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Already, even a short time before, when the Queen ousted Châteauneuf without consulting the Duke d'Orleans, the wrath of the Frondeurs had been such, that at a council held at the Palais d'Orleans of the whole party, it was proposed to go, on the part of the lieutenant-general, and demand back the seals from Mathieu Molé.
Their hatred and contempt for the Cardinal made them too easily forget that the lowest faults do not prevent the higher orders of the empire from being defended by those to whom they have the honour to belong; that a Rohan, a Prince of the Church, however culpable he might be, would be sure to have a considerable party which would naturally be joined by all the discontented persons of the Court, and all the frondeurs of Paris.
The Duchess de Chevreuse, always gallant, in spite of waning beauty, constituted herself the mediatrix between the Queen and the Frondeurs; and although her daughter had openly become the mistress of the Coadjutor, it was already contemplated to make her the wife of the Prince de Conti, as a condition of the arrangement by which he should be set free.
This artifice of Servien united the Prince to the Cardinal, because he found himself obliged to defend himself against the Frondeurs, who, as he believed, sought to assassinate him.
But it must be confessed, the suspicions of the Frondeurs and the accusations of the Queen's friends have such great weight that it is scarcely possible to avoid attributing to Madame de Longueville a sufficiently large share in the deplorable rupture whence so many evils sprang. Her complaisant biographer, Villefore, is on this point in accordance with Madame de Motteville.
All this made the Frondeurs hope much from beginning to resist; but I remember Sir Andrew said that he did not believe that these nobles and princes cared in the least for relieving the people, but merely for overthrowing the Cardinal, and he could not find out that the Parliament had any definite scheme, or knew what they wished. In fact, Sir Andrew dreaded any movement.
Has his Royal Highness any regular troops to besiege Vincennes? And, granting the Frondeurs to be the greatest fools imaginable, will they expose the people of Paris at a siege which two thousand of the King's troops might raise in a quarter of an hour though it consist of a hundred thousand citizens? I therefore conclude that the removal would be altogether impolitic.
Richelieu had completely tamed the turbulent spirit of the French nobility, and had subverted the "imperium in imperio" of the Huguenots. The faction of the Frondeurs in Mazarin's time had had the effect of making the Parisian parliament utterly hateful and contemptible in the eyes of the nation. The assemblies of the States-General were obsolete. The royal authority alone remained.
Cardinal Mazarin, upon his return with the King from Guienne, was greatly pleased with the acclamations of the mob, but he soon grew weary of them, for the Frondeurs still kept the wall.
Jean d'Angely equipped soldiers for the king; Montauban, to resist the Frondeurs, repaired the fortifications thrown down by Richelieu. "The crown was tottering upon the king's head," said Count d' Harcourt to the pastors of Guienne, "but you have made it secure."
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