trary to all the views cherished by the minister touching royal majesty; all these reasons might have contributed to his wrath, but there was something more personal and petty in its bitterness. The triumph of the Cid seemed to the resentful spirit of a neglected and irritated patron a sort of insult. Therewith was mingled a certain shade of author's jealousy. Richelieu saw in the fame of Corneille the success of a rebel. Egged on by base and malicious influences, he attempted to crush him, as he had crushed the house of Austria and the Huguenots.

The cabal of bad taste enlisted to a man in this new war. Scudery was standard-bearer; astounded that "such fantastic beauties should have seduced knowledge as well as ignorance." The contest was becoming fierce and bitter; much was written for and against the Cid; the public remained faithful to it; the cardinal determined to submit it to the judgment of the Academy. At his instigation, Scudery wrote to the Academy to make them the judges in the dispute. The Sentiments de l'Academie at last saw the light in the month of December, 1637, and, as Chapelain had foreseen, they did not completely satisfy either the cardinal or Scudery, or Corneille, who testified bitter displeasure. Richelieu did not come out of it victorious; his anger, however, had ceased the duchess of Aiguillon, his niece, accepted the dedication of the Cid; when Horace appeared, in 1639, the dedicatory epistle addressed to the cardinal proved that Corneille read his works to him beforehand ; "Horace, condemned by the decemvirs, was acquitted by the people," said Corneille. The same year Cinna came to give the finishing touch to the reputation of the great poet:

"To the persecuted Cid the Cinna owed its birth."

The great literary movement of the seventeenth century had begun; it had no longer any need of a protector; it was destined to grow up alone during twenty years, amid troubles at home and wars abroad, to flourish all at once, with incomparable splendor, under the reign and around the throne. of Louis XIV. Cardinal Richelieu, however, had the honor of protecting its birth; he had taken personal pleasure in it; he had comprehended its importance and beauty; he had desired to serve it while taking the direction of it.

The Academy, the Sorbonne, the Botanic Gardens (Jardin des Plantes), the King's Press have endured; the theater has grown and been enriched by many master-pieces, the press has become the most dreaded of powers; all the new forces that Richelieu created or foresaw have become developed without him, frequently in opposition to him and to the work of his whole life; his name has remained connected with the commencement of all these wonders, beneficial or disastrous, which he had grasped and presaged, in a future happily concealed from his ken.

The declaration of Louis XIII. touching the regency had been entirely directed toward counteracting by anticipation the power entrusted to his wife and his brother. The queen's regency and the duke of Orleans' lieutenantgeneralship were in some sort subordinated to a council "with a prohibition. against introducing any change therein, for any cause or on any occasion

whatsoever." The queen and the duke of Orleans had signed and sworn the declaration.

King Louis XIII. was not yet in his grave when his last wishes were violated; before his death the queen had made terms with the ministers: the course to be followed had been decided. On the 18th of May, 1643, the queen, having brought back the little king to Paris, conducted him in great state to the parliament of Paris to hold his bed of justice there, and on the evening of the same day the queen regent, having sole charge of the administration of affairs, and modifying the council at her pleasure, announced to the astounded court that she should retain by her Cardinal Mazarin.

A stroke of fortune came at the very first to strengthen the regent's position, Since the death of Cardinal Richelieu, the Spaniards, but recently overwhelmed at the close of 1642, had recovered courage and boldness; new counsels prevailed at the court of Philip IV., who had dismissed Olivarez; the house of Austria vigorously resumed the offensive; at the moment of Louis XIII.'s death, Don Francisco de Mello, governor of the Low Countries, had just invaded French territory by way of the Ardennes, and laid siege to Rocroi, on the 12th of May. The French army, commanded by the young duke of Enghien, the prince of Conde's son, scarcely twenty-two years old, gained a signal victory over the Spanish infantry, till then deemed invincible (1643).

Negotiations for a general peace, the preliminaries whereof had been signed by King Louis XIII. in 1641, had been going on since 1644 at Münster and at Osnabrück, without having produced any result. Fear of having him unoccupied deterred the cardinal from peace, and made all the harder the conditions he presumed to impose upon the Spaniards. Meanwhile the United Provinces, weary of a war which fettered their commerce, and skillfully courted by their old masters, had just concluded a private treaty with Spain; the emperor was trying, but to no purpose, to detach the Swedes likewise from the French alliance, when the victory of Lens, gained on the 20th of August, 1648, over Archduke Leopold and General Beck, came to throw into the balance the weight of a success as splendid as it was unexpected; one more campaign, and Turenne might be threatening Vienna while Conde entered Brussels; the emperor saw there was no help for it and bent his head. The house of Austria split in two; Spain still refused to treat with France, but the whole of Germany clamored for peace; the conditions of it were at last drawn up at Münster by MM. Servien and De Lionne; M. d'Avaux, the most able diplomatist that France possessed, had been recalled to Paris at the beginning of the year. On the 24th of October, 1648, after four years of negotiation, France at last had secured to her Alsace and the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun; Sweden gained Western Pomerania, including Stettin, the Isle of Rugen, the three mouths of the Oder and the bishoprics of Bremen and Werden, thus becoming a German power; as for Germany, she had won liberty of conscience and political liberty; the rights of the Lutheran or reformed Protestants were equalized with those of

Catholics; henceforth the consent of a free assembly of all the estates of the empire was necessary to make laws, raise soldiers, impose taxes, and decide peace or war. The peace of Westphalia put an end at one and the same time to the Thirty Years' War and to the supremacy of the house of Austria in Germany.

So much glory and so many military or diplomatic successes cost dear; France was crushed by imposts, and the finances were discovered to be in utter disorder; the superintendent, D'Emery, an able and experienced man, was so justly discredited that his measures were, as a foregone conclusion, unpopular; an edict laying octroi or tariff on the entry of provisions into the city of Paris irritated the burgesses, and parliament refused to enregister it. For some time past the parliament, which had been kept down by the iron hand of Richelieu, had perceived that it had to do with nothing more than an able man and not a master; it began to hold up its head again; a union was proposed between the four sovereign courts of Paris; the queen quashed the deed of union; the magistrates set her at naught; the queen yielded, authorizing the delegates to deliberate in the chamber of St. Louis at the Palace of Justice; the pretensions of the parliament were exorbitant; the concessions which Cardinal Mazarin with difficulty wrung from the queen augmented the parliament's demands. Anne of Austria was beginning to lose patience, when the news of the victory of Lens restored courage to the court. The grave assemblage, on the 26th of August, was issuing from Notre Dame, where a Te Deum had just been sung, when Councillor Broussel and President Blancmesnil were arrested in their houses and taken, the one to St. Germain and the other to Vincennes.

The arrest of Broussel, an old man in high esteem, very keen in his opposition to the court, was like fire to flax.

Thousands of persons rushed to the Palais-Royal, where the court then resided, shouting out, "Liberte et Broussel!" Barricades were erected in the principal streets; the authority of the chancellor Seguier was set at naught, and the president of the parliament himself, Mathieu Mole, saw himself obliged to comply with the wishes of the people. They forced him to go to the queen at the head of the assembly, and, under penalty of death, to bring back either Broussel or the cardinal. He succeeded in obtaining the liberty of the captives, and the queen, frightened out of her obstinacy, hastened to confirm the resolutions of the Chambre de Saint Louis by a decree dated October 24th, 1648.

The court, however, had yielded only with the firm resolution of retracting its concession as soon as a fit opportunity should occur. The king was removed from Paris and, supported by Conde, the queen-dowager engaged against the parliament the war to which the name of La Fronde has been. given by way of contempt; the rebellion of the parliamentarians being compared to that of unruly children who would persist in fighting with slings notwithstanding the prohibition of the police.

The chief results of this war, at least in its commencement, were songs,

The

epigrams, lampoons, and now and then a few insignificant skirmishes. twenty councillors of Richelieu's creation, who supplied fifteen thousand livres toward the expenses of the war, in order to ingratiate themselves, with their colleagues, were nick-named les quinze-vingts. As for serious battles, there were none. Conde had only to present himself with a handful of soldiers; he defeated at Charenton the armies of the Parisians who had marched out against him covered with ribbons and feathers. An arrangement was made at Ruel (April, 1649), but the court returned to Paris only four months afterward.

The State stroke had succeeded; Mazarin's skill and prudence once more checkmated all the intrigues concocted against him. When the news was told to Chavigny, in spite of all his reasons for bearing malice against the cardinal, who had driven him from the council and kept him for some time in prison, he exclaimed: "That is a great misfortune for the prince and his friends; but the truth must be told; the cardinal has done quite right; without it he would have been ruined." The contest was begun between Mazarin and the great Conde, and it was not with the prince that the victory was to remain.

Already hostilities were commencing; Mazarin had done everything for the Frondeurs who remained faithful to him, but the house of Conde was rallying all its partisans; the dukes of Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld had thrown themselves into Bordeaux, which was in revolt against the royal authority, represented by the duke of Epernon. The princess of Conde and her young son left Chantilly to join them; Madame de Longueville occupied Stenay, a strong place belonging to the prince of Conde: she had there found Turenne; on the other hand, the queen had just been through Normandy; all the towns had opened their gates to her. It was just the same in Burgundy; the princess of Conde's able agent, Lenet, could not obtain a declaration from the parliament of Dijon in her favor. Bordeaux was the focus of the insurrection; the people, passionately devoted to "the dukes," as the saying was, were forcing the hand of the parliament; riots were frequent in the town; the little king, with the queen and the cardinal, marched in person upon Bordeaux; one of the faubourgs was attacked, the dukes negotiated and obtained a general amnesty, but no mention was made of the princes' release. The parliament of Paris took the matter up, and on the 30th of January, Anne of Austria sent word to the premier president that she would consent to grant the release of the princes, "provided that the armaments of Stenay and of M. de Turenne might be discontinued."

The cardinal saw that he was beaten; he made up his mind, and anticipating the queen's officers, he hurried to Le Havre to release the prisoners himself; he entered the castle alone, the governor having refused entrance to the guards who attended him.

The cardinal had slowly taken the road to exile, summoning to him. his nieces, Mdlles. Mancini and Martinozzi, whom he had, a short time.

since, sent for to court. He went from Normandy into Picardy, made some stay at Doullens, and, impelled by his enemies' hatred, he finally crossed the frontier on the 12th of March. The parliament had just issued orders for his arrest in any part of France. On the 6th of April, he fixed his quarters at Bruhl, a little town belonging to the electorate of Cologne, in the same territory which had but lately sheltered the last days of Mary de' Medici.

The Frondeurs, old and new, had gained the day; but even now there was disorder in their camp. Conde had returned to the court "like a raging lion, seeking to devour everybody, and, in revenge for his imprisonment, to set fire to the four corners of the realm" [Memoires de Montglat]. He retired southward and prepared for war. He was opposed, in the first instance, by Marshal d'Hocquincourt, who was defeated at Bleneau, on the banks of the Loire, and afterward by Turenne, who, having come to terms with the court, gained at Gien a battle over the rebels. Both commanders then marched upon Paris, and a general engagement took place at the Porte Saint Antoine, where the Frondeurs remained victorious, thanks to the audacity of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston, Duke d'Orleans. Conde marched into the metropolis, and after attempting vainly to maintain himself by violence, he took the command of the Spanish army, thus disgracing his character by joining the enemies of his country. The court then returned to Paris, punished the rebels, and in October, 1652, the Fronde may be said to have finished.

It was now Mazarin's turn to triumph; his progress back to Paris was almost regal. The duke of Orleans retired before long to his castle at Blois, where he died in 1660, deserted, toward the end of his life, by all the friends he had successively abandoned and betrayed. He was a prey to fear, fear of his friends as well as of his enemies. The Fronde, as we last said, was all over, that of the gentry of the long robe as well as that of the gentry of the sword. The parliament of Paris was once more falling in the State to the rank which had been assigned to it by Richelieu, and from which it had wanted to emerge by a supreme

effort.

From 1653 to 1657 Turenne, seconded by Marshal la Ferte and sometimes by Cardinal Mazarin in person, constantly kept the Spaniards and the prince of Conde in check, recovering the places but lately taken from France, and relieving the besieged towns; without ever engaging in pitched battles, he almost always had the advantage. At last the victory he gained at the Downs was productive of the greatest results; Dunkerque surrendered immediately, and was ceded to England conformably to an agreement made between Mazarin and Cromwell. For a long time. past the object of the cardinal's labors had been to terminate the war by an alliance with Spain. The infanta, Maria Theresa, was no longer heiress to the crown, for King Philip at last had a son; Spain was exhausted by long-continued efforts, and dismayed by the checks received