The citizens were armed and the Parlement accompanied by a furious and enthusiastic crowd marched in a body to demand the release of Broussel. The court was again obliged to yield, and Broussel was set at liberty, but as before Mazarin only drew back in the hope of making his final spring more effective. The peace of Westphalia would shortly put a disciplined army at his disposal, and then the position of the government would be impregnable. Paris might rage as much as it liked, but the days had gone by when the caprice of Paris decided the fortunes of France. Never was politician more mistaken. On the 13th of September the court withdrew to Ruel to free itself from the constant danger of tumults. Paris was immediately in an uproar. [Sidenote: =Acceptance of the reforms by the court, 1648.=] Persuaded by the clever and unscrupulous Gondi, bishop-coadjutor of Paris, a man who had nothing ecclesiastical about him except his title, Condé the military hero of the hour declared for the Parlement, and the court once more following the favourite policy of Mazarin had to procrastinate. It returned to Paris, and on the 24th of October 1648 published an edict accepting and enforcing the whole of the demands of the Chambre de S. Louis. [Sidenote: =Unpopularity of the prime-ministership.=] Thus far the struggle had been in its main aspects constitutional. The Parlement de Paris, aided by the populace of the city, and taking advantage of the unpopularity of Mazarin, was endeavouring to curb the caprice of an irresponsible prime minister by assuming to itself control over the finances, and obtaining for all Frenchmen security against arbitrary arrest. Men felt vaguely that the constitution of France had altered in a way contrary to their interests of recent years. It was one thing to acknowledge the personal authority of the king as supreme, when it had to be exercised largely through local governors who were practically independent, and was from its very nature subject to the limitations which necessarily followed from the different characters of the supreme rulers. It was quite another thing to acknowledge that that personal supremacy could be delegated, and to be required to pay the same implicit obedience to a prime minister ruling through a bureaucracy of his own nominees when the king himself was a minor. The pressure of despotic rule had hitherto been little felt in France by the noble or the professional classes. They did not object to acknowledge and obey the will of a Henry IV., while a Henry III. hardly presumed to ask them to do so. It was quite a different thing when they were called upon to pay implicit reverence to a Mazarin following a Richelieu, when Louis XIII. seemed a _fainéant_ and Louis XIV. was a boy. And behind the actual revolt against the irresponsible will of the minister lay the old rivalry between local authority and centralised administration. All local authorities whether of the