Robert Knecht, Francis I and the History of the French Court (original) (raw)
The Key to Power?, 2016
There are a lot of doors in the world of the court, many of them shut. He who holds the keys controls access to the treasure within-in the case of the Chambre du Roi, the monarch himself. Entrusting a set of keys to someone involves-literally-trust. So whom did the King of France trust? Who was given authority to regulate proximity, the sine qua non for the acquisition of power and wealth? Perhaps these were the personal favourites of the monarch, men he had grown up with. Or perhaps they were men of exalted rank and ancient lineage, qualities which, as explained by Castiglione, would compel them to act in an upright manner so as not to sully family honour. 1 Or even more narrowly, perhaps the sovereign would depend on princes of his own blood, whose sense of dynastic honour was tied up even more completely with his own. Yet it would be foolish for any monarch to trust the strength of blood implicitly: numerous lessons can be learned from the continual rebellions of royal uncles in the fifteenth century to those of royal brothers and cousins in the seventeenth. 2 Yet this is precisely what was attempted in the refining of the regulations of the French court from the reigns of Henri III to Louis XIV, as has been analysed by scholars from Richard Jackson to Katia Béguin. 3 By providing the princes of the blood with a more permanent, secure function at court, the monarchy in a way disempowered them-by taking away their justification for rebellion-but also empowered them, to contribute to, rather than compete with, the overall power of the court and the dynasty. 4
‘La Maleureuse Bataille’: Fifteenth-Century French Reactions to Agincourt
French History, 2019
This article examines the military and political impact of the battle of Agincourt in France and the way in which this defeat was remembered up until the end of the Hundred Years' War. The English presented their victory as a sign of God's support for Henry V and his claims in France, but the French preferred to understand their defeat as a divine punishment for their sins. This led to debate about who had incurred God's wrath, as civilians blamed soldiers, soldiers blamed their aristocratic leaders, and partisans for the Armagnac and Burgundian factions blamed one another. But most French commentators attempted to bridge these divisions, or at least to minimize the damage by attributing the disaster to the actions of foolish young hot-heads and to cowards. This avoided the need to name and shame specific noblemen, but also meant that only the most traditional lessons were highlighted from this defeat.
1999
The periodic disputes between the FrenchParlements and the monarchy played a vital role in the unravelling of the ancien régime and the origins of the French Revolution. In recent years historians have looked towards the study of the ideological arguments put forward by the parlementaires to assert their importance and autonomy. This article focuses on the ideology and rhetoric of the Paris Parlement, during the period of the most intense dispute between crown and parlements prior to the Revolution, that is, the Maupeou crisis of 1770 to 1774. In 1771 Paris Parlement was abolished, although this decision was reversed in 1774 after the death of Louis XV. The rhetoric of the magistrates themselves is examined, as well as that of lawyers, journalists and other polemicists who engaged in the debate on behalf of the Parlement. The language of civic virtue played a significant role in the debates, expressed as the idea of virtuous magistrates who were acting to defend the public interest. This article examines how virtue came to be part of a rhetoric associated with the parlements. It then goes on to consider the protests, from the magistrates themselves in their remonstrances, from the lawyers attached to the Parlements, and from many observers of events. Supporters of the parlements saw the coup not simply as a power struggle between king and magistrates, but as confirmation that the government was ‘despotic’ and that the parlements were heroic - and virtuous - defenders of the liberties of the nation. For the great majority of the magistrates, the issue of ‘parlementary constitutionalism’ seems to have been one towards which they retained a strong degree of ambiguity, as is suggested by their relative calm in the years after 1775 when their own jurisdictional authority was left relatively secure. But it is neverthess clear that from the time of the Maupeou coup, the jurisdictional quarrel between parlements and ministers had generated the idea of the legitimacy of civic virtue as an authority for political participation in the minds of people who followed the debate. The egalitarianism and moral authority implicit in the concept of civic virtue became, in the context of the final crisis of the ancien régime, a veritable Pandora’s box.
Procedures, Jurisdictions and Records: Building the French Empire in the early eighteenth century
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2020
During the first half of the eighteenth century, law, paperwork and legalities were unifying vehicles in the development of a French empire. The empire was a structure dealing with civilians (sailors, planters, merchants, craftsmen) supporting economic activities overseas. Courts, law and paperwork contributed to establishing royal authority over new territories through their status as key institutions supporting people in their private dealings and disputes. The daily routine of jurisdictions and legalities were milestones in the advent of an overseas empire that became a proper political formation before the Seven Years War. This article looks into three main moments: the expansion of paperwork and jurisdictions under Louis XIV; the process of lawmaking and differentiating colonies from France, until the Regency; and finally the collection of, and attempts to harmonise, local colonial regulations by Maurepas and his agents. The early eighteenth-century French Empire was a web of intertwined rights of jurisdiction on people, places and activities, rather than an entity that exercised homogeneous sovereignty over every overseas territory. 1 The so-called "first French colonial empire" was established through the devolution of governance to trade companies in the early seventeenth century, followed by a central Navy administration, the Secrétariat d'Etat de la Marine, from the 1660s onwards. So far, scholars have mostly focused their attention on one single colony or region. This fragmental historiography reflects the many challenges faced by all European powers in imposing their rule: distance and time, as well as geographic, demographic and social diversity were prevalent in their overseas territories. In his examination of imperial communications, Kenneth Banks concluded that the French Empire was more an © 2020 Marie Houllemare and The Johns Hopkins University Press ambition than a reality because mastering information and mobilizing colonial elites was too challenging for France to effectively assert imperial power. 2 James Pritchard also concluded that only an "elusive empire," a mere collection of colonies, existed in the first half of the eighteenth century. 3 More recent scholarship has questioned this narrative of late empire building by looking at the nature of imperial power in connection with national and Atlantic history. 4 François-Joseph Ruggiu's work, in particular, has been instrumental in initiating a broad re-examination of imperial sovereignty in this period. 5 This article argues that, during the first half of the eighteenth century, procedure, paperwork and legalities were unifying vehicles in the development of a French empire that was still very diverse. Royal orders were received and loosely relayed by an embryonic administration, supervised by a military governor and a civil intendant. Appeal courts, known as Conseils souverains or Conseils supérieurs, also had duties that went further than judging cases. Notaries wrote legal acts for colonists. These actors participated in developing a common administrative culture in the French overseas territories that, in return, influenced colonists' experiences. As in mainland France, where a unified body of law did not apply, legal unification of the overseas territories was no more than a king's dream. 6 Rather than lawmaking and royal orders, a shared legal language and procedures had a unifying effect. A relative standardization of imperial proceedings came about through a common way of handling contracts and resolving conflicts among colonists. As in the conquered provinces, common procedures helped incorporate local elites and new territories within the monarchy, which thus helped in turn consolidate territorial expansion. This well-established tradition can be traced back to the sixteenth-century Italian Wars, when courts modelled on the French parlements were implemented in Savoy and Piedmont. It was reused by Louis XIV in the northeast provinces of France with the creation of Conseils supérieurs in the 1660s. At the same period, from 1663 onward (but more efficiently in the first half of the eighteenth century), French officials established their governance through jurisdictions and legal acts in the colonies, not through a top-down dynamic, but by managing legal scenarios where private interests could be pursued: notaries' offices and royal courts were resources for colonists. The former gave validity to contracts and offered guarantees © 2020 Marie Houllemare and The Johns Hopkins University Press to personal property; the later settled disputes among colonists by framing them in reference to a European legal tradition. This legal culture, rather than a set of laws that officials tried hard to enforce in order to impose the King's rule, was a repertoire at the disposal of the colonists in their exploitation of overseas territories. Such procedures were at the core of this empire-in-the-making: they proved an effective means to integrate the various colonies into a single administrative framework. In mainland France, French "absolutism" relied on collaboration with local elites. 7 In the colonies, local autonomy was even more crucial, especially in places where the French were in a minority. Empire building was not only a case of military expansion, but was connected to the daily routine of governance, exercised by a small group of royal agents. Legal documents such as land grants, title deeds, contracts or testaments were validated by notaries, lawyers appointed on official order, who guaranteed that private contracts and deeds were authentic and had legal value. 8 Courts were arenas for contests over civilians' (sailors, planters, merchants, craftsmen) economic activities and interests, proven by such legal documents. Tribunals were also instrumental in maintaining colonial order through a very selective application of penal law. Their main targets, in the slave colonies of the Caribbean and the Mascarenes, were slaves, in particular runaway slaves. The public display of suffering was meant to terrorize slaves who had not run away. Further, it extended the harsh punishments of the plantations into public spaces. Indigenous people were another important target of penal practices. 9 Even if the French overseas territories were very different from each other, in terms of geography, demography and economies, resorting to notaries and courts gave all actors, whether officials or private individuals, a common legal culture that was a unifying principle for the empire as a whole. By means of written culture and procedure, therefore, French overseas territories all belonged to a single imperial formation, even though France only described the empire as "colonies" in the plural. This article examines the daily routine of jurisdictions and legalities as milestones in the advent of an overseas empire that became a proper political formation before the Seven Years' War.