10 Traitors Who Were Proven Right
3. France Was Being Ruled By Tyrants And Autocrats - The Fronde
As there were two Fronde's, and many of the leaders of both Fronde's switched back and forth (several times) between supporting the French monarchy or fighting against it, we'll just stick with the rebellion itself.
The Fronde was a series of uprisings and civil wars that took place mainly between 1648 – 1653 in France. The name comes from the French word for sling, which were seen as a symbol of defiance against authority.
As mentioned, there were two separate Fronde movements. One was lead by the nobility, the other by the French parliament. While they sometimes fought each other, the two factions made common cause in their opposition to what they saw as the increasingly autocratic rule of Louis XIV.
Or rather, they rose up against what they felt were the real powers behind the throne: Louis's mother Anne of Austria and his chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin.
The rebellion was eventually crushed when its most gifted commander, the Viscount of Turenne permanently switched sides to support the King. Although the rebels continued to fight on until the late 1650s, the conflict mostly moved beyond France's borders to subsidiary fields of battle. The Fronde was the last attempt by the nobility and parliament to check the power of the French Monarchy.
As for Anne of Austria, once Louis XIV came of age, he gradually pushed her to the periphery until she retired. Mazarin remained in power until his death in 1661.
The monarchy, far from weakening after the Fronde, took a harder line than before, and successive French Kings became increasingly autocratic, decadent and ignorant of the concerns of the ruling classes and the plight of the ordinary people.
Had the Fronde succeeded in checking royal power, the French Revolutions of the 18th and 19th Century might not have occurred, and France might have remained a monarchy.