ABSTRACT
The first encounter of Mazarin and Don Haro took place on 13 August 1659. The peace of the Pyrenees, eventually embodied in a weighty document of 124 articles, with a number of matters reserved for further consideration, was concluded on 7 November. Preliminaries had already cleared much of the ground by August. Both sides wanted to make peace. Mazarin knew that Turenne was right when he argued that there were pickings for the asking in Spain’s increasingly vulnerable Netherlands; but he preferred to use that knowledge to press his case rather than license another campaign. Indeed there was a cessation of hostilities from the start of negotiations, unlike 1648 when armies fought to the bitter end to win concessions at the table. Mazarin would surely have nodded appreciatively to the axiom of Sun-Tzu, mentor of Chinese war-lords: ‘Those who love warfare will inevitably perish. Those who forget warfare will certainly be endangered.’ He had his share too of that saving grace of ancien régime diplomacy: there was no wish to turn the knife in the wounds: the spirit of revenge, which tends to inform the diplomacy of the age of democracy, was missing. Since the privileged suffered least, the unrepresented people most, from war’s savagery, that is not surprising: diplomacy was the occupation and art of a cultivated élite, having an idea of the state, with its interests and demands, which would have meant little to the masses unacquainted with the chambers of power. As for the views of people in territories considered for transfer between states – such matters were to be decided at the only appropriate level, that is between sovereigns, their ministers and envoys; only then were corporate rights and local laws taken into account – but then scrupulously. Certain intangible, but influential notions were taken seriously. Points of honour were understood. Appreciating that Spain’s main concern was now maintaining her hold over Portugal, whose legitimate sovereign was Philip IV, for which crown he was prepared to let Artois go, with parts of Catalonia, Mazarin undertook not to aid the rebels in Portugal. Spain also recognised an obligation to Condé, on whose honourable reinstatement it insisted, delaying other matters in the process.
