Fronde (1648–1653)

Abstract

Abstract Contemporaries called the period of civil disturbance in France known to historians as the Fronde a period of “troubles” akin to a civil war. The term Fronde literally means “sling.” A famous contemporary engraving shows an image of David (figuratively representing the opposition) armed with a sling ( fronde ), apparently having triumphed over Goliath (that is, the chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin) (Carrier 1989: ii, 251). The Fronde was a collective protest against a long foreign war (France had been fighting Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor since 1635) and an increasingly heavy burden of taxation. There were secondary, but important, objections to continuing the foreign war in a period of royal minority (the infant Louis XIV succeeded his father as king on May 14, 1643) and the autocratic style of government exercised by Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister and favorite of the queen regent, Anne of Austria. There were few coherent constitutional alternatives to the absolutist style of government that had been exercised by Louis XIII, however. In particular, the 27 reform proposals of the Parisian sovereign courts in the summer of 1648, had they been accepted by the crown, would have forced France to make peace with its enemies on disadvantageous terms. In many respects, the military campaigns fall into the category of what “might have been” rather than actual events of significance. Thus, Turenne's invasion force from the Spanish Netherlands was decisively defeated at Rethel by the royalist army under Marshal du Plessis Praslin on December, 15 1650—one of only two defeats in Turenne's career. Had the outcome of this battle gone the other way, the Frondeur opposition would have taken over the government of the kingdom.