Kept in idleness, tantalised by promises of office which were never fulfilled, and forbidden even to follow the wars, my wretched position led me at last to seek some way of showing my resentment at the treatment I had received from the queen and cardinal.  The means were at hand.  Like many others, I had come under the spell of the beauty and charm of Madame de Longueville, and thus come gradually into association with the party of the Fronde.  I followed the Duke of Enghien, her brother, to the attack on Courtray, then to Mardick, where I was wounded; and this time of military service united me more closely to his later interests.

By the year 1647 everyone was weary of Mazarin’s rule.  His bad faith, his weakness, and his trickiness were becoming known, provinces and towns alike were groaning under taxation, and the citizens of Paris were reduced to mere despair.  Parliament tried respectful remonstrances in vain; the cardinal thought himself safe in the servility of the nation.  But the great majority in France desired a change, and then smouldering discontent soon burst into a flame.

The Duke of Enghien, who had become, by the death of his father, Prince of Conde, had gained in 1648 a great victory in Flanders, and a solemn thanksgiving was held in Notre Dame to celebrate it.  Mazarin chose this moment for the arrest of Broussel and other members of parliament who had voiced most urgently the public distress.  The action roused Paris to a fury which astonished him; the people sought him to tear him to pieces; barricades were erected in the streets, and the king and queen were besieged in the royal palace.  Resistance to the parliament’s demands were at the moment impossible; the prisoners had to be released.

I was at this time absent from Paris, having been sent down by the queen to my government at Poitou, which I had purchased; the province was almost in insurrection and I had to pacify it.  I happened to be deeply wounded by a new slight which Cardinal Mazarin had put upon me, when Madame de Longueville sent for me to come to Paris, informing me that the whole plan for a civil war had been drawn up, and asking for my counsel in the matter.  The news delighted me, and I arrived at the capital eager for my revenge on the queen and the cardinal.

Mazarin, on the other hand, had formed his plan.  Realising that Paris was unsafe, he determined to leave it, to place the king at Saint-Germain, and to lay siege to the city, which would soon be reduced to famine and dissensions.  Their escape was made at midnight on the eve of Epiphany, 1649, all the court following in great disorder.