_Le bon temps de la régence_ followed. For five years France enjoyed external and internal prosperity. The former was insured by the battle of Rocroi, and other successes, obtained by the prince of Condé and Turenne, against the power of Spain. The latter was more fallacious. The intrigues, cabals, and dissensions of the court were carried on with virulence. Manners became every day more and more corrupt--the gulf between Mazarin and his antagonists wider. We have little trace of Marsillac's conduct during this interval. He followed the campaigns, and served gallantly in several actions. He was present at the siege of Mardike, in which he was wounded in the shoulder, which obliged him to return to Paris. He bought the governorship of Poitou, and took up his residence there. He visited Paris, but want of money prevented his remaining. His secretary, Gourville, lets us into a view of the corruption of the times, when he details how he enriched his master by only obtaining from Emery, the comptroller of the finances, a man of low extraction, whose extortion, luxuriousness, and debauchery disgusted the nation, a passport for a thousand tons of wheat, to be brought from Poitou to the capital; and the profit he gained by this transaction enabled the prince, to his infinite joy, to remain in Paris. There can be little doubt that, at this time, he had immersed himself in political intrigue. Madame de Chevreuse was again banished; but affairs had taken another and more important aspect than mere intrigues and disputes among courtiers for royal favour. The extravagance of the court, and corruption of the times, had thrown the finances into disorder; and every means most subversive of the prosperity of the people, and of justice, was resorted to by Emery to supply the royal treasury. The consequence was universal discontent. Parliament resisted the court by its decrees; the populace of Paris supported parliament; and a regular system of resistance to the regent and her minister was formed. This opposition received the name of the Fronde: the persons who formed it were called Frondeurs. These were bent, the duke de la Rochefoucauld tells us, in his memoirs, on arresting the course of the calamities at hand; having the same object, though urged by a different motive, as those who were instigated by hatred of the cardinal. [Sidenote: 1648. Ætat. 35.] At first the remonstrances of parliament, and the opposition of the court, was a war of words only; but when the court, enraged at any opposition to its will, proceeded to arrest three principal members of parliament, the people of Paris rose in a body; the day of the barricades ensued, the members were set free, and the court forced to yield.