The Fronde was a civil war fought in France between 1648 and 1653, during the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659). The conflict derived from opposition to the centralising policies pursued by the government of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin. These in turn were a response to the financial crisis caused by French involvement in the Thirty Years' War.
It can be divided into two parts, the Fronde of the Parlement from 1648 to 1649, followed by that of the Princes, 1650 to 1653. Both resulted in victory for the Crown, and facilitated the development of absolute monarchy under Louis XIV.
Origins
thumb|left|upright=1.0|[[Cardinal Mazarin]]
The insurrection aimed to protect the ancient liberties from royal encroachments and to defend the established rights of the parlements and especially the right of the Parlement of Paris to limit the king's power by refusing to register decrees that ran against custom. The liberties under attack were feudal, not of individuals but of chartered towns, where they defended the prerogatives accorded to offices in the legal patchwork of local interests and provincial identities that was France. The Fronde in the end provided an incentive for the establishment of royalist absolutism, since the disorders eventually discredited the feudal concept of liberty.
The pressure that saw the traditional liberties under threat came in the form of extended and increased taxes as the Crown needed to recover from its expenditures in the recent wars. The costs of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) constrained Mazarin's government to raise funds by traditional means, the impôts, the taille, and the occasional aides. The nobility refused to be so taxed, based on their old liberties, or privileges, and the brunt fell upon the bourgeoisie.
First Fronde, the Parlementary Fronde (1648–1649)
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In May 1648 a tax levied on judicial officers of the Parlement of Paris provoked not merely a refusal to pay but also a condemnation of earlier financial edicts and a demand for the acceptance of a scheme of constitutional reforms framed by a united committee of the parlement (the Chambre Saint-Louis), composed of members of all the sovereign courts of Paris.