1648.

DEMANDS OF THE PARLIAMENT.

65

salaries. This latter was a finesse on the part of Mazarin, to make it appear that the opposition of the magistrates proceeded from their private interests; another blunder of his over-astuteness. In fine, the younger and more violent inembers, the reformers as they might be called, succeeded in carrying their plan, which was a union of the chiefs of the magistracy, with deputies from the inferior members and, with the municipality of Paris, forming an assembly for the reformation of the state.

The queen lost all temper at this practical reply to a question that she deemed unanswerable. She accused Mazarin of weakness, because he sought to calm her. The assembly was forbidden. It met in despite of this, and the prohibition was recalled. At length, in July, it produced its plan of reformation. This recommended, in the first place, the removal of the intendants, whom Richelieu had appointed; the diminution of the taille ;* the illegality of all taxes not consented to by the sovereign courts of law; and, finally, a kind of habeas corpus, by which every prisoner was to be interrogated within twenty-four hours after his arrest, and brought before his natural judges. No marvel that the court, in the words of De Retz, felt itself "touched in the apple of the eye" by these bold demands, which constituted no less than a free constitution. It cost Anne of Austria fresh tears, and new bursts of rage. The blood of Charles V. and Philip II. might well boil within her. Not in a position to deny, the minister determined to evade. In a bed of justice the young king was made to grant some immaterial part of the demands; but the principal articles were found to want the expression which gave them force. The presence of royalty did not now keep down the murmurs, and the boyhood of Louis XIV. unfortunately saw his dignity insulted and his authority denied. Bred up in these quarrels, his young ears drank in the continued complaints and imprecations of his mother against the parliament; and the circumstances increased that strong bias to despotism which was but natural to his station.

Nevertheless, the queen and Mazarin had no thought but of yielding, and of deferring the recovery of authority to a future period; when tidings of the victory gained by the

*The yearly taille, levied on the poorest classes only, amounted to 50 million of livres, equal to double the sum in our day. The present landtax in France, paid by all, does not exceed that amount by more than one half. And now there are neither tithes nor feudal exactions. The weight of taxes on the French population under Mazarin may be thence imagined. The whole revenue amounted to 80 or 90 millions of livres, equal, if doubled, to the value of about 7,000,0001. sterling.

prince of Condé at Lens arrived, roused the drooping spirits of the court, and excited it to resistance. On the 26th of August the king went in state to hear Te Deum sung in honor of the victory.* The opportunity was taken of the military force attending this ceremony to arrest six of the chief magistrates. Broussel was the name of the principal. The news of his imprisonment created a tumult, which soon grew into a seditious mob, clamoring for the liberation of the prisoners. The mareschal de la Meilleraye with 200 guards tried to disperse them; he drove them back to the Pont Neuf, where his progress was impeded, and where he met De Retz, coadjutor of the archbishop of Paris, who had rushed out in his robes amongst the mob. After having harangued and momentarily tranquillized the populace, De Retz hurried with the mareschal to the Palais Royal, to represent the alarming state of the city to the queen. Anne of Austria, who knew the coadjutor's character, suspected him as one more likely to throw oil than water on the flame. "It is rebellion itself to imagine that the people can rebel," said she: "you would have me deliver Broussel; I will first strangle him with these hands." This resentment, seconded by the jeers of the court, had the ill effect of converting De Retz into a dangerous enemy. The mob, however, dispersed for that day; and it was not till the morrow that, on the meeting of the parliament, and in full cognizance of the matter, the more respectable citizens joined the populace in renewing the tumult. The queen had troops. Defence was necessary, and tradition pointed out the means. In a few hours the barricades of the league were renewed. The streets were every where broken up; and these intrenchments, guarded by an armed population, became, as the military men of that day avowed, impregnable to a force of whatsoever magnitude.

The presidents and chiefs of the parliament now proceeded to supplicate the queen to allay the tumult by rendering up the prisoners. At first unhearkened to, the people drove them back into the palace, and into the queen's presence; to whom a sister queen, the wife of the unfortunate Charles I., then present, observed, that the troubles in London were

* I cannot refrain from here remarking, how similar scenes are repro duced in French history. This has been noticed in relating the barricade of the league. The barricades of the fronde we now enter on, and they too had their points of resemblance with the last. It was the capture of Algiers that raised the confidence of Charles X. to resist. We saw him proceeding to the Te Deum amidst the silence of his people. And in a few days the barricades of 1830 had driven him from his capital. The reader will find that the Fronde had also its garde bourgeoise or national guard, its mobs its moderate royalists, astonished to find themselves revolutionary, &c. &c

1648

ACCOMMODATION.

67

never more passionate nor more alarming. The court, was forced to yield. Broussel and Blancmenil were restored to liberty. The barricades were immediately levelled, and the people ceased their turbulence and clamor. "Never was disorder more orderly managed," says madame de Motteville; “the citizens who had taken up arms to prevent the ascendency of the rabble and to check pillage, were little more peaceable than the populace itself, and roared for the liberation of Broussel with equal violence." The court in yielding had but temporized, however; and it soon made its escape from the capital to St. Germain's. Such was the first insurrection of the Fronde. As it had been commenced by troops of urchins, who at that time amused themselves with slings, the wits of the court called the insurgents frondeurs, or slingers, insinuating that their force was trifling, and their aim merely mischief. The young lords and dames, who afterwards embraced the party, willingly adopted a name which so well characterized their petulance, and sportive rather than serious rebellion.

The hopes of the queen were now in the young prince of Condé. But that young hero, though opposed to the party of the importans, was not prepared to martyrize his popularity for Mazarin. He proposed his mediation. Mazarin accepted it, well knowing how soon the hot prince would lose patience at the formal and democratic pleadings of the parliamentary statesmen. De Retz, now the leading man of the popular party, made every effort to gain Condé, who replied, "My name is Louis de Bourbon: I will not shake the throne." Through his means negotiations were entered into with the court; the elders of the parliament, and Molé, the president, at their head, being anxious to avoid a civil war, whilst the violent party, bestowing on the pacific chiefs the nickname of barbons, pushed matters to extremities. They had revived an old law, passed after the fall of the mareschal d'Ancre, which prohibited the administration of the kingdom by foreigners, thus aiming at Mazarin. Still a second accommodation took place: a royal declaration, dated the 28th of October, accepted the principal articles of the plan of reformation, and the court once more took up its residence in the capital.

This proved but a hollow truce, entered into by both parties out of respect for Condé, whom both feared, and both hoped to gain. The popular party was suspicious; De Retz con tinued his intrigues; whilst the queen urged Condé to make preparations for defending the royal authority by force. It has been the fate of all attempts to establish liberty in France to be frustrated, not by the opposition of the aristocracy, but by

their affecting to abet and to adopt its principles. Having under this pretext obtained the lead, they have ever perverted the force of the cause to their own selfish or frivolous interests, thus proving equally fatal in their friendship as their enmity. The nobles and princes of the blood, taking the lead of the popular party, destroyed all its efforts for freedom under Charles VI. The struggle of the Huguenots for religiou liberty was perverted in the same way. To what end was al the blood of the French Protestants spilled, and their victories achieved? To the establishment of the house of Bourbon, and to the oppression and ruin of themselves. In the Fronde, the magistracy of Paris, supported by the citizens, endeavored to supply the want of a national assembly. They framed a constitution; forced it on the court without effusion of blood, and might have succeeded in upholding and perhaps amelior ating it, when the young noblesse interfered, drove the citizens to insurrection first, then to submission, and for the sake of their selfish quarrels, which all their light-heartedness and valor cannot redeem, they sacrificed the last hope that the French had of even a degree of liberty; they pierced the last plank that shut out the overwhelming ocean of despotism. We certainly, of the present day, can look but with a small degree of hope or approbation on a judicial body which grasps at legislative power. But had the noblesse known its true interests, and acted its natural part of mediator, the statesgeneral might have superseded the parliament in its political functions; the moderation of the provincial deputies would have tempered the ardor of the capital, and the ever consecutive extremes of insurrection and pusillanimous submission might both have been avoided.

The

The old party of the importans now roused itself. duc de Beaufort escaped from prison. The duc de Bouillon, smarting under the loss of Sedan, joined counsels with him; and both intrigued with the violent men in the parliament to form an insurrection against the court. The duchess of Longueville brought her charms to support the same cause: these decided De la Rochefoucault, her lover, to adopt it. She used all her influence to the same effect with her brother Condé in vain. In default of him, the prince of Conti, of the same family, was won over. No cause could subsist, in the opinion of these gentlemen, unless it could boast the name of a prince of the blood. The duchess of Chevreuse, though still in exile, corresponded with the party, and promised to it the accession of the princes of Lorraine. Madame de Montbazon was found united in the same cause with her rival, madame de Longueville. The mareschal d'Hocquincourt offered te

1649.

THE FRONDE.

69

strong and important fortress which he commanded, in homage to the charms of the former. "Peronne," wrote he to her, "is at the disposal of the fairest of the fair." A crowd of nobles gaily joined the conspiracy; and the court was once more obliged to make its escape from Paris, and retire to St. Germain's, in January, 1649.

Strong and extreme measures were at last resolved upon although not prepared with that vigor and foresight that Richelieu would have displayed. Troops, under Condé and the duke of Orleans, prepared to invest Paris, and occupied on either side of the city the bridges of Charenton and St. Cloud; but with only 12,000 men, the utmost of the royalist force, it was impossible to invest the metropolis. A royal order, commanding the parliament to retire to Montargis, was treated by them with contempt. A civic guard was raised, to the number of 12,000; the chief officers, it is remarkable, being lawyers and officers of parliament; the provost of the merchants, however, retained the supreme command. In addition to these, a stipendiary force of 20,000 men was raised in a few days, by means of a house-tax, fixed at so much for every plain house-door, and double the sum for the gate which admitted a carriage. The noblesse did not forget their petty ambition, even in adopting the burgess cause. The duke of Elbœuf had first seized on the chief command, and was reluctant to yield it to the prince of Conti. The duc de Beau fort, however, was the most popular chief, owing to his affable manners and handsome person. He was called the roi des halles (the king of the markets). The war, if it can be called such, commenced by the attack of the Bastile, at which the ladies of the party assisted. It surrendered gallantly to these fascinating adversaries. On his side, Condé began to press towards the wall; and some skirmishes took place, in which a few were slain; amongst others, the duc de Châtillon.

Two circumstances soon after occurred, that much altered the views and shook the resolutions of the court. One was the defection of Turenne, who, won over by his brother the duc de Bouillon, promised to march the army, which he commanded on the Rhine, to the support of the Fronde; the other was the connexion of the frondeur nobles with Spain, and the public reception by the parliament of an envoy from that power. This savored of the inveteracy of the League. The elder magistrates, and principally Molé the president, indig nant at this alliance with the enemies of the country, began to exert themselves to frustrate the violent projects of the young noblesse, and to seek an accommodation with the court. The majority of the parliament, already disgusted with the