It was not the good fortune of Frontenac to serve under either Conde or Turenne during those campaigns, so triumphant for France, which marked the close of the Thirty Years’ War.  From Perpignan he was ordered to northern Italy, where in the course of three years he performed the exploits which made him a brigadier-general at twenty-six.  Though repeatedly wounded, he survived twelve years of constant fighting with no more serious casualty than a broken arm which he carried away from the siege of Orbitello.  By the time peace was signed at Munster he had become a soldier well proved in the most desperate war which had been fought since Europe accepted Christianity.

To the great action of the Thirty Years’ War there soon succeeded the domestic commotion of the Fronde.  Richelieu, despite his high qualities as a statesman, had been a poor financier; and Cardinal Mazarin, his successor, was forced to cope with a discontent which sprang in part from the misery of the masses and in part from the ambition of the nobles.  As Louis XIV was still an infant when his father died, the burden of government fell in name upon the queen-mother, Anne of Austria, but in reality upon Mazarin.  Not even the most disaffected dared to rebel against the young king in the sense of disputing his right to reign.  But in 1648 the extreme youth of Louis XIV made it easy for discontented nobles, supported by the Parlement of Paris, to rebel against an unpopular minister.

The year 1648, which witnessed the Peace of Westphalia and the outbreak of the Fronde, was rendered memorable to Frontenac by his marriage.  It was a runaway match, which began an extraordinary alliance between two very extraordinary people.  The bride, Anne de la Grange-Trianon, was a daughter of the Sieur de Neuville, a gentleman whose house in Paris was not far from that of Frontenac’s parents.  At the time of the elopement she was only sixteen, while Frontenac had reached the ripe age of twenty-eight.  Both were high-spirited and impetuous.  We know also that Frontenac was hot-tempered.  For a short time they lived together and there was a son.  But before the wars of the Fronde had closed they drifted apart, from motives which were personal rather than political.

Madame de Frontenac then became a maid of honour to the Duchesse de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston d’Orleans [Footnote:  Gaston d’Orleans was the younger brother of Louis XIII, and heir-presumptive until the birth of Louis XIV in 1638.  His vanity and his complicity in plots to overthrow Richelieu are equally famous.] and first cousin to Louis XIV.  This princess, known as La Grande Mademoiselle, plunged into the politics of the Fronde with a vigour which involved her whole household—­Madame de Frontenac included—­and wrote Memoirs in which her adventures are recorded at full length, to the pungent criticism of her foes and the enthusiastic glorification of herself.  Madame de Frontenac was in attendance upon La Grande Mademoiselle during the period of her most spectacular exploits and shared all the excitement which culminated with the famous entry of Orleans in 1652.