The Fronde (1648–1653): France's Civil Wars Against Mazarin

The Fronde was a series of revolts and civil wars that shook France between 1648 and 1653, during the childhood of King Louis XIV. It began when the Parlement of Paris resisted new taxes imposed by the regent Anne of Austria and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, and grew into armed rebellion led by the greatest nobles of the kingdom. The revolts failed, but the experience shaped the absolute monarchy that Louis XIV built after he took power.

Background: war, taxes and a child king

When Louis XIII died in May 1643, his son Louis XIV was only four. His mother, Anne of Austria, became regent and kept as chief minister the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Richelieu’s protégé. France was at war with Spain, and the cost of the war, including the campaigns that followed the victory at the Battle of Rocroi, was enormous.

To pay for it, the government raised taxes, sold offices, borrowed heavily and pressed the courts to register new financial edicts. Peasant revolts had already broken out under Richelieu. Mazarin, a foreigner widely suspected of enriching himself, became the target of popular hatred.

The Parlement of Paris was the highest court in much of France. Its magistrates owned their offices and claimed the right to examine and “register” royal laws before they took effect. In 1648 they, along with the other sovereign courts of Paris, decided to resist a new financial measure that threatened their own salaries.

The Parlementary Fronde (1648–1649)

In May 1648 the sovereign courts agreed to meet jointly in the Chamber of Saint Louis. In June and July they drew up a programme of reforms that would have limited the crown’s power to raise new taxes without their consent, abolished the royal provincial administrators known as intendants in most areas, and protected people against arbitrary imprisonment.

The government gave way on several points, but after the news of Condé’s victory over Spain at Lens on 20 August 1648, Anne felt strong enough to strike back. On 26 August she had several leading magistrates arrested, including the popular elderly councillor Pierre Broussel.

Paris rose in protest. Over the next two days, in what became known as the Day of the Barricades, citizens put up well over a thousand barricades in the streets. Anne was forced to release Broussel on 28 August.

The court then accepted, at least on paper, many of the Chamber of Saint Louis’s demands in a royal declaration of October 1648. The same month, the Peace of Westphalia ended the war in Germany, but the war with Spain went on, and the government’s need for money, and its resentment of the concessions, remained.

In the night of 5–6 January 1649, the royal family secretly left Paris for Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and the Prince of Condé, still loyal to the crown, blockaded the capital. After some weeks of skirmishing and growing hunger, both sides accepted the Peace of Rueil, signed in March 1649.

The Fronde of the Princes (1650–1653)

The second phase was a struggle for power among the great nobles. Condé, the victor of Rocroi, now demanded rewards and influence that Mazarin would not grant. On 18 January 1650 Anne had Condé, his brother the Prince of Conti and his brother-in-law the Duke of Longueville arrested.

Their supporters, including Condé’s sister the Duchess of Longueville and, for a time, the great general Turenne, raised revolts in Normandy, Burgundy and the south-west. Bordeaux became a centre of resistance. Early in 1651 an alliance of the princes’ party and the old Parlementary Frondeurs forced the release of the princes, and Mazarin went into exile in Germany.

Louis XIV was declared of age on 7 September 1651, just after his thirteenth birthday. Condé, quarrelling with the court again, now openly rebelled and allied himself with Spain. Mazarin returned with an army at the end of 1651, and Turenne switched to the royal side.

On 2 July 1652 Turenne’s royal army trapped Condé’s forces against the walls of Paris in the battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Condé was saved when the king’s cousin, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, known as La Grande Mademoiselle, had the city gates opened and the cannon of the Bastille fired on the royal troops.

Collapse of the revolt

Condé’s success did not last. On 4 July 1652 a mob attack on the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s city hall, left many dead and turned much of the city against the princes. Parisians were tired of war, high food prices and disorder.

Mazarin withdrew into exile again in August 1652 to remove the main grievance. In October Condé left Paris to join the Spanish army, and on 21 October 1652 Louis XIV re-entered the capital in triumph. Cardinal de Retz, the leading clerical Frondeur, was arrested in December, and Mazarin returned in February 1653. Bordeaux, where a radical movement called the Ormée had controlled the city, submitted in the summer of 1653.

Key people

• Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661): chief minister and the main target of the revolt; he died still in power.
• Anne of Austria (1601–1666): queen mother and regent, who stood firmly by Mazarin.
• Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1621–1686): France’s leading general, first the court’s defender and then its most dangerous enemy.
• Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1613–1679): ambitious coadjutor archbishop of Paris and organiser of popular opposition, whose memoirs are a classic of French literature.
• Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans (1627–1693): La Grande Mademoiselle, the king’s cousin, who fought on Condé’s side.

Consequences and legacy

The Fronde failed because its leaders wanted different things. Magistrates sought to defend their legal privileges, princes wanted power and pensions, and Parisians wanted lower taxes and bread. None of them offered a real alternative to the monarchy.

The crown emerged stronger. The intendants returned, the Parlement’s political role was curtailed, and many nobles accepted that their future lay in royal service rather than rebellion. Condé fought for Spain until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, when he was pardoned.

The revolt produced around 5,000 pamphlets, known as Mazarinades, many attacking the cardinal in crude and satirical terms, an early explosion of political print in France. Louis XIV never forgot the humiliations of his childhood. His later personal rule, described in the article on Louis XIV’s personal rule, and his decision to move the court to the Palace of Versailles, away from Paris, are often linked to these memories.

Timeline

• 1648, May–July: The sovereign courts meet in the Chamber of Saint Louis and demand reforms.
• 1648, 26–28 August: Arrest of Broussel and the Day of the Barricades in Paris.
• 1649, 5–6 January: The royal family flees Paris; Condé blockades the city.
• 1649, March: The Peace of Rueil ends the Parlementary Fronde.
• 1650, 18 January: Condé, Conti and Longueville are arrested.
• 1651, February: The princes are released and Mazarin goes into exile.
• 1651, 7 September: Louis XIV is declared of age.
• 1652, 2 July: Battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
• 1652, 21 October: Louis XIV returns to Paris.
• 1653, February–July: Mazarin returns; Bordeaux submits and the revolt ends.

Why it matters

The Fronde was the last great aristocratic and judicial challenge to royal power in France before the Revolution. Its failure cleared the way for the centralised, court-centred monarchy of Louis XIV, while the memory of barricades and pamphlets remained part of the political culture of Paris.