CARDINAL MAZARIN

APKIL 1996
On Second Thouahts...
CARDINAL MAZARIN
Sidelined by historians,
compared unfavourably with
his predecessor Richelieu,
the man who steered France
through the years of
Louis XrV's minority has had
a poor press. But is the
criticism justified?
Richard Wilkinson
thinks not.
r undcrraled? Philippe de
Champaigne'.s contemporary portrait of
Richelieu's successor.
ichelieu I respected, much
though I disliked him; Mazarin
I neither liked nor respected".
Such was the verdict of Paul de Retz.
Although this ambitious troublemaker's opinions should be treated
with caution, his contemporaries
agreed that whereas Richelieu was 7f
i>rcind cadinal\ Miizarin was at best a
stop-gap, a second-rater. Historians
have been more generous, yet have
found Mazarin enigmatic and forbidding. While studies of Riehelieu roil
off the press. Mazarin has been coldshouldered. Geoffrey Treasure's
Mazarin. which came out last year, is
the first biography in English since
Hassall's Heroes of the Nations study
of 190-1. Nor have French writers
shown much greater interest.
Yet Mazarin's career was astonishing. Born Guilio Mazarini in Rome on
July 14th. 1602, he came from
an aristocratic, but impoverished,
background. As a papal diplomat
from 1634 to 1636 Mazarin impressed France's chief minister Cardinal Richelieu, who adopted him as
one of his 'creatures'. Thanks to
R
French influence Mazarin became a
cardinal in 1641. When in 1643 Louis
Xlll followed Richelieu to the grave,
the boy king Louis XlVs mother.
Anne of Austria, made Mazarin chief
minister, a position he was to hold
for eighteen years - exactly the same
innings' as Richelieu. And what
momentous years they were.
Mazarin settled with the Habsburg
powers at Westphalia (1648) -which
ended the Thirty Years War - and the
Pyrenees (1659). At home he guided
France through the political and
social crisis known as the Fronde
(1648-53). Fronde means sling- the
weapon used by Paris urchins against
the rich. But there was nothing trivial
or childish about this rebellion, the
most serious challenge to the French
crown's authority between the
sixteenth-century religious wars and
the revolution of 1789. After the
Frondeurs had been defeated Mazarin
devoted himself to the training of the
young king. Louis XIV. Louis showed
respect for his mentor by postponing
his personal rule until Mazarin died
on March 9th, 1661.
But contemporaries did not agree
with Louis XIV. The one cause which
united the socially and politically
39
ments within France, for his domestic
policy was indeed foreign policy-led.
His failure to achieve a speedy end to
the wars against the H a b s b u r g
powers allowed the Eronde to happen. The domestic situation which
Mazarin inherited in 16-43 was so
fraught that he should have wound
up France's foreign commitments as
soon as possible. Instead, the war in
Germatiy lasted Luitil summer I648,
by which time the Fronde had begun.
The contemporary allegation that
,Ma/.arin deliberately prolongetl tlie
wars to make himself intiispensable is
unfair. Yet there is something in the
charge that he fluffed promising
opportunities of ending the war. for
itistance after C^otides victories at
Rocroi (1643) and Lens (1648), when
the Habsburgs offered to negotiate.
Obviously Mazarin had to avoid the
appearance (if a sell-out, for a "soft"
treat}' would have made I-rance s herculean sacrifices seem in vain. But he
bungled his foreign and diplomatic
policy, failing to recognise that a
quick settlement in (iermany was
vital. Again, his over-clever, greedy
pursuit of the Spatiish Netherlands in
1648 provoked the Spatiish and the
Dutch to sign a treaty behind Frances
back which enabled Spain to continue the war for another tiecade.
Louis XIV, aged 10 - a portrait by Testeliii. Lacking the divinity tliat doth hedge a iting' - even
a child-one - Mazariji's ability lo command loyalty from the nobility was problematic,
even though be retained the king's confidence.
divided Frondeurs was contempt for
M:izarin. Eor instance, in March 1652
the Parlement of Paris demanded
Mazarin's exile:
(Cardinal .Mazarin has shown, by seeking to continue the wur [against Spain],
that he doe.s not ciire about the future:
he has used all his efforts to do this,
exhausting our soldiers and our
money. We now sec that he has caused
so much disorder that we have both a
foreign and a civil war.
The nobles hated Mazarin for usurping their rightful place in the crown's
service. He was, they claimed, 'a foreigner from a very squalid background'. The common people
shouted: "No Mazarin. no mercy, kill,
kill, kiir. Above all Mazarin was pilloried in the Mazurinades. the scurrilous rhymes and pamphlets which
circulated in Paris during the Eronde.
Mazarin was accused of vanity, hypocrisy, sodomy, the seduction of the
queen, financial corruption, the
deliberate prolongation of the war
and inability to protiounce Erench.
The poor man could do nothing
right.
Where does the truth lie? The
40
Mazarinades were both cause and
product of a campaign to denigrate
the chief minister who became the
victim of the most effective character
assassination in history. Rut the
researches of the last thirty years have
left histt)rians with no excuse to be
brainwashed. While Ma/arin himself
has been ignored by biographers,
perception of the social, econotnic
and political world in which he
moved has been transformed. Thanks
to Bayard. Castan, Dethan. Goubert.
Mousnier and Porchnev in Erance,
and Bonney. Briggs, Kettering, Mettam, Moote, Parker and Ranum in
England and America, Mazarin can
now be seen in context. How does he
emerge from this enhanced perception? What was his rcMe in the emergence of France as a great power?
What was his cotitribution to the
social atid political development of
Erance? Was the Fronde his fault or
did his skill enable the crown to
recover from a crisis which no-one
could have prevented? What was his
legacy to Louis XIV - and to France?
It is wrong to separate Mazarins
conduct of diplomacy from develop-
To be fair, Mazarin's persistence
and resourcefulness e\ entiially
brought results. He financed the
armies and appointed the leaders
who won the victories which brought
the Habsburgs to the negotiating
table. Mazarins "creature" Le Tellier
raised and equipped the armies
which Conde and Turenne led with
such elan. The treaties wliich etisurett
the domination of Western Europe by
Erance were the products of Mazarins painstaking diplt)macy. At Westphalia Frances possession of Metz,
Toul, Verdun and Breisach was confirmed, in additi<.jn to strategic eontrol of Alsace. The Treaty of the Pyrenees awarded Erance Artois in the
north, Rousillon in the south, valuable fortresses in the east and an
advantageous marriage settlement
between the French king and Maria
Theresa. Philip lV"s tiaughter. M;izarin
thus dealt Louis XIV a strong hand.
Though Mazarin lacked the vision
of Richelieu, who founded Frances
navy and overseas empire, he dominated Europe, He created the League
of the Khine, a coalition of west German principalities under Erench protection. Mazarin masterminded the
Treaty of Oliva (1659) which brought
peace in the Baltic. He supported the
etnpire in its conflict with the Turks,
His greatest coup was his alliance
with Protestant, republican England in its way even more daring and
provocative to Catholic orthodoxy
than Richelieu's alliance with Gustavus Adolphus. In the event Oliver
Cromwell proved a more co-operative
and reliable ally than the Swedish
king. The Anglo-French victory at the
Dunes (1658) finally brought Spain to
her knees.
Recent researeh has thrown new
light on the problems encountered
by Mazarin in achieving a satisfactory
peace settlement. David Parrott has
stressed the ineffectiveness of the
armies created by Richelieu, while
iioiiney and Ranum show what a
nightmare France's financial problems presented. Indeed. Mazarin
inherited an almost unwinnable war.
in which both sides' armies blundered around on each others' frontiers, eonimitting atrocities but incapable of winning victories. From 1648
onwards Mazurin tbught the Spaniards with one arm pinned behind his
back, as he encountered ever-inereasing challenges to his authority at
home, lreasure describes the i!lliealth which Mazarin suffered while
he negotiated the complex Treaty of
the Pyrenees and Louis XIV s marriage settlement. For the last months
of his life he was carried on a litter.
his body tortured by suppurating
sores. He could only watch Louis"
marriage procession through Paris
from a first floor window. While contemporaries blamed Mazarin for not
achieving peace sooner, in truth he
only just lived long enough to see it
happen.
If Mazarin bequeathed a strong
hand to Louis XIV at considerable
pensonal cost, the damage to the
French people was horrendous:
national bankruptcy, mass starvation
and disease, large-scale civil war. To
what extent was Mazarin to blame for
this suffering? (^ne point should be
made straightaway. Mazarin inherited
not only a war that was going badly,
but an impossible situation at home.
Richelieu's hand-to-mouth taxation
and finance caused immense problems which could only end in eatastrophe. Indeed. Riehelieu got out in
the nick of time. When Talleyrand
died in 1832 King Louis Philippe
exclaimed. I wonder why he has
done that'. Similar flippancy about
Richelieu's gruesomely prolonged
and painful death might seem tasteless. Yet by dying when he did. le
Grand Annand certainly escaped the
consequenees of his inept policies,
leaving Mazarin to pick up the bill.
Hven so. by overplaying a weak
hand Richelieu's suecessors made a
dire situation worse. Treasure thinks
that Anne of Austria may have called
the shots rather than Mazarin. This
may be so, for Mazarin was preoccupied with diplomacy and war. The
high-handed defiance of opponents
whieh caused the Fronde suggests the
proud, not very intelligent Habsburg
princess rather than the wily Italian.
But Mazarin too was a gambler. Anne
of Austria and her chief minister conferred continually, for theirs was a
close relationship, based on trust and
affection. Both were strangers in a
land whose politics they misunderstood. They incurred disaster together.
The problem was money. Richelieu
had tackled it with short-term measures whieh put off the day of reckoning. He borrowed at high rates of
interest, mortgaging future revenue.
He invented sinecures which he sold
for cash. By his death lYance was burdened with 40.000 office holders,
most of them surplus to the requirements of administration. Richelieu
extracted ever-mounting taxation by
'fiscal terrorism', that is to say. the
use of troops. Starvation, suffering
and resentment mounted. 'I do not
understand finance', Richelieu
claimed, disingenuously shrugging off
responsibility. In fact he understood
finance well enough to make his own
fortune while France starved. With
ITie marriage of Louis XIV and the Spanish Infanta Maria Teresa, June 166O. The architects of the alliance - Mazarin and Anne of Austria - hover
the wings, .stage left.
41
IIISroRYK)[>AY
Open eyes he accepted the risks of
national bankruptcy since victory
abroad would solve all problems. But
victory proved a mirage.
Mazarin, who also protested his
ignorance of finance, continued
Richelieu's "policies': more borrowing, more taxation, more sale of office
and the employment of harassed
finance ministers who could be
thrown to the wolves. But Mazarin
compounded the problem in two
ways. First, he had no idea how to
control public opinion. Richelieu
adopted a sophisticated approach to
propaganda, producing publications
such as the Gazette which presented
the government in the best possible
light. Anne and Mazarin, however,
displayed little flair or sensitivity
when marketitig the government's
image. Secondly, Mazarin made mistakes which Richelieu would have
avoided. He alienated the office holders, even though they had everything
to gain from the government's success and stability. The Fronde
occurred in summer 1648 when the
entire judicial and financial machinery of government went on strike.
Anne and Mazarin turned a protest
into a revolt by appealing to force.
Throughout the Fronde there are
echoes of England. The kidnapping
of Broussel in August 1648 parallels
Charles Ts attempted arrest of the
five Members of Parliament in January
1642. Both abortive coups had disastrous results. In the aftermath both
governments left their capitals with
little alternative but to appeal to
arms.
Pierre Broussel was an unlikely
hero. Elderly, austere, impractical, he
was a member of the Paris Parlement,
that exclusive club of snobbish and
selfish lawyers. But unlike most of his
fellow robins {members of the robe,
as opposed to the sword nobility)
Broussel was incorruptible, philanthropic and poor. By arresting this
eccentric lawyer. Anne and Mazariti
turned him into a cult figure and
united the Parlement and the people
of Paris. Because patronage linked
the robins with the sword nobility,
there emerged a formidable coalition
which defied the g o v e r n m e n t s
attempt to besiege Paris. By the
humiliating peace of Reuil (March
1649) the crown's tax-collecting
machinery was dismantled and the
claims of the Parlement to control
finance were conceded. Such a settle-
ment was a significant defeat for the
regent and her cardinal.
In January 1650 Anne and Mazarin
plunged the rest of France into civil
war by imprisoning three princes of
the blood, Conde. Conti and
Longueville. This provocatixe measure was the climax of Mazarin's
efforts to wriggle out of the Reuil
settlement and defeat his aristocratic
opponents' claims to patronage anti
power. Ranum defends the move: "It
was either arrest the princes or totally
capitulate to Conde and give him
control of the Council of State and
the power to appoint governors".
Whether the alternatives were quite
so stark, the coup blew up in the government's face.
During the next year Mazarin
fought for his political life, on battlefields, by touring the provinces and
towns of France and through patronage. His enemy Conde was imprisoned in remote fortresses where he
read history and watered his plants.
In the short term Mazarin lost. In
February 1651 he personally released
the princes at Le Havre and went into
exile, Moote thinks that Mazarin had
lost his nerve. Treasure that he was
exhausted. Frightened, humiliated,
baffled. Mazarin nevertheless appreciated that the cleverest step he could
take in order to advance the crown's
cause was to go. It is amazing that he
ever catne back given the song circulating in Paris:
If he returns, whatever shall we do? We
could cut off his private parts. But the
king says: "Don't do that. Mama still
needs them'.
Mazarin opens the
door of the Temple
of Peace as tbe
Spanish Don Luis de
Haro closes ibat of
war - an allegorical
engraving
celebrating tbe 1659
Treat)- of tbe
P^'renees. Mazarin's
trininph in
eventually steering
the conflict with
Spain to a
successful
coiiehision arguably
offsets sotne of bis
earlier diplomatic
blunders in the late
1640s.
42
Mazarin did come back. In fact he
twice went into exile and twice
returned, on each occasion with a
bodyguard of several hundred troops.
The crown survived the Fronde
because Anne and Mazarin learnt
from their mistakes. Mazarin mastered patronage, dominating both the
capital and provinces such as Guyenne where his broker, (^ppede, outsmarted Conde. Left to itself the
Fronde fell apart. The agreement
which united the Frondeurs in 1648
proved to be exceptional. For the
widespread hatred of Mazarin was
overtaken by universal hatred of soldiers. Irresponsible military violence
was personified by Conde. In July
1652 his troops disgraced themselves
in Paris, forcing their way into the
city, roughing up a priest who tried
to restrain them, taking the Hotel de
Ville by storm when a hundred
Parisians were slaughtered and setting up a puppet government. The
French preferred to be exploited by
One of tlie
Mazarinades: ilhe
heading to this 1650
hroadshcet state.': that
the illustration shows
a duel between two
sisters, one
supporting the
crown, the other the
l-rondeurs-the
advantage being
taken by ia belle
I'rondeuse". Tlie
Mazariitades
excoriated the
cardinal for his
background ai:id
corrupt policies -and
for provoking i.hc
horrors of civil war
within which the
image of "sist'^r
against sister' wiis an
elTcctive paradigm.
Mazarin rather than be murdered or
raped by Conde.
In addition. Mazarin was lueky. Set
against the misfortune of inheriting
Riclielieu's mess was a series of fortunate deaths. Just as Richelieu's and
Louis XlM's deaths had given Anne
and Mazarin their chance, so
Mazarin's rivals. Chateauneuf and
Chavigny. died conveniently. These
men apart, the Frondeurs failed to
produce an alternative to Mazarin. No
Pym. no Oomwell emerged: Broussel
was a lightweight, cie Retz (a combination of Mr Pooter and Mr Toad)
was ludicrously blind to his own
defects, Conde was insufferable.
Mazarin was lucky too in retaining
Anne's unwavering support. His
greatest good fortune was that the
Frondeurs totally lacked credibility as
loyal subjects of a boy-king whose
advisers they wished to replace. Louis
wrong-footed them by making it clear
where his own preferences lay.
But the Fronde east a long shadow.
While the civil war ended in 1653
with the capture of Bordeaux, violence eontinued throughout the
l650s: nobles revolted in nine out of
I ranee's thirteen provinces, while
peasants lynched tax-collectors. Paris
witnessed the so-called religious
Fronde in which the ct4res defied the
government by remaining loyal to de
Retz. now their archbishop, and by
distributing subversive tracts. Har-
vests were poor, trade in the doldrums, the government bankrupt.
According to (Colbert, at the cardinal's
death in 1661 the debt stocKl at 451
million livres. In short. Mazarin can
only claim a limited recovery by the
crown from the Fronde, for he left
what Parker calls 'a mass of unresolved problems'.
Indeed, the state of France in
Mazarin's last years increases one's
respect for Louis XIV. To be sure,
nature had been kind to Louis. He
had good looks, a tough constitution
and a retentive mind. Furthermore,
France worshipped her king and
longed to be royally governed Yet
Louis was to demonstrate skills whieh
his predecessors lacked. He was
cheerful and urbane where his father
Beggars in tbe
17th-centnry l-rencli
countrysid'^economic instahility
combined wilh very
real need provided a
potent backclotb of
discontent besides
which Mazatin's
apparent
indifference to the
poor could be used
against him.
43
had been morose and uncouth, he
was as ruthless as Richelieu without
incurring hatred, he was as devious as
Mazarin without provoking contempt. Treasure calls the young king
"Mazarin"s masterpiece', in recognition of the excellent training in
kingship which the young man
received from the old cardinal. This is
fair comment. But Louis would need
all his kitigly qualities to govern
France in the aftermath of the
Fronde.
In the meantime Mazarin. basking
in the admiration of the king and the
love of the queen mother, reaped the
rewards which he had always
believed he deserved. During the
summer of 1648 he had written:
You must admit that it requires a commitment to the very limit and an
extraordinai7 zeal to redouble one s
efforts in public service - as I do when one is treated so badly and when
it is possible to .say without vanity that
my elforts are beginning to bear fniit.
Mazarin's whingeing was understandable, for while his "efforts in the public ser\'ice' were bearing fruit at Westphalia, he was traduced by the
Mazarinades. and soon he would
have to run for his life. But now all
that was behind him, and in his last
years Mazarin accumulated jewellery,
pictures, sculptures, benefices and
cash: he shamelessly and ostentatiously enriched himself. One of
Ethelred the Unready's earls was
called Streona, "the accumulator".
Such a nickname would have suited
Mazarin. Ihere is an unforgettable
story of Mazarin in his last illness lovingly surveying his pictures and his
The arrest of Conde, Conti and Lon^fneville at Vineennes 1650: the attempted "decisive blow"
by Mazarin and the queen against their opponents only precipitated civil war.
jewellery and murmuring. 'II fatil
quitter
tout cela' ("I shall have to
leave all this behind). Whereas the
exceptionally accjuisitive Richelieu
left 22 million livres at his death.
Mazarin left 39 million. The French
never forgave him.
Did Mazarin deserve the abuse
which his critics hurled at him? Much
of it was outrageous, the product of
envy and xenophobia. Mazarin was
basically a tolerant, good-natured
mati of the world, devoid of malice or
rancour. The only Frondeur he
treated vindictively was de Retz (perhaps because de Retz so blatantly
coveted Mazarin's job). In general
Mazarin murdered the French language rather than Frenchmen. If he
always won at cards and probably
cheated, he spent his winnitigs on
presetits for his friends. For Mazarin
liked to be liked. He was deeply hurt
by the Mazarinades ('My nieces are
now my daughters', he remarked
sadly.) Perhaps his unconcealed
extravagance was his way of getting
back at his critics. The arriviste had
arrived whether they liked it or not.
Winner takes all!
The contemporary perception that
when Mazarin succeeded Richelieu
A Frondeur exhorting the people of Paris againsl Mazarin: tbe cardinal's clumsy moves against the Parlement and its members is another area
•_ : wbere he arguably lacked sure-footedness.
44
sleaze replaced style was correct. For
his conduct of both public and private business was indisputably corrupt. So was his predecessor's, but
Richelieu operated behind a propaganda smokescreen and with discretion. Richelieu would never have
tried to bribe the austere advocategeneral Omar Talon with an abbey
for his brother - which Talon indignantly rejected. Geoffrey Treasure
finds Mazarin's greed unattractive,
though he suggests that insecure
people who have narrowly survived
catastrophe often behave tike that. In
Mazarin's world a bank account in
Geneva was a sensible insuranee - as
he discovered when he went into
exile. The truth is that public men
usually had their snouts in the trough
- but Mazarin's was a little further in
than most.
In fact Mazarin's corruption is a
secondary issue, though more important than his alleged marriage to
Anne of Austria - conceivably possible as the cardinal remained in
minor orders. The primary questions
are, did Mazarin do a good job, were
his priorities correct, did he achieve
his objectives?
Arguably. Mazarin did an excellent
job. He played his part well in the
Bourbon programme. There is an
identifiable consistency in the policies pursued by the first three Bourbon kings and their ministers.
Domestic reforms such as the overhaul of taxation c^r the revitalisation
of trade and agriculture were sacrificed to the single-minded pursuit of
victory abroad. The population of
France was subjected to increasing
taxation, violently extracted and
unjustly assessed, to enable France to
wrest the domination of Furope from
the Habsburg powers. In this story
Mazarin played a crucial link role
between the dynamic Richelieu and
the masterful Louis XIV. As a
resourceful and constructive minister
Mazarin compares well with Richelieu. There were certainly two great
cardinals, not one. Indeed, there is
justice in Goubert's claim that
Mazarin rather than his predecessor
or his successor forms the pivot or
the central bond of the seventeenth
century'.
Whether the French people - especially the peasants who formed the
majority of the population of France
- benefited from this programme is
another matter. While it might seem
inordinately Whiggish to pose sueh a
question, it was in fact implied by
contemporaries. Just as Richelieu's
critics opposed the wars which
caused such suffering, so the Fron-
Simon pure: tbe Parlement lawyer Pierre
Broussel. whose kidnap united the
opposition to Mazarin.
deurs blamed Mazarin for failing to
make a compromise peace. The Parlement of Paris expressed sympathy
for the sufferings of the poor and
achieved a temporary reduction of
the taiUe by twenty per cent, while in
the 1660s Colbert proved that taxation could be raised honestly and etifieiently. Fenelon and Vaubon were to
condemn Louis XIV's warmongering
extravagance, pereeivitig that 'avoid
encirclement' was code for Freneh
domination of Europe'. Yet the policy
of war backed by fiseal terrorism continued. The defenceless, inarticulate
taxpayers paid the bill.
Turenne - legendary victor among Lotiis
XIV's generals: but was it Mazarin's policies
that provided the underpinning for French
success on the battlefieldi'
In the face of this immense mass
suffering modern historians ai'gue
that France 'had no choice' but to
fight. So we have admiration for
Richelieu's 'statesmanship'. Bluche's
hero-worship of Louis XIV and Hatton's special pleading for the Sun
King's foreign policy. Treasure's biography of Mazarin is more balanced.
He stresses that Mazarin inherited a
programme which he was required to
complete and that he served a
dynasty rather than 'Franee' or
'Frenehmen'. Still, the question lugs:
did it have to happen like that?
Mazarin's greatness lay in his ability
to manoeuvre within the Bourbon
p r o g r a m m e . His c o n s i d e r a b l e
achievements reflect his political dexterity. He learnt from his mistakes. He
developed a keen sense of the possible. He perceived that the salvation
of the monarchy would be achieved
not by absolutist authoritarianism,
but by persuading the rieh and
powerful that they had more to gain
than lose from co-operation with the
crown. Against this achievement must
be set Mazarin's refusal to make the
speedy termination of the wars an
urgent priority and his failure to
empathise with the poor, to reftirm
French agriculture or tackle the monstrous injustice of government taxation. There is no evidence that he
recognised the case for reform or that
there were alternatives to the Bourbon programme. Nor did he encourage his pupil, the young king, to
question this programme.
Did Mazarin ever have second
thoughts? It is hard to say. Fven Geoffrey Treasure still finds him an elusive
figure. Perhaps his touching and
humble dying words ('the hour of
mercy, the hour of mercy') indicate a
certain unease. Perhaps he realised
that if Louis XIV was indeed his masterpieee, he had much to answer for.
Nevertheless Louis was to recognise
on his own deathbed fifty-four years
later that the pupil would have done
well to have adopted his master's
patient pragmatism.
FOR FURTHER READING:
The books by all tht- historians mentioned in
tbis anicic are to be recti mm ended. In particular: Ores! Ranum. Tbe /'rnnt/c. (New York.
199.1): Richard Bonney, Political Change
Under Richelieu and Mazarin. (Oxford 197S)
and Tbe King s Debts. {Oxford 1981): Sharon
Kettering. Patrons. Brokers and Clients in Seventeentb Century i-rance. (Oxford. 1986):
Geoffrey '\'vc.ii>utv Mazarin. (Routledge, 199^):
Geortjc Oelhan. Tbe Young Mazarin. (Thames
and Hudson. 19''"^); Robin Brigg.s, I-arly Modern I ranee l'>60-m 5. {Oxford. 1977).
Richard Wilkinson teacbe.s history at Marlboroiigb College. Wiltshire, and is the author
of France and the (-ardinais (Hodder and
Stougbton. 1995)
45