Marshal Turenne. the greatest heroism. The princess and her partisans were permitted to retire peaceably to their estates, but the court resolutely refused her petition for the release of her husband and his fellow-captives. Mar- Flight of shal Turenne, who had been joined by a Spanish force, won some important successes in the province of Picardy; but he was thoroughly defeated near Rhetel by the Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, December 15, 1650, whereupon he fled into the province of Lorraine with a few followers. New in Paris and Mazarin. The triumph of the court now appeared complete; but a reaction set in at Paris in favor of the imprisoned princes, and the leaders Outbreak of the original Fronde headed a coalition against Cardinal Mazarin. The Parliament of Paris demanded the banishment of the cardinal- Flight of statesman, who became so terrified by the strength of the opposition that he fled secretly to Havre, February 8, 1651. The queen-regent prepared to follow him with the boy king; but she was prevented from doing so by the leaders of the Fronde, who insisted upon entering the palace to satisfy themselves of the presence of the court. Release of Conde. Self In the meantime Cardinal Mazarin hastened to Havre and ordered the release of the captive princes, hoping to gain their support by his promptness; but they treated him coldly, and hastened to Paris after Mazarin's their liberation. The cardinal-statesman retired to Bruhl, in the territory of Cologne, whence he maintained a correspondence with the queen-regent, by which he continued to direct the affairs of state in France. Exile. New Revolt against the Queenregent. The Prince of Condé expected to find himself supreme in power Conde's when he returned to Paris; but he discovered that the queen-regent was still bitterly hostile to him, and that the leaders of the Fronde were disinclined to acknowledge his authority. The queen-regent finally brought matters to a crisis by accusing him before the Parliament of Paris of being guilty of a treasonable correspondence with the Spaniards. The Prince of Condé was so enraged by this accusation that he hastened to his province of Guienne, where he headed an open armed rebellion against the court. Young XIV. The queen-regent now declared her son of age, and accordingly young Louis XIV. took his place at the head of the army designed to take the field against the Prince of Condé. Cardinal Mazarin now boldly returned to Paris and rejoined the court; and Marshal Turenne, Mazarin's who had made his peace with the court, was assigned a command in the royal army. A desultory warfare followed without any decisive result for either party; and late in the spring of 1652 both armies-the royalists under Marshal Turenne, and the Frondeurs under the Prince of Condémarched to Paris, which had not yet pronounced for either party. A Return. Battle of St Antoine, in Paris. Conde's desperate battle was fought in the Faubourg St. Antoine, July 2, 1652, which was decided by Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, who caused the cannon of the Bastile to open Victory fire upon the royal forces at the critical moment. Thereupon the Turenne. citizens threw open the Porte St. Antoine, thus allowing the army of the Prince of Condé to enter the city. Marshal Turenne, who had felt confident of victory, then retreated to St. Denis. over Fickleness of the Parisians. Conde's Triumph of the Royal The Prince of Condé was master of Paris for some time, and it appeared that the capital was about to fully espouse the cause of the Fronde; but the fickle Parisians suddenly changed sides and commenced treating with the youthful king. The Prince of Condé found his influence wholly destroyed by the trickery of the Cardinal de Retz; and he accordingly retired from Paris in utter disgust, in October, 1652, and joined the Spanish army under the Duke of Lorraine. Louis XIV. and his mother, escorted by Marshal Turenne's army, entered Paris several days afterward, amid the rejoicings of the Family. populace, and occupied the Louvre. The young king granted a general amnesty, from which the Prince of Condé, the Duke of Beaufort and several other leaders of the Fronde were especially excepted. The Prince of Condé was condemned to death as a traitor. The Duke of Orleans was ordered to retire to Blois, where he died in 1660. The Cardinal de Retz, who had been the most active man in France in fomenting the troubles, was imprisoned in Vincennes. He was afterward liberated from prison, but the rest of his life was passed in obscurity. Punishment of the Fronde Leaders. Absolute Power in Thus ended the civil war of the Fronde, which had agitated France for four years, A. D. 1648-1652. It was the final struggle of the France. feudal nobility of France against absolute royal power. It had produced the greatest discomfort and even actual privation upon the royal family of France, and its effect was to confirm Louis XIV. in his ideas of despotic rule. The French nobles utterly failed in their efforts to limit the royal power, and the failure of the revolt enabled the young king to erect an absolute monarchy in France. Spanish Successes. As the civil war of the Fronde was now ended, Cardinal Mazarin was able to direct his attention to the war with Spain. The Spaniards had profited greatly by the internal troubles of France; having recovered Dunkirk, Ypres and Gravelines in the Netherlands, Barcelona and Catalonia in Spain, and Casale in Northern Italy. The Spanish Spanish army on the frontier of Picardy was now under the command of the Prince of Condé, and that able general ravaged the French territory as far as the Somme during the summer of 1653. The French army under Marshal Turenne, though inferior in numbers, was able to hold his great adversary in check during the entire campaign. Armies Led by Conde. Failure in the Arras. In 1654 the Prince of Condé and the Archduke Leopold, at the head Conde's of twenty-five thousand Spanish troops, laid siege to Arras, the capital of the valuable province of Artois. Though the siege was conducted Siege of with great ability, Marshal Turenne forced the Prince of Condé to raise it and to retreat, leaving three thousand prisoners in the hands of the victorious French. The campaign of 1656 was remarkable for one of the Prince of Condé's most brilliant exploits. He attacked the French division under Marshal de la Ferté, which was separated from Turenne's main army, then engaged in the siege of Valenciennes ; almost annihilated it, and took the marshal himself, with nearly all his officers and four thousand of his troops, prisoners. Spanish Victory under Conde. Alliance with France. Cardinal Mazarin now induced the Commonwealth of England, then England's under the iron rule of its famous Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, to enter into an alliance with France against Spain. An English force of six thousand infantry under General Reynolds reinforced Marshal Turenne, who captured Montmedy, St. Venant and Mardyke in 1656; the last fortress being turned over to the English, by whom it was at once garrisoned. Dunkirk. Battle The allied French and English forces then laid siege to Dunkirk. A Siege of Spanish army under the Prince of Condé and Don John of Austria marched to the relief of the beleaguered fortress, but was defeated with heavy loss by Marshal Turenne in the battle of the Dunes, June 14, 1658. The immediate result of this French victory was the surrender of Dunkirk, which France ceded to England in accordance with the treaty of alliance. Marshal Turenne then proceeded to the reduction of Gravelines, and overran Flanders, advancing to within two days' march of Brussels. of the Dunes and Fall of Dunkirk. Spain and the Franco Alliance. German Spain was so dispirited by her reverses that she now desired peace; her anxiety on the point being increased by the formation of a coalition between France and the German states to uphold the Treaty of German Westphalia-a league which virtually isolated Spain from the rest of Europe. Ever since the Peace of Westphalia the Emperor Ferdinand III., Previous though nominally at peace with France, had been indirectly supplying the Spaniards with money and troops. Duke Charles of Lorraine, who had been driven from his duchy by the French, gladly enlisted German imperial troops under his own banners, and gained many advantages in Flanders and on the frontiers of Germany. To resist his ravages, the Elector-Palatine, the Archbishop-Electors of Cologne, Mayence and Treves and the Bishop of Münster formed a Catholic League, for the avowed purpose of enforcing the Treaty of Westphalia. A Protestant League was formed in Northern Germany with the same design. Intimidated by these coalitions, the Emperor Ferdinand III. Catholic and Prot estant Leagues. Mazarin's tion caused the Treaty of Westphalia to be confirmed by the Imperial Diet at Ratisbon in 1654. Upon the death of Ferdinand III., in 1657, Cardinal Mazarin, with all the German princes who were in the interest of France, sought to prevent the election of another prince of the Austrian House of Hapsburg to the imperial throne of Germany. Mazarin would have gladly obtained the imperial crown for King Louis XIV.; but, as this was Emperor impossible, the French interest was exerted in behalf of the young Leopold I. to the Election of Elector of Bavaria. The eldest son of Ferdinand III. had died before his father; and his second son, Leopold, had been educated only for the Church. But Leopold I. was elected Emperor of Germany about sixteen months after his father's death, in spite of the opposition of the French and their German allies, who, however, imposed the most rigorous conditions upon him concerning the war then in progress between France and Spain. Leopold I. solemnly pledged himself not to render any secret or open aid to the enemies of France, and not to interfere in Italy or in the Spanish Netherlands. The fulfillment of this treaty was insured by the consolidation of the Catholic and Protestant Leagues into the Rhenish League, under the protection of Louis XIV. The military forces of the Rhenish League were styled "The army of League. His Most Christian Majesty and of the Allied Electors and Princes." Proposed In October, 1658, King Philip IV. of Spain commenced negotiations Franco- for peace with France by proposing that Louis XIV. should marry the Infanta Maria Theresa, the daughter of the Spanish king. Louis XIV. was deeply in love with the beautiful Maria Mancini, Cardinal Mazarin's niece; but Mazarin removed her from court and induced Louis XIV. to accept the Spanish king's offer. The Rhenish Spanish Royal Intermarriage. Peace of the Pryenees. Cardinal Mazarin proceeded to the Pyrenees and met the Spainsh Prime Minister, Don Luis de Haro, on the Isle of Pheasants, in the Bidassoa, a small stream which forms part of the boundary between France and Spain. Negotiations for peace and for the royal marriage were successfully consummated. Spain insisted positively that the Prince of Condé should receive a full and free pardon, be reconciled to the French court and be restored to all his honors and possessions. For a long time Mazarin refused this demand, but finally yielded when the Spanish Prime Minister threatened to form a principality for the Prince of Condé in Flanders. The Prince of Condé was pardoned for his treason and was restored to the government of Burgundy; and the Peace of the Pyrenees was signed November 7, 1659. By the terms of the treaty the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa was contracted in marriage to Louis XIV., and was promised a dowry of half a million crowns by her father, in consideration of her renunciation of all claims to the succession to the Spanish crown. All the children of this marriage and their descendants were likewise solemnly excluded from the succession to the Spanish crown. Spain ceded to France the county of Artois and the towns of Gravelines, Landrecies, Thionville, Montmedy, Avesnes and a few others, as well as the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne. Lorraine was nominally restored to its duke, but really remained annexed to the crown of France. As France had succeeded against the Austrian Hapsburgs in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, so she succeeded against the Spanish Hapsburgs in the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, and secured for herself the proud position of being the leading power of Europe-a position which she held for a century and a half. Marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa Negotiated. France's Triumph. Consummated. Louis XIV. repaired to St. Jean de Luz, in May, 1660; and, after Marriage a magnificent interview with King Philip IV. of Spain at the Isle of Pheasants, he married the Infanta Maria Theresa in the Church of St. Jean de Luz, June 9, 1660. France's acy in Europe. Mazarin. The two Treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees secured the supremacy of France in European diplomacy, and, in connection with the marriage of Louis XIV., placed Cardinal Mazarin at the height of his power. Like Richelieu, Mazarin did not long survive this realization of his hopes, but he died March 8, 1661, at the age of fifty-nine. Death of Mazarin was one of the ablest and most unscrupulous of the statesmen who have swayed the destinies of France, and would have left a more honorable name to posterity had it not been for his inordinate and insatiable love of money. Like Richelieu, Mazarin patronized art, literature and education, and founded many colleges and academies in France. His Char acter. SECTION III.-LOUIS XIV. AND HIS WAR WITH SPAIN (A. D. 1661-1668). THE next day after Cardinal Mazarin's death, King Louis XIV., whose ambition was beginning to make him impatient of restraint, made this important announcement to his Council: "For the future I shall be my own Prime Minister." He was well qualified for the task which he assumed. Mazarin was in the habit of saying of the young king: "There is enough in him to make four kings and one honest man.” Louis XIV. was a man of good judgment, of a firm, determined will, of great sagacity and penetration, of the most indomitable energy and perseverance. He possessed great powers of application, and throughout his reign he was occupied eight hours daily with the cares of state. He had imbibed the most exalted ideas of his "divine right" as a king, and considered himself the absolute master of the lives, liberties and Louis XIV. Assumes the Government. His Abilities and His Ideas of Right. |