Portraits of the Seventeenth Century Historic and Literary

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...he had of the real state of affairs in the shrewd and very serious conversations he held with the Duc de Bouillon, Turenne's elder brother, and the best head among the nobles who had joined the faction. Retz, who knows his Paris better than any one, lays bare to the Duc de Bouillon all the divisions and the probable causes of ruin: The bulk of the people that are firm, he says, keeps us from perceiving as yet the dislocation of parties. But he himself feels this dislocation, disunion, to be very near if care is not taken, and he lays his finger upon it better in his words than by his acts. Less than six weeks after the breaking out of the first Fronde, he said, energetically: A people are weary some time before they perceive that they are so. The hatred against Mazarin sustained and covered that weariness. We divert their minds by our satires, our verses, our songs; the blare of trumpets, drums and cymbals, the sight of flags and banners rejoice the shops in the streets, but, after all, are the taxes paid with the same punctuality as at first? The taxes--there 's the delicate point to which one must always return if one wants to organise any kind of order on the morrow of a revolt; and the first cry of a revolt is that it is made in behalf of a relief that is often impossible to grant. Retz reveals to the Duc de Bouillon his whole policy under the first Fronde, and we must do him this justice: if he was seditious, he was only half so. In concert with the Duc de Beaufort, he made himself master of the populace, he held it in his hand and it proved but a phantom; he is the idol of the churches as the duke was of the markets. But he will not abuse this mania of the people, he says, for M. de Beaufort and for me. He resists firmly the...