DUNKIRK AND THE DUNES
The shifting sands and brackish tides surrounding the port of Dunkirk were no less treacherous or unpredictable than the murky political alliances on display there in June 1658. Two bristling armies, each commanded in whole or in part by a storied French general and variously including large contingents of French, English, Spanish, Swiss, German, and Walloon troops, jockeyed for position around the besieged city. Even the city’s ownership was in dispute. Although Dunkirk was technically in France, Spain claimed it as part of its northernmost colony, the Spanish Netherlands. A decade earlier, Spain and the Dutch Republic had concluded an uneasy peace settlement that gave the Dutch their independence but allowed Spain to retain the southern half of the Netherlands. Neighboring France, ruled by the regent Queen Anne in the name of her underage son, King Louis XIV, looked on the new arrangement—particularly Spanish control of Dunkirk—with scant enthusiasm.
But the French rulers had more immediate problems than the disposition of Dunkirk or the Netherlands. A series of spontaneous rebellions known collectively as La Fronde (after the slingshots rebels used during the first round of rioting in Paris in 1648) had kept the nation in a near-constant state of turmoil. Less a spontaneous people’s revolt than a reassertion of hereditary rights by French noblemen aggrieved by the crown’s steady accumulation of power, the three Fronde wars featured an ever-changing roster of pro-royal and pro-rebel commanders. Not even the principals could keep track of all the changes. Leaders switched sides at a moment’s notice.
The commander of the royal forces, Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, had initially opposed the king and been imprisoned during the First Fronde War before repenting and being restored to command. At age 46, Turenne was one of the most respected generals in Europe. He had served in the Eighty Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War—the names alone were stark evidence of the European propensity for conflict—and had subdued Bavaria and its faithless Elector (prince of the Holy Roman Empire), Maximilian I, at the Battle of Zusmarshausen in 1648. A French Protestant, or Huguenot, Turenne had entered the military at 14 and risen rapidly to command, overcoming not only his minority religion but also a lifelong speech impediment. By age 32 he was a full-fledged marshal of France.
Turenne’s rebel counterpart, Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, was almost exactly 10 years younger than Turenne. A blood relative of Henry IV, the late king of France, he had been forced while still a minor to marry the 13-year-old niece of the all-powerful cardinal Armand de Richelieu. (He eventually locked her away in the countryside after claiming, improbably, that she had committed adultery with numerous men. The princess, by all accounts, kept her marriage vows—and was also notoriously homely.) One of the richest men in France, with hereditary holdings that included the lush provinces of Burgundy and Lorraine, Condé had become a general
