Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME. PARIS.

It is an interesting spectacle to see this woman, moved by sheer pride and obstinacy, conjoined with ignorance of the actual situation, seeking to set her single will against that of a city in revolt, and endangering the very existence of the monarchy by her sheer lack of reason. Her consent, for the time being, settled the difficulty, though the passions which had been aroused were not easily to be set at rest. Broussel was released and took his seat again in the Parliament, and the people returned to their homes, satisfied, for the time, with their victory over the queen and the cardinal.

In truth, a contest had arisen which was yet to yield important consequences. The Prince of Condé had arrived in Paris during these events. He had the prestige of a successful general; he did not like the cardinal, and he looked on the Parliament as imprudent and insolent.

"If I should join hands with them," he said to De Retz, "it might be best for my interests, but my name is Louis de Bourbon, and I do not wish to shake the throne. These devils of square-caps, are they mad about bringing me either to commence a civil war, or to put a rope round their own necks? I will let them see that they are not the potentates they think themselves, and that they may easily be brought to reason."

"The cardinal may possibly be mistaken in his measures," answered De Retz. "He will find Paris a hard nut to crack."

"It will not be taken, like Dunkerque, by mining and assaults," retorted the prince, angrily; "but if the bread of Gonesse were to fail them for a week—" He left the coadjutor to imagine the consequences.

The contest continued. In January, 1649, the queen, the boy king, and the whole court set out by night for the castle of St. Germain. It was unfurnished, with scarcely a bundle of straw to lie upon, but the queen could not have been more gay "had she won a battle, taken Paris, and had all who had displeased her hanged, and nevertheless she was very far from all that."

Far enough, indeed. Paris was in the hands of her enemies, who were as gay as the queen. On the 8th of January the Parliament of Paris decreed Cardinal Mazarin an enemy to the king and the state, and bade all subjects of the king to hunt him down. War was declared against the queen regent and her favorite, the cardinal. Had it been the States-General in place of the Parliament, the French Revolution might have then and there begun.

Many of the greatest lords joined the side of the people. Troops were levied in the city, their command being offered to the Prince of Conti. The Parliaments of Aix and Rouen voted to support that of Paris. It was decreed that all the royal funds, in the exchequers of the kingdom, should be seized and used for the defence of the people. All was festivity in the city. The versatile people seemed to imagine that to declare war was to decree victory. There was dancing everywhere within the walls. There was the rumble of war without. The Prince of Condé, at the head of the king's troops, had taken the post of Charentin from the Frondeurs, as the malcontents called themselves, and had carried out his threat of checking the flow of bread to the city. The gay Parisians were beginning to feel the inconvenience of hunger.

What followed is too long a story to be told here, except in bare epitome. A truce was patched up between the contending parties. Bread flowed again into Paris. The seared and hungry people grew courageous and violent again when their appetites were satisfied. When M. Molé and his fellows returned to Paris with a treaty of peace which they had signed, the populace gathered round them in fury.

"None of your peace! None of your Mazarin!" they angrily shouted. "We must go to St. Germain to seek our good king! We must fling into the river all the Mazarins."

One of them laid his hand threateningly on President Molé's arm. The latter looked him in the face calmly.

"When you have killed me," he said, quietly, "I shall only need six feet of earth."

"You can get back to your house secretly by way of the record offices," whispered one of his companions.

"The court never hides itself," he composedly replied. "If I were certain to perish, I would not commit this poltroonery, which, moreover, would but give courage to the rioters. They would seek me in my house if they thought I shrank from them here."

M. Molé was a man of courage. To face a mob is at times more dangerous than to face an army.

Paris was in disorder. The agitation was spreading all over France. But the army was faithful to the king, and without it the Fronde was powerless. The outbreak had ended in a treaty of peace and amnesty in which the Parliament had in a measure won, as it had preserved all its rights and privileges.

It was to be a short peace. Condé, elated by having beaten the Fronde, claimed a lion's share in the government. His brother, the Prince of Conti, and his sister, the Duchess of Longueville, joined him in these pretensions. The affair ended in a bold step on the part of Mazarin and the queen. The two princes and M. de Longueville were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Vincennes, while the princesses were ordered to retire to their estates, and the Duchess of Longueville, fearing arrest, fled in haste to Normandy.

For the present the star of the cardinal was in the ascendant. But his master-stroke set war on foot again. The Parliament of Paris supported the princes. Their partisans rallied. Bordeaux broke into insurrection. Elsewhere hot blood declared itself. The Duke of Orleans joined the party of the prisoners. The Parliament enjoined all the officers of the crown to obey none but the duke, the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the night of February 6, 1651, Mazarin set out again for St. Germain. Paris had become far too hot to hold him.

The tidings of his flight brought the people into the streets again. The Duke of Orleans informed Cardinal de Retz that the queen proposed to follow her flying minister, with the boy king.

"What is to be done?" he asked, somewhat helplessly. "It is a bad business; but how are we to stop it?"

"How?" cried the more practical De Retz; "why, by shutting the gates of Paris, to begin with. The king must not go."