s well as the faults of
Mazarin were accordingly free to crop out: he was neither vindictive nor
cruel towards even his most inveterate enemies, whom he could not manage,
as Richelieu did, to confound with those of the state; the excesses of
the factions had sufficed to destroy them. "Time is an able fellow," the
cardinal would frequently say; if people often complained of being badly
compensated for their services, Mazarin could excuse himself on the
ground of the deplorable, condition of the finances. He nevertheless
feathered his own nest inordinately, taking care, however, not to rob the
people, it was said. He confined himself to selling everything at a
profit to himself, even the offices of the royal household, without
making, as Richelieu had made, any "advance out of his own money to the
state, when there was none in the treasury." The power had been honestly
won, if the fortune were of a doubtful kind. M. Mignet has said with his
manly precision of language, "Amidst those unreasonable disturbances
which upset for a while the judgment of the great Turenne, which, in the
case of the great Conde, turned the sword of Rocroi against France, and
which led Cardinal Retz to make so poor a use of his talent, there was
but one firm will, and that was Anne of Austria's; but one man of good
sense, and that was Mazarin." [_Introduction aux Negotiations pour la
Succession d'.Espagne._]

From 1653 to 1657, Turenne, seconded by Marshal La Ferte and sometimes by
Cardinal Mazarin in person, constantly kept the Spaniards and the Prince
of Conde in check, recovering the places but lately taken from France and
relieving the besieged towns; without ever engaging in pitched battles,
he almost always had the advantage. Mazarin resolved to strike a
decisive blow. It was now three years since, after long negotiations,
the cardinal had concluded with Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth
of England, a treaty of peace and commerce, the prelude and first fruits
of a closer alliance which the able minister of Anne of Austria had not
ceased to wish for and pave the way for. On the 23d of March, 1657, the
parleys ended at last in a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive;
it was concluded at Paris between France and England. Cromwell promised
that a body of six thousand English, supported by a fleet prepared to
victual and aid them along the coasts, should go and join the French
army, twenty thousand strong, to make war on the S