On the basis of these policies, Richelieu was able to pursue an increasingly ambitious foreign policy. His first aim was the security of France, which he hoped to achieve through the occupation of key points on the country’s frontiers lying along imperial and Spanish territories. He thus involved France in the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–31) in northern Italy. Through diplomatic means he worked for the dismissal of Albrecht Wenzel von Wallenstein, the brilliant general fighting on the side of Emperor Ferdinand II, whose forces were threatening to destroy the Protestant princes of Germany in the Thirty Years’ War. To undermine the power of the Habsburgs, he prolonged this conflict, negotiating with the United Provinces; with Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, with whom he concluded the subsidy Treaty of Bärwalde in 1631, agreeing to pay the Swedish king one million livres per year to continue the war; with Gustav’s successor, Greve (count) Axel Oxenstierna; and with Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar. Eventually, in 1635, Richelieu committed France to direct conflict with the Habsburgs; and before his death he had savoured the triumph of having French arms in the Spanish Netherlands, Lorraine, Alsace, and Roussillon.
Richelieu’s foreign policy was not only ambitious but extremely expensive. Annual government expenditure tripled from 1620 to 1640, two-thirds of the money going to the military. The drastic increase in taxes needed to pay for the war sparked a series of provincial rebellions in the 1630s. The population’s resentment of the monarchy’s rising demands was exacerbated by the fact that these years marked the end of a long cycle of prosperity, encompassing most of the 16th century and the beginning of a period of economic difficulties that would extend through the reign of Louis XIV. Crop failures, great fluctuations in prices, and outbreaks of famine further accentuated the misery. Although most participants in the revolts of the 1630s came from the lower classes, municipal authorities such as those of Lyon in 1632, provincial nobles in Périgord in 1636, and even princes of the blood such as Louis de Bourbon, comte de Soissons, in 1641, took advantage of the discontent to incite protests against the increasing centralization of royal power and Richelieu’s efforts to abrogate local privileges. Indeed, peasants often turned to local nobles to lead their movements.
Although these revolts were unwelcome distractions from the minister’s efforts to project French power abroad, they did not pose a revolutionary threat. Dispersed and uncoordinated, they were put down by a combination of temporary concessions, such as the suspension of efforts to collect unpopular taxes, and the exemplary execution of a few ringleaders. There was little sign of the revolutionary attitude that had characterized aspects of the 16th-century Wars of Religion and that would surface again in 1789. On the contrary, there were positive signs of continuing loyalty to the crown, with such rebel slogans as "Vive le roi sans la gabelle" (“Long live the king, but not the salt tax”) or "Vive le roi sans la taille" (“Long live the king, but not the direct tax”) indicating that the resistance was focused on the taxes themselves. Nor was the other great bastion of the establishment, the church, attacked. The substantial tax of the dîme (the tithe, or tenth) continued to be paid to the church without complaint. The first half of the 17th century was a period of revival for French Catholicism, as the church reforms called for by the Council of Trent began to show their effects. Improved seminary training produced more educated and devout priests, who worked to inspire stricter observance among their flocks. New religious orders, inspired by such figures as Francis of Sales, Vincent de Paul, Jane Frances of Chantal, and Louise de Marillac (all later canonized), emphasized practical activities such as teaching and the provision of medical care. These orders—such as the Oratorians and the Vincentians (Lazarists), for men, and the Ursulines and Sisters of Charity, for women—rooted the church more strongly in French society.
The career of Richelieu bears something of a contradictory aspect. He undoubtedly added to the earlier success of Henry IV and Sully in overcoming the threat of anarchy and disorder that was the legacy of the late 16th century. Indeed, his contemporary reputation was one of supreme ruthlessness and arbitrariness in the application of power. Yet he was never more than the king’s creature, incapable of pursuing a course of action of which Louis disapproved, always vulnerable to the loss of royal favour and support. He was ambitious, but he recognized that his desire for power could be satisfied best within the confines of dutiful royal service. Richelieu was no innovator: he devised neither new administrative procedures nor novel methods of taxation to secure the king’s authority. Indeed, the power of the great financiers grew with the government’s need for additional war revenue, posing a different threat to royal absolutism. Richelieu’s unique contribution lay in the single-minded devotion he gave to the task of increasing royal authority at home and abroad. He also succeeded in accumulating a vast personal fortune as a result of his years in power. Richelieu died in 1642, and Louis XIII died the following year. France was once again ruled by a regent, the queen mother, Anne of Austria. But the task of governing the country fell increasingly into the hands of another cardinal, Jules Mazarin. The Fronde
The years of Louis XIV’s minority were dominated by the Fronde, a series of civil disturbances that lasted from 1648 to 1653. The government’s financial difficulties were once more at the root of the trouble. In the first few years of the regency a variety of expedients were tried to raise additional revenue for the war with Spain. There was about these expedients an air of arbitrariness and compulsion that antagonized a wide cross section of Parisian society, notably the Parlement of Paris, and the animosity was heightened by Mazarin’s use of intendants in the localities to cut across traditional legal hierarchies. Although most of the disputes were superficially concerned with financial exactions, below the surface an older constitutional argument was developing, as Mazarin followed Richelieu in attempting to dictate from the centre in the interests of the state. The climax came when the government failed to renew the paulette for the members of the provincial parlements and for some of the chief legal officiers in the capital, in the Cour des Aides, the Chambre des Comptes, and the Great Council. This decision was not a gratuitous rebuff to these magistrates but yet another attempt to gain additional revenue, this time by offering a renewal of the paulette in lieu of four years’ salary.
At this point, the first phase of the disturbances (the Fronde of the Parlement) began with the outraged magistrates of the three courts concerned joining with the Parlement of Paris to demand redress. Their demands included the abolition of the office of intendant, a reduction in the level of the taille, and the restoration of normal judicial procedure in registering financial edicts in the Parlement. The regent and Mazarin at first took a conciliatory attitude, but each side gradually moved to more committed and extreme positions, and civil disturbances in Paris exacerbated an already delicate situation. The magistrates increasingly aimed their fire at Mazarin, for he, like Richelieu before him, seemed to be taking over the king’s authority and using it in uncharted and illegal areas. The magistrates, however, were not revolutionaries, and the state of disorder in the capital frightened them. That fact, allied with fears of a Spanish invasion (for the war was continuing with Spain despite the Peace of Westphalia in 1648), persuaded them in 1649 to make the Peace of Rueil with the government, the terms of which were for the most part favourable to the magistrates’ original demands. At this stage the second civil war broke out, the Fronde of the Princes, headed by the Great Condé. The second phase was a pale reflection of the aristocratic resistance during the Wars of Religion; and, although Condé succeeded in gaining control of Paris, he did not acquire the support of the Parlement except briefly and under duress. In October 1652 Condé fled to Spain, and Louis XIV reentered his capital in triumph.