The Struggle for Absolute Power: Louis XIV vs. the French Nobility

Richelieu continued to serve King Louis XIII until the Cardinal's death in 1642. The new King, Louis XIV, and his first minister -- another politically talented nobleman and high-ranking member of the clergy, Cardinal Mazarin continued these policies, especially the creation of intendants to replace provincial nobles as the representatives of government power in most regions of France.

Higher-ranking nobles, including sword nobles as well as many robe nobles, feared that Louis and Mazarin were diminishing their authority. They expressed their opposition in the regional courts, known as Parlements. Although these were royal courts in which only nobles sat as judges, they had the authority to review all royal decrees  especially those concerning taxation before the decrees became law.

In 1648, the most important of these courts, the Parlement in the capital of Paris, demanded that Mazarin restore the former power of the nobles by removing the intendants from their offices. The people of Paris, artisans who paid taxes to the King, had also worried about the increasing power of the King and tended to support the Parlement, which they saw as defending not noble privilege but instead the public good of the city and the kingdom.