THE FORTRESS RECALLED INDEPENDENT NOBLES' LAST REVOLT AND DEFINITIVE DEFEAT
"LA FRONDE," 1648 – 1653
Anne-Marie Louise d'Orléans, Louis XIV's first cousin, ordered the cannoneers of the Bastille fortress to fire on the king's troops.
Portrait at the Musée Carnavalet
The five-year civil war was essentially the attempt by parliamentarians, magistrates and nobles to halt the growth of royal power.
"Fronde" means "Slingshot."* The name suggests frivolousness because many nobles inserted their personal intrigues, but accounts mention the queen of England** staying in bed because of the cold, little Louis XIV sleeping in torn sheets and a mother and children dead of starvation on pont Neuf.
*Boys broke the windows of the Prime Minister's coach with their slingshots (frondes):"Come fronder with us," became the slogan.
-- La Fronde by Orest Ranum, Fr. ed. 1993
**Widow of Charles I and Louis's aunt, she took refuge in Paris.
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The duchess's account:
" ...I walked for a long time along the towers [of the Bastille] and had the cannon changed [to direct them toward the countryside]. I looked at them through my spyglass: I saw a multitude on the Charonne heights, and even coaches; which made me think that the king was there and I learned later that I had not been wrong. I also saw the whole of the enemy army in the distance, near Bagnolet [...]. One saw the generals without recognizing their faces; but one recognized them by their suites [...]."
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| Adapted from a map of 1615 |
"I saw how they split their cavalry to force us between the suburb and the escarpment, some from Popincourt and others from Reuilly... ."
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| Adapted from a métro map |
Places she saw by telescope
"The troops [...] advanced near the town: But two or three cannon shots were fired from Bastille, as I had ordered [...]. That frightened them, having shattered a row of horsemen: without the foreign infantry, the police force and part of the cavalry the rearguard of the rebel army would have been defeated [...]."
Combat under the Walls of the Bastille, anonymous, 17th century / zoom
"When I thought that night, and all the times I think again, that I had saved that army, I admit that it gave me great satisfaction [...]. The joy I felt of rendering service to such a considerable party and of having done something so extraordinary, which perhaps had never happened to someone of my condition, kept me from the reflections one can have now and would have troubled my joy [she mentions the killed]. "
-- La Grande Mademoiselle, "Mémoires," 2004 ed, I, p. 234
"All those who on the day of the battle of Saint-Antoine had seen the bodies of so many dead or dying citizens dragged back to Paris on a harrow, on viewing the entry of such a different kind praised the heavens, and gave thanks for such a fortunate change."
-- The Century of Louis XIV by Voltaire, 2015 ed, p. 402
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A month later the rebels were definitively beaten,
and nobles' independence came to an end.
Beginning the parade at La Bastille recalled their swan song
and underscored the change of epoch.
The monarchy would be uncontested
until the Revolution.
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