In the spring of 1647, the new Prince de Condé was despatched to Catalonia to endeavour to retrieve the reverses sustained in that province, which had of late years earned an unenviable notoriety as the grave of French military reputations. He determined to lay siege to the fortress of Lerida, and, on 18 May, the trenches were opened gaily to the sound of violins. It was a fashion of the time, which made of a war a fête; but it was the hitherto invincible general who had, on this occasion, to pay the expenses of the music; for Lerida was resolutely defended, while the supplies and siege-artillery promised him by the Government did not arrive, and, after severe losses, he decided to raise the siege. Condé deserved credit for having placed the safety of his army before his pride; but it was his first reverse, and, though he was aware that he had done everything possible to ensure success, his mortification was none the less keen.
The memory of the Catalonian fiasco was brilliantly effaced in the following year, when, in command of the Army of Flanders, he gained, with comparatively trifling loss, the splendid victory of Lens, over an enemy much superior in numbers, whom, by a feigned retreat, he had succeeded in drawing from an almost unassailable position into a battle on level ground (20 August). This success hastened the conclusion of peace with the Emperor, and, on 24 October, 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia terminated thirty years of war and twelve years of negotiations, and extended the frontiers of France to the coveted line of the Rhine.
Left with Spain alone to face, there seemed every reason to hope that a great future awaited France, and that, as the result of two or three successful campaigns, she would be enabled to secure the same advantages in the North-East and South-West as she had already secured in the East. That this hope was only very partially realized, and that not until after more than ten years of further warfare, was due to that miserable internecine strife which, under the name of the Fronde, checked the victorious career of Condé at the age of twenty-seven, plunged France into a welter of anarchy, and sapped the very vitals of the nation.
This sanguinary and farcical struggle began with a contest between the Court and the Parlement of Paris, which, encouraged by the weakness of the Government and backed by popular feeling, was neglecting its judicial duties to encroach upon the political rights of the Crown and to claim an authority which even the States-General had never possessed. The “Importants”—the aristocratic cabal, headed by the two great turbulent Houses of Vendôme and Guise, which from the beginning of the regency had bitterly opposed the ascendency of Mazarin—and a number of discontented and ambitious princes, prelates, nobles and great ladies: Paul de Gondi, afterwards the Cardinal de Retz, La Rochefoucauld, the Duc and Duchesse de Longueville, the Prince de Conti, Turenne, and the Duc and Duchesse de Bouillon, threw in their lot with the popular cause.
Although Condé detested Mazarin and sympathized to a large extent with the opposition to the Minister, and though Madame de Longueville, who exercised great influence over both her brothers, made every effort to win him over to her cause, the sentiment of duty, which was not yet obscured, kept him faithful to the Court, and to the solicitations of the rebels he replied simply: “My name is Louis de Bourbon, and I do not wish to weaken the Crown.” An admirable maxim, which, however, he was very soon to abandon.
In the early morning of 6 January, the Court quitted Paris for Saint-Germain, a picturesque exodus of which the pen of la Grande Mademoiselle has traced an inimitable picture, and the rebellious capital was forthwith invested by the royal troops, under the command of Condé. The forces at the prince’s disposal were, however, insufficient to invest the city completely, and, though some roads were effectually closed, others remained open. Occasional skirmishes took place, but the only serious fighting occurred at Charenton on 8 February. In this affair, the Duc de Châtillon, husband of the beautiful Isabelle de Montmorency-Boutteville, was mortally wounded and expired the following day at Vincennes, whither he had been carried. With his death, the male line of the illustrious Admiral became extinct.
The widowed duchess received the sad news with comparative indifference, but, according to Madame de Motteville, “counterfeited grief, after the manner of ladies who love themselves too well to care for any one else.” She had not, indeed, waited for the death of her husband to establish tender relations with the fascinating Duc de Nemours, and was already aspiring to resume over the heart of Condé the empire which she had for a brief while exercised in former years.[198] Hitherto, the prince would appear to have given the lady but scant encouragement, for, though very far from indifferent to her charms, Châtillon was one of his closest friends, and the idea of engaging in a liaison with his wife was repugnant to his sense of honour. But, with the death of the duke, his scruples vanished, and not long afterwards Isabelle became his mistress, without, however, renouncing the Duc de Nemours, her relations with whom she was, of course, very careful to conceal from her titular lover.
On 12 March, 1649, the Peace of Rueil put an end to the war, though it was not until 18 August that the Court returned to Paris, after an absence of seven and a half months.
To the Parliamentary Fronde succeeded, at a short interval, the Fronde of the Princes, more difficult to characterize, since it was composed of little save disappointed ambitions and interested calculations, but also more difficult to conquer. The good understanding between Monsieur le Prince and Mazarin had been merely of a temporary nature, called into being by the danger to which the royal authority had found itself exposed, and it did not long survive the restoration of order. Condé’s natural pride and arrogance had been enormously increased by the events of the last few months, and he believed his support absolutely indispensable to the Government. The Regent and her Minister were willing to go to great lengths to secure a continuance of it, but no ordinary concessions were likely to satisfy a man who regarded himself as the saviour of the Crown, and believed that he held its fate in the hollow of his hand, and whose jealous and suspicious mind, skilfully played upon by his sister, seemed to see in every action of Mazarin a carefully calculated move to strengthen the Cardinal’s position or to diminish his own prestige. His increasing pretensions rendered him more of a rebel than the Frondeurs themselves; his arrogance disgusted every one. He exacted from Mazarin a written agreement whereby he undertook not to make any appointment of importance in Church or State unless he had first been consulted, or to arrange any marriage for his nephews and nieces without his consent. “In his ordinary life he had such mocking airs that no one was able to endure him. However high their rank, people were obliged to wait an interminable time in Monsieur le Prince’s ante-chamber. In the visits which were paid him he manifested so disdainful an ennui, that he showed plainly that they were wearying him.”[199] Finally, having exasperated the Regent and Mazarin beyond endurance, while, at the same time, he had contrived to alienate the Frondeurs, who had been eager for his alliance, the latter and the Court joined forces against him, and, on 18 January, 1650, he, with his brother, the Prince de Conti, and the Duc de Longueville, were arrested at the Palais-Royal, whither they had come to attend a meeting of the Council, and conducted to the Château of Vincennes. Madame de Longueville, whose arrest had also been determined upon, succeeded in making her escape to her husband’s government of Normandy.