The Cardinal, the Prince and the Crisis of the Fronde, by David Parrott

France, like virtually every other country in Western Europe, found itself in the midst of a general crisis during the middle of the seventeenth century. The Fronde (1648–1652) has long exercised the imagination of historians, either as an early anarchic predecessor to the French Revolution, or as a hurdle on the road towards absolutism, a last gasp of resistance that the forces of modernity needed to overcome. This remarkable study focuses on an aspect of the Fronde that has received surprisingly little attention: its conclusion. The grand historical narratives detailed above resonate more with the original wave of popular unrest of 1648, the ‘revolt of the judges’ which had forced the French court to leave Paris, and the vast output of printed invectives (mazarinades) than with the princely revolt which defined the Fronde’s final years. David Parrott’s principal hypothesis, amply substantiated in his book, is that historians in...

Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History