Conde did not permit himself to be caught by the queen’s declarations:  of all the princes he alone was missing at the ceremony of the bed of justice whereat the youthful Louis XIV., when entering his fourteenth year, announced, on the 7th of September, to his people that, according the laws of his realm, he “intended himself to assume the government, hoping of God’s goodness that it would be with piety and justice.”  The prince had retired to Chantilly, on the pretext that the new minister, the president of the council, Chateauneuf, and the keeper of the seals, Matthew Mole, were not friends of his.  The Duchess of Longueville at last carried the day; Conde was resolved upon civil war.  “You would have it,” he said to his sister on repelling the envoy, who had followed him to Bourges, from the queen and the Duke of Orleans; “remember that I draw the sword in spite of myself, but I will be the last to sheathe it.”  And he kept his word.

A great disappointment awaited the rebels; they had counted upon the Duke of Bouillon and M. de Turenne, but neither of them would join the faction.  The relations between the two great generals had not been without rubs; Turenne had, moreover, felt some remorse because he, being a general in the king’s army, had but lately declared against the court, “doing thereby a deed at which Le Balafro and Admiral de Coligny would have hesitated,” says Cardinal de Retz.  The two brothers went, before long, and offered their services to the queen.

Meanwhile Conde had arrived at Bordeaux:  a part of Guienne, Saintonge, and Porigord had declared in his favor; Count d’Harcourt, at the head of the royal troops, marched against La Rochelle, which he took from the revolters under the very beard of the prince, who had come from Bordeaux to the assistance of the place, whilst the king and the queen, resolutely quitting Paris, advanced from town to town as far as Poitiers, keeping the centre of France to its allegiance by their mere presence.  The treaty of the Prince of Conde with Spain was concluded:  eight Spanish vessels, having money and troops on board, entered the Gironde.  Conde delivered over to them the castle and harbor of Talmont.  The queen had commissioned the cardinal to raise levies in Germany, and he had already entered the country of Liege, embodying troops and forming alliances.  On the 17th of November, Anne of Austria finally wrote to Mazarin to return to the king’s assistance.  In the presence of Conde’s rebellion she had no more appearances to keep up with anybody; and it was already in the master’s tone that Mazarin wrote to the queen, on the 30th of October, to put her on her guard against the Duke of Orleans:  “The power committed to his Royal Highness and the neutrality permitted to him, being as he is wholly devoted to the prince, surrounded by his partisans, and adhering blindly to their counsels, are matters highly prejudicial to the king’s service, and, for my part, I do not see how one can be a servant of the king’s, with ever so little judgment and knowledge of affairs, and yet dispute these truths.  The queen, then, must bide her time to remedy all this.”