The brilliant matches made by the Cardinal’s cousins, Mesdemoiselles de Pontchâteau and others, had already proved that, as Montglat says, “the greatest were happy and honoured to be allied with him.” Among these “greatest” was the first prince of the blood, the Prince de Condé. He had been Richelieu’s faithful and rather servile follower ever since their reconciliation in 1626, being shrewd enough to see that this was the path to wealth and power. So early as 1633, when Mademoiselle de Brézé was only five years old, he had proposed a marriage between her and his son Louis, Duc d’Enghien, and the Cardinal had accepted the offer. In 1641 the marriage was celebrated in Paris with great magnificence. The bridegroom was sulky and unwilling: already, at twenty, he was a fighting hero, a man of the world, and desperately in love with Mademoiselle du Vigean. To him his childish little wife was profoundly uninteresting. But the match gave keen pleasure to Cardinal de Richelieu; and the Prince de Condé proved his satisfaction by offering to marry his daughter, Mademoiselle de Bourbon (the famous Duchesse de Longueville), to young Armand de Maillé-Brézé. The Cardinal replied, according to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, with dignity and good sense: “Qu’il vouloit bien donner des demoiselles à des princes, et non pas des gentilhommes à des princesses.” [Illustration: PORTE DE CHÂTELLERAULT: RICHELIEU] But there was the other side of the shield. There were dark shadows behind the victories and social triumphs which lifted France and her great Minister so high in Europe. During Richelieu’s last years his armies were sometimes forced to other work than that of fighting Imperialists. The provincial government of France had become, in many quarters, little but a hard and extortionate system of tax-collecting, and the richest districts naturally fared the worst. When Bullion, Bouthillier’s colleague in the management of the finances, wrote despairingly in the autumn of 1639 to Chavigny, “Nous sommes maintenant au fond du pot,” and added his fear that foreign war might bring about civil war, the great fertile province of Normandy, ruined by injustice, tyranny, and enormous taxation, was actually in open rebellion; the “Va-nu-pieds” were marching in bands over the country, murdering tax-gatherers, destroying Government property, while even the tradespeople of Rouen and Caen rose and burned the houses and _bureaux_ of the royal officers and killed them and their servants in the streets.