Cardinal Mazarin and the Fronde
France we know, but French governments perplex us, writes J.H.M. Salmon. Mazarin’s was one of the oddest regimes that France has undergone. This Italian “condottiere in diplomacy” ruled France, despite recalcitrant noblemen and civil war, for nearly twenty years.
Few statesmen have been the subject of a general execration as malevolent as that which was expressed for Cardinal Mazarin during the dissensions known as the Fronde. Yet there were times when the authors of the scurrilous Mazarinades tempered their abuse with a certain involuntary admiration. In this vein one of his detractors wrote in January 1649:
“Who will ever believe that an insignificant foreigner, derived from the meanest popular dregs (sorti de la derniere lie du peuple) and born a subject of Spain, has within six years raised himself upon the shoulders of the King of France, chastened the princes, and built for himself in Paris a residence which shames the royal palaces —where his very stables are of an indescribable luxury? ’1
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