e Counsellor Bachaumont one day
ridiculed insurrectionists, as resembling the boys who played with slings
(_frondes_) about the streets of Paris, but scattered at the first glimpse
of a policeman. The phrase organized the party. Next morning all fashions
were _a la fronde_,--hats, gloves, fans, bread, and ballads; and it cost
six years of civil war to pay for the Counsellor's facetiousness.

That which was, after all, the most remarkable characteristic of these
wars might be guessed from this fact about the fashions. The Fronde was
preeminently "the War of the Ladies." Educated far beyond the Englishwomen
of their time, they took a controlling share, sometimes ignoble, as often
noble, always powerful, in the affairs of the time. It was not merely a
courtly gallantry which flattered them with a hollow importance. De Retz,
in his Memoirs, compares the women of his age with Elizabeth of England. A
Spanish ambassador once congratulated Mazarin on obtaining temporary
repose. "You are mistaken," he replied, "there is no repose in France, for
I have always women to contend with. In Spain, women have only love-
affairs to employ them; but here we have three who are capable of
governing or overthrowing great kingdoms: the Duchess de Longueville, the
Princess Palatine, and the Duchess de Chevreuse." And there were others as
great as these; and the women who for years outwitted Mazarin and
outgeneralled Conde are deserving of a stronger praise than they have yet
obtained, even from the classic and courtly Cousin.

What men of that age eclipsed or equalled the address and daring of those
delicate and highborn women? What a romance was their ordinary existence!
The Princess Palatine gave refuge to Mme. de Longueville when that alone
saved her from sharing the imprisonment of her brothers Conde and Conti,--
then fled for her own life, by night, with Rochefoucauld. Mme. de
Longueville herself, pursued afterwards by the royal troops, wished to
embark in a little boat, on a dangerous shore, during a midnight storm so
wild that not a fisherman could at first be found to venture forth; the
beautiful fugitive threatened and implored till they consented; the sailor
who bore her in his arms to the boat let her fall amid the furious surges;
she was dragged senseless to the shore again, and, on the instant of
reviving, demanded to repeat the experiment; but as they utterly refused,
she rode inland beneath the tempest, and travelled for fourteen