The Peace of Rueil (French: Paix de Rueil, IPA: [p d j] or [j]), signed 11 March 1649, signalled an end to the opening episodes of the Fronde (a period of civil war in the Kingdom of France) after little blood had been shed. The articles ended all hostilities and declared all avenues of trade reopened. The settlement was promulgated in the name of the child king Louis XIV through his mother Anne of Austria, the Queen Regent. Cardinal Mazarin, the true power of the court party, was not mentioned in the text, though he was a signatory, as was the Grand Cond, who had been recruited by the court party to overcome the resistance of Paris.

The Fronde (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɔ̃d]) 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 courts (parlements), as well as most of the French people; yet he won in the end. The dispute started when the government of France issued seven fiscal edicts, six of which were to increase taxation. The parlements pushed back and questioned the constitutionality of the King's actions and sought to check his powers.The Fronde was divided into two campaigns, the Parlementary Fronde and the Fronde of the Princes. The timing of the outbreak of the Parlementary Fronde, directly after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years' War, was significant. The nuclei of the armed bands that terrorized parts of France under aristocratic leaders during this period had been hardened in a generation of war in Germany, where troops still tended to operate autonomously. Louis XIV, impressed as a young ruler with the experience of the Fronde, came to reorganize French fighting forces under a stricter hierarchy whose leaders ultimately could be made or unmade by the King. Cardinal Mazarin blundered into the crisis but came out well ahead at the end. The Fronde represented the final attempt of the French nobility to do battle with the king, and they were humiliated. In the long-term, the Fronde served to strengthen royal authority, but weakened the economy. The Fronde facilitated the emergence of absolute monarchy.