days it would have been able to intercept a Spanish flotilla which had since disembarked 3,000 troops and some extra artillery on the coast south of the city.⁷¹ Indicative of a military dysfunctionalism that was coming to dominate these initiatives, and which was to persist through the 1650s, no disciplinary action appears to have been taken against Ferrière. Le Tellier noted in passing in a letter to Mazarin that the behaviour of Ferrière was scandalous, but as Ferrière had been ⁶⁸ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 100, Mothe-Houdancourt to Mazarin, Barcelona, 12 July 1652: the first time he wrote to Mazarin since he was wounded. Only in mid-August was he able to walk again: 32, fo. 107, Aligre to Mazarin, Barcelona, 8 Aug. 1652. ⁶⁹ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 111, copy of letter from Aligre to Ferrière, Girona, 16 Aug. 1652. ⁷⁰ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 113, Aligre to Le Tellier, Girona, 22 Aug. 1652. ⁷¹ AAE MD 884, fo. 85, camp outside Barcelona, 31 Aug. 1652.

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personally selected by Mazarin for the task there seemed little willingness to take matters further.⁷² A lengthy memoir by Ferrière’s allies was circulated in November which sought to deflect criticism for the failure, rather unconvincingly seeking to blame the French troops in Barcelona and the local population.⁷³ And astonishingly, when a further naval expedition was commissioned in October in a last-ditch effort to sustain resistance in Barcelona, Ferrière was once again placed in charge of its organization. Only his sudden death led to replacement by admiral Vendôme in late October, by which time any relief operation was too late to save the city.⁷⁴ Attempts to bring seaborne relief to the city were dogged by bad decisionmaking and the corrosive effects of limited funding. But land-based initiatives to break the blockade were no less hampered by the state of the armies and the erosion of the will and capacity of the army officers to carry further burdens and make more financial sacrifices. Following the disappearance of Ferrière’s expedition, Saint-André-Montbrun, acting in coordination with Mothe-Houdancourt, resolved on a desperate attempt to break through the Spanish lines with a relief force which had slowly been filtered down into Catalonia from Roussillon over the summer. A large proportion of these troops had served in Italy in 1651. Instead of going into winter quarters in early 1652, they had been drawn into the royalist campaign against the Condéen forces in Guienne. From there they had been moved down to Roussillon, and Saint-André had taken command of them in Catalonia. From the outset this was a desperate plan, based not on careful strategic assessment but on concern to raise morale in Barcelona: La Mothe-Houdancourt had reported his opinion that the city would not hold out for more than another four days without relief.⁷⁵ The attempt to break through the Spanish lines failed, as Saint-André feared. But in the process it provoked the most serious troop mutiny of 1652. The mutiny was led by the maréchal de camp, Louis d’Aligre, cousin of the intendant with the army in Catalonia, and supported by at least three of the colonels who commanded regiments destined for Italy in 1652, but which had instead been diverted, via campaigning in France, to Roussillon and Catalonia. Their main concerns were that they would be ordered to remain in Catalonia over the winter of 1652/3, and a reluctance to see their troops wasted in another futile attempt to save Barcelona. Saint-André presented the episode in terms of the immoderate greed of the particular colonels—‘tout leur but n’estoit que d’aller piller en France’—and

⁷² AAE MD 884, fo. 322, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 13 Sept. 1652. For Mazarin’s recruitment of Ferrière: Chéruel v. 53–4, Mazarin to Ferrière, Saumur, 23 Feb. 1652; Montglat, Mémoires, l. 387–8. ⁷³ AAE CP Espagne 31, fos 265–7, Relation, [November] 1652. ⁷⁴ AAE CP 885, fos 4–5, 167, 275, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise/Mantes, 1/13/26 Oct. 1652. ⁷⁵ AAE MD 884, fo. 85, Saint-André-Montbrun to Le Tellier, camp outside Barcelona, 31 Aug. 1652.

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personal antagonism between Louis d’Aligre and La Mothe-Houdancourt.⁷⁶ The intendant, Michel d’Aligre, was harsher: the action of the officers and soldiers in simply abandoning Catalonia was mass desertion, and should be punished as such, by summary executions.⁷⁷ The issue pointed however to larger problems of authority and expectation: military hierarchy had broken down, and behind this was a conviction amongst the officers and their soldiers that the crown and the ministers had reneged on their side of the implicit contract to provide the means by which the units could be reconstituted and the officers reimbursed. The situation grew worse. The immediate fear after the fall of Barcelona on 11 October was that the Spanish siege army would advance into Roussillon, with the prime target of Perpignan. Concerns about the security of Perpignan and the state of its defences had been voiced as early as March 1652, but by late September Le Tellier was concerned both about the strength of its defences and the possibility of conspiracy.⁷⁸ The obvious response was to draw the remaining troops out of Catalonia and garrison them in Roussillon, but billeting them in a territory that had borne the brunt of troop movements through 1651 and 1652 was not going to provide the cash and properly supplied lodgings that the officers and troops expected. The mutiny spread to troops in Roussillon, and the government saw no option but to compromise: the risk of losing the troops altogether outweighed the importance of enforcing discipline. Trusting to the weakness of the Spanish at the end of a lengthy siege, the ministry permitted the regiments who had served or been destined for Catalonia to withdraw further into France for the winter, leaving the existing garrisons and adding whatever newly recruited troops could be gathered and passed down to Roussillon.⁷⁹ Despite the growing agitation of the governor of Perpignan, Anne de Noailles, about his paltry garrison and his vulnerability to enemy action, neither military nor civil authorities were prepared to challenge what had become a collective refusal to obey the orders that would condemn the regiments to another winter quarter of dearth and financial abandonment.⁸⁰ Meanwhile those French troops who were left or arrived in Roussillon took out their anger and frustration in particularly harsh and violent treatment of the population, behaving, as one local official wrote, as if they were occupying enemy territory.⁸¹

⁷⁶ AAE CP Espagne, 32, fo. 118, Saint-André-Montbrun to ‘Monsieur’ [not Le Tellier], Girona, 13 Sept. 1652. ⁷⁷ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 121, intendant Aligre to Le Tellier, 13 Sept. 1652. ⁷⁸ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 63, mémoire touchant Perpignan, 1 Mar. 1652; MD 884, fo. 439, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 30 Sept. 1652, especially concerned at rumours of conspiracy to surrender the place. ⁷⁹ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 125, Saint-André-Montbrun to Le Tellier, 22 Sept. 1652; mutiny reported in Roussillon: MD 885, fo. 111, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 7 Oct. 1652. ⁸⁰ AAE CP Espagne 32, fos 142, 144, 148, duc de Noailles to Mazarin, Perpignan, 23 Nov, 1/8 Dec. 1652. ⁸¹ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 156, M de Sagarra to Don Joseph de Margueritte, 21 Dec. 1652.

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The larger strategic implications of this serial collapse in later 1652 should not be underestimated: it decisively reversed the upward trajectory of French foreign policy since the 1630s. And the fall of these key places opened up an entirely new set of vulnerabilities across and within France’s frontiers. No one seriously doubted that if the civil war in France continued with the same intensity into 1653, the fate of every other major French conquest from Arras to Perpignan would be sealed. Royalist rhetoric tried to heap the blame for these disasters squarely on the shoulders of the princes’ party and Condé in particular, but contemporaries were more even-handed in their allocation of responsibility.⁸² For them, Mazarin’s self-interested and unnecessary return to France and intransigent determination to remain in power was at least as responsible for precipitating the chain of disasters as Condé’s rebellion. Not only did Mazarin reinvigorate a civil war which showed every sign of being snuffed out in late 1651 and would have allowed the majority of troops to assume their habitual winter quarters, but he and Condé seemed locked in negotiations which consistently foundered on what to commentators looked like a reluctance to make necessary compromises.

War and the Subsistence Economy: Soldiers and Peasants The previous section argued for the hugely disruptive impact on French military resources of the continual and wide-ranging civil war across France from autumn 1651. It also proposed that the almost complete failure to achieve the winterquartering of the troops in the winter of 1651/2 had disrupted a process which since the early 1640s had been tacitly acknowledged as the basis of a financial ‘contract’ with the officer corps. But what was the effect of the burdens of war, and the particular impact of the failure of the normal system of supporting the troops, on the ordinary people of France? Why was 1652 both the year in which France’s foreign policy collapsed and the year in which the extreme hardship suffered by the civilian population during 1648–51 became the year of catastrophe, a subsistence crisis on a vast scale in which ‘a third of the population has died’?⁸³ This book’s introduction drew attention to those historians of France who since the mid-twentieth century have studied historical data on climate conditions, and the impact of temperature and weather on an economy hugely dominated by subsistence agriculture. A more recent trend, seen notably in the work of Geoffrey Parker and the debates that it has stimulated, has sought to explore the collision of

⁸² AAE MD 889, fo. 406, Declaration du Roy, contre les princes de Condé, Conty . . . etc, Paris, 13 Nov. 1652, which roundly accuses the princes of being responsible for the loss of the places. ⁸³ Angélique Arnauld, Lettres (3 vols; Utrecht, 1742), ii. 433, Arnauld to queen of Poland, 28 Jan. 1654, but refers back to the crisis of 1652.

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the essentially determinist relationship between climate and subsistence economy with the contingent impact of human actions.⁸⁴ And in the seventeenth century the greatest human impact came from the waging of war, with all of its economic consequences.⁸⁵ Studies of seventeenth-century climate have identified two patterns. First is the consolidation of the Little Ice Age, a lowering of mean global temperatures across a 300-year period from the later sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. This brought long-term challenges to agricultural productivity: the shortening of growing seasons as springs remained colder and autumns cooled more quickly; the overall reduction of suitable agricultural land as the altitude at which crops could be grown was reduced; in more northerly territories, the encroachment of glaciers on land which would hitherto have remained free of ice for most of the year, and had previously been suitable for animal grazing if not crop growing. Temperature falls can also change patterns of sea currents, with impact in turn on fishing grounds and the economic viability of island communities. Contemporaries were conscious of this larger-scale climate shift: in December 1665 the prince de Conti reported in a letter to the king about the damage that persistent cold weather ‘over the last thirty years’ had inflicted on the olive trees of Languedoc.⁸⁶ The second pattern operates within this larger, cyclical downturn in temperatures, and involves the study of much shorter periods of dramatic climate variation within this cycle. Some of these shorter periods were benign: in France and western Europe generally, the years from 1602 to 1616 were characterized by ‘ice age’ cold winters with considerable snowfall, but these were then mostly followed by relatively hot, dry summers, well suited to abundant harvests of grain and grapes.⁸⁷ But good years of large harvests and low grain prices brought no cumulative benefit since surpluses could not be banked in the longer term, and poor communication networks restricted access to larger markets. Such years simply allowed peasants and artisans to negotiate the immediate burdens and demands on their lives more easily. In terms of human impact, attention needs to be focused on the shorter cycles of abnormally poor meteorological conditions, massively compounding the permanent downturn in mean temperatures over these centuries. In France, the four-year cycle that began with the bitterly cold winter of 1648/9 and ended with the cold, wet spring of 1652 was almost certainly the worst sequence of bad years across the century, including the terrible years of

⁸⁴ Parker, Global Crisis; ‘Forum: The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century Revisited’, The American Historical Review 113, (2008), 1029–99. ⁸⁵ Parker, Global Crisis, specifically 26–36; J. Landers, ‘The Destructiveness of Pre-Industrial Warfare: Political and Technological Determinants’, Journal of Peace Research 42 (2005), 455–70. ⁸⁶ BN Ffr. 23,203, fo. 74, written from Béziers. ⁸⁷ E. Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire humaine et comparé du climat. Vol 1: Canicules et glaciers, XIIIeXVIIIe siècles (Paris, 2004), 310–14.

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the early 1690s. The period 1648–52 had been foreshadowed by a number of earlier short, sharp climatic downturns, notably in 1640–3, marked by harsh winters and cold, wet summers which delayed and greatly reduced the harvests.⁸⁸ Yet although France had been at war in the early 1640s, military campaigning, territorial occupation, and systematic devastation largely took place along or beyond France’s frontiers. The agriculturally rich interior—provinces from Normandy down through the Loire valley and into Berry and the Auvergne— paid the financial costs of the war, intensifying the waves of tax rebellion and popular revolt. But in 1640–3 these provinces did not suffer the direct impact of conflict, and the relationship with the climate-driven subsistence crisis was less intense. The picture that unfolds after 1648 and culminates in 1652 is catastrophically more extensive in its impact.⁸⁹ This is because the ‘short’ climate cycle was more severe, but still more because the compounding factor of military action and the waging of war was a different experience from anything encountered previously. The climate downturn from 1648 to 1652 demonstrates particularly graphically the cumulative impact of successive combinations of weather conditions. The summer of 1648 was normal both in terms of sun, warmth, and precipitation and in the timing and productivity of grain and grape harvests; it came at the end of a run of relatively benign conditions from 1644 through the middle years of the 1640s. The combination of good harvests and the military successes that kept French troops campaigning beyond the frontiers may have tempered the initial anger and resistance to a demanding ministerial regime, ever more prepared to test the boundaries of fiscal compliance. The first shock came with the winter of 1648–9. Unusually cold across Western and Central Europe, with low temperatures that lasted into May, the first half of 1649 was also a time of heavy rainfall, river flooding, and deep snow that lasted into early April in north-eastern France. Warmer weather in the summer was accompanied by further heavy rain and high humidity, which rotted the surviving crops in the ground. Wheat, which had averaged 15.90 livres per septier (156 litres) in the Paris markets in the twelve months of 1647–8, averaged 21.35 livres in 1648–9 and 28.96 livres over the twelve months of 1649–50. But these twelvemonth averages understate the impact of price rises. If instead we take a single market price at a critical moment in the agricultural cycle, the grain markets around 11 November when the size and quality of the year’s harvest had a direct impact on the coming winter months, a more dramatic picture of crisis emerges: a septier of lower-quality rye cost 7 livres in November 1648 and 22 livres at the

⁸⁸ Le Roy Ladurie, Canicules et glaciers, 356–61. ⁸⁹ See, for example, evidence in J-M Moriceau, ‘Les Crises démographiques dans le sud de la région parisienne de 1560 à 1670’, Annales de démographie historique 1980, 105–23.

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same point in 1649.⁹⁰ Even in areas that were at the heart of grain production such as Picardy, the same impact was noted: an abrupt and steep rise in grain prices in local markets from 1647 to 1649.⁹¹ By late 1649 France was already in the grip of severe dearth. While the winter of 1649/50 was not so cold as the previous year, the relative mildness of December/ January was then followed by unusually low temperatures stretching into the spring, and yet more heavy rainfall. The 1650 harvest was suboptimal; once again much of the grain had been rotted and spoiled by humidity which persisted through the summer. A weakened and malnourished population fell victim to waves of epidemic disease like the brutally intense and contagious fevers that swept through Provence and Languedoc in the summer of 1650.⁹² Prices of grain fell slightly after the terrible year of 1649: a septier of rye in the Paris November market had fallen to 11 livres, though the price was back up at 15 livres by January 1651—twice its level during the winter of 1648. However the merely bad winter and first half of 1649/50 was followed by the disasters of the winters of 1650/1 and 1651/2. In both cases the pattern echoed that of 1648/9: extreme cold and intense, torrential rainfall, which, combined with melting ice and snow, led to flooding in the vicinity of all major rivers, and again the ruining of crops in the ground.⁹³ The winters were long and the cold persisted deep into the spring. The unprecedented impact of this crisis was clear by the opening months of 1651, when accounts of the plight of the poor in the north-east of France started to be distributed in Paris and elsewhere to encourage charitable support.⁹⁴ The reports pointed to mass deaths from starvation and disease, often detailed parish by parish by individual curés; they raised dilemmas about whether to concentrate the distribution of charity in cities such as Amiens and Saint-Quentin, where large numbers of the poor had congregated in the hope of support, or in the countryside in a bid to prevent the flight to the towns. When the summer of 1651 finally arrived it was unusually dry and hot, but this seems to have been a further blow to agricultural production that had already been devastated by the earlier conditions. The harvest of 1651 was dismal, and the price of grain started to rise in anticipation as early as July 1651. The effects of crop failure resonated throughout the rest of 1651 and well into summer 1652. Prices of grain in Paris continued to rise through the spring and summer of 1652, reaching a peak of 45 livres per septier of wheat by mid-July.⁹⁵

⁹⁰ P. Goubert, Mazarin (Paris, 1990), 525–7. ⁹¹ Deyon, Amiens, 46–56; Goubert, Beauvais, 401–3, 411–25. ⁹² Feillet, La misère, 257–9. ⁹³ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 158, noted that the winter ice started to melt at the beginning of February 1651, but was followed by continuous and heavy rain. Also Feillet, La misère, 302–3, on the 1651 floods. ⁹⁴ AAE MD 878, fo. 44, nouvelle relation du mois de janvier 1651, Contenant l’estat des pauvres de Champagne et Picardie. ⁹⁵ J. Jacquart, Crise rurale, 672–3.

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What prevented the worst subsistence crisis in the seventeenth century from turning into a catastrophe perhaps overshadowing even the Black Death of 1348/9 was that weather conditions in the summer of 1652 turned out, for the first time in four years, to be near normal.⁹⁶ The ability to exploit this to ensure an abundant harvest was still constrained, as we shall see, by the presence of troops and military movement across great swathes of France throughout the summer and autumn of 1652. But where military activity was less intense, the harvests of grains and grapes could be brought in, and the effects of this relative abundance gradually made itself felt more widely across markets. Yet it was not until the spring of 1653 that supply brought the price of wheat on the Paris market to below 20 livres per septier, and barley below 12 livres.⁹⁷ The summer of 1652 initiated a short cycle of better climate and growing conditions which lasted through the mid-years of the 1650s. The next major downturn occurred from 1658, with persistent cold, rainfall, and flooding in the springs/early summers of 1658 and 1661 that was even more severe than 1649 and 1651.⁹⁸ Yet these years at the end of the decade were accompanied by no equivalent levels of economic disruption, immiseration, and mortality. Largely missing was the additional factor in the Fronde years, and above all in 1652: the destructive impact of direct military factors on an already dangerously fragile economic environment. Ronald Syme cited Marcus Crassus’ comment during the Roman civil wars that ‘no man should consider himself wealthy unless he possessed the income to support a private army’.⁹⁹ The French monarchy was a long way from possessing any monopoly of violence before 1648. And any such pretensions utterly collapsed during 1651 and 1652: Condé, Mazarin, Gaston d’Orléans, Turenne, Conti, Longueville, Mercoeur, Tarante, Marsin, Dognon, Palluau, Ferté-Senneterre, had all assembled and commanded military forces that they operated as private armies in order, individually or in alliance, to pursue their particular objectives. These armies—in some cases army corps—could be raised by drawing on networks of family, clients, landholdings, or previous military loyalties. The initial costs of the levy and equipment might be borne by the commander and/or his clients and subordinates. Beyond this, however, the troops would depend on local resource extraction, whether through the formal imposition of taxes on territory under ⁹⁶ Though it was reported that much of the grain crop in Guienne had been ruined by torrential rain and heavy flooding throughout July: AAE MD 889, fo. 312, [no author or addressee], Paris, 10 Aug. 1652. ⁹⁷ Jacquart, Crise rurale, 673–4. ⁹⁸ Details of the above taken from Le Roy Ladurie, Canicules et glaciers, i. 367–92; Jacquart, Crise rurale, 646–80; Goubert, Beauvais, 407–27; A. Croix, La Bretagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècle. La vie, la mort, la foi (2 vols; Paris, 1981), i. 249–451; E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Quand Paris est sous les eaux (1658)’, Histoire 334 (2008), 78–81. ⁹⁹ Syme, Roman Revolution, 12.

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their control, or by living off the land—requisitioning goods and money, or informal looting and plunder. Mazarin and his fellow ministers could pretend that resources would come from regular tax revenues and the central allocation of funds, but the state was effectively bankrupt; tax revenues had fallen precipitately, and where the princes, their sympathizers, or neutral parties such as Longueville in Normandy were in control the localities held on to what little revenue could be collected.¹⁰⁰ Any money that reached the centre was allocated to the politically sensitive objectives of paying interest on the rentes de l’hôtel, and meeting short-term loan interest and repayment to keep at least some of the financiers and traitants willing to provide more cash.¹⁰¹ Similarly from November 1651 Condé could offer his followers hopes that instalments made from a generous Spanish subsidy treaty would materialize to meet immediate military expenditure and to pay off some of the debts that his client officers had incurred in his service. That the Spanish crown promised much to Condé and his fellow princes, but delivered little, drove the officers no less inevitably to seek both subsistence, and if possible personal reimbursement, from the surrounding population and the ‘business of war’. One consequence of this need to gain and maintain subsistence was that this was not a static conflict. It was unlike the earlier war on the Flanders frontier where French and Spanish armies, supplied with food and munitions from forward magazines and via convoys, disputed a few miles of territory defined by the control of major fortified cities.¹⁰² The pattern was closer to that of the later Thirty Years’ War, when highly mobile armies ranged across swathes of Germany in pursuit of operational advantage against equally widely ranging enemy forces. To sustain themselves these forces had relied on a flexible combination of advance supply depots established via contractors together with a great deal of local requisitioning.¹⁰³ Strategic success in this style of warfare might involve fighting and winning battles in favourable circumstances. On two occasions during the civil war, at Bléneau and then at the Porte Saint-Antoine, surprise and enemy miscalculation were exploited by commanders to make decisive victory a possibility. Yet the odds in this style of warfare were heavily tipped against achieving a quick and decisive victory in battle. The private armies of the individual belligerents were small:

¹⁰⁰ Bonney, King’s Debts, 238–41. ¹⁰¹ Though in most cases new loans were acquired in anticipation of revenues in 1653 and beyond: Bonney, King’s Debts, 340–1. ¹⁰² This could still cause considerable hardship and disruption: M. Stevenin, ‘Une fatalité: les devastations des gens de guerre dans l’Est de la France (1620–1660). L’exemple de la Champagne’, A. Corvisier, J. Jacquart (eds), De la guerre à l’ancienne à la guerre réglée (Paris, 1996), 161–79. ¹⁰³ Parrott, Business of War, 173–94; D. Croxton, ‘A Territorial Imperative? The Military Revolution, Strategy and Peacemaking in the Thirty Years War’, War in History, 5 (1998), 253–79; L. Höbelt, Von Nördlingen bis Jankau: Kaiserliche Strategie und Kriegführung 1634–1645 (Vienna, 2016).

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assembling 6,000–9,000 troops represented the outer limits of the resource capabilities of the various key individuals and their followers, clients, and allies. Moreover, the resilience and effectiveness of these armies depended on a far smaller number of experienced veterans: men like the 1,100 troops that Marsin brought back from Barcelona to form the core of the princes’ army in Guienne in late 1651, or the 2,000–3,000 veteran troops Mazarin stripped out of the garrisons on the north-eastern frontier in January 1652, which subsequently provided the basis of the royal army assembled around the court at Poitiers. The modest scale of the armies was however matched by the ability of both parties to draw more resources into the conflict. For Mazarin and the crown, at least at the beginning of 1652, the small army in south-west France under the command of Harcourt, together with Mazarin’s newly arrived forces around the court, could be supplemented by troops recruited for and maintained within the royal armies serving on the frontiers. Numbers of troops returning from Italy and Catalonia were reallocated into Harcourt’s army in this way. During the first months of 1652 further troops from the garrisons on the eastern frontiers were marched across France to join what was to become the main royal army, or were formed up in Champagne to face the small corps of Condé’s elite units collected near Stenay. It was a risky strategy, as the succession of losses on the frontiers culminating in the autumn of 1652 demonstrated. For both belligerents there was also the possibility of drawing in foreign mercenaries to bolster their armies. These could be the individual German units which both Mazarin and Condé hired, or the far more substantial private army of the duke of Lorraine. With up to 8,000–10,000 troops at his disposal, the adherence of Lorraine’s army could compensate for any particular setbacks suffered by one or other of the belligerents in the course of the conflict. Finally for Condé there was the balance-tipping possibility of bringing the Spanish army of Flanders, anything up to 20,000 troops, into the struggle. It was the prospect of the Spanish advance into Champagne in July which reversed the mauling of Condé’s army at the Porte Saint-Antoine, turning the situation into a crisis of survival for the royalist forces and the court. This capacity to draw in reinforcements and external support gave the civil war its particular, attritional character. Harcourt steadily encroached on the princes’ holdings in the south-west, pushing their troops back on Guienne, and then Bordeaux, forcing them to exhaust a narrowing resource base while facing defeat in detail if they tried to hold out in individual fortified locations. The possibilities for a break-out from this methodical strangulation were essentially down to external factors: massive Spanish (or English) intervention in Guienne, or the prospect that Condé’s own army, after enjoying success in the north of France, could sweep down into the south-west in what would form a pincer movement trapping Harcourt’s forces. Turenne and Hocquincourt’s blockade of the Condéen army in Étampes in May/June revealed similar attritional thinking, and was only broken by the unpredictable movements of the duke of Lorraine and his army.

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Control of territory and its denial to the enemy, and manoeuvres that sought to box in enemy forces until supply problems grew intense and their troops started to melt away, were characteristic of this approach. Yet as Turenne himself noted, probably based as much on his experience in Germany in the 1640s as on the campaign of 1652, there was an unresolved tension in the pursuit of this attritional strategy. Unable to rely on central sources of finance to provide for durable contracts with bread and munitions suppliers, or to offer cash in hand to attract large-scale local entrepreneurs, the armies were largely dependent on extorting subsistence piecemeal from the territory across which they operated. To facilitate this, armies evolved towards a preponderance of light cavalry in place of infantry. Although more expensive to recruit and requiring additional subsistence in the form of fodder, including at least some oats or barley, light cavalry had the range and carrying capacity to sustain military activity based on requisitioning or plundering of supplies. This gave the armies manoeuvrability and the capacity for surprise, but it also meant, as Turenne complained, that the cavalry were mainly occupied in the business of gathering subsistence.¹⁰⁴ The supply needs of the army were dominant, and the majority of the troops were adapted to meeting this need, not to creating a well-balanced combat force. For many military operations—notably blockades and sieges— cavalry were far less useful than infantry, which was in relatively short supply.¹⁰⁵ A further consequence of this style of war was the absence of artillery. Field and siege guns were slow and difficult to move, and expensive and demanding to keep equipped with shot, powder, and support teams of gunners, carpenters, and transport specialists. Artillery was always in short supply, while the rain and flooding of these years made the transport of artillery overland even more challenging than usual. One of Mazarin’s clients, count Broglio, wrote in February that three days of continual rain had flooded and blocked the roads in Champagne, which in turn had done so much damage to the gun carriages that the entire army corps had come to a halt.¹⁰⁶ The result of these shortages was that armies often lacked the resources to pursue a chosen strategy of trapping and wearing down enemy forces: plenty of infantry to build and man earthworks and fortified locations that would render a blockade effective; artillery to make enemy positions untenable, and to force the issue of a siege or blockade. The siege of Angers, widely seen as an important test of the resilience of the Condéen party, was initially stalled by the absence of any artillery with the royalist army which had arrived to besiege the city. Pushing the ¹⁰⁴ Parrott, Business of War, 184–6; Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 411–12, identifies the preponderance of cavalry and the mobile nature of this war as it was fought in the south-west; Revol, Turenne, 219–22. ¹⁰⁵ Gantelet, M., ‘Financer la guerre sur l’ennemi. La garnison française de Thionville à la mort du gouverneur de Marolles (Août 1655)’, Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de la Lorraine 1/2 (2008), 35–41, 37. ¹⁰⁶ AAE MD 881, fo. 228, Coué, 7 Feb. 1652.

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garrison into surrender required a complex logistical operation via the grand master of the artillery, Armand-Charles de La Meilleraye, and involved the shipment of artillery down the Loire from Nantes. La Meilleraye demanded that in return for financing and organizing this he should assume overall command of the military operation, creating tensions with the existing commander, Hocquincourt. With the arrival of the guns and their establishment in battery, Angers duly surrendered, but it was not clear that this would have happened so quickly without this threat. Where artillery could not be provided, matters could be much more protracted. The comte de Palluau’s blockade of the Condéen fortress of Montrond lasted for ten months until early September 1652; Palluau lacked both artillery to batter the defences and infantry on the ground to make a blockade effective. Instead most of the time was spent despatching troops in ever widening circles to requisition subsistence and impose contributions on surrounding territory in Berry.¹⁰⁷ The same can be said of Harcourt’s setback before Villeneuve d’Agen, where troops from the princes’ army defended the place tenaciously for two months until Harcourt abandoned the siege in early August.¹⁰⁸ It would seem that the conduct of a full-scale siege was beyond either the size or the available resources of these armies. Insofar as large, fortified places such as Cognac or Agen fell to armies it was via a decision to surrender on good terms, by subversion or persuasion from internal sympathizers, or a desire of the inhabitants to escape the dire effects of a blockade on trade or food supplies. Moreover, the shortage and frequent absence of artillery with the armies was not just important when it came to the conduct of sieges: Turenne wished to delay the assault on Condé’s army outside the Porte Saint-Antoine on 2 July until La Ferté arrived with more infantry and the available artillery. He allowed himself to be pushed by the court into launching the assault on the Condéen positions immediately, suffering heavy casualties and making no headway until the separate artillery train arrived.¹⁰⁹ Thus both the volatile political situation—the potential to draw other, outside forces into the conflict or mobilize more troops from the military establishment— and the cavalry-heavy composition of the armies made it exceptionally difficult to gain an outright military advantage over an enemy force. Yet the manoeuvring of small, mobile armies, their capacity to draw upon resources and deny them to enemy forces, offered an alternative, incremental route to military advantage. Condé’s decision to leave the struggle in Guienne in the hands of Conti, Marsin, and Lenet, and to move northwards to take command of the troops commanded by Nemours and Beaufort, reflected his calculation that he needed to overstretch the royalist armies, forcing them to deal with multiple threats. One reason why he ¹⁰⁷ See ‘The September Campaign’ in Chapter 6. ¹⁰⁸ Cosnac, Souvenirs, iii. 370–407; Balthazar, Histoire de la guerre de Guienne, ed. C. Moreau (Paris, 1858), 336–8. ¹⁰⁹ Aumale, Condé, vi. 185–207, who mentions that the chief weakness of Condé’s own army was its lack of infantry, 189; Turenne, i. 203–6.

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placed so much store on drawing his brother-in-law, Longueville, into the struggle was the prospect of establishing a further princely army corps operating out of Normandy. The style of warfare had direct implications for the relationship between troops and civilian populations. For while this incremental strategy of wearing down and over-extending the enemy was being played out by both sides, the armies remained almost entirely dependent on drawing their subsistence from the surrounding populations and their resources. This then lay at the crux of the demographic catastrophe wrought by war and armies on a population that was already haemorrhaging from the effects of a third successive year of subsistence crisis. But there are issues to be addressed behind these starkly obvious facts. A key consideration is the extent of death and destruction brought about during a civil war rather than a transnational conflict. An explicit contrast has been drawn between the relatively restrained behaviour and limited destructiveness of the royalist and parliamentarian forces during the English Civil Wars, and the waging of war across the German territories during the Thirty Years’ War, and, for that matter, the waging of war in Ireland from 1641.¹¹⁰ The difference, Quentin Outram argues, lay in the ways in which troops were recruited. The waging of the Thirty Years’ War drew largely on privately contracted mercenaries, acquired through an international mercenary market. Such troops served for pay, were professionalized in their esprit de corps and detachment from civil society, and often found themselves serving in lands which were confessionally, linguistically, and culturally distinct from their own identities and experience. Naturally, the argument follows, such soldiers would have no incentive to treat civilian populations with anything other than exploitative brutality. Against this could be contrasted the English Civil Wars in which there remained between the two belligerents and their armies an enduring ‘imagined community’ which was ‘used to maintain a restraint in the waging of war’.¹¹¹ Troops recruited by English officers from English communities and operating in areas that were religiously and culturally homogenous bred restraint in both officers and soldiers. Both knew, in effect, that they would continue to live in these same communities after the end of the war, and their behaviour reflected that shared identity.¹¹² Applied to the French civil war of 1652, this thesis cuts little ice. There is certainly reason to think that foreign mercenaries brought into France, above all the troops of the duke of Lorraine, behaved exceptionally badly: the particular ¹¹⁰ Q. Outram, ‘The Demographic Impact of Early Modern Warfare’, Social Science History 26 (2002), 245–72. ¹¹¹ Outram, ‘Demographic Impact’, 247. ¹¹² See also J-P. Bois, ‘Les villageois et la guerre en France à l’époque moderne’, in C. Desplat (ed.), Les villageois face à la guerre (XIVe—XVIIIe siècle) (Toulouse, 2002), 185–207, who sees some amelioration in civil–military relations when mercenaries were replaced with permanent line troops.

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brutality of the Lorrainers was noted by Angélique Arnauld, Dubuisson-Aubenay, and numerous other commentators. A royal declaration on 22 June concerning troop disorders specifically cited the troops of the army of the duke of Lorraine, who had ravaged the territory around Brie with ‘unheard-of violence’.¹¹³ Some recognized that this was in part a response to the harsh military occupation of the duchy since 1633.¹¹⁴ It is also notable that many of the accounts of destruction, misery, and mortality cast blame on the behaviour of generalized foreign troops, usually ‘Germans’.¹¹⁵ Mercenary units travelled with their Troß or baggage train, which could potentially double the number of mouths to feed, and provided the means for the disposal of unwanted booty via sutlers and merchants.¹¹⁶ Oudart Coquault, citizen of Reims, bitterly described the experience of the war years where ‘ce que les voleurs pillent en une province, les vivandiers d’armée les vont vendre en une autre’.¹¹⁷ These soldiers were well experienced in the ‘looting economy’ of the Thirty Years’ War, and their officers were unlikely to discipline their troops for what had become routine crimes and violence against the civilian population.¹¹⁸ Yet that does not mean that the French troops involved in the conflict behaved better in comparison. The uncomfortable challenge in understanding these months of civil war is why French troops confronting local populations with whom they shared identities, should have been so prepared to act with murderous, often gratuitous, violence and destructiveness towards them? The question worried many contemporaries, who wrote with agitation and shock about the violence and destruction of soldiers during the Fronde. In some cases they argued that responsibility lay with one side or the other. The crown’s declarations against Condé and his supporters constantly dwelt on both his treason and his ruthless irresponsibility in bringing foreign troops inside France, implying that their brutality and rapaciousness was contagious.¹¹⁹ Condé’s

¹¹³ AAE MD 888, fo. 164, Déclaration du Roi. ¹¹⁴ Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 133–4, Arnauld to M. Le Maître, 21 June 1652, on the brutal behaviour of the army of the duke of Lorraine: ‘on dit qu’elle le fait pour se venger de ce qu’elle a reçus.’ The behaviour of the French governor of Lorraine, La Ferté-Senneterre, was egregiously harsh: M. Gantelet, L’Absolutisme au miroir de la guerre. Le Roi et Metz (1552–1661) (Rennes, 2012), 325–31. Feillet, La misère, 357–60; Jacquart, ‘Fronde des Princes’, 267–8. Saint-André Montbrun, sent to negotiate with the duke of Lorraine, wrote to Le Tellier that the behaviour of Lorraine’s troops embodied ‘all that is most cruel and horrible in war’: Cosnac, Souvenirs, ii. 187. ¹¹⁵ Feillet, La misère, 357–61; ‘Poles’—presumably Eastern European light cavalry—were also identified as particularly violent. ¹¹⁶ F. Redlich, De Praede Militare: Looting and Booty, 1500–1815 (Wiesbaden, 1956); Redlich, ‘Die Marketender’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 41 (1954), 227–52. ¹¹⁷ Coquault, Mémoires, 1649–1668, ed. C. Loriquet (2 vols; Reims, 1875), i. 72 (‘what these thieves steal in one province, the sutlers sell in another’). ¹¹⁸ According to Hans von Erlach, Turenne had grown used to tolerating the indiscipline and violence of his troops towards civilians while commanding in Germany: Feillet, La misère, 138, quoting Erlach; a view confirmed in Revol, Turenne, 146–51. Grimoard, Lettres de Turenne, i. 523, royal order concerning the disorders and violence of Turenne’s troops, Melun, 22 June 1652. ¹¹⁹ AAE MD 880, fo. 307, Royal Ordinance against Condé and Conti, 15 Nov. 1652; AAE MD 888, fos 253–259, declarations of the King in favour of Mazarin and against the princes [NP; ND]. BN Ffr.

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supporters responded that Mazarin also hired foreign mercenaries, and was encouraging bad behaviour by troops in his service to punish and terrorize the population, as he had done against the Parisians in 1649. The atrocities of Mazarin’s soldiers in the countryside were, on these accounts, just a prelude to the ravages they would inflict on the capital when it fell into the cardinal’s power.¹²⁰ The reality was that the troops on both sides committed atrocities, pillaged and ransacked the countryside, and ransomed and/or looted towns when they had the opportunity. And by 1652 the most basic reason for this was that the ordinary soldiers in all these armies were locked into a desperate struggle for survival with the peasants and townspeople: both were seeking, in often appalling conditions, to lay hands on the remaining supplies of food that would give them the wherewithal to survive. For the peasants, holding back, concealing, or defending what remained of their grain, livestock and wine was a matter of life and death as the months of dearth extended into 1652. However, when pitched against armed and experienced soldiers with the same imperative, it was a struggle that they were likely to lose. The grim evidence that across most of France the civilians lost can be seen in the huge upward spike in mortality revealed in surviving parish records for the year.¹²¹ Commanding officers would certainly prefer to requisition supplies through a coordinated, centrally directed mechanism rather than allow their troops to pillage piecemeal. Condé and Gaston d’Orléans gave out orders in their own governorships and in provinces under their control for the collection and appropriation of tax revenues. In February an anonymous informant wrote to Mazarin about Gaston’s appointment of two intendants des subsistances in the généralité of Orléans, with authority to impose a levy of 400,000 livres to support the costs of the princes’ army.¹²² More typical of the year was the demand for immediate payment under military duress of large sums levied on town or regions: on 16 March Beaufort and his army were near to Chartres, and he demanded that the city provide an immediate contribution of 30,000 livres and 70 muids of grain. The city might have been prepared to meet this ransom were it not for the additional demand that they accept a garrison of 800 infantry and 200 cavalry, for whom these demands would be merely a first instalment.¹²³ But the option of rejecting terms was not available to the surrounding countryside, and Beaufort imposed 6709, fo. 176, Marigny to Lenet, [Paris], 25 Aug. 1652, details Marigny’s response to these royal accusations against the Condéens for having ‘imported violence’. ¹²⁰ AAE MD 882, fo. 14, Croissy to Condé, [Paris], 9 Mar. 1652: reports that atrocities committed by troops under the command of Mazarin’s client d’Aumont were stirring up the people of Paris against the ‘secte mazarine’; 882, fos 155/278, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 2/30 April 1652: rumours that Mazarin’s troops will besiege and sack Paris. ¹²¹ Jacquart, ‘Fronde des princes’, 279–88. ¹²² AAE MD 881, fo. 283, [Paris], 14 Feb. 1652. ¹²³ AAE CP 882, fo. 62, anonymous letter [Sainctot?] to Mazarin, Paris, 16 Mar. 1652.

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contributions under direct military force across the towns and villages between Chartres and Châteaudun.¹²⁴ While the principle of contributions was that they bought protection against pillage and destruction, such niceties were increasingly less likely to be observed. Having allowed his troops to ‘thoroughly pillage’ the town of Dreux, Nemours then levied a contribution of 20,000 livres on the inhabitants.¹²⁵ If they could be extracted, these large lump-sum payments were the critical means to plan and structure military campaigning. They even offered the potential to escape dependence on French supply sources. Condé, writing to Lenet when it finally appeared that money from the Spanish subsidy was about to arrive in Bordeaux, urged Lenet to consider making grain contracts for the supply of the army with suppliers in Hamburg and Poland as well as Brittany, given that the royal fleet would not be able to intercept such shipments.¹²⁶ In practice, however, the economic situation of the towns, and especially the countryside, was too dire for large-scale, collective contribution demands to stand much chance of success. The reality was local, often house-by-house extortion and pillage. Military decisions were shaped by an awareness of ever tightening logistical imperatives. Tavannes, who had been left in command of the princes’ army after the victory at Bléneau was frank about the decision to park the army in and around Étampes. The Loire valley had been stripped of supplies by the successive passage of armies, while Étampes had become a repository for vast amounts of grain, livestock, and other products stockpiled there by the peasantry from across the entire surrounding region. By occupying the place and appropriating the supplies, the army could guarantee its subsistence for 3–4 months of steady consumption.¹²⁷ But there were relatively few places like Étampes, and still fewer as the months of 1652 continued and the last grain stocks from the harvest of 1651 were consumed. What makes this harsh account of day-to-day survival more disturbing is that the soldiers in innumerable cases were not just seeking their subsistence at the expense of the civilian populations they encountered. They were then destroying what they could not consume or take for themselves. The reports of the time were horrified, above all, by French troops wantonly burning French villages, destroying crops in the ground before they could be harvested, cutting down vines and fruit trees, and slaughtering draught animals and other livestock when these could not be driven off and sold. Villages were rendered uninhabitable by the pillaging and burning of wood from the houses, the destruction of farm implements and ploughs, and the desecration and vandalism of parish churches.¹²⁸ The aim, as Angélique Arnauld wrote, was not only to render utterly destitute the poor and marginal in the villages, but to destroy the livelihood ¹²⁴ ¹²⁵ ¹²⁶ ¹²⁷ ¹²⁸

AAE CP 882, fo. 73, anonymous to Mazarin, Paris, 18 Mar. 1652. AAE CP 882, fo. 28, Sainctot to Mazarin, [Paris] 10 Mar. 1652. BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 200, Condé to Lenet, [Paris], 30 Sept. 1652. Tavannes, Mémoires, 133–4. Vallier, iv. 18–19; Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 112–13, 16 May 1652.

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and resources of the more prosperous laboureurs and thus the economic viability of the communities. In other cases, she noted, the soldiers were deliberately maiming and crippling the peasants to ensure that they would be unable to work their lands.¹²⁹ Peasants who had taken refuge in Paris, Reims, or other cities and went back into the countryside to try to recover what remained of their crops, or to restore their lands and houses, were likely to be beaten and robbed by soldiers.¹³⁰ There was a paradox in this wanton destruction, as mère Angélique noted when she compared the soldiers to demons who both torment others and are themselves tormented. For as they ‘spoil and destroy everything that they do not pillage’, so they in turn die of hunger having left nothing for the peasants or for themselves.¹³¹ All the armies are in the same disorder, she wrote despairingly, and engaged in the same wanton destruction. The situation was no better in towns and cities. Étampes, where stockpiled peasant foodstuffs, livestock, and property had supplied Condé’s army through the early summer, was devastated by the military occupation. When Condé ordered the troops to withdraw from Étampes on 16 June they systematically seized or destroyed all the remaining grain, uprooted vines, and burnt much of the property in and around the town. The few remaining inhabitants, Angélique Arnauld wrote, were saved from starvation only by charity sent from Paris.¹³² Paris itself, where mère Angélique had retreated with many hundreds of religious from the surrounding areas, was a morgue, filled with the sick and dying. The overall scarcity of food supplies, with bread prices at a level not seen since the blockade of 1649, reduced much of the city’s own population to starvation. This, compounded by a vast influx of peasants fleeing the troops and the destruction in the surrounding towns, villages and, farmlands, completely overwhelmed the resources of the city, whether to provide accommodation, hospitals, or charitable support. From July Condé’s troops had established themselves in Paris; some efforts were made to keep them outside the walls in the closest suburbs like Saint-Marcel, Saint-Cloud, and Suresnes, but these billets did not prevent the soldiers from entering the city. The subsistence needs and the violence of the troops were imposed on the already desperate population.¹³³ Comments about the dead and dying in the streets of Paris appear regularly in correspondence from the city.¹³⁴

¹²⁹ Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 115, 16 May, ii. 140–1, 28 June 1652. ¹³⁰ Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 176–7, 6 Sept. 1652; Livre des choses memorables de l’abbaye de Saint-Denys en France (Extract for 1652, Paris, 1848), 427. ¹³¹ Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 160–1, 16 July 1652: ‘ils gâtent plus de bien qu’ils n’en pillent.’ ¹³² Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 141–2, 28 June 1652; Feillet, La misère, 411–13. For the situation in Reims in 1652, see Coquault, Mémoires, i. 209–51. ¹³³ AAE MD 888, fo. 181, Royal Edict, 4 July 1652: troops have spread all over Paris. ¹³⁴ AAE MD 882, fo. 127, Bluet to Mazarin, 27 Mar. 1652; 884, fo. 128, Mesnardeau, Pontoise, 26 Aug. 1652; Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 141–2, 28 June; Registres de l’Hôtel de Ville pendant la Fronde (3 vols, Paris, 1846–48) iii. 231, 29 Aug.

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Writers and even official documents were drawn back to comparisons with the intense suffering of the years of the Paris League of the late 1580s, though leaving implicit the difference that then the destructiveness had been fuelled by intense confessional passions, shading into radical millenarianism.¹³⁵ No such motive was required for the violence of the soldiers in 1652. Explaining the extraordinary licence of soldiers even by the lax standards of the earlier seventeenth century and the Thirty Years’ War raises another issue. ‘Those who command the troops are kings of the surrounding territory’ was one embittered comment amongst the noble grievances recorded in 1652.¹³⁶ The levels of violence and destruction can only be explained through the complicity, and in many cases active involvement, of the officer corps at every level, from subalterns to corps commanders. The complicity can be explained in a number of ways. Most obviously, the officers themselves sought to gain from the activities of their troops. While much of the previous discussion suggests that extracting resources from the population was a struggle to apportion subsistence levels of agricultural production, in the right circumstances extortion could offer much greater opportunities. Extra agricultural produce and seized livestock, together with all kinds of other property, had high market value. The baron de Montbas wrote from Lagny in Champagne that the cavalry regiment of Bussy de Vere was largely composed of ‘gens du pays’ who knew how to resell everything that they stole. Overall Montbas claimed this regiment had cost the province some 450,000 livres through systematic pillage and theft.¹³⁷ The officers were actively involved in this, he noted, since their troops were without funds and ‘it was impossible to provide any of their basic needs without direct action’. Montbas pointed as well to the economy of pillage that had come into existence: the merchants who appeared in the military encampments to buy up horses, livestock, and other pillaged goods, and the ready local markets for stolen property. Even if the merchants and others profiteered through buying the stolen goods at ‘the lowest price’, the demand stimulated a virtually commercial level of plundering organized at company and regimental level, or even higher in the command chain.¹³⁸ The duc de Beaufort had commented in March 1652 that he commanded the best infantry but also the worst robbers in France, and he was unable to restrain their pillaging. But even his allies recognized that Beaufort was taking a proportion of this pillage for his own profit.¹³⁹ Awareness of the importance of maintaining good relations with the ¹³⁵ The comparison with the disorders of the League is cited in successive royal declarations, but see also, amongst many others, AAE CP Venise 32, fo. 152, Argenson to de La Barre, Venice, 6 July 1652. ¹³⁶ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 22, Mémoire instructif des choses proposées a l’assemblée à Châteaudun, 1652: ‘ceux qui commandent les troupes sont les rois dans les pais ou ils se trouvent.’ ¹³⁷ AAE MD 884, fo. 21, Montbas to Mazarin, Lagny, 5 Aug. 1653: The regiment was notionally on the side of the crown. ¹³⁸ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 234: cites livestock plundered and sold ‘à très vil prix’. ¹³⁹ AAE MD 889, fo. 136, Beaufort to Chavigny, 2 Mar. 1652; 889, fo. 211, Croissy to Chavigny, Paris, 3 April 1652.

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Paris bourgeois did not prevent Condé’s officers profiting from the theft and sale of 200,000 livres of stolen silk, even while feigning to placate the merchants by executing two soldiers directly involved in the robbery.¹⁴⁰ Other officers simply set up private mechanisms to exploit local revenues. One garrison commander wrote directly to Mazarin—though only because the secretary for war, Le Tellier, was seeking to restrain his activities—that he was maintaining his troops by levying a river toll on all passing goods, pointing out that this was merely following the example of other officers who controlled river passages.¹⁴¹ This was certainly a lesson learnt by both Condéen and royal troops encamped around Paris, who set up river blocks and toll stations wherever they controlled sites along the rivers leading into the capital, taxing goods at will.¹⁴² Tolls offered one means to extract additional resources and were in most cases established and run by officers. It was no less evident that officers were complicit and likely to have profited from the ransoming of individuals or whole populations. Taking prisoners from the wealthier peasant families or local landowners, and holding them until the community—or the individual—paid an arbitrarily assessed charge for their release, was a standard mechanism for reaching further into the resources of the community. But it required at the very least active complicity from the subaltern officers.¹⁴³ Grievances in the noble assemblies suggest that the extortion of cash or goods via ransoms also implicated officers at higher levels. Complaints were made that governors and local commanders blackmailed local nobles by threatening both to destroy the farming resources of their tenants and to conscript the tenants themselves into service as labourers and servants.¹⁴⁴ A ransom of 60,000 livres was levied on Angers after its surrender to royalist forces in February; this sum was to be paid directly to Mazarin as a letter from Colbert reveals in September, concerned about foot-dragging in making the payment.¹⁴⁵ Ransoming of individuals or whole communities shaded into the kind of terrorism practised by Louis de Dognon, who ran a series of piracy and protection rackets out of La Rochelle, and then Brouage, earning a level of hatred amongst the local populations which was remarkable even in 1652.¹⁴⁶ It is easy to moralize about this involvement of the officers in extortion and pillage, above all given the desperate predicament of the mass of the population during 1652. Many contemporaries were unsparing in their criticism of this ¹⁴⁰ AAE MD 889, fo. 312, no author or addressee, Paris, 10 Aug. 1652. ¹⁴¹ AAE MD 883, fo. 256, Berthaud to Mazarin, 31 July 1652. ¹⁴² AAE MD 885 fo. 288, Rubent to Mazarin, Paris, [late Oct. 1652]. ¹⁴³ Jacquart, Crise rurale, 667: the major of the regiment billeted at Orsay ransomed the population for 200 louis d’or after having burnt down the parish church to intimidate them; Oudard Coquault describes how he was captured and ransomed for 720 livres—with another 200 for his horse—by the marquis d’Harancourt, colonel of a Lorraine regiment operating around Reims: Mémoires, 247–9. ¹⁴⁴ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 29, Mémoire instructif des choses proposées à l’assemblée indique à Châteaudun, 1652. ¹⁴⁵ AAE MD 884, fo. 238, Colbert to Mazarin, Compiègne, 7 Sept. 1652. ¹⁴⁶ Berthomier, Dognon, 30–5.

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corruption and complicity, echoing Angélique Arnauld’s repeated scriptural refrain that for their actions, negligence, and lack of concern for the oppressed ‘the great and powerful will be tormented all the more intensely (in the afterlife)’.¹⁴⁷ Some senior officers did in fact suffer later remorse for their behaviour.¹⁴⁸ Yet, while impossible to excuse, the officers’ behaviour has to be set in the context of the complete collapse of the central structures of financial allocation, and in the case of the princes’ forces these structures’ non-existence. And particularly significant to the whole nexus of calculations by which officers advanced their credit and received some reimbursement was the absence in 1651/2 of the winter-quarter allocations and payments. Units continued operations through the winter months, and did so in some of the harshest conditions experienced during the century.¹⁴⁹ As the campaign moved into the spring and summer, officers had exhausted their own credit, yet knew that their forces would have to be financed from their own initiatives. Without some cash in hand, the officers would be unable to sustain any kind of military operation which required stockpiling supplies, the purchase of munitions, the remounting of cavalry, and much else. While the officers were certainly engaged in unauthorized extortion, some of this was deployed to sustain their operations. Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, described how, needing to provide subsistence and new muskets for his infantry regiment, he levied a contribution of c. 5,000 livres on the territory around La Charité-sur-Loire, where the unit was billeted. Though he sought authorization from the court for this imposition, and did receive a subsequent order to levy a second month’s contribution, the process took so long that by the third month, his credit somewhat restored by receiving the initial payment, he was in a position to provide money from his own pocket.¹⁵⁰ Bussy-Rabutin was unlikely to be unique in recycling at least part of the funds that he had appropriated into funding his troops. Moreover, the absence of winter quartering, the brutal conditions, the struggle for survival against an all-encroaching shortage of supplies, left the soldiers themselves angry and potentially mutinous. Commanders living hand-to-mouth with what meagre funds were available were unable to offer even basic assurances about the provision of bread rations, let alone modest levels of pay. Their letters testify to their need to handle their troops with care, and this underlines the second element of the complicity of the officers in the actions—effectively amounting to collective indiscipline—of their soldiers. The brutal truth in this situation was that for individual officers to impose discipline on their soldiers did not bring them any benefit. Gaining a good

¹⁴⁷ ¹⁴⁸ ¹⁴⁹ ¹⁵⁰

Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 158: ‘que les grands et les puissans seront tourmentés puissament.’ C. Blanquié, ‘Les restitutions du prince de Conti’, Revue Historique 292 (1994), 269–95. For the harshness of the winter campaign in the south-west see Cosnac, Souvenirs, i. 335–439. Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, Mémoires (2 vols; Paris, 1857), i. 291.

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reputation with the bourgeois of Paris or the inhabitants of localities for keeping particular units of troops on a tight leash counted for little when the vast majority of officers exercised no similar restraint. The responsible officer would almost guarantee the wholesale defection of his troops to a less exacting unit commander, even if he avoided provoking their open mutiny. There was the occasional glimmer of the idea that, finances permitting, civilian hearts and minds could be won over, and financial credit tapped, by keeping the troops better disciplined. When the duc de Nemours’ army marched from the eastern frontier to Paris in early March accompanied by a detachment of Spanish veterans commanded by Clinchamp and with 180,000 livres that had been allocated by the archduke in Brussels for military expenditure, tight discipline seems to have been maintained. This was largely thanks to the careful purchase and stockpiling of provisions along a well-planned route. Croissy wrote with satisfaction that the good behaviour of the troops had greatly impressed the Parisians, and stood in marked contrast to the looting and disorders of the royalist troops under d’Aumont’s command.¹⁵¹ Nemours’ forces duly observed the long-standing agreement made between crown and Parlement for all troops to keep themselves at least ten leagues outside of Paris.¹⁵² Yet by the time the same army of Nemours had passed around Paris, joined up with Gaston d’Orléans’ troops under the duc de Beaufort, this early restraint had been entirely abandoned: the troops took part in an orgy of looting and destruction that, in combination with the actions of Mazarin’s forces, left the Loire valley incapable of sustaining a military presence by mid-April.¹⁵³ Assumptions about the unrestrained modus operandi of armies in these harsh circumstances were becoming ever more deeply entrenched, and for individual officers to challenge them was reckless. Condé himself encountered a near mutiny when in late August he belatedly decided to respond to the casual plunder of the Parisian suburb of Saint-Marcel by his troops. The looting had provoked violent resistance, drawn in elements of the garde bourgeoise, and led to some fatalities, which in turn created a wave of hostility towards the Condéen troops across Paris. Condé feared that this would play into the hands of royalist sympathizers in the capital, and determined on exemplary punishment of the troops responsible for the disorder. Instead of gaining the support of his officers he encountered obstructionism verging on mutiny, with one senior officer simply informing Condé that he ‘wasn’t his executioner’, while two regiments raised by Gaston d’Orléans refused to serve under Condé. The situation was resolved by the diplomacy of Beaufort, but the limits of what could be expected from the troops

¹⁵¹ AAE MD 881, fo. 423, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 6 Mar. 1652: ‘assez de discipline’; 882, fo. 14, Croissy to Condé, Paris, 9 Mar. 1652. ¹⁵² AAE MD 882, fo. 68, ‘Nouvelles de Paris’, 17 Mar. 1652. ¹⁵³ AAE MD 882, fo. 208, Jacques Gaudin [to Mazarin], Paris, 14 April 1652.

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and their officers were made clear.¹⁵⁴ For Condé the issue had been one of trying to improve his parlous relations with the Parisian bourgeois. With that restraint removed, he felt few scruples about the treatment of civilians. There was general consensus that when Condé’s troops, together with those of the duke of Lorraine, pulled back from the Paris Basin to the frontiers of Champagne in October, they behaved with an unchecked and ruthless destructiveness that was remarkable even by the standards of 1652.¹⁵⁵ Yet this corridor of destruction carved across already pillaged and ruined parts of north-east France points to the third reason for the officers’ complicity in the systematic destruction of land and its resources, peasant livelihoods, and peasant lives. In the circumstances, there was a military logic to wasting and devastating territory. Opposing military commanders in this civil war recognized that they were operating within shared parameters: all were in charge of small, mobile armies which had no reserves of money or supplies to draw upon; all were dependent for their subsistence on requisitioning and pillaging from the surrounding localities. The obvious consequence was that maintaining operational effectiveness was not just about keeping an army supplied, but about denying that support to the enemy. And where the resources of a locality could not be entirely appropriated by the occupying army it made sense to waste and destroy them. Territory left unspoiled today might feed a pursuing enemy force tomorrow. A look at the campaigning during 1652 reveals the harsh realities of this situation: the key zones of military activity were the south-west of France, the north-eastern frontier, the Île de France, and the Loire valley. In all these areas relatively small and mobile armies repeatedly crossed and re-crossed the same territories in pursuit of campaign objectives: these were as much to block and outmanoeuvre enemy forces as to secure any independent strategic advantage. Jean Jacquart’s account of the struggle in the Paris Basin gives some sense of the routes passed and re-passed, and the crippling economic impact on these areas. The regions around Paris in particular were hit in the space of months by innumerable occupations and passages of forces from individual units up to entire armies of 5,000–10,000 troops. The Hurepoix to the immediate south of the capital was devastated by the manoeuvres and campaigning of April and May, culminating in the siege of Étampes by Turenne, the movement of the duke of Lorraine to support the princes’ troops, and the withdrawal of both these forces towards Paris. A further wave of manoeuvres and consequent devastation followed in the east of the Hurepoix for five weeks in September and early October, when the massed forces of Condé, Lorraine, and Spanish auxiliaries sought to ¹⁵⁴ Montpensier, Mémoires, 150–4; Vallier, iv. 36–7. ¹⁵⁵ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 102, Abbé Viole to Lenet, Paris, 13 Oct. 1652: ‘encore tout le monde se plaigne des troupes de SA (Condé) qui avoient desolé dans leur passage les terres de ses meilleurs amis’; AAE MD 885, fo. 126, anonymous account, 11 Oct. 1652; Vallier, iv. 94–5; Guy Patin, Lettres ed. Jestaz, ii. 968, 25 Oct. 1652.

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blockade Turenne around Villeneuve-Saint-George. To the east of Paris, and on the most direct route to the frontier, even more troop movements afflicted the regions: Brie and the surrounding region was ravaged by the duke of Lorraine’s troops in spring, and again in September, but saw the passage of numerous other forces from January through to October.¹⁵⁶ In these cases, as with the armies operating in Guienne, Poitou, or Saintonge, the logic of denying resources to subsequent enemy troop movements was constantly present. Commanders, on the—often erroneous—assumption that their own troops would not pass by the same route or occupy the same territory again, saw unspoilt or only partially devastated areas as an invitation to enhance their enemies’ scope for manoeuvre and subsistence. They and their officers acted accordingly to make later dependence on the resources of the territory as hard as possible. Were there any possibilities for resistance to this brutal process of seemingly onesided exploitation? Various contemporaries wondered how small numbers of troops were able to tyrannize and exploit populations of hundreds of thousands.¹⁵⁷ One commentator suggested that it was shameful that France should be pillaged by a mere 10,000–12,000 foreign troops, and wondered why the crown had failed to summon the traditional arrière-ban, or military levy of the provincial nobility.¹⁵⁸ The concern of Mazarin and the ministers would certainly have been about the loyalty of any such military gathering of nobles, even if the mechanisms to raise and supply the arrière-ban had been in working order.¹⁵⁹ More typically, initiatives to obtain military service from provincial nobles came from the autonomous military commanders, who were as likely to use these troops to plunder as to protect local communities.¹⁶⁰ Defence against predatory troops depended on local and private initiatives. The most famous of these was the ‘fortified camp’ set up by the duc de Luynes and the solitaires, the hermits from among the social elite who lived solitary, contemplative lives around the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs. The nuns of Port-Royal, led by mère Angélique Arnauld, had retreated in mid-April to the relative safety of their convent in Paris. The solitaires remained, grouping together the tenants from the surrounding convent lands and organizing them into a local defence force. The fortified camp served as both defence and stockade into which the families, goods, livestock, and grain and grape harvests could be gathered and defended. The military ¹⁵⁶ Jacquart, Crise rurale, 660–8; Jacquart, ‘Fronde des Princes’, 257–65; J-P. Barlier, ‘Guerres et désastres à l’ouest de la région parisienne en 1649-52’, Stemma (26), 2004, vol 1, 2315–20, vol 2, 2339–45. ¹⁵⁷ For example, Vallier, iv. 38. ¹⁵⁸ AAE MD 883, fo. 229, Gaudin to Mazarin, Gaillon, 29 July 1652. ¹⁵⁹ Its failure as a mechanism for raising volunteer noble cavalry had proved conclusive in the mid1630s: Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 63–5. ¹⁶⁰ AAE MD 888, fo. 51, anonymous to Mazarin, 13 Mar. 1652: noblesse of the Vivarais; MD 881, fo. 185, Sr de Corbet, Poitiers, 31 Jan. 1652: noblesse of the Beauce.

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prowess of the solitaires, many of whom had received military training in their youth or had been officers in their earlier adult lives, provided the leadership and cutting edge for successful resistance to ravaging forces of troops.¹⁶¹ Organized resistance by peasant communities is harder to discover, though lack of written evidence may not denote its absence, and there is plenty of indication from the Thirty Years’ War that in similar desperate situations peasant communities were prepared to organize themselves into vigilante bands to defend their villages, to retrieve stolen property, and to revenge acts of violence.¹⁶² The one well-known case is that of the peasant company assembled near the forest of Chevreuse, trained and led by a prosperous local farmer who simply styled himself ‘Sauvegrain’. The company, well armed and trained, enjoyed some success in driving off opportunistic bands of soldiers, which allowed the harvests in the area to be gathered.¹⁶³ Jean-Nicholas de Parival, in his wide-ranging contemporary history, makes laconic allusions to local nobles and people in Champagne taking up arms against plundering soldiers and brigands, killing large numbers of them, and suggests that such examples of spontaneous local action followed in Meaux, Senlis, Auvergne, and elsewhere.¹⁶⁴ But there is little evidence for action on the scale of the croquant revolts of the 1590s, widely established against plundering soldiery and officers or nobles who had set up local extortion rackets. Better documented, and alarming to the central authorities, were the numerous local assemblies of the nobility. Dating back to the noble assembly that was convoked in Paris during February/March 1651 in defiance of Mazarin and with the support of Gaston d’Orléans, a series of local and provincial assemblies continued to be convened through 1651 and 1652.¹⁶⁵ While these assemblies were anticipating the summons to a promised Estates General, they also drew up lists of current grievances; amongst those recorded most frequently was concern at violence and extortion by soldiers, especially when these impacted on the nobles and their privileges. The assembly of the nobility at Rocheguyon voiced what was a common refrain, that it was ‘notorious that the greatest calamities to afflict us at present are the disorders of the troops’.¹⁶⁶ Especially provoking was the armies’ disregard for nobles’ taxation and billeting exemptions, although the nobles as landowners were no less aware that the extortion and destruction ¹⁶¹ Thomas du Fossé, Mémoires (Rouen, 1876–79: reprint 1976), i. 217–39; Angélique Arnauld, Lettres, ii. 124–4, end May; 140–1, 148, 28 June; 203, 18 Oct; Jacquart, ‘Fronde des Princes’, 273–4, 277. ¹⁶² Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 837–9; M. Meumann, D. Niefanger (eds), Ein Schauplatz herber Angst. Wahrnehmung und Darstellung von Gewalt im 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1997); see articles by R. Pröve, M. Kaiser, M. Knauer. ¹⁶³ Jacquart, ‘Fronde des Princes’, 275–6; another example of a band of peasant vigilantes operating in Champagne is provided in Pernot, La Fronde, 389. ¹⁶⁴ Parival, Siècle de fer, i. 500. ¹⁶⁵ For the 1651 assembly and its consequences see: Constant, ‘La troisième Fronde’; Constant, ‘L’assemblée de noblesse de 1651’; Jouanna, ‘Valeurs et identité nobiliaires’; J-D Lassaigne, Les assemblées de la noblesse de France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1962), 14–84. ¹⁶⁶ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 175, Assembly of nobles, Rocheguyon, 9 June 1652.

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inflicted on their tenants was no less damaging to their own income and the viability of their estates.¹⁶⁷ It was a noble assembly which complained that the military commanders behaved like petty tyrants in the provinces. The crown conceded the legitimacy of these noble demands for safeguards, and a series of ineffectual prohibitions were promulgated during 1652 against billeting soldiers on nobles’ property or allowing them to pillage or damage their estates.¹⁶⁸ The nobles were no less aware that these royal orders were worthless in the crisis environment of 1652, and the only realistic response to military violence was to organize some form of concerted resistance. From early in the year, various projects were mooted for uniting nobles in regional groups to mobilize their tenants and to fight off the soldiers.¹⁶⁹ In the Touraine, the crown granted authority to the nobles and gentlemen to join together to chase down and punish disorderly or pillaging troops.¹⁷⁰ Yet such permissions did not detract from the crown’s wider unease about illicit noble assemblies and their deliberations and actions, which remained a source of concern throughout the 1650’s.¹⁷¹ When such ideas of unions and leagues against troop violence started to be adopted by the third estate, the concern could only be heightened.¹⁷² Setting aside the concern of the king’s ministers, how effective was resistance to the soldiers? Another tragedy of 1652 was that the prospect of an abundant harvest made possible by better weather was sacrificed across large areas of France: military activity and deliberate military targeting of peasants and their houses, crops, livestock, and farm implements prevented sowing of crops in the first place, or constrained later harvesting, storage, and marketing. The cities and major towns were choked with peasants, even the hitherto prosperous landowning laboureurs, who had fled the countryside. With their flight, the chances of bringing in the harvest, benefiting from grazing opportunities for their animals, and either supporting themselves or providing surpluses for the urban markets disappeared as well. Where peasants, as at Port-Royal-des-Champs, could be

¹⁶⁷ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 22, grievances of the nobility assembled at Nogent-le-Roi, Beauce, 7 Mar. 1652; fo. 167, Circulaire envoyée dans les provinces à tous les gentilshommes par l’ordre des députez des bailliages unis assemblez à Nogent-le-Roi, 16th May 1652. ¹⁶⁸ AAE MD 888, fos 21, 23, 32, various drafts of royal ordinances against troop disorders committed against gentlemen, [c. 25] Feb 1652; BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 18, Order of the King to nobles of Touraine regarding the billeting of troops, June 1652. ¹⁶⁹ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 161, Project for a Union of the Nobility against the soldiers, [NP] Feb. 1652; fo. 191, Mémoire, Paris, 15 Feb. 1653, proposing that the King gives permission to the nobles to form bands to hunt down disorderly and plundering troops. ¹⁷⁰ BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 209–10v, [printed] order of the King in favour of the gentlemen and nobles of Touraine to proceed against disorderly troops, 9 June 1652. ¹⁷¹ AAE MD 883, fo. 44, no signature, but addressed to Mazarin, 7 June 1652: noblesse of Poitou, together with those of Anjou, Berry, and Beauce, are assembling and this should be prevented, especially as it may provide cover for the assembly of some of the partisans of the comte de Dognon. ¹⁷² AAE MD 881, fo. 197, proposed ‘Union Generalle’ of the Third Estate, which would involve raising a militia to curb the excesses of the soldiery across the country, Jan. 1652.

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protected, or could protect themselves while remaining on their farms, the benefits were felt more widely: the surpluses from Port-Royal were brought into Paris and helped supply both the market and the support given to the poor by the various religious orders. Yet the success of a few communities in defending themselves may only have made the lot of all the others even harsher in the face of marauding soldiers against whom they had no comparable defence. The overall picture, provided in numerous memoirs and reports, of a desolate and depopulated countryside remains grimly characteristic of 1652 in all but a few fortunate provinces. Even when not simply seizing their foodstuffs and supplies, soldiers inflicted starvation on peasants by depriving them of the means and opportunity to sow and harvest crops. Yet starvation was a lesser cause of mortality than its ever present shadow, epidemic disease. Contemporaries certainly associated the presence of troops, and indeed warfare, with the prevalence of ‘plague’. This might mean bubonic/pneumonic plague, but could also include a variety of lethal epidemic diseases, especially the two other great killers—various forms of typhus and dysentery. Epidemic disease was the largest single cause of death in the crisis, preying on a population that was weakened by malnutrition and starvation. All these diseases would have spread amongst the weakened population through normal channels of communication and contact, and would have caused high mortality even if troops had not been present. But military camps and baggage trains were ideal incubators of epidemic diseases, and the ceaseless movement of troops across France throughout 1652 certainly played a role in ensuring that epidemic diseases reached areas that might otherwise have been spared, raising the levels of mortality.¹⁷³ Yet for what remained the most lethal epidemic disease, bubonic plague, it is notable that the patterns of infection in France was akin to that of much of Europe north of the Alps.¹⁷⁴ Away from the Mediterranean, plague never really went away, but moved across territories in cycles of moderate intensity. At the peak of a particular cycle local communities might lose as much as 10 per cent of their population over a single year. This would quickly fall to much lower levels, although not disappearing entirely, until another upsurge in infection was experienced perhaps a decade later. This contrasted with the situation in Italy, for example, where large territories remained free of plague for decades, but then would be hit by a sudden epidemic which could claim 30 per cent or more of the population in a few months. The role of soldiers in bringing plague into Italy and ¹⁷³ F. Prinzing, Epidemics Resulting from Wars (Oxford, 1916), 25–78; D. Parrott ‘Bubonic Plague, Armies and European War, 1618–1659’, in J. Baechler, M. Battesti (eds), Guerre et Santé: Series: L’homme et la guerre (Paris, 2018), 83–99; Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 792–5. ¹⁷⁴ E. Eckert, The Structures of Plagues and Pestilences in Early Modern Europe. Central Europe, 1560–1640 (Basel, 1996); J-N Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et mediterranéens (2 vols; Mouton/Paris/The Hague, 1975).

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spreading it is much clearer: it was troops from Germany despatched over the Alps to lay siege to Mantua in 1629 who brought the plague. This spread from Milan to Venice and in two years wiped out 30–40 per cent of the populations of these two cities, with a comparable impact on the smaller cities and countryside of Lombardy and the Veneto.¹⁷⁵ In the same year French troops spread plague into the duchies of Savoy and Piedmont, with similar catastrophic mortality. In 1651–2 the comparable tragedy was in Barcelona: bubonic plague, which may have been carried into the city by French troops in the garrison in 1651, was to claim around 30,000 lives in the city by June 1652, when new infections finally slowed.¹⁷⁶ In this case the plague seems to have moved back to the French troops in Roussillon: in December 1652 the duc de Noailles, governor of Perpignan, reported that 25–30 soldiers were dying of the plague each day amongst the troops under his command.¹⁷⁷ In France, by contrast, there had not been long plague-free periods: regular waves of the disease spreading across different regions of France had frequently taken a heavy toll on both urban and rural populations.¹⁷⁸ In some cases the mortality could be considerably higher than 10 per cent: the plague epidemic in Lyon in 1628–9 appears to have brought Italian levels of mortality to a city whose prosperity rested on its location as the French gateway into Italy. Troop movements may have spread epidemic disease in 1652 further than it would otherwise have reached across France, but the long-established patterns of infection and mortality in France meant that the armies could not wreak demographic catastrophe by bringing the plague to regions and cities that had hitherto entirely escaped. Quantifying increased mortality from epidemic disease specifically spread by warfare and troops would be impossible. All that is clearly known is that troop movements intensified exposure to diseases, and, more fundamentally, the armies contributed substantially to the overall subsistence crisis in which a large proportion of the population were dangerously undernourished and therefore much more vulnerable to all forms of epidemic disease. So what was the final cost of the demographic disaster that the combination of the disastrous four-year climate downturn and unconstrained civil war inflicted on France in 1652? There is little reason, several decades on, to dispute the findings of that most distinguished cohort of scholars who began their research as regional specialists: Jean Jacquart, Pierre Goubert, Pierre Deyon, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, to which can be added the work of Jacques Dupâquier. Their studies ¹⁷⁵ R. Canosa, Tempo di peste. Magistrati ed untori nel 1630 a Milano (Rome, 1985), 39–46; G. Weiner, ‘The Demographic Effects of the Venetian Plagues of 1575–77 and 1630–31’, Genus 26 (1970), 41–57. ¹⁷⁶ J. Amelang (trans and editor), A Journal of the Plague Year: The Diary of the Barcelona tanner, Miquel Parets, 1651 (Oxford, 1991). ¹⁷⁷ AAE CP Espagne 32, fo. 148, Noailles to Mazarin, Perpignan, 8 Dec. 1652. ¹⁷⁸ Biraben, La peste en France, 142–6, 388; Croix, La Bretagne, i. 453–534; Roupnel, Ville et campagne, 25–40.

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drew on archival research and no less on the published works of successive generations of local historians, whose studies of surviving communal and parish records allowed some sort of patchwork picture to be built up of death and birth rates across whole regions. Angélique Arnauld’s well-known comment that ‘a third of the population has died’ in and around Paris was not the highest estimate of the deaths in 1652; André d’Ormesson estimated that two thirds of the population in the countryside around Paris had died in 1652.¹⁷⁹ Jacquart’s carefully assembled statistics point to an actual mortality rate across the Île de France in 1652 of around 25 per cent, with the highest levels attained from June onwards, peaking in August and September, and finally levelling off from November. Jacquart points out that the other significant marker of demographic crisis, the fall in conceptions, was already well entrenched in the hunger year of 1651, though low levels of births unsurprisingly still characterized 1652.¹⁸⁰ If the Île de France bore the worst impact of military activity, the region around Beauvais and out into Picardy and Champagne also suffered the catastrophic impact of regular troop movements and systematic destruction. By the middle of 1652 the extended Loire valley had been devastated by troop movements, but was spared in the last phase of the struggle. Languedoc, Guienne, Saintonge, Poitou—even Provence, given the fierce struggles over control of particular towns and cities—stood in the next wave of economic and demographic consequences, with losses of 10–20 per cent of their population over the year. Only fortunate, peripheral provinces such as Brittany, and, thanks to the political strategies of the duc de Longueville, Normandy, significantly escaped the impact of warfare and military exactions in 1652.¹⁸¹ Moderate demographic recovery set in from 1653. While the frontiers were still regions of intensive warfare, the French heartlands saw the constant military presence lifted. But they still needed to deal with local warfare, banditry and noble militias, and violence—problems which persisted into the 1660s. Birth rates recovered and the rates of mortality fell back to average levels. But like the loss of the military conquests across the frontiers, the experience of 1652 lingered into the rest of the 1650s. Peasant indebtedness, disrupted and fragmented communities, mass flight to towns, and a scattered or partial return to devastated rural communities—all these took their toll on rural recovery. Moreover, the continued costs of war sustained through hand-to-mouth expedients and the over-taxing of the countryside limited recovery and ensured continued high levels of rural tension, which was again to turn from local resistance and tax rebellion into mass peasant revolt in 1658–9. ¹⁷⁹ Jacquart, ‘Fronde des Princes’, 279. ¹⁸⁰ Dupâquier, Population rurale du Bassin Parisien, 241–2, ranks the crisis in the généralité of Paris in 1649–52 as the worst of the century, ranked 5 on his scale, compared to 4 each in 1693–94 and 1705–10. ¹⁸¹ Croix, La Bretagne, i. 323–8; Logié, Fronde en Normandie, iii. 103–41.

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6 Autumn 1652 The Brink of the Precipice?

Mazarin’s exile resolved nothing. Far from absenting himself from the king’s councils, Mazarin intended to be a constant, if virtual, presence; he would be comprehensively informed of events by agents and ministers, above all by Michel Le Tellier, who wrote to the cardinal up to five times a day.¹ Mazarin had been well informed during the last few months of his 1651 exile, but the volume of information he received during this second absence, and the hugely detailed replies to ministers and the court that he despatched on a daily basis, gave no scope for anything approaching a ‘post-Mazarin’ political environment to evolve. The court was divided over crucial questions of war and peace, but Mazarin still dominated decision-making. For the cardinal’s enemies, the exile was an insulting farce. It was undertaken via a carefully scripted set of remonstrances and royal declarations that were little more than an implicit admission that the exile was a political manoeuvre. Mazarin’s departure in August was accompanied by no indication of duration: the one point that was clear from the crown’s declarations was that it was certainly not, as his enemies had demanded in 1651, ‘exile without hope of return’. Mazarin himself did not know precisely how long the exile would last; but both he and his enemies agreed in assuming that it might be no longer than a few weeks.² Some initial obstructiveness by the governor of the château of Bouillon had been resolved by the time of Mazarin’s arrival, but the dispute evidently evoked the insecurities of his first exile, where Mazarin had been painfully aware of his dependence on the changeable goodwill of his foreign hosts.³ A few days after his departure from the Court, Mazarin had specifically asked Le Tellier whether he thought it was necessary that he should cross the frontier.⁴ The cardinal reluctantly conceded that he should move to Bouillon, where he arrived on

¹ AAE MD 884, fo. 220, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 4 Sept. 1652. ² Chéruel, v. 241/42, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 14 Sept. 1652: Mazarin was already discussing the way that his return from exile should be managed for public consumption, making use of the Parlement at Pontoise; BN Ffr. 6709 fo. 144, Viole to Lenet, 21 Aug. 1652. ‘No one believes that the departure is more than a feint, or that his absence will be for long’. ³ Chéruel, v. 154–5, Mazarin to Fabert, Château-Thierry, 23 Aug. 1652; AAE MD 889, fo. 332/334v, Louis XIV to the Chapter/Elector, Monchy, 19/20 Sept. 1652. ⁴ Chéruel, v. 158, Château-Thierry.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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 :     ? 217 9 September.⁵ Yet on 13 September he received a peremptory letter from the king ordering him to return to France and to settle at Sedan until future notice.⁶ The content would have come as no surprise, since on 4 September Mazarin had requested that the letter be sent to him. In fact, once armed with the order, Mazarin saw no need for immediate action, and sat out time in Bouillon until 14/15 October before returning within the frontiers.⁷ Neither Mazarin nor the court took the stipulations surrounding exile seriously, whether in terms of geography or duration. What they did choose to consider binding was the implication that Mazarin’s physical removal from the court should immediately trigger a unilateral disarmament of the princes’ party and other opponents of the crown, the abandonment of all treaties with foreign powers and collective action to expel foreign troops from France.⁸ It is hard to know whether the court recognized the asymmetry of what was being demanded. To some of Condé’s supporters it seemed clear that either the court simply did not want a settlement, or that Mazarin was using his malign influence to sow confusion and dissent that only he would be able to unravel.⁹ The intractability was compounded by what was envisaged as the complement to Mazarin’s exile, the king’s declaration of a general amnesty, registered by the royalist Parlement at Pontoise on 26 August. An extended preamble was devoted to a celebration of Mazarin’s virtues and achievements, followed by ‘a long invective’ against the princes, such that accepting the amnesty also implied the comprehensive acceptance of the princes’ war guilt.¹⁰ Moreover, the various exclusions from the amnesty for acts of unacceptable violence—including involvement in the 4 July massacre—left considerable uncertainty about exactly who would gain immunity. Proposals that the princes should send a delegation to the court to discuss the terms under which the amnesty and the settlement would be implemented were all rebuffed with the same response—that the exile of Mazarin required an unconditional laying down of arms before any further discussion.¹¹ Faced with this stance by the court, the princes attended a session of the Paris Parlement on 2 September. They stressed that the amnesty could only have effect if duly discussed and registered by the ‘real’ Parlement. But before any such debate, Orléans denounced the terms of the amnesty as without precedent, and incompatible with any guarantee that France was secured from the return of

⁵ Chéruel, v. 188, Mémoire of Mazarin, Sedan, 31 Aug. 1652. ⁶ AAE MD 889, fo. 331, royal declaration, Compiègne, 13 Sept. 1652. ⁷ Chéruel, v. 207, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 4 Sept. 1652; v. 364–5, Mazarin to Walter Montagu, Bouillon, 7 Oct. 1652. ⁸ AAE MD 884, fo. 102, Le Tellier to duc d’Orléans, Compiègne, c. 23 Aug. 1652. ⁹ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 209, Viole to Lenet, Paris, 28 Aug 1652. ¹⁰ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 176, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 25 Aug. 1652: see also Vallier, iv. 28–9. ¹¹ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 172, Viole to Lenet, 25 Aug: refusal of request for passports; Chéruel, v. 173, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Reims, 28 Aug. 1652; Vallier, Journal, iv. 27.

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Mazarin. Unless the cardinal was exiled under the terms of the original royal declaration of September 1651, the departure could have no validity.¹² A letter, subsequently printed, from the duc d’Orléans to the king on 7 September which addressed these points received an intemperate response, which began by expressing surprise that Orléans had not already disarmed his troops and submitted to royal authority, and continued into another comprehensive denunciation of the princes’ actions.¹³ Orléans’ letter nonetheless fared better than a similar letter from Condé, which was returned unopened.¹⁴ This was language and gesture appropriate to the imposition of unconditional surrender, not the negotiation of a settlement in which it was becoming clear that the princes held a substantial military advantage. Seeking in part to please the queen mother, whose emotionally driven response to challenge was typically to double down into uncompromising reaction, the ministers were evidently experimenting in early September with this hard-line approach. The only real issue was how long this façade of intransigence could be sustained.

Lost Opportunities The September Campaign The answer, unsurprisingly, turned out to be very little time indeed. Although the main body of the Spanish Army of Flanders had pulled out of Champagne in early August to besiege Dunkirk, the archduke and Fuensaldaña had agreed to provide an additional 6,000 troops for Condé. In conjunction with the army of the duke of Lorraine, these would continue to prop up the princes’ forces around Paris. Characteristic of such Spanish offers of support, the reality turned out to be around 50 per cent of the number of troops originally promised. However, the 3,000 or so cavalry and infantry joined the 6,000–7,000 troops of the Duke of Lorraine, and news reached Paris in the last week of August that the combined force of around 10,000 troops was moving across Brie.¹⁵ On 28 August Jacques Marigny wrote from Paris that this bolstering of the princes’ army would certainly give the court cause for consternation.¹⁶ Condé ordered his own troops out of the Paris suburbs of Suresnes and Saint Cloud, in order to march across Paris towards a rendezvous with Lorraine and the Spanish auxiliaries near Charenton and Créteil. Despite the looting and violence ¹² AAE MD 884, fo. 205, Declaration to Parlement, Paris, 2 Sept. 1652. ¹³ Vallier, iv. 62–4: king’s reply—also published—dated 12 Sept. ¹⁴ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 5, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 1 Sept. 1652. ¹⁵ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 278, 281, 290. ¹⁶ BN Ffr. 6709, fos 207–11, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 28 Aug. 1652: Marigny, viewing the disparity of military forces, wrote that the game was effectively over for Mazarin.

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 :     ? 219 of his troops, which resulted in an ugly clash in the suburb of Saint-Marcel, Condé’s forces had been increased to 4,000 by the addition of 2,000 volunteers from Paris, recruited in Beaufort’s name.¹⁷ The general misery of the population continued to serve as a persuasive recruiting sergeant, despite the resentment of the bourgeois towards the troops and their ‘incredible excesses’.¹⁸ The combined forces of the princes and their allies would total around 15,000–16,000 troops, confronting combined royalist forces under Turenne and La Ferté that were at most 8,000.¹⁹ Despite these developments, the royal court’s uncompromising stance was initially encouraged by Mazarin. The cardinal still appeared convinced that his exile had wrong-footed the princes by exposing the self-interested character of their motivation. He assured his correspondents that Condé had no intention of negotiating sincerely for an accommodation, while the princes’ close alliance with Spain would lead inevitably to public blame for the civil war falling on them.²⁰ There was at least one cause for Mazarin’s optimism: after weeks of military stagnation the royalists had a potential victory within their grasp. The great fortress of Montrond on the borders of Berry and the Bourbonnais, the last Condéen stronghold in the heart of France, had been blockaded since October 1651. The delays and evident failure of the royalist commander Philippe de Clairambault, comte de Palluau, to make progress, accompanied by some cantankerously insubordinate correspondence between Palluau and the court, had provided something of a propaganda success for Condé.²¹ But in July and August Palluau intensified the siege to the point where the remains of the garrison, short of munitions and food, agreed that they would surrender on 1 September if they had not been relieved before then.²² Finally it seemed the game was up: Condé dispatched 800 cavalry from the army outside Paris to try to break the siege before 1 September, but these were countered by a similarly sized force sent by Turenne.²³ The Condéen relief force finally reached Montrond, where the troops vainly attempted to break through the superior and well-entrenched besiegers.²⁴ By 4 September the news of the surrender was confirmed and spread through Paris: quite apart from its psychological impact on the princes’ party, it eliminated an important strongpoint that was neither in the Paris basin nor Guienne, and freed up a small but potentially significant royalist force that had been tied down for nearly a year.²⁵

¹⁷ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 68, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 8 Sept. 1652. ¹⁸ Vallier, iv. 59. ¹⁹ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 66v, abbé Viole to Lenet, Paris, 8 Sept. 1652. ²⁰ Chéruel, v. 190–1, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 31 Aug. 1652. ²¹ See letter from Palluau to Le Tellier, 20 July 1652, in Cosnac, Souvenirs, iv. 55–8. ²² Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 280–1; Cosnac, Souvenirs, iv. 25–110. ²³ AAE MD 884, fo. 104, no author, c. 23 Aug. 1652. ²⁴ Cosnac, Souvenirs, iv. 86–90. ²⁵ La Rochefoucauld emphasized the particular impact of the loss of Montrond on Condé: Mémoires, lii. 174.

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Setting aside Montrond, however, the principal factor influencing Mazarin’s intransigence was the belief that, despite the evidence of the duke of Lorraine’s military movements on behalf of Condé, this would be a replay of the situation in May. Lorraine and his army could be bought off and packaged back to the frontiers in return for the usual raft of concessions. After his meeting with the duke at Château-Thierry on 24 August en route to exile, Mazarin was buoyantly confident that Lorraine could be persuaded to change sides. On 26 August he wrote to Le Tellier that while Lorraine had argued that he was honour-bound to ensure that Condé received the German auxiliaries provided by Spain, he considered himself under no such obligation to serve the prince with his own army. This led to the apparently grotesque proposition that the French government should turn a blind eye to the movement of the German troops across France to join up with Condé. In return Lorraine proposed that he would abandon his alliance with Condé, and possibly even join his forces to those of Turenne. Mazarin was certainly aware that if Lorraine kept to this and abandoned his support for the princes, the 3,000 additional German troops alone would not have a decisive impact on Condé’s military strength.²⁶ But giving free passage to enemy troops crossing France to support the king’s domestic opponents was going too far, and it seems that Mazarin always intended to double-cross Lorraine over this agreement. The cardinal’s subsequent letters to Le Tellier emphasize the importance of blocking the route to Paris for both the German troops and, if necessary, the army of the duke.²⁷ What Mazarin had seemingly not anticipated was that the duke would doublecross him first. Duke Charles allowed discussion about an eight-day truce to move forward in a climate of negotiations that implied that he was buying time to switch sides. The truce supposedly came into force on 4 September, but Lorraine claimed his agents had acted without his knowledge, and pushed his own troops and the Germans rapidly through Brie, aiming to seize the defensible position at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, within easy reach of Paris.²⁸ The surprise was not entirely successful, since Turenne had anticipated the possibility that Charles would break his word, and moved the bulk of the royal army forward from its positions at Thillay, near Gonesse. Turenne’s cavalry occupied Villeneuve-SaintGeorges a few hours ahead of the Lorrainers, who spread out instead around Charenton to await the arrival of Condé on 5 September.²⁹

²⁶ Chéruel, v. 164–7, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Reims, 27 Aug. 1652. Chéruel leapt to defend Mazarin against the charge made by the comte d’Haussonville, Réunion de la Lorraine, ii. 362–7, that the cardinal cynically opened the route to Paris for the army of Lorraine and the Germans: Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 253–63. ²⁷ Chéruel, v. 178–9, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 30 Aug. 1652. ²⁸ d’Haussonville, Réunion de la Lorraine, ii. 359–71; Des Robert, Charles IV, 506–9. ²⁹ Turenne, i. 213–14.

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Until that moment the supporters of the princes were nervously aware that everything depended, once again, on the allegiance of duke Charles. President Viole had written anxiously to Lenet the day before that if Lorraine were to fail the princes then Condé would have no choice but to return to Guienne, or move to the frontier near Stenay.³⁰ La Rochefoucauld was equally alarmed to hear of the eight-day truce agreed between Lorraine and the court, but remained confident that the duke would remain loyal to Condé, convinced that Lorraine was much more seriously engaged with the Spanish than previously.³¹ As soon as Lorraine had broken the truce and met up with Condé it was clear that the tables had indeed been turned, and Mazarin had spectacularly miscalculated. In the next few days the reality of the situation started to sink in more widely. Pierre de Longueil, no supporter of Condé, had nonetheless recognized that a window of opportunity for the court had closed, and that the balance of advantage had now shifted. In his view, the court’s mistake had been the failure to move against Paris at the beginning of the month to exploit the weakness of the princes’ party and the alienation of the city’s inhabitants.³² In contrast, Condé wasted little time once his own troops had arrived in planning an all-out attack on Turenne’s forces.³³ Turenne had spent the few days since his arrival around VilleneuveSaint-Georges on 5 September strengthening his defences against likely lines of attack. The first encounter took place on 8 September, with around 14,000 of the princes’ troops confronting Turenne’s army of around 7,000. Turenne’s carefully chosen position was located between the Seine and the river Yères so that he could not be outflanked. Moreover, the two armies faced each other across a stream and surrounding marshy land which made it difficult to carry forward an assault. Turenne, well aware of his numerical weakness, had no intention of abandoning his defensive positions; success for Condé would have depended, as so frequently in the past, on his leadership in a difficult and costly direct assault on Turenne’s positions. After a few initial manoeuvres, some exchanges of artillery fire and small-scale cavalry skirmishes, a general assault was called off and the Condéen troops dug in to face Turenne’s position.³⁴ One of Condé’s clients, Jacques Caillet, remained convinced that such an assault could easily have succeeded, and that the real constraint was the reluctance of Lorraine to engage his forces.³⁵ The duke was a classic military enterpriser

³⁰ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 34, President Viole to Lenet, Paris, 4 Sept. 1652. ³¹ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 36, La Rochefoucauld to Lenet, [Paris], 4 Sept. 1652; AAE MD 884, fo. 164, Etienne Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 14 Oct 1652: Aligre notes that the Spanish had given Lorraine the revenues from the county of Limburg in return for 300,000 livres outstanding on his contract. ³² AAE MD 884, fo. 251, Longueil to Président Grenelle, Paris, 7 Sept. 1652: ‘le théâtre change’. ³³ AAE MD 889, fo. 364, Goulas to Chavigny, Paris, 8 Sept. 1652: Condé’s intention to attack immediately. ³⁴ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 66v, [8/9 Sept. 1652]: detailed account of the stand-off. ³⁵ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 60, Caillet to Lenet, Paris, 8 Sept. 1652; this suspicion had become gossip in Paris a few days later: AAE MD 884, fo. 275, Bluet [to Mazarin], Paris, 10 Sept. 1652.

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 :     ? 223 forged in the Thirty Years’ War: he was prepared to commit his troops to battle if there was no alternative and the strategic rewards were high enough. But he was justifiably reluctant to waste veteran troops in insignificant sieges or, in this case, a costly encounter whose outcome might also be settled by blockade and skirmishing. His troops were his investment—and in Lorraine’s case, his state—and were not going to be expended lightly. In general, though, commentators accepted that the issue had been the defensibility of Turenne’s positions.³⁶ Condé evidently agreed, and recognized that while Turenne’s location was strong, it also brought the potentially fatal weakness of being isolated from easy access to supplies. Condé could blockade Turenne’s forces, finally forcing them to abandon their positions in search of food and forage.³⁷ Indeed, if the real aim was to force the pace of negotiations with the court, blockading rather than destroying the royalist army might be the better option.³⁸ With Turenne’s troops now bottled up between the two rivers, Condé, Lorraine, and Orléans sent a letter to the king proposing the resumption of talks.³⁹ Even before 8 September Mazarin was having second thoughts about negotiations with the princes. On 31 August he had drafted a memoir for his client, Abraham Fabert, whose long-standing friendship with the comte de Chavigny once again offered a route into negotiations.⁴⁰ Without revealing too many of his cards in this initial memoir, Mazarin was exploring possible routes to a settlement with Condé, whether in conjunction with Orléans and Lorraine, or individually. Some sense of this unease and the need for greater flexibility in negotiations seems to have reached the court. On 4 September, Le Tellier had written to Mazarin to discuss once again whether to issue the princes’ delegates with passports to come to negotiate peace terms at court. Le Tellier recognized that refusing these passports was a public statement of intractability ill suited to the present political situation, and so urged flexibility.⁴¹ Further stimulating this change in tone was another, potentially catastrophic development in the military situation. The frustration of the comte d’Harcourt at what he saw as his shabby treatment by Mazarin and the crown had been growing through 1652. In 1649 he had been rewarded for well over a decade of unswerving service and loyalty to the crown and to Mazarin with the governorship of Alsace. Modest in terms of revenues and territory, it was supplemented by the Rhinefortress of Philippsburg in 1651.⁴² More important than gaining Philippsburg, ³⁶ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 62, La Rochefoucauld to Lenet, Paris, 8 Sept. 1652; though Ffr. 6710, fo 66v, suggests that even without the Lorrainer troops Condé had large enough forces to overwhelm Turenne. ³⁷ Vallier, iv. 54; Turenne, i. 214–15. ³⁸ Cosnac, Souvenirs, iv. 111–12; Tavannes, Mémoires, 178, 185–6. ³⁹ BN Ffr. 6710, fo 66v. ⁴⁰ Chéruel, v. 188–9, Mazarin to Fabert, Sedan, 31 Aug. 1652. ⁴¹ AAE MD 884, fos 220–1, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 4 Sept. 1652. ⁴² G. Livet, L’Intendance d’Alsace de la guerre de Trente Ans à la mort de Louis XIV (1634–1715) (2nd edition: Paris, 1991), 138–9. It appears that Harcourt (or the crown) paid 100,000 livres in early October 1651 to acquire the governorship of Philippsburg: Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 121. Harcourt

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Harcourt subsequently claimed that in recognition of his services and the modest status of Alsace, he had also been promised a first claim on the fortress of Breisach should the governorship become vacant. This, he asserted, would ‘render his governorship (of Alsace) profitable, and give him a secure place as every other governor possesses’.⁴³ Harcourt’s greatest single source of resentment was that this promise had been disregarded in 1650 when Le Tellier, acting as agent to facilitate Mazarin’s ultimate objective of acquiring the place for himself, obtained Breisach for his brother-in-law, Gabriel de Cassagnet, marquis de Tilladet.⁴⁴ However, the situation remained complicated. From his arrival, Tilladet became locked in a power struggle with his long-serving and popular lieutenant, which resulted in a mutiny of the garrison and Tilladet’s expulsion from the fortress.⁴⁵ The plot took a further turn in March 1652 when the lieutenant, Charlevoix, was lured outside of Breisach, kidnapped and imprisoned in Harcourt’s own fortress of Philippsburg. Still resentful that he had been passed over for the governorship, Harcourt now entered into negotiations with Charlevoix by which the latter agreed that he would orchestrate the acclamation of Harcourt by the garrison as governor of Breisach in return for his release and re-establishment as lieutenant.⁴⁶ Fortified with this agreement, Harcourt wrote to Mazarin on 8 April 1652. Presenting himself as deeply concerned about the present situation in Breisach, Harcourt wrote that the only solution was to appoint him as the governor, given his existing standing as governor of Alsace, and his reputation amongst the troops.⁴⁷ Mazarin however had no intention of surrendering his own grip on Breisach, which he had earmarked as a potential place de sûreté during his 1651 exile, and which he now intended to appropriate from the humiliated Tilladet. His reply on 16 April was a steely rejection of Harcourt’s claims on the place.⁴⁸ Marginalized, and unable to achieve a breakthrough in Guienne with forces that had been progressively weakened, for Harcourt the issue of Breisach festered. In July, and following up the secret agreement with Charlevoix, Harcourt despatched his wife and children, together with money to pay the garrison, to the fortress.⁴⁹ Knowledge of the dispute between Harcourt and Mazarin, and rumours about Harcourt’s possible actions, had been rife since April. But his actual move, on 16 August, simply to abandon the army in Guienne and ride with a few followers to complained in 1652 that given the state of the fortress it was more of a financial liability to him than a benefit: AAE MD 884, fo. 2, Mémoire of Harcourt, (early Aug.) 1652. ⁴³ AAE MD 875, fo. 314, Mémoire . . . , June 1651. ⁴⁴ Cosnac, Souvenirs, iii. 196–7; Chéruel, iii. 459, 473, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Aincourt/Rouen, 4/7 Feb. 1650. ⁴⁵ AAE CP Suisse 32, fo. 45, de La Barde to Chavigny, Soleure, 26 May 1651, who was particularly concerned by the implications of this struggle for Breisach’s security; Cosnac, Souvenirs, iii. 199–200. ⁴⁶ Cosnac, Souvenirs, iii. 201–4. ⁴⁷ AN KK 1219, fo. 145, Harcourt to Mazarin, Agen, 8 April 1652. ⁴⁸ Chéruel, v. 87–8, Mazarin to Harcourt, Gien, 16 April 1652. ⁴⁹ Cosnac, Souvenirs, iii. 376–7.

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 :     ? 225 take control of Breisach still came as a thunderstroke. Even Harcourt’s immediate subordinates with the army had simply been told that he was departing ‘for the court’.⁵⁰ To justify his action to Mazarin, Harcourt penned an extensive list of grievances and his reasons for leaving the army, and made clear his determination to hold Breisach against all opposition.⁵¹ Mazarin’s first impulse was to play down the crisis, but the implications for the campaign in Guienne and the security of the eastern frontier were too serious to ignore. By late September the possibility of any quick compromise had vanished and Mazarin denounced Harcourt’s ingratitude and disloyalty in terms which only just fell short of arraigning him for treason.⁵² Condé and his party assumed that Harcourt would soon be joining forces with them—a nice irony given Harcourt’s much-mocked role as Condé’s gaoler back in 1650.⁵³ However the most immediate concern was the security threat in the south-west.⁵⁴ Mazarin’s fear, voiced to Le Tellier, was that Condé would move with a large part of his forces down to Guienne, knock back all of the progress made by the royal army since autumn 1651, and establish a powerful base of operations again in Guienne.⁵⁵ A whole new layer of military uncertainty had been created to unnerve the already shaken cardinal and court. A reversal in Guienne turned out to be a false alarm, but the situation around Paris was no less threatening. Turenne’s position above Villeneuve-Saint-Georges was strong, but maintaining supplies to his army was, as he had anticipated, a serious challenge. In contrast, the princes and their allies had a substantial hinterland from which they could requisition supplies, including Paris itself, whose population was coerced into providing a major contribution in food and money to a mostly foreign army.⁵⁶ Trapped in their defensive positions, for the first 3–4 days the only forage available to the horses of Turenne’s cavalry were vine leaves.⁵⁷ By constructing a pontoon bridge across the Seine and out of range of the enemy, Turenne was able to reconnect with territory that could provide proper forage and some additional supplies for the troops.⁵⁸ This access, together with ⁵⁰ AAE MD 884, fo. 70, Harcourt to the comte d’Aubeterre, maréchal de camp in the army of Guienne, camp near Montflanquin, 16 Aug. 1652. ⁵¹ AAE MD 884, fos 2–4, Harcourt to Mazarin, (Montflanquin) (c. 16) Aug. 1652. See also the manifesto published immediately on his arrival in Breisach: Le manifeste du Comte d’Harcourt sur son arrivé en la ville de Brissac, faisant cognoistre le dessein du Cardinal Mazarin de s’emparer de cette forteresse, qui estoit le subject de sa retraitte hors de France (Paris, Chez Samuel de Larry, 1652). ⁵² Chéruel, v. 274–8, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 24 Sept. 1652. ⁵³ BN Ffr. 6079, fos 218–20, Condé to Lenet, Paris, 29 Sept. 1652: ‘Harcourt n’a point d’aultre party à prendre que celuy de se jetter dans nos mesmes.’ ⁵⁴ Jean de Bougy wrote of the large numbers of officers who had abandoned the army after the departure of Harcourt: AAE MD 884, fo. 285, Bougy to Mazarin, 10 Sept. 1652. ⁵⁵ Chéruel, v. 204–5, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 4 Sept. 1652. ⁵⁶ Vallier, iv. 59–60. ⁵⁷ Turenne, i. 216. ⁵⁸ AAE MD 884, fo. 335, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 14 Sept. 1652; Turenne to governor of Corbeil, camp near Villeneuve-St-Georges, 12 Sept. 1652, requesting boats for the pontoon bridge, in Menditte, Lettres de Turenne, 68.

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occasional boatloads of supplies which had evaded interception by Condé’s troops, enabled him to maintain his positions for the next five weeks.⁵⁹ The armies were within sight of each other, and there were some skirmishes and small engagements. But the princes were not seriously prepared to assault Turenne’s army, and Turenne was not confident that he could fight his way out through the enemy lines.⁶⁰ There was little doubt that the situation was deteriorating more rapidly for Turenne: supplies were erratic, and the heavy rains throughout September had saturated the camp and turned the roads and paths into swamps. Turenne knew that he would have to break out of the camp before conditions got even worse as the autumn continued.⁶¹ The risk was that a false step by Turenne could lead to a crushing defeat that would leave the king and court at the mercy of Condé. Jean de Gourville, maître de l’hôtel of the duc de La Rochefoucauld—so perhaps guilty of some wishful thinking—wrote on 22 September that ‘from the Charente to the Flanders frontier the king has no more than 12–14,000 troops under arms’; the mauling of Turenne’s force of 7,000 would be devastating in this situation.⁶² The problem faced by Condé was less dramatic, but equally stultifying in its impact. Turenne’s army, though trapped, could only be securely pinned down with all Condé’s available forces; this represented a massive opportunity cost at a time when the princes enjoyed military superiority. A month blockading Turenne was time in which some of the troops could have exploited the new military situation in Guienne—as Mazarin had feared might be a possibility. Above all, an army not tied to what was effectively a monthlong siege would have been able to discourage the growth of hostility and outright opposition in Paris. In the midst of their negotiations for a comprehensive accommodation with the court, the princes did not want the development of a substantial and vocal party in the capital who simply sought the return of the king to Paris at virtually any price. The first indications of this movement, apart from the obvious and growing frustrations with the presence and burdens of the troops in and around the city, were the various deputations of citizens requesting passports from the duc d’Orléans to travel to the Court to plead for the king’s return to Paris. The threat of an imminent revolt seemed small, but the prospect of subsequent unauthorized deputations to the court was a nagging source of worry to Condé and Orléans. On 17 September, the court had sought to test the mood in Paris by disseminating an order from the king urging the population to take up arms against their illegitimate rulers, resist the claims of the princes to military supplies and money, and demand the annulment of Broussel’s unauthorized appointment as prévôt des marchands or city mayor.⁶³ An illegal assembly of ⁵⁹ Turenne, i. 215–17; the pontoon bridge was partially destroyed a little later by a raid launched by Condé’s cavalry; Tavannes, Mémoires, 177–8, 185–6. ⁶⁰ Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 290, 292; Cosnac, Souvenirs, iv. 131–2; Monglat, Mémoires, l. 363–4. ⁶¹ Turenne, i. 217–18. ⁶² BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 137, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 22 Sept. 1652. ⁶³ Vallier, iv. 67–8; Talon, Mémoires, vi. 510.

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 :     ? 227 between 400 and 700 bourgeois subsequently came together near the Palais Cardinal to stress their loyalty to the king.⁶⁴ The assembly did not lead to open— and most likely bloody—revolt, but it did persuade Orléans to give passports to a delegation of merchants who wished to supplicate the king to return to Paris, and it achieved its biggest coup on 26 September when Broussel agreed to demit his post of mayor.⁶⁵ This success could be added to the decision on 12 September by the loyalist Chambre des comptes to abandon activities in Paris, and to obey the king’s orders to move to Pontoise.⁶⁶ Moreover, the drift of royal officials out of Paris continued, now including chancellor Séguier, who slunk out of the city disguised as an Oratorian priest.⁶⁷ Concern at the evidence of a potential opposition grouping was compounded by the decision of the court to move from distant Compiègne much closer to Paris, settling at Pontoise on 28 September. For several weeks various of Mazarin’s agents had urged moving the king and court closer to Paris as an essential step to fomenting rebellion.⁶⁸ The obvious risk was that the court was now further away from Turenne’s forces, but in the second half of September the military stand-off was unchanged, and the danger of moving the court seemed low. In the face of these developments, the incentives for Condé to try to force a military resolution were growing. The surrender of Dunkirk to the main Spanish army on 16 September might open up possibilities for Condé in making more Spanish troops available for operations within France.⁶⁹ But that seemed a distant prospect compared to his more immediate concern, predictably enough, about the duke of Lorraine. An intercepted letter from Condé, seemingly addressed to Fuensaldaña and dated 20 September, reveals that the prince was worried about Lorraine’s commitment to the military alliance—how far would Lorraine commit his troops given, Condé noted, that the duke’s primary concern was keeping his Spanish subsidy, not cooperating with the princes’ army?⁷⁰ Though it would make tactical sense to blockade Turenne’s forces until the problems of supply and the condition of his encampment grew even worse, Condé was less certain that he still had that luxury. By late September Condé was moving ineluctably towards risking an engagement with Turenne’s troops before Lorraine made a separate settlement, before the royalists started receiving reinforcements, and before the situation in Paris, ⁶⁴ Vallier, iv. 68–9; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 292–3; Talon, Mémoires, vi. 510–11. ⁶⁵ Registres de l’Hôtel de Ville, iii. 266–71; AAE MD 884, fo. 430, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 28 Sept. 1652. ⁶⁶ Marigny had predicted on 1 September that the court would obey the king’s instructions to move—‘c’est l’esprit de la compagnie’: BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 5, Marigny to Lenet; Dubuisson-Aubenay, ii. 288. ⁶⁷ Vallier, iv. 51–2. ⁶⁸ Notably Bluet: AAE MD 884, fos. 76, 188, 275, 419; Paris, 19 Aug, and 1/9/27 Sept. 1652. ⁶⁹ This was certainly a concern of Michel le Tellier: AAE MD 884, fo. 391, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 20 Sept. 1652. ⁷⁰ AAE MD 884, fo. 387, Paris, 20 Sept. 1652.

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encouraged by the movement of the court, became still more volatile. It was at this moment that chance took a decisive turn.⁷¹ On 29 September the abbé Viole, while writing of how the princes’ forces had further tightened the river blockade that would prevent supplies getting to Turenne, also mentioned that Condé had been forced to abandon the army because of violent headaches.⁷² A day later, Viole’s brother, the président, wrote that Condé had been bled four times. Condé himself dictated a letter on the same day, being too ill to write, noting that had he been fit he would have been able to push forward a vigorous attack on the royalist positions.⁷³ Condé’s physical paralysis continued: the abbé Viole wrote to Lenet on 2 October that ‘the illness of Condé, which is a lot worse than you have been told’, was continuing, and meanwhile the armies remained immobilized in their positions.⁷⁴ Condé’s illness provided Lorraine with the opportunity to launch parallel negotiations with the crown, and above all to defer any full confrontation with Turenne’s army which, win or lose, would cost him many of his best troops. Without directly making the request, Lorraine let it be known to the court around 1 October that he would be prepared to negotiate a ten-day truce, allowing him to withdraw his troops towards the frontier.⁷⁵ But Lorraine was unprepared to take the final steps needed to set these negotiations in progress, and Condé’s health recovered sufficiently for him to hold a council of war in his Paris hôtel on 3 October, at which Lorraine was present.⁷⁶ The council was to address a changing situation, for Condé had received some early intelligence that Turenne might be preparing to stage a retreat from his position at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Convinced that any attempt to withdraw in the face of the princes’ army would prove a disaster for Turenne’s forces, Condé ordered his commanders to stand on full military alert. Condé’s health had revived, but he was not sufficiently recovered to return to the command of the army, where he might have been able to anticipate and exploit Turenne’s actual manoeuvres. For Turenne spent the night of 3/4 October moving his troops around his own encampment and sowing uncertainty about his intentions, then during the following day kept up the feint that he was about to launch an assault to break out through Condé’s lines. On the night of 4/5 October Condé’s troops were tired and suspected that the alert had after all been a false ⁷¹ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 196, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 29 Sept. 1652: expects Condé to attack within four days. ⁷² BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 188, abbé Viole to Lenet, Paris. ⁷³ BN Ffr. 6710, fos 198, 200, both letters to Lenet, Paris, 30 Sept. 1652. ⁷⁴ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 17, Abbé Viole to Lenet, Paris, 2 Oct. 1652: ‘tout autre chose que ce qu’on vous a mandé.’ ⁷⁵ AAE MD 885, fo. 2, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 1 Oct. 1652; rumours had also reached Turenne, who urged acceptance: MD 885, fo. 21, Turenne and La Ferté to Le Tellier, 2 Oct. 1652. ⁷⁶ Tavannes, Mémoires, 191: partly because it forms the background to his decision to leave Condé’s service, the episode of Turenne’s well-managed withdrawal from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges receives its most detailed account from Tavannes.

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 :     ? 229 alarm. Turenne had a new pontoon bridge constructed across the Seine behind his lines, and stealthily withdrew his entire army across the river, unit by unit, while maintaining signs of activity in his camp.⁷⁷ On 5 October Turenne’s army reassembled in battle order near Corbeil: he had recovered his freedom of manoeuvre, was separated from the princes’ forces by the Seine, and could link up with reinforcements as these became available.⁷⁸ From Corbeil, the army crossed the Marne on 11 October and established itself around Senlis.⁷⁹ There was little doubt in the princes’ camp that Condé’s absence had been the main reason for this missed opportunity.⁸⁰ Suspicion also fell on Lorraine and his unwillingness to commit his troops, though he had been in Paris on the night of 4/ 5 October, and the overall command of the army was in the hands of the secondlevel commanders, the comtes de Tavannes and de Valon, and the marquis de Clinchamp.⁸¹ The slender prospect available to Condé—though still a large factor in the calculations of Mazarin and the court—was that the main Spanish army would finally move into France, dwarfing the military resources of the royalists. In fact, following the capture of Dunkirk, the Spanish forces did indeed move across the Champagne frontier onto French territory, avoiding the heavily fortified places, but picking off some of the smaller, less well-fortified towns.⁸² The major question, unclear to both sides in France, was whether the Spanish simply intended to establish their winter quarters within Champagne, or whether Condé would be able to persuade them to cross the Marne and move down towards Paris.⁸³ A Spanish advance into France offered some possibility of regaining the military initiative, but news from a different quarter that Lorraine had reopened unilateral negotiations to seek a ten-day truce to pull his own army back from the Paris basin seemed to foreclose options for Condé.⁸⁴ Turenne’s repositioning of his army between the Marne and the Oise was anyway likely to make it impossible without direct Spanish assistance for Condé to control the territory east of Paris; this meant that it would be far too dangerous to quarter his army over the winter in its present positions.⁸⁵

A Last Chance for Settlement? In the same weeks that the military outcome of the conflicts of 1652 hung in the balance, dependent on the decisions of Turenne and Condé and the pressures of ⁷⁷ Ibid, 200–5. ⁷⁸ Ibid, 204–5. ⁷⁹ Turenne, i. 218. ⁸⁰ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 41, François de Guitot to Lenet, [Paris], 7 Oct. 1652. ⁸¹ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 33, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 6 Oct. 1652. ⁸² BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 173 no signature [Jacques Caillet?], Paris, 25 Sept. ⁸³ AAE MD 885, fo. 58, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 4 Oct. 1652. ⁸⁴ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 62, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 13 Oct. 1652. ⁸⁵ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 64, president Viole to Lenet, Paris, 13 Oct. 1652; Turenne to Le Tellier, camp de Rully, 26/29 Oct. 1652, in Mendillet, ed., Lettres de Turenne, 90–1, 94.

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logistics and military attrition, a second, diplomatic, struggle was being played out. While it might seem from the previous section that the fate of the parties depended on military action in the Paris basin, at exactly the same time the negotiations for a settlement within France entered their most intense phase. From a confident belief that his short exile would divide and expose his enemies and garner public support for his apparently statesmanlike gesture, Mazarin saw his position progressively deteriorating through September. His political manoeuvre of self-imposed exile now appeared a potentially disastrous mistake from which it might prove impossible to recover. His rapidly evolving conviction that Condé needed to be brought into a settlement more or less regardless of cost reflected a panicky concern that he might otherwise find himself on the wrong side of an accommodation enforced on the court by the princes. Personal factors aside, the debates between Mazarin and his ministers about the form and price of a settlement also reveal the shared concerns about the impact of continued conflict on state, society, and the legacy of the foreign policy pursued since the 1630s. The spectre of a complete military and economic collapse which had been averted during the first four years of the Fronde now seemed, as Chapter 5 indicated, a great deal closer. By the middle of September, even before the fall of Dunkirk, Mazarin’s line on negotiating with Condé had softened markedly.⁸⁶ As we have seen, Mazarin had already started using his connection through Abraham Fabert to Condé’s advisor, the comte de Chavigny, in order to open up lines of negotiation.⁸⁷ Flickers of bullish optimism about a settlement dictated from a position of strength occasionally sparked up.⁸⁸ But overwhelmingly, Mazarin’s letters to Le Tellier stressed that it was essential to reach an accommodation with Condé, even if this required concessions which some at the court might resist.⁸⁹ The news that Mazarin was prepared to negotiate a settlement in detail with the person he might have regarded as his most dangerous and consistent enemy had soon become common knowledge. On 22 September, the abbé Viole wrote to Lenet that everyone in Paris believed a peace settlement would be achieved in a few days.⁹⁰ On the same day, La Rochefoucauld’s right-hand man, Gourville, gave his opinion that both sides had reached the limits of their endurance and a settlement was on the cards: Dunkirk had fallen; Barcelona would soon follow; Mazarin wanted to return, and would not be able to conceal from the wider court for much longer the extent to which he had been negotiating for an accommodation with Condé.⁹¹ On 24 September one aspect of this search for a settlement emerged in an irritable letter from Mazarin to his agent, the abbé Basile Fouquet.

⁸⁶ ⁸⁷ ⁸⁹ ⁹¹

Chéruel, v. 226–7, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 10 Sept. 1652. See ‘The Peace that Failed’ in Chapter 4. ⁸⁸ Chéruel, v. 247–8, Bouillon, 14 Sept. 1652. Chéruel, v. 251–3, Bouillon, 19 Sept. 1652. ⁹⁰ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 141. BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 137, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 22 Sept. 1652.

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 :     ? 231 Mazarin defended his written advice that leaving intact the fortifications of recently captured Montrond was militarily useful to the crown, as well as being an obvious concession to Condé to encourage him to reach an accommodation. As the place would then be returned intact to Condé’s control, Mazarin’s argument that a fortified Montrond served the security interests of the crown would have convinced few at court.⁹² The drive towards a settlement was gaining ever greater momentum, and forming part of the regular correspondence between the cardinal and his various ministers and agents. Just how many concessions was Mazarin prepared to make to draw Condé into an accommodation? This preoccupied Abel Servien, secretary of state and long-established client of Mazarin, who had recalled Servien from the disgrace into which Richelieu had cast him at the end of 1635.⁹³ On 24 September Servien launched his first, extensive blast against Mazarin’s bid to win over Condé. Beginning the letter in a tone of self-deprecation that will have been familiar to Mazarin from the minister’s correspondence as one of the plenipotentiaries at the Westphalia negotiations, Servien took the liberty, as he put it, of sending Mazarin some considerations that might be important to the crown and the state. Servien dismissed the whole project of seeking an accommodation with Condé as delusory. His alternative proposal was to stimulate a royalist rising in Paris and to use this for the king to make his entry into the capital and to seize control while the princes’ troops were blockading Turenne’s army. As Servien freely admitted, stimulating such a rising would be a risky business, but did at least offer a chance of breaking the present deadlock and defeating the princes’ grip on the capital. In contrast, trying to negotiate a settlement with Condé brought three disadvantages. First, it was highly unlikely that it would ever be possible to satisfy all of the demands of Condé for himself, his family and his allies; already many of the proposals were unacceptable to the queen mother. Second, the whole process opened Mazarin to the criticism that he was simply trying to buy himself back from exile and into his old position at court with concessions ‘prejudicial to the monarchy and the state’. Third, the apparent likelihood of a settlement with Condé meant that, right up into the royal council itself, those at court were doing their best to get into the prince’s good graces by providing him with information and support: Condé and Orléans were fully informed of everything that was said or done at the court, however secret.⁹⁴

⁹² Chéruel, v. 289–90, Bouillon, 24 Sept. 1652. ⁹³ H. Duccini, Guerre et paix dans la France du Grand Siècle. Abel Servien: diplomate et serviteur de l’état (1593–1659) (Paris, 2012), 181–92; L. Bély, ‘Les métamorphoses d’une relation humaine et politique: Servien et Mazarin’; G. Braun ‘La diplomatie française en Allemagne et le rôle d’Abel Servien pendant les négociations de Westphalie (1644–49)’, both in G. Ferretti (ed.), De l’ombre à la lumière. Les Servien et la monarchie de France, XVIe et XVIIe siècle (Paris, 2014), 13–47. ⁹⁴ AAE MD 884, fos 406–11, Creil, 24 Sept. 1652. Servien provided a formidable list of those at court he considered to be particular sources of leaked information.

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Servien’s warning shots fell for the most part on selectively deaf ears. The one area that he touched on that was already a source of concern and a potential sticking point for Mazarin was the prospect that the cardinal might be excluded or marginalized from the peace negotiations between France and Spain. For Servien, it was self-evident that Condé would seize control of the negotiations simply in order to pay off the Spanish for their support for him.⁹⁵ In practice, there was good reason to think that Condé would not be the docile executor of all and every Spanish demand. But the concern touched a raw nerve with Mazarin, who a few days earlier had worried that peace negotiations left in the hands of Condé and the duke of Lorraine might end up depriving him of a role that was intrinsic to his status as incumbent first minister.⁹⁶ Even here, interestingly, Mazarin’s aim was not to try to exclude Condé and Lorraine from participation, but to discover what they would consider a reasonable settlement with Spain while ensuring his own role in the negotiations was maintained. Despite his high regard for Servien’s opinions, Mazarin was set on his chosen path towards compromise, and in this he was strongly and consistently supported and abetted by Michel Le Tellier. Though currently holding the secretaryship for war from which Servien had been dismissed in 1635, there was no permanent rivalry or rancour between the two ministers. Both had fallen from Mazarin’s favour during his 1651 exile and had helped each other recover their positions, and both were now seen by Mazarin as amongst his most trusted supporters while he was again in exile. But over policy choices in September 1652 there was profound disagreement between the two. Le Tellier had been acutely aware of the fragility of the military situation throughout the year: he had been the key witness to the unprecedented failure to mobilize military resources in the first half of 1652, and the consequences of this on the frontiers and in confronting the princes. Le Tellier also had a high regard for Condé’s generalship, and a justified concern about the prospect of having him fighting against the crown and its forces. Le Tellier’s own advice to Mazarin had consistently favoured accommodation, and during the final stages of the negotiations in early October he became the key negotiator acting for the cardinal, and the recipient of Mazarin’s confidential assessments about the details of the settlement and the way in which it should be sold to the court and crown. Le Tellier was from the outset brought into the unfolding negotiations between Mazarin and Condé via the mediation of Fabert and Chavigny. Initially Le Tellier worked directly with Servien, and the two collaborated in bringing together proposals and discussing them with Mazarin. On 14 September Le Tellier wrote to Mazarin that he and Servien had looked over a series of proposals (from Condé) for an accommodation, and had done so as

⁹⁵ Ibid, fo. 408v–9.

⁹⁶ Chéruel, v. 267–70, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 21 Sept. 1652.

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 :     ? 233 Mazarin had requested ‘in the light of the affairs of the kingdom’. They too had concluded that the only course was to extract themselves from the civil war by ‘accommodement raisonable’. They approved the settlements for Condé’s lieutenants in the South West, Marsin and Dognon, the cash payment of a million livres to Condé, and the preservation of the fortifications of Montrond. They queried only the agreement that Orléans and Condé should be allowed after the settlement to maintain troops under their own names.⁹⁷ Though, as we have seen, Servien was shortly to warn against the whole project of a settlement and to offer the radical alternative of a popular rising in Paris, Le Tellier, like Mazarin, envisaged only one alternative plan: if the negotiations with Condé failed, then they should pursue negotiations with the duc d’Orléans and/or the duke of Lorraine. In neither case did they consider this anything more than a poor second choice, but the possibility of cutting a deal with one or the other might have the effect of forcing Condé to compromise over sticking points in his own settlement.⁹⁸ Meanwhile the terms that Mazarin would be prepared to offer Condé for a settlement grew more generous: fewer and fewer of the demands made by the prince seemed objectionable to either Mazarin or Le Tellier.⁹⁹ This was not, however, the unanimous view at court, and Mazarin wrote with some irritation on 27 September that he could not understand why the queen mother was not prepared to show more flexibility in negotiating with the princes. Rather than jumping to the sordidly inappropriate conclusion that Mazarin would make any concessions to her enemies to facilitate his return from exile, she needed to come to terms with the perilous situation in which they now stood: faced with enemies on all sides, domestic and foreign, disaster could only be averted by putting aside her aversion to Condé and adopting the prudent course of negotiation.¹⁰⁰ A further letter to the abbé Fouquet, acting as one of Mazarin’s agents in the negotiations with Condé, also made clear Mazarin’s frustration with the queen’s changes of opinion about which concessions could be accorded, and in this case her renewed insistence that the fortifications of Montrond must be razed after all.¹⁰¹ Floating behind all this was Mazarin’s suspicion that the queen was being provided by those around her with an alternative interpretation of both his own motives and the imperative to settle with Condé.

⁹⁷ AAE MD 884, fo. 339, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 14 Sept. 1652. ⁹⁸ Chéruel, v. 313, Mazarin to Fabert (instructions for Fabert to write to Chavigny), Bouillon, 1 Oct. 1652: explores the possibility that Chavigny might be able to leverage a settlement out of Condé by threatening him with the consequences of a separate deal struck with the duc d’Orléans. ⁹⁹ AAE MD 884, fos 391, 420, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne/Mantes, 20/27 Sept. 1652. ¹⁰⁰ Chéruel, v. 297–9, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 27 Sept. 1652. ¹⁰¹ Chéruel, v. 304–5, Mazarin to Abbé Fouquet, Bouillon, 28 Sept. 1652.

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By putting these concerns to one side, and assuming that the crown could eventually be persuaded to accept whatever terms were finally agreed, Mazarin pressed on towards what he hoped would be a rapid and viable settlement. The path was not straightforward. Mazarin had relied heavily on the mediation of Chavigny, and in late September correspondence between the abbé Fouquet and Mazarin was intercepted in which Fouquet revealed that Chavigny had promised him that he would be able to bring Condé round to accepting a more moderate settlement.¹⁰² After Condé furiously dismissed him from his service, Chavigny retired to his Paris hôtel, and died on 11 October, probably from the same fever that had prostrated Condé a few days earlier.¹⁰³ The loss was significant, since Chavigny was committed to a settlement, and had encouraged Condé if not to moderation, at least to a reasonable appraisal of what could be demanded with some chance of success. Mazarin was subsequently forced to rely on his own agents, notably the abbé Fouquet and then Langlade, secretary of the king’s cabinet, neither of whom had any ability to exercise influence over Condé’s actual decision-making. Moreover, linked to the disgrace of Chavigny came a major, effectively definitive, quarrel between Condé and the duc d’Orléans. Described in detail by Le Tellier from his Paris informants, the dispute began on 25 September; it reflected Condé’s conviction that he had carried the full weight of the struggle against Mazarin while Orléans had been negotiating for a separate deal with the court, a charge which was vigorously denied by Orléans.¹⁰⁴ At one level a split between the two princes might seem helpful to the court, presenting the possibility of playing them off against each other through separate negotiations. In practice it made matters more complex, by encouraging Condé both to draw closer to the duke of Lorraine, and to become still more determined to seek the interests of his own allies and supporters in the peace negotiations. The immediate effect was that Condé hardened his demands, including those over which he had previously seemed flexible. These included marshals’ batons for Marsin and Dognon, the return of the two towers of La Rochelle to the control of Dognon, the demand of the Parlement of Bordeaux that the rival Cour des aides, created in 1630 and established in Bordeaux in 1637, should be suppressed, and a continued right for Condé (and Orléans) to raise troops in their own names.¹⁰⁵ It also became a lot more difficult to achieve what was at least Le Tellier’s ambition: a settlement with Condé that would leave the duke of Lorraine—whom Le

¹⁰² BN Ffr. 6891, fo. 2v (no author) Paris, 28 Sept. 1652; Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 215–17 ‘Mort de Chavigny’; La Rochefoucauld claims that the letter was changed to incriminate Chavigny, and that the original wording had spoken of Orléans’ secretary, Nicolas Goulas: Mémoires, lii. 175–6. ¹⁰³ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 175; Conrart, Mémoires, xlviii. 217–20. ¹⁰⁴ AAE MD 884, fo. 423, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Mantes, 27 Sept. 1652. According to Marigny, the quarrel had been festering since February: BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 194, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 29 Sept. 1652. ¹⁰⁵ AAE MD 884, fos 424–5, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Mantes, 27 Sept. 1652.

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 :     ? 235 Tellier detested almost as much as he loathed the cardinal de Retz—vulnerable to a French counter-strike now that his French alliance had disappeared.¹⁰⁶ Whatever their previous differences and suspicions, Condé and Lorraine presented a considerably more united front, which also made it far more difficult to achieve a purely internal, French settlement without reference to the general European peace.¹⁰⁷ Mazarin and Le Tellier remained undaunted, however. Le Tellier made use of his own intermediary in the negotiations, the director of finance, Etienne d’Aligre.¹⁰⁸ In the first days of October, the lengthy list of demands for a settlement was exhaustively reviewed and discussed in detailed correspondence between Aligre, Le Tellier, and Mazarin. Between them, and via some direct negotiation with Condé and some negotiations undertaken via the abbé Fouquet, they had reached the point of agreeing all of Condé’s demands except for the two that Aligre wrote were completely ‘déraisonnables’. It was inconceivable that the fortifications at La Rochelle should be returned to Dognon, and the suppression of the Cour des aides at Bordeaux would also be impossible to concede, given the services rendered by the Cour to the king, and the pretensions that this success would afford the sovereign courts in general.¹⁰⁹ The thorny issue of the princes maintaining troops in their own name seemed to be negotiable on a formula that they would mostly be demobilized (reformés) at the end of the year, just as would be the case with the king’s troops.¹¹⁰ Yet while this group was working, with Mazarin’s full knowledge and support, to try to achieve a comprehensive settlement with the princes, at court Servien was writing to Mazarin from a very different perspective. In two letters dated 2 October, Servien first of all reiterated his opinion that there were various routes to trying to bring the civil war to an end, of which negotiation with Condé was the least likely to be effective, and fomenting a rising in Paris and taking over the city the best way.¹¹¹ This was followed by a more direct account of the situation at court, where Servien informed Mazarin that no one approved the accommodation on the terms proposed. The demands for marshals’ batons on behalf of Dognon and Marsin had particularly shocked the court, but it was considered no more acceptable that the rebels should remain armed and publicly united with the Spanish after the conclusion of the peace, nor that they should play a role in negotiating the general peace. There was no support for suppressing the Cour

¹⁰⁶ Ibid, fo. 422: Le Tellier’s wish to ‘mettre M. de Lorraine en estat de respecter la France.’ ¹⁰⁷ BN Ffr. 6891, fo. 4, papier envoyé par M. de Lorraine, 30 Sept., explicitly drawing the peace settlement with Spain and the withdrawal of Lorraine’s troops into the negotiations. ¹⁰⁸ D. Sturdy, The d’Aligres de la Rivière. Servants of the Bourbon State in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1986), 26–7, 136–9. There was also a kinship tie, since Aligre’s cousin, Elizabeth Turpin, had married Le Tellier in 1629. ¹⁰⁹ BN Ffr. 6891, fos 85–6, Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 7 Oct. 1652. ¹¹⁰ AAE MD 884, fo. 422, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Mantes, 27 Sept. 1652. ¹¹¹ AAE MD 885, fos 38–9, Servien to Mazarin, Pontoise, 2 Oct. 1652. The other route was negotiations with the duc d’Orléans.

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des aides at Bordeaux, or leaving the fortifications of Montrond standing. The rewards to Condé and his supporters were considered exorbitant, and the servants of the king were mortified by a proposed treaty which failed to recognize loyalty and recompensed disobedience.¹¹² Servien’s account pointed to two dangerous issues raised by the concessions offered to the princes and their allies. One, which lay at the heart of Mazarin’s subsequent ministry, was party management. Much of the resentment at the payoff for the princes was not based on principled politics, but exasperation and frustration that the system of rewards and favours was being deployed to favour so conspicuously those who had opposed the minister-favourite. At the same time, it was possible—as Servien neatly demonstrated—to harness this factional resentment to more principled assertions that the concessions to the princes undermined royal authority and created dangerous political precedents. The trump card here was the response of the queen mother, whose two predictable positions in any policy discussion were her desire to secure Mazarin’s unconditional return to court and her hostility to any concession that could be presented as diminishing the authority of the king.¹¹³ Had Mazarin been present at court, he would undoubtedly have swayed Anne’s opinions in favour of whatever settlement he wanted. But despite his best efforts to dominate the court and council in absentia, Mazarin’s reliance on correspondence to shape the queen’s opinions placed him at a critical disadvantage. On 27 September Mazarin wrote to Le Tellier that he had learnt, via Walter Montagu, that the queen mother was unhappy about some of the concessions being offered to the princes, and that she was drawing the wrong conclusions about the reasons for these negotiations.¹¹⁴ Mazarin stressed that it was vitally important that Le Tellier, Servien, Ferté-Senneterre, and other courtiersupporters of Mazarin were actively engaged in persuading the queen of the need for these policies and concessions.¹¹⁵ Even before he had received Servien’s letters of 2 October, Mazarin seems to have been agitated by his sense that the court was not under his full control. In a letter to Le Tellier of 4 October, Mazarin vigorously defended his priority of ending the civil war by whatever means were required. Yet the substance of the letter involved a retreat from some of the extreme concessions earlier offered to Condé; in a not unusual manoeuvre, Mazarin’s fidèles were being asked to practise selective amnesia, and to accept a different version of recent events in which

¹¹² Ibid, fos 42–3. ¹¹³ AAE MD 885, fo. 63, Servien to Mazarin, Pontoise, 4 Oct. 1652. ¹¹⁴ Comparatively few of Mazarin’s letters to the queen appear to have survived from this second period of exile, but we do have a letter of 27 Sept. (Chéruel, v. 303–4) written in opaque terms which nonetheless betray Mazarin’s concern that she had taken offence at his actions. For a letter acknowledging the tip-off from Montagu that the queen was not happy, see Chéruel, v. 301–2, Mazarin to Montagu, Bouillon, 27 Sept. 1652. ¹¹⁵ Chéruel, v. 297–9, Bouillon. It was most likely this letter, or a copy sent directly to him, which provoked Servien’s two replies of 2 Oct. containing their reservations about treating with Condé.

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 :     ? 237 Mazarin had either not known about some of the concessions offered to Condé, or had dismissed them out of hand.¹¹⁶ Mazarin’s action may have been prudent. The queen mother and the royal council finally—around 6 October—asked Basile Fouquet to give an account of the progress of the peace negotiations, and promptly disavowed a swathe of the concessions that had been put on the table without their knowledge.¹¹⁷ For some commentators, this was a carefully concerted plot, aimed not at Condé but at Mazarin. Humiliating Mazarin by rejecting his negotiated settlement would be followed by a bid to seize Paris and establish the king in the capital, exploiting the cardinal’s absence and his lukewarm support for re-entering the city.¹¹⁸ Mazarin recognized the potential threat to him posed by the ‘Paris project’. On 7 October he replied to Servien’s memoir of 2 October which had recommended seizing the capital in preference to negotiating with Condé. Mazarin carefully stressed his single-minded commitment to the restoration of royal authority, and the difficulty, while based at Bouillon, of giving practical advice about the viability of the king’s entry into Paris. But his own preoccupations rapidly emerged: a stagemanaged uprising in Paris to prepare the way for a royal entrance would provide the perfect opportunity for the cardinal de Retz and the marquis de Châteauneuf to seize the political initiative in Mazarin’s own absence. He intimated that the kind of settlement that would follow without having previously negotiated the departure of the king’s leading enemies from the capital would simply offer a route for them, from Orléans downwards, to dominate the restored court and government.¹¹⁹ Two days earlier he had shared with Le Tellier his concerns about what he suspected was an extensive court conspiracy based on Châteauneuf, and about a variety of other figures at court whom he regarded as hostile.¹²⁰ They were, as Mazarin was doubtless aware, concerns echoed by Servien, who had earlier written to him about court factions and the lack of confidentiality in the conduct of government business. Unsurprisingly, given Mazarin’s clear concerns about the prospect of a coup de main outside of his control, the response was a further effort to secure a breakthrough in negotiations with Orléans and, if at all possible, with Condé. The situation was complicated by the new awareness that the court might well be prepared to challenge many of the concessions under negotiation.¹²¹ Le Tellier was ¹¹⁶ Chéruel, v. 324–40, esp. 329–32, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 4 Oct. 1652; the letter can be contrasted, revealingly, with Le Tellier’s update for Mazarin on the negotiations with the princes: AAE MD 884, fos 426–7, 27 Sept. 1652, and indeed earlier correspondence. ¹¹⁷ BN Ffr. 6891, fo. 195, response that the king wishes the abbé Fouquet to give to Condé by way of Mme de Châtillon or whoever he judges appropriate, ND, but clearly immediately after 6 Oct. ¹¹⁸ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 51, [Gourville?] to Lenet, Paris, 9 Oct. 1652 (printed in Aumale, Condé, vi. 575–7.) ¹¹⁹ Chéruel, v. 355, Mazarin to Servien, Bouillon, 7 Oct. 1652. ¹²⁰ Chéruel, v. 345–7, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bouillon, 5 Oct. 1652. ¹²¹ This detail had already reached Condé’s supporters: BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 39, [Caillet or Gourville?] to Lenet, Paris, 6 Oct. 1652.

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exasperated by the disruption caused by the queen mother’s abrupt refusal to allow the fortifications of Montrond to remain standing, and wrote on 6 October of his suspicions that she was being manipulated precisely in order to undermine a settlement—as Mazarin feared. Le Tellier urged Mazarin to consider whether some of the negative views at court, including those of the queen mother, might usefully be concealed during the negotiations.¹²² Yet on the same day, Mazarin’s fidèle the abbé Fouquet was judged by those at court to have been too conciliatory in his negotiations with Condé and was replaced.¹²³ In the hands of Le Tellier and Aligre the negotiations continued, albeit now with the proviso that the issues of the Cour des aides, the control of La Rochelle and the long-term maintenance of the troops raised in the princes’ names, were off limits.¹²⁴ A letter from Aligre to Le Tellier on 8 October indicated that Condé, pushed hard by the duc de Rohan, was prepared to abandon the demand concerning the suppression of the Cour des aides in Guienne. Moreover, another new sticking point—the restitution of the fortress of Taillebourg to Condé’s committed ally, the prince de Tarente—could potentially be resolved by cash compensation. Yet Condé remained adamant in his insistence on the restitution of the towers of La Rochelle to Dognon. Aligre wondered whether Mazarin might still be able to ‘sell’ the concession of La Rochelle to the court, but essentially seems to have drawn the conclusion that negotiations with Condé could go no further. Instead, Aligre pointed to the weakening of the position of the duc d’Orléans, who appeared to want a settlement more than any particular concession. He would moreover be willing to break with Condé in the event that the latter refused to make a settlement on ‘reasonable terms’.¹²⁵ Yet all this movement towards a general settlement suddenly evaporated. Independently from the negotiations with Condé and Orléans, the duke of Lorraine had been developing an exit strategy since late September, and was prepared to make a separate treaty to extract himself from the environs of Paris. The royal council sent Jacques de Souvré to meet with Lorraine in Paris and to offer him a truce of ten days to allow him to retire with his troops to Liège.¹²⁶ Though this move by Lorraine could have been predicted from his past actions, it still had a decisive impact on the pattern of negotiations. Superficially, it appeared just another instance of double-dealing by Lorraine.¹²⁷ But it served to crystallize a decision in Condé’s mind that had been forming since the failure to pin down and destroy Turenne’s army in early October. This was to withdraw his own forces

¹²² AAE MD 885, fo. 104–5, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 7 Oct. 1652. ¹²³ Ibid, fo. 111. ¹²⁴ AAE MD 885, fo. 98, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 6 Oct. 1652. ¹²⁵ BN Ffr. 6891, fo. 105, Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 8 Oct. 1652; AAE MD 884, fos 410–11, Servien to Mazarin, Creil, 24 Sept. 1652. ¹²⁶ AAE MD 885, fo. 111, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 7 Oct. 1652. ¹²⁷ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 62, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 13 Oct. 1652.

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 :     ? 239 from the Paris basin and move to the frontier, probably to operate in conjunction with Lorraine’s army. Condé’s thinking was partly based on declining confidence that the princes would be able to hold Paris through the winter. The concern owed less to fear of popular hostility or open resistance in the capital than to Turenne’s slowly expanding army. Having broken out of its September encampment, Turenne was now free to operate across the Île de France; his army would pose a grave threat to princely forces that were over-concentrated in Paris or the suburbs. These would be dependent throughout the winter on either the regular movement of supplies into the city by river and road, or vulnerable foraging parties straggling outwards into the (already devastated) countryside. Lorraine had previously urged Condé to move his troops to the frontiers in conjunction with the duke’s own army; the subsistence problems would be reduced, and the military threat that the princes’ armies would represent in the frontier provinces was far greater than if they were boxed in around Paris. On 6 October it was reported that they had agreed to move all their troops to take up winter quarters in Burgundy, Champagne, or Lorraine. They would then act in conjunction with the Spanish in the next campaign to achieve a general peace.¹²⁸ On 9 October, Aligre reported rumours that not only were Lorraine’s troops moving slowly—and extremely destructively—away from Paris in accordance with the truce agreed with Souvré, but that they were accompanied by the troops of Condé.¹²⁹ Condé himself had not yet left Paris, but the final act was now playing itself out. A last set of proposals for a peace were put forward in the names of Orléans and Condé on 14 October, submitted under the direction of Orléans’ secretary, Nicolas Goulas. The twenty-seven articles reflected most of the issues and demands that had previously been discussed, though, significantly, they were weighted towards the demands of Orléans and his allies.¹³⁰ Two days earlier, Aligre had approached Orléans, well aware that Condé’s apparently imminent departure from Paris left Orléans with diminishing options. In fact, Orléans privately welcomed the imminent departure of Condé and Lorraine, which would finally clear a path, he hoped, to make a separate treaty with the crown.¹³¹ Recognizing the shift in power that had occurred over the previous two weeks, Aligre was specific that the terms for a settlement would involve the duc d’Orléans leaving Paris, though with no other constraints on his person.¹³²

¹²⁸ AAE MD 885, fo. 96, [No author or addressee], Paris, 6 Oct. 1652. ¹²⁹ BN Ffr. 6891, fo. 112, Aligre to Le Tellier, Paris, 9 Oct. 1652. ¹³⁰ AAE MD 885, fos 180–7, Proposals for peace, and responses, 14 Oct. 1652. ¹³¹ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 177–8. ¹³² AAE MD 885, fo. 145, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Mantes, 12 Oct. 1652 (reporting on Aligre’s meeting).

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Condé’s decision brought to an end a period of seven months since Bléneau in which the fortunes of the princes’ party had been fought out across the Paris basin and the capital itself, and had swung between dizzying possibilities of outright victory and total defeat, while almost continual peace negotiations had brought a settlement within grasp on numerous occasions. The new development unsurprisingly disconcerted many of Condé’s most loyal followers: président Viole wrote grimly that it was unclear what to expect from this move, except that it threatened an ‘infinity of misfortune’ if the court was not prepared to make an ‘honest settlement’.¹³³ While it seemed clear that the dynamics of the struggle were likely to take on very different forms, it was equally certain that no one assumed that the struggle was over. The failure to gain a settlement, the declared aim of all the major participants in the civil war, condemned France to an uncertain future. And domestic uncertainty intersected with foreign policy crisis: on 11 October, Barcelona had capitulated to the Castilian army; on 22 October, the French troops in the citadel at Casale-Monferrato marched out of the city, leaving only the garrison of Pinerolo as a French toe-hold in north Italy. Why did Condé hold out so obstinately against a peace settlement that was to be gained for the sacrifice of a few marginal concessions? For many at the time and subsequently, it was simply a product of Condé’s overweening arrogance, his reluctance to make concessions of any kind, since this would diminish his hyperbolic sense of self-worth. Only unconditional acceptance of all his claims to recompense, recognition, and status would be adequate compensation for his treatment by Mazarin, and the necessity that he had been placed under to enter into civil war. Paradoxically, it was precisely because Condé was himself so deeply hierarchical—his own pre-eminence after all depended on the supreme status of the king—that he needed to be fully validated in his decision to take up arms, against his enemies but also, as an unwanted consequence, against the crown. Acceptance of his terms publicly justified the rightness of his cause. Others, such as Le Tellier, drew attention to a certain political immaturity in Condé, who, after all, was barely into his thirties in 1652: he was unable to act in a balanced, temperate way, and was more prepared to take offence and indulge his anger than to restrain himself. He would rather look for reasons to break a treaty than find ways of accommodating divergent demands, although accommodation would be directly advantageous to him.¹³⁴ François, duc de La Rochefoucauld, offered another judgement, which he admitted might seem counter-intuitive, but which he could nonetheless maintain on the basis of a more intimate knowledge of Condé’s character than almost anyone amongst his contemporaries. This judgement in some respects corroborated Gaston d’Orléans’ opinion about the

¹³³ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 64, président Viole to Lenet, Paris, 13 Oct. 1652. ¹³⁴ AAE MD 885, fo. 104, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Pontoise, 6 Oct. 1652. This is very much the opinion of Bertière, Condé, 503–5.

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 :     ? 241 narrowness of Condé’s political vision and his essentially military perception of his world. La Rochefoucauld drew attention to Condé’s extraordinary respect and admiration for the duke of Lorraine and his role as a condottiere, or more specifically a military ‘general contractor’. This admiration was noted by other contemporaries, most of whom worried about its consequences for Condé’s decision-making. It might seem peculiar that Lorraine, whose duplicity was by this time legendary and who had made a speciality of betraying Condé at inopportune moments, should have been held in such respect by the prince.¹³⁵ Indeed, Condé’s correspondence contains numerous exasperated complaints about Lorraine’s unreliability and shameless pursuit of self-interest, even down to the suspicion that he would never deploy his army in combat. But La Rochefoucauld described Condé as battered and frustrated by the mutually conflicting demands of clients and allies, seeking to steer a complex and often obscure political path requiring constant negotiation and attention to contradictory advice. Trying to direct and coordinate an essentially horizontal network of supporters and allies required tact, flattery, self-restraint, and constant attention to the personalities and interests of others—all qualities which Condé conspicuously lacked. In contrast a military hierarchy was regulated by principles of subordination and obedience; these might in practice be challenged, ignored, or variously interpreted, but at least provided a normative structure at the summit of which Condé could operate. In Rochefoucauld’s view, military hierarchy, and the freedom provided through acting as a military enterpriser negotiating contracts with war lords on behalf of his army, beguiled Condé. He recognized Lorraine’s limitations as a leader, an ally, and indeed a military strategist. But ‘if Lorraine, deprived of his state and with qualities that were so clearly inferior to his own (Condé’s) could make himself so considerable by means of his army and his access to money . . . then what could Condé not achieve with much greater talents, while leading a life which was much more suited to his own humour?’¹³⁶ Admiration might seem misplaced for the rather desperate figure of Charles, duke of Lorraine, who in February 1654 was seized and then imprisoned for five years in Toledo by a Spanish government which had finally tired of his compulsive double-crossing. Yet it points to a larger possibility: that Condé’s role models were the great military power-brokers of the Thirty Years’ War, figures such as Wallenstein, Piccolomini, Banér, and, closer to his own immediate experience, commanders such as Bernhard von Saxen-Weimar and Carl-Gustav Wrangel.¹³⁷ Possessing authority that was partly validated by military hierarchy, partly by military success and charisma, they seemed to Condé to pursue power in a way ¹³⁵ Turenne famously commented that there was no difference between a promise made by Lorraine and nothing at all: Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, i. 266. ¹³⁶ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 162. ¹³⁷ The author explores some of the political, social, and cultural characteristics of military enterprisers in Parrott, Business of War, 241–59.

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that was untrammelled by the need to compromise, negotiate, and work within complex coalitions. In La Rochefoucauld’s opinion, this ambition to be an autonomous general contractor was the siren’s song which dragged Condé away from successive possibilities of compromise and re-establishment in France under massively favourable circumstances. Even in early October 1652, when the terms for a settlement ‘were far more generous than any that had ever been proposed before’, Condé’s chosen destiny drew him towards Flanders and his role as a military enterpriser in Spanish service.¹³⁸

The Trap Closes Condé’s departure from the capital did not mark his departure from France, and dating the moment when he could be said to pass definitively into exile is not straightforward: his military operations were preponderantly on French soil for most of the campaigns of 1653 and 1654. The abandonment of the capital was an operational decision: by early October Condé had recognized that it would not be possible to maintain the army through the winter while under semi-blockade in and around Paris. Moreover, Gaston d’Orleans did not accompany Condé and Charles of Lorraine when they withdrew from the capital. His continued presence with a few other major figures, notably Beaufort and Retz, and concern that he might become a focus for resistance served to defer the king’s entrance into Paris from 13 to 21 October. During this time further attempts were made to negotiate Orléans’ submission, or at least his prior departure from Paris.¹³⁹ Though some of his more reckless allies suggested he promote a popular frondeur rising in Paris against the entry of the king, Orléans’ house regiments and those of his clients had moved eastwards with the rest of the princes’ army under Condé.¹⁴⁰ Without regular troops Orléans’ accommodation with royal authority was inevitable, and only the timing and the terms of a final agreement were in question.¹⁴¹ Meanwhile, Condé had marched the combined princely army eastwards to act in conjunction with Lorraine’s troops.¹⁴² Though Mazarin and his supporters tried to talk down the size of these forces, the eastern frontier offered far greater opportunities for direct collaboration with the Spanish army of Flanders.¹⁴³ In late ¹³⁸ La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires, lii. 178. ¹³⁹ AAE MD 885, fo. 227, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Saint-Germain, 20 Oct. 1652. ¹⁴⁰ For the decision over the troops, see BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 68, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 13 Oct. 1652. The lengthiest, though by no means most accurate, account of these last days before Orléans left Paris is provided in Retz’s Mémoires, Michaud/Poujoulat, i. 399–406. More reliable is Vallier, iv. 95–104. ¹⁴¹ Though Turenne was less convinced of the weakness of Orléans’ position if he remained in Paris: i. 222–3. ¹⁴² Lenet wrote that Condé’s ‘private’ army at this point was of around 3,000 men: J. Inglis-Jones, ‘The Grand Condé in Exile. Power Politics in France, Spain and the Spanish Netherlands’, Oxford University DPhil thesis, 1994, 47–8. ¹⁴³ For example, Chéruel, v. 436–7, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 2 Nov. 1652.

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 :     ? 243 September the Spanish had 8,000–10,000 troops camped around Laon in Champagne under Fuensaldaña’s command.¹⁴⁴ The arrival of Condé and Lorraine would bring the combined field army up to a strength of around 25,000 troops.¹⁴⁵ For Mazarin and the court it was worryingly unclear what Condé would do next. The cardinal’s first assumption, given the lateness of the season, was that the confederate army would simply settle into winter quarters within France. He assumed that Burgundy would be the province targeted for this, both because it was prosperous and had so far escaped serious devastation, and because the military presence would cement its position as a Condéen stronghold, leaving the governor, Épernon, marooned in Dijon.¹⁴⁶ However, dispersing troops into winter quarters when the enemy’s intentions were unknown was a classic military blunder which Condé was not about to make.¹⁴⁷ Turenne’s field army, by his own account some 10,000 men at the end of October, would have no difficulty rooting out pockets of enemy troops who had dispersed too early into quarters.¹⁴⁸ Condé’s plan was quite different; taking into account the numerical strength of the combined army, and the weakness of most of the royal garrisons in fortified strongpoints along the frontier, he continued campaigning through November. Between 26 October and 13 November the army besieged and took ChâteauPorcien, Rethel, and Sainte-Menehould in Champagne.¹⁴⁹ Such rapid conquest of places which were expected to put up much more substantial resistance worried other loyalist governors, unsure whether and when Condé would finally settle into winter quarters, or where an attack might fall next.¹⁵⁰ The effect was even more disconcerting for Mazarin, and for the royal government in Paris, since without offering a credible military challenge to the combined forces of the princes and the Spanish, the cascade of surrenders was likely to continue. And in a specific way, it had an impact on Mazarin and his own political calculations. Mazarin had been reluctant for the king and court to make an entry into Paris without him, but was persuaded, not least by Le Tellier and Turenne, that the opportunity for the king to move into Paris was too good to wait for his return. Now, however, the very factor that had made the royal entry into

¹⁴⁴ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 100, Gourville (to Lenet), Paris, 23 Oct. 1652. ¹⁴⁵ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 84, abbé Viole to Lenet, Paris, 20 Oct. 1652; Turenne, i. 225. ¹⁴⁶ Chéruel, v. 415, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 19 Oct. 1652. ¹⁴⁷ In a notable disaster, it had led to the destruction of the French army of Germany and the death of maréchal Guébriant at Tuttlingen in early winter of 1643, an event familiar to both Condé and Turenne. ¹⁴⁸ Turenne, i. 225; Mazarin had written rather naively to Turenne on 19 Oct. hoping that Condé would fall into this error: Chéruel, v. 215–16, Sedan. ¹⁴⁹ BN Ffr. 7611, fos 158, 182, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 3/10 Nov. 1652; Turenne to Le Tellier, 28 Oct 1652, in d’Huart, ed., Lettres, 483–4; Turenne, i. 225–6 mentions how weak the garrisons were in all these places. ¹⁵⁰ AAE CP Pays Bas 32, fo. 342, Guy de Bar, governor of Doulens, to Mazarin, Doulens, 7 Nov. 1652.

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Paris far less risky—the departure of all of the princely and enemy troops to the eastern frontiers—left Mazarin blockaded in Sedan, and unable to return to the court.¹⁵¹ While it was unlikely that the enemy would target Sedan, with its strong fortifications and large garrison, the risk of capture in the open country remained: on 20 November, Mazarin wrote that 400 of Condé’s cavalry were stationed close to Sedan to intercept him if he tried to leave for Paris.¹⁵² The only secure way back from Sedan was via a royalist field army that could conduct large-scale military operations in the eastern provinces, and which could shield Mazarin’s return to Paris. Both rescuing Mazarin and preventing a further series of surrenders of key frontier places could be achieved only by increasing the size of Turenne’s army so that he could challenge the enemy for control in Champagne. The troops raised by the duc de Longueville in Normandy, and very belatedly contributed to the royalist war effort, made a useful addition.¹⁵³ But Mazarin recognized that further increases depended on persuading the governors and local commanders of the fortified places in Picardy and Champagne to contribute troops from their own garrisons, or troops recruited at their own expense, to the field army.¹⁵⁴ It took the best part of November for Mazarin to cajole his various clients and lukewarm allies in Picardy and Champagne to bring together around 3,000 extra soldiers in order to reinforce Turenne and rebalance the respective strengths of the two field armies.¹⁵⁵ This meant that Mazarin could finally leave the shelter of Sedan: he braved the forces of Spanish cavalry operating across Champagne, and reached Châlons-sur-Marne on 25 November.¹⁵⁶ Still concerned about the dangers of encountering enemy forces, Mazarin finally joined up with Turenne’s army on 5 December.¹⁵⁷ But the slow process of gathering reinforcements had allowed Condé and his allies further opportunity to expand their grip on the frontier. After the successes in Champagne, the army moved down into the Barrois and, in succession and without serious resistance, took Bar-le-Duc on 19 November, Ligny-en-Barrois a day later, and then the fortified château of Void.¹⁵⁸ Turenne feared that Condé would besiege the major fortified city of Toul, but he managed to strengthen the garrison sufficiently to make it a less attractive target, and Condé moved instead to seize Commercy.¹⁵⁹

¹⁵¹ Chéruel, v. 432, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 2 Nov. 1652, in which Mazarin explains that he has no choice but to remain in Sedan. AAE MD 885, fo. 300, [illeg. author] to Mazarin, 28 Oct., warning of a plot to seize Mazarin between Clermont and Stenay if he tried to return to Paris. ¹⁵² Chéruel, v. 465, Mazarin to Ondedei, Sedan. ¹⁵³ AAE MD 885, fo. 387, mémoire addressed to Mazarin, [ND—early Nov. 1652]—calculates the royal army after reinforcements from Normandy and elsewhere as 6,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry. ¹⁵⁴ Chéruel, v. 443, Mazarin to d’Aumont, Sedan, 4 Nov. 1652; v. 436, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 2 Nov. 1652, on lack of receptiveness of the governors to these orders. ¹⁵⁵ Chéruel, v. 471, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Châlons, 25 Nov. 1652. ¹⁵⁶ Ibid. ¹⁵⁷ Chéruel, v. 492, Mazarin to Le Tellier. ¹⁵⁸ Turenne, i. 226–7; Vallier, iv. 130–1. ¹⁵⁹ Turenne, i. 227–8.

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 :     ? 245 Yet, as this shift to smaller targets in the Barrois indicates, Condé was encountering his own difficulties. The bulk of the Spanish forces did not intend to spend the winter on French soil, and the Spanish and Italian soldiers in particular were already agitating to move into winter quarters back in Flanders.¹⁶⁰ The rapid capture of a string of frontier fortifications each required a garrison drawn from the field army; by late November this had left Condé in no position to undertake a large-scale siege or to risk an engagement with Turenne’s army. Brief optimism that Fuensaldaña might move back into France to support Condé proved vain: if Fuensaldaña himself wished to uphold the alliance, his officers had other priorities. With Spanish support evaporating, Condé came under more aggressive attack from Turenne. Lacking an adequate field army to confront the royalist force, Condé was forced to pull back, abandoning plans to winter within France, and withdrawing towards Clermont and his other strongpoints of Stenay and Damvilliers. This retreat allowed Turenne’s army to besiege Bar-le-Duc. But whereas, cut off from relief, Bar had surrendered to Condé within hours, its recapture was slow and costly: the lower town surrendered on 8 December, but the upper town held out until 18 December.¹⁶¹ This was to the intense frustration of Mazarin, who was now present with the army and vainly seeking to reprise his role in the successful defeat of Turenne’s Spanish and frondeur army outside Rethel in December 1650—after which he had returned to the court in (shortlived) triumph. On 16 December Mazarin wrote to Fabert that Condé had captured Bar in eleven hours, while Turenne’s siege was now in its eleventh day and showed no signs of nearing its end.¹⁶² The foot-dragging reluctance of various local centres—Châlons and Toul—to provide the heavy cannon that were essential for the success of the siege contributed to the slowness of the operation.¹⁶³ A further six-day siege restored the chateau of Ligny to royal control, but by this time, Mazarin wrote, the cold had become absolutely unendurable: it was, he reported, impossible for men and horses to spend more than a couple of hours in the open air.¹⁶⁴ Projects to attack Sainte-Menehould and Rethel were both abandoned in the face of lethal cold and the likelihood of protracted struggles against ferocious resistance.¹⁶⁵

¹⁶⁰ Mazarin had picked up this reluctance of the Mediterranean soldiers to campaign through a northern winter, especially perhaps given the conjuncture of the acute climate of the early 1650s: Chéruel, v. 451, 455, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 8/12 Nov. 1652. ¹⁶¹ Chéruel, v. 500, 508, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Bar, 8/18 Dec. 1652. ¹⁶² Chéruel, v. 504–5, Mazarin to Fabert, camp outside Bar. ¹⁶³ Chéruel, v. 502, 505, Mazarin to Le Tellier/Fabert, camp before Bar, 10/16 Dec. 1652. ¹⁶⁴ Chéruel, v. 519, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Suippe, 30 Dec. 1652. The bitter cold is also cited in Turenne, i. 230 as the main reason why nothing further was attempted; further detail in James, duke of York, Memoirs (Bloomington, 1962), 113–24. ¹⁶⁵ Chéruel, v. 521, Mazarin to Fabert, Coulommes, 1 Jan. 1653; Turenne, Mémoires, i. 230.

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The prospect of a quick rebalancing of the military situation on the frontier was receding, and by the beginning of the next campaign season Condé would be able to count on another round of Spanish military intervention to facilitate his strategic objectives. Moreover, although in the event Condé had not moved his troops down into Burgundy, the situation there was still uncertain thanks to Condéen control of the two fortresses of Belfort and Bellegarde, where the large garrisons were under the command of the prince’s kinsmen, Gaspard de Champagne, comte de la Suze, and François-Henri de Montmorency, comte de Bouteville—the future maréchal de Luxembourg.¹⁶⁶ The provincial governor, the duc d’Épernon, remained concerned that a move by Condé’s troops into the province would encourage a large-scale uprising amongst provincial elites still dominated by Condé’s clients and allies.¹⁶⁷ The situation was no more reassuring in the south-west. Just prior to Harcourt’s departure for Breisach in August, the army in Guienne had suffered a setback with the failure of the siege of Villeneuve d’Agen. The heavy losses in the besieging army, mostly from plague, compounded a sense of neglect and inertia over the previous months as resources were focused on the struggle around Paris. The failure left the troops demoralized and on the defensive against a flurry of small tactical successes won by the princes’ forces across the south-west.¹⁶⁸ The initiative had been lost, and the disappearance of their well-regarded commander immediately provoked quarrels over precedence between his subordinates. Jean de Bougy, a junior commander with the royal army, wrote that shortage of funds had made it impossible to build up the strength of the army, and that since the departure of Harcourt there had been large-scale absenteeism amongst the captains and other officers.¹⁶⁹ It was not until 19 September that the new commander of the army was confirmed as the duc de Candale, eldest son of the duc d’Épernon.¹⁷⁰ Candale was emphatically not Mazarin’s choice, since he was well aware of the Épernon family’s unpopularity in Guienne; but as the cardinal was locked in negotiations to marry Candale to one of his nieces, the appointment was made nonetheless.¹⁷¹ Candale held a clear advantage, in that the princely leaders in Bordeaux were in almost total disarray, and family rivalries and animosities crossed paths with a vicious and sustained conspiracy to discredit both Marsin and Lenet.¹⁷² ¹⁶⁶ B. Fonck, ‘L’ascension du maréchal de Luxembourg: du frondeur Condéen au “Tapissier de Nôtre-Dame” ’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (2006), 55–80, 62–3; Inglis-Jones, ‘Condé in Exile’, 48; Béguin, Princes de Condé, 410, 430. ¹⁶⁷ AAE MD 885, fo. 372, Roncherolles to Mazarin, Dijon, 13 Nov. 1652. ¹⁶⁸ Balthazar, Histoire, 342–3. ¹⁶⁹ AAE MD 884, fo. 285, Bougy to Mazarin, (NP) 10 Sept 1652; Balthazar, Histoire, 344. ¹⁷⁰ AAE MD 884, fo. 364, Le Tellier to Mazarin, 19 Sept. 1652. ¹⁷¹ Mazarin’s preferred choice was the duc de La Force: Chéruel, v. 151, Mazarin to Le Tellier, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, 22 Aug. 1652. ¹⁷² For the details of the quarrel from diametrically opposed angles, see the memoirs of Lenet and Aymar de Chouppes.

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 :     ? 247 Resentment at what was considered to be the Spanish failure to deliver money and troops had also led to the scapegoating of the Spanish admiral, Vatteville; he and his fleet were to withdraw from the Gironde in January 1653, leaving Bordeaux open to the threat of a naval blockade by the crown.¹⁷³ The city itself was in turmoil; the princes’ party had initially stood back in early June and allowed the grands bourgeois in the city to surprise and defeat the Ormée which had set itself up as the representatives of the ordinary citizens. But they were unprepared for the vigorous counter-attack by the ormistes, who seized the Hôtel de Ville and attacked the property and persons of the leading families.¹⁷⁴ The reaction of key members of the Condéen party was to shift support across to the Ormée and to seek to exile the leading members of the Bordeaux Parlement considered responsible for the attempt to put down the popular movement.¹⁷⁵ But misgivings quickly developed about the extent to which the Ormée could now be managed: there was considerable unease when Lenet was reported to be relying on mob violence to threaten the bourgeois who were slow to pay military taxes.¹⁷⁶ However, the reality for Lenet, Marsin, and those who were trying to uphold the military situation rather than seeking factional advantage by aligning for or against the Ormée was that the party depended heavily on credit raised through the mercantile and credit structures of the city to feed, and occasionally pay, their troops.¹⁷⁷ The sources of this credit were threatened both by the Ormée and by the volatility of the political and economic situation. A crisis was averted in later 1652 thanks to fortuitous military circumstances which allowed the grape harvest to be brought in across the surrounding countryside.¹⁷⁸ But it was clear that a period in which Bordeaux, by virtue of its trade, had been relatively insulated from the dearth and economic damage visited on other areas of France had come to an end. The rest of the struggle for the princes’ cause in Bordeaux and the surrounding region would be fought out under progressively worsening economic circumstances in which both the commitment and the capacity of the population would be tested to the limit. Yet surprisingly, in the midst of their opponents’ problems, Candale and the army made the most halting progress. Where the fall of Bordeaux would have offered an invaluable propaganda victory to the crown and counterbalanced the losses being suffered in Champagne and the Barrois, all that was offered was

¹⁷³ Cosnac, Souvenirs, v. 353, Lenet to Condé, Bordeaux, 12 Dec. 1652; vi. 3–4. ¹⁷⁴ Aumale, Condé, vi. 301–2. ¹⁷⁵ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 55, Condé to Lenet, Paris, 5 Aug. 1652: Condé has heard with great displeasure of the attempts of the Parlement to interfere in the affairs of Bordeaux. ¹⁷⁶ Lenet, Mémoires, ii. 573, letter of Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 22 Sept. 1652. ¹⁷⁷ BN Ffr. 6709, fo. 12, provides a typical modest example of this day-to-day dependence: a letter of credit to raise the sum of 6,300 livres in Bordeaux, and to pay this money, via a merchant of Bordeaux, to the lieutenant of the artillery at Villeneuve d’Agen, Bordeaux, 2 Aug. 1652. ¹⁷⁸ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 196, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 29 Sept. 1652.

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inertia, compounded by bad news from Catalonia and Roussillon.¹⁷⁹ As late as January 1653 the capture of the town of Sarlat by Marsin in the face of Candale’s opposition provided a momentary boost to the princes’ cause.¹⁸⁰ It was not until spring 1653 that Candale’s army, substantially reinforced and properly supported, began in earnest the campaign that was to sweep away the remaining local resistance in Guienne and push forward the blockade of Bordeaux on land and along the Gironde, gaining the surrender of the city on favourable terms on 3 August 1653. The accommodation of Conti, Mme de Longueville, and the others in the princely party, and their negotiation of the surrender of Bordeaux at the beginning of August, may have been facilitated by the amicable tone adopted and encouraged by Candale in negotiating with Conti. His establishment of cordial and easygoing relations with leaders of a rebellion who were traitors to the king and guilty of lèse majesté stands in interesting contrast to the exigent and undeferential style in which Candale frequently addressed Mazarin over family interests and what he expected in return for accepting one of Mazarin’s nieces in marriage.¹⁸¹ The correspondence, even if contrived by Candale to bring forward the surrender, gives a strong sense of two men who were prepared to behave as if they were familiar equals, cutting across the party lines that supposedly identified them with Mazarin and with Condé. It was a small issue, but charged with significance for Mazarin’s political standing through the 1650s. The grave situation at the end of 1652 had yet another ominous foreign-policy dimension. Since the English surprise attack on the convoy bringing supplies and troops to the besieged garrison at Dunkirk, the French had speculated that England had made a secret treaty with Spain, intending to exploit French weakness for mutual benefit. By the end of the year this speculation had become a virtual certainty in the minds of the government. An extensive memoir, undated but clearly from late 1652, regarded war with England as inevitable and considered that the next English target, with or without Spanish cooperation, was likely to be Calais. The only deterrent to English belligerence was their war with the Dutch, and the memoir urged that the French crown should make an offensive alliance with the Dutch Republic as rapidly as possible. The memoir took a downbeat view of Dutch prospects in their war with England, and argued that without a French alliance the Dutch would soon need to make peace. The author therefore proposed pre-emptive confiscation of English goods and ships in French ports to gain an initial benefit; the war that this would provoke would merely anticipate the inevitable conflict, and this in turn would discourage the Dutch from making ¹⁷⁹ Cuy Patin wrote from Paris on 20 Dec. that Baltazar and Marsin were ‘masters of the countryside in Guienne, holding all the key places on the Garonne and in the Dordogne’: Lettres, ed Jestaz, ii. 1000. ¹⁸⁰ M. Carsalade du Pont, Documents inédits sur la Fronde en Gascogne (Paris, 1883), 108–12; Balthazar, Histoire, 354–6. ¹⁸¹ BN Ffr. 20,479, fos 85, 45, Conti to Candale, Bordeaux, 30 Mar./5 Aug. 1653.

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 :     ? 249 terms to abandon their struggle with England.¹⁸² Fortunately neither Mazarin nor his ministers were prepared to provoke a conflict with England which might have seemed probable, but was not entirely inevitable. Yet concern at English intentions certainly influenced the decision to make an extremely generous settlement with Condé’s ally, the comte de Dognon, who had been negotiating with the English.¹⁸³ The prospect that Dognon would provide his fortified port of Brouage as a base for an English naval squadron overcame the court’s reluctance to accept his demands for a marshal’s baton and a massive indemnity, as well as the governorship of the Ile d’Oleron in place of Brouage, which he surrendered to the king.¹⁸⁴ So great was the concern to try to bring Dognon across into Mazarin’s party that a marriage to one of Mazarin’s nieces was even mooted by the cardinal in correspondence with Servien.¹⁸⁵ This idea fell by the wayside, but a final settlement was agreed in midMarch, to the evident relief of Mazarin and the court.¹⁸⁶ Meanwhile, the problem of the continued resistance in Bordeaux and Candale’s lack of progress was intensified by the negotiations between the ormistes and the English government, and the risk of English military intervention to prop up the revolt.¹⁸⁷ Above all, perhaps, Mazarin had good cause to worry about Paris. As well as his enforced absence at the time of the king’s entry into the capital and the subsequent settlement with the city and the frondeurs, Mazarin had no illusions—even setting aside those such as Retz, Châteauneuf, and the late Chavigny who had sought directly to replace him at the centre of power—that the court was filled with individuals, often strong supporters of the crown, who would have liked to prevent his return, or to defer it as long as possible.¹⁸⁸ Initial proposals for the king’s triumphant entry into the city had been uncompromising: it was even proposed that the king should enter Paris not through one of the gates, but through a breach created by demolishing a section of the city walls.¹⁸⁹ The majority of the judges of the Parlement who had remained in Paris would be forced to travel out to Pontoise, or at least to Saint-Germain, where the act of reconciliation between the two groups of parlementaires would take place to

¹⁸² AAE CP Pays Bas, 32, fo. 350, [no signature]. ¹⁸³ Chéruel, v. 509, 511–12, Mazarin to (1) Le Tellier (2) Servien, Camp de Bar, 22 Dec. 1652; AAE MD 892, fo. 83, Servien to Mazarin, Paris, 4 Jan. 1652; 891, fo. 59, [Servien?] to Mazarin, Paris, 26 Jan. 1653. ¹⁸⁴ The granting of the marshal’s baton was in the teeth of resistance from the queen mother: AAE MD 892, fo. 162, Marandé to Mazarin, Paris, 27 Jan. 1653. ¹⁸⁵ Chéruel, v. 512, Camp de Bar, 22 Dec. 1652; AAE MD 892, fo. 83, Servien to Mazarin, Paris, 4 Jan. 1653; Berthomier, Dognon, 59–60. ¹⁸⁶ Chéruel, v. 581, Mazarin to Vendôme, Paris, 18 Mar. 1653; AAE MD 891, fo 112, Mazarin to archbishop of Embrun, Paris, 4 April 1653. ¹⁸⁷ BN Ffr 6714, fo. 23, Barrière (Condé’s agent in London) to Lenet, London, 3 May 1652; Knachel, England and the Fronde, 198–214. ¹⁸⁸ Chéruel, v. 432–3, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 2 Nov. 1652. ¹⁸⁹ AAE MD 885, fo. 238 (unsigned clerical informant to Mazarin), Saint-Germain, 20 Oct. 1652. This ritual humiliation of a city was actually undertaken for the king’s entry into Marseilles in 1661.

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the advantage of the ‘royalist’ judges.¹⁹⁰ Yet concern about the political situation in the city grew, and with it doubts about the timing of the king’s entry.¹⁹¹ The move into the city finally took place, but was a lot more conciliatory. The Parlement was reunited by the king’s lit de justice in the palace of the Louvre, and the royal amnesty was presented as a key element of the king’s return, despite the implications this carried of bargaining with the city. Even so, the decision to exclude a significant number of known frondeurs from the terms of the amnesty, together with the barring from the lit de justice ceremony of those parlementaires—around twenty—who were identified as notably Condéen, changed the atmosphere. From initially joyous acceptance of the king’s return, the mood turned more ambivalent and suspicious, beginning a long period of difficult and contested relations between the king, the city, and its principal institutions.¹⁹² An issue that was ducked, again to Mazarin’s concern, was a specific declaration of the cardinal’s innocence and the abolition of all the charges and penalties laid against him by the Parlement and the city. Le Tellier’s letters to Mazarin on the subject were evidently intended to be reassuring in stressing that Mazarin’s pardon was implicitly part of the general amnesty and therefore required no specific royal decree and registration.¹⁹³ It is hard to escape the conclusion that those around the king wanted to make as little reference to Mazarin as possible in a celebration specifically of the king’s return to the capital. Mazarin was unconvinced by this argument about the amnesty, and by early January 1653 he was again insisting that a full and formal assertion of his innocence and services to the crown be drafted and then registered by the Parlements.¹⁹⁴ The desire in October and November to render Mazarin invisible was more widely shared, even by his fidèles. Isaac Bartet considered that it made sense for Mazarin to stay away from Paris at this juncture (not that he had any choice). His only suggestion concerning Mazarin’s return was to act before any settlement with Condé was reached to avoid the imputation of a secret deal.¹⁹⁵ However great the initial welcome given to the king on his return to Paris, Mazarin could not portray himself as the maker and arbitrator of this rapprochement between king and capital. In fact, he was perceived as a part of the settlement itself, so that his position would need to be negotiated in relation to other factions. His supporters had to struggle to eliminate rivals who were presenting themselves as mediators between the people and the crown and looking to permanent roles in

¹⁹⁰ AAE MD 885, fo. 236, memoir relating to the settlement (Saint-Germain, c. 20 Oct. 1652). ¹⁹¹ AAE MD 885, fo. 227, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Saint-Germain, 20 Oct. 1652; MD 885, fo. 217, Sr. de La Vigne to Mazarin, St Germain, 19 Oct. 1652. ¹⁹² BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 114, Gourville [to Lenet], Paris, 27 Oct. 1652; 6711, fo. 127, abbé Viole to Lenet, Paris, 27 Oct. 1652. For similar concerns amongst Mazarin’s supporters: AAE MD 885, fo. 318. [Servien?] to Mazarin, Paris, 31 Oct. 1652 ¹⁹³ AAE MD 885, fos 251–2, 263–63, Le Tellier to Mazarin, 23/24 Oct. 1652. ¹⁹⁴ AAE MD 892, fos 1–9, drafted under the aegis of Archbishop Marca of Toulouse, ND [early Jan. 1653]. ¹⁹⁵ AAE MD 885, fo. 270, Bartet to Mazarin, Paris, 25 Oct. 1652.

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 :     ? 251 the royal council. After Châteauneuf ’s worrying appearance at court just before the royal entry into Paris, the marquis was fairly easily excluded from government. He had counted on his ability to strike a deal that would keep Gaston d’Orléans in Paris and at court, and therefore provide him with a biddable ally on the council who could support his opposition to Mazarin’s reinstatement.¹⁹⁶ By persuading the queen mother that Châteauneuf was intriguing against Mazarin’s return, the cardinal’s allies got him exiled to Bourges. His wry comment on hearing of the order from the queen was that this was now his seventh political disgrace; his death in 1653, aged seventy-three, meant that it turned out to be his last.¹⁹⁷ In contrast, the challenge posed by the cardinal de Retz was of a different order of seriousness, and his network of allies, supporters, and sympathizers larger and more committed. Retz too had sought to muscle in on the preparations for the king’s entry into Paris, hoping to use this as a foothold to regain credit with the court and a seat in the council. His claim that he had been instrumental in persuading the duc d’Orléans to leave Paris, though characteristically duplicitous, gave him some credit in a court that had become convinced that Orléans could have acted as a focus for resistance to the king’s entry.¹⁹⁸ Retz brought two very particular dangers in the present circumstances, the first being his support amongst the clergy of Paris and the second his ability to stir up the Parisian bourgeoisie about financial matters, above all the rentes sur l’hôtel de ville.¹⁹⁹ By October the overall weakness of the crown’s financial position raised the prospect again of default on the rentes, and fears that this would be exploited by the crown’s opponents in the sovereign courts and in the city. As Mazarin noted, anyone who wished to stir up hostility to the royal government over rumours of non-payment of the rentes could draw on 30,000–40,000 people who were interested parties.²⁰⁰ The most likely stirrer was of course Retz, as Servien wrote to Mazarin on 31 October.²⁰¹ Mazarin’s plan to get Retz out of Paris and French politics involved persuading him to accept the role of cardinal-ambassador based permanently in Rome. There seemed some urgency: unimpressed by Retz’s recent protestations that he intended to abandon politics and embrace his religious vocation, Mazarin was concerned by the worsening health and age of Retz’s uncle, Jean-François de Gondi, archbishop of Paris, whom the cardinal de Retz served—now rather incongruously—as coadjutor and designated successor. Surprisingly, the aged archbishop lived on until March 1654, but finding some means to persuade Retz to renounce the succession, and the ¹⁹⁶ AAE MD 885, fo. 240, Bartet to Mazarin, St Germain, 21 Oct. 1652, on the surprise arrival of Châteauneuf at court, where he met with the queen mother for an hour and a half. MD 885, fo. 277, Servien to Mazarin, Paris, 26 Oct. 1652. ¹⁹⁷ Vallier, iv. 120–1. ¹⁹⁸ AAE MD 885, fo. 263, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Paris, 24 Oct. 1652. ¹⁹⁹ See ‘Condé, Paris and the Princes’ Army’ in Chapter 4. ²⁰⁰ Chéruel, v. 418–19, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan, 20 Oct. 1652; for general concern about inability to pay the rentes, see Vallier, iv. 129–30. ²⁰¹ AAE MD 885, fo. 318 (Paris).

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additional influence that it would bring over the clergy of Paris and the life of the capital, preoccupied Mazarin from 1652.²⁰² The proposal to send Retz to Rome offered him ample powers to act on behalf of the crown in Italian affairs, would grant him an additional 60,000 livres p.a. in revenues, and included paying off his existing debts up to 100,000 livres.²⁰³ But Retz was as wary of this offer as Mazarin had been of a similar set of proposals offered as a route out of exile in the summer of 1651: the revenues would soon be diverted, the diplomatic authority marginalized. Retz stalled the negotiations, conducted via a sympathetic princesse Palatine, by increasing his demands to include governorships for a handful of his allies and established opponents of Mazarin, such as the duc de Brissac.²⁰⁴ Retz’s reluctance to accept the terms of the treaty strengthened the argument of Le Tellier and Servien, who urged arresting and imprisoning him without trial.²⁰⁵ Mazarin was rightly concerned that this would incite widespread unrest, would alienate the Paris clergy, and would provide a propaganda gift to Condé. Mazarin’s efforts slowly to poison Retz’s reputation through public statements about his behaviour and his refusal of the king’s ‘generous offer’ of a treaty, would be swept away by turning Retz into a victim of arbitrary power.²⁰⁶ But the concern at allowing Retz to manipulate opinion in Paris, and the possibility that he would align himself with the rump of Condéen supporters, prevailed over the more measured view that Retz was a declining force in politics; he had been outmanoeuvred by the king’s return to the capital, and was more a gadfly than an existential threat.²⁰⁷ Mazarin, as de facto leader of the French church, was aware of the probable reaction from both the clergy inside France and the papacy to the cardinal’s arrest, and wanted any action against Retz to be taken while Mazarin himself was away from the court and capital.²⁰⁸ Since Mazarin and his ministers assumed that his own return was imminent, this meant acting immediately, rather than waiting to allow Retz’s influence to decline further or for his confidants to persuade him to accept a settlement.²⁰⁹ As events were to show, the notion that absence would allow Mazarin plausibly to deny the actions of his subordinates, or to throw responsibility entirely onto the king and the queen mother, was naïve: as so often in politics, watchful inaction might have been preferable to hasty decision-taking.²¹⁰ ²⁰² Chéruel, v. 493, Mazarin to abbé Fouquet, Fains, 8 Dec. 1652. ²⁰³ Chéruel, v. 483, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Rumigny, 3 Dec. 1652. ²⁰⁴ Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 83. ²⁰⁵ Chéruel, v. 497–9, Mazarin to Le Tellier and Servien, Fains, 8 Dec. 1652. ²⁰⁶ AAE MD 885, fo. 359, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Paris, 4 Nov. 1652; Chéruel, v. 483–5, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Rumigny. 3 Dec. 1652. ²⁰⁷ Chéruel, v. 509, Mazarin to Le Tellier, camp outside Bar, 18 Dec. 1652: Retz is on the point, Mazarin asserts, of concluding a treaty with Condé and stirring up major unrest in Paris. ²⁰⁸ Vallier, iv. 137–8. ²⁰⁹ BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 158, Gourville to Lenet, Paris, 3 Nov. 1653 on Retz’s declining fortunes since Orléans’ departure; Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 84–5. ²¹⁰ Bertière, Retz, 323–4.

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 :     ? 253 The unfolding of events after Retz’s arrest on 19 December had similarities with the arrest of the three princes in January 1650. The positive joy in some quarters at Condé’s arrest was not replicated at the news that Retz had been seized, but there was general indifference to the event, and even a feeling, according to Guy Joly, that Retz was getting his reward for years of duplicity and manipulation.²¹¹ Yet well-situated supporters were quickly able, as they had had been after the princes’ arrest, to shift the collective mood. Within a few days of Retz’s arrest the clergy of Paris and the chapter of Nôtre Dame, with the notable exception of Retz’s uncle the archbishop, began to organize and to petition for Retz’s release.²¹² The abbé Guillaume Charrier, Retz’s secretary, left immediately for Rome, where he described Retz’s arrest and imprisonment to an already sympathetic Pope Innocent X.²¹³ What was to be a long and troublesome struggle opened up, in which the Parisian clergy strove tirelessly to incite the population on behalf of Retz and against Mazarin, who, though absent, was presented as the real author of the imprisonment. The Paris clergy, with few exceptions, became politicized by this campaign, concerting their action through sermons, pastoral influence, and pamphleteering to present Retz as the victim of Mazarin’s arbitrary authority.²¹⁴ They found a receptive audience in much of the clerical hierarchy across France, who may not have been sympathetic to Retz as a political actor, but were warmly inclined to defend the principle of clerical privilege threatened by his arrest. Ironically, many of the bishops who called for Retz’s release had also protested in 1651 about Mazarin’s exile and the charges laid against him by the Parlement.²¹⁵ Opening a new can of worms, Mazarin tried to buy the acquiescence of Innocent X for his treatment of Retz, by first inciting the Pope about the threat of Jansenism in France, then receiving Innocent’s Bull Cum Occasione of 31 May 1653 which condemned the ‘Five Propositions’ supposedly contained in the Augustinus of Bishop Cornelius Jansen. Thus began the massively divisive campaign to identify and root out Jansenism within the Gallican church, a process which divided and set the French clergy against itself for over a century. And in the years after 1653 it was easy to associate support for Retz with the defence of a doctrinally rigorist clergy accused of being ‘Jansenist’ heretics by the mazarinist church establishment.²¹⁶ Further exacerbation of the crisis duly came with the death of Retz’s uncle, and the predictable refusal of both the chapter of Nôtre Dame and the ²¹¹ Ibid, 326–8. ²¹² Guy Joly, Mémoires, ii. 86; Golden, Godly Rebellion, 20–7. ²¹³ AAE MD 892, fos. 76–9, Brienne to Mazarin, Paris, 8 Jan. 1653, on the dangerous situation developing in Rome; Golden, Godly Rebellion, 25–6. ²¹⁴ AAE MD 892, fos 30–1, Bluet to Mazarin, Paris, 1 Jan. 1653: agitation in Paris in favour of Retz stimulated by the clergy; Golden, Godly Rebellion, 28–62. ²¹⁵ AAE MD 892, fo 45, Auvry, Bp of Coutances, to Mazarin, Paris, 2 Jan. 1653: this indefatigable fidèle of Mazarin writes as representative of an assembly of bishops at present in Paris to request Retz’s release. ²¹⁶ P. Jansen, Le Cardinal Mazarin et le mouvement Janséniste français, 1653–1659 (Paris, 1967), 30–68; Golden, Godly Rebellion, 26–31. Though see J-L. Quantin, ‘A Godly Fronde? Jansenism and the Mid-Seventeenth-Century Crisis of the French Monarchy’, French History, 25 (2011), 473–91, for

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papacy to countenance Retz’s exclusion from the succession to the archbishopric.²¹⁷ It had looked as though Retz, weary of imprisonment, might finally renounce the archiepiscopal title, though he was equally intent on repudiating the renunciation on grounds that it had been extracted under duress. But on 8 August 1654 Retz escaped from his captivity at Nantes, where he had been transferred in April.²¹⁸ Any chance now of coercing him to abandon his episcopal title was lost, and more chaos and opposition beckoned. Retz’s arrest also resulted in what all the previous political events of 1652 had failed to achieve—a de facto rapprochement between Retz and Condé and their supporters.²¹⁹ Evidence for this was seen soon after the arrest through the declaration of support offered to Retz by two of the governors of fortresses on the Champagne frontier—Antoine-François, comte de Bussy-Lameth, governor of Mézières, and Louis de La Trémoïlle, duc de Noirmoutier, governor of Charleville-Montolympe.²²⁰ At a time when fortified places in Champagne and the Barrois were falling to Condéen and Spanish troops, and doubts were already in the air about the commitment of many of the apparently loyalist governors along the frontiers, this action by Retz’s supporters added considerably to the alarm of the royal government. In reality, an alliance between Retz’s and Condé’s parties was unlikely to provide substantial military support for Condé in the north-east. Noirmoutier, whose support had already been purchased by Mazarin in 1650 via a ducal title and appointment as lieutenant general of the king’s armies, was prepared to reaffirm his loyalty for further advantages.²²¹ If military support was to come from an alliance with Retz, it would be from Brittany where the Gondi family had their estates and clientele; in the volatile circumstances of the mid-1650s this remained a significant threat. More immediately, the effect was felt on the wider political climate: the successes (real or claimed) of one or other party became linked in a shared opposition, aware of potential tipping points in the political situation, and able to coordinate institutional opposition, noble assemblies, pamphleteering, and unrest on the streets. It was finally evident by late 1656 that Retz had overplayed his political hand, and his departure from Rome signalled his slide into a rackety scepticism both about defining Jansenists in the 1650s, and in ascribing a distinctive role to more broadly identified doctrinal rigorists in the opposition to Mazarin. ²¹⁷ Bertière, Retz, 346–56. ²¹⁸ J. Salmon, Cardinal de Retz. The Anatomy of a Conspirator (London, 1969), 227–61. ²¹⁹ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 399. ²²⁰ Mazarin’s concerns at their loyalty in Chéruel, v. 523/527, Mazarin to Fabert/Le Tellier, Sedan, 3/ 6 Jan. 1652; AAE MD 891, fo. 3, declaration in favour of Retz [no addressee] by Bussy-Lameth, [Mézières], 3 Jan. 1653; MD 891, fo 84, Mazarin to Noirmoutier [and Bussy-Lameth], Paris, 17 Mar. 1653: acknowledges their remonstrances on behalf of Retz, but stresses that the arrest was the king’s decision. Le Tellier was also concerned about the loyalty of Manicamp, in dispute with Mazarin over the governorship of La Fère: MD 892, fo. 97, to Mazarin, 10 Jan. 1653. ²²¹ AN KK 1073, fos 88–9, Talon to Mazarin, (NP), 13 Oct. 1653: concern at evidence of an active alliance between Noirmoutier, Bussy-Lameth, and Condé; fo. 110, Fabert to Mazarin, Sedan, 20 Oct. 1653: uncertainty whether this treaty has been concluded.

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 :     ? 255 obscurity which culminated in his final renunciation of the archiepiscopal title in 1662. But this was certainly not evident in the intervening years, and the alliance between Retz and Condé, as well as Retz’s capacity to exploit the fault lines and mishandling of disputes within the French church, were problems that haunted the ministerial regime of the 1650s.²²² On 3 February 1653 Mazarin finally returned to join the royal family in Paris. He had spent all of January trying to urge the army of Turenne to achieve a further roll-back of Condé’s early winter successes. The bitter cold, and the troops’ resentment at the possibility that they might be deprived of winter quarters for a second year running, provoked near mutiny.²²³ Château-Porcien was finally recaptured on 10 January, and the loss of Vervins to Condé on 19 January was retrieved by the surrender on terms of its small Condéen garrison on 28 January.²²⁴ Mazarin felt no confidence that he would receive a hero’s welcome on his return to Paris, and the king’s ‘spontaneous’ proposal to ride out to meet Mazarin in order to escort him into Paris was a welcome safeguard against an overtly hostile popular reception as he entered the city.²²⁵ The king’s public approbation for his first minister was a sensible precaution: though the initial response in Paris to Mazarin’s return was deferential, royal support, in one form or another, would need frequent reiteration during the 1650s.²²⁶ Late 1652 and early 1653 had therefore produced neither a political nor a military outcome that Mazarin could regard with any satisfaction. He had finally returned to the court and capital and re-established his direct influence over the queen and—probably—the king. But he faced continuing conflict in the southwest and the north-east of France, unresolved provincial unrest, a church that was prepared to challenge him over the imprisonment of Retz, and France’s most capable and charismatic military leader acting in the service of Spain after the failure of repeated attempts to reach an accommodation with him. Yet if the trap had closed on Mazarin in a way that was to blight his ‘second ministry’, the situation was certainly no better for Condé by the end of 1652. Even though Condé’s military situation was by no means hopeless and the possibility of a negotiated settlement had not been abandoned, the departure from Paris and the break-up of the princely alliance had burnt a number of bridges and diminished Condé’s political options.

²²² Golden, Godly Rebellion, 97–156. J. Bergin, The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–1661 (New Haven/London, 1996), 527–40. ²²³ Duke of York, Memoirs, 123–7 on the extreme frustration of the troops and their hostility to Mazarin. ²²⁴ Turenne, i. 230–1. ²²⁵ AAE MD 892, fo. 180, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Paris, 2 Feb. 1653, confirming that he has passed on the information to the court about Mazarin’s departure from Soissons and that the king is prepared to come to meet him outside Paris. Brienne, Mémoires, ii. 214. ²²⁶ See Vallier, iv. 171–2, on the capriciousness of the Parisians.

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The chief challenge for the prince was that his own party of supporters had been haemorrhaging adherents since August. Some of this was an inevitable consequence of external, above all financial, pressures; some of it reflected internal tensions which in many cases were extraordinarily ill-managed by Condé.²²⁷ There were other reasons why obtaining a settlement was becoming more difficult. From his arrival on the frontiers, the intensity of Condé’s alliance with Spain was ratcheted up a further level. The Spanish king and his court were keen to recognize Condé’s status as a French prince of the blood. This recognition entailed thorny issues of precedence between Condé and the Habsburg archduke Leopold Wilhelm, which Condé was not inclined to play down for the sake of military cooperation. Moreover, Spanish recognition of his rank potentially gave Condé precedence over Fuensaldaña in military command. In early December Fuensaldaña had been recalled to Brussels, and left Condé with overall command of the remaining Spanish troops on French territory.²²⁸ The notion that Condé’s status and his treaty with the king of Spain gave him rights as a commander in the Army of Flanders was not willingly accepted by either Leopold Wilhelm or Fuensaldaña.²²⁹ It nonetheless became a persistently contested issue, since for Condé control over all or some of the troops of the Spanish army was the most direct way in which he could pursue a concerted strategy that would place pressure on Mazarin and his government. In this he had political, if not always financial, support from Madrid, where the government continued to prioritize Condé’s ability to destabilize French government as the best means to gain an advantageous general peace. This exacerbated the clash with the high command in Brussels, and the struggle over Condé’s military and political status was to play out until the dismissal of Fuensaldaña and the resignation of the archduke at the end of 1655. It undoubtedly weakened the effectiveness of what should have been a powerful coalition, well able to take the offensive and exploit the continued problems of the French armies.²³⁰ What might be seen as the ‘hispanicization’ of Condé was compounded by changes in the character of the troops under his command. A core of indefatigable kinsmen, clients, and long-serving Condéen officers remained in his service. But they had lost many of their original French soldiers, and started replacing them— as Spanish funding and war contributions permitted—from the international mercenary market. Indeed, as Condé saw the political need to expand the rump of the army that he had brought into Spanish service, he started looking towards German enterpriser-colonels to provide additional troops for what became ²²⁷ Bussy-Rabutin, Mémoires, i. 197–206; Tavannes, Mémoires, 192–220; Henri-Charles de La Tremoïlle, prince de Tarente, Mémoires (Liège, 1767), 130–2, then passim. ²²⁸ Vallier, iv. 132. ²²⁹ Malcolm, Royal Favouritism, 192–7. ²³⁰ See the excellent section on Condé, Madrid, and the Brussels high command in Inglis-Jones, ‘Condé in exile’, 91–130. Inglis-Jones lays particular stress on the damaging military consequences of political rivalry between Leopold-Wilhelm and Condé.

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 :     ? 257 known as the ‘auxiliary army’ directly under his command and serving in conjunction with the army of Flanders. His army increasingly took on the appearance of that of the duke of Lorraine: a cosmopolitan blend of experienced troops, with a declining proportion of French. He was another grandee with an army but not a territory.²³¹ Neither of these developments closed the door to the possibility of a negotiated settlement, which remained Condé’s primary objective provided that it was achieved on ‘honest and sure’ conditions.²³² On the positive side, the decline of his party meant that he had fewer supporters who needed to be accommodated, and most of them were from the middling military nobility, whose demands in a settlement would not be great.²³³ But a greater obstacle was now placed in the way of a personal settlement by the much tighter interlinking of Condé with the Spanish war effort. It was more and more difficult to see how Condé could extricate himself by a private treaty with Mazarin and/or the French crown without this becoming widely known. Indeed, if Mazarin’s short-term tactical aim was to disrupt cooperation between Condé and his Spanish paymasters, making known the details of secret peace negotiations between himself and Condé would be about the most effective means available: it would destroy Condé’s integrity in the eyes of the Spanish king. As a result, Condé was also trapped. It became virtually impossible to envisage any accommodation between Condé, Mazarin, and the French crown that was not part of a general Franco-Spanish peace settlement. Condé was committed both by treaty and hard military and geographical reality to an integrated role in a Spanish war effort, whose strategy he sought to determine but from which he could not extricate himself. This remained the case until the conclusion of the Peace of the Pyrenees in November 1659. It is easy to assume that Condé’s situation demonstrated both Mazarin’s political skills and his good fortune. The exclusion of the prince from the capital and the government, and his cantonization on the Champagne and Picardy frontiers as a hireling of the Spanish, was surely the providential opportunity to wind up unrest and resistance elsewhere in France, and to restore royal authority over institutions and policy-making. As we have seen, the breakdown of the princes’ party in Bordeaux and the focusing of Spanish resources in the north-east of France allowed royalist forces to overrun the rest of Guienne and settle the revolt in Bordeaux by July 1653. This ended any operational flexibility that Condé might have possessed: henceforth his war against Mazarin could only be decided on the Flanders frontier. But Guienne was the one benefit that Mazarin gained from the shift of Condé’s base of operations to combined campaigning with the army of Flanders. It

²³¹ Aumale, Condé, vi. 352–3; Inglis-Jones, ‘Condé in exile’, 103–4. ²³² BN Ffr. 6712, fo. 6, Condé to Lenet, Damvilliers, 3 Dec. 1652. ²³³ This greater freedom given to Condé to negotiate by shedding the princely alliance was noted by Président Viole: BN Ffr. 6711, fo. 129, Viole to Lenet, 29 Oct. 1652.

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took five years and finally an alliance with England to make any breakthrough remotely comparable with the military achievements of 1643–8. Meanwhile the political situation within France remained volatile, as the alliance between Condéens and clerical and lay supporters of Retz continued to seek opportunities for disruption and resistance. And the deadlock could not be broken by any separate treaty with Condé, but only by a full peace treaty with Spain. All of this was to be a high price for the failure to reach a settlement during 1652. The trap that had closed at the end of 1652 held both the first minister and the rebel prince in its grip.

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Conclusion Transactional Politics and the Cankered Decade: France in the 1650s

It is a strange thing that the negotiations for a settlement hang so completely on the interests of a few individuals, and concern perhaps 100,000 écus more or less. Yet that is enough to break any treaty, and in pursuit of these individual demands it is necessary that His Highness (Condé) should imperil his life, his fortune and those of all his followers.¹ This account of the unfolding events of 1652 has sought to demonstrate the primacy of contingency in explaining the failure to negotiate a political settlement. Insofar as the failure can be attributed to deeper structural reasons, then the clearest of these was the dependence of both Condé and Mazarin on parties of supporters who expected rewards and favour in return for their adherence.² In forming such a party the Bourbon-Condé had started with a considerable advantage, possessing an imposing network of family alliances with roots that extended well back into the sixteenth century, and a clientele of appointees, beneficiaries, and established adherents that spread across the territories and institutions of France. Out of this extended group a loyal and committed party could be carved, composed primarily of military nobility, or those, such as Pierre Lenet or Abraham Girard, whose careers had been made in the household of the Condé family. To these could be added a number of the closest family alliances, such as those with the La Rochefoucauld or the Coligny-Châtillon. It was these together who formed around two hundred close adherents making up the Condéen party.³ The party was held together by a combination of personal loyalty to Condé, in many cases forged through shared military experience, and self-interested

¹ BN Ffr. 6710, fo. 5, Marigny to Lenet, Paris, 1 Sept. 1652. ² The centrality of building and managing parties is noted in two important articles from the early 1980’s: Descimon, Jouhaud, ‘La Fronde en movement’, esp. 312–19; R. Bonney, ‘Cardinal Mazarin and the Great Nobility during the Fronde’, English Historical Review 96 (1981), 818–33. ³ Béguin, Princes de Condé, 112–32.

1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde. David Parrott, Oxford University Press (2020). © David Parrott. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797463.001.0001

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calculations about the benefits which would flow from a negotiated settlement.⁴ As Condé in revolt could offer few immediate rewards, he needed to recognize that his supporters were making sacrifices in remaining committed to his leadership, and this required careful and tactful handling of the ambitions, concerns, and resentments of his adherents. Yet his rebarbative personality and humour, lack of graciousness in acknowledging services, and intense sense of hierarchy all cut across the need to emphasize the horizontal solidarities of a network formed by the choice and personal commitment of its adherents. Charismatic when the winds of military victory were blowing in his favour, Condé was not the person to lead a party through difficult times.⁵ In contrast, Mazarin would appear to have the means to buy and retain a party through extensive access to both the offices and revenues of the state, and, thanks to his relationship to the queen mother, to the mechanisms of social promotion. Yet Mazarin’s position in 1652 presented its own challenges to the creation and maintenance of a party. The military situation remained unclear for most of the year; the most likely outcome was a settlement in which Mazarin would be obliged to accept some form of power-sharing with his opponents. His adherents were aware that actively backing his reassertion of power was not simply the low-risk political option. And they were conscious that in the eyes of many others, and not just open enemies, support for Mazarin did not equate with loyalty and commitment to the crown. Mazarin, for obvious reasons, constantly sought to elide the two, and to a large extent has been abetted by subsequent historians. But many contemporaries drew a clear distinction between a commitment to Mazarin’s ministerial regime and their commitment to Louis XIV in person, to the institution of the monarchy, and to government exercised directly by the king. In these circumstances, the decision to support Mazarin might be justified as the least bad of the available routes to try to re-establish royal authority and end the anarchy into which the country seemed to be fast sinking. But a similar opinion informed some of those who surrounded Condé or Gaston d’Orléans, and who regarded support for the princes as the best route to a political compromise that would reunite the royal family and set limits on the régime de l’extraordinaire of the cardinal ministers which had eroded royal authority so disastrously. For most of those who actively supported Mazarin and his deeply unpopular regime, the motivation was straightforward: the extent to which he would be able to satisfy their various interests via his standing with the crown, his direct control of patronage, and his access to financial resources. They served, in the language of the time, ‘more by interest than by affection’. Yet maintaining a large and ⁴ J-M. Constant, ‘L’amitié, moteur de la mobilisation politique au XVIIe siècle’, in Constant, Noblesse en liberté, 173–87. ⁵ The comte de Coligny-Saligny, Mémoires, ed. Monmerqué (Paris, 1841), offers the most penetrating and critical insight into Condé’s maltreatment of those attached to him by honour, friendship, or family ties: 40–7 for 1652.

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demanding party of supporters was not simply about finding the offices, titles, territories, pensions, and bribes necessary to satisfy their extensive ambitions. It also raised the intractable problem of status inflation: the success of others stimulated not just resentment, but emulation and competition; it ratcheted up expectations. Mazarin’s pressing need to create and maintain his party, his own notorious example of unrestrained self-seeking, and the broader sense of uncertainty and instability in the midst of civil war brought about what might almost be seen as a ‘hyper-inflation’ of expectations. A bidding war was unleashed amongst supporters and allies of the cardinal in which there was no self-restraint, nor any recognition of the inappropriateness of demands, merely the awareness that others were demanding and probably receiving more. As the duchesse de Nemours wrote, it was ‘the custom in these times to demand a high price for doing very little’.⁶ The unprecedented creation of twenty-one duchés-pairies between 1648 and 1652 was a mechanism for both buying and rewarding support, but was no less provocative for the traditional holders of the rank, who regarded their own status as diluted by both the quantity and quality of the new creations.⁷ A similar process was evident in the army, where one inflationary starting point had been the unprecedented creation of five maréchaux de France in January 1651.⁸ The promotion was a politically motivated decision by Mazarin to reward four senior officers following the victory against Turenne outside Rethel. An intimation of wider change, the fifth, Jacques Rouxel de Médavy, comte de Grancey, obtained his marshal’s baton by insinuating that he might not otherwise be prepared to maintain his governorship of Gravelines on behalf of the king.⁹ This collective promotion had an impact on subsequent expectations: Achille de Longueval, marquis de Manicamp, had been granted the caretaker governorship of the fortress of La Fère, near Laon, in 1650. In 1652 he refused to surrender it to the appointed governor, Mazarin, and to Mazarin’s fury demanded a marshal’s baton for its transfer.¹⁰ In the event Manicamp was bargained down to a cash payment of 150,000 livres.¹¹ More successful in his extortion was Philippe de Clairambault, comte de Palluau, who alarmed Mazarin and Le Tellier by his delays in vacating the fortress of Montrond after he captured it in early September, and by consulting his friends about how he should react to a refusal to create him maréchal de

⁶ Mémoires, ix. 655. ⁷ See ‘The Peace that Failed’, in Chapter 4. AAE MD 882, fo. 226, Henri de Daillon, duc du Lude to Mazarin, Paris, 19 April 1652: Lude’s report on the resentful self-exile of Charles de Schomberg, sixth duc d’Hallwin. ⁸ M. Pinard, Chronologie historique militaire (8 vols; Paris, 1760–88), ii. 568–94. ⁹ AAE MD 878, fo. 8, Fouquet de Croissy to Chavigny, Paris, [7] Jan. 1651. This was not just Condéen party gossip: Montglat, Mémoires, l. 264; Vallier, Journal, iii. 241–2. ¹⁰ Dulong, Mazarin, 217–18; Chéruel, v. 198–9, 279–80, Mazarin to Le Tellier, Sedan/Bouillon, 2/24 Sept. 1652. ¹¹ Dulong, Mazarin, 218.

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France.¹² The response was capitulation.¹³ In another case much noted by contemporaries, César-Phébus d’Albret, comte de Miossens, captain-lieutenant of the gendarmes of the king’s guard, was no Condéen but he was part of the cabal of senior military officers and councillors, including Roquelaure, Créqui, and Villeroy, who were hostile to Mazarin’s return to court in 1652. Miossens demanded a marshal’s baton in recognition of his support for the crown at the Porte Saint-Antoine, although he had no experience of senior military command. However, as commander of the king’s bodyguard, his ill will posed a daily threat to Mazarin which the cardinal preferred to buy off, even though it reinforced a widely shared perception that threatening Mazarin was the most effective route to attention and promotion.¹⁴ Mazarin seems ruefully to have recognized this inflationary trend when the comte du Plessis-Bellière demanded a marshal’s baton as the price of leading French troops down into Catalonia in September 1652. While trying to find ways to avoid this concession, Mazarin commented that if a marshal’s baton was what Plessis-Bellière expected simply for leading his troops, then were he to relieve Barcelona, he would presumably ask for the sword of the connétable to be set aside for him on his return.¹⁵ At the levels immediately below the rank of marshal, military inflation was spectacular. In short order during 1652 Mazarin acquired loyalties by raising at least thirty-five senior officers to the charge of lieutenant general, which ought to have signified command over a particular campaign army or corps, and gave lasting rank at the top of the military hierarchy.¹⁶ Precisely because of its potential to create problems of precedence, the numbers of such promotions had hitherto been very limited, restricted to a handful each year. Yet the most spectacular area of growth was the massive proliferation of the office of maréchal de camp. Later in the century to be replaced with the post of brigadier, this was the lowest staffofficer rank but a sought-after post, again normally restricted because of the problems of precedence it generated. In 1635, at the beginning of the war with Spain and following the creation of six separate armies to operate in different theatres, nineteen new maréchaux de camp were created. In subsequent years before the Fronde new creations averaged around six per year. However, in 1652, Mazarin and a docile war office created 139 maréchaux de camp.¹⁷ The massive increase in promotions during the Fronde years, and above all in 1652, vastly intensified problems of ranking and hierarchy. Those who had received the charge when it was an occasional, prestigious promotion with real military status were ¹² AAE MD 885, fo. 143, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Mantes, 12 Oct. 1652. ¹³ Pinard, Chronologie, ii. 597–601. ¹⁴ Montglat, Mémoires, l. 341–3. ¹⁵ Chéruel, v. 289, Mazarin to abbé Fouquet, Bouillon, 24 Sept. 1652. The constableship of France was the highest military office in the kingdom and had been in abeyance since 1626, but various figures, including Turenne, eyed the charge during 1652 and after. ¹⁶ SHD, A1 132, fos 131–153; Pinard, Chronologie, ii. 116–66. ¹⁷ Pinard, Chronologie, vi. 104–388. Pinard stresses the difficulty of establishing the exact number of these promotions, but the scale of the increase is more significant than the precise totals.

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predictably resentful that it had become an ‘on demand’ gratification for anyone with some military leverage against Mazarin or the crown.¹⁸ Military promotions were of course only one element of a massive process of buying and rewarding adherents, begun in the earlier years of the Fronde but reaching its climax in 1652. Lacking any of the deeply embedded structures of aristocratic clientelism, familial networks, and territorial influence, Mazarin could only buy adherence and loyalty. But the need to feed the ambitions and satisfy the interests of his adherents in turn inflated the scale of rewards while simultaneously driving resentment and concern at the impact of that inflation on the part of those who had gained less from their adherence. This shaped two distinctive and lasting characteristics amongst the diverse adherents of Mazarin’s party. The first was the use in correspondence of an aggressively transactional language, in which all of the deference and politeness customary in addressing the king’s first minister was absent, or entirely perfunctory.¹⁹ The second was the frequently voiced conviction amongst members of his party that the scale of rewards received was a function, not of loyalty and service to the minister, but of the capacity to damage or undermine his interests, or indeed those of the state. Shared amongst his longest-serving supporters was an embittered conviction that threatening or bad behaviour was necessary to gain concessions and recognition from Mazarin.²⁰ The duc d’Épernon and his son, the duc de Candale, in their communications with Mazarin concerning negotiations for a marriage between Candale and AnneMarie Martinozzi, serve as a touchstone for egregious rudeness to the cardinal. The Épernon would only accept the match in return for being raised to prince étranger status comparable with the Tour d’Auvergne, whose promotion particularly rankled with them. Mazarin’s attempt to wriggle out of the commitment to their court promotion produced an extraordinary stream of letters lacking in the smallest hint of respect or deference.²¹ But this was certainly not confined to the Épernon or even the highest ranks of the nobility. Charles d’Elbeuf, governor of Picardy, addressed Mazarin as ‘Monsieur’—not uncommon amongst the high ¹⁸ The proliferation of maréchaux de camp was a specific grievance of the assemblies of the nobility in 1651/2: BN Ffr. 10,458, fo. 3v, proposition of the nobles of Senlis, 1651. ¹⁹ This might seem a minor matter, but that would underestimate the hugely elaborate structure of early-modern status relations built on the appropriate and status-sensitive use of language, indeed even the arrangement of words on the page of a letter. See especially G. Sternberg, ‘Epistolary Ceremonial: Corresponding Status at the Time of Louis XIV’, Past and Present 204 (2009), 33–88. C. Blanquié, ‘Entre courtoisie et révolte. La correspondance de Condé (1648–1659)’, Histoire, économie et société 14 (1995), 427–43, shows Condé consciously modulating forms of address, salutation, and style in his correspondence in order to reflect the changing needs and realities of the political situation during and after the Fronde. ²⁰ CP Pays Bas 32, 342, 7 Nov. 1652, M. de Bar to Mazarin, who pointedly stresses that he is not one of the many who believe that threatening to change sides or behaving badly will gain more rapid notice and advancement. ²¹ For example, AAE MD 885, fo. 137, Épernon to Mazarin [Dijon] (ND—early Oct. 1652): Épernon expresses his ‘amazement’ that, given Mazarin’s present circumstances, he was making difficulties about granting Épernon a baton of maréchal (Épernon was already colonel-général of the infantry).

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aristocracy when they were not specifically asking the cardinal for anything—and engaged in sour and explicit criticisms of Mazarin for neglecting his allies and treating his enemies better than his friends.²² In a quarrel over the right to levy taxes locally for military subsistence in Picardy, Colonel Brideau wrote to Mazarin that he ‘either misunderstands the situation or thinks that he (Brideau) is of no importance’.²³ Le Tellier commented to Mazarin about the progressive decline of deference and formality in proceedings in the royal council, as individuals took the opportunity to present and criticize without restraint or order.²⁴ The language of assertiveness was commonplace in negotiations with Mazarin. Threats to withdraw support, to obstruct ministerial policy, even to change sides, were the stock-in-trade of negotiations with the cardinal and his ministerial regime. The tone of Charles de Schomberg, asking for the survivance (guaranteed transfer) of his office of colonel general of the Swiss for his son, combined false humility (a modest post and request, far less than others have received) with the clear menace that otherwise Schomberg’s (self-funded) military cooperation would cease.²⁵ Amidst a tirade of criticism about unkept promises, the governor of Bapaume on the north-east frontier wrote to Mazarin in August 1652 that the cardinal’s recently offered gift of an abbey with an income of 1,000 écus p.a. was simply not worth accepting, being such paltry recompense for his services.²⁶ Orest Ranum convincingly asserted that from 1630, and under Richelieu’s auspices, there was a systematic use of courtesy as a device to coerce obedience.²⁷ Much of his discussion concerned the enforcement of appropriately deferential language and behaviour towards the king himself and the king’s agents in the provinces. Ranum’s article is no less clear however that the two cardinal-ministers considered that they should be addressed in an appropriately deferential manner.²⁸ Ranum proposed that the Fronde was not only an overtly political crisis, but a crisis of deference. He focuses on the collapse of courtesy in the conduct of political and social relations extensively catalogued in the anonymous journal of events in Paris from 1648 to 1652 (BN Ffr. 25,025-26).²⁹ The end of the Fronde brought about a return to courtesy, but as Ranum presciently notes, this courtesy was accorded ‘slowly, very much more slowly, toward Mazarin’.³⁰ For many holding political and military power, assertive and demanding language in defining a relationship with the first minister remained the predominant tone of the

²² AAE MD Picardy, 1685, fo. 120, Amiens, 16 Aug. 1652. ²³ AAE MD Picardy, 1685, fo. 23, Guise, 19 May 1652. ²⁴ AAE MD 884, fo. 220, Le Tellier to Mazarin, [Compiègne], 4 Sept. 1652. ²⁵ AAE MD 881, fo. 257–8, Schomberg to Mazarin, 12 Feb. 1652. ²⁶ AAE MD Picardy, 1685, fo. 108, Saucourt to Mazarin, Bapaume, 6 Aug. 1652. ²⁷ O. Ranum, ‘Courtesy, Absolutism and the Rise of the French State, 1630–1660’, Journal of Modern History 52 (1980), 426–51, 430. ²⁸ Richelieu’s expectations of deference are more explicitly considered in Ranum, ‘Richelieu and the Great Nobility’, French Historical Studies 3 (1963), 184–204. ²⁹ Ranum, ‘Courtesy’, 443–7. ³⁰ Ibid, 448.

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years after 1653. Political relations involved overt and unashamed bargaining, in which language was direct, and the threat of withdrawing services or support the usual bottom line of those dealing with the first minister. There were many amongst Mazarin’s party who were prepared to make good these threats. Whether because of the inflationary ambitions that now conditioned the world of Mazarin’s adherents, or the resentment at the ability of enemies to reap even larger rewards, both the scale of demands and stridency with which they were asserted grew. For such adherents, the success of a Condéen defector like Louis Foucauld de Dognon, who in 1653 received his marshal’s baton, 500,000 livres, and the governorship of Oléron in return for not handing Brouage to Oliver Cromwell and for submitting to royal authority, was an incitement to ever more forthright demands.³¹ At the summit of this negotiating model stood Henri, comte d’Harcourt. The commander who, after over a decade of faithful and highly distinguished service, had abandoned the army of Guyenne to seize control of the fortress of Breisach, was a profoundly alarming model for the new world of hard-line negotiations brought into being by Mazarin’s relationship to his supporters. The case of Harcourt is exemplary of the general issues of managing a party or faction: how were powerful adherents to be both retained and constrained? But it also illustrates the particular problems that Mazarin’s own interactions could generate, given the cardinal’s willingness to pursue his personal interests without apparent restraint and, when necessary, against those of his allies. Mazarin’s primary reason for denying Harcourt the governorship of Breisach was that he wanted it for himself. In the face of this, Harcourt played the long game with skill, trading his extensive services for what he considered their market value in financial and status terms. Harcourt personified—in many ways much better than Condé and his followers—the successful political opportunism of adherence to party; he knew at what point he needed to step outside the acceptable bounds of political negotiation to secure his own ‘interests’, and to increase his bargaining power. As he consistently stressed in his correspondence and public statements, his seizure of the governorship of Breisach was an act to secure the king’s control of a key border fortress, a language he used even when he provocatively wrote to the king and queen mother to ask for the governorship to be confirmed in his hands.³² Mazarin might complain about Harcourt’s ingratitude and indeed his wickedness, but he was simply confronting someone who could compete using the cardinal’s own style of politics. Harcourt held Breisach until May 1654, rejecting as inadequate all of Mazarin’s offers to buy him out of the governorship. The stakes grew higher in early 1654 as ³¹ See ‘The Trap Closes’ in Chapter 6; Berthomier, Dognon, 56–9. ³² Livet, L’Intendance d’Alsace, 167–8; AAE MD 884, fo 364, Le Tellier to Mazarin, Compiègne, 19 Sept. 1652, reports letters sent by Harcourt to king and queen.

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Harcourt entered into negotiations with the Spanish to fund his garrisons in return for an alliance. This produced a surge of activity by Mazarin: in May 1654, in return for 150,000 livres p.a, the confirmation of his existing offices including that of grand écuyer, and the governorship of Anjou with Saumur and Angers, Harcourt finally surrendered Breisach and the governorship of Alsace.³³ The transaction allowed Mazarin himself finally to gain his own ambition of becoming governor of both the province and the key place de sûreté of Breisach. The case of Harcourt is a distinct indicator of the issues of loyalty and authority, significant because it straddles the end of the Fronde and the period of government after 1653 frequently taken to represent a new world of restored authority and stability. Unsurprisingly, later examples followed. In late 1655 the maréchal d’Hocquincourt, angry that Mazarin had refused his requests for a military command on the eastern frontier, entered into negotiations with Condé and the Spanish to surrender his joint governorship of Péronne and Ham. In the frantic negotiations that followed once these initiatives were discovered, Hocquincourt obtained the demission of Péronne to his son, and the sale of his governorship of Ham for 600,000 livres, slightly reduced from his original asking price of 700,000.³⁴

The Cankered Decade How far could this legacy of building and maintaining parties, and the expectations of bargaining and self-interest that it bred, be rolled back after the immediate crisis of the civil war? Most politics are at root transactional, and rest on basic calculations of interest amongst the actors, but these bare bones are usually covered by the flesh, sinews, and skin of a vastly more complex and multi-layered political culture. Political action is usually masked, and often directly shaped, by powerful ideologies of authority and obedience, notions of hierarchy and obligation, wider social and cultural values. Embedded in early modern French political culture were deeply rooted ideals of behaviour, derived from Christian and chivalric sources, which gave great weight to the twin virtues of honour—both in relation to self and others—and fidelity. The French crown stood at the apex of a system of values whose official expression was the divinely ordained nature of royal authority and succession, and the religious obligation to offer unquestioning obedience to the sovereign, regardless of personal cost or interest.

³³ Livet, L’Intendance d’Alsace, 144–5; Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, ii. 128–39. As Livet described it: ‘not a treaty between a rebellious servant and a master, but between two equals.’ ³⁴ Chéruel, Ministère de Mazarin, ii. 314–21, who prefers to attribute Hocquincourt’s behaviour to the feminine wiles of Mme de Châtillon.

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In periods of civil conflict much of this might be stripped away so that the overt pursuit of individual and factional interest would come to dominate political action and language.³⁵ Nonetheless, it could be expected that with the return of relative domestic stability, both the rhetoric and reality of politics would be reshaped to re-emphasize the values of service and loyalty to the monarchy and its institutions. Yet there is much evidence to suggest that this was not the case during the 1650s, that instead overt, self-interested, and calculating adherence to what was generally perceived as a ministerial party continued to shape politics.³⁶ To appreciate the reasons for this requires discounting both contemporary and retrospective accounts whose aim was either to enhance the particular reputation of Cardinal Mazarin, or to create a seamless narrative in which triumph over the frondeurs led smoothly into the personal rule and absolutist apotheosis of Louis XIV. Indeed, those who have uncritically espoused the notion that Mazarin was triumphantly restored in 1653 have often overlooked a much more ambiguous inflection in contemporary accounts. Many who cite Guy Patin’s comment that the return of Mazarin to Paris and the court had rendered him all-powerful—‘as powerful as God at the beginning of creation’—have surely missed Patin’s sardonic tone here.³⁷ Contemporaries recognized the ragged and inconclusive ending to the Fronde—the continued struggle in Bordeaux, but above all the situation on the north-eastern frontier. It is easy with hindsight and a dose of historical determinism to assume that Condé’s retreat with his troops to the frontiers was an endgame, consigning him to marginalized obscurity for the rest of the 1650s. But the failure to secure a compromise settlement in 1652 did not eliminate Condé and his allies from subsequent political calculations in France. There may have been relief that foreign troops had been expelled from the heart of France, but there was no means of knowing that 1651–2 was not the first act of a much lengthier political and military drama, which would continue to unfold with equally uncertain consequences. And in significant ways this apprehension was correct: both the real presence of armies led by Condé and threatening French territories, and his virtual presence as a focus of continued domestic opposition and hostility to Mazarin’s regime, continued through the 1650s. Now that Condé was embedded ³⁵ K. Béguin, ‘Changements de partis et opportunisme durant la Fronde (1648-1653). La mort de la politique ancienne?’ Politix 14 (2001), 43–54; S. Kettering, ‘Patronage and Politics during the Fronde’, French Historical Studies 14 (1986), 409–41. ³⁶ The author will return to this subject in detail in his planned sequel, a broader study of the years from 1653 down to Mazarin’s death in 1661. ³⁷ Patin, Lettres, iii. 24, to Falconet, 16 Feb. 1654. Other memoirists such as Pierre de La Porte seemed more interested in describing the grovelling and self-interested sycophancy of those around the court: cited in Dulong, Mazarin, 214; Mme de Motteville juxtaposed Mazarin’s ‘glorieux retour’ with a preceding paragraph describing how he would drain France of money to fill his own coffers: Mémoires iv. 355. Guy Patin himself says much the same in a letter to Charles Spon, where he speaks of Mazarin’s return and the ‘banquet of succulent meats’ prepared in order ‘to fatten up this man returned from the wars’ (‘rengraisser cet homme qui vient de la guerre’). Lettres, ed. Justaz, ii. 1031, Paris, 4 Feb. 1653.

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in the command structures of the army of Flanders and his status had been recognized by the Spanish court, negotiating a settlement with the French crown for his restoration was considerably more complex. But Condé’s unreconciled status continued to delegitimize Mazarin’s regime in the eyes of contemporaries, and kept alive a core of opposition amongst the traditional nobility and members of the judiciary, willing to exploit any conjunction of domestic difficulties and foreign policy setbacks to destabilize the ministry. Paradoxically, the situation was made worse for Mazarin by his willingness to negotiate the marriage between his niece, Anne-Marie Martinozzi, and Condé’s brother, Armand, prince de Conti.³⁸ For Mazarin of course the marriage was a dynastic triumph, the cornerstone of a strategy for familial advancement that, fortified with this link to French royal blood, would subsequently establish marital links with the Este and Savoy-Carignano families and the Colonna in Rome, and in France ties to the Tour d’Auvergne and La Meilleraye.³⁹ The material benefits of the marriage for Conti may have been balanced by his resignation of several lucrative benefices to Mazarin, but it enhanced his military profile by giving him successive command of armies in Catalonia and Italy, theatres where he would not be at risk of confronting his brother.⁴⁰ Equally important for Conti, who was now head of the Bourbon-Condé in France, it allowed him to defend the bulk of the family’s wealth and status, including much of his brother’s patrimony, in theory sequestered for his treason.⁴¹ The survival of opposition in France would have mattered less if the 1650s had permitted a replay of the foreign policy of Mazarin’s ‘first’ ministry. After 1643 hostility to the installation of a second minister-favourite in the highly problematic constitutional circumstances of a regency had been allayed by the sequence of military and territorial successes from Rocroi to Lens. There was no similar foreign policy dividend for Mazarin’s position from 1653 onwards. If 1643–8 were the ‘six glorious years’ on the basis of which Mazarin had validated his sense of personal entitlement as—in his own view—the greatest servant the French crown had ever possessed, then the five years from 1653 to 1657 should be seen in contrast as ‘five dismal years’ for foreign policy. The losses of 1652—Dunkirk, Barcelona, Casale—proved irrevocable, and the campaigns from 1653 started with a tabula rasa which had taken the military–political situation back to 1642, and arguably left it in a worse state than at Richelieu’s death. Campaign armies once again took the field from 1653 as the système de l’extraordinaire reasserted itself. ³⁸ Oresko, ‘Marriage of the Nieces’, 122–5. ³⁹ Ibid, 126–51. ⁴⁰ D. Parrott, ‘La dernière campagne d’Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti’, in B. Augé (ed.), Regards nouveaux sur les institutions representatives de l’ancien régime, la cour, la diplomatie, la guerre et la littérature. Essais en homage à John Rogister (Paris, 2017), 39–61. ⁴¹ K. Béguin, ‘La fortune du Grand Condé: un enjeu de l’après-fronde (1654–1660)’, Revue Historique 297 (1997), 57–84. Béguin emphasizes the rankling hostility between Condé and his younger brother and Conti’s ambition to profit from his new position, but stresses his role, together with Condé’s wife, in keeping the patrimony largely intact.

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Under the assertive direction of Nicolas Fouquet as the superintendent of finances, a new mountain of poorly secured, high-interest debt was acquired on which the war effort could be sustained. Yet the results were meagre, and presented little opportunity for an embattled ministry to celebrate its triumphant conduct of affairs. In 1654 Arras was narrowly saved from capture by Condé and the army of Flanders; in 1655 an attempt to revive the military position in Italy came to a dismal end when the army fell apart under Spanish pressure outside the walls of Pavia, while the slide towards the complete and definitive loss of Catalonia was barely checked. In 1656 the defeat of a royal army outside Valenciennes, again by forces led by Condé, provoked the abrupt Spanish termination of peace negotiations begun earlier in the year. In 1657 Mazarin threatened to dismiss Nicolas Fouquet over the debacle of the siege of Courtrai, and the army of Italy failed to take Alessandria. The single success celebrated in 1657, the capture of Mardyck on the Flanders coast, reflected the controversial military alliance with the Cromwellian Protectorate. The results of this alliance were to be seen in 1658 when, after the one decisive battlefield victory of these years, Dunkirk was summarily handed over to the English army as the price of their military assistance. Anti-Mazarin factions in France had little difficulty stirring up agitation and resentment against the surrender of Dunkirk to heretics, and the humiliating failure to capitalize on hard-won military success.⁴² On the diplomatic front, matters did not look more impressive. Frenetic effort and pressure in Rome had failed to prevent the election of Fabio Chigi as Pope Alexander VII in 1655, at best a tepid supporter of French interests and emphatically not Mazarin’s choice for pontiff.⁴³ French influence over the German princes, and especially the Catholic Electors, failed in its first major test—preventing the election of the Habsburg Leopold I as Holy Roman Emperor in 1658.⁴⁴ Mazarin had been an early and enthusiastic exponent of the ‘decline of Spain’ thesis, as letters through the 1640s and into the Fronde years bear witness. The failure to recover significant ground in the 1650s, while Spain was still locked in a debilitating war with Portugal, raised pressing questions about the effectiveness of French resource mobilization, strategic focus, and military leadership now that the most charismatic of French commanders was serving Spain. There was general relief across France when the negotiations of 1659 finally culminated in the Peace ⁴² AAE MD 905, fos 200–201, Servien to Mazarin, Paris, 22 June 1658, reporting on the resistance in Paris to any celebration of the victory at the Dunes. For a good summary of this whole neglected period, see Inglis-Jones, ‘Condé in Exile’, 274–95; J. Inglis-Jones, ‘The Battle of the Dunes, 1658: Condé, War and Power Politics’, War in History 1 (1994), 249–77. Throughout the last two volumes of his Ministère de Mazarin Chéruel attempts to maintain an upbeat tone in discussing foreign policy, but even his relentless optimism is put to the test. ⁴³ J. Valfrey, La diplomatie française au XVIIe siècle. Hugues de Lionne, ses ambassades en Italie, 1642–1656 (Paris, 1877), 209–51. ⁴⁴ J. Valfrey, La diplomatie française au XVIIe siècle. Hugues de Lionne, ses ambassades en Espagne et en Allemagne (Paris, 1881), 67–141; J. Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire (2 vols; Oxford, 2012), ii. 23–7.

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of the Pyrenees, and the fiscal and military burdens could at last be reduced. Yet amidst the carefully managed celebrations of Mazarin’s diplomatic skill, some commentators had the temerity to point out that France could have exacted better terms from Spain at any point between 1646 and January 1648.⁴⁵ External setbacks and military stagnation correlated closely with domestic unrest. The relief of Arras in 1654 narrowly averted a political crisis and a major challenge from both recalcitrant grandees and the Parlement that had been gaining intensity as the fall of the city grew ever more probable.⁴⁶ The collapse of peace negotiations after the defeat at Valenciennes precipitated a major crisis of confidence amongst the crown’s creditors. The consequent, ever more desperate measures invoked by Fouquet to raise new revenues on which more loans could be floated generated both popular unrest and noble assemblies and agitation on a scale unprecedented since the Fronde.⁴⁷ One crucial consequence of the 1658 battle of the Dunes was that it freed up troops who could be sent into the French provinces to put down popular unrest and disperse the nobles.⁴⁸ Faced with the combination of military setbacks and fiscal crisis, the régime de l’extraordinaire once again assumed overt and arbitrary forms, acting in the king’s name to impose both heavy taxation on the ordinary population and successive waves of new initiatives to extract money from the privileged. On 20 March 1655 Mazarin and Fouquet made use of another ceremony of the king’s lit de justice to force the Parlement to register seventeen fiscal edicts, which included a variety of new schemes to create and sell offices, and taxes on the paper used for legal documents.⁴⁹ Among the most provocative initiatives, leading to a wave of noble ⁴⁵ The notion of Mazarin’s diplomatic triumph on the Île des Faisans originated with Mazarin’s own carefully manicured account of the negotiations in his letters to Le Tellier and others: Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin où l’on voit le secret de la Négociations de la Paix des Pyrenées et la Relation des Conferences qu’il a eües pour ce sujet avec D. Loüis de Haro, ministre d’Espagne . . . Nouvelle edition, augmentée d’une seconde partie (Amsterdam, 1693). Of those who struck a more sceptical note, the most celebrated was Saint-Evremond: de Maizeaux, La vie de M. Charles de Saint-Denis, sieur de St Evremond . . . avec sa lettre sur la Paix de Pyrenées qui fut la sujet de sa disgrace . . . (The Hague, 1711). ⁴⁶ Mazarin was sufficiently concerned by the growing instability that he took the initiative in proposing a settlement with Condé based on the marriage of his son, the duc d’Enghien, to one of Mazarin’s nieces: AAE MD 893bis, fos 100–6, [Servien] to Mazarin, Paris, 30 June 1654. The proposal was rejected by Condé. ⁴⁷ J. Lair, Nicolas Foucquet, procureur général, surintendant des finances, ministre d’état de Louis XIV (2 vols; Paris, 1890), i. 436–50; D. Dessert, Fouquet (Paris, 1987), 94–120; Bonney, King’s Debts, 251–9; L. Jarry, La Guerre des Sabotiers de Sologne et les assemblées de la noblesse, 1653–60 (Orléans, 1880); J-M. Constant, ‘La troisième Fronde’; Constant, ‘La révolte nobiliaire de 1658–59 en Orléanais, mouvement marginal ou authentique manifestation de démocratie nobiliaire’, both in Constant, Noblesse en liberté, 239–63; Lassaigne, Assemblées de la noblesse, 87–127; R. Briggs, ‘Noble conspiracy and revolt in France, 1610–60’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 12 (1990), 173–4. ⁴⁸ AAE MD 905, fos 133, 139, procureur-général to Mazarin, Paris, 3/5 June 1658, concerning the problematic combination of small-scale, localized unrest on the one hand, and the major unrest in the Orléanais, Berry, and Normandy on the other; 905, fos 149–50, report of unrest and noble assemblies in Orléans, late May 1658. ⁴⁹ Hamscher, Parlement of Paris, 87–96; J-C. Petitfils, Fouquet (Paris, 2005), 133–7; Bonney, King’s Debts, 251.

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unrest across the country, were the plans for an investigation into noble titles, with fines imposed on those who could not prove their status.⁵⁰ Another characteristic of the extraordinaire re-emerged in these years: the regular use of troops as an instrument of financial extortion—provinces recently liberated from the horrors of civil war were nonetheless subjected to billeting and confiscation of goods and property to meet the costs of tax arrears and the burden of winter-quarter payments.⁵¹ Fouquet’s primary modus operandi as finance minister was to reassure and build confidence amongst the circle of established financiers; he was convinced that the regime could not survive another blow to fiscal confidence of the sort that followed the great bankruptcy in June 1648. In opposition to Mazarin and Servien, who in 1654 and 1656 were tempted by the possibilities of a crown-declared bankruptcy and the cancellation and rescheduling of debt, Fouquet argued that the destruction of credit which would follow could not be retrieved, and the war effort would collapse as disastrously as it had done in 1652.⁵² But the consequence of Fouquet’s ‘responsibility’ towards the crown’s key creditors was even more exigency and harshness in the treatment of the taxable populations, and even more provocative initiatives to try to raise revenues, one way or another, from the privileged. Only Fouquet’s conviction that it would infallibly revive the Fronde prevented the ministry withholding payments on the interest-bearing rentes sur l’Hôtel de Ville and the salaries of the higher officeholders.⁵³ There was no real end to the crisis, at least until after the Peace of the Pyrenees with Spain and the stipulated pardon and return of Condé and his allies to France and to the great majority of their previously held dignities and offices. Mazarin’s regime, though not facing the immediate and existential dangers of 1652, lacked broad political acceptance in the years down to 1659. Its supporters and allies remained well aware how crucial their support remained. Hence, unsurprisingly, the persistence and embedding of the transactional character of politics: support needed to be bought, and once bought, it needed to be retained. Yet instead of struggling to subordinate this culture of a party to ideals of royal service with its higher obligations of loyalty, sacrifice, and subordination, thus seeking to add the sinews and flesh to the bare bones of political transactionalism and bargaining, almost the reverse appears to have happened. From 1653 we see the development of a political culture which was subtly different from that of the period 1624–48. Overt bargaining and deal-making by the central government, ⁵⁰ Dessert, Fouquet, 110; Lair, Foucquet, i. 433–4. ⁵¹ Lair, Foucquet, i. 435–36; E. Esmonin, ‘un episode du rétablissement des intendants après la Fronde: les maîtres des requêtes envoyés en chevauchées’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 12 (1965), 219–28. ⁵² Dessert, Fouquet, 103–8; J. Dent, ‘An Aspect of the Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: The Collapse of the Revenue System of the French Monarchy, 1653–1661’, The Economic History Review 20 (1967), 241–56. ⁵³ Dessert, Fouquet, 109–12.

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and Mazarin in particular, was acceptable and normal. Financial exploitation by the holders of posts, offices, and appointments was more open and cynical, and rested on a culture of self-interest that was itself validated through service to the ministers. The army provides one forum in which this shift was evident. Corrupt practices flourished in the negotiation and management of supply contracts at every point in the command chain, decisions concerning military action, and the establishment of the numerical strength of units.⁵⁴ Of itself, peculation and failure to fulfil contracts in the army was nothing new. But the scale and scope of corruption was more systematic, while complaints and denunciations by the administrators with the army were brushed aside or ignored by the ministers. In 1653 the French ambassador in Turin, Ennemond Servien, launched into a detailed denunciation of corruption and collusion in the dealing of the munitionnaire (bread contractor) Jean-Pierre Falcombel, the duc de Lesdiguières, and de Piennes, governor of Pinerolo. Yet back in Paris, both his brother, the other superintendent of finance, and Le Tellier, the war minister, responded testily and impatiently to his allegations, making it clear that they had no intention of pursuing the matter.⁵⁵ In 1657, the intendant with the army of Italy, Jacques Brachet, wrote to Mazarin to whitewash a number of financial and supply irregularities that were, he claimed, necessary if the army was to pursue its campaign objectives.⁵⁶ The lessons about not disturbing vested interests seems to have become engrained.⁵⁷ Meanwhile, the winter quartering of troops across France evolved from its pre-Fronde character of a relief system for troops and officers who had received little pay during the campaign months.⁵⁸ For the commanders of units it now became an annual opportunity for substantial profiteering, where any concomitant obligation to restore (‘refresh’) the unit or to recruit additional troops could be ignored with impunity.⁵⁹ In the provinces, the message was equally clear that social and political leverage could be deployed without scruple to bargain for financial or political advantage. Legal bodies, city councils, or nobilities, with their local administrative and

⁵⁴ Kroener, ‘Truppenstärken’, 178–93. For an overview of all these problems as they affected the Italian campaign theatre in 1657: D. Parrott, ‘Interests, Corruption and Military Effectiveness: The French Army of Italy and the Campaign of 1657’, Storia Economica 19 (2016), 51–75. ⁵⁵ AAE CP Sardaigne 45, fos 99–100, and second, more detailed copy fos 101–3, Ennemond Servien to surintendant Servien, Turin, 12 April 1653; Sardaigne 45, fos 187, 188, replies from Le Tellier and Servien to Ennemond Servien, Paris, 1 Aug. 1653. (Abel Servien served as co-surintendant with Fouquet.) ⁵⁶ AAE CP Sardaigne 52, fo. 288, Brachet to Mazarin, 21 June 1657. ⁵⁷ BN Ffr. 20,479, fo. 181, Le Tellier to duc de Candale, [Paris], 14 July 1655, Le Tellier explains that he has taken measures to prevent the officers of Candale’s ‘house’ regiment being put on trial for disorders in Lyon, and to explain away the huge gap between the claimed size of the regiment and its active strength of fewer than 300 men. ⁵⁸ See ‘The Military Collapse beyond the Frontiers’ in Chapter 5. ⁵⁹ Parrott, ‘Interests, Corruption’, 64–6.

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judicial influence, all grasped the opportunities of a political culture which accepted the primacy of interest. The great noble houses were reinforced in their awareness of their bargaining power. Even without committing to a mésalliance with one of Mazarin’s nieces, the Épernon family continued to plough its furrow of conditional support, squeezing their political alliance with Mazarin for all it was worth. In 1656 the duc d’Épernon had rigorously defended Burgundy from the tax demands of the centre, blocking any attempt to increase the sum levied on the pays d’état.⁶⁰ A deal appears to have been struck subsequently, since in 1658 Fouquet wrote in some frustration about the terrible state of the finances and the need to set aside 300,000 livres to pay off the duke, who was otherwise threatening to disrupt the tax administration in Burgundy.⁶¹ What was tacitly accepted in the army and across the provinces was institutionalized in the management of the finances. The inner core of ‘ministerial’ financiers—above all, those who had continued to support Mazarin through the Fronde—were given remarkable licence, abetted by Fouquet’s concern to retain their active support, to exploit financial opportunities at the expense of the crown and the tax-paying population. Of course, this was scarcely new, and to some extent abetting financier profiteering had always been the means to keep the wheels of the over-heated fiscal system turning.⁶² Yet the sheer scale of financier exploitation, notably the redemption of apparently worthless treasury bills at deliberately inflated values, which required the active complicity of the bureau des finances, represents a new departure.⁶³ By 1659 Mazarin and his fellow ministers had given the lead to a remarkable culture of self-interested and shameless self-advancement through exploitative practices—whether bargaining for power and position, or using administrative, financial, and judicial positions, even quite modest ones, as a basis for the pursuit of financial advantage. One part of the context for this was the distinctly inglorious political background. The ministry’s attempt to claw financial and military resources from the realm to recover a small portion of what had been conquered in far more positive circumstances during the 1640s was not calculated to inspire enthusiastic devotion. But the legacy of the Fronde also hung over the 1650s—perhaps most strongly in the collective awareness that the events of 1651–2 had left virtually no one in the political classes untainted: there were few who could claim unwavering loyalty to the crown, untarnished by active disloyalty, compromise, or simple ⁶⁰ BN Ffr. 20,478, fos 351–85, series of letters from Fouquet to Épernon, between May and 9 July 1656, trying to increase the tax assessment on Burgundy. ⁶¹ Lair, Fouquet, i. 432, quoting a memorandum from Fouquet to Mazarin, AAE CP 905, fo. 135, Paris, 3 June 1658. Lair cites a parallel case of the duc de Vendôme demanding payment of a pension of 30,000 livres from the farmers of the salt tax (gabelle), threatening otherwise to disrupt the collection of the tax. ⁶² Bayard, Monde des financiers, 28–74; J. Dent, Crisis in Finance: Crown, Financiers and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (Newton Abbot, 1973), 44–91. ⁶³ Bonney, King’s Debts, 251–52; Dent, Crisis in Finance, 83–6.

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hedging of bets. Fewer still could regard their alliance with Mazarin during those 12–15 months as standing up to rigorous scrutiny. Playing the card of unstinting ministerial loyalty was never a likely or credible option for the political class. Yet a determined post-crisis effort might have been made to stress the virtues and rewards of unconditional loyalty and commitment, to encourage a mood of voluntary collective amnesia familiar from more recent regimes emerging out of political crises. The failure to achieve this lies, more than anywhere else, with the person of the first minister. Ever since his death, admirers as well as detractors of Mazarin have sought to deal with the implications of his inordinate private fortune, and the rapacity and illegality with which it was amassed around him. Not only did the stupefying global total of Mazarin’s assets and wealth— somewhere between 35 and 38 million livres—become known immediately after his death, but the political classes had been well aware that he had been relentlessly accumulating revenues, lands, benefices, and cash since 1653.⁶⁴ The scale of his correspondence with his financial intendant, Jean-Baptiste Colbert; with his various financial agents; and with innumerable others with whom he had direct financial dealings leaves little doubt about the prioritization of this objective. Most striking about Mazarin’s accumulation of wealth, however, was the extent to which he suborned the régime de l’extraordinaire itself to facilitate its accumulation. The correspondence of surintendant Fouquet with Mazarin, Colbert, and third parties throughout the financial upheavals, shortfalls, and scavenging of the 1650s makes evident both Fouquet’s enforced complicity and his simultaneous frustration.⁶⁵ From 1655 he was working with what was in effect a shadow financial administration run by Mazarin, Colbert, and their clerks and agents, whose principal aim was to negotiate, profit, and exit at will from massively favourable financial contracts, which often cut across the deals that the surintendant needed to strike with broader groups of financiers.⁶⁶ Historians have questioned the motives for accumulating a fortune on a scale not only far beyond contemporary rivals, including cardinal Richelieu, but greater than any other individual throughout the ancien régime. One motive was undoubtedly the insufficiently stressed sense of entitlement that was key to Mazarin’s character—the crown and the state owed him a vast obligation for his statesmanship and dedication to their service. Add to this the humiliation, discomfort, and danger that he suffered during the years of the Fronde and the entitlement was significantly increased. Yet paradoxically, entitlement ran hand-in-hand with a chronic insecurity about his future. As much as anyone else in France, Mazarin worried ⁶⁴ Dulong, Mazarin et l’argent; Dulong, Fortune de Mazarin; D. Dessert, ‘La fortune de Mazarin’, 161–81. ⁶⁵ The infiltration of Mazarin’s personal fiscal objectives and targets into the crown’s fiscal system was made abundantly clear at Fouquet’s trial in his défenses: Recueil des défenses de M. Fouquet (13 vols; Paris, 1665–8). ⁶⁶ Dessert, Fouquet, 199–225; Lair, Foucquet, i. 408–13.

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that the Fronde was the first act of a longer and unpredictable political drama. And unlike in 1651, when he allowed himself to be surprised by events and forced with minimal preparation into exile at Brühl, Mazarin from 1653 intended to prepare for any circumstance that might threaten his political control or force him out of France. A huge chunk of Mazarin’s fortune at his death was composed of nearly nine million livres held in cash, a staggering sum given the general shortage of specie in circulation and the armies’ desperate need for cash during the last years of war. The largest parts of this hoard (more than two million and nearly 1.5 million livres respectively) were held close to the cardinal in Paris and deposited in Mazarin’s governor’s quarters at Vincennes. But other sums were spread amongst the frontier fortresses of Sedan (1.1 million), La Fère (600,000), and the port of Brouage (1.2 million), where Mazarin either was the governor himself or was confident of the governors in place.⁶⁷ To this could be added at least two million livres of easily portable precious stones and jewellery.⁶⁸ Flight and prosperous exile was one evident possibility being contemplated by Mazarin. But so was the option of resistance and bargaining from a position of strength against whatever faction of ministers and grandees might seek to remove him from power. Since 1652 Mazarin had built a substantial private power base within France, controlling in person the frontier fortifications of La Fère, Philippsburg, and Breisach—the latter two contained within the governorship of Alsace, where he was governor following the 1654 demission of the comte d’Harcourt. He obtained the bishopric of Metz in 1652, and held it as an unconsecrated bishop.⁶⁹ He added the lieutenant governorship of Metz in 1656, after the death of maréchal Schomberg, and consolidated his hold on the wider pays Messin with a series of appointments of his clients.⁷⁰ On the western coast, by the end of the 1650s he held the governorships of La Rochelle, Brouage, Aunis, and the îles of Oleron and Ré.⁷¹ As the possessor himself of a formidable, interlinked network of coastal fortifications, or places de sûreté, Mazarin saw no reason to oppose Fouquet’s proposal to purchase and develop the port and fortifications at Belle Île, on the Breton coast. Yet at Fouquet’s trial in 1662–4, Belle Île was cited as prime evidence of his treasonable intentions.⁷² Mazarin’s combination of entitlement and insecurity drove an acquisitive machine that continued through military crisis, the persisting downturn in ⁶⁷ Dessert, Fouquet, 216–18. ⁶⁸ Ibid, 219–21. The distribution of cash amongst Mazarin’s governorships is detailed as common knowledge in the Mémoires of abbé de Choisy, ed. G. Montgrédien (Paris, 1979), 58–9. ⁶⁹ J. Bergin, ‘Cardinal Mazarin and His Benefices’, French History 1 (1987), 3–26, 7–8; AAE MD 884, fo. 14, [Bluet?] to Mazarin, Paris, 4 Aug. 1652: congratulating Mazarin on the accommodation with the previous Bishop of Metz. Parisians sardonically termed him the new ‘cardinal de Metz’: DubuissonAubenay, ii. 269. ⁷⁰ Gantelet, Le roi et Metz, 116–29. ⁷¹ Dessert, Fouquet, 211–13. ⁷² Pitts, Embezzlement and High Treason, 75–6.

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climate conditions and agricultural productivity, and levels of crippling debt and impoverishment across France. It was compounded by a first minister who nonetheless constantly used the language of sacrifice, disinterested service, and personal poverty in such an exaggerated way as to excite the sarcasm, mockery, or contempt of the political classes.⁷³ The mazarinades are a collective verdict on Mazarin’s self-representation as a tireless and selfless servant of the state. Of the reality, even Mazarin’s most sycophantic clients and allies were well aware. Without the mazarinades it might be possible to dismiss the self-parodying tone of much of Mazarin’s correspondence as baroque extravagance, more characteristic of the age than the man. Those mazarinades focused on the personality and political practice of the cardinal remind us that contemporaries drew the distinction.⁷⁴ And although the physical evidence of the mazarinades could be largely suppressed as censorship became more effective from 1653, the way of thinking about Mazarin and the political culture he dominated continued through the 1650s. Leading by personal example, during and after 1652 Mazarin legitimized the predominant style of politics. His own calculations about motivation, advantage, and private benefit, barely shrouded by an overblown language of public service, all too easily provided a model for those around him, whose undeferential tone and self-interested actions took their cue from a minister who seemed to condone it through his own behaviour. This section opened with Harcourt’s willingness to trade his seizure of Breisach to exact an advantageous deal from the ministry. Another figure, no less closely identified as a fidèle of Mazarin, might act as an appropriate concluding testimony to this transformation. Abraham Fabert, governor of Sedan and host to Mazarin for part of his second exile, finally tired of neglect and his unrecompensed financial commitments. The break-point was reached in February 1653 when Mazarin side-stepped Fabert’s request for the charge of superintendent of finances, gratifying Abel Servien and Nicolas Fouquet instead. This was compounded by the evidence that Mazarin was seeking to squeeze Fabert out of the governorship of Sedan. In an outburst of resentment spread over an extended correspondence, Fabert systematically rejected a number of concessions belatedly offered him by Mazarin as too little, too late, and launched into a tirade of criticism against the cardinal’s intentions. Deploying Mazarin’s own familiar rhetoric of selfless service and the commitment of all his resources, the steely subtext of Fabert’s letters was that he had been acting in ways that were ‘inutile à tous mes intérêts’, and that it was clear that Mazarin had behaved ‘sans faire la moindre reflexion sur moi’. Making it clear that he had no intention of peacefully giving up Sedan, Fabert’s subsequent acrimonious letters focused on the ⁷³ Dulong, Fortune de Mazarin, 141–4. ⁷⁴ Carrier, Labyrinthe de l’état, 23–62; Laurain-Portemer, Études Mazarines II, 847–78; Bonney, ‘Cardinal Mazarin and His Critics’, 20–2.

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consequences of the inadequacy of financial support for the gouvernement, which included some tart comparisons between Fabert’s accumulating debts and the alacrity with which Mazarin ensured that his own were repaid. The looming threat of an unspecified ‘accident’ befalling Sedan which would be the consequence of this poor treatment was the bottom line in these negotiations.⁷⁵ In the event, Fabert stepped back from this confrontation, just as Mazarin abandoned any attempt to remove him from the governorship. But the episode captures the mood that cankered political relations with a political elite who still saw themselves as members of a party, not subjects of a monarch who was acknowledged as having spiritual and moral claims to his subjects’ loyalty and obedience.⁷⁶ In his Roman Revolution Ronald Syme captures a historical moment in which violent upheaval, civil war, and its aftermath strips any deeper ideological structure from government. In reasserting authority, the Augustan revolution manipulated systems of patronage and self-interest with deep and systematic skill: ‘Augustus claimed to have restored Libertas and the Republic, a necessary and salutary fraud.’⁷⁷ The result was the creation of government, dominated by factions based on family alliances, ties of amicitia, and simple political calculation, in which reward was not an incidental benefit of service, but became the specific and overt purpose of service in the first place. By the time, between 1666 and 1671, that Louis XIV drafted and had written his ‘Memoir for the instruction of the Dauphin’, his ambivalence towards cardinal Mazarin had become profound.⁷⁸ In the lengthy chapter discussing the situation in France in 1661 when he assumed his ‘personal rule’ over the realm, he conceded that he should probably have acted sooner to establish his direct control over government. He then describes the situation in which Mazarin continued to govern for him, and it is immediately significant that Louis does not draw any sharp distinction between the period of the Fronde and the subsequent years of the 1650s. Throughout this whole period, Louis argued, the state ‘swarmed with conspiracies’, while at the court he received ‘very little disinterested loyalty’. He added that ‘those of my subjects who appeared to be the most submissive were as burdensome and dangerous for me as the most rebellious’. Of Mazarin he wrote that he was ‘a minister reinstated in spite of so many factions . . . who had rendered

⁷⁵ Bourelly, Fabert, ii. 5–17. ⁷⁶ Similar resentment about unreciprocated favours, the cardinal’s lack of generosity and relentless pursuit of his self-interest emerges in the biography of another fidèle, the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin: F-H. Turpin, César de Choiseul, duc de Duplessis-Praslin, maréchal de France (Amsterdam/Paris, 1768), 336, 341–2, 349. ⁷⁷ Syme, Roman Revolution, 516. ⁷⁸ For the dating and composition of the memoirs see P. Sonnino, ‘The Dating and Authorship of Louis XIV’s Mémoires’, French Historical Studies 3 (1964), 303–37.

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me some great services, but whose ideas and manners were naturally quite different from mine’.⁷⁹ Warming to the theme, the king emphasizes that in 1661: Disorder reigned everywhere . . . People of quality, accustomed to continual bargaining with a minister who did not mind it, and who had sometimes found it necessary, were always inventing an imaginary right to whatever was to their fancy; no governor of a stronghold who was not (himself) difficult to govern; no request that was not mingled with some reproach over the past, or with some veiled threat of future dissatisfaction. Graces exacted and torn rather than awaited, and extorted in consequence of each other, no longer served to obligate anyone, merely serving to offend those to whom they were refused.⁸⁰

Louis may have felt inhibited in intervening or checking the authority of his first minister, fearing in his words ‘that the false impression of a disgrace’ might reexcite the storms of the Fronde; but he was certainly true to his boast that during this time he ‘carefully observed’ everything around him. The historical consensus has traditionally asserted that the restoration of Mazarin as first minister was the only acceptable outcome of the events of 1652. Every potential compromise with Mazarin’s opponents, every alternative combination of ministers and advisors which might have emerged from the incessant negotiations of 1652, would have been tantamount to destroying the monarchy and consigning France’s historical destiny to the dustbin. Above all, Condé’s disappearance into exile in 1653 is seen—explicitly or implicitly—as the final bankruptcy of a culture of noble resistance and individual assertiveness.⁸¹ His departure and the collapse of the Fronde discredited the individualism and selfassertiveness that stood in the way of a modern conception of the state based on collective subordination to royal authority, and centralizing and bureaucratic principles of government. Mazarin’s triumph represented the future of the state, the frondeur nobles the rejected past. Historians have been more easily persuaded than contemporaries. The price of re-establishing Mazarin was exorbitant; the project of bringing Spain to terms through sustained military pressure, undoubtedly successful in the 1640s, was derailed in late 1652. Not until 1658 did France win the kind of military victory capable of persuading the Spanish that there was an urgent need to enter peace negotiations. A settlement to the civil war that had kept Condé and his military expertise in the service of the French king after 1652 would almost certainly have tipped the military balance far earlier in favour of France. At home the price of not compromising with Condé and the party of the princes was not untrammelled ⁷⁹ Louis XIV, Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin, ed. P. Sonnino (New York/London, 1970), 22–3. ⁸⁰ Louis XIV, Mémoires, 24. ⁸¹ Bannister, Condé in Context, 135–73.

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freedom of political action for Mazarin and his fellow ministers, but the need to establish and maintain deals and compromises with a broad cross-section of the aristocracy, institutions, and provinces. The triumphalist rhetoric about the stable re-establishment of ministerial power in the years after 1653 sought to conceal something very different. The defeat of the frondeurs was a triumph for interest and party that had been inherent in Mazarin’s bid to restore his power in 1652 and became its lasting legacy. Whether we regard Louis XIV’s 1661 declaration that he intended to rule in person and without a first minister as a spontaneous response of the king to the legacy of his youth and his father, or whether we see it as the product of suggestion and manipulation by the inner core of Mazarin’s ministers, the result was nonetheless dramatic.⁸² One aim of the government of the 1660s was to sweep away the régime de l’extraordinaire, with its overt dependence on ministerial rather than royal power and authority, and its capricious readiness to overrule and ignore the wishes of political elites. The government after 1661 sought to re-legitimize authority by channelling it through the king and out towards many of the traditional institutions of the state. The result was that ‘contagion of obedience’ first described by William Beik, consolidated into the revisionist orthodoxy of an absolutism founded on concession and compromise between the crown and traditional sources of institutional and provincial power.⁸³ In contrast, less attention has been paid to the other achievement of Louis XIV after 1661: he restored a language and practice of idealism to politics through service given to, and expected by, the crown. To do so he needed to bury not just cardinal Mazarin, but the regime of the cardinal ministers which had atrophied from the powerful language of the original système de l’extraordinaire into the transactional government, ruled by interest, that had been established in 1652.

⁸² D Dessert, Louis XIV prend le pouvoir, Naissance d’un mythe? (Paris, 1989); J. Janczukiewick, ‘La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV: la construction du mythe’, Dix-septième siècle 227 (2005), 243–64. ⁸³ W. Beik, Absolutism and Society, esp. 279–328; K. Béguin, ‘Louis XIV et l’aristocratie’, Histoire, économie et société 19 (2000), 497–512.

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Chronology 1642/43

4 December 1642: Death of Cardinal Richelieu 14 May 1643: Death of Louis XIII 19 May: Victory of Condé over the Spanish army of Flanders at Rocroi Queen mother, Anne of Austria, persuades the Parlement to overturn the decision of Louis XIII to set up a council of regency and to grant her full powers as regent for the five-year old Louis XIV May: Mazarin established as minister-favourite of queen mother and head of the Council

1648

13 May: First meeting of the sovereign courts of Paris at the Chambre SaintLouis. Decree of bankruptcy 20 August: Victory of Condé at battle of Lens 27 August: ‘Day of barricades’ in Paris

1649

6 January: Royal court leaves Paris and Condé begins the military blockade of the capital 11 March: Treaty of Rueil achieves a settlement between court and city; government concedes many of the financial and administrative demands of the frondeurs September/October: Worsening relations between Mazarin and Condé

1650

18 January: Arrest of princes de Condé and Conti and the duc de Longueville on royal orders, and imprisonment in Vincennes June: Alliance between the allies of the princes and the Parlement and city of Bordeaux 15 November: Transfer of the princes to confinement at Le Havre 15 December: Defeat of Turenne’s forces advancing to relieve Rethel by Mazarin’s fidèle, Plessis-Praslin 31 December: Mazarin returns to Paris after supporting the military campaign in Champagne

1651

20 January: King and queen mother harangued by Mathieu Molé, concerning the imprisonment of the princes and the misgovernment of Mazarin 30 January: Formal treaties between the princes’ partisans, the ‘Old Fronde’, and Gaston d’Orléans to secure the princes’ release 13 February: Mazarin travels to Le Havre to release the princes in person

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 11 April: After a protracted period moving around the frontiers, Mazarin finally settles at Brühl, a country residence offered him by the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne May: Exchange of governorships of Burgundy and Guienne between Condé and the duc d’Épernon 18 July: Queen mother cedes to Condé’s pressure and dismisses the ‘mazarinist’ ministers, Le Tellier, Servien, and Lionne July: Mazarin concludes a secret treaty with Paul de Gondi, coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris, Mme de Chevreuse, and Châteauneuf, stipulating that in return for support for Mazarin’s return, Mazarin would seek to facilitate Gondi’s nomination to a cardinalcy 6 September: Royal letter, registered by Parlement, reaffirming Mazarin’s banishment, confirming the charges of embezzlement and abuse of authority laid against him 7 September: Declaration of king’s majority. Condé is absent from ceremony 16 September: Condé’s partisans in Guienne open negotiations with Spain; arrival of Condé in Bordeaux 8 October: Royal declaration promulgated against Condé and his supporters 12 October: Mazarin leaves Brühl and moves into the bishopric of Liège 31 October: Court establishes itself at Poitiers and begins operations against Condé in the south-west 6 November: Formal treaty for military and financial support agreed in Madrid between Condé’s representatives and the Spanish crown 15 November: Fall of Cognac to Harcourt’s royal army 27 November: Surrender of comte de Dognon’s garrison at La Rochelle to Harcourt’s troops 24 December: Mazarin crosses the frontier into France 29 December: Parlement declares Mazarin guilty of lèse majesté and puts a price on his head

1652

24 January: Formal treaty of alliance between Condé and Gaston d’Orléans 31 January: Mazarin reaches the court at Poitou with his army 19 February: Promotion of Paul de Gondi as cardinal de Retz 28 February: Surrender of Angers to royalist and mazarinist forces 10 March: Fall of Saintes to Harcourt; Condé subsequently forced by local resistance to abandon Agen 24 March: Condé slips away from Guienne to take control of the army commanded by Beaufort and Nemours near Montargis 6/7 April: Condé victorious over d’Hocquincourt at Bléneau, but fails to break through Turenne’s forces to capture the court and royal family at Gien

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11 April: Condé enters Paris, leaving the army under command of Tavannes and Clinchamp 19 April: Assembly at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris Late April: Princes’ army occupies Étampes and faces off Turenne’s army at Palaiseau/Arpajon 4 May: Surprise and heavy defeat of Tavannes’ troops outside Étampes 18 May: Fall of Gravelines to the Spanish army of Flanders Late May: Turenne’s army moves to blockade the princes’ forces in Étampes. 1 June: Duke of Lorraine’s army advances into France as far as Lagny 2 June: Agreement between Lorraine and Condé in Paris that Lorraine will deploy his army to relieve the blockade of Étampes 7 June: Ten-day ceasefire agreed, during which Lorraine would withdraw his army from France, and the princes’ army would be permitted to evacuate Étampes 11 June: Spanish army of Flanders gathers on French frontiers around Cambrai 16 June: Princes’ army withdraws and regroups in the western suburbs of Paris 28 June: Royal court settles at Saint-Denis and is joined by Turenne’s army, which had been shadowing the departure of Lorraine’s troops 1/2 July: Condé moves his entire army eastwards around the north of Paris, and encounters Turenne’s main army. Battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; Condé’s army saved from total defeat when city gates are opened for them 3 July: Condé receives confirmation that the Spanish are marching into France; Turenne urges the court to make whatever concessions are needed to obtain a peace with the princes. Subsequent attempt to move the court and army into Normandy rebuffed by the governor, Longueville 4 July: Massacre of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris 12 July: Formal proposal to send Mazarin into exile for a second time 17 July: Spanish forces capture Chauny 20 July: Shadow council of state formed in Paris on basis of legal fiction that the king was being held captive by Mazarin 29 July: Lorraine moves his army back into France, setting up camp close to Reims 30 July: Creation of the royalist ‘Parlement’ at Pontoise 12 August: Royal edict concedes the request of the Parlement of Pontoise for the exile of Mazarin, while reiterating Mazarin’s services and declaring him innocent of any criminal action 16 August: Harcourt abandons the army of Guienne and seizes control of Breisach 19 August: Mazarin leaves the court en route to exile—reaches Bouillon on 9 September

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 26 August: Promulgation of the royal amnesty 1 September: Surrender of Montrond to royalist forces 4 September: Turenne rushes his army to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, blocking access to Paris for the army of the duke of Lorraine. Condé and his forces meet up with Spanish troops and Lorraine around Charenton, a combined force of 15,000–16,000 troops 8 September: Condé declines an outright attack on Turenne’s army camped at Villeneuve-St-Georges, and opts instead for a blockade 16 September: Surrender of Dunkirk to Spanish 29 September–3 October: Condé becomes violently ill and unable to take command of the army 5 October: Turenne withdraws his army by stealth from Villeneuve-SaintGeorges and establishes his base at Corbeil, then Senlis (11 Oct.), escaping from Condé’s blockade. 11 October: Death of Chavigny weakens negotiations between Mazarin and Condé 11 October: Surrender of Barcelona to Castilian troops 13 October: Condé and his troops leave Paris together with the army of Lorraine 21 October: Entry of the king into Paris 22 October: Lit de Justice in the presence of the reunited Parlement. Gaston d’Orléans and many frondeurs accept the king’s amnesty 22 October: Surrender of Casale-Monferrato to Spanish; garrisoned by troops of duke of Mantua 26 October to 20 November: Condé captures a succession of fortified places on the Champagne frontier and in the Barrois 18 December: Turenne’s army manages to recapture Bar-le-Duc 19 December: Arrest of Cardinal de Retz

1653

10 January: Royalist recapture of Château-Porcien 3 February: Mazarin returns to Paris and is conducted into the city by king 24 July: Agreements between the princely party in Bordeaux and duc de Candale 31 July: Peace proclaimed in Bordeaux

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Index Admiral (and Grand Master of Navigation) 52–53, 179–80, 188 Agen 84, 92, 108–09, 115, 198 agriculture 13–14, 59, 175, 190–94, 202–03, 211–12, 247 Aiguillon, Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot, duchesse de 149–50 Albret, duché d’ 86, 148 Alexander VII, pope (Fabio Chigi) 269 Aligre, Etienne 124, 165–66, 170, 235, 238–39 Aligre, Louis (maréchal de camp) 188–89 Aligre, Michel (intendant d’armée) 187–89 Alsace 21, 39, 101, 145, 223–24, 266, 275 Amiens 193 Ampus, Marie de Brancas, marquise d’ 149 Andilly, Arnauld d’ 160 Angers 111–13, 115, 197–98, 205, 266 Angoulême, Louis-Emmanuel de Valois, duc d’ 132, 186 Angoumois 109 Anjou 84, 110, 266 Anne of Austria, queen of France 4, 60, 159, 218, 233, 236, 238, 251 as regent 28–31, 38, 40–41, 48, 52–54, 65, 78, 80 attitude to Mazarin 49, 71–73, 96, 98–99, 106–07, 109–10, 147–48, 236 Argenson, René de Voyer de Paulmy d’ (ambassador in Venice) 107, 183–84 armies 194–96, French royal 31, 33, 39, 42, 60–61, 116–17, 127–28, 138, 140, 144–45, 167, 219, 226, 239, 244, 255 Harcourt’s (in S.W. France) 91–93, 107–09, 112, 127, 130, 160, 196, 198, 246–48 Lorraine, duke of 68, 79, 101, 111–12, 127–28, 135, 139, 143, 154, 163, 167, 196, 199–200, 209, 218, 223, 239, 242–43 Mazarin’s 71, 80, 97–98, 101–03, 112, 114, 177, 196 Princes’ 92, 108–12, 114–15, 127–28, 136–38, 159–60, 165, 177, 198, 207, 218–19, 233–35, 238, 242, 256–57

Spanish army of Flanders 23, 45, 63, 103, 111, 127–28, 140–41, 153–54, 163–64, 167, 172–74, 178–79, 196, 207, 218, 227, 229, 242–43, 245, 256–57, 268–69 Swedish 22, 33, 59 arrière-ban 209 Arnauld, la mère Jacqueline-MarieAngélique 200, 202–03, 206, 209, 214 Arpajon 127, 136 Arras 33, 176, 178, 190, 269–70 artillery, importance of 113, 118, 143–44, 197–98, 245 Aumale, Henri d’Orléans, duc d’ (historian) 122, 149 Aumont, Antoine, marquis de Villequier, marshal d’ 102, 180 Aumont, César d’ 134, 207 Auvergne 192, 210 Bailleul, Nicolas de 105, 121 Baltazar, Jean 159 Bapaume 102, 264 Bar, Guy de 102–03 Bar-le-Duc 244–45 Barrois 135, 244, 247, 254 Barberini, Antonio 29 Barcelona 15, 174, 176, 180–81, 184–90, 196, 213, 230, 240, 262, 268 Bartet, Isaac 78, 97, 98, 250 Bastille 143–44 Beaufort, François de Bourbon, duc de 54, 111–13, 115, 120, 127, 132, 155–56, 158–59, 198, 201–02, 204, 207, 219, 242 Beauvais 163, 214 Beik, William (historian) 25, 279 Belfort 246 Bellegarde 58, 107, 246 Belle Île 275 Bellièvre, Pomponne de 18 Bergerac 84 Bergues 173 Beringhen, Henri de 106, 150, 162 Berry 97, 192, 198, 219 Béthune 33, 178, 180 Bléneau 46, 115–20, 130, 136, 146, 195, 202, 240 Blois 114–15

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Bluet, sr de 104, 107, 112, 118, 121, 138, 161–62, 164 Bonaparte, Napoléon 50 Bonneau, Thomas 40 Bordeaux 2, 58–59, 83–84, 109, 131, 145, 160, 196, 246–48, 257, 267 Bouchu, Jean 133 Bougy, Jean, marquis de 108, 246 Bouillon, duchy of 169, 215–17, 237 Bouillon, Frédéric-Maurice de La Tour d’Auvergne, duc de 58, 85–86, 111, 133, 148, 152 Boulogne 103, 179 Boulonnais 101, 102 Bourges 91, 118 Bouteville, François-Henri de Montmorency, comte de 246 Bouthillier, Claude 29, 31 Brachet, Jacques 272 Brandenburg, Elector of (Friedrich-Wilhelm I) 68, 94, 101 Brasset, Henri 179, 180 Braudel, Fernand (historian) 10–11 Breisach 79, 224–25, 246, 265–66, 275–76 Brienne, Henri-Auguste de Loménie, comte de 2, 31, 79, 97, 100, 106, 173, 180 Brézé, Jean-Armand de Maillé, marquis de 40, 52 Brideau, Colonel 264 Brie 209, 220 Brisembourg 107 Brissac, François de Cossé, duc de 252 Brittany 113, 177, 202, 214, 254 Brives-sur-Charente 108 Broglio, comte Francesco 102–03, 163, 165, 197 Brouage 84, 93, 205, 249, 265, 275 Broussel, Pierre 39, 144, 158, 226–27 Brühl, château of 66, 68–69, 71, 79, 89, 99, 169, 275 Brussels 66, 68, 103, 167, 207, 256 Burgundy 58–59, 107, 115, 133, 145, 154, 239, 243, 246, 273 Bussy de Vere, regiment of 204 Bussy, Roger de Rabutin, comte de 206 Bussy-Lameth, Antoine-François, comte de 254 cabale des importants 31 Caillet, Jacques 222–23 Calais 176, 180, 248 Cambrai 54, 141 Candale, Louis-Charles-Gaston de Nogaret de La Valette, duc de 152, 246, 247–48, 263 Carrier, Hubert (historian) 6 Casale-Monferrato 15, 21, 29, 174, 176, 181–84, 240, 268

Catalonia 33, 53, 109, 174, 184–85, 188–89, 196, 248, 262, 268–69 revolt of 32, 33, 34, 174, 176 cavalry 23, 45, 59, 108, 112, 115, 117, 135, 138–39, 141, 180, 184, 197–98, 220, 222, 244 Châlons-sur-Marne 244–45 Chambre des comptes (Paris) 38, 40, 126, 227 Chambre-Saint-Louis, assemblies in 38–39, 126–27 Champagne 60, 63, 95, 102, 104, 112–13, 134, 153, 163, 196–97, 204, 207, 214, 229, 239, 242, 244, 247, 254, 257 Charente, river 84, 91–93, 226 Charenton 141–42, 218, 220 Charles I, king of Britain 41 Charlevoix, sr de 224 Charleville-Montolympe 254 Charrier, Guillaume 253 Chartres 201–02 Châteaudun 133, 202 Châteauneuf, Charles l’Aubespine, marquis de 76, 78, 90–91, 93, 96–97, 99, 237, 249, 251 Château-Porcien 59, 173, 243, 255 Château-Thierry 86, 169, 220 Châtillon 120, 127 Châtillon, Isabelle-Angélique de MontmorencyBouteville, duchesse de 148–49 Chauny 163 Chavigny, Léon Bouthilllier, comte de 29, 31, 34, 77, 88, 96, 106, 110, 115, 250 as negotiator for Condé 146–47, 150, 162, 223, 230, 232, 234 Cherasco, Treaty of (1631) 21 Chéruel, Adolphe (historian) 4–5 Chevreuse, forest of 210 Chevreuse, Charlotte-Marie de Lorraine, Mlle de 49, 81 Chevreuse, Marie-Aimée de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de 49, 54, 61–62, 76, 78, 81, 149, 155 Christina, duchess of Savoy 30, 65, 184 Cinq Mars, Henri Coeffier de Ruzé, marquis de 28 civil war 9, 14–15, 199–200 Clermont 102, 135, 245 Clinchamp, Bernardin de Bourqueville, baron de 112, 127, 136–138, 207, 229 Cognac 92, 198 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 50, 69–70, 90, 274 Coligny, Jean de, comte de Saligny 259 Cologne 98, 101 Cologne, archbishop-elector of (Maximilian Henry of Wittelsbach) 65–66, 68, 79, 169

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 Commercy 244 Compiègne 154, 163, 227 Concini, Concino 19 Condé, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, princesse de 44, 52, 58 Condé, Henri II de Bourbon, prince de 22, 31, 44, 46, 52 Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, prince de passim ambitions and career 11–12, 46–48, 233, 240–41, 271 arrest and imprisonment 55–61, 63–64, 102, 253 departure from France 151, 242, 278 Lorraine, alliance with duke of 112, 234–35, 241–42 Paris, management of 53–54, 114–15, 118, 120–21, 145, 155–59, 207–08, 239, 242 party, management of 93–94, 97, 133, 151–52, 157–59, 164–65, 231, 241–42, 246, 248, 256–57, 259–60 Mazarin, antipathy towards 44, 49–50, 68, 74, 89, 240, 267–68 military leadership of 31, 33, 39, 45–46, 109, 114–17, 118, 141–43, 222–23, 227–29, 242–43, 256–57 personality flaws 48–49, 80–81, 87, 241, 256, 260 support for the crown 40–42, 47 willingness to negotiate 84–85, 96–97, 146–49, 151, 162–64, 234, 238–39, 240, 257 Conti, Armand de Bourbon, prince de 41, 49, 56, 76, 81, 109, 131, 148, 159–60, 191, 198, 248, 268 Constant, Jean-Marie (historian) 1, 7 Corbeil 123, 166, 229 Corbie, ‘year of ’ (1636) 167 Coquault, Oudart 200, 205n.143 Council, royal 19, 52, 56, 62, 65, 72–73, 74, 77, 87–91, 96, 105, 114, 147–48, 150, 153, 160–61, 164, 169, 231, 236–38, 251, 264 Cour des aides (Paris) 38 Cour des aides (Bordeaux) 234–36, 238 Court (royal) 73–74, 84, 97, 106–07, 115, 118, 143, 145, 150, 153–54, 160–62, 164, 196, 219, 222, 226, 228, 230, 231, 236–38, 240, 244, 245, 249, 251, 255, 262, 267, 277 Courtrai 33, 269 Coutances, bishop of (Claude Auvry) 74 Cremona 33 Créqui, Charles de, duc de Poix 262 Crescentino 183 Créteil 218 Cromwell, Oliver/Protectorate 265, 269

301

Dammartin 140, 163 Damville, François Christophe de Lévis, duc de 124, 150 Damvilliers 245 Day of barricades (27 Aug 1648) 39 Descimon, Robert (historian) 77 Deyon, Pierre 213 Dijon 58, 107, 133, 243 Dinant 80, 89 Dognon, Louis Foucauld de St-GermainBeaupré, comte de 81, 93, 179, 194, 205, 233–35, 238, 249, 265 Doullens 64, 102 Du Buisson et d’Aubenay, Baudot, N-F, sr 161, 200 ducs et pairs 152, 159, 261 Dunes, battle of (1658) 270 Dunkirk 15, 33, 94, 101, 102, 140, 167, 174, 176, 178–81, 218, 227, 229–30, 248, 268–69 Dupâquier, Jacques (historian) 213 Dutch Republic 21, 35, 65, 94, 103, 174, 179, 248–49 eclipse, solar 121 Elbeuf, Charles de Lorraine, duc d’ 263 Empire, Holy Roman 94, 197, 269 England 180, 196, 248, 258 Civil Wars 2, 11, 42, 199 English Channel 176, 180 Épernon, Bernard de Nogaret de La Valette, duc de 25, 58, 83, 107, 133, 152, 243, 246, 263, 273 Estates-General, meetings of 17, 133–34, 210 Estissac, Barthélemy, baron d’ 93 Estrades, Godefroy comte d’ (governor of Dunkirk) 94, 101–02, 178–79 Étampes 118, 127–28, 135–40, 142, 196, 202–03, 208 Fabert, Abraham (governor of Sedan) 77, 94–95, 97–98, 99, 101–03, 223, 230, 232, 245, 276 Falcombel, Jean-Pierre 272 Feillet, Alphonse (historian), 3, 12 Ferdinand III of Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor 68 financiers 25, 36–39, 40, 42, 125, 177, 195, 270–71, 272, 274 Fismes 163, 173 Flanders (see Spanish Netherlands) Flanders frontier 32–33, 113–14, 167, 173–74, 195, 226, 257 flooding, impact of 12–13, 63, 92, 101, 192–94, 197 foreign policy 33–34, 171–190, 230, 268–70

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Fouquet, abbé Basile 231, 233, 234–35, 237–38 Fouquet, Nicolas 162, 269, 270, 272, 274, 275, 276 Fouquet de Croissy, Antoine 130, 207 François I, king of France 124 Fronde, la 11, 12, 14–17, 77, 85–86, 111, 131, 175, 262–63, 270, 272, 277–78 course of 1–2, 39–42 interpretations of 2–7, 47–48, 264 women’s involvement in 3, 62, 144, 149 Frondeurs 1, 17, 41, 47, 55, 64, 125, 153, 242, 245, 249–50, 279 Fuensaldaña, Alonso Pérez de Vivero, count of 140, 163, 218, 227, 242, 245, 256 Gassion, Jean comte de 45 Gaston (see Orléans) Gaudin, Jacques 90, 93–94, 141, 147, 163 Gien 115, 118, 136 Girard, Abraham 259 Gironde 91, 111, 247–48 Gonesse 154, 166, 220 Gondi, Paul de (see Retz) Gondi, Jean-François de, archbishop of Paris 54, 251–54 Gonzaga, Carlo II, duke of Mantua 181, 184 Gonzague, Anne de Gonzague de Clèves (princesse Palatine) 59, 62, 77–78, 103, 149, 252 Goubert, Pierre (historian) 213 Goulas, Nicolas 146–7, 239 Gourville, Jean Hérauld de 148, 226, 230 grain prices 37, 41n.138, 166, 187, 192–94, 202 Gramont, Antoine de, comte de Guiche 25 Grancey, Jacques Rouxel de Médavy, comte de 102, 261 Grand-Mesnil, Marie-Noëlle (historian) 6 Gravel, Robert de 95, 101, 103 Gravelines 32, 102, 140, 178–79, 181, 261 Guienne 58, 83, 97, 113, 115, 118, 128, 133, 159–60, 177, 188, 196, 198, 209, 214, 219, 222, 224–26, 246–47, 257 Ham 102, 266 Hapsburg dynasty 20, 22 Harcourt, Henri de Guise, comte d’ 25, 33, 49, 53, 54, 58, 152 Breisach, claimed by 160, 223–25, 246, 265–66, 275–76 Guienne, commander of army in 91–93, 96, 98, 107–09, 114–15, 118, 127–28, 160, 185, 196, 198 Haro, don Luis de 160 Henri IV, king of France 16, 18 Hervart, Barthélemy 42

Hocquincourt, Charles de Monchy, comte d’ 102–03, 112, 115–18, 127, 136, 173, 196, 198, 266 Honnecourt, battle of (1642) 31 Huguenots 16, 20, 92, 130 Hurepoix 208 Île de France 177, 208, 214, 239 Innocent X, pope (Giovanni Battista Pamphilj) 65, 69, 78, 113, 253 Italy 21, 174, 177, 188, 196, 212–13, 240, 268–69, 272 Jacquart, Jean (historian) 13, 208, 213–14 Jametz 135 Jansenism and Jansenist doctrine 253 Joly, Claude 125 Joly, Guy 253 Jouhaud, Christian (historian) 6, 77 La Bassée 33, 102, 180 La Capelle 59, 135, 173 La Fère 261, 275 La Ferrière, sr de 186–88 La Ferté-Imbault, Jacques d’Étampes, marquis de 102 La Ferté, Henri de Senneterre, marquis de 95, 97, 102, 140–43, 194, 198, 236 Lagny 135, 139, 140, 166, 204 La Louvière, marquis de 144 La Meilleraye, Charles de La Porte, duc de 112–13, 198 La Mothe-Houdancourt, Philippe, comte de 186–89 Landrecies 33 Langlade, Jacques de 234 Languedoc 20, 87, 108, 130–31, 193, 214 Laon 243, 261 La Rochefoucauld, François VI, prince de Marsillac, duc de 2, 83, 92, 120, 222, 240–42, 259 La Rochelle 20, 84, 93, 179, 205, 234–35, 238, 275 La Suze, Gaspard de Champagne, comte de 246 La Vieuville, Charles de Coskaer, marquis de 19, 90, 93, 105, 125, 177–78 Le Boindre, Jean 28 Le Havre 60, 64, 76, 77, 80 Lenet, Pierre 2, 83, 159–60, 198, 202, 222, 228, 230, 246–47, 259 Lens, battle of (1648) 32, 33, 39, 54, 268 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor 269 Leopold-Wilhelm von Habsburg, archduke 14, 97, 140, 167, 207, 218, 256

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 Lérida 33, 40, 53 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel (historian) 11, 213 Lesdiguières, François de Bonne de Créquy 272 Le Tellier, Michel 29, 31, 53, 59, 64, 73–74, 89, 91, 103, 124, 170, 180, 183, 185, 187–88, 205, 215, 220, 224–25, 240, 243, 250, 252, 261, 264, 272 involvement in negotiations 223, 230, 232–38 L’Hôpital, François du Hallier, maréchal de 122, 158 Liège, bishopric of 95, 101, 169 Ligny-en-Barrois 244–45 Lionne, Hughes de 64, 73–74, 89, 99 lit de justice 37, 39, 74, 250, 270 Little Ice Age 12–15, 104, 191–94 logistical support/supply operations 98, 127, 135–36, 138–39, 179, 181, 185–86, 195, 199, 201–02, 208–09, 223, 225–26, 239, 242, 272 Loire river/valley 84, 87, 113, 127, 130, 192, 198, 202, 207–08, 214 Longueil, Pierre de 222 Longueil, René de, marquis de Maisons 90 Longueville, Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon, duchesse de 85, 248 Longueville, Henri II d’Orléans, prince de Neuchâtel, duc de 41, 50, 54–56, 76, 128–30, 135, 153–54, 194–95, 244 alliance with Condé 84–85, 111, 113, 199 Lorraine, Charles IV, duke of 53, 68, 150, 169, 196, 208, 222–23, 233, 257 alliances with princes 112, 135, 139, 177, 220–22, 234–35 Condé’s desire to emulate 241–42 duplicity of 135, 139–40, 159–60, 167–68, 220–22, 227–29, 238–39, 241 Lorraine, duchy of 22, 102, 112, 140, 239 Lorraine, Henri de, duc de Guise 131–32 Louis XIII, king of France 17, 18–19, 27, 49, 80, 90, 147 Louis XIV, king of France 138, 226, 250, 260, 265, 277–79 absolutism of, post-1661 3, 5, 8, 10, 18, 65, 279 amnesty to rebels 59, 217–18, 250 declaration of majority (7 Sept 1651) 8, 74, 81, 89–90, 106, 111 peace negotiations initiated by 155, 161, 230 public support for Mazarin 74–75, 109–10, 168–69 regency in name of 27–28, 56–57 Luynes, Charles d’Albert de, connétable de France 19 Luynes, Louis-Charles d’Albert de 209–10 Luxembourg, Palais 77, 143 Lyon 154, 213

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Machiavelli, Niccolò 51 Madrid 83, 151, 236, 256 Mailly, Jean-Baptiste (historian) 2 maîtres des requêtes 25, 37 Mancini, Paul 145 Mancini, Laure-Victoire 53, 55, 132 Manicamp, Achille de Longueval, marquis de 102, 261 Mantes 110, 166 Mantua, duchy of 21, 29, 213 Mardyck 33, 102, 174, 178, 269 Marie de Médicis, queen of France 17, 19, 20–21 Marigny, Jacques Carpentier de 159, 163–64, 218 Marin, Denis 40 Marne, river 141, 163, 229 Marseilles 131, 186 maréchaux de France, creation of 77n.2, 102, 159, 234–35, 261–62 Marsin, Jean-Gaspard-Ferdinand de 81, 108, 153, 159, 186, 194, 196, 198, 233–34, 246–47 Martin, Henri-Jean (historian) 6 Martinozzi, Anne-Marie 263, 268 Mazarin, Giulio Mazzarino, cardinal passim ambitions of/sense of entitlement 12, 34–35, 49–51, 69–71, 224, 246, 248, 250, 265, 268, 274–76 Anne of Austria, relationship with 32, 49, 70–75, 94–95, 99–101, 128, 147–48, 233–34, 236, 255, 260 cupidity of 68–69, 165, 274–75 early career 29–31 exiles of 9, 64–75, 88–89, 94–103, 120, 134, 146–48, 160–65, 168–69, 215–17, 230, 243–44, 252–53 financial resources 95, 98, 275 foreigner/outsider 17, 49–50 foreign policy, successes/failures of 33–34, 60–61, 268–70 hostility towards 39, 56–57, 104–07, 237–38, 255 historians’ interpretations of 4, 55, 70–71, 98–99, 257–58, 260, 267, 278–79 Lorraine, negotiations with 135, 169, 220 Louis XIV, relationship with 62–63, 234, 255, 277–79 minister under Louis XIII 29–30 nieces 53, 55, 68, 132, 246, 248, 249, 263, 268, 273 party of 77, 95, 102, 104, 112, 147, 151–52, 236, 244, 260–66, 271–72, 279 self-deception/misjudgements of 35, 62–64, 66–68, 77–79, 219–22, 236–37, 252–54

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Mazarin, Giulio Mazzarino, cardinal (cont.) settlement, willingness to negotiate 146–47, 163–64, 223, 230–38 trial of 66, 98, 250 mazarinades 5–7, 17, 27, 42, 51, 54, 57, 60, 87, 160, 164, 276 Mazarin, palais (Paris) 69, 106, 227 Melun 133, 140, 161, 166 Mercoeur, Louis de Bourbon, duc de 53, 55, 72–73, 97, 132, 152, 186 Metz 79, 275 Mézières 254 Michelet, Jules (historian) 3 Milan 19, 33, 181, 213 Military office, inflation of 102, 261–63 Millet de Jeure, Guillaume 99 ministers of state, (role and powers of) 18–19, 25–26, 30–31, 46–47, 89, 90–91, 232, 260, 278–79 Miossens, César-Phébus d’Albret, comte de 262 Molé, Mathieu 38, 55–57, 62, 90, 93, 97, 105, 161 monarchy (political role of) 17–18, 22, 27, 63, 86–87, 120, 150, 260, 266–67 Monferrato, duchy of 32, 181 Montague, Walter 150, 236 Montbas, baron de 204 Montargis 115, 120 Montauban 92 Montglat, F, de Paule de Clermont, marquis de 136 Montmorency, Henri II, duc de 21 Montpellier 130 Montpensier, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, (Mademoiselle) 2, 136, 143–44 Montpezat, Jacques de Cominges, sr de 181 Montrond 81, 115, 219–20, 231, 233, 236, 238, 261 Moreau, Celestin (historian), 6 Motteville, Françoise Bertaut, Mme de 2, 46, 72, 98 Mouzon 95, 173 Münster, peace of (1648) 31, 35, 39, 174 mutinies amongst troops 179, 188–89, 207–08, 255 Nantes 113, 198, 254 Naples, revolt of (1647–48) 33, 35, 131, 174 Naudé, Gabriel 104, 106 Navailles, Philippe de Montaut de Bénac, duc de 102 Nemours, Charles-Amédée de Savoie, duc de 83, 111–13, 115, 117, 120, 127, 135, 159, 198, 202, 207 Nemours, Marie d’Orléans-Longueville, duchesse de 72, 98, 261 Nesmond, François-Théodore de 160–61

Nevers, Charles de Gonzague, duc de (duke of Mantua) 21 Nîmes 130 Noailles, Anne, duc de 189, 213 nobility assemblies of 17, 133–35, 204, 210–11, 270 historians’ perception of 8, 47 Noirmoutier, Louis de La Trémoïlle, duc de 254 Nördlingen, battle of (1634) 22 Normandy 58–59, 84–85, 128–30, 135, 153–54, 192, 214, 244 Novion, Nicolas Potier de 168 Noyon 163 office holders 8, 23, 25, 54, 156 sale of office 35, 37, 125–26 Oise, river 163, 229 “Old Fronde” 54, 58–59, 61, 76–79, 81, 96, 158, 160 Oleron, Île d’ 249, 265, 275 Ondedei, Zongo 64, 69, 95, 104, 161–62 Orléans 59, 114, 136, 201 Orléans, Gaston-Jean-Baptiste, duc d’, uncle of Louis XIV 20–22, 28, 48, 56, 58–60, 90, 115, 130, 155–56, 201, 207, 210, 226, 231, 237, 240–1, 251, 260 Condé, alliance with 62, 86–88, 110–11, 118, 234, 238–39 Mazarin, hostility to 97, 99, 105–06, 110, 170 Retz, influence of 81, 88, 93, 96, 114, 118, 147, 251 Lieutenant General of France 110–11, 158 negotiations for settlement 119–20, 147–48, 162, 223, 233, 238–39, 242 party of 76–77, 239 relationship with Parlement 87–88, 97, 151, 162, 217–18 weakness of character 87, 143–44 Orbitello 33, 52 Ormée, l’ (Bordeaux) 2, 5, 7, 160, 247, 249 Ormesson, André d’ 214 Ormesson, Olivier d’ 2 Osnabrück 31, 39 Outram, Quentin (historian) 199 Palaiseau 136 Palluau, Philippe de Clairambault, comte de 194, 198, 219, 261 Parker, Geoffrey (historian) 14–15, 190–91 Parival, Jean-Nicholas de 14–15, 210 Paris 110, 114–15, 133, 136, 144, 147, 203, 205, 214, 219–20, 226, 228–29, 239, 253, 275

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 Condé, attitude to 57, 118, 120–27, 138, 141, 143–45, 154–59, 226–27 Crown’s attitude towards 40–42, 160–62, 222, 249–50 garde bourgeoise 121, 144, 207 hôtel de ville 122–23, 125, 155–59, 217 loyalist uprising in 144, 161–62, 226–27, 231, 235, 237 Mazarin, hostility to 59, 121, 135, 144, 150, 154–55, 170, 249–50, 253 moderate opinion in 123, 145, 156–57, 170 prévot des marchands (Paris) 122, 144, 155, 158–59, 226–27 subsistence of 41, 166, 208, 212 Paris Basin 130, 208, 219, 229–30, 239–40 Parlement of Bordeaux 234, 247 Parlement of Dijon 133 Parlement of Paris 1, 17, 25, 87, 93 and princes 121, 159, 166–67, 217–18 Mazarin, attacks on 40–42, 55–56, 60, 62, 97, 99, 104–05, 110, 150–51, 162 opposition to government 37–39, 95, 121–22, 158–59, 164, 167, 249–50, 270 regency, role in 28, 30, 31 ‘Parlement’ at Pontoise 164, 167, 168–69, 217, 227 Parlement of Rouen 104, 130 Parlement of Toulouse 131 Particelli d’Hémery, Michel 31, 36–38 Patin, Guy 267 Pavia (1655) 269 peasants, resistance to soldiers 201, 209–11, 214 Péronne 102, 266 Perpignan 33, 176, 189–90, 213 Perrault, Jean, President in Chambre des comptes 76 Philip IV, king of Spain 135, 149, 256–57 Philippsburg 33, 223–24, 275 Picardy 59, 63, 95, 102, 112–13, 173, 214, 244, 257 Piedmont, duchy of 176, 181, 183–84, 213 Piennes, Antoine de Brouilly, marquis de 183–84, 272 Pimentel de Prado y lo Bianco, Antonio 66, 70 Pinerolo 174, 176, 183–84, 240, 272 Piombino 33, 173 plague (and other epidemic diseases) 179, 193–94, 212–13, 246 Plessis-Bellière, comte de 262 Plessis-Besançon, Bernard du 163, 184 Plessis-Praslin, César, duc de Choiseul, marshal de 60, 72, 99–100, 150, 173 plunder and looting 121, 165–66, 194–95, 200–01, 204–05, 207, 209, 218–19

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Poitiers 91, 93, 102, 104, 111–12, 196 Poitou 91, 209, 214 Poland 65, 202 Pontoise 154, 163–64, 166, 227, 249 popular revolt 36, 192, 210, 214, 270 population loss in 1652 13–14, 171, 199, 213–14 Port-Royal-des-Champs 209–12 Portugal 174, 269 Prague, Peace of (1635) 22 Praslin, François de Choiseul, marquis de 134 princes étrangers 86, 136, 152, 263 princes of the blood, political role of 17–18, 29, 32, 44–45, 49, 86–87, 147, 256 Proust, Marcel 1 Provence 20, 131–33, 148, 186, 193, 214 Puisieux, Charlotte d’Étampes-Valençay, Mme de 149–50 Pyrenees, Peace of the (1659) 8, 257, 269–70, 271 raison d’état 20, 26 Ranum, Orest (historian) 7, 144, 264–65 Ravenel, Jules (historian) 1 Regency fiscal policy of 36–38 military successes of 31–34 regency council 28, 30, 80, 147 Reims 167, 169, 200, 203 rentes sur l’hôtel de ville 124–27, 166, 177–78, 195, 251, 271 Rethel 59–60, 103, 167, 173, 243, 245 Retz, Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, cardinal de 2, 54, 63, 76, 81, 93, 106, 118, 128, 147, 155, 235, 237, 242, 249, 251–54, 258 ambitions for cardinalcy 61–62, 78–79, 113–14 Reuil, peace of 41 Rhine 21, 22, 101 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal-duc de 1, 5, 16–29, 30, 49–51, 70, 112, 231, 264, 268, 274 Rocroi, battle of (1643) 31, 45, 52, 268 Rohan, Henri de Chabot, duc de 84, 110–13, 146–47, 238 Rome 30, 69, 79, 251–52, 254 Rosas 33 Rouen 104, 153 Roussillon 32, 174, 176, 177, 188–89, 213, 248 Sacchetti, Gian-Francesco 29 Sainctot, Nicolas de 84, 97, 104 Saint-André, Alexandre du Puy, marquis de Montbrun 187–89 Saint-Ange, sr de 183

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Saint-Antoine, Porte/Faubourg of, battle at 142–46, 153, 195–96, 198, 262 Saint-Cloud 123–24, 140–42, 157, 203, 218 Saint-Denis 123–24, 140, 141–42, 154, 157, 161 Sainte-Menehould 243, 245 Saintes 92, 108–09, 266 Saint-Germain-en-Laye 40, 64–65, 124, 136, 146, 150, 249 Saint-Marcel 141, 144, 203, 207, 218 Saint-Sébastien 160 Saintonge 108, 209, 214 Saint-Quentin 102, 193 Sarlat 248 Saumur 112, 133 Sauvegrain (peasant leader) 210 Savoy-Piedmont, duchy of 65, 183–84, 213 Saxen-Weimar, Bernhard von 241 Schomberg, Charles de, duc d’Halluin 264, 275 Scudéry, Madeleine de 46 Sedan 77, 79, 94, 101, 103, 169, 217, 244, 275–76 Séguier, Pierre, duc de Villemor (Chancellor) 29, 31, 90, 159, 227 Seine, river 63, 140–42, 222, 225, 229 Senlis 134, 210, 229 Servien, Abel 65, 74, 89, 94, 249, 251, 271, 272, 276 peace negotiations and 231–32, 235–36 Servien, Ennemond (ambassador in Turin) 183, 272 Solitaires (of Port-Royal) 209–10 soldiers recruitment of 83, 91–92, 102, 123–24, 136, 154, 165–66, 219 foreign 196, 199–200, 209, 217, 256–57 German 94–95, 101–03, 138, 177, 196, 200, 220, 256 Irish 83 Swiss 65, 93, 124, 179, 264 Souvré, Jacques de 96, 238–39 sovereign courts 38–40, 61, 74, 106, 109–10, 122, 124–26, 146, 155, 235, 251 Spain 5, 19, 21–22, 34, 38, 39, 54, 174, 176, 181, 184, 241, 248, 262, 269–70 treaty with Condé 47, 83, 128, 135, 149, 162, 177, 219, 255–57 peace negotiations with France 8, 28–29, 31, 35, 40, 58, 146–51, 163, 232, 257–58, 270–71, 278–79 financial support for Condé 83, 160, 195, 202, 256 military support for Condé 59, 83, 135, 140–42, 153, 158, 160, 220 Spanish Netherlands 14, 33, 34, 111, 245 Stenay 84, 135, 196, 222, 245

Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de 18 Sully, Maximilien-François de Béthune, duc de 110–11 Suresnes 140, 203, 218 Sweden 21, 65 Swiss Confederation 65 Syme, Ronald (The Roman Revolution) 9, 11, 57, 194, 277 système/régime de l’extraordinaire 10, 22–29, 32, 34, 39–40, 42, 58, 268–71, 274, 279 Taillebourg 91, 108–09, 238 Talon, Omer 37, 159, 165, 169 Tarente, Henri-Charles de La Trémoïlle, prince de 49, 83, 91–92, 194, 238 Tavannes, Jacques de Sault, comte de 83–84, 112, 118, 127, 136, 140, 202, 229 taxation 35–37, 40, 83, 123, 125–26, 166, 174–75, 271 taxation, military (contributions and extortion) 109, 181, 194–95, 197–98, 200–01, 202, 205, 210 247, 256 Thionville 32, 52 Thirty Years’ War 19, 22, 195, 197, 199, 200, 204, 213, 222–23 Tilladet, Gabriel de Cassagnet, marquis de 224 Tonnay-Charente 92–93 Tortosa (Catalonia) 174 Toul 244–45 Toulon 131–32, 186 Toulouse 130–31 Touraine 134, 211 Trino (Monferrato) 32, 181 Turenne, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de 33, 39, 54, 127, 139–40, 149, 219 as military commander 45–46, 115–18, 136–40, 142–43, 148, 194, 196–97, 220–23, 225–26, 228–29, 239, 243, 245, 255 prince étranger status 49, 86, 133, 152, 263 support for Condé 41–42, 58–59, 85–86, 111, 173 support for crown 49, 68, 153–54, 160, 227 Turin 173, 176, 183, 272 Tuscany, Grand-Duchy of 173 Tuttlingen, defeat at (1643) 33, 243n.147 Valenciennes 269–70 Vallier, Jean 87, 107, 147, 150–51, 159 Valtelline pass 19 Vatteville, comte de Corbiers, baron de 83, 91, 111, 247 Vendôme, César de Bourbon, duc de 32, 50, 53, 132, 179–80, 188 Venice 107, 176, 213

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 Verrua 183 Vervins 173, 255 Villeneuve d’Agen 198, 246 Villeneuve-Saint-Georges 139, 209, 220–23, 225–26, 228 Villeroy, Nicolas de Neufville, marquis de 18 Villeroy, Nicolas de Neufville, first duc de 97, 262 Vincennes, château of 46, 59, 275 Viole, abbé 228, 230 Viole, Pierre (president) 48, 76, 109, 222, 228, 240 violence, extortion of armies/troops 14, 134, 136, 155, 165–66, 199–203, 210–11, 218–19 complicity of officers in 166, 189, 200, 204–09, 211 Voltaire, (Arouet, F-M) 3

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Waldeck, Johann, Graf zu 94, 98, 103 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, duke of Friedland 241 Wars of Religion, French 46, 156, 204 weather, impact of extreme 63, 191–94, 205–06, 245, 255 Wesel 101, 103 Westphalia, peace congress at 31, 34, 39, 66, 231 winter quarter payments 174–76, 177–78, 186, 190, 206, 271–72 winter quartering of troops 229, 243, 245 Wrangel, Karl-Gustav 33, 59, 241 Ypres 53, 173 Zusmarchausen, battle of (1648) 33

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OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 1/7/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 1/7/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 1/7/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 1/7/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 1/7/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 1/7/2020, SPi