nswering gravely, as if in his
judgment-seat, said, "If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of
earth": he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of
missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell's
triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal,
and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of
the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of
tumultuous joy.

[Footnote 138: So named from the wooden seat, or _couche de bois_,
covered with rich stuff embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_, on which the
king sat when he attended a meeting of the Parlement.]

In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert
its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the
palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under Conde: the Parlement
taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen
militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now
at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles.
The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university
promised its support and a subsidy. Thus arose the civil war of the
Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history, whose name
is derived from the puerile street fights with slings, of the
printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war
read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens
were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque
form of cavalry, called the corps of the _Portes Cocheres_, formed by
a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate,
became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and
beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the
people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat--and the
Parisians were always defeated--formed a subject for songs and
mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen
at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard
sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book,"
said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement
soon, however, tired of the folly; Mazarin won over De Retz by the
offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the
court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The People were still
bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Pa