for reinforcements to be sent to subdue the rebellion in the
south, and the royal general had to retire. Then, happily for
France, the archduke decided that he had spent sufficient of
the king of Spain’s money and men in the French quarrel.
The magnificent regular army withdrew into winter quarters,
and left Turenne to deliver the princes with a motley host of
Frondeurs and Lorrainers. Plessis-Praslin by force and bribery
secured the surrender of Rethel on the 13th of December 1650,
and Turenne, who had advanced to relieve the place, fell back
hurriedly. But he was a terrible opponent, and Plessis-Praslin
and Mazarin himself, who accompanied the army, had many
misgivings as to the result of a lost battle. The marshal chose
nevertheless to force Turenne to a decision, and the battle of
Blanc-Champ (near Somme-Py) or Rethel was the consequence.
Both sides were at a standstill in strong positions, Plessis-Praslin
doubtful of the trustworthiness of his cavalry, Turenne too weak
to attack, when a dispute for precedence arose between the
Gardes françaises and the Picardie regiment. The royal infantry
had to be rearranged in order of regimental seniority, and
Turenne, seeing and desiring to profit by the attendant disorder,
came out of his stronghold and attacked with the greatest vigour.
The battle (December 15, 1650) was severe and for a time doubtful,
but Turenne’s Frondeurs gave way in the end, and his army,
as an army, ceased to exist. Turenne himself, undeceived as to
the part he was playing in the drama, asked and received the
young king’s pardon, and meantime the court, with the maison
du roi and other loyal troops, had subdued the minor risings
without difficulty (March–April 1651). Condé, Conti and
Longueville were released, and by April 1651 the rebellion had
everywhere collapsed. Then followed a few months of hollow
peace and the court returned to Paris. Mazarin, an object of
hatred to all the princes, had already retired into exile. “Le
temps est un galant homme,” he remarked, “laissons le faire!”
and so it proved. His absence left the field free for mutual
jealousies, and for the remainder of the year anarchy reigned
in France. In December 1651 Mazarin returned with a small
army. The war began again, and this time Turenne and Condé
were pitted against one another. After the first campaign, as
we shall see, the civil war ceased, but for several other campaigns
the two great soldiers were opposed to one another, Turenne as
the defender of France, Condé as a Spanish invader. Their
personalities alone give threads of continuity to these seven years
of wearisome manœuvres, sieges and combats, though for a
right understanding of the causes which were to produce the
standing armies of the age of Louis XIV. and Frederick the Great
the military student should search deeply into the material and
moral factors that here decided the issue.
The début of the new Frondeurs took place in Guyenne (February–March 1652), while their Spanish ally, the archduke Leopold William, captured various northern fortresses. On the Loire, whither the centre of gravity was soon transferred, the Frondeurs were commanded by intriguers and quarrelsome lords, until Condé’s arrival from Guyenne. His bold trenchant leadership made itself felt in the action of Bléneau (7th April 1652), in which a portion of the royal army was destroyed, but fresh troops came up to oppose him, and from the skilful dispositions made by his opponents Condé felt the presence of Turenne and broke off the action. The royal army did likewise. Condé invited the commander of Turenne’s rearguard to supper, chaffed him unmercifully for allowing the prince’s men to surprise him in the morning, and by way of farewell remarked to his guest, “Quel dommage que des braves gens comme nous se coupent la gorge pour un faquin”—an incident and a remark that thoroughly justify the iron-handed absolutism of Louis XIV. There was no hope for France while tournaments on a large scale and at the public’s expense were fashionable amongst the grands seigneurs. After Bléneau both armies marched to Paris to negotiate with the parlement, de Retz and Mlle de Montpensier, while the archduke took more fortresses in Flanders, and Charles IV., duke of Lorraine, with an army of plundering mercenaries, marched through Champagne to join Condé. As to the latter, Turenne manœuvred past Condé and planted himself in front of the mercenaries, and their leader, not wishing to expend his men against the old French regiments, consented to depart with a money payment and the promise of two tiny Lorraine fortresses. A few more manœuvres, and the royal army was able to hem in the Frondeurs in the Faubourg St Antoine (2nd July 1652) with their backs to the closed gates of Paris. The royalists attacked all along the line and won a signal victory in spite of the knightly prowess of the prince and his great lords, but at the critical moment Gaston’s daughter persuaded the Parisians to open the gates and to admit Condé’s army. She herself turned the guns of the Bastille on the pursuers. An insurrectional government was organized in the capital and proclaimed Monsieur lieutenant-general of the realm. Mazarin, feeling that public opinion was solidly against him, left France again, and the bourgeois of Paris, quarrelling with the princes, permitted the king to enter the city on the 21st of October 1652. Mazarin returned unopposed in February 1653.
The Fronde as a civil war was now over. The whole country, wearied of anarchy and disgusted with the princes, came to look to the king’s party as the party of order and settled government, and thus the Fronde prepared the way for the absolutism of Louis XIV. The general war continued in Flanders, Catalonia and Italy wherever a Spanish and a French garrison were face to face, and Condé with the wreck of his army openly and definitely entered the service of the king of Spain. The “Spanish Fronde” was almost purely a military affair and, except for a few outstanding incidents, a dull affair to boot. In 1653 France was so exhausted that neither invaders nor defenders were able to gather supplies to enable them to take the field till July. At one moment, near Péronne, Condé had Turenne at a serious disadvantage, but he could not galvanize the Spanish general Count Fuensaldana, who was more solicitous to preserve his master’s soldiers than to establish Condé as mayor of the palace to the king of France, and the armies drew apart again without fighting. In 1654 the principal incident was the siege and relief of Arras. On the night of the 24th–25th August the lines of circumvallation drawn round that place by the prince were brilliantly stormed by Turenne’s army, and Condé won equal credit for his safe withdrawal of the besieging corps under cover of a series of bold cavalry charges led by himself as usual, sword in hand. In 1655 Turenne captured the fortresses of Landrecies, Condé and St Ghislain. In 1656 the prince of Condé revenged himself for the defeat of Arras by storming Turenne’s circumvallation around Valenciennes (16th July), but Turenne drew off his forces in good order. The campaign of 1657 was uneventful, and is only to be remembered because a body of 6000 British infantry, sent by Cromwell in pursuance of his treaty of alliance with Mazarin, took part in it. The presence of the English contingent and its very definite purpose of making Dunkirk a new Calais, to be held by England for ever, gave the next campaign a character of certainty and decision which is entirely wanting in the rest of the war. Dunkirk was besieged promptly and in great force, and when Don Juan of Austria and Condé appeared with the relieving army from Furnes, Turenne advanced boldly to meet him. The battle of the Dunes, fought on the 14th of June 1658, was the first real trial of strength since the battle of the Faubourg St Antoine. Successes on one wing were compromised by failure on the other, but in the end Condé drew off with heavy losses, the success of his own cavalry charges having entirely failed to make good the defeat of the Spanish right wing amongst the Dunes. Here the “red-coats” made their first appearance on a continental battlefield, under the leadership of Sir W. Lockhart, Cromwell’s ambassador at Paris, and astonished both armies by the stubborn fierceness of their assaults, for they were the products of a war where passions ran higher and the determination to win rested on deeper foundations than in the dégringolade of the feudal spirit in which they now figured. Dunkirk fell, as a result of the victory, and flew the St George’s cross till Charles II. sold it to the king of France. A last desultory campaign followed in 1659—the twenty-fifth year of the Franco-Spanish War—and the peace of the Pyrenees was signed on the 5th of November. On the 27th of January
