Jean François Paul de Gondi
Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz was a French churchman, writer of memoirs, and agitator in the Fronde.
Portrait by Jacob Ferdinand Voet
Jean-François Paul de Gondi as a young cardinal of the church.
1731 Edition (by Bernard, Amsterdam)
The Fronde were a series of civil wars in the Kingdom of France between 1648 and 1653, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The government of the young King Louis XIV confronted the combined opposition of the princes, the nobility, the law courts (parlements), as well as much of the French population, and managed to subdue them all. The dispute started when the government of France issued seven fiscal edicts, six of which were to increase taxation. The parlements resisted, questioned the constitutionality of the king's actions, and sought to check his powers.
Battle of the Faubourg St Antoine (1652) by the walls of the Bastille, Paris
Cardinal Mazarin, French diplomat and statesman; portrait attributed to Mathieu Le Nain
"Louis XIV Crushes the Fronde" by Gilles Guérin 1654
The Battle of the Dunes in 1658