Pierre Broussel (c. 1575–1654) was a councillor in the

Parlement A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fre ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

under

Louis XIII Louis XIII (; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown ...

and

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

, and later its president. He was a popular politician, in part due to his opposition to tax plans proposed by

Cardinal Mazarin Cardinal Jules Mazarin (, also , , ; 14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661), born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino () or Mazarini, was an Italian cardinal, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Louis XIII and Louis X ...

and his support for other legal reforms. Mazarin arrested him and a number of other members of the Paris Parlement for their politics on 26 August 1648. In response, the people of Paris rebelled and Mazarin was forced to free Broussel two days later. This insurrection touched off the first

Fronde The Fronde () was a series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. King Louis XIV confronted the combined opposition of the princes, the nobility, the law cour ...

. Broussel was appointed '' Provost of the merchants of Paris'' (effectively, the mayor) in July 1652, but he resigned in September in order to make it easier to end the civil war he had helped to start.

References

1570s births 1654 deaths French politicians Year of birth uncertain Provost of the Merchants of Paris {{Paris-politician-stub