The Fronde
Mazarin was not liked by ordinary Frenchmen. In Paris in 1648, popular discontent erupted into open violence. Paris was a city of about half a million people in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1644, Mazarin tried to prevent it growing further and to raise taxes by fining those who built houses outside the City Walls. This policy produced widespread resentment. The Fronde began in January 1648, when the Paris mob used children's slings, frondes, to hurl stones at the windows of Mazarin's associates.
Mazarin's continual need to raise money for the war against the Habsburgs provoked the troubles known as the Fronde of the Parlement. Mazarin proposed that the magistrates of the high courts forego their salaries for a number of years; they were outraged, as was the parliament of Paris, because although its deputies' salaries were not threatened, Mazarin wanted to create new offices that would undermine its powers. The Parlement joined with other government bodies to demand various reforms. These included suppressing the intendants, reducing taxation, and forbidding all new taxes without the consent of the parliament, no imprisonment without trial, and limiting the creation of new offices of state. Anne and Mazarin responded by ordering the arrest of several deputies of the parliament, including the popular Pierre Broussel. The Paris mob rioted and built barricades in the streets, forcing the release of Broussel and the others. Renewed disturbances in Paris led Anne to take Louis and leave Paris. In March 1649, the government confirmed the Declaration of October, in return for which Paris and the Parlement laid down their weapons and allowed royal troops to return. However, Anne and Mazarin did not yet consider it safe for themselves or the king to return.
Many frondeurs had been unhappy with the compromise reached in 1649 and one of their leaders, Jean François Paul de Gondi, had been trying for some time to recruit Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé to their cause. Mazarin feared that an alliance between Condé and the Fronde was imminent. On 18 January 1650 Mazarin had Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti and his brother-in-law, Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville arrested. The agreements of 1649 had brought peace to Paris, but there was unrest in other parts of France where supporters and opponents of the government raised forces and disrupted tax collection and administration. The arrest of Condé provoked these areas to open revolt, as Condé's friends and allies spread out across the country recruiting forces to oppose Mazarin and liberate the princes. Condé's wife raised a revolt in Bordeaux, while his sister, and Henry de la Tour d’Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne raised troops and sought Spanish help against the government. Mazarin and Anne were strong militarily, but when the Condéans, the Fronde and the parlement allied and demanded the princes' release, their political position collapsed. In February 1651, Anne freed the princes while Mazarin, fearing the parliament's vengeance, fled the country. The Prince of Condé, although a fine general, was an incompetent politician, who soon alienated nobles, parlement, and Parisians. In the Fall of 1651, Condé openly revolted against the crown. In July 1652 his troops entered Paris, but acted with such brutality that his cause lost credibility.
Although in exile, Mazarin had not been idle and had reached agreement with Turenne, a general as talented as Condé. Turenne's forces pursued Condé's, who in 1653 fled to the Spanish Netherlands. Louis XIV, now of age to claim his throne, re-entered Paris in October 1652 and recalled Mazarin in February 1653. The last vestiges of resistance in Bordeaux fizzled out in the late summer of 1653. The French people suffered terribly in the Fronde, but it achieved no constitutional reform. Royal absolutism was reinstalled without any effective limitation.
Mazarin died on 9 March 1661. The same day, Louis XIV received dispensation from Pope Alexander VII regarding the marriage of Philippe de France and his first wife Princess Henrietta Anne of England.
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