in provisions.
The Parliament, from the populace of Paris, could bring sixty thousand
bayonets upon any field of battle. Thus very serious civil war was
inaugurated.

As we have mentioned, many of the nobles, some of whom were allied to
the royal family, assuming that they were not contending against their
legitimate sovereign, the young king, but against the detested
Mazarin, were in cordial co-operation with the Parliament. The people
in the rural districts were also in sympathy with the party in Paris.

The court party was now called "The _Mazarins_," and those of the
Parliament "The _Fronde_." The literal meaning of the word fronde is
sling. It is a boy's plaything, and when skillfully used, an
important weapon of war. It was with the sling that David slew
Goliath. During the Middle Ages this was the usual weapon of the foot
soldiers. Mazarin had contemptuously remarked that the Parliament were
like school boys, _fronding in the ditches_, and who ran away at the
approach of a policeman. The Parliament accepted the title, and
adopted the _fronde_ or _sling_ as the emblem of their party.

There were now two rival courts in France. The one at St. Germain was
in a state of great destitution. The palace was but partially
furnished, and not at all capable of affording comfortable
accommodations for the crowd which thronged its apartments. Nothing
could be obtained from Paris. Their purses were empty. The rural
population was hostile, and, while eager to carry their products to
Paris, were unwilling to bring them to St. Germain. Madame de
Motteville states in her memoirs "that the king, queen, and cardinal
were sleeping upon straw, which soon became so scarce that it could
not be obtained for money."

The court of the Fronde was assembled at the Hotel de Ville in Paris.
There all was splendor, abundance, festive enjoyment. The high rank
of the leaders and the beauty of the ladies gave eclat to the
gathering.

Cardinal Mazarin was not only extortionate, but miserly. He had
accumulated an enormous property. All this was seized and appropriated
by the Fronde. Though there were occasional skirmishes between the
forces of the two factions, neither of them seemed disposed to plunge
into the horrors of civil war.

The king sent a herald, clad in complete armor and accompanied by two
trumpeters, to the Parliament. The Fronde refused to receive the
herald, but decided to send a deputation to the king to ascertain what
over