Unfortunately the Parlement itself was a body wholly unfit to lead a constitutional struggle. A close corporation of magistrates without representative character, without legislative or political rights, without traditions to which to appeal, without force on which to rely, was ludicrously unfit to stand forth as the champion of national interests against a Crown, which at that very moment had assumed the headship of European politics. Its ally the city of Paris was more unfit still. The close-fisted bourgeoisie, anxious for its privileges, and trembling for its money-bags, the turbulent populace of the streets intoxicated with its own importance, a small knot of interested agitators like Gondi, a larger body of selfish aristocrats and frivolous women, half fools, half knaves, like the duke of Beaufort and the duchesse de Longueville, were not the stuff of which successful constitutional revolutions are made. As a natural result the movement began at once to deteriorate. Hatred of Mazarin was a common factor between the constitutionalists of the Parlement, the populace of the streets, and princes of the blood-royal and the nobility. The lead taken by the nobility and the populace. To gain the support necessary to meet the forces of the Crown, the Parlement had to rely on the city and to appeal to the nobles. The latter eagerly joined the movement in order to recover their old political influence and to oust the hated minister. They cared not a sou for the Parlement. In their heart of hearts they hated and they dreaded the noblesse de la robe and their constitutional ambitions. They wanted back the old days of private anarchy and public plunder. They loathed the very idea of constitutional reform and common right. From the moment that the nobles took the direction of the movement it loses its constitutional character, it becomes only the last and the basest act in the long drama of the struggle between the nobles and the royal authority, it has for its direct and most unmistakable object, not the amelioration of a down-trodden people, but the overthrow of an unpopular minister.
Factiousness of the movement.
From this point then the Fronde loses its chief interest and its story may be briefly told. Seeing the weakness of the court, the nobles flocked to take the leadership of the movement out of the hands of the Parlement and Gondi. The prince de Conti, the duc de Bouillon, the duc de Beaufort the popular roi des halles, the due de Longueville and his intriguing fascinating wife, all rushed to Paris. Even Turenne, the patriot and the incorruptible, was for the moment seduced by the duchesse de Longueville to draw his sword against the court. Mazarin however succeeded in detaching Condé from the side of the rebellion. On the 6th of January 1649 the court fled secretly to S. Germain, and nominating Condé to the command of its army prepared to bring Paris to its senses by open war. But for the time both sides shrunk from so terrible an alternative, and through the intervention of Molé, the president of one of the chambers of the Parlement and a man of unblemished integrity, the peace of Ruel was arranged on the 1st of April 1649 on the basis of the status quo. The Peace of Ruel, 1649. For nearly a year quiet was restored, but it was a peace only in name, the intrigues, the libels, and the agitation continued as before. Condé in particular made himself odious to every one by the insolence of his pride and the theatrical ebullitions of his passionate nature. Even the patience of Mazarin became exhausted, and on the 18th of January 1650 he astonished France by suddenly committing Condé Conti and Longueville to prison. It was a gross blunder. Imprisonment of the princes, 1650. The imprisonment of the princes gave his enemies what they most wanted, a common rallying cry, while the arbitrary character of the proceeding disgusted moderate men. The feeling became general that France would never gain peace as long as Mazarin remained at the head of affairs. The provinces of Normandy Guienne and Burgundy declared against the court, and the Fronde recommenced with a definite programme of the release of the princes and the banishment of Mazarin. The risings in the provinces. Like so many other risings against royal authority, it took the outward form of a rising in the true interests of the Crown to rid it of a bad and incapable minister. The revolts were put down in Normandy and Burgundy without difficulty, in Guienne by the capture of Bordeaux after a protracted siege by the queen-mother and the young king in person, but the flame continued to spread. Paris declared against the court. The duc d’Orléans joined the movement. Turenne invaded France at the head of a Spanish army, but was defeated by Duplessis near Rethel on the 17th of December. Mazarin, ever timid, determined to yield. Flight of Mazarin, 1651. In January 1651 he left France secretly, having ordered the release of the princes, and betook himself to Brühl in the electorate of Köln from whence he still directed affairs by correspondence with the queen-mother and the ministers, Lionne Letellier and Servien. On the news of the retirement of Mazarin, the Fronde was beside itself with joy, the Parlement passed a decree of banishment against him, and sold his library and works of art. Paris treated the court as its prisoners, and received the princes in triumph on their return from prison in February 1651. But Condé soon made himself more intolerable to the leaders of the Fronde by his rapacity and violence than he had been before to Mazarin; and Anne by a clever move was able to detach the Frondeurs from him and drive him into open rebellion against the young king who had just been declared of age.
The movement a struggle between the nobles and the Crown.
The quarrel now openly appeared in its true light of a struggle between the nobles and the king. Condé, supported by Nemours, Le Rochefoucauld, La Tremouille and others of the nobles, raised the south in revolt. Anne and the king on their side put three armies in the field. Turenne came back to his allegiance, and Mazarin returned from his self-imposed exile and joined the court at Poitiers on the 28th of February 1652. For eight months civil war raged and France lay at the mercy of rival armies, while the foreign enemy took advantage of her misery to advance his frontiers in the north-east. It looked as if the very policy which Richelieu and Mazarin had carried out so ruthlessly at the expense of Germany was about to recoil on the head of France. But no sooner were the two sides definitely arrayed against each other as the party of Condé and the nobility against the party of Mazarin and the royalists, than it was seen that though Paris would fight to the death against Mazarin, France would not fight against the king. Condé found no adequate support in the country. Foiled by the superior military genius of Turenne near Blenau in April, he was defeated at the Faubourg S. Antoine in July, and must have been utterly destroyed, had not the energy and enthusiasm of Mademoiselle, the daughter of Gaston of Orléans, persuaded the citizens of Paris to admit him and his beaten army within the walls. Quarrel between Condé and Paris. But Paris had no love for Condé. It simply cherished an undying hatred for Mazarin, and a supreme conviction of its own importance. It was the only force in France still opposed to the court, and Mazarin found himself in consequence the only obstacle to peace. By a voluntary retirement to Sedan in August 1652, he built a bridge by which the Parisians could return to their allegiance to the king without compromising their opposition to the minister. They eagerly availed themselves of it. Condé, finding himself deserted on all sides, openly joined the enemies of France, and carried on for eight years more a foreign war against his country as the leader of the armies of Spain. Flight of Condé, and the end of the Fronde, 1652. On the 21st of October Louis entered Paris at the head of his army and the Fronde was at an end. From that moment the royal authority shone out pre-eminent over all the forces of the country until the Revolution. Constitutionalism as well as privilege, local feeling as well as legal right lay helpless before the all-mastering Crown. The leaders of the Fronde were exiled, many of its supporters put to death on various pretexts, none of them admitted even to the shadow of political power. The Parlement were forbidden to deal either directly or indirectly with the affairs of state. For a century it became but the registration office of the royal edicts and the channel of the royal justice, while the nobles, deprived of all political power and sadly weakened in local influence, accepted the service of a splendid court in willing exchange for the precarious dignity of half-independent feudatories.
Return of Mazarin to power.
When the triumph of the court was assured, Mazarin emerged from his retirement and again took up the reins of government. For the nine years that were left to him of life and power, he strove to repair the havoc wrought by the Fronde in his private fortune and his public policy. His best efforts were directed to the maintenance of the war with Spain, which with the help of England was brought to such a successful issue by the peace of the Pyrenees in 1660. In domestic affairs he paid little attention to anything except the amassing of a prodigious fortune in the management of which Colbert received his first lessons of finance. He had none of Richelieu’s love for the greatness of France. He did nothing for her arts, her literature, or her sciences. He cared even less than Richelieu for the welfare and happiness of the people. His financial administration was corrupt to the core; offices were sold, revenue anticipated, state property alienated for the personal advantage of the cardinal. Had it not been that he was soon succeeded by the best finance minister that France ever produced, the world would not so lightly have passed over the fact that Mazarin on his death in March 1661 bequeathed to Louis XIV., not merely absolute power at home and the leadership of Europe abroad, but a home administration at once so oppressive and so corrupt, that had it lasted but a few years longer, France could hardly have escaped hopeless bankruptcy and irretrievable ruin.
CHAPTER VIII
NORTHERN EUROPE TO THE TREATY OF OLIVA
Character and policy of Oxenstjerna—The Form of Government—War between Sweden and Denmark—Treaty of Brömsebro—Christina of Sweden—Her character and ability—Frederick William of Brandenburg—His character and political aims—The question of Pomerania—Condition of his dominions at his accession—His withdrawal from the Thirty Years’ War—Acquisition of east Pomerania—Establishment of his personal authority—His intrigues against Charles X. of Sweden—Acknowledgment of Swedish suzerainty—He joins Charles X. against Poland—Obtains independence by the treaties of Labiau and Wehlau—Death of Charles X.—The pacification of the north.
Position of Sweden, 1632.