A New Theatre of the War with France. The Spanish intervention in the Fronde (1648-1653)

Abstract

Thousands of pages have been dedicated to the Fronde, all of them based upon the same underlying assumption: little or no attention has been paid to the involvement of the Spanish Monarchy. Yet given the context of a pan-European struggle for hegemony (1635-1659), Philip IV could hardly fail to take advantage of this singularly-favourable opportunity to intervene in the internal conflicts of France and so weaken his principal enemy, in much the same way as Paris had become involved in Catalonia and Portugal (and, previously, in Italy.) This thorough but detailed analysis of Spanish involvement in these quintessentially ‘French’ revolts is principally based upon the rich documentation held in the Archivo General de Simancas, and so constitutes a first step towards correcting a historiographical oversight that still prevails on both sides of the Pyrenees. It will attempt to set out a provisional interpretation of the extent to which the outcome of the Franco-Spanish war had yet to be resolved in the years 1648-1653 and how the Fronde was not an exclusively French affair.

Keywords

• siglo xvii
• monarquía hispánica
• francia
• fronda
• política in-ternacional
• felipe iv
• louis xiv
• louis ii de bourbon-condé