that the nobility, angered at their own systematic depression, and by
Mazarin's ascendency, might make common cause with the Parliament and
establish some effectual check to the advances of the Crown. This
was the origin of the party called the Fronde, because the speakers
launched their speeches at one another as boys fling stones from a
sling (fronde) in the streets.

The Queen-Regent was enraged through all her despotic Spanish
haughtiness at such resistance. She tried to step in by the arrest
of the foremost members of the Opposition, but failed, and only
provoked violent tumults. The young Prince of Conde, coming home
from Germany flushed with victory, hated Mazarin extremely, but his
pride as a Prince of the Blood, and his private animosities impelled
him to take up the cause of the Queen. She conveyed her son secretly
from Paris, and the city was in a state of siege for several months.
However, the execution of Charles I. in England alarmed the Queen on
the one hand, and the Parliament on the other as to the consequences
of a rebellion, provisions began to run short, and a vague hollow
peace was made in the March of 1649.

Conde now became intolerably overbearing, insulted every one, and so
much offended the Queen and Mazarin that they caused him, his
brother, and the Duke of Bouillon, to be arrested and imprisoned at
Vincennes. His wife, though a cruelly-neglected woman whom he had
never loved, did her utmost to deliver him, repaired to Bordeaux, and
gained over the Parliament there, so that she held out four months
against the Queen. Turenne, brother to Bouillon, and as great a
general as Conde, obtained the aid of Spaniards, and the Coadjutor
prevailed on the King's uncle, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, to represent
that the Queen must give way, release the Princes, part with Mazarin,