The direction of the policy of France passed on the death of the stern and uncompromising Richelieu into the hands of the supple and intriguing Mazarin, but the change made no difference to the conduct of foreign affairs. Louis XIII. followed his great minister quickly to the grave, and during the minority of his young son, Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, the queen-mother, who was entirely devoted to Mazarin, became regent, and the policy of aggrandisement at the expense of the Austro-Spanish House was vigorously carried on. Within a few months of the accession of the young king, his reign was graced by the most splendid success which had attended the arms of France since the capture of Calais by the duke of Guise. Don Francisco Mello, who had succeeded the cardinal-infant in the government of the Netherlands in December 1641, thought to take advantage of the weakness caused by the change of rulers in France; and sent the count of Fuentes at the head of all the available troops which he could muster, across the frontier. Mazarin, following his habitual policy of trying to attract the princes of the blood to his side, intrusted the command of the French army to the young duc d’Enghien, the eldest son of the prince of Condé, who found the Spaniards on the 19th of May 1643 strongly posted among the marshes which surround the little fortress of Rocroy. Condé, to give him the name by which he is best known, though he never in the course of a long training in war developed any of the higher qualities of a general, had that magnetic personal power over his men which is all-important on the battle-field. [Sidenote: =Destruction of the military power of Spain at Rocroy, 1643.=] They would follow him anywhere. The _furia francese_, which had been often remarked upon in the Italian wars of the sixteenth century, had been but the mad rush of an undisciplined mob, like the rush of African dervishes. Condé was the first great leader to utilise this power among disciplined troops, and to make the peculiar _élan_ of the French charge into one of the most decisive tactics of the battle-field. Ever since the days of the great captain, Gonsalvo da Cordova, the Spanish infantry had been the finest in the world. The solid mass of pikemen, wedged close together in a fortress-like formation, by their stubborn endurance could resist all cavalry attack, and by sheer weight bear down all opposition. But if once the mass became disorganised, it could never reform. Once break the ‘hedgehog’ of pikes, and the day was won. Gustavus Adolphus had shown at Breitenfeld how the superiority of artillery and musketry fire might open lanes in these mighty masses, into which the heavy cavalry might throw themselves, and overcome weight by weight in the shock of hand-to-hand conflict. Condé at Rocroy illustrated a similar principle by his mobile and disciplined infantry. Plunging a deadly fire into the dense immovable masses of the Spaniards, he waited for the moment when