Transactional Politics and the Cankered Decade

The conclusion explores the most fundamental development of the civil war: the need for both Condé and Mazarin to acquire and maintain military/political parties. It shows how the flaws in Condé’s personality undermined his efforts to create and maintain a militarized following, above all once he moved to the frontiers and thence into exile in the Spanish Netherlands. Mazarin’s attempts to create and maintain factional alliances led to an inflation of rewards that was self-defeating both in corroding the loyalty of established parties whose status was being debased by the newly and richly rewarded, and in creating a political culture in which aggressive assertiveness, non-cooperation, and overt calculation of interest were perceived as the best route to secure individual advantage. The conclusion argues further that this culture of overtly self-interested assertion—transactional politics—continued to predominate in the years after 1652. In part this reflected the persisting climate of tension, uncertainty, and instability that characterized these years, so different from the triumphalism of the first part of Mazarin’s ministry. In part it also reflected the example given by Mazarin and his fellow ministers, who set the pattern for cynical self-advancement, and adjusted their expectations of probity, good service, and loyalty from their subordinates accordingly. It was a cankered decade; one of the achievements of Louis XIV and his ministers on assuming power following Mazarin’s death in 1661 was to re-establish a language of disinterested service and loyalty to the crown, a language which had become incompatible with government by first minister.