f the city, when the king's
attorney-general proposed to conjure his Majesty to return to Paris
without Cardinal Mazarin, the princes, who demanded the union of the
Parisians with themselves, rose up and went out, leaving the assembly to
the tender mercies of the crowd assembled on the Place de Greve. "Down
on the Mazarins!" was the cry; "there are none but Mazarins any longer at
the Hotel de Ville!" Fire was applied to the doors defended by the
archers; all the outlets were guarded by men beside themselves; more than
thirty burgesses of note were massacred; many died of their wounds, the
Hotel de Ville was pillaged, Marshal de l'Hopital escaped with great
difficulty, and the provost of tradesmen yielded up his office to
Councillor Broussel. Terror reigned in Paris: it was necessary to drag
the magistrates to the Palace of Justice to decree, on the 19th of July,
by seventy-four votes against sixty-nine, that the Duke of Orleans should
be appointed "lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and the Prince of Conde
commandant of all the armies." The usurpation of the royal authority was
flagrant, the city-assembly voted subsidies, and Paris wrote to all the
good towns of France to announce to them her resolution. Chancellor
Seguier had the poltroonery to accept the presidency of the council,
offered him by the Duke of Orleans; he thus avenged himself for the
preference the, queen had but lately shown for Mole by confiding the
seals to him. At the same time the Spaniards were entering France; for
all the strong places were dismantled or disgarrisoned. The king,
obliged to confront civil war, had abandoned his frontiers; Gravelines
had fallen on the 18th of May, and the arch-duke had undertaken the siege
of Dunkerque. At Conde's instance, he detached a body of troops, which
he sent, under the orders of Count Fuendalsagna, to join the Duke of
Lorraine, who had again approached Paris. Everywhere the fortune of arms
appeared to be against the king. "This year we lost Barcelona,
Catalonia, and Casale, the key of Italy," says Cardinal de Retz. We saw
Brisach in revolt, on the point of falling once more into the hands of
the house of Austria. We saw the flags and standards of Spain fluttering
on the Pont Neuf, the yellow scarfs of Lorraine appeared in Paris as
freely as the isabels and the blues." Dissension, ambition, and
poltroonery were delivering France over to the foreigner.

The evil passions of men, under the control