ABSTRACT
The people of Paris celebrated the return of the princes by lighting bonfires, prompting duchesse de Longueville to comment that they had used the embers of those they had lit at the time of the arrest. Le Grand Conde, however, seemed to be taking no action to maintain the political balance in his favour. With Cardinal Mazarin removed from the scene and the Queen humiliated by being held a virtual prisoner in her own palace, there was a political vacuum which everyone assumed Conde would fill. Conde's rebellion was vindicated and his partisans could plausibly present him as the only effective champion of the nation's interests. The Vieille Fronde had become very largely irrelevant and, with Gaston d' Orleans and Conde standing together, the struggle between some alternative views of the correct political structure in France was once more clearly defined.
