ABSTRACT
The treatises on politics that appeared after 1660 show how the debate concerning the nature of the state conducted during the first half of the seventeenth century had resolved itself. The key factor in the evolution of the affair was Le Grand Conde's absolute determination to do nothing that might compromise his position vis-a-vis Louis de Bourbon. In a more detailed account of the civil war, Simon de Riencourt presents the Fronde des Princes as a private quarrel which at no time involved the mass of honest Frenchmen; Le Laboureur Louis had to impose order for the sake of the great majority who had never lost their loyalty. The king's decision to express his full confidence in Conde's loyalty by giving him military command of the invasion of the Franche-Comte in the winter of 1667-8 represents a turning-point in the reinsertion of Conde into French society.
