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.

The Cost of Civil War

This chapter takes an analytical approach to the question of first how civil war undermined the earlier achievements of French foreign policy, and then how armies and their destructiveness greatly worsened the impact of the harsh climate conditions of the years since 1648. It examines in particular the impact that a winter campaign fought across France had on the established means by which troops and their commanders replenished their resources during the winter quartering of troops in the provinces. The falls of Dunkirk, Casale-Monferrato, and Barcelona are each examined in terms of growing resource scarcity, demoralization, and the inability to organize adequate relief for the besieged garrisons. The impact of successive harsh winters and wet, poor summers is then considered, showing how even without civil war the French population would have suffered intensely under the impact of three successive poor harvests. However, the destructiveness of the troops, both to secure their own survival and as a deliberate military policy to deprive enemy forces of support, hugely worsened the situation. The chapter proposes that at least 25 per cent of the population died in the areas of intense or regular military activity, and that the impact of the destruction persisted well into the subsequent decade.

Mazarin’s Fall

The chapter examines the crisis of authority that had emerged in early 1650 between cardinal Mazarin and Condé, and provides a character assessment of the two protagonists. Mazarin’s decision to resolve the crisis by arresting and imprisoning Condé, his brother, and his brother-in-law generated a variety of damaging consequences, including military operations conducted against the royal armies by Turenne, while opposition progressively focused hostility on Mazarin and his style of government. During a crucial few weeks in January 1651, open condemnation of the cardinal, above all by the Parlement of Paris, undermined the remnants of Mazarin’s power and forced him to release the princes. Despite Mazarin’s hopes for a rapprochement with Condé, he was expelled from France and ultimately settled in exile at Brühl in the territory of the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne. The rest of the chapter explores Mazarin’s inability, both practical and psychological, to accept the permanence of his exile, and his attempts to exert maximum pressure, through correspondence and allies at court, on Anne of Austria, the queen mother, to recall him to France. The chapter concludes with the comprehensive failure of this policy when, on the eve of Louis XIII’s thirteenth birthday and the declaration of his official majority, the regency government promulgated an edict reiterating Mazarin’s criminal behaviour and his banishment in perpetuity (6 September 1651).

Towards Stalemate

Following Bléneau, Condé returned to Paris to consolidate relations with his allies, and to open negotiations with the crown. His main army was established to the south of Paris, at Étampes. But after a devastating surprise attack, these troops were blockaded in the town by Turenne’s royalist forces, and the tide of war seemed to be flowing in the direction of the crown. However, Condé’s ability to enlist the support of Charles of Lorraine’s freebooting army to march into France and towards Étampes rendered Turenne’s blockade unsustainable. Condé’s army moved into the western suburbs of Paris, where the military situation once again weakened as Lorraine made a treaty with Mazarin to withdraw his forces from France. In a crucial miscalculation, Condé sought to reposition his army to the eastern side of Paris, and in the process ran into Turenne’s main royalist force. Trapped outside the walls of Paris in the Faubourg St-Antoine, Condé fought against heavy odds, and was saved from defeat only by the Parisian decision to open the gates to allow the remnants of his army to pass into the city. Demoralized by this snatching away of victory, the royal court’s disappointment turned to panic as it received news that Condé’s alliance with the Spanish had brought a major Spanish army into Champagne, seemingly marching on Paris. Believing that securing a settlement with Condé was now imperative, Mazarin and the crown’s ministers moved to propose a second exile for Mazarin. Mazarin left the court for the frontier on 19 August.

Condé’s Miscalculation and Mazarin’s Gamble

The chapter begins by looking at the various ways, beyond applying pressure to the queen mother, by which Mazarin had sought to secure his return from exile, and their equal lack of success. This account is interwoven with an account of Condé’s political alienation after his return from imprisonment; his failure to develop stable political relationships either with Anne of Austria or the king’s uncle, Gaston d’Orléans; and the series of self-inflicted blows that he managed to inflict on his own power and standing. Frustrated by his declining influence and afraid of re-arrest, Condé refused to appear at the ceremony of the king’s majority and left Paris to establish a base of military resistance in Guienne, focused on the already rebellious city of Bordeaux. The initial months of Condé’s revolt saw his troops defeated and driven southwards by royalist forces. Despite Mazarin’s absence, the government showed that it had the capacity to crush Condé’s revolt. Yet for the cardinal, Condé’s rebellion was the great opportunity to justify ending his exile, returning at the head of mercenaries that would bring support to a supposedly beleaguered crown. Mazarin’s return to France in January 1652 had precisely the opposite effect, reviving the flagging rebellion and bringing together a wave of opposition from those hitherto neutral or sympathetic to the crown. In the rapidly shifting political and military context of early 1652 Condé slipped away from his army in Guienne, joined up with the forces of Gaston d’Orléans and Spanish troops aiding his rebellion, and inflicted a surprise defeat on royalist forces at Bléneau (6/7 April 1652).

Autumn 1652

The chapter pursues two main narratives. It describes the near destruction of the royalist army commanded by Turenne, blockaded south of Paris by the combined forces of Condé, Lorraine, and allied Spanish troops. Turenne’s success in escaping this trap and freeing his army to disrupt Condé’s positions around Paris precipitated Condé’s October decision to move his forces eastwards to establish himself on the French frontiers. Meanwhile, the last and most extensive phase of negotiations for a settlement between Mazarin and Condé had been unfolding. The exceptionally generous concessions offered to Condé and his party during this phase were overwhelmingly driven by Mazarin’s concern that he would otherwise be consigned to permanent exile, blocked from re-entering France. The failure of the negotiations owed little to notions that Mazarin was playing a game of masterly duplicity, but reflected the outright rejection of Mazarin’s extensive concessions by the queen and many at court and government, who considered them an unacceptably high price for securing a settlement. One consequence was the missed opportunity to prevent Condé’s move into Spanish military service. The other was the erosion of Mazarin’s standing—he was still trapped on the frontiers when Louis XIV and the court moved back into Paris to receive the allegiance of the city and its institutions and to bring the civil war to an end. The price of the failure to secure a settlement was to be paid by both Condé and Mazarin throughout the 1650s.

Rethinking 1652

The first section of the chapter offers an overview of the historiography of the Fronde, looking at the evolution of different interpretations and emphases from the eighteenth century to the present day. The contribution of 1652 to this debate is summarized: the study looks as much at the consequences of the 1652 crisis as at its origins, above all its impact on the ensuing decade of Mazarin’s ministry; it emphasizes the role of contingency in what has frequently been seen as a pre-determined triumph of monarchical authority; it explores the collision of civil war waged across much of France with a dramatic worsening of climatic conditions and the impact of both on a vulnerable subsistence economy. The second half of the chapter examines the nature of ministerial government in France through Richelieu’s ministry, as well as Mazarin’s emergence as first minister during the regency which followed the death of Louis XIII in 1643, and looks at the unfolding of the Fronde down to the end of 1649. It explores in particular the close links between the burdens of foreign and military policy and the development of a ministerial ‘extraordinary regime’ which bypassed or overruled much of the existing government to give extensive, and in the eyes of many illegitimate, authority to the cardinal ministers. The chapter culminates in the miscalculations made by Mazarin which precipitated the opening rebellion of the Fronde. In order to bring the frondeurs back into obedience, Mazarin was forced to rely on the prince de Condé, who blockaded Paris with the royal army on behalf of the crown.