FRONDE, THE, the name given to a civil war in France which lasted from 1648 to 1652, and to its sequel, the war with Spain in 1653-59. The word means a sling, and was applied to this contest from the circumstance that the windows of Cardinal Mazarin’s adherents were pelted with stones by the Paris mob. Its original object was the redress of grievances, but the movement soon degenerated into a factional contest among the nobles, who sought to reverse the results of Richelieu’s work and to overthrow his successor Mazarin. In May 1648 a tax levied on judicial officers of the parlement of Paris was met by that body, not merely with a refusal to pay, but with a condemnation of earlier financial edicts, and even with a demand for the acceptance of a scheme of constitutional reforms framed by a committee of the parlement. This charter was somewhat influenced by contemporary events in England. But there is no real likeness between the two revolutions, the French parlement being no more representative of the people than the Inns of Court were in England. The political history of the time is dealt with in the article [France]: History, the present article being concerned chiefly with the military operations of what was perhaps the most costly and least necessary civil war in history.
The military record of the first or “parliamentary” Fronde is almost blank. In August 1648, strengthened by the news of Condé’s victory at Lens, Mazarin suddenly arrested the leaders of the parlement, whereupon Paris broke into insurrection and barricaded the streets. The court, having no army at its immediate disposal, had to release the prisoners and to promise reforms, and fled from Paris on the night of the 22nd of October. But the signing of the peace of Westphalia set free Condé’s army, and by January 1649 it was besieging Paris. The peace of Rueil was signed in March, after little blood had been shed. The Parisians, though still and always anti-cardinalist, refused to ask for Spanish aid, as proposed by their princely and noble adherents, and having no prospect of military success without such aid, submitted and received concessions. Thenceforward the Fronde becomes a story of sordid intrigues and half-hearted warfare, losing all trace of its first constitutional phase. The leaders were discontented princes and nobles—Monsieur (Gaston of Orléans, the king’s uncle), the great Condé and his brother Conti, the duc de Bouillon and his brother Turenne. To these must be added Gaston’s daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La grande Mademoiselle), Condé’s sister, Madame de Longueville, Madame de Chevreuse, and the astute intriguer Paul de Gondi, later Cardinal de Retz. The military operations fell into the hands of war-experienced mercenaries, led by two great, and many second-rate, generals, and of nobles to whom war was a polite pastime. The feelings of the people at large were enlisted on neither side.
This peace of Rueil lasted until the end of 1649. The princes, received at court once more, renewed their intrigues against Mazarin, who, having come to an understanding with Monsieur, Gondi and Madame de Chevreuse, suddenly arrested Condé, Conti and Longueville (January 14, 1650). The war which followed this coup is called the “Princes’ Fronde.” This time it was Turenne, before and afterwards the most loyal soldier of his day, who headed the armed rebellion. Listening to the promptings of his Egeria, Madame de Longueville, he resolved to rescue her brother, his old comrade of Freiburg and Nördlingen. It was with Spanish assistance that he hoped to do so; and a powerful army of that nation assembled in Artois under the archduke Leopold, governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands. But the peasants of the country-side rose against the invaders, the royal army in Champagne was in the capable hands of César de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, who counted fifty-two years of age and thirty-six of war experience, and the little fortress of Guise successfully resisted the archduke’s attack. Thereupon, however, Mazarin drew upon Plessis-Praslin’s army for reinforcements to be sent to subdue the rebellion in the south, and the royal general had to retire. Then, happily for France, the archduke decided that he had spent sufficient of the king of Spain’s money and men in the French quarrel. The magnificent regular army withdrew into winter quarters, and left Turenne to deliver the princes with a motley host of Frondeurs and Lorrainers. Plessis-Praslin by force and bribery secured the surrender of Rethel on the 13th of December 1650, and Turenne, who had advanced to relieve the place, fell back hurriedly. But he was a terrible opponent, and Plessis-Praslin and Mazarin himself, who accompanied the army, had many misgivings as to the result of a lost battle. The marshal chose nevertheless to force Turenne to a decision, and the battle of Blanc-Champ (near Somme-Py) or Rethel was the consequence. Both sides were at a standstill in strong positions, Plessis-Praslin doubtful of the trustworthiness of his cavalry, Turenne too weak to attack, when a dispute for precedence arose between the Gardes françaises and the Picardie regiment. The royal infantry had to be rearranged in order of regimental seniority, and Turenne, seeing and desiring to profit by the attendant disorder, came out of his stronghold and attacked with the greatest vigour. The battle (December 15, 1650) was severe and for a time doubtful, but Turenne’s Frondeurs gave way in the end, and his army, as an army, ceased to exist. Turenne himself, undeceived as to the part he was playing in the drama, asked and received the young king’s pardon, and meantime the court, with the maison du roi and other loyal troops, had subdued the minor risings without difficulty (March-April 1651). Condé, Conti and Longueville were released, and by April 1651 the rebellion had everywhere collapsed. Then followed a few months of hollow peace and the court returned to Paris. Mazarin, an object of hatred to all the princes, had already retired into exile. “Le temps est un galant homme,” he remarked, “laissons le faire!” and so it proved. His absence left the field free for mutual jealousies, and for the remainder of the year anarchy reigned in France. In December 1651 Mazarin returned with a small army. The war began again, and this time Turenne and Condé were pitted against one another. After the first campaign, as we shall see, the civil war ceased, but for several other campaigns the two great soldiers were opposed to one another, Turenne as the defender of France, Condé as a Spanish invader. Their personalities alone give threads of continuity to these seven years of wearisome manœuvres, sieges and combats, though for a right understanding of the causes which were to produce the standing armies of the age of Louis XIV. and Frederick the Great the military student should search deeply into the material and moral factors that here decided the issue.
The début of the new Frondeurs took place in Guyenne (February-March 1652), while their Spanish ally, the archduke Leopold William, captured various northern fortresses. On the Loire, whither the centre of gravity was soon transferred, the Frondeurs were commanded by intriguers and quarrelsome lords, until Condé’s arrival from Guyenne. His bold trenchant leadership made itself felt in the action of Bléneau (7th April 1652), in which a portion of the royal army was destroyed, but fresh troops came up to oppose him, and from the skilful dispositions made by his opponents Condé felt the presence of Turenne and broke off the action. The royal army did likewise. Condé invited the commander of Turenne’s rearguard to supper, chaffed him unmercifully for allowing the prince’s men to surprise him in the morning, and by way of farewell remarked to his guest, “Quel dommage que des braves gens comme nous se coupent la gorge pour un faquin”—an incident and a remark that thoroughly justify the iron-handed absolutism of Louis XIV. There was no hope for France while tournaments on a large scale and at the public’s expense were fashionable amongst the grands seigneurs. After Bléneau both armies marched to Paris to negotiate with the parlement, de Retz and Mlle de Montpensier, while the archduke took more fortresses in Flanders, and Charles IV., duke of Lorraine, with an army of plundering mercenaries, marched through Champagne to join Condé. As to the latter, Turenne manœuvred past Condé and planted himself in front of the mercenaries, and their leader, not wishing to expend his men against the old French regiments, consented to depart with a money payment and the promise of two tiny Lorraine fortresses. A few more manœuvres, and the royal army was able to hem in the Frondeurs in the Faubourg St Antoine (2nd July 1652) with their backs to the closed gates of Paris. The royalists attacked all along the line and won a signal victory in spite of the knightly prowess of the prince and his great lords, but at the critical moment Gaston’s daughter persuaded the Parisians to open the gates and to admit Condé’s army. She herself turned the guns of the Bastille on the pursuers. An insurrectional government was organized in the capital and proclaimed Monsieur lieutenant-general of the realm. Mazarin, feeling that public opinion was solidly against him, left France again, and the bourgeois of Paris, quarrelling with the princes, permitted the king to enter the city on the 21st of October 1652. Mazarin returned unopposed in February 1653.
The Fronde as a civil war was now over. The whole country, wearied of anarchy and disgusted with the princes, came to look to the king’s party as the party of order and settled government, and thus the Fronde prepared the way for the absolutism of Louis XIV. The general war continued in Flanders, Catalonia and Italy wherever a Spanish and a French garrison were face to face, and Condé with the wreck of his army openly and definitely entered the service of the king of Spain. The “Spanish Fronde” was almost purely a military affair and, except for a few outstanding incidents, a dull affair to boot. In 1653 France was so exhausted that neither invaders nor defenders were able to gather supplies to enable them to take the field till July. At one moment, near Péronne, Condé had Turenne at a serious disadvantage, but he could not galvanize the Spanish general Count Fuensaldana, who was more solicitous to preserve his master’s soldiers than to establish Condé as mayor of the palace to the king of France, and the armies drew apart again without fighting. In 1654 the principal incident was the siege and relief of Arras. On the night of the 24th-25th August the lines of circumvallation drawn round that place by the prince were brilliantly stormed by Turenne’s army, and Condé won equal credit for his safe withdrawal of the besieging corps under cover of a series of bold cavalry charges led by himself as usual, sword in hand. In 1655 Turenne captured the fortresses of Landrecies, Condé and St Ghislain. In 1656 the prince of Condé revenged himself for the defeat of Arras by storming Turenne’s circumvallation around Valenciennes (16th July), but Turenne drew off his forces in good order. The campaign of 1657 was uneventful, and is only to be remembered because a body of 6000 British infantry, sent by Cromwell in pursuance of his treaty of alliance with Mazarin, took part in it. The presence of the English contingent and its very definite purpose of making Dunkirk a new Calais, to be held by England for ever, gave the next campaign a character of certainty and decision which is entirely wanting in the rest of the war. Dunkirk was besieged promptly and in great force, and when Don Juan of Austria and Condé appeared with the relieving army from Furnes, Turenne advanced boldly to meet him. The battle of the Dunes, fought on the 14th of June 1658, was the first real trial of strength since the battle of the Faubourg St Antoine. Successes on one wing were compromised by failure on the other, but in the end Condé drew off with heavy losses, the success of his own cavalry charges having entirely failed to make good the defeat of the Spanish right wing amongst the Dunes. Here the “red-coats” made their first appearance on a continental battlefield, under the leadership of Sir W. Lockhart, Cromwell’s ambassador at Paris, and astonished both armies by the stubborn fierceness of their assaults, for they were the products of a war where passions ran higher and the determination to win rested on deeper foundations than in the dégringolade of the feudal spirit in which they now figured. Dunkirk fell, as a result of the victory, and flew the St George’s cross till Charles II. sold it to the king of France. A last desultory campaign followed in 1659—the twenty-fifth year of the Franco-Spanish War—and the peace of the Pyrenees was signed on the 5th of November. On the 27th of January 1660 the prince asked and obtained at Aix the forgiveness of Louis XIV. The later careers of Turenne and Condé as the great generals—and obedient subjects—of their sovereign are described in the article [Dutch Wars].
For the many memoirs and letters of the time see the list in G. Monod’s Bibliographie de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1888). The Lettres du cardinal Mazarin have been collected in nine volumes (Paris, 1878-1906). See P. Adolphe Chéruel, Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (4 vols., 1879-1880), and his Histoire de France sous le ministère de Mazarin (3 vols., 1883); L. C. de Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire, Histoire de la Fronde (2nd ed., 2 vols., 1860); “Arvède Barine” (Mme Charles Vincens), La Jeunesse de la grande mademoiselle (Paris, 1902); Duc d’Aumale, Histoire des princes de Condé (Paris, 1889-1896, 7 vols.). The most interesting account of the military operations is in General Hardy de Périni’s Turenne et Condé (Batailles françaises, vol. iv.).
FRONTENAC ET PALLUAU, LOUIS DE BUADE, Comte de (1620-1698), French-Canadian statesman, governor and lieutenant-general for the French king in La Nouvelle France (Canada), son of Henri de Buade, colonel in the regiment of Navarre, was born in the year 1620. The details of his early life are meagre, as no trace of the Frontenac papers has been discovered. The de Buades, however, were a family of distinction in the principality of Béarn. Antoine de Buade, seigneur de Frontenac, grandfather of the future governor of Canada, attained eminence as a councillor of state under Henri IV.; and his children were brought up with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. Louis de Buade entered the army at an early age. In the year 1635 he served under the prince of Orange in Holland, and fought with credit and received many wounds during engagements in the Low Countries and in Italy. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in the regiment of Normandy in 1643, and three years later, after distinguishing himself at the siege of Orbitello, where he had an arm broken, he was made maréchal de camp. His service seems to have been continuous until the conclusion of the peace of Westphalia in 1648, when he returned to his father’s house in Paris and married, without the consent of her parents, Anne de la Grange-Trianon, a girl of great beauty, who later became the friend and confidante of Madame de Montpensier. The marriage was not a happy one, and after the birth of a son incompatibility of temper led to a separation, the count retiring to his estate on the Indre, where by an extravagant course of living he became hopelessly involved in debt. Little is known of his career for the next fifteen years beyond the fact that he held a high position at court; but in the year 1669, when France sent a contingent to assist the Venetians in the defence of Crete against the Turks, Frontenac was placed in command of the troops on the recommendation of Turenne. In this expedition he won military glory; but his fortune was not improved thereby.
At this period the affairs of New France claimed the attention of the French court. From the year 1665 the colony had been successfully administered by three remarkable men—Daniel de Rémy de Courcelle, the governor, Jèan Talon, the intendant, and the marquis de Tracy, who had been appointed lieutenant-general for the French king in America; but a difference of opinion had arisen between the governor and the intendant, and each had demanded the other’s recall in the public interest. At this crisis in the administration of New France, Frontenac was appointed to succeed de Courcelle. The new governor arrived in Quebec on the 12th of September 1672. From the commencement it was evident that he was prepared to give effect to a policy of colonial expansion, and to exercise an independence of action that did not coincide with the views of the monarch or of his minister Colbert. One of the first acts of the governor, by which he sought to establish in Canada the three estates—nobles, clergy and people—met with the disapproval of the French court, and measures were adopted to curb his ambition by increasing the power of the sovereign council and by reviving the office of intendant. Frontenac, however, was a man of dominant spirit, jealous of authority, prepared to exact obedience from all and to yield to none. In the course of events he soon became involved in quarrels with the intendant touching questions of precedence, and with the ecclesiastics, one or two of whom ventured to criticize his proceedings. The church in Canada had been administered for many years by the religious orders; for the see of Quebec, so long contemplated, had not yet been erected. But three years after the arrival of Frontenac a former vicar apostolic, François Xavier de Laval de Montmorenci, returned to Quebec as bishop, with a jurisdiction over the whole of Canada. In this redoubtable churchman the governor found a vigorous opponent who was determined to render the state subordinate to the church. Frontenac, following in this respect in the footsteps of his predecessors, had issued trading licences which permitted the sale of intoxicants. The bishop, supported by the intendant, endeavoured to suppress this trade and sent an ambassador to France to obtain remedial action. The views of the bishop were upheld and henceforth authority was divided. Troubles ensued between the governor and the sovereign council, most of the members of which sided with the one permanent power in the colony—the bishop; while the suspicions and intrigues of the intendant, Duchesneau, were a constant source of vexation and strife. As the king and his minister had to listen to and adjudicate upon the appeals from the contending parties their patience was at last worn out, and both governor and intendant were recalled to France in the year 1682. During Frontenac’s first administration many improvements had been made in the country. The defences had been strengthened, a fort was built at Cataraqui (now Kingston), Ontario, bearing the governor’s name, and conditions of peace had been fairly maintained between the Iroquois on the one hand and the French and their allies, the Ottawas and the Hurons, on the other. The progress of events during the next few years proved that the recall of the governor had been ill-timed. The Iroquois were assuming a threatening attitude towards the inhabitants, and Frontenac’s successor, La Barre, was quite incapable of leading an army against such cunning foes. At the end of a year La Barre was replaced by the marquis de Denonville, a man of ability and courage, who, though he showed some vigour in marching against the western Iroquois tribes, angered rather than intimidated them, and the massacre of Lachine (5th of August 1689) must be regarded as one of the unhappy results of his administration.
The affairs of the colony were now in a critical condition; a man of experience and decision was needed to cope with the difficulties, and Louis XIV., who was not wanting in sagacity, wisely made choice of the choleric count to represent and uphold the power of France. When, therefore, on the 15th of October 1689, Frontenac arrived in Quebec as governor for the second time, he received an enthusiastic welcome, and confidence was at once restored in the public mind. Quebec was not long to enjoy the blessing of peace. On the 16th of October 1690 several New England ships under the command of Sir William Phipps appeared off the Island of Orleans, and an officer was sent ashore to demand the surrender of the fort. Frontenac, bold and fearless, sent a defiant answer to the hostile admiral, and handled so vigorously the forces he had collected as completely to repulse the enemy, who in their hasty retreat left behind a few pieces of artillery on the Beauport shore. The prestige of the governor was greatly increased by this event, and he was prepared to follow up his advantage by an attack on Boston from the sea, but his resources were inadequate for the undertaking. New France now rejoiced in a brief respite from her enemies, and during the interval Frontenac encouraged the revival of the drama at the Château St-Louis and paid some attention to the social life of the colony. The Indians, however, were not yet subdued, and for two years a petty warfare was maintained. In 1696 Frontenac decided to take the field against the Iroquois, although at this time he was seventy-six years of age. On the 6th of July he left Lachine at the head of a considerable force for the village of the Onondagas, where he arrived a month later. In the meantime the Iroquois had abandoned their villages, and as pursuit was impracticable the army commenced its return march on the 10th of August. The old warrior endured the fatigue of the march as well as the youngest soldier, and for his courage and prowess he received the cross of St Louis. Frontenac died on the 28th of November 1698 at the Château St-Louis after a brief illness, deeply mourned by the Canadian people. The faults of the governor were those of temperament, which had been fostered by early environment. His nature was turbulent, and from his youth he had been used to command; but underlying a rough exterior there was evidence of a kindly heart. He was fearless, resourceful and decisive, and triumphed as few men could have done over the difficulties and dangers of a most critical position.