This sanguinary and farcical struggle began with a contest between the Court and the Parlement of Paris, which, encouraged by the weakness of the Government and backed by popular feeling, was neglecting its judicial duties to encroach upon the political rights of the Crown and to claim an authority which even the States-General had never possessed. The “Importants”--the aristocratic cabal, headed by the two great turbulent Houses of Vendôme and Guise, which from the beginning of the regency had bitterly opposed the ascendency of Mazarin--and a number of discontented and ambitious princes, prelates, nobles and great ladies: Paul de Gondi, afterwards the Cardinal de Retz, La Rochefoucauld, the Duc and Duchesse de Longueville, the Prince de Conti, Turenne, and the Duc and Duchesse de Bouillon, threw in their lot with the popular cause. Although Condé detested Mazarin and sympathized to a large extent with the opposition to the Minister, and though Madame de Longueville, who exercised great influence over both her brothers, made every effort to win him over to her cause, the sentiment of duty, which was not yet obscured, kept him faithful to the Court, and to the solicitations of the rebels he replied simply: “My name is Louis de Bourbon, and I do not wish to weaken the Crown.” An admirable maxim, which, however, he was very soon to abandon. In the early morning of 6 January, the Court quitted Paris for Saint-Germain, a picturesque exodus of which the pen of _la Grande Mademoiselle_ has traced an inimitable picture, and the rebellious capital was forthwith invested by the royal troops, under the command of Condé. The forces at the prince’s disposal were, however, insufficient to invest the city completely, and, though some roads were effectually closed, others remained open. Occasional skirmishes took place, but the only serious fighting occurred at Charenton on 8 February. In this affair, the Duc de Châtillon, husband of the beautiful Isabelle de Montmorency-Boutteville, was mortally wounded and expired the following day at Vincennes, whither he had been carried. With his death, the male line of the illustrious Admiral became extinct.