Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585

GOVERNING PASSIONS

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Governing Passions Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576–1585 MARK GREENGRASS

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  Mark Greengrass 2007

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Greengrass, Mark, 1949Governing passions : peace and reform in the French Kindom, 15761585 / Mark Greengrass. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-921490-7 (alk. paper) 1. France—History—Henry III, 1574-1589. 2. France—Politics and government—1562-1598. 3. France—Church history—16th century. 4. France—Intellectual life—16th century. 5. Constitutional history I. Title. DC119.G74 2007 944’.029—dc22 2007023857 Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978-0-19-921490-7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Acknowledgements Historians’ memories are as fallible as anyone’s. I do not recall exactly when Madame Aline Karcher-Vallée gave me permission to consult her 1956 thesis for the École des chartes but it may have been in the early summer of 1973. I remember, however, its impact on me and, although this is very different from her work, I readily acknowledge a debt of gratitude to her. That is the first of a series of debts that an English historian, working on French history, has incurred towards his French colleagues. Their willingness to share information and ideas has been a consant source of encouragement; their insight an important stimulus to this work. I am particularly grateful to Robert Descimon for allowing me to present some of the ideas in this book to his seminar at the E. H. E. S. S., Paris. Conversations with him are always the most stimulating a historian could could wish for. I also spent part of a semester at the Centre d’Études de la Renaissance at the Université François Rabelais, Tours, and benefited from the interest that colleagues there showed in my work. The same is true for the period I spent at the Université de Paris-I in the company of Nicole Lemaitre and colleagues. I have drawn more than perhaps they realize on the encouragement and advice of Denis Crouzet, Arlette Jouanna, Robert Muchembled, Michel Cassan, Nicolas Le Roux, and Jacqueline Boucher at various stages of the research and writing of the book. I have learnt much, too, from discussions with younger French early modernists, in particular Sylvie Daubresse, Hugues Daussy, Xavier Le Person, Thierry Rentet, Ariane Boltanski, Thierry Amalou, Marco Penzi, and Lothar Schilling. A session at Alain Tallon’s DEA seminar at the University of Paris-IV (Sorbonne) was particularly stimulating. The book was researched and written in two periods of study leave, the first funded by a one-year scholarship from the British Academy and the second partly funded by a research leave enhancement award from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (now Council). I am grateful to both bodies, as well as to all my colleagues in Sheffield, for the opportunity that these two periods of leave afforded me to complete this book. During the first period of leave, I was elected a bye-fellow at Trinity College, Oxford, and I thank the Warden and Fellows for their hospitality. Joan Davies kindly allowed me to use some unpublished work in Chapter 7 and saved me from some howlers; Simone

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Acknowledgements

Testa helped me with the publication history of Scipio di Castro’s work in Chapter 10. I am grateful, too, to Christopher Wheeler and his colleagues at Oxford University Press. Friends and colleagues read through the first version of the manuscript and helped me to cut the text, and to say what I wanted to say clearly; I owe Peter Derlien, Joe Bergin, Howell Lloyd, and Bob Knecht a great debt of gratitude. More than anyone else, my partner Emily Eells nurtured this work into being and she knows how much I owe to her for her support and encouragement. With her consent, I dedicate it to Martha and Daniel, offspring who grew up with this book, and to the memory of my sister Sarah, who, afflicted by a brain tumour, lived her last months with courage, urging me to finish this book ‘before it is too late’. M. G. Sheffield July 2006

Contents List of Figure, Tables, and Map Abbreviations

ix x

Introduction

1

1 Defeat and Reformation

15

2 Comprehending Passions

35

Eloquence and the Passions Moral Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century The ‘Palace Academy’ and the Passions The Projet d’Éloquence Royale 3 The Estates of Blois and the Bien Public A Beneficent Myth The Peace of Monsieur (6 May 1576) and its Aftermath Setting an Agenda Catholicity and the Commonwealth Conferring for the Common Weal A Gallican Interlude A Project for the Common Good ‘Advice’ for the King A Diplomatic Offensive The Estates, Peace, and Reformation 4 Le Chemin de la Paix, 1577–1579 Making Peace The King’s Peace A Ceasefire Instruments of Peace Missionaries in Search of Peace

39 41 44 59 66 66 70 81 83 89 97 101 107 111 118 123 124 134 136 138 146

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Contents

5 Dissent in the Country

154

‘Pernicious Enterprises’ ‘A General Reformation of Things’ ‘Trouble-Makers’

159 168 176

6 The Perfection of Peace, 1579–1580

185

‘Our Guyenne Expedition’ The Conference at Nérac ‘Que les petites choses croissent par concorde’

188 192 205

7 France through the Looking Glass, 1581–1582

227

French Calvinists and the Governance of the Passions The Peace of Fleix The ‘Credibility Gap’ in Guyenne, 1581–1583 The Miroir des François 8 Restoring Virtue, 1579–1582 ‘Quatrains’ of Virtue ‘Beaucoup de belles et bonnes ordonnances’ The Sale of Offices The Assembly of the Clergy and the Reform of the Church, 1579–1580 ‘Nostre souveraine nourrice, la Pénitence’ 9 The Assembly of Notables, 1583–1584 ‘Personages of Authority and Quality to See and Visit our Subjects’ Tours of Duty Mines of Information The Deliberations of the Notables

227 230 238 246 260 260 265 274 286 303 312 314 320 337 341

Conclusion

365

Bibliography Index

382 409

List of Figure, Tables, and Map FIGURE 1. The moral and intellectual virtues

49

TAB LE S 1. Pierre de Thouars’s estimates of the royal budget per annum

103

2. Royal budget (état par estimation) for 1577

104

3. Comparison between the cahiers from the estates general and the Ordinances of Blois

268

4. Clerical composition of the Assembly of Paris/Melun, 1579–1580

293

5. Provincial commissioners for reform, August 1582

318

6. Surviving manuscript corpus of avis prepared for consideration at the Assembly of Notables

340

7. Chapters and articles discussed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye

345

8. Discourses and memoranda on the royal articles presented at the Assembly of Notables, 18 November 1583–c. 15 February 1584

351

MAP 1. Security strongholds conceded to the protestants at the peace of Bergerac (1577) and the accords of Nérac (1579) with the route of Catherine de Médicis’s southern journey in 1578–1580

194

Abbreviations A&P

Articles et propositions, lesqvelles le roy a vovlv estre desliberees par les Princes & Officiers de la Couronne & autres Seigneurs de son Conseil, qui se sont trouuez en l’assemblee pour ce faicte à S-Germain en Laye, au mois de Nouembre, mil cinq cens quatre vingts & trois (1584).

AN

Archives nationales.

ANG

Acta nuntiaturae Gallicae published at Rome by the Université pontificale Grégorienne and the École Française de Rome, and at Paris by Éditions de Boccard, as follows : Pierre Hurtubise, and Robert Toupin (eds.), Correspondance du nonce en France. Antonio Maria Salviati (1572–1578), 2 vols., vol. xii (1975). Ivan Cloulas (ed.), Correspondance du nonce en France: Anselmo Dandino, 1578–1581, vol. viii (1970). René Toupin (ed.), Correspondance du nonce en France: Giovanni Battista Castelli, 1581–1583, vol. vii, (1967). Pierre Blet (ed.), Girolamo Ragazzoni évêque de Bergame, nonce en France: correspondance de sa nonciature (1583–1586), vol. ii (1962).

Archives curieuses

Louis Lafaist (pseud.: L. Cimber) and Félix Danjou, Archives curieuses de l’histoire de France, depuis Louis XI jusqu’à Louis XVIII, ou collection de pièces rares et intéressantes, 1st series, 15 vols. (Paris, 1834–7).

Berger

J. Berger de Xivrey (ed.), Recueil des lettres missives, 7 vols., vol. i: (1562–1584), Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France (Paris, 1843–60).

BN

Bibliothèque nationale [MS Fr.; Fonds français; MS Dupuy; Fonds Dupuy, etc.].

Bodin

Jean Bodin, Recueil de tout ce qui s’est negotié en la compagnie du tiers estat de France (1577).

Breunot

J. Garnier (ed.), ‘Journal de Gabriel Breunot, conseiller au Parlement de Dijon (1575–1578)’, in Analecta divionensia (Dijon, 1864), 167–256.

Cahiers

Lalourcé (fils), Recueil des cahiers généraux des trois ordres aux Etats généraux, 4 vols. (Paris, 1789).

Abbreviations

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CalSPFor (Year)

Allan James Crosby (1575–7) [1880]; Arthur John Butler (1577–8) [1901], (1579–80) [1904], and (1581–2) [1907]; Arthur John Butler and Sophie Crawford Lomas (1583) [1913]; Sophie Crawford Lomas (1583–4) [1914] (eds.), Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth.

Cayet

Palma Cayet, Chronologie novenaire, ed. J. F. Michaud and J. J. F. Poujoulat, xii: Collection des mémoires (Paris, 1888).

Collection

Collection des procès-verbaux des assemblées générales du clergé de France depuis l’année 1560, ed. Antoine Duranthon., 9 vols. (Paris, 1767–78).

D’Aubigné

Agrippa d’Aubigné, Histoire universelle, ed. André Thierry, 11 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1981–2001).

DBF

J. Baltaux, M. Barroux, M. Prevost, et al. (eds.), Dictionnaire de biographie française, 18 vols. in prog. (Paris, 1932–2002).

Desjardins

Abel Desjardins (ed.), Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane: documents recueillis par Guiseppe Canestrini, 6 vols. (Paris, 1859–86).

De Thou

Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Histoire universelle, 16 vols. (London, 1734) and [Latin] Jac. Augusti Thuani, Historiarum sui temporis, 9 vols. (London, 1733).

Devic and Vaissète

Claude Devic and Jean Vaissète, Histoire générale de Languedoc, 15 vols. (T oulouse, 1872–92).

Dictionnaires (CD-ROM)

Dictionnaires du XVI et XVIIe siècles (CD-ROM) (Paris; Champion, 1998).

Drouot

Henri Drouot, La Première Ligue en Bourgogne et les débuts de Mayenne (Dijon, 1937).

Dumont

François Dumont, Inventaire des arrêts du conseil privé, règnes de Henri III et Henri IV, 2 vols. (Paris, 1969–71).

Etchechoury

Maïté Etchechoury, Les Maîtres des requêtes de l’Hôtel du Roi sous les derniers Valois (1553–1589) (Paris: Champion and Droz, 1991).

F46849–46880 [and related series]

Printed edicts, ordinances, and letters patent of the French monarchy, specified in the Bibliography.

Fontanon

Antoine Fontanon, Les Edicts et ordonnances des roys de France, 4 (bound in 3) vols. (Paris, 1611).

Frémy

Édouard Frémy, L’Académie des derniers Valois (Paris, 1887).

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Abbreviations

Gaches

Charles Pradel (ed.), Mémoires sur les guerres de religion à Castres et dans le Languedoc (Paris, 1879).

Gassot

Sommaire mémorial (souvenirs) de Jules Gassot, secrétaire du roi (1555–1623), ed. Pierre Champion, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1934).

Haag

Eugène Haag and Émile Haag, La France protestante; 2nd edn., directed by Henri Bordier, appearing in 6 vols. (Paris, 1877–88) is cited for preference, where it exists (i.e. entries to ‘Gasparin’). Otherwise, 1st edn., 10 vols. (Paris, 1846–58).

Isambert

F. A. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois françaises, 29 vols. (Paris, 1821–33), vol. xiv.

Isnard

A. Isnard, Catalogue général des livres imprimés à la Bibliothèque nationale: actes royaux, vol. i (Paris, 1910).

Lalourcé and Duval

Lalourcé and Desbois (pseud.: Duval) (eds.), Recueil de pièces originales et authentiques, concernant la tenue des états-généraux [ . . . ], 9 vols., vols. ii and iii (Paris, 1789).

La Popelinière

(Henri Lancelot Voisin de La Popelinière), L’Histoire de France, 2 vols. (La Rochelle, 1581).

LCM

Hector de La Ferrière and [Comte] Gustave Baguenault de Puchesse (eds.), Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, 9 vols., Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France (Paris, 1880–1905).

L’Estoile

Madeleine Lazard, and Gilbert Schrenck (eds.), Pierre de l’Estoile, registre-journal du règne de Henri III, 6 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1996–2005).

LH3

Michel François (vols. i–iii), Bernard Barbiche (vol. iv), Henri Zuber (vol. iv), and Jacqueline Boucher (vol. v), (eds.), Lettres de Henri III roi de Fance, 5 vols. in prog., Société de l’histoire de France (Paris: Librairie Klincksieck/Champion, 1959–2000).

MF

Le Miroir des François, dialogues, par Nicolas de Montand (1581).

Montaigne

Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier (with additions by Marcel Conche) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2004).

NBG

(Dr) Hoefer (ed.), Nouvelle Biographie générale, 46 vols. (Paris, 1862–77).

Nevers

(Gomberville) (ed.), Mémoires de M. le duc de Nevers, 2 vols. (Paris, 1665).

Abbreviations

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Registres CPG

Olivier Labarthe and Bernard Lescaze (vol. iv); Olivier Labarthe and Micheline Tripet (vol. v) (eds.), Registres de la compagnie des pasteurs de Genève, iv: (1575–1582), vol. 137 (1974); v: (1583–1588), vol. 153 (1976) (Geneva: Droz).

République

Christiane Frémont, Marie-Dominique Couzinet, and Henri Rochais (eds.), Jean Bodin. Les Six livres de la République (Paris: Fayard, 1986) [Bk: Ch].

Robillard

Charles-Marie Robillard de Beaurepaire (ed.), Cahiers des états de Normandie sour le règne de Henri III, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1887–8).

Taix

Guillaume de Taix, Mémoires des Affaires du clergé de France, concertées et délibérées ez premiers Estats de Blois, 1576. Et depuis ez Assemblees generales dudict Clergé (Paris, 1625).

Vindry (1909–12)

Fleury Vindry, Les Parlementaires français au XVIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1909–12).

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Note on Presentation Footnotes provide short titles only to printed works cited, the full reference being contained in the Bibliography. Works in French are presumed published in Paris, unless otherwise stated. Place of publication is only indicated for works in English published outside London. A brief description of manuscript materials cited is given where appropriate. All contemporary orthography has been retained in citations with the following exceptions; macrons in printed sources have been silently expanded, as have abbreviations in manuscript sources, except in circumstances where they are problematic. ‘I’s, ‘j’s, ‘u’s, and ‘v’s have been left as they appear in both printed and manuscript sources, despite the marginal increased difficulty in legibility that it creates for the reader. Gaps in citations are indicated thus: [ . . . ]. Gaps in citations which stretch over more than a sentence are indicated thus: [. . . . ]. French institutions and offices have generally been italicized. In the case of the sovereign courts (Parlements; Chambre des Comptes; Cour des Aides; Cour des Monnaies) and the royal councils (Conseil Privé; Conseil d’État; Conseil des Finances) they are fundamental and readily recognizable components of the French royal state. They have been kept as they are in the text and not italicized. Readers should be aware, however, that the organization of the royal council changed in this period.

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Introduction This is a big book about something which never happened. Its subject is the reform of the French kingdom—a refashioning of its major political, ecclesiastical, military, and educational institutions and their underlying mores. It has been termed ‘un des grands mythes du temps des guerres de Religion, celui d’une réformation de la société civile en une société de justice’.¹ Reform was much discussed by France’s governing groups in the wars of religion, indicative of their fundamental disquiets in coming to terms with the impact of the civil wars. It became a major political endeavour for the Valois monarchy in the years 1576–85. The aim was a moral reformation and, like most such pursuits, it was a chimera. The more exhaustively it was pursued, the larger the task, and the more elusive it became. To envisage a moral reformation as a political endeavour sits uncomfortably in our modern minds. We are used to imagining politics as the management and delivery of realizable programmes by governments for the governed. Much of this book is about contextualizing this reformation such that we can understand it properly. This means, first, abandoning the idea of its being a political programme. It was, rather, an agenda, ‘une volonté idéologique’.² It grew out of a perception of politics as a branch of moral philosophy. Its endeavour was more important than its accomplishment. And endeavours are no less real for all that they are not realized since, through them, we may recover the important underlying principles of statecraft as it was perceived by France’s notables in the second half of the sixteenth century. Here is a taste of the preoccupation with reform. In 1582, Louis Musset, bailli of Saint-Verain in the Nièvre, published his Discours sur les remonstrances et reformations de chacun estat [ . . . ].³ Musset had been one of the secretaries of the king’s brother François, duke of Anjou. But this, the only work published under his name, was dedicated to his latest patron, ‘Monseigneur ¹ Crouzet, La nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy, 224. ² Ibid. ³ Musset, Discovrs (Paris, 1582). He was bailli of Saint-Verain, Cosne, and Bohy.

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Introduction

mon maistre’ Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers.⁴ Musset did not aim to impress with his learning. Indeed, the work had been written away from his books at ‘Champcellee lez Douzy’. He was on family business and the civil wars echoed around him as he wrote (probably in the early summer of 1577). He wanted to present an encyclopedia of the ‘common and general discourses on the reformation of the public, following the remonstrances of the estates general’.⁵ Like most compendia, Musset’s grew rather shapelessly. His fifty-two chapters touched on almost every aspect of public life. He began with the qualities to be expected in a good prince and the evils of a tyrant. It was but a short step to expositions of other well-worn themes—flattery and the treacherous self-serving of ill counsel. He would return several times to the damage done by careless advice, ‘les bombances des grands’.⁶ The remedy lay in ‘les liures des bons & anciens autheurs’, those ‘docteurs muets & hardis professeurs de la verité’ that offer ‘une pierre précieuse dans un coffre fermé’ of advice on how a prince should govern his own passions and those of his subjects.⁷ Armed with this learning, the ‘prince d’éloquence et de philosophie morale’ conducts himself ‘auec telle modestie & temperance’ that he is able to coax his people into a kingdom of reformed order and virtue.⁸ Musset was in no doubt that such a reformation was urgently needed. If civil wars had not been caused by decadence, they had certainly brought it in their wake. The wars had given licence to that minority of the king’s subjects who were not ‘God’s elect’. Musset wrote as a catholic and he disliked protestants. They were a minority that were incapable of controlling their passions, the ‘profonds abysmes de leurs conuoitises & concupiscences’. Their rhetoric is mistress to their passions, their opinions being thereby fabricated ‘par invectiues & par semence d’inimitiez occultes’ which are ‘issues de leurs appetits charnelz & mondains’. The inevitable result of the civil wars and protestant menace is decadence in the standards and virtues of justice in society (right religion being ‘le vray fondement, accroissement & maintien ⁴ BN MS Fr 1207, a manuscript presentation copy of the work with amendments by the author. He mentions his service to Anjou (fo. 2); in the published work, he praises the ‘bons & subtils esprits’ of the duc de Nevers. The manuscript passed into the library of Jacques-Auguste de Thou. ⁵ Ibid., fo. 2 (‘[ . . . ] extraict des plus Communs et generaulx et discours et raisonnementz vulgaires sur la reformation du public, suyuant les remonstrances faictes par des estatz tenuz a Bloys’). ⁶ Musset alluded to the motto of the dukes of Nevers : ‘Taccio et patisco’—‘c’est dire Ie ne le dis mot, & I’endure’ (Musset, Discovrs, fo. 13v ). ⁸ Ibid., fos. 17–17v . ⁷ Ibid., fos. 11; 13v ; 25.

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d’un estat public en justice & droicture’). Ordinary people have suffered most as a result and have become powerless to right the wrongs that have been done to them. In classical Greece and Rome, there are examples, says Musset, of princes who dressed up as wayfarers in order to discover the true distress in their realm.⁹ France’s rulers, by contrast, have the institution of the estates general through which they can ‘ouyr les penibles respirations des affligez, & doleances de son peuple nauré iusques au cœur, pour y remedier de façon salutaire, & le rendre à son repos par le bon aduis des bons & plus grands seigneurs’. The remainder of the treatise is an exposition of reforming ideas that had been discussed at the estates general of Blois in 1576–7. Like many of his contemporaries, Musset was aware of the paradoxes that reformation evoked in people’s minds in the immediate aftermath of the civil wars. The tension between what constituted the virtuous and the practical was never far from the surface. If, for example, corruption and decadence had been the inevitable consequence of civil war, the virtuous prince should have them investigated and rooted out in each order of society. But the learned prince knew from the exempla of the past that it was often better to draw a line under past failings and misdeeds, allow bygones to be bygones, and not to allow the disordered passions of the past to become a breeding ground for future troubles. Yet there were certain crimes that one could not forgive and forget, so offensive to civil society that it was damaging to the future of that same society to permit them to go unpunished. Was such tolerance not giving encouragement to precisely the world of disordered passions that Musset was so anxious to reform? Then there was the related paradox of whether it was better to engage in war to reform society, to eradicate the evil within it (and thus to foment the decadence that civil war inevitably brought in its wake), or to make peace and live with the disordered passions within the community, hoping little by little to reform it from within. It was a debate that, as Musset discussed it, went back to the beginnings of human history—to the quarrel between Jacob and his brother Esau, provoked by the latter’s uncontrolled passion. Overshadowing these issues in his mind were the recent edicts of pacification that had marked the inconclusive conclusions to military hostilities. They raised another question in his mind. If warfare was like a surgical remedy to human illness, i.e. an invasive removal of the ‘exterior causes’ of a malady, were there not many illnesses which responded ⁹ Ibid., fo. 23v .

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better to less invasive medical treatment, treatment that tackled the ‘internal causes’ of the illness? In which case, the task of the prudent and wise prince was to know when to reform the realm by these gentle remedies. Musset spent several chapters on each of the estates of the realm in turn attempting to do just that. In each case, he sought to establish the ultimate paradox of his treatise. The reformation of society was not something that a prince, however wise and virtuous he might be, could achieve on his own. There were laws that could be strengthened, customs and practices that could be changed. These all had a gradual and educative effect upon society and should not be underestimated. The reform of the sumptuary laws, the enforcement of laws against usury, stricter regulation of taverns, the control of blasphemy were ways by which Musset thought it was legitimate for a prince to seek to bring disordered passions into greater conformity with right reason and the precepts of a godly kingdom. But the greatest changes, the most profound reformation came from within ourselves, from our acceptance that we have all contributed to the decadence in society, and must all be responsible, by prayer, penitence, and practice, for its reform. His concluding chapter was headed ‘que les Princes ne peuuent faire trouuer tout bon ce qu’ils ordonnent’ and it was a reminder that laws cannot always achieve the summum bonum and that the only enduring reformation was one that took place in our hearts. Musset was a purveyor of worthy platitudes and not a profound political thinker. But commonplaces tell us about widely held aspirations. These aspirations were ways by which people came to terms with the civil wars—to understand how they had happened, what they had been about, and how they could be prevented from occurring again. Three propositions and an assumption underlie the book and these may be baldly stated here. The first proposition is that the civil wars progressively undermined the self-confidence and credibility of France’s governing institutions. Slowly at first (for the civil wars had been a punctuated affair in the first decade), and then with ever greater insistence, a more extensive state of bafflement afflicted France’s notables. The sense that they had an answer or answers to the problems of the kingdom gave way to a debate as to what the underlying problems were and how they should be resolved. The second proposition of this book is that the discussion was conducted by different groups and at different levels. There were questions of the extent to which failings within the French church had contributed to the success of the protestant challenge. A comparable debate occurred over the decay of the

Introduction

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French judiciary as a result of the extension of venality of office-holdings to judicial posts. Had that not also been a root cause of the faltering respect for the institutions of the state? The burgeoning debts of the French monarchy created a parallel set of questions among contemporaries that led them, almost despite themselves, to debate fundamental issues of privilege and tax exemption, the distribution of royal largesse, and the effectiveness of the fiscal machinery of the state. Some of these debates, as we shall see, were restricted to those in the elite who had a specialist administrative competence. This was true, for example, with currency reform. Other domains, such as the reform of the gendarmerie or the court, raised issues that engaged a wider cross-section of society, laying bare conflicting assumptions about the way in which they were organized and functioned. Military reform was inevitably linked to the question of law and its enforcement, to what constituted proper (i.e. godly) discipline in society, to the right application of the lessons of antiquity to the reform of France’s military strength, and to the nature and role of the nobility itself. Reform of the court could not fail to embrace the difficult matters of justice and favour, upon which almost everyone of note had an opinion. Reform of the church engaged every order in society, as the protestant reformation had already demonstrated, raising fundamental issues about the internal organization of the clerical order. And, since the royal court, the companies of gendarmes, or the church itself easily formed ‘models’ of the ills in French society at large, so their reform became epitomes of what would constitute a well-policed and godly society. In each case, these were far from academic debates. With the evidence before their eyes that the civil wars had demonstrated serious weaknesses in France’s royal armies, that the court was an instrument of the country’s political divisions, that the failings in the established church had contributed to the success of protestantism, France’s elites confronted issues that were an integral and uncomfortable part of their immediate experience. The French monarchy found itself held up to scrutiny and public criticism as never before. It therefore sought to embrace, and eventually to draw renewed strength and legitimacy from, the proposed reformation of the kingdom. For a period, debates about the reformation of the kingdom carried monarchical blessing. Partly because of the interlinked and intractable nature of the issues involved, this debate had a shared agenda. The third proposition of this book is that it was mostly unrealizable. France’s elites agreed that reform implied recovering a past that had become corrupted. The corruption occurred, they agreed, because of man’s moral failings. The common agenda of reformist

6

Introduction

sentiment was its heavy dependence upon moral philosophy. Academic moral philosophy in the late sixteenth century was particularly attracted to trying to understand the human passions. Although it proved very difficult to disentangle and define the passions (pagan and Christian antiquity had not spoken with one voice on the subject), there was general agreement on the starting points of such an enquiry. There were noble and ignoble passions. ‘Godly’ discipline involved the restraint of the latter and the encouragement of the former. Both needed to be governed by reason. France’s elite groups were particularly attracted to the passions as the explanatory dimension for their debates about reform, even though they were often not well versed in the formal philosophical background upon which theories of the passions were formulated. The passions provided a theologically neutral language, non-denotative of a protestant or catholic perception of reform, a ‘politically correct’ framework of reference. Moreover, arguments could be developed on the basis of the passions that reinforced the social convictions of the French elites. Ignoble passions were those of the lower orders who needed discipline and regulation; noble passions were those that could be encouraged by rhetoric and argument, by debate and discourse, eloquence being the privilege of the elites themselves. By presenting the world of public affairs as a theatre of passions rather than a domain of power, French ‘notables’ reinforced their conservative picture of a universe governed by moral forces. Arguments on the basis of passions could be deployed in a variety of different contexts, as useful in explaining why a particular individual was not to be trusted (because ‘governed’ by ignoble passions) as they were a refuge for presenting an argument for change in comfortingly consensual language. Such conceptions were far from unique to France’s elites and they had their origins well before the protestant reformation. In the ancient world, Greek and Roman thought had much to say on the contrast between reason and the passions, and the importance of self-control. Centuries of Christian tradition had transformed that into a doctrine that defined good and evil and emphasized the significance of the human will. The religious changes of the sixteenth century placed, however, a new emphasis on the problem of the passions. We cannot dissociate the history of the passions in the later sixteenth century from what Jean Delumeau has described as its ‘titanic effort of religious acculturation’ in which the problem was ‘how to persuade hundreds of millions of people to embrace a severe moral and spiritual discipline of a sort which had never actually been demanded of their forebears, and how to make them accept that even the most secret aspects of

Introduction

7

their daily lives should thenceforth be saturated by a constant preoccupation with things eternal’.¹⁰ The necessary ‘internalizing’ of Christianity that this involved was achieved through emphasizing the significance of self-control, and that, in turn, required an understanding of how the passions should rightly be governed. The distinctiveness of the French case rests simply in the degree to which the debates were explicit, politicized, and therefore laicized. Common perceptions and agendas were important. But they were less easily transformed into practical and realizable proposals for change. Restraining the ignoble passions and encouraging the noble ones readily became reduced to truisms that were applied more easily to the individual rather than the group—to the fostering of godly virtue in individual human beings. There was an underlying tension between the need for wholesale change and piecemeal reform. There was no agreement on the instruments to effect change. ‘Reform’ was, by definition, a reflexive and subjective entity, an empty vessel that individuals filled as they wished. Even though there were common aspirations and yearnings, there was no objective agreement as to what needed to be changed first, how and when. As Guillaume de Taix said in his diary, exasperated by the debates in the assembly of clergy at Melun in 1579: ‘le mot de Reformation estoit fort beau & specieux, & digne (à la verité) de courir par les bouches d’vne si celebre assemblée; mais que d’autant qu’il estoit general & s’estendoit fort loing, j’eusse bien désiré que particulierement on eust declaré que c’est que l’on vouloit reformer.’¹¹ The frustrations of these unachievable aspirations will become clear as we examine the sequence of national events that sought to embody and realize them. The book begins with the estates general of Blois of 1576–7 and culminates in the assembly of notables at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1583–4 and its immediate aftermath, a period dominated by the complex process by which the French governing elites came to terms with the unsettling implications of civil war. The three propositions in the book that have just been outlined are accompanied by an assumption. This is that there were governing elites in sixteenth-century France. We shall not attempt to define them too closely. To do so would risk doing substantial injustice to a generation of scholarship on early modern French history that has been devoted to examining its elites and how they worked. I prefer to envisage a multiplicity of governing elites, since such diversity was enshrined in contemporary perceptions. This was bound ¹⁰ Delumeau, ‘Prescription and Reality’, 134–58, see esp. 147–8; Gaukroger (ed.), The Soft Underbelly of Reason, 1–14. ¹¹ Taix, 160.

8

Introduction

to be the case since the distinction between various social elites was the most deeply embodied social reality in France. They coexisted with one another, their functional differences reinforced by inequalities of privilege, rank, and wealth that were nevertheless glossed by social commentators as mutually supportive and in fundamental harmony one with another. That diversity was fostered in the sixteenth century by the revival of ancient thought which encouraged educated men and women in the elite to think about their society in new ways, emphasizing the more fluid ‘virtues’ of talent, ability, and service as defining elements in the composition of the elites.¹² Social elites should, however, be kept distinct from governing elites, since social and political power only intersected at the senior echelons of the clergy, nobility, and officialdom. And, since (like the Holy Spirit), royal favour bloweth where it listeth, there were regular mismatches between those who were given the opportunity to exploit it and their immediate social background, mismatches that were often masked by social assimilation to accommodate their rise to power. It is possible that the governing elites became more distinctive and numerous in the course of the sixteenth century. If that was the case, then it was the result of a number of concomitant developments. In the church, for example, the Concordat of Bologna (1516) sanctioned the French monarchy’s effective control over the appointments to its senior clergy in most of the realm. Individuals were nominated as bishops and abbots to reward them for royal service as diplomats, bankers, and officials and to satisfy their families and patrons. Some of them were readily identified as royal servants, members of the king’s council, or in receipt of royal pensions. These were held in some suspicion by others of their order and for a variety of reasons. The latter included the facts that they were sometimes commoners who disturbed the patrimonial presumptions of established noble families, and that they assisted the king in imposing heavy financial demands upon the clergy.¹³ For the senior nobility, the growth in the size, significance, and formality of the court was on the way to turning them into a court aristocracy. This put them at the apex of networks of aristocratic clientage and made them the focal points of informal power structures that lay in and around the accepted institutions of the kingdom.¹⁴ ¹² Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree; Jouanna, L’Idée de race en France. ¹³ Baumgartner, Change and Continuity, esp. 196–207; Péronnet, Les Évêques de l’ancienne France. ¹⁴ Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite, esp. ch. 1; Kettering, ‘The Historical Development of Political Clientelism’.

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The influence of these networks is most evident and most documented in surviving aristocratic correspondence.¹⁵ There we can detect the concentric circles of influence stretching outwards from the domestic and household servants of a particular aristocrat to their relatives and kin and, beyond them, to the individuals who served as gendarmes and archers in their cavalry companies. A good deal of this correspondence related to requests for favour and protection from individuals and corporations. The supplicants were not all ‘clients’ of a particular aristocrat, although many of them might have liked to imagine their becoming so one day. They often exploited the fact that the individual in question was the royal governor or lieutenant of the province where they lived or the province where they had seigneurial or family interests.¹⁶ Royal authority and aristocratic influence coalesced and, during the wars of religion, the governing elites were dominated by the higher nobility and their ‘affinities’. The membrane between the royal ‘affinity’ and particular aristocratic ‘affinities’ was, therefore, porous.¹⁷ This remained the case, despite Henri III’s determined efforts to fashion his household, court, and mechanisms for the distribution of favour on a more ‘exclusive’ basis. The problem of ‘counsel’ at sixteenth-century courts was central to the way that they functioned. It attracted considerable contemporary debate, especially in periods of intense political division. Nicolas Le Roux has examined the dynamic of court politics under the later Valois in extraordinary detail.¹⁸ He presents a ‘generational shift’ in attitudes towards monarchical authority, and thus towards the handling of the issue of ‘counsel’, which affords an explanation for the rise of a more exclusive form of ‘favourite’ (mignon) at Henri III’s court. The argument has weight and substance. But Henri III’s court was not alone in facing the growing complexities of princely government in the later sixteenth century. Nor was it unique in having powerful aristocratic figures in proximity to it, each seeking to acquire privileged, informal access to sovereign power on their own account and in order to exclude another. For both these reasons, the recourse to ‘mignons’, those who could be trusted to carry out the king’s will and whose loyalty was uncompromised, had political advantages, even though it also led to vituperative criticism of the individuals in question and, through that, a ¹⁵ Greengrass, ‘Functions and Limits of Political Clientelism’; Rentet, ‘Le Roi, le Grand Maître et les fidèles’; Boltanski, ‘Les Nevers’. ¹⁶ Carroll, Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion; cf. Drouot, Mayenne et la Bourgogne. ¹⁷ Potter, A History of France, 57–60; 286–70. ¹⁸ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi.

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Introduction

questioning of royal judgement. It was part of the royal attempt to govern the passions of his disordered kingdom. It would be wrong to concentrate on the governing elites of mitre and sword to the exclusion of the senior magistracy in the governing elites of sixteenth-century France. The magistrates in the sovereign law courts and financial courts grew dramatically in number and influence in the course of the sixteenth century. They were in the process of acquiring a dominant position in many cities and played an increasingly important role in local affairs, representing the king and exercising delegate powers. The senior judges were becoming more wealthy and privileged. Purchasing a senior royal office proved an exceptionally good investment in the sixteenth century, and especially in the period that concerns us. One particular group of this senior magistracy will be the object of our attention in the course of this book. This was what has been called the robe du conseil, i.e. the senior magistracy that assisted the king in the higher levels of decision-making around the royal council. These included secretaries of state, masters of requests (maîtres des requêtes), and intendants of finance. Together, they prepared cases for adjudication at the council, mastered the complex financial processes of the French monarchy, prepared the drafts of edicts and ordinances, and handled the flow of information that lay behind the appreciation of what was going on in this vast kingdom. They have been described as a ‘political class’ and a ‘technostructure’, though that overstates their cohesion, at least in the sixteenth century.¹⁹ But it is important to remember that the governing elites needed specialist advisers on a wide variety of matters—jurists with knowledge of public law, specialists in monetary and financial management, negotiators, diplomats, and publicists. They were educated, influential, and they voiced their own opinions. While accepting that there is much that we do not know about France’s governing elites in the political flux of the wars of religion, I shall assume there is general agreement on the following. Although theoretically united in the king’s service, the elites were, in every other respect, composite and diverse. They were dominated by the senior aristocracy of the sword and mitre, but not to the exclusion of other social groups. Those closest to the king in the upper echelons kept many important advantages to themselves, and none more so than the flow of favour. Informal power structures played ¹⁹ Goubert and Roche, Les Français et l’ancien régime, ii. 49–55; Braudel and Labrousse (eds.), Histoire économique et sociale de la France, ii. 216.

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an important part in determining their access to power and the distribution of favour. The high nobility readily cooperated with high-ranking non-nobles. They all accepted that local elites should not be sidelined in the government of the kingdom. Whether it was through formal or informal structures, local elites—corporations such as town councils, cathedral chapters, individuals such as the more prominent members of the provincial nobility, noblesse seconde, or ‘inferior’ royal office-holders—were to be accommodated as far as possible, collaborating with the governing elites in order to make monarchical authority as inclusive as possible. As convenient shorthand, we shall refer to these governing elites generically as ‘notables’. The term is not intended to imply anything much by way of homogeneity of social background, status, or attitude beyond the fact that this or that individual or collection of individuals at this or that time carried the confidence of the king. The word has the merit of being a contemporary description for a real event, namely an ‘assembly of notables’. This was the name given to those who were occasionally summoned to advise the king in an extended royal council. They were not exclusively members of the royal ‘court’, favourites, or those in receipt of a royal pension. The ‘notables’ were those who had, or claimed to have, the moral virtues necessary to govern. They were the ‘bons et notables personnages et plus estimés du royaulme’, the ‘plus grands et notables prélats’, the ‘notables bourgeois et marchands’, all those who had the king’s confidence at that particular moment, were commissioned in his service, or had significant offices of the crown and kingdom to carry out. In local terms, the ‘notables’ were identifiable as the apex of a social hierarchy that was generally depicted in terms developed by, and largely for, the men of justice. Our objective is to investigate how they came to terms with the French civil wars, which agendas for change they proposed, and how they thought they could be implemented. Three methodological approaches underscore the research and writing of this book. The first is an attempt to recover the narrative dynamic of the period with which it is concerned. As specialists have observed, these years are ‘possibly among the least familiar of the ancien régime’, subject ‘to broad generalizations but few detailed studies’.²⁰ This approach may seem conservative, even ‘positivist’ in its historical understanding. Are there not, after all, any number of narrative dynamics, myriads of possible chronologies ²⁰ Sutherland, The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition, 232; Manetsch, Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 93.

12

Introduction

that we can recover from the past, and which delineate a given period? Undoubtedly, but they must all begin from the vantage point that the past never knows its future. We shall start in 1576, very aware (as our notables were) of the cumulative impact of the civil wars on France’s public life, and we shall tunnel through to 1585, living their expectations and anticipations of reformation as we go, trying to be as unaware as they were of what lay ahead. Only by adopting that perspective will we truly understand the origins of the League and the reactions of the notables to the crisis of the royal succession that engulfed France thereafter. The implied critique of our current understanding of this period is that, if we seek to ‘hop’ from the ‘protestant’ crisis of the early wars of religion to the ‘catholic’ crisis at their culmination, we shall fail to appreciate the period in between for what it essentially was. The documents that we use determine the history that we write. The most signal recent advances in our understanding of the politics of later sixteenth-century France have been to comprehend the nature and operation of aristocratic patronage. It has been rewarding to discover that there were transparent filaments of fidelity, hidden pulleys of protection lying just below the surface and ready to be revealed by the historical equivalent of an archaeological excavation. There is more to be achieved along these lines. But, having contributed to this research trajectory myself, it may appear perverse to want to argue now that we should recognize the limits of this approach. Yet that is one of the methodological undercurrents of this book. Aristocratic letter collections tell us a great deal about the honour codes, the kinship and companionship that structured the discourse of request and favour in sixteenth-century networks. They necessarily constrain, however, our picture of the mental horizons of France’s governing elites. It is as though the ideological conflicts of the age of the reformation, not to mention the practical and moral dilemmas posed by civil war and the memories that they left behind them, exist only as distant hills, glimpsed on clear days. Yet, if we change the nature of the documentation things looks rather different. If we look at the avis presented before the royal council, the lectures presented in the so-called ‘Palace Academy’, the speeches before the estates general or the Parlements, the debates at the assembly of the clergy or that of the notables, and the negotiations round bargaining tables, we have a picture of French notables who were clearly listening to, and actively debating, larger issues. They were aware of, and (in some cases) articulate about, the difficult choices before the king and the kingdom. They drew on a familiarity with classical

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antiquity which acted for many, though not for all, as a ‘code’ for belonging to the notability.²¹ They were often contradictory in their views but they were not ignorant of the imperative of restoring the kingdom to what was perceived as a previously pristine state. The treatment of the issues raised by the debates about reform will be inevitably selective. This is partly because some of them have already been very well researched in recent years—most notably in respect of the attempts to reform the royal court. Jacqueline Boucher has provided a classic examination of a sixteenth-century European princely court and the attempts to reform it by detailed regulations whose objective was to discipline the behaviour and way of life of those in attendance upon the king.²² It is evident that these were seen in royal circles as a ‘model’ for a wider moralizing change in society at large. In the case of the reform of royal councils and finance, the subject is not explored in depth in these pages because the analysis of the surviving materials has yet to be undertaken. I hope to do so in due course, but it is more suited to publication in technical research papers than in a more general monograph. Suffice it to say that the extant documentation for such an analysis is extensive, especially for the early 1580s. The monetary reforms of the period have also been the subject of some investigation, and I have analysed elsewhere the debates among the monetary notables about what had caused the collapse of the coinage and what should be done about it.²³ So this is a book about the interplay between events and ideas. There is a danger of writing the history of ideas with imprecise recourse to free-floating ‘concepts’, too readily adduced as having a general currency. The study of ideas in this book will be firmly based in the close reading and citation of texts—lectures, speeches, treatises, and memoranda. But these texts need interpretation and contextualization and they are not to be treated as normative. They were thoughtfully written but not formally constrained by the rigorous academic logic of the sixteenth century. They frequently had recourse to contemporary techniques of rhetoric, using well-known exempla in their presentations. This is, in itself, of importance to us since we shall argue that eloquence was conceived of as one of the important ways by which the passions were governed. But we should not be too readily persuaded that ²¹ Gerrit, ‘Adel und Antike: Zur politischen Bedeutung gelehrter Kultur für die Führungselite der Frühen Neuzeit’. ²² Boucher, La Cour de Henri III, a brief recension of her thesis ‘Sociétés et mentalités autour de Henri III’; cf. Chatenet, ‘Henri III et l’ordre de la cour’. ²³ Parsons, ‘Money and Sovereignty’ and ‘Governing Sixteenth-Century France’; Greengrass, ‘Money, Majesty and Virtue’.

14

Introduction

what people wrote automatically reflected what they believed. There were certainly occasions when they wrote what they thought others wanted to hear, what constituted an ‘appropriate’ response, or the received and ‘conventional’ wisdom. Louis Musset lived within a thought-world that was bounded by his familiar experiences and the beliefs he shared with others. It is by recovering that familiarity that the history of ideas will prove useful to us.

1 Defeat and Reformation The reformation of the kingdom was part of the shadow cast by military defeat. The French monarchy had experienced several military defeats in the recent past. At the battle of Saint-Quentin (1557) the best fighting forces of the French army, including its military commander the constable Anne de Montmorency, were either killed or captured by their Spanish Habsburg opponents. At the battle of Saint-Denis (1567), there had also been a heavy toll and the constable himself was killed in action by his protestant assailants. But, in both instances, defeat was followed by recovery. The siege of La Rochelle (1573) was different. It was one of the most gruelling of the sixteenth century and, for the royal army, it was a fiasco. We shall never know the total number of casualties. A recent assessment is that, of the 18,000 French infantry who mainly composed the army, at least 5,000–6,000 were killed or wounded in the various assaults of the siege, with many more dying from war-related illnesses.¹ Over 200 senior army officers, including most of the regimental and company commanders, were killed or wounded. It was an all too apparent defeat for the French monarchy as well. The besieging force was commanded by the king’s younger brother, Henri, duke of Anjou, and included almost all the military aristocracy of prominence in his subsequent reign. The failure to take La Rochelle cost the Valois the best opportunity they would ever have to defeat and dismantle the protestants’ military capability. Protestant commentators were not slow to exploit the defeat and explain it in terms of God’s providence and the heroic resistance of the town’s protestant citizenry, assisted by their allies abroad.² Meanwhile, royal commanders were left struggling for explanations of their defeat that measured up to the complexity of the events that had overwhelmed them. The subsequent military engagements of the fifth civil war brought them little comfort either. Under Henri, formerly duke of ¹ Wood, The King’s Army, 31–2. ² e.g. Philadelphe, Réveille-matin des François, 128.

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Anjou and now King Henri III, it was Paris itself that, in the winter of 1576, prepared to defend itself against a siege by protestant and allied forces as the royal army proved powerless to defend the capital. The defeat and humiliation of the royal forces at La Rochelle created mutual recriminations and collective introspection that subsequent events only served to nurture still further. Sixteenth-century France was well served by military memoirs, of which the Commentaires of Blaise de Monluc and the Discours sur les colonels de l’infanterie de France of Pierre de Bourdeille, sieur de Brantôme, became the most widely read. Both texts did more than simply record and comment on the recent military events that they had witnessed or knew at close hand. They acted as instruments of metamorphosis, transforming the muddy memory of warfare into a valhalla of military glory, applying heroic and chivalric filters which elevated contemporary captains to the ideals of the past. Such a metamorphosis was curtailed in the subsequent civil wars—not least because the military memory was essentially contested within France. And, in the case of the siege of La Rochelle, the military experience itself was of a different order, quite incapable of being glorified. Blaise de Monluc, who (despite being 71 years of age) saw service at La Rochelle and lost several of his kin, hardly tried. As ‘le plus vieux soldat de votre camp’, he had offered the benefit of his military experience on how the siege should be conducted before it began.³ He knew it had been a disaster, though, and when he came to dictate the later version of his Commentaires in 1576, he (uncharacteristically) kept his counsel for fear of courting enemies.⁴ Pierre de Bourdeille, sieur de Brantôme, also a participant (and one who conducted some of the final truce negotiations), equally did not gloss the siege of La Rochelle.⁵ He remembered it in terms of violence and tragedy.⁶ His own estimate of the casualties was 22,000. He claimed to have seen Philippe Strossi, the colonel general of the French infantry, with a list in his hand of officers that had been killed, a roll-call of 266 names. Filippo Cavriana (var.: Cauriana: Cabrian), the duke of Nevers’s physician and a secret agent for the duke of Florence, who perhaps arrived towards the end of the siege, recorded his impressions too. His Latin account circulated in manuscript and it recalled with a physician’s eye the ³ Tamisey de Larroque, ‘Quelques pages inédites de Blaise de Monluc’, 322–31. ⁴ Courteault (ed.), Commentaires de . . . Monluc, 836–7; cf. Knecht, ‘The Sword and the Pen’. ⁵ Lalanne, Brantôme, 165–80. ⁶ Vaucheret (ed.), Discours sur les colonels, 78–9; 80–4; 91; 156–8; 160–1; 165–6; 203; 220; 223.

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17

exhaustion of royal forces.⁷ For everyone involved in the royal siege, it was a disillusioning and disheartening engagement. The peace terms that brought the siege to a conclusion were agreed on 25 June 1573. By that time, the royal army had been around La Rochelle for seven months. Armand de Gontaut, baron de Biron, entered the city the following month on 10 July and the duke of Anjou left by galley ‘to avoid the murmuring and mutiny of the soldiers, for that they were unpaid’ to prepare the defence of his conduct of operations before the royal council.⁸ In his entourage were most of the leading military figures from the siege who had survived, with the exception of Biron himself. They included Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers, who had directed operations against the bastion of the Évangile fortress and the northern wall of the city. Also present was Albert de Gondi, count of Retz, who had led a contingent of cavalry and been dispossessed of his possessions in a daring counter-attack by the Rochelais. They each had reputations to preserve and careers to protect. The duke of Anjou himself had just been elected king of Poland. The news of his election had arrived in La Rochelle on 27 May 1573. Accusations were already being voiced that the siege had been lifted in order to allow him to make his departure. The duke of Nevers sought to enter the royal conseil des affaires as Anjou’s representative in France, once he had departed for Poland. In a projected discourse dated 21 July 1573, he laid out the imperative for Anjou to have an agent at the French court to protect his reputation.⁹ He also foresaw the likely opposition from others in council to his proposed elevation—from Henri de Lorraine, duke of Guise, and his brothers Charles de Lorraine, duke d’Aumale (both present at La Rochelle, the father of the latter having been killed in action on 3 March), and from Louis II, cardinal of Guise, as well as Artus de Cossé, the latter being the senior serving maréchal (also present at La Rochelle). He had harsh words for them all. Reading between the lines, the implication was clear. Only the duke of Nevers could be trusted to preserve the duke of Anjou’s fragile reputation. Retz presented his own account of what had gone wrong in the siege of La Rochelle before the duke of Anjou at the end of July.¹⁰ That of the duke ⁷ Cavriana, De Obsidione rupellæ commentarius, 147. ⁸ CalSPFor (1572–4), 392 [‘Occurrents in France’, 23 July 1573]. ⁹ BN MS Fr 3950 fos. 143–5 [endorsed ‘Tours 21 juillet 1573. Discours sur lentrée es affaires du Roy S.M. le Roy de Pollogne’]. ¹⁰ BN MS Fr 3950 fos. 147–51 [endorsed: ‘Discours donné par Monsieur le comte de Retz au Roy de Poullogne sur le Voiage de la Rochelle et reglement du Roiaulme de France. Pour aller au Roy avant son partement’].

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of Nevers was drafted the day after Anjou had his first meeting with his brother Charles IX at the palace of Madrid near Paris on 2 August, when the king gave him leave to submit his report on the siege.¹¹ Nevers wrote a lengthy discourse to be read out by the duke of Anjou himself.¹² He drew, no doubt, on the daily journal that, in his fastidious way, he had drawn up during the siege, or just after it had ended.¹³ The speech was far too long and a summary version was what Anjou eventually presented before the king on 6 August.¹⁴ Both texts provided an antidote to the conventional military memoir, an object lesson in anti-heroics with half a finger pointing towards the royal advisers who had contemplated the enterprise in the first place. Almost everything had gone wrong. The campaign had been badly timed, poorly prepared, and under-resourced. There had been no evaluation of the defensive capabilities of La Rochelle before embarking on the operation. When Anjou left to join his army, he had been told that everything was in place for the forthcoming siege but this turned out to be very far from the case. The initial force of 6,000 soldiers was insufficient to blockade a town with a garrison of 2,000 soldiers in it. The Swiss infantry that he had asked for were initially countermanded and then, when Anjou insisted, did not arrive until 23 May, two months into the siege. He only had one carrack at his disposal to hold the blockade at sea. So the protestant naval squadron of the count of Montgomery not only deflected soldiers from the siege but also interrupted the royal army’s supply routes by sea to the Loire. There were never enough engineers or materials for the siege itself. There was repeated dissension in the royal army too, and a failure of intelligence and security. In the face of assaults that achieved nothing, morale dissolved. Soldiers refused to fight, saying ‘que lon les menoit a la boucherie, et quilz estoient mal traictez’ and that ‘lon les envoioyt faire tuer a credict & sans faire seruice’.¹⁵ Some of their officers supported them, and ‘reffroidissent la ¹¹ BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 157. ¹² BN MS Fr 4765 fos. 57–77 [headed in a later hand: ‘Discours sur le siege de la Rochelle’ and endorsed in another contemporary hand on fo. 64v ‘Madrid. 1573. 3 Aoust. Discours sur le progres des chauses faittes [a] la Rochelle par devant le Roy de Poullogne qui le volloit dire au Roy a son arriuée a la court voulut’]. ¹³ Ibid., fos. 15–53 [headed in a later hand: ‘Journal du premier siege de la Rochelle en 1573’]. ¹⁴ BN MS Fr 3950 fos. 164–182r [headed: ‘Discours presente au Roy par le Roy de Poullongne son frere touchant sommairement son voiage faict a la Rochelle. Et aultres choses concernant le bien et repos de son Roiaulme’. In another hand, probably that of the duke of Nevers, it is endorsed ‘Lequel j’ai dresse au nom dudit Roy quy le presenta au Roy Charles son frere auant son partement pour aller en Poulogne’]. ¹⁵ BN MS Fr 4765 fos. 67; 76.

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vollonte des soldatz au lieu quilz les doibuent eschauffer’.¹⁶ Anjou found it particularly galling to hear some of his commanders argue that, if only he had sustained the siege for another two weeks, the town would have fallen. Their prescience would have been the more appreciated had they displayed it at an earlier stage.¹⁷ Anjou took full responsibility for the failure of the campaign, but individual captains should bear some of the blame for the indiscipline of the soldiers, although the latter were themselves the product of a flawed recruitment process. Using ‘soldatz licenciez & accoustumez a vivre en liberte et piller tout sans rien paier’ it was hardly surprising that the army dissolved as the hope of booty from a captured La Rochelle evaporated.¹⁸ The fiasco of La Rochelle raised conflicting emotions that Anjou did not seek to disguise. ‘Je ne vous diray poinct combien d’emeu et fascherie jauois de veoir les choses si mal aller.’¹⁹ He had been humiliated. He set up the landward blockade only to ‘receuoir la honte dy voir entrer le secours a mon arriuee’ by sea.²⁰ When his assaults were compromised, ‘la honte feust plus grande que le mal’.²¹ With the entrenchment that had been captured by his forces retaken by the townsmen, it was ‘une grande honte pour le peu de courage quilz [his soldiers] monstrerent’.²² It was ‘avec une honte tres grande’ that he saw the Rochelais carry out sorties a mile or more beyond the city walls.²³ The conundrum to which he returned several times in his speech was that it was not a question of individual blame but of collective responsibility and systemic failure. The breakdown of discipline indicated a fundamental malaise. His own military ordinances of 15 February 1573 had been models of their kind, offering ‘l’ordre, devoir et police qu’il convient et est nécessaire en l’armée d’un prince très chrétien et amateur de la justice’.²⁴ Yet the reality had proved different. So, when it came to the general battery of the city on 7 April (the moment when the city came closest to surrender), he found the impact of a barrage of 3,000 cannon-balls to be as great on his own forces as on those inside the city. Spartan discipline did not seem to work either. When his engineers sought to dragoon unwilling soldiers to put gunpowder in the tunnels that had been dug under the city’s bastion wall, they killed 35–40 of them as an object lesson to the rest. Anjou was privately horrified when the effect was the opposite of what had been intended: ‘ce desastre rafroidit le cœur de plusieurs soldats et en empescha dautres.’ Not the least of the ¹⁶ ¹⁹ ²¹ ²⁴

Ibid. ¹⁷ BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 166v . ¹⁸ BN MS Fr 4765 fo. 76. ²⁰ BN MS Fr 4765 fo. 58v . BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 166v . v ²³ Ibid., fo. 69. Ibid., fo. 66. ²² Ibid., fo. 67 . Cavriana, De Obsidione rupellæ commentarius 151–7; cf. 41.

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perplexing elements of this strange defeat was that the protestant defenders showed more determination and discipline than their assailants. Cavriana acknowledged the role of the 100 or more ministers in the town, whose sermons ‘emflammaisent le cœur des Rochellois et accroissaient sans cesse leur audace’.²⁵ Had the citizens not mocked their assailants by holding up playing cards and dice over the city walls—symbols of the enemy’s degeneracy? So, in seeking to present the lessons of the defeat at La Rochelle to the king, Anjou was led to consider more generally the ‘establissement’ of the kingdom. The resulting document was a testament politique, bequeathed to his brother on his departure for Poland. Retz submitted proposals to him for a more general ‘reformation of the realm’ that concentrated on judicial and military change.²⁶ Nevers’s memorandum on judicial affairs accompanied his own account of the siege too, and was submitted to the king with some changes by Anjou on 6 August.²⁷ Anjou’s final document included chapters (in addition to elements copied from de Retz’s and Nevers’s documents on justice and military change) on the reform of the ecclesiastical order, on finance, on the honours and rewards system, and on currency.²⁸ It was the longest, most comprehensive and most searching review of the way in which the kingdom was run since the Ordinances of Orléans (1560) and the first of its kind to emerge from the interstices of the royal family itself. The document began with Anjou’s personal commitment to the proposals he was making, a legacy of his responsibilities as lieutenant-general during the preceding civil wars as well as his gratitude for having been sponsored to election as king of Poland: ‘J’ai tousjours eu, Monsieur, Grand desire de regler votre royaulme comme je suys tenu pour avoir mis entre mes mains les affaires de votre estat et de m’auoir pourchasse ung royaulme tel que la Pollongne.’²⁹ The overall theme was that the renewal of the kingdom could ²⁵ Cavriana, De Obsidione rupellæ commentarius 151–7; cf. 15. ²⁶ BN MS Fr 3950 fos. 153–6 [endorsed: ‘1573 a la fin de juillet. Aultre discours ensuiuant l’aultre de Mr le comte de Retz. Cestuy cy ne fut leu et seullement le 1e traittant du faict de la Rochelle’]. ²⁷ BN MS Fr 3950 fos. 158v –160 [endorsed: ‘Madrid 1573 6 aoust. Article de la Iustice [qui] fut presentez deuant le roy par ces memoires et depuis fut changee par luy mesme, car il nestoit guere sceu et ne refeit sur le menu y changeant quelques clauses. Vray est que il fait tout aussy des finances mais pris sur ces memoires’]. ²⁸ Ibid., fos. 164v –182 [endorsed: ‘Paris. 1573. 14 aoust. Discours presente au Roy par le Roy de Poullongne son frere touchant sommairement son voiage faict a la Rochelle, Et aultres choses concernant le bien et repos de son Roiaulme’ to which another hand, apparently that of the duke of Nevers, adds ‘Lequel je dressai au nom dudit Roy quy le presenta au Roy Charles son frere auant son partement pour aller en Poulogne’]. Champion, La Jeunesse de Henri III, ii. 229–32. ²⁹ Ibid., fo. 166.

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only begin with the determined royal reassertion of its powers of favour and reward to ensure that its notables lived up to their name. He began with the difficult subject of ecclesiastical reform. Explicitly avoiding the debate over whether religious pluralism was the root cause of weakness in a unitary kingdom like France, and conscious that the church had an independent authority for ‘la doctrine’ and ‘la refformation des mœurs’, he was concerned, nevertheless, with the reform of the king’s powers of nomination to senior benefices in the church.³⁰ He had an image of the kinds of individuals he wanted as bishops: ‘charitables, de bonne vie et doctrine, lesquelz puissent prescher, ou ayent soing de faire prescher de scauans personnaiges en leurs dioceses’. The current bench of bishops left him unimpressed: ‘la pluspart des eueschez sont tenuz par prebtres Ignorans, Euesques portatifz qui ne se soubvient de faire prescher & moins de pourueoir aux parroisses, et pensent que a joyr de leurs dismes, dont ce pauure peuple est en danger de deuenir bientost paian parce que maintenant en plusieurs villaiges Il n’y a poinct de Curez, et en grande partie de la France plusieurs s’approprient les cures.’ The heads of monastic houses were even worse: ‘Daultant que souuent Il aduient que les Abbayes et Prieurez que vous auez donnez a quelques Gentilzhommes et aultres qui vous ont faict seruice, sont par eulx baillez en garde et mis au nom de quelques ungs, qui ne sont ny de qualite ny de merite pour le tenir, et du tout gens Incongneuz, ou bien mesmes sont tenuz par Economat, sans quil y en ayt aucune prouision en Court de Rome, [et] par ce moien vous sont faict beaucoup de desguisemens & tromperies, car lesdites benefices peuuent venir a vacquer bien souuent, sans que vous en soyez aduerty, et par ainsy [vous] estes frustre du moien den disposer.’ He proposed a radical change in the way in which ecclesiastical appointments were made. Without going so far as to accept capitular or monastic elections, he wanted local nominations of potential senior clerics whose careers would be investigated and their names held on a list which would be consulted as and when vacancies appeared.³¹ Bishops would be required annually to present to the secretaries of state a list of all the abbeys and priories in their dioceses that were in the king’s presentment. The lists would include the names of their current holders, the details of their provision, and an estimate of the material state of the monastic house in question. On this basis, the king would know who held what. The ultimate aim was a clergy that would be ‘nommé par mérites, et non par faueur’. He did not underestimate the wider impact of a reformed senior ³⁰ Serbat, Les Assemblées, 379–82.

³¹ BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 167.

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clergy on society at large—indeed throughout the document, reform was presented as having a mutually reinforcing and distributive effect. They would be trusted to settle quarrels, invited to mediate in debates, able to have a greater charitable impact in the kingdom, and counter the heresy which their current state merely encouraged. In judicial affairs, the memorandum echoed de Retz’s perception that the ‘infinis accidens & abbuz’ were ‘de longue main accumulez en tel desreiglement que les formalitez & longueurs ordinaires l’obscurcissent et estaignent’.³² It would require a similarly lengthy period of progressive change to effect a ‘souuerain remede’.³³ As with the church, the central issue in justice was to encourage a sense of discipline through the reform of ‘distributive justice’, i.e. the distribution of honours and favour: Et pour laccroissement de lestat, daultant que ceste distribution des graces & biens faicts faicte a propos, non seulement contient en office les personnes mais aussy les rend desireulx, et les contrainct de suyure le chemyn de bien loyaulment, fidellement et diligemment seruir pour pouuoir meriter, et par ce seruice accroistre lestat, et pour parvenir a cela Il est tres certain que celluy qui plusieurs foys a este delibere par ce Roy de ne haster poinct de donner et faire les distributions de ses graces, non aux premiers courans demandeurs qui cause l’Importunite extreme qui trauaille tant et le Roy et les principaulx qui le seruent . . .

The king should distribute his favour in a premeditated fashion, keeping account of who receives what in registers of gifts, ensuring that what is granted is what is free to be given and not otherwise mortgaged or engaged. The beneficiaries should be announced publicly once a month. The king should bear in mind that he only has a maximum of about one million livres a year at his disposal for the distribution of favour, and be sparing in its use. Provincial officers, especially royal lieutenants and governors, should keep the four secretaries of state informed of offices that become vacant, and be able to nominate individuals worthy of reward.³⁴ At the same time, Anjou had recommendations to make on that part of the judicial system that concerned the punishment of crimes. The imposition of a new discipline meant a much greater emphasis upon criminal justice rather than on civil suits (‘la Ciuille’). For Retz, a judiciary in which venality of office had become an established fact of life was one that placed the profits from hearing civil suits over the needs of executing criminal ³² BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 168; cf. fo. 153.

³³ Ibid.; cf. fo. 153v .

³⁴ Ibid.; cf. fo. 154.

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justice. The duke of Nevers focused on the deficiencies in prosecuting criminals:³⁵ Aujourdhuy ung chacun pense quil soyt permis de mal faire & nestre point puny Car dun coste Ilz se gardent destre prisonniers ou y estant deschapper, et sil cognoist sa faulte estre par trop grande, Il vous contrainct par Importunite de luy accorder sa grace dont sensuyt que aujourd’huy nest faict Iustice sinon de ceulx qui nont de quoy ou de corrompre les Juges. . . . Croyez Monsieur que si vous ne remettez la Justice en sa premiere splendeur & Integrite [et] quelle ne soyt auctorises de votre auctorite, vous ne pouvez vous dire Roy qu’a demy.

His memorandum went on to suggest various steps, none of them novel but, in the overall context of this document, new in their cogency. These included the codification of the criminal law, restricting appeals, tightening up of arbitrary remissions of sentences, and eliminating close relatives as magistrates in the same court (which delayed lawsuits through legal challenges—récusations —against particular judges with proven kinship).³⁶ Retz proposed a radical change in the bringing of criminals to justice. He wanted to abolish the prévôts des maréchaux, the much criticized officers responsible for the pursuit of serious felons, and replace them with a bailli or sénéchal in each locality, appointed for a term of years. These baillis would be given powers to judge felonies without appeal, assisted by ten magistrates ‘de robbe longue, personnaiges dhonneur, des premiers de la prouince, ou pour mieulx faire des courtz de parlement’.³⁷ They would each have a company of cavalry (gendarmes) at their disposal with which to enforce their authority. The duke of Nevers readily accepted the need for change but proposed instead a ‘forme de grands jours’ or (in English terminology) permanent assize court.³⁸ Anjou himself eventually proposed a watered-down version of the latter, i.e. an assize of grands jours in each of the Parlements of the kingdom with two in the Parlement of Paris. He anticipated that such an innovation could be achieved without additional expenditure, since there were so many magistrates in the Parlements they could be redeployed without extra cost.³⁹ He added significant clauses, however, on the way in which the profits of justice (especially confiscations) were currently abused by being offered to individuals in advance of the decision of the court and to the detriment of justice—profits which, if handled intelligently, could become part of the broader strategy of distributing royal favour.⁴⁰ He was also personally concerned at the injustice ³⁵ Ibid., fo. 158 bis. ³⁸ Ibid., fo. 158v .

³⁶ Ibid., fo. 154v ; cf. fo. 169 andv . ³⁷ Ibid., fos. 154v –155. ³⁹ Ibid., fos. 168v –169. ⁴⁰ Ibid., fo. 169v .

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endured by those condemned to the galleys at Marseille.⁴¹ Running through the memorandum was the underlying theme that justice and peace were intertwined and that the reform of the former would necessarily encourage the latter. ‘Justicia et pax osculatae sunt’ (‘Justice and Peace are embraced’) was the text from Psalm 85 that had already found its way into the repertoire of court painters as well as feeding the protestant critique of the French monarchy. The next section, ‘Des honneurs et Recompences’, seems to have come from Anjou himself. It took an instrumental view of loyalty: ‘l’Intention de celluy qui vous sert nest fondee que sur deux occasions, les ungs ont le premier but a acquerir des honneurs, les aultres ne tendent que au proffict et la pluspart veullent et lun et laultre.’⁴² The question was how to engineer loyalties such that ‘tous voz subiectz vous ayment et quilz vous seruent d’affection’. Anjou’s proposal attempted to learn the lessons of antiquity, where affective loyalties were stimulated by the appropriate public recognition of virtue and service. The ancients ‘ont eu en tres grande recommandation de recompencer dhonneur ceulx qui faisoient quelque grande seruice a leur patrie’. This was why ‘les Romains ont este extremement bien seruiz’. Why not, he proposed, a commemorative tablet in bronze in the cathedral at Notre-Dame in Paris on which the names of all those ‘personnaiges de qualité’ who had died in the service of the crown could be ceremonially inscribed?⁴³ Or perhaps a commemoration for the souls of the departed in battle during the civil wars would give courage to the nobility to ‘bien faire son debvoir et vous seruir daffection puys quils se verront le soing et memoire que aurez de leur seruice, et ainsy ne vous sera malaise dexecuter aucune grande entreprinse’. There were precedents for such honours. François I, he noted, offered to reward those among his seven legions of foot-soldiers (légionnaires) who served him well in battle with the gift of a golden ring, distributed through their colonels.⁴⁴ If, as happened now, rewards were distributed to young men who had achieved nothing, it had the reverse impact. It was too often ⁴¹ ‘Jay cogneu estant a Marseilles auec vous [presumably during Charles IX’s tour of the kingdom in 1565–6] et depuys encores estant a la Rochelle [where royal galleys eventually played a part in the siege], quil se faict une grand Injustice aux pauures forsatz condemnez aux Gallaires, Lesquelz encores quil ne soient condamnez que pour trois ans, ou quelque peu de temps dauantaige, Neanmoins se trouuent encores attachez vingtcinz ans apres.’ The king had issued an ineffectual edict in 1571. ⁴² BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 170; cf. Le Roux, La Favour du roi, 122–3. ⁴³ Achille de Harlay, in his speech opening the sessions of the Parlement of Paris in April 1584, refers to the reading of the ordinances of the Parlement as the equivalent of the ancient laws ‘gravées dedans l’airain [i.e. bronze] enchassées et exposées en place publique ou chacun a toutes heures les pouuoit inculquer en sa memoire’ [BN MS Fr 18418 fo. 13]. ⁴⁴ Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 350–2.

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the case that individuals asked for, and were given, several offices at once in different parts of the country. Not only was the king ill served as a result, and the opportunity to reward others constricted, but the affective loyalty of all royal servants had been debased. A devaluation in the ‘affective currency’ had occurred. The experiences of La Rochelle were never far from the surface in the memorandum. When it came to proposing changes in royal finance, Anjou was blunt. Unless the royal finances were properly reformed, the king would never succeed in ‘grandes entreprinses’, either in peace or war. It was ‘le vray nerf et de la guerre et du bon et heureux succes des affaires du prince’.⁴⁵ He admitted that the financial matters of the kingdom were issues for specialists; but he had his own views. He knew that the monarchy had been saddled with huge debts by their father. Catherine de Médicis had put in place various measures to redress the situation after the first civil war, but these had been completely compromised by the protestant Surprise of Meaux (1567) and the renewed civil wars. Like any noble entering into an encumbered estate he must put in place a ‘redressement’ using a range of measures that he itemized at length. A better management of debt, domain income, and revenue collection formed part of the solution. So too did control of expenditures, the balancing of the budget, and keeping the overall fiscal burden within the productive resources of the kingdom.⁴⁶ The king’s financial experts had the expertise to carry this out, but not the incentive. The way in which they were rewarded encouraged corruption and peculation.⁴⁷ Accounting techniques were capable of controlling corruption. If they did not work it was because they were inhibited from doing so. In other parts of Europe, the treasurer was one of the principal officers of the kingdom, and this was, perhaps, no bad idea. Given, however, that this was not the case in France, the key point was to ‘choisir de gens de bien et riches’ as intendants of finance, and ‘les bien recompencer quant Ilz s’acquictent fidellement de leurs charges, et les bien chastier silz font le contraire’.⁴⁸ It would be worth giving the intendants of finance different areas or ‘departments’ of the kingdom and make them responsible for the revenues raised in each region. Some officials in the royal fiscal machine—he singled out the receveurs généraux —should be appointed on commission so that they could be removed or transferred if they were suspected of wrongdoing. Once more, the theme was that of the ⁴⁵ BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 170v . ⁴⁷ Ibid., fo. 173. ⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid., fo. 172.

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progressive nurturing of the virtues of fidelity, honesty, and diligence. Little by little, the Augean stables of royal service were to be sanitized. Monetary inflation had begun to have a serious impact in France and there was already a debate among its notables as to its underlying causes and the possible solutions one might adopt. Anjou’s memorandum devoted a brief section to the monetary problem, making clear that he understood the basic elements of the debate, even if he had no solutions to offer. Monetary inflation affected everyone, but particularly ‘vostre pauure peuple’. The problem was that the market rate for coin, especially foreign coin, was higher than official rates; but those who paid royal taxes were obliged to pay in coin at official rates ‘de quoy Ilz recoiuent grand dommaige’. He had seen various ordinances on the subject over recent years ‘mais elles nont jamais dure six moys’. It was for the king’s monetary advisers to provide the detailed solutions but they would not work until they were properly enforced by roving royal commissioners.⁴⁹ For good measure, he reminded the king that the fundamental process by which ordinary people could present grievances to the king and receive redress had fallen into desuetude. The maîtres des requêtes no longer went into the provinces to receive complaints and report them to the council. The discipline of receiving petitions and responding to them was another element in Anjou’s proposed reform. The longest section of the memorandum came last. It concerned, predictably enough, military affairs and reflected his recent experiences. The cavalry, traditionally ‘la principalle force de ce Royaulme’, was debased. There were too many companies. They were led by inexperienced captains of mediocre quality who siphoned off the pay of their soldiers, expecting the latter to live off the land. The number of companies had grown during the civil wars, only to be retrenched in peacetime. This expansion and contraction weakened morale. The king should imitate Charles V’s retrenchment of his cavalry in 1373. Initially it would be unpopular. But anything was better than his recent experience of company captains who refused to march and cavalry who declined to serve under their captain because they had so little respect for him. It was not a matter of making the cavalry the preserve of the nobility, although he did propose limiting access to those of French origin. But a smaller number of companies, properly maintained and in experienced hands, conforming to military ordinances that required military exercises on a regular basis, would provide the necessary educative ⁴⁹ BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 173v .

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environment in virtue, loyalty, and service for the next generation of those serving in the army. The infantry had a glorious reputation, which was why its present state was so deplorable.⁵⁰ Their decline was because they were poorly paid, maintained, and equipped. The military ordinances had not been enforced and he had proposals to make them more effective. He suggested, for example, that each soldier should carry proof of his identity, or that soldiers receive their pay in money directly from their paymasters (rather than through their captains). He approved of the Swiss arrangement, whereby soldiers could complain of ill treatment by their captains directly to their colonels or regimental commanders.⁵¹ He could see some merit in reviving François I’s legions, with their regional recruitment and loyalties. After all, there was hardly a principality in Italy that did not have its legions, each of which trained regularly and was ready for action. There was nothing wrong in such forces, so long as they had ‘de si bons capitaines’ that there was no chance of their becoming the backbone of some revolt. With the feudal levy (ban et arrière-ban) he wanted a smaller contingent of better-equipped and better-led forces and offered various suggestions as to how this might be achieved. The royal artillery had been one of the Achilles heels of the siege of La Rochelle. He supported the gradual consolidation of well-stocked arsenals and a return to Henri II’s edict of 1552, which had established a royal force of military suppliers, equipped with a team of 4,000 horses, 1,000 drivers, and 600 carts to ensure that military supplies could be delivered where necessary. When it came to the realm’s fortifications, he was aware that it was a never-ending process of strengthening and repair. The problem was that military engineers regularly changed so that, what one constructed, his successor wanted to modify. It would be better to concentrate on the reconstruction of only one or two sites each year, limiting oneself to a small number of engineers and requiring the latter to make good ‘portraits’ of their work so that it could be documented.⁵² The navy, too, had proved weak. The duke had been impressed with the commercial ships he had seen on the west coast, a fleet that could be impressed for royal use in case of war.⁵³ There was a problem with pirates in north-west Atlantic waters—a training ground for individual profit and private gain. In the Mediterranean there was a case for matching the Venetian arsenal, and maintaining a galley fleet of some thirty to forty ⁵⁰ Ibid., fo. 177. ⁵² Ibid., fo. 181.

⁵¹ Ibid., fo. 181v . ⁵³ Ibid., fo. 180.

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ships. In the final rhetorical flourish to his memorandum the duke pictured ‘ce beau Royaulme florissant comme Il estoit du temps de Charlemagne’, a France worthy of the name. How was such a broadside received by the king? Was it with a polite nod in the direction of his brother, followed by rapid consignment to the archives? Not quite. So far as we can determine, it was publicly read out to the council in the presence of various members over successive days from 6 August through to 14 August.⁵⁴ The council can have done little else during that period. Then, individual council members were given an article of the memorandum to take away and produce a more detailed report.⁵⁵ One such report, that of the surintendant des finances, Pomponne de Bellièvre, still survives among his papers.⁵⁶ He envisaged reform rather like a painter preparing his canvas. He must lay down the foundation pigment of peace, carefully removing the ‘deffiance qui est entrée es cœurs de voz subiectz qui ont suiuy ou demeurent en la nouuelle opinion que nonobstant toutes promesses a eulx faictes on machine neaulmoins contre leurs vies, biens et honneur’. It was not a matter of new laws, but of enforcing those that exist effectively. Then reformation could begin. It would be (Bellièvre changed his metaphor at this point) like a physician applying gentle remedies to a patient who was recovering from a serious illness. These remedies would eventually have to include a change in the educational system (‘la bonne institution de la Jeunesse’).⁵⁷ He doubted whether great legislative changes were helpful, his experience telling him that such innovation risked doing more damage than good. His main concern was with the lesser officers since any reformation must begin and end with them. He singled out the lieutenants généraux des bailliages, the présidiaux, the prévôts des maréchaux, and (in the financial administration) the élus as manifestly susceptible to ‘l’injustice, l’ignorance et l’incapacité’.⁵⁸ It would take time to ‘mectre de gens de bien en la place des mauvais’. He strongly supported the proposal to dispatch notables around the kingdom to investigate ‘diligemment de la vie, mœurs, suffizance et deportemens de voz officiers’.⁵⁹ Upon their reports the king could establish a register of those whose virtue was assured and who were worthy of further reward. Those officers found incapable or unworthy should be suspended for a year and given the opportunity to defend their conduct, their place being ⁵⁴ BN MS Fr 3950 fo. 157. ⁵⁵ Ibid. ⁵⁶ BN MS Fr 15890 fos. 388–90 [an attached endorsement in a contemporary hand reads: ‘Au Roy touchant l’ordre a tenir pour le r[oyaulme?] après la Paix a La Rochelle, 1573’]. ⁵⁸ Ibid., fo. 389. ⁵⁹ Ibid. ⁵⁷ Ibid., fo. 188v .

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taken by more diligent substitutes. Bellièvre supported a gentle, progressive reformation but, in this one area, he was prepared to be ‘rigorous’ since the example of a small number of suspensions would act as ‘le frain de plusieurs qui se pourroient precipiter en semblables faultes’. In general the notables were convinced that the health of the commonwealth depended essentially on the virtue of its lesser officers. How and when the ‘physic’ necessary to achieve such health was to be administered remained, as we shall see, a matter of debate. It is possible that the Assembly of Notables held at Compiègne in the autumn of 1573 was one of the consequences of Anjou’s memorandum. Although memoranda were probably commissioned from various localities, we know almost nothing of its proceedings.⁶⁰ In reality, such efforts were submerged by the negotiations for Anjou’s departure, by the growing evidence of the king’s ill health, and above all by the discovery of a major conspiracy in February 1574. The reformation of the kingdom would always take second place after the more immediate concerns of security and survival, and those would predominate through to the peace of Monsieur in May 1576.⁶¹ It would be easy, but misguided, to regard the duke of Anjou’s memorandum as a ‘blueprint’ for his reign when he returned from his hundred-day reign in Poland to the throne of France after his brother’s death at Pentecost, 30 May 1574. Although he would return to the document on occasions, reform was a penchant, never a programme. We can use it as a lens, through which we can view the ‘grande chimère de la réforme des mœurs et de la foi’ (as Pierre Champion described it) which is the subject of the remainder of this book.⁶² We shall begin in 1576. Defeat, this time on a much larger scale, confronted the French monarchy. During the fifth civil war that began after Henri III arrived in Lyon on 6 September 1574, a sequence of damaging defections from the king created a powerful confederacy ranged against it. In May 1574, Henri, prince of Condé, fled the court and raised an army of mercenaries to come to the aid of his protestant coreligionists.⁶³ That same ⁶⁰ Douais, ‘L’état du diocèse de Saint-Papoul et sénéchaussée du Lauragais en 1573’ and ‘Mémoires ou rapports inédits sur l’état du clergé, de la noblesse de la justice et du peuple’. For the chevauchée of the viscount de Mejusseaume, governor of Rennes, in autumn 1573 around upper Brittany, see BN MS Fr 8726 fo. 244. ⁶¹ The Assembly of Notables of July 1575 was dominated by the agenda of the war effort—Major, ‘The Assembly of Paris’; for a cahier from the nobility of Brittany to that assembly, see BN MS Fr 22310 fos. 285–287v . ⁶² Champion, ‘Henri III et les écrivains de son temps’, 65–6. ⁶³ BN MS FR 3969 fo. 43 [Henri de Bourbon to Henri III, n.d., copy].

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month, two of the senior marshals of France, Artus de Cossé and François de Montmorency, were imprisoned in the Bastille while the new king’s younger brother, François, duke of Alençon (‘Monsieur’), was held under house arrest for alleged complicity in the conspiracy against the king. In September, after some months of hesitation and inconsequential negotiations, Montmorency’s younger brother, Henri de Montmorency-Damville, the governor of Languedoc, also defected, entering into a military alliance with the Huguenots. Various other significant figures in the provincial government of the kingdom also found their loyalty to the crown compromised. The defections were completed when the king’s younger brother, François, duke of Alençon, escaped the court in September 1575 and fled to Dreux, to be followed by the second heir to the throne, the young King Henri de Navarre, on 3 February 1576.⁶⁴ Yet another siege, this time at Livron in Dauphiné (17 December to 24 January 1575), turned into a disaster. The Valois monarchy had never looked more in the balance since the Hundred Years War.⁶⁵ Catherine de Médicis, the queen mother, appreciated the danger. She advised the king to release Montmorency and Cossé from prison without preconditions, and woo them back to court. There was no time to stand on ceremony: ‘et n’é pas temps de dire; je ne puis contreindre ni disimuler; yl le fault à cet coup s’eyder de tout’.⁶⁶ As she set about the difficult task of negotiating a truce with Alençon, the queen mother reputedly sent the king a copy of Philippe de Commynes’s chronicle to read. The parallels with the War of the Public Weal under Louis XI were, so it seemed to her, uncannily similar.⁶⁷ Alençon was bought off with a truce, completed at Étigny, near Champigny, on 22 November 1575, by which the king agreed to feed and forage the confederate army for seven months while he sought a more permanent peace with the other confederates. It purchased time, albeit at an extortionate ⁶⁴ For perceptions in royal circles of the anti-monarchical elements congregating around Alençon at this moment, see BN MS Fr 3969 fos. 39 f. [‘Sur le partement de Monsieur’, n.d. (?September 1575)]. ⁶⁵ See the contemporary verses, sent on to London by the English ambassador in March 1575 [CalSPFor (1575), 40–1]. For Condé’s capitulation with Johann Casimir, see PRO SP 70/137 fos. 328–32 [copy]. ⁶⁶ LCM, v. 157. ⁶⁷ CalSPFor (1575), 165–6—though Dr Dale, the English agent who reports the fact, noted essential differences: ‘First there is the case of religion [ . . . .] neither is there a Louis the Eleventh alive that was his craftsmaster [ . . . ].’ The surviving copy of Philippe de Commynes’s Memoirs, bound in Henri III’s coat of arms, is the 1580 edition—Quentin-Bauchart, La Bibliothèque de Fontainebleau, 170.

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price.⁶⁸ Alençon was promised five towns as security for the truce, while Condé was given Mézières. Freedom of worship was given the protestants in towns already in their hands and in two others in each government. The German mercenaries were promised 500,000 livres providing that they remained east of the Rhine. Generous though the terms were, Damville was not alone in feeling that Alençon had misconstrued the situation. Far from securing a good ‘confederate’ peace, the whole enterprise had been jeopardized. He should have headed south for Montauban, where he would have found the Midi ‘ung bon quanton [i.e. ‘canton’]’ for launching a coordinated offensive.⁶⁹ As things turned out, the truce did not hold. The governors of Angoulême and Bourges refused to hand over their citadels to the duke of Alençon and, in December, the duke accused the chancellor, René de Birague, of trying to poison him. Catherine de Médicis hoped that the truce would help to dissuade Condé and his German military allies from launching their invasion. But, having mustered their expeditionary force of over 25,000 men and with the failure of royal efforts to negotiate a retreat, they crossed the Rhine in December and the Meuse on 9 January 1576. By the end of January, they were near Dijon; a week later they were ready to cross the Loire. In February, they were close to Alençon’s army and the king’s negotiators concluded a forty-day truce, desperately trying to contain the deteriorating situation. The following month, the truce with Alençon collapsed. The fear that the combined confederate forces would converge upon Paris drew closer to reality. That anxiety had been present since Alençon’s departure from court. The city fathers became preoccupied with fortifications and defensive planning as never before in their lifetimes. Trenches were repaired, new platforms erected in the fields around the city, and Montmartre turned into a citadel.⁷⁰ Henri III addressed a general assembly of the prévôt des marchands (Jean Le Charron, a king’s privy councillor and président in the Cour des Aides), échevins, conseillers, quarteniers, and ‘notables bourgeois’ of each quarter on 24 September and urged them to defend the capital. A fortnight later, the king took part in a general procession with them to Notre-Dame to solicit

⁶⁸ See Pierre Brulart: ‘Les choses sont avantageuses pour eulx [the confederates] [ . . . ] Dieu nous fait la grâce d’estre sages à la fin par le sentiment de nos maux [ . . . ]’—BN MS Fr 15560 fo. 43 [Brulart to Jean de Bellièvre, sieur de Hautefort, n.d.]. ⁶⁹ BN MS Fr 3324 fos. 54–5 [headed ‘Avis’], an important anonymous, undated memorandum from Damville to Alençon, probably composed in late November 1575. ⁷⁰ Bonnardot (ed.), Registres . . . de Paris, 282–3; 284; 288 etc. Cf. CalSPFor (1575), 212–13.

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God’s protection for it.⁷¹ With news of the reiters’ passage of the Rhine freshly arrived, the royal council met in Paris on 4 December to hear the duke of Nevers’s strategic assessment. Casimir and Condé’s army could cross the frontier as early as 15 December and ‘nous venir donner ung tres maulvais bon Jour de l’an’.⁷² Their purpose might well be to surround Paris and starve it into submission. It might not take more than two winter months. True, following the protestant ‘Surprise of Meaux’ of September 1567, royal forces had forestalled their attempt to take the capital. But things were very different now. The confederates had a larger army and the collapse of royal morale could be sudden, once the king was besieged in his capital.⁷³ The king must levy his own Swiss or Germans. The king had already demanded an exceptional levy of 6,000 livres from the walled towns around Paris in August.⁷⁴ Now, on 10 December Henri III dispatched an ordinance to the city fathers to ask them to dig deep into their pockets to enable him to levy 3,000 Swiss infantry for four months at an overall cost of 2,000 livres.⁷⁵ Three days later, a general assembly of the city established a commission to produce a ‘remonstrance’ on their behalf.⁷⁶ It was composed of the great and the good, headed by a privy councillor and président of the Parlement (Pierre Hennequin), and included senior magistrates, an archdeacon, two canons, as well as representatives from the bourgeois. The text was drafted by the city’s advocate, Louis de Sainctyon (var.: Saint-Yon), a stickler for the privileges of the city of Paris. They agreed the draft on 15 December and the city’s provost, aldermen, and the various members of the commission went before the king in council on 19 December.⁷⁷ What they produced was a clarion call for reformation, drafted by the notables of Paris but speaking for a much wider constituency.⁷⁸ It deplored the ‘longueur et continuation des guerres intestines et civilles’ and the resulting impoverishment. Paris alone had contributed 36 million livres to the war effort; the clergy of the realm had provided 60 million livres. Yet ‘les affaires de vostredict Royaume n’ont esté rien plus advancées ny aulcun meilleur ordre estably’ than they were in 1560. The fundamental problems were no secret. They arose from God’s wrath and that, in turn, was provoked by ⁷¹ Bonnardot (ed.), Registres . . . de Paris, 295–6; 300. ⁷² BN MS Fr 3961 fos. 26–8 [endorsed: ‘Discours leu au Roy le 4 decembre 1575 sur les disaings que les ennemis ont contre le Roy et speciallement contre la ville de Paris, messieurs le chancellier et de Cheverny presents’], cited fo. 26. ⁷³ Ibid., fos. 26v –27. ⁷⁴ F46849–9. ⁷⁵ Bonnardot (ed.), Registres . . . de Paris, 309. ⁷⁶ Ibid. 311–12. ⁷⁷ Ibid. 319–20. ⁷⁸ Ibid. 313–18.

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the corruption of the realm. Simony was openly permitted. Benefices were openly held by married gentlemen and even gentlewomen. The people were left without religious instruction. It was hardly surprising that ‘vostre pauure Peuple se desbauche et desvye de l’ancienne et vraie Religion’. Justice could only be bought. The Roman Emperor Hadrian had declared on his death bed that he died of a surfeit of physicians; just so France was suffocating from an excess of incompetent and corrupt magistrates. As for the soldiers, the gendarmerie is ‘remplie de personnes de vil estat non duittes ny exercitées aux armes’. They act with impunity, the stories of common brutality so common that it was obviously widespread. Even the royal guards regularly stole from the common people, monasteries, and hospitals. In royal finances, the remonstrance benefited from the inside knowledge of magistrates from the Chambre des Comptes. Beyond alluding to the ‘dons immenses mal et inegallement distribuez et en temps si calamiteux’, they had some impressive figures from recent years to substantiate their case.⁷⁹ In many instances the Chambre had refused to register gifts but they had been forced to do so by lettres de jussion. In the government of the city, its commercial life was disrupted by tolls, its capital markets dislocated by the failure to pay interest on the rentes, or bonds issued in the name of the hôtel de ville of the city to satisfy royal debts. There was a sense of public decay. What was needed was a reformation of the realm in accordance with the principles in the ‘testament’ of St Louis, a copy of which they had found among the charters in the archives of the Chambre des Comptes.⁸⁰ As close to the equivalent of Abraham’s bosom as it was possible to get in terms of French monarchical history and tradition, the document expressed simple, almost proverbial, truths that cut close to the quick: ‘Ne prend poinct tailles ny aides de tes ⁷⁹ They were careful to specify that the amounts were for gifts (dons) and not pensions, since some of those on the commission would have been in receipt of the latter. The amounts appear to be of the right order of magnitude: 1572: 2,700,000 livres 1573: 2,080,000 ,, 1574: 547,800 ,, 1575: 955,000 ,, [for the first six months of the year] ⁸⁰ In reality, it had nothing to do with Louis IX’s will. It reflects the ‘Enseignemens que li Rois Loys fist a son fils’ (better known as the ‘établissements de Saint Louis’), a document now known to be a compilation of various thirteenth-century texts. For the iconic significance of this document in later medieval France, see Raymond Cazelles, ‘Une exigence de l’opinion depuis saint Louis: la réformation du royaume’, 91–9. The document presented in the city registers and subsequently printed, however, bears no relationship to any extant version of the établissements of Louis IX. It is curious, therefore, that Christofle de Thou, the erudite président of the Parlement, expressed no doubts as to its validity.

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subjectz, si urgente necessité et evidente utilité ne le te faict faire, et pour juste cause, non pas voluntairement; car si tu faictz aultrement, tu ne seras pas reputé pour Roy, mais tu seras reputé pour Tiran.’ When Claude Pinart, the king’s secretary, finished reading out the text the king rose to reply. Henri III knew that the remonstrances would soon be widely distributed.⁸¹ He found them ‘bien agreables; et que quant Dieu luy donnera le moien de pourveoir à tout ce qui est contenu en icelles, il montrera qu’il a la voluntté de le faire et soy monstrer tousjours bon Roy envers ses subjectz pour les faire vivre en paix et repos, extorquer et oster les vices, maulx, abbus et corruptions qui sont en tous les estatz de son Royaume’. Yet he could give them no immediate satisfaction. With the king’s signature on a peace in May 1576 that agreed to summon the estates general within six months, Henri III had the first opportunity to make good his promise. ⁸¹ Contemporary manuscript copies exist variously; e.g. CalSPFor (1575), 216–17; BN MS Fr 3168 fos. 1 f.; BN MS Dupuy 500 fos. 92 f. Cf. Remonstrances, faites au Roy . . . Decembre, 1575 (1576); Remonstrances treshumbles de la ville de Paris (1576).

2 Comprehending Passions Public speaking dominated French politics in the sixteenth century. The speeches delivered before the king, during the meetings of representative institutions, or in courts of law were carefully prepared and rehearsed. Although oratorical techniques were personalized, rhetoric was an art form that was learnt and practised. It therefore rested on a shared understanding of the power of the word as a polemical and redemptive instrument, alternately unleashing and controlling passions. The opening speeches to the legal sessions of the Parlement of Paris on the feast of St Martin, 22 November, furnish an excellent way of exploring this shared understanding. In 1583, the recently promoted premier président of the Parlement, Achille I de Harlay, addressed the court. Achille de Harlay spent all his adult life in the Parlement (‘Senate’ as he called it). He had taken his vows as a conseiller in March 1553 at an indecently early age and would remain there almost until his death in 1616.¹ With an imposing physical presence and an impressive speaking voice, it was not for nothing that Jacques de La Vallée christened him in 1624 ‘the Christian Cato’.² His family connections were impeccable. One cousin (Philippe de Harlay de Césy) became a conseiller d’état and ambassador in Constantinople; another (Nicolas de Harlay de Sancy) was a maître des requêtes and ambassador to the Swiss cantons. He himself married Catherine de Thou in 1568, the daughter of the premier président Christofle de Thou. Thanks to his marriage, he acquired the resignation (i.e. rights of succession to the office) of the first presidency, legitimately his when Christophe died in 1582.³ Harlay marked his accession by pronouncing a mercuriale in person, his predecessors having seemingly declined to do so ever since the shocking ‘outing’ of Anne Du Bourg as ¹ For his reception in Parlement on 10 March 1557 [1558 NS], see BN MS Fr 4390 fo. 85 [copy]. He was just 22 years old. ² NBG, 23, 398–402. Cf. Pilastre, Achille III de Harlay, 1–8. ³ Popoff, Prosopograhie, 192.

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a protestant at the celebrated mercuriale in the king’s presence back in 1559.⁴ Eloquence, the theme of his speech, was chosen for him by the occasion. ‘Il n’y a rien de plus beau et rare en une Republique que de voir un homme parlant en public gaigner le cœur du peuple difficile a contenter, acquerir la bienveillance des escoutans et les esmouuoir selon que les occasions se presentent,’ he began.⁵ But, he continued, the orator’s task was not easy. It required ‘une inuention prompte, un jugement mœur et asseuré, une action bien composée, une memoire de Iurisconsulte, en dernier et principal lieu une eloquution c’est a dire une belle election de parolles’—in short, ‘l’encyclopédie des vertus’. Yet the art of rhetoric was a dangerous gift. It contained ‘les artifices & deuisement pour exciter les passions de ceux qui leur prestent l’oreille’. He did not need to spell out the rhetorical precepts of the Greeks and Romans—his audience had learnt them at school. But the ancients, for all their merit, had offered rhetoric without virtue, subtlety without substance. That was why they had chosen Mercury, the god of communication, but also of ‘tromperie’ and ‘lucre’, as the patron of eloquence. Not that he wanted to replace the eloquence of the ancients with ‘un nouvel art oratoire’, but rather to encourage a reform of rhetoric, a return to ‘celuy qui fut antiennement le plus suiuy et obserué entre nos antiens Gaulois’, a Gallic eloquence. The patron of Gallic rhetoric was Hercules, the god that Lucian had depicted ‘trainer au bout de la langue une quantité de peuple enchaisné par les oreilles’.⁶ True, he admitted, Lucian’s story might seem implausible, given that ‘en toute l’antienneté nous ne trouuerons point que jamais Hercule aye esté en reputation de bien dire’. But that unfortunate lapse could be explained, since there were many stories of Hercules pitting his strength against monsters. And what were these monsters if not the ‘monstres de l’âme’, the passions, that the true Orator must seek to conquer and lead in the ways of justice through his eloquence?⁷ The essence of Gallic eloquence was that it united eloquence with virtue, rhetoric with truth. That defined ⁴ Filhol, Le Premier Président, 20. Christofle de Thou took his responsibilities as premier président with the utmost seriousness. Étienne Pasquier observed of him: ‘Quant à ce qui appartient à l’enclos du Palais, la première chose qu’il eut en recommandation fut d’y apporter réformation tant au chef que membres’—cited ibid. 33. ⁵ BN MS Fr 18418 fos. 1–4. ⁶ Lucian’s text had just been edited and translated by Philibert Bertin, published in Paris in 1582. ⁷ Jung, Hercule dans la littérature française, esp. 73–93. The myth of Hercules belongs within the mythic representation and idealization of ideals of reformation and restoration. Vivanti, Lotta politica e pace religiosa, ch. 2.

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the office of an advocate; to plead just causes, to assist the poor to obtain justice, to advance nothing but the truth, never to slander the honour of the court, and not to seek for undue reward. These precepts constituted the basis of a well-ordered republic. Eloquence on its own, however, was not sufficient. The Athenian republic had prized public speaking more than that of Sparta; but the latter had outlived the former. The Roman republic had been overturned by the eloquence of ‘esprits jeunes folz et mal reglez’ in the Senate. Quintilian had said in his famous treatise on Eloquence: ‘vir bonus dicendi peritus’ (‘The good man [is] skilful in oratory’).⁸ Actually, as Achille de Harlay pointed out, Seneca told us that the phrase had been first coined by Cato.⁹ It neatly conjoined ‘conscience’ (‘vir bonus’) with ‘science’ (‘dicendi peritus’). The judges of the Paris Parlement would take more note of Cato the Censor than Cicero the Orator.¹⁰ They would seek, like the council of the Lacedemonians, to judge people on their merits rather than their words.¹¹ Achille de Harlay drew on the rhetorical traditions of the Parlement.¹² But the model of public behaviour that he extrapolated had a much wider valency than the immediate audience to which his speech was directed. It was part and parcel of the attitudes of the ‘perfect magistrate’ which influenced a whole generation of French notables.¹³ They were taught to tame their emotions and reflect it in their body language. They understood that their task was to govern the passions of others. They knew how important it was to do so by combining reason and emotion, seeking to express their arguments with form and economy, and not to allow passions to overwhelm them in debate. They learnt that it was fashionable to deplore an Italianate, courtly ⁸ The phrase was at the heart of a Renaissance debate about rhetoric as the scientia bene dicendi rather than the art of persuasion—Monfasani, ‘Episodes of anti-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance’, 119–38. Harlay’s point was echoed in Jean de Sponde’s epistolatory preface to another collection of Parlement harangues: Jacques Faye, Recveil des remonstrances (La Rochelle, 1592), 11. ⁹ He was referring to the work collectively known as the ‘Declamationes’ of Seneca the Elder (Marcus Annaeus Seneca). In common with almost all his contemporaries, Achille de Harlay did not distinguish between the works of Seneca the Elder and his son Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca). ¹⁰ As Achille de Harlay pointed out, Cato had not been the best orator of his day. Yet the Roman senate preferred to take his part in the aftermath of the Catiline conspiracy rather than Cicero’s. ¹¹ Achille de Harlay’s reference was to Plutarch, which provided him with moral exempla from the ancient world. For the influence of Plutarch’s ‘Moralia’ in the Amyot translation in the later sixteenth century, see Aulotte, Amyot et Plutarque, 253–73. ¹² Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 427–74. ¹³ Dewald, ‘The ‘‘Perfect Magistrate’’ ’; also Kaiser, ‘Les Cours souveraines’.

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tendency which sought to dissimulate what one was trying to say and disguise one’s real purpose behind a mask of decorous ambiguity. It was not becoming for a premier président like Achille de Harlay to publish his speeches, although they circulated in manuscript and contributed to his reputation.¹⁴ Two days after the beginning of each legal term (generally on a Wednesday), the avocats and procureurs of the Paris bar assembled to listen to the reading of the ‘ordinances’ of the Parlement, these being the precepts that governed its proceedings, and to swear to obey them. From the mid-1550s, it became habitual for this to be followed by a harangue from the king’s senior prosecuting counsel (the avocat du roi) on matters affecting the discipline and procedure in the court. Known as mercuriales, these speeches were similar in style and content to that undertaken by the premier président himself. They promulgated models of eloquence as the governor of passions and the tutor of public virtue. Guy Du Faur de Pibrac (var.: Pybrac), avocat du roi at the Parlement of Paris until he resigned the post to Barnabé Brisson in 1575, was particularly credited with breathing new life into the discourse of the mercuriale. That was partly because the two mercuriales that he presented following his appointment as avocat du roi (those for the opening of the post-Easter and St Martin terms of 1569) were the very first to be published. Judging by the number of reprints, the publication was a success, and often imitated.¹⁵ The reading public appreciated his vision of the morally ordered public life of antiquity. Those of Jacques Faye, sieur d’Espeisses, who succeeded Barnabé Brisson as avocat du roi in 1580, were published in La Rochelle in 1592 with a preface by Jean de Sponde. The latter wrote: ‘ie suis [ . . . ] attaché à la lecture assiduelle de ces belles harangues, ausquelles quand ie compare toute l’antiquité, il me semble voir ce vraye Achille dans les champs Elysiens [ . . . ]’.¹⁶ In his first speech to the Parlement opening the law term after Easter in 1581, Jacques Faye presented the mercuriale as a cleansing of the judicial temple from lawsuits which were like ‘des vlceres & fluxions corrompues qui descendent en ce palais de toutes parts, pour ¹⁴ Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 540. ¹⁵ They each published separately in 1569 and 1570; then in a compendium of 1573; Recveil des poincts principavx [ . . . ] (1573). This was then republished in 1579, 1580, in the compendium of those of Jacques Faye in 1592; and in a further collection in 1604. The mercuriales of Jacques Faye d’Espeisses, Jacques Mangot, and Jacques de la Guesle, his successors as avocats du roi, would also be published in the early seventeenth century. ¹⁶ Jacques Faye, Recveil des remonstrances (La Rochelle, 1592), dedicatory preface to Messieurs de Gillot and Saint-Fulcran, conseillers in the Parlement of Paris sitting at Tours. Sponde was also paying a compliment to Achille de Harlay, president of the royalist Parlement in Tours.

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y receuoir guarison, estans engendrez ou d’vne cholere precipitee, ou d’vne enuie obstinee, ou d’vne auarice iniuste, ou de quelque autre passion ou perturbation d’esprit’.¹⁷ The mercuriale was a ‘préservatif’ to ‘conseruer son ame pure & nette des souillures & corruptions, au milieu desquelles nous cheminons iournellement’.¹⁸

ELOQUENCE AND THE PASSIONS When Guillaume Du Vair came to write his treatise De l’éloquence françoise [ . . . ] it was in the shadow of the catholic League, exiled from the Parlement where he was a président. His began with an apology for the frailty of French eloquence, cultivated in the stony soil of a monarchy rather than the rich loam of a republic (where the need to cultivate the good opinion of the people sustained the arts of rhetoric). The old nobility held rhetoric in low esteem.¹⁹ They should understand that, far from being a polite but unnecessary adjunct to their position in the governing elite, eloquence was essential to their protection. If they neglected it, others (his allusion to the League was evident) would seek to use it in their stead, raising ‘les plus vives et violentes affections qui y puissent entrer, lesquelles y estant mises avec une maligne ou imprudente main, ruinent et difforment estrangement toute la societé civille’.²⁰ He concluded by explaining how eloquence provided an understanding of group psychology, of the ‘choses qui remuent noz affections et donnent mouvement à noz volontez’.²¹ Eloquence laid out a governing matrix for the passions, as powerful in their own way in civil society as the spread of a contagious disease in a city or the spread of fire. ‘Toute la force et l’excellence de l’eloquence consiste de vray au mouvement des passions’, he declared, echoing Cicero.²² Eloquence was stronger than an army, capable of stirring up emotions ‘comme la naphthe qui s’allume à la seule veüe du feu’, but also able to smother the flames which had thus been raised. When Bernard de La Roche Flavin, the Toulousain avocat, published his treatise on the Parlements of France in 1617, he presented a mirror of the ‘perfect magistrate’. For him the power of eloquence over the passions was the central drama of the theatre of justice, by which men could be restrained from evil enterprises ‘comme nos peres anciens figuroient ¹⁷ Ibid. 2. ¹⁸ Ibid. 3; cf. third estate cahier, estates general of Blois, ¶ 157. ¹⁹ Radouant, Guillaume Du Vair, 150. ²⁰ Ibid. 151. ²¹ Ibid. 155. ²² Ibid. 155–6; Cicero, De oratore, 1.12.

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Hercules Celtique en vieillard, qui trainoit après soy les peuples enchaisnez & pendus par les oreilles, avec chaisnes, qui sortoient de sa bouche [ . . . ]’.²³ The chains which held the passions in restraint remained a striking motif in the representation of the passions by seventeenth-century philosophers and metaphysicists.²⁴ The sixteenth-century ancestors of such diagrams were more often in the form of an ‘arbor moralis’ or moral tree, depicting the passions and counter-passions as the roots of a tree whose branches constituted the virtues and their contraries. Such diagrams complemented those of the ‘tree of justice’ illustrating the conception of the various branches of the French state. A fundamental element of political life was the extent to which individuals in public life subsumed their private personae to their public identities. It was characteristic of more traditional societies that patterns of behaviour—dress, precedence, deference, and decorum—should be predictable and reflect fundamental social values. Rhetoric was an integral part of those values. If individuals in the sixteenth century sought to project themselves in public environments, they were taught to do so within parameters that were laid down for them by the nature of their office or the public task upon which they were engaged. It was a facet of a society in which self-knowledge and self-control were becoming part of a larger preoccupation with the relations between ‘knowledge and control, whether of the self or others’.²⁵ The norms for how to conduct oneself in public life were of pre-eminent importance to the notability. Princes and potentates, magistrates and mayors, preachers and prelates, courtiers and councillors occupied public roles in which the functions that came with their office had patterns and codes of behaviour attached to them. All the treatises on rhetoric in the sixteenth century emphasized that public speaking was a prerequisite for holding an office.²⁶ So, although the French noblesse d’épée affected to despise both formal education and the men of the pen, believing that it was their function to fight and not to write, they could not deny that they shared a common voice, and especially in a culture where speaking generally took precedence over writing. Learning the arts of rhetoric had its technical aspects—invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and pronunciation being among the standard topics treated by educators. These resulted in turns of phrase, habits of ²³ La Roche Flavin, Treze livres, 375. ²⁴ James, Passion and Action, 12; Levi, French Moralists. ²⁵ James, Passion and Action, 2. ²⁶ Rhetoric was ‘constituees à l’usage & commodité des Citoyens: comme des coutumes des lois, & des preuileges de la Cité, en laquelle l’on fera oraison [ . . . ]’—Pierre de Courcelles, La Rhétorique (1557), fo. 2.

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conversation, ways of holding one’s body and projecting one’s voice, all of which could be taught.²⁷ Rhetoric, in other words, was as much a practical as a theoretical art and to be learned, like etiquette or a good seat in the saddle, by praxis. It called for the memorizing and manipulation of examples, drawn from human experience. These were collected as different rhetorical devices, with particular passages classified under topics to provide the means of making use of the example in another context. More generally, the collecting of exempla was a means of recovering the wisdom of antiquity, and one that could readily be conceived as the stimulus to an amended individual ethical praxis or a more practical social change and moral reformation.²⁸ All sixteenth-century treatises on rhetoric stressed the significance of imitatio. Du Vair, for example, claimed that the best way of learning the secrets of the art was by practical attuning of the ear in exercises of imitation.²⁹ Exemplarity had a recognized place in the study of rhetoric, even though the sharpest minds of the sixteenth century had already begun to question its value and significance.³⁰ There were, inevitably, disagreements about the significance of the various components of the rhetorical art.³¹ Pierre de La Ramée (Ramus), and his friend, pupil, and advocate Omer Talon had some controversial things to say about the way in which it was taught and practised.³² These were part of a wider attempt to reform the liberal arts curriculum that Ramus had proposed for the University of Paris on the eve of the civil wars.³³ This is a reminder that, for the sixteenth century, the word ‘reformation’ evoked changes in a university syllabus.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The study of the passions from a philosophical or theoretical perspective explored the rich veins of ancient philosophy and Christian wisdom.³⁴ The ²⁷ Ibid., fo. 2v . The work borrowed from other treatises on rhetoric and did not consider ‘exercitio’, leaving it to a projected second volume. See Gordon, ‘Pierre de Courcelles’. ²⁸ Lyons, Exemplum, 12–20. ²⁹ Radouant, Guillaume Du Vair, 158. ³⁰ Rigolot, ‘The Renaissance Crisis of Exemplarity’. ³¹ Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, ch. 5; Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence; and Histoire de la rhétorique. ³² Ong, Ramus; Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 475–7. ³³ Pierre de la Ramée, ‘Advertissements sur la réformation de l’Université de Paris’. In Archives curieuses, 115–63. Cf. Graves, Peter Ramus and Skalnik, ‘Ramus and Reform: The End of the Renaissance and the Origins of the Old Regime’. ³⁴ James, Passion and Action, part one; Schmitt and Skinner (eds.), Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, chs. 7 and 9.

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resulting strands of moral philosophy were complex. They engaged academics, poets and playwrights, artists and physicians, princes and their advisers. Political thought, especially when it was applied to questions of contemporary political practice, was a branch of moral philosophy in the sixteenth century—albeit a branch that bore the rich fruit of understanding about all that made up the quest for the ‘common good’, of central significance to the Renaissance as to early periods.³⁵ Classical moral philosophy was also underpinned by a humanist culture in which the Roman moralists—Seneca, Quintilian, Cicero, and (a Romanized Greek) Plutarch—provided the starting points for discussions about virtue in public life.³⁶ Partly because their works needed no translation, their terminologies seemed relatively unproblematic. Their vocabulary and conceptions of the passions had underpinned Roman ideas of rulership, with its notions of self-control, sobriety, and the moderation of the appetites and impulses.³⁷ Only the man who was capable of ruling himself, who understood his own fundamental character (éthos), was considered capable of ruling others well. Good rulership necessarily involved authority and discipline over the passions in both the public and private spheres. ‘Tranquillity’ (‘tranquillitas’/‘tranquillité’ of the soul) was how Cicero, reflecting and translating Stoic thought, presented the ideal human emotional state. It was achievable through the application of three emotional states that reflect various facets of the balance between reason and the passions. These were will (‘voluntas’/‘volonté’), the capacity for enjoyment (‘gaudium’/‘joie’), and the capacity for human wariness (‘cautio’/‘prudence’). Together they were known as the ‘constantiae’, which, towards the close of the sixteenth century, was a word translated into French by the singular ‘constance’ (‘constancy’). These were distinguished from the four dynamic and irrational emotional states, identified by Cicero (again with Stoic antecedents) as lust (‘libido’/‘volupté’), unbounded joy (‘laetitia’/‘joie immodérée’ or ‘extase’), fear (‘metus’/‘crainte’), and sorrow (‘aegritudo’/‘douleur’ or ‘extreme tristesse’). But there was a wider range of passions that the Roman moralists identified and discussed in the context of individual and public life—envy, hatred, avarice, etc. ‘Perturbatio’ (‘passion’) in Cicero or ‘affectus’ (‘affect’/‘affection’)—the word more utilized by Seneca—described the condition of mind in which the passions risked not being controlled by reason, a condition that they often describe as ‘intemperantia’ (‘intemperance’). ³⁵ Kempshall, The Common Good. ³⁶ Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 6–20. ³⁷ Kinneging, Aristocracy, Antiquity and History, esp. 148–61.

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In sixteenth-century France, however, it was impossible to ignore Aristotle and his greatest scholastic interpreter, Aquinas, and the more so since Aristotle had been dressed in a Roman toga by new humanist translations and commentaries.³⁸ Aristotle and Aquinas continued to provide persuasive topographies of the passions, in which their physical manifestations provided an apparently scientific basis for their understanding.³⁹ The ‘appetites’ are connected to bodily sensations that attract or repel animals as they perceive them as pleasurable or painful. These appetites are arranged in a hierarchical continuum which stretched from the extreme of material passivity to the opposite extreme of spiritual activity, and the ‘passions’ (‘passiones’) are derivations from the potential passivity and activity of these appetites.⁴⁰ Aquinas made significant modifications to Aristotle’s formulations that do not concern us here, but he followed Aristotle in distinguishing two broad categories of appetites. On the one hand there were the ‘irascible appetites’ (‘appetitus irascibilis’), following the terminology adopted by William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s work On the Soul.⁴¹ In human animals, these appetites can be, to some degree, controlled by our thought processes and may even mask the physical manifestations that relate to them. Moreover, these thought processes can themselves excite rational appetites—or wishes—that can move us to particular actions. Aquinas, again following Moerbeke’s translation, called these the ‘concupiscible appetites’ (‘appetitus concupiscibilis’), meaning that these appetites were attracted by or repelled from a sensibly understood good (‘delectabile’) or evil (‘dolorosum’). The pursuit of such sensibly understood appetites causes an initial inclination or aptitude in the appetite which is the passion of love (‘amor’) or hate (‘odium’). If the good or evil is not possessed, it can nevertheless produce a ‘desire’ (‘desiderium’; ‘concupiscentia’) or, alternatively a ‘distaste’ (‘fuga’; ‘abominatio’). The resulting states of appetite are variously joy (‘gaudium’; ‘delectatio’) or sorrow (‘dolor’; ‘tristitia’). The pursuit of irascible appetites causes an initial inclination or aptitude in the appetites which is either hope (‘spes’) or despair (‘desperatio’). These also have their future states since, if not yet realized or possessed, they produce fear (‘timor’) or boldness (‘audacia’). ³⁸ Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance. ³⁹ Most notably, in the teaching of moral philosophy in its universities. Unfortunately, there is no study of the surviving commentaries and course notes of teachers of the subject at French universities in the sixteenth century comparable to Lines, Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’ in the Italian Renaissance. ⁴⁰ James, Passion and Action, ch. 3. ⁴¹ Pasnau (ed.), Thomas Aquinas: A Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, esp. introd. and chs. 16–18.

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The resulting state of appetite is anger (‘ira’); but it can have no contrary state since there is no present appetite of an irascible good that could ever be truly realized, but only ever potentially realized—a sort of ambition never satisfied. This taxonomy and its associated terminology continued to be persuasive for all sorts of reasons. Comprehensive and detailed, it carried the authority of the church. Given the overwhelming intellectual tendency towards the syncretic enrichment of traditions in the Renaissance, we should not be surprised to discover that, even for those who had been exposed to a university education, their understanding and interpretation of the passions did not fit into one ‘school’ or another. Rather, they expressed an imaginative and pragmatic amalgam of the classical and scholastic learning to which they had been exposed. And, when asked to present the results of their learning in the vernacular, they often had difficulty in finding the appropriate French words adequately to delineate the passions that they were attempting to describe, especially when attempting to translate the Aristotelian/Aquinean categories that we have delineated. The authors of the remarkable lectures given before Henri III in the so-called ‘Palace Academy’ in 1576–9, lectures that reflected the amalgam of wisdom on the subject, often had cause to remark on that difficulty.⁴²

THE ‘PAL ACE ACADEMY ’ AND THE PASSIONS In January 1576, Henri III began the practice—it lasted for the following three years—of retiring twice a week immediately after lunch to his cabinet de travail in the Louvre to listen to specially arranged lectures.⁴³ In doing so, he abandoned the established court etiquette of the daily audience that took place at that time. He also forwent the opportunity to attend the sessions of the council that were scheduled afterwards. Contemporaries were disconcerted by such a retreat from affairs, and especially at a time when the king was, as we have seen, beset by ‘malcontents’. The queen mother viewed it ‘con poca satisfattione’.⁴⁴ Étienne Pasquier, the witty Parisian lawyer, constructed some Latin hexameters to amuse his friend Antoine de Loisel. Referring to the tutorials to improve his Latin that the king had ⁴² e.g. Frémy, 321. ⁴³ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 5–7. ⁴⁴ BN MS It 1729, 469 [Giovanni Morosini to the Doge, 3 February 1575 (1576 NS), copy].

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begun to receive from Claude Doron in November 1575, they played on the zeugma of a king who declined his Latin verbs and his kingdom.⁴⁵ Pasquier applauded the objectives of the royal lectures, but criticized their timing.⁴⁶ Why was it so important that these lectures took place immediately after lunch? Erasmus, in his Colloquies, had coined the tag: ‘Edire est audire’ (‘to eat is to listen’).⁴⁷ ‘Table-talk’ was, as Plutarch had explained in his treatise on banquets, part of the process by which the feeding of the animal appetites could be controlled.⁴⁸ He was drawing on Plato’s The Symposium, in which the banquet forms the backdrop to the ‘apres-disner’ of conversation, in which eloquence overcomes the temptations of gluttony and excess. As Louis Le Roy explained in his introduction to his new French translation and commentary, published originally in 1558 though republished in 1581, Plato offered a model of nourishment of the soul as part of the means of civilizing the body.⁴⁹ The elaborate mealtime etiquette of the king—a means of governing the lesser appetites—attracted the criticism of contemporaries.⁵⁰ Beyond the timing of the lectures, their occurrence also contained a moral message. The king could do little to influence immediate events. He had been dissuaded on security grounds from putting himself in personal charge of the army and had given the command instead to Charles, duke of Mayenne. Kings did not engage directly in negotiations. In political crises, royal strength lay in placid immovability. Playing for time was a trump card in the royal pack. Mathieu Coignet, sieur de La Thuillière, maître des requêtes and former ambassador to the Swiss cantons and Grey Leagues (Grisons), wrote a treatise on moral philosophy as the basis for political action, based on his experiences during these years.⁵¹ In it, he explained such passivity as the application of the moral virtue of patience. Using examples from Roman antiquity, he explained: ‘qu’il n’y a rien au monde qui restablisse plus les playes que faict longue patience, ne chose qui amene plus de vergongne aux personnes violens & impetueux que les patiens, qui endurent leur aigreur & violence sans en faire estat ny semblant’.⁵² Active engagement often inflamed the passions. Meddling made matters worse. The example of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (d. 203 ⁴⁵ Thickett (ed.), Pasquier, Lettres familières, 296. ⁴⁶ Ibid. ⁴⁷ See Jeanneret, A Feast of Words, ch. 5, esp. 112. ⁴⁸ Ibid., esp. 65–8. ⁴⁹ Le Roy, Le Sympose de Platon (1581), introd. ⁵⁰ Artus, Description de l’Isle de Hermaphrodites (1605), 60–1 and 98–111. The English agent Richard Cooke was sufficiently impressed by the mealtime rituals of Henri III that he illustrated them by a pen drawing in his treatise of 1583—Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.146, post fo. 19. ⁵¹ Coignet, Instruction aux princes (1584). ⁵² Ibid. 64 (citing examples taken from Josephus and Agrippa).

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), the ‘procrastinator’ (‘Cunctator’), in the face of Hannibal’s invasion came readily to mind: ‘On loue la prudence de Fabius, qui a rompu la pointe de la fortune, & auancement d’Annibal, en euitant le combat & temporisant & attendant son auantage, qui est vne vertu qu’on appelle longanimité.’ The French nobility had much to learn, Coignet remarked, from the moral virtues advocated by, among others, Seneca: ‘Parquoy ie prie la noblesse & bons esprits de France, qu’ils commencent par ce qui est facile, à maistriser leurs volontez, passions, precipitations, soudainetez & choleres: & que de longue main ils s’accoustument à patience, debonnaireté, taciturnité & modestie, donnant comme vn mors à leurs cupiditez, &, comme dit le Psalmiste, vne garde à leur bouche: à fin de ne rien faire ny dire sans y auoir bien pensé.’⁵³ By retiring to his study to be instructed in the moral virtues, was not Henri III applying the lessons of ‘longanimity’? The Palace Academy met in a room that was located on the third floor of the Louvre, above the king’s living quarters, unlit by natural light and small; a scene of inward contemplation. Attendance was by invitation only. Those whom we know to have accompanied him were, as the Venetian ambassador Giovanni Morosini explained in his dispatch of 3 February 1576, ‘four or five young men of this city who professed poetry and humanist studies’. We can put names to most, if not all, of those who attended these initial sessions in Paris, thanks to Claude Binet’s life of Ronsard and the comprehensive research undertaken by R. J. Sealy.⁵⁴ Besides Pierre de Ronsard himself, Binet mentioned Guy Du Faur, sieur de Pibrac (‘qui estoit autheur de ceste entreprise’), who had just returned from his embassy to Poland; Claude Doron, sieur de Montmirault, later a maître des requêtes; Pontus de Tyard, sieur de Bissy, the bishop of Châlons-sur-Saône and royal chaplain; Jean-Antoine de Baïf; Philippe Desportes, abbé de Tiron; and Jacques Davy Du Perron. The latter, in fact, as Sealy noted, joined the academic discussions rather later, at the time of the estates general in Blois; and it is possible that Baïf was never invited at all—one of several confusions between the Académie de poésie et de musique of Charles IX’s reign and what would become seen as its spiritual successor.⁵⁵ Those who were invited to participate were not necessarily present at every meeting and we should imagine a floating audience. In addition to those mentioned by Binet, we should add the presence from time to time of the secretary of state Simon ⁵³ Coignet, Instruction aux princes (1584). ⁵⁴ Lemonnier, La Vie de P. de Ronsard, 49–50. ⁵⁵ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 8; 26.

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Fizes, baron de Sauve; Amadis Jamyn; Agrippa d’Aubigné; Jean Bertaut, later bishop of Séez; the king’s principal physician, Marc Miron, sieur de l’Hermitage; and Filippo Cavriana (physician to the duke of Nevers) whom we have already encountered. They were joined by selected members of the court. The latter included his half-brother Henri d’Angoulême, known as the ‘Grand Prior’, the duke of Nevers himself, the king’s sister Marguerite de Valois (now queen of Navarre), Claude-Catherine de Clermont, countess of Retz (wife of the maréchal de Retz, then lieutenant-general and governor in Provence), Henriette de Clèves, duchess of Nevers (wife of the duke of Nevers), and Louise de Cabriane de la Guyonnière (wife of one of Henri III’s former favourites, Philibert Le Voyer, sieur de Lignerolles). Later invitees included the Italian humanist Bartolomeo Delbene and the rising star of French intellectual life, Jacques Davy Du Perron, then tutor to the children of the Matignon family. Their collective talents and learning were formidable; their proximity to royal favour was taken for granted. The overall purpose of the academy was to complete the king’s education. He had already used the opportunity afforded by the long journey from Paris to Cracow to listen to lectures from Pibrac on the Politics of Aristotle. The king would not have learnt much about the passions, but he would have heard a great deal about law, different constitutions, property, wealth, and the supreme good—an important reminder that (in political thought) there was a broader agenda than pathognomy. On his arrival, he was eager to learn more about how to deliver speeches and asked for lessons, once more from Pibrac.⁵⁶ The pattern of invited lectures adopted in the academy was, in short, already familiar to Henri III. Remarkably we have twenty-two surviving drafts of texts of what was read to the academy over the three years of its existence as well as several other documents that originated in lectures there. Selections of academy lectures circulated in manuscript around the court. One such collection carries the autograph of ‘P. Brulart’ on the title page—a manuscript volume that was written for the secretary of state Pierre Brulart.⁵⁷ From the surviving texts we can deduce the flavour of the proceedings. Each lecture lasted no more than an hour. In general, they were subject overviews, undergraduate lectures for a king. Invited speakers were encouraged to provide examples of what they were saying—exempla that the king might use ⁵⁶ Ibid. 33. ⁵⁷ BN MS Fr 2585. Brulart may have been the secretary assigned to the academy, and this volume may have been produced under his aegis.

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on other occasions.⁵⁸ They drew upon their specialisms—poetry, medicine, knowledge of public affairs—and applied them to the subject in hand. Speakers were conscious of their responsibilities, anxious not to be dull or pedantic. Some succeeded better than others. Definitions were simple and clear. Quotations were kept to a minimum. Latin terms were translated into French for the king’s benefit, and paraphrased where there was no precise equivalent in French. The occasional Greek allusion was generally translated or expounded. Examples were given from classical antiquity and mythology; but lecturers occasionally alluded to the king’s own experiences and cross-referenced to preceding lectures at the academy, engaging in some jockeying for pre-eminence as they did so.⁵⁹ The different schools of classical antiquity were referred to in passing, but as a means to indicate that there were differing opinions on a particular subject, and not because speakers took it as their brief to introduce the king to controversial, new, or radical opinions. What we cannot recover is the academic discussion that must have accompanied the lectures. It is likely that such discourse reinforced the sense of the academy as a meeting of ‘notables’ engaged in the purpose of educating the king to the moral and intellectual virtues necessary in his exercise of kingship. What did the lectures tell the king about the passions? The first six presented different expositions of the relative superiority of the intellectual and moral virtues.⁶⁰ This gave the speakers the opportunity to outline the faculties of the soul and to introduce the king to some of the principal ‘building blocks’ of contemporary pathematology (summarized very schematically in Figure 1). The ‘intellectual virtues’ served two very different purposes—both to ‘know’ something and to ‘judge’ its worth. Beyond the human knowledge of God (a particular and innate intellectual virtue that the speakers, with the exception of Du Perron three years later in 1579, felt unqualified to discuss), they concentrated on giving an account of human understanding that balanced ‘pure’ knowledge with more experientially based judgement. They all agreed that the soul had both an intellectual (‘raisonnable’) and an emotional (‘irraisonnable’) faculty. They accepted that the moral virtues, as opposed to the intellectual virtues, were acquired to a greater degree by experience, and that ⁵⁸ Frémy, 263. ⁵⁹ See the references to ‘Le Flamand’ (Corneille de Lyon), a painter whom Henri III much admired; also the emotional satisfaction that the king had experienced during the third civil war after the battle of Moncontour, in the discourse by Pierre de Ronsard (Frémy, 254–5). ⁶⁰ Ibid. 37–40.

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The Soul The Intellect [RATIONAL] Intellectual Virtues

The Appetites [SENSITIVE]

Universal Sagacity [understanding of God]

Moral Virtues

Particular wisdom [human understanding] governed with - science - knowledge OR - prudence - intelligence governed - art by Debate over the primacy of intellectual over moral virtues

- justice - temperance - liberality - magnanimity or Debate - temperance over the - fortitude definition - liberality of ‘moral virtues’

Sensuality [VEGETATIVE] The Passions

Debate over the constituency of the passions

Wrath Pain Sadness Despair etc Fear Joy Hope

Figure 1. The moral and intellectual virtues Source: From the first six discourses of the Palace Academy: Frémy, 221–341.

their purpose was to manage our sensuality. As Pierre de Ronsard put it: ‘Les vertus moralles sont habitudes acquises et aprises par longue accoustumance et long usage, inssinuées et imprimées de longue main en ceste partie et faculté de l’âme irraisonnable pour corriger, chastier, subjuguer et mettre soubz l’obéissance les passions de l’appétit et de la sensualité [ . . . ].’⁶¹ There was some debate as to the precise identification of the moral virtues, but they had no difficulty in classifying ‘fortitude’, ‘temperance’, and ‘justice’ (identified by Cicero and Quintilian as the leading moral virtues) along with wisdom, ⁶¹ Ibid. 225.

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or prudence, as the four cardinal moral virtues.⁶² To these, they added attributes that the Roman moralists had considered particularly important in the discharge of public office, especially ‘magnanimité’ and ‘libéralité’. These are the cardinal virtues to which they would return in the seventh session and onwards of the Academy’s deliberations. When the three theological virtues (‘faith’, ‘hope’, and ‘charity’) were added to the four cardinal moral virtues of Roman antiquity, these constituted the classic seven virtues. There was also general agreement that moral virtues lay in the middle, between ‘deux extremitez et vices contraires’. These extremes, far from governing passions, exacerbated them. So, for example, Ronsard cited liberality as lying at the mean point between prodigality and avarice, both of which were not merely vices but, by giving encouragement to concupiscent passions, engendered other vices in the process.⁶³ The precise layout of human sensuality depended on the enumeration of the virtues, but all the speakers were agreed that it was composed of an assemblage of pathemata and anti-pathemata (‘passions’ and ‘contre-passions’): of joy, envy, fear, anger, ambition, etc. Each had virtuous components that were to be encouraged, and vicious components which were to be restrained. Ronsard briefly alluded to the Stoic view that all human passions should be suppressed as simply delusions of the mind, but he did so only to dismiss such an opinion as against human nature.⁶⁴ The subjects for the second to sixth sessions of the academy, when particular passions were discussed in greater detail, were laid out in the lectures and discussion in the first session. The speakers arrived at no common view as to the primacy of the intellectual or the moral virtues, not least because they were aware of their complex interdependency. There were arguments for saying that ‘justice’ and ‘prudence’ were both ‘moral’ and ‘intellectual’ virtues, and to be incorporated within ‘magnanimity’ and ‘liberality’ respectively. Although there might be arguments in favour of the intellectual virtues, they all felt that, when it came to ‘les choses incertaines et le gouvernement des villes où les uns sont colères, les autres flegmatiques, les autres mélancoliques, les ungs ambitieux, les autres modestes, les autres arrogans, les autres simples [ . . . ]’, the pure sciences, and the platonic ‘contemplation des choses divines’, should give way to the difficult exercise of applied wisdom, and this meant exercising moral virtue.⁶⁵ ⁶² Cicero, De officiis, 1. 7. 20; 1. 68. 61; 1. 27. 93; Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric, ch. 2. ⁶³ Frémy, 226. ⁶⁴ Ibid. 228; he returned to the point in his later lecture on ‘Joy and Sadness’ (253). Other speakers also went out of their way to denounce the ‘fauce opinion des Stoïciens’—or, rather, the Stoicism that they had imbibed through Cicero and Seneca. ⁶⁵ Ibid. 236.

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The lectures specializing in pathognomy began with the particular example of joy and its contrary, sadness. No one doubted the reality and significance of human passions in the world of human affairs, Amadis Jamyn contended. He defined them as ‘une perturbation ou mouvement qui trouble la tranquilité de l’esprit ou bien une perturbation désobeissante de la raison’.⁶⁶ They were all powerful appetites, deep-seated in the human psyche, capable of agitating us in irrational ways such that we even invest in objects or events a capacity to give us joy or sorrow. The more these ‘chimères’ are rooted in our sensuality, the greater their power to ‘enchant’ us and the more difficult they are to control by means of reason. At this point, Jamyn borrowed a simile from the Neoplatonic dialogues on love of Léon Hébreu (Leone Ebreo: Judah Abravanel), readily fitting it into his overwhelmingly Aristotelian analysis. The intellectual part of our souls is like the sun, the ‘partie irraisonnable’ like the moon, and the passions like the earth that can occlude the light of the sun upon the moon, leaving us ‘estonnée comme si quelque sorcier l’avoit enchantée, et lors se dit éclipsé, pource qu’elle perd entièrement toute participation de lumière’. Physical illness and infirmity affect our capacity for joy and sadness in fundamental ways. Uncontrolled joy is as dangerous to our well-being as an excess of sadness and, because both tend to occur suddenly, they are the more difficult for us to control. Ronsard agreed about the power of the passions—we all knew it experientially.⁶⁷ Emotions such as joy or pleasure were dynamic in their effects upon us, capable of being conjured up by our memories and our anticipations as much as by the current state of our appetites. Memory, he reminded the king, was the strongest, most long-lasting stimulus to any passion, including joy or sorrow.⁶⁸ All passions have, albeit to differing degrees, a direct relationship to our physical sense of well-being, affecting ‘les esprits les plus spirituels et plus subtils du sang’ with an inevitable effect upon the heart and the rest of the body. But he was inclined to think that sadness may have a more profound physical effect on us than joy, manifested in our ‘chagrin, despit, hagard, farousche et refrongné’, i.e. evident in our physiognomy.⁶⁹ Two lectures that have not survived from court physicians probably amplified the connection already identified between disordered passions and illness, and the fact that the moral virtues were a ‘medicine’ to the passions. A further, ⁶⁶ Ibid. 268. ⁶⁷ Ibid. 253. ⁶⁸ Ibid. 256: ‘Mais la souvenance est la meilleure partie du plaisir, car l’espérance n’est que par imagination, la fruition est prompte et soudaine et la souvenance dure longuement.’ ⁶⁹ Ibid. 257.

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unidentified speaker offered a broader analysis of the passions, concentrating the king’s attention on those where memory played a particularly important part, such as ‘courroux’ (wrath) and ‘haine’ (hatred). It is not difficult to read into the lecture at this point an allusive commentary on the sectarian troubles of the recent past: ‘Courroux est une émotion meslée de tristesse et de vengeance, par laquelle le cueur abhorre quelque outrage et tout ensemble se met en son debvoir de le repousser et de punir et de corriger l’autheur et la cause de l’outrage’.⁷⁰ Such powerful passions affect our whole being, mind and spirit. ‘En ceste bouillante passion, le cueur s’enflamme, allume les esprits et le sang. A cause du brouillement d’iceux, les actions de tous les membres sont troublées; principalement le cerveau s’en offense, lequel s’échauffe par la chaleur et l’émotion portée du long des veines et des nerfs qui communiquent et se derivent au cueur, ce qui est cause que, bien souvent, d’un grand et véhément courroux s’engendrent des tournemens de sents [i.e. ‘sens’] et parfois des apoplexies [ . . . ].’ Such passions, held in check, might serve us well. Hatred, for example, could be turned into a hatred of vice. Shame was a passion that could be harnessed for our own self-discipline. But passions were easily deformed. Joy, for example, could become ‘male-joy’ or a disguised pleasure at the misfortune of others. Shame could deform to ‘mauvaise honte’ (‘vitiosa verecundia’), a lack of self-worth which Plutarch described in one of his moral essays.⁷¹ Ungoverned, the passions were liable to be as fatal to an individual human being as (by implication) to society at large. As we have already seen, speakers had no difficulty in giving their lectures the occasional Neoplatonic inflection. This particular lecture closed with a description of the balancing of the passions as the establishment of ‘temperance’, the equivalent of that of the humours in the physical body or the making of musical harmony:⁷² [ . . . ] tout ainsi aussi qu’en la musicque l’accordance et l’armonie n’est pas à du tout en oster le hault et le bas, mais à bien faire acorder l’un avec l’autre, quoy faisant, la consonnance et les bons acords et la parfaite musique se fait, la dissonance et les faulx accords et la mauvaise musique est rejettée, pareillement en bien acordant et bien attrempant la Joie et la Tristesse, ensemble, les autres, afections et passions que Dieu a mises en nous pour bonne fin, nous osterons de nous les vices et les perverses passions et planterons en nous les bonnes mœurs et les vertus. ⁷⁰ Frémy, 245. ⁷¹ Ibid. 323; Amyot, Les Œvvres morales de Plvtarque (1584), 240–56; cf. Aulotte, Amyot et Plvtarque, 119–23; Margolin, ‘De la ‘‘dyopsie’’ de Plutarque à la ‘‘mauvaise honte’’ d’Amyot’. ⁷² Frémy, 250.

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This ‘perfect music’ constitutes one of the few references in the surviving texts of the Henrician academy to the belief that the music of the ancients had a strong psychological power to calm, or alternately to raise, passions.⁷³ As Frances Yates has outlined, Orpheus who, with his lute, turned men from killing one another and soothed the animal in them to sleep, and Amphion, whose lyre had power to move stones and who constructed the walls of Thebes with music, were engaging myths in the sixteenth century.⁷⁴ The essay on music and morals ascribed to Plutarch (‘De musica’), recently translated into French by Jacques Amyot, emphasized the importance of ‘genereuse & bonne musique’ for the stability of the state.⁷⁵ But, as Amyot’s introductory commentary explained, such an effect was to be found not in polyphonic music.⁷⁶ It would require a reformation of musical forms to recover this ancient ‘musique grave’ with its Pythagorean ‘harmonie proportionelle’.⁷⁷ In March 1576, the sessions of the academy were devoted to the passion of ‘anger’, a unique passion in Aristotelian and scholastic pathognomy because, as we have seen, it had no contrary.⁷⁸ It was, as Amadis Jamyn said, a ‘passion grande et violante’ which could not be countered, only ‘moderated’, a ‘tiran qui traine à sa suite, comme ses satalites, couroux, douleur, despit, haine, discorde, inimitié’.⁷⁹ This passion had direct political consequences: ‘C’est elle qui souvent a ruyné totalement les Estats des respublicques et monarchies’.⁸⁰ With the deputies from the king’s brother, the protestants, and the ‘catholiques associés’ arriving at court on 1 March, the academic discussions could hardly fail to have a contemporary political resonance. Guy Du Faur de Pibrac began the series of lectures with a pointed reference to recent events: ‘combien la colère et les dissensions des Princes et grands Capitaines cause de ruynes et de pertes à leurs subgects [ . . . ].’⁸¹ The king had asked for practical advice as well as an academic treatment of the subject. He wanted to know ‘par quels moyens on peut modérer et réfréner l’Ire’. The speakers took him at his word.⁸² The surviving texts depicted anger as a dangerous and contagious passion with profound physical manifestations. In Valois court culture, interpreting ⁷³ Ibid. 279. ⁷⁴ Yates, The French Academies, ch. 3, esp. 37; Joukovsky, Orphée et ses disciples, 25–7; 81–112; Maillard, ‘Le Roi-prophète: David et Orphée sous le règne de Henri III’, 32–44. ⁷⁵ Amyot, Les Œvres morales de Plvtarque, ii, fos. 660v –668; esp. fo. 667v and i, fo. 118. ⁷⁷ Ibid., fo. 666v . ⁷⁶ Ibid., fo. 660v . ⁷⁸ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 44–6. ⁷⁹ Frémy, 287. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 288; 297. ⁸¹ Ibid. 274. ⁸² Ibid. 293.

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people’s facial expressions was an important skill for diplomats and negotiators, just as it was vital for a prince, his aristocrats, and advisers.⁸³ They needed to know the pathology of the passions, and court portrait painters, Flemish tapestry weavers, and artists of the so-called School of Fontainebleau educated the French court and notability in the subject.⁸⁴ Representing the ‘moral virtues’ and their contraries had been a favourite theme for tapestries. ‘Anger’ was generally depicted as having (as Amadis Jamyn put it) ‘ung visage bazané d’ardeur, ayant les yeulx étincelans et l’habillement rouge, souflante des narines une animosité, tenant une espée de feu laquelle est faicte par ondes pour signifier que l’Ire n’est que feu [ . . . ]’.⁸⁵ It was associated with ‘une ébullition de sang à l’environ du cœur’, and the knowledge of the humoral conditions of those with whom one had dealings was of importance in handling them.⁸⁶ Anger, however, was unique among the passions in its all-consuming nature.⁸⁷ How could it be controlled? Guy Du Faur de Pibrac offered various ‘préservatifs’. Anger often had innocuous origins: ‘comme de petites mocqueries, des risées, ung clin d’œil ou de testes et semblable’.⁸⁸ Such inconspicuous matters should not be ignored. They were fundamental to understanding how the passion of anger worked. ‘Petits courroux’ should be eliminated by trying to remove the sources of the ‘suspicion’ on which they fed. Anger could, with education and discipline, be controlled. Sang froid was an important virtue in a courtier or prince. Guy Du Faur cited the example from Herodotus of the mignon Prexaspes at the court of King Cambis. In the midst of a court that was divided by fierce contests for royal favour, the moral virtues were necessary, in other words, to control the disequilibrium and dysfunctionality that existed at its core.⁸⁹ All the speakers were agreed that time (‘dilation’) was a sovereign healer of anger. So too was royal justice, through the grace of pardon. The academicians dispensed advice on how to allow time for anger to subside. But they were aware that anger fed on an exaggerated sense of self-worth, an unjustified sense of honour, or the fact that one was ill at ease. So there was a need to establish an environment of moral virtue in a place such as the royal court in order to prevent such ‘malaisance’ and to ensure that the dangers of a passion as powerful as that of anger were understood and disciplined. Among the people at large, by contrast, anger was repressed by law and justice. ‘Je ne veulx que le menu peuple soit furieux ni transporté de courroux’ said one of ⁸³ Le Person, ‘Pratiques’ et ‘Pratiquers’, ch. 3. ⁸⁴ Frémy, 254–5. ⁸⁵ Ibid. 291. ⁸⁶ Ibid. 289. ⁸⁷ Ibid. 281. ⁸⁸ Ibid. 280. ⁸⁹ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, ch. 14.

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the speakers, ‘et le doibt on pugnir par la loy, car les effectz de l’Ire populaire ne servent de rien au publicq et ne font que leur entre-injurier et tuer.’⁹⁰ In a prince or an ‘homme de bien’, by contrast, ‘just anger’ served a good purpose, since it was a powerful stimulus ‘à l’observation de la discipline, à la correction des mœurs et à la compression de la licence’. The possibility for anger in the just defence of one’s honour could not be excluded, so rooted was it in the social code. ‘Feigning’ anger in a speech in order to persuade one’s audience of a particular course of action was also justifiable. So it was necessary to allow for ‘la généreuse cholère d’un Prince, quant elle est bien reiglée et conduicte par le frain de la raison’, vital qualities in a just prince since they ‘luy eschauffe le sang, le faict magnanime, le faict adventureux, et hazardeux, faict qu’il est craint de son peuple, luy faict gaigner batailles, provinces et citez et le rend plain de nécessaire majesté’. A king who wanted to reform his realm could show his just anger: ‘Il se fault colérer contre ung magistrat avaricieux, ung cappitaine voleur, ung soldat rabisseur de filles, pilleur de pauvres maisons, ransonneur de laboureur, renieur de Dieu’. Governing passions meant matching them with the majestic weight of just wrath. In June 1576, following a frenetic month of activity in which the king was preoccupied with making the peace of Monsieur a reality, the academy reconvened. They might have chosen to consider ‘hope’ and ‘despair’ as their subjects. But the preferred theme was closer to the application of moral virtues to political life—that of ‘ambition’ and its contrary, ‘honour’. Its contemporary political significance was evident. The ‘publicains’ and ‘malcontents’ were already interpreted in royal circles as embodiments of ambition. ‘Nous avons si beau subiect en ceste saison de discourir de lambition [ . . . ]’ began the discourse of the duke of Nevers.⁹¹ In the first of the four, surviving lectures, the speaker used Seneca’s moral essay ‘De beneficiis’ (‘On Benefits’) to set the tone: ‘ce qu’on baille à ung homme convoiteux et désireux d’honneur ne lui est jamais assez, et d’autant qu’il leur advient de plus grands honneurs, d’autant en désirent-ils de plus grands’.⁹² Its particular danger was that it was a more occult passion, operating by ‘ruses et subtils moyens’. Ambition was fundamentally alien to the moral economy of court society, which rested, as contemporaries well understood, on the virtues of honour, favour, and friendship.⁹³ In fact, said successive speakers, it ⁹⁰ Frémy, 295. ⁹² Frémy, 314.

⁹¹ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 180. ⁹³ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, ch. 1.

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was alien to a ‘saincte société’, commodifying its friendships and brutalizing it.⁹⁴ The Latin ‘ambitio’, said the first speaker, was etymologically close to the Latin ‘ambio’ (‘I surround’). That was because, in Roman society, the ambitious senator surrounded himself with clients whom he showered with favours, even employing a ‘nomenclator’ to register the names of those who were among his clients and record the largesse they had received.⁹⁵ He then enveloped his ambitions in a cloak of acting for the public good, ‘amateur du commun et pourchasseur du bien publicq’.⁹⁶ Lucius Sergius Catilina (c.108–62 ) provided the classic example of a Roman politician whose party had been built on ambition. The pertinency of the Catiline conspiracy to contemporary events had often been noted.⁹⁷ The existence of clienteles in French politics was controversial, not merely because it was an established reality, but also because, in the wrong hands and utilized in nefarious ways, they subverted the moral order, acting as vehicles for passionate ambition rather than legitimate honour. What existed to counteract the passions of ambition? The sovereign remedy, as the first speaker said, lay in self-knowledge. The Oracle of Apollo to ‘Know Thyself’, that reservoir of moral rectitude for Roman moralists, was often referred to in later sixteenth-century France.⁹⁸ Other ‘remedies’ included an acceptance of what ‘fortune’, or providence, had decreed for us. The third speaker, Amadis Jamyn, spoke at greater length than the others, on how honour acted as a counter-passion to that of ambition. He had recourse to the mythological account of the birth of human honour, the result of the chance union at the court of Jupiter between the god Honour and the goddess Opinion. Once on earth, the reputation of ‘Honour’ had grown mighty, and every civilization had its own manifestations, each a dilution of ambition. So, Amadis Jamyn inferred, the ‘beaux monumens et sépulchres gravez d’inscriptions faictes en prose ou en vers’, or the ‘images taillées, les armoiries et semblables’, were important manifestations of honour ‘pour rendre une mémoire éternelle en récompense de leur court vie à ceux qui se précipitoient à la mort pour l’Estat de leur républicque’.⁹⁹ Equally, ⁹⁴ Frémy, 317; 310; Sealy The Palace Academy of Henry III, 188. ⁹⁵ Frémy, 314–15. ⁹⁶ Ibid. 316. ⁹⁷ See, e.g., L’Histoire de la conjuration de Catilin (1575), a work bound in with the Traicté des conjurations [ . . . ] (1575) in the Bibliothèque Nationale. ⁹⁸ Frémy, 319; see Yates, The French Academies, 117–18. Guy Du Faur describes it as a ‘divine’ precept (Recveil des poincts principavx (1573), fos. 39v –40). The Oracle’s significance for Montaigne needs no emphasis. ⁹⁹ Frémy, 309.

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to fail to stand up against the vicious passion of ambition was to create a ‘mespris d’honneur’, which would merely give it free rein and fail to establish the ‘mediocrity’ that lay at the heart of ordered society. Henri III’s punctilious insistence on the physical manifestations of honour acquires a broader resonance and coherence when viewed in the light of the discussions of the passions in the academy. The lecture cycles for other sessions of the Palace Academy devoted to the passions are less complete. We have only two of the five that tackled the theme of ‘Envy’ (‘envie’), and three of the five that concerned ‘Fear’ (‘crainte’), the subjects that the academy returned to in September 1576 after a summer break. Since the passions were all ‘cousins’ (as one of the speakers said), it is not surprising that similar themes recurred from earlier discourses.¹⁰⁰ The cumulative effect of successive speeches was to reinforce the sense that a coherent knowledge of the passions existed and that there were common means to control them. ‘Envy’ was one branch of a tree that had others spreading out towards the ambition and sadness that had already been discussed. It was a ‘cruel monstre’, highly dangerous and contagious, capable of generating extreme reactions.¹⁰¹ It created physiological manifestations that anyone in positions of responsibility should know how to recognize in order to be able to respond appropriately. It made the sufferer’s complexion pallid and his body thin and languid.¹⁰² ‘Fear’ also had its varieties (‘timidité’; ‘frayeur’; ‘horreur’). It was also extreme, invasive, and destructive of our well-being. It had its physical manifestations, most notably those of making the sufferer cold, unresponsive, and, in extreme instances, paralysed.¹⁰³ Philippe Desportes pointed out that fear sometimes made people lose their capacity to speak, or forget what they wanted to say.¹⁰⁴ It was a passion that could block the very means by which the passion itself could be attenuated. As with the other passions, envy and fear could be conjugated in active and passive, past, present, and future tenses. Each had aspects that were conducive of moral virtue as well as those that were susceptible to corruption. ‘Indignation’ was potentially a force for good, whilst pure envy was as damaging of civil society as ‘ambition’ and ‘wrath’ because of its capacity to be ‘blind’ to reason.¹⁰⁵ ‘Fear’ was the beginning of wisdom and order, of government in the state too, but it could easily become, unless checked, ‘timidité & couardise’.¹⁰⁶ ‘Pity’ was the good cousin of envy and it could be ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. 321. ¹⁰¹ Ibid. 352; 354. ¹⁰² Ibid. 353. ¹⁰³ Ibid. 333. ¹⁰⁴ Burgess, Platonism, 150. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid. 326. ¹⁰⁶ Ibid. 151.

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nurtured ‘dans la juste indignation et par la louable émulation’. One of the themes that many speakers had emphasized was the degree to which moral education and emulation had a part to play in the governing of passions.¹⁰⁷ A rightly construed fear could even be the basis for good rulership. Yet that raised a topical issue, at least since the publication of Machiavelli’s The Prince with its contested chapter on whether it was better for a prince to be feared than loved. That controversy had become focused in France by the propaganda of protestant controversialists—most notably Innocent Gentillet—who sought to portray Catherine de Médicis and other Italians at the French court as ‘Machiavellian’, and thus immoral.¹⁰⁸ The writings of Machiavelli were, as these commentators surmised, known at the French court. In particular, a sanitized summary of them in the form of the ‘maxims of state’ of Francesco Guicciardini had been translated into French by Antoine de Laval and published earlier in 1576 in Paris.¹⁰⁹ That year was, for these and other reasons, the ‘Machiavellian moment’ in French history. Although it was to Seneca rather than Machiavelli that the view (‘qu’il fault que celluy qui veut longtemps régner soit crainct de ses subjectz’) was attributed by the speaker at the academy, it could as readily have been Machiavelli to whom he alluded. The discourse began by admitting that fear was, as a matter of fact, a component of rulership.¹¹⁰ Plutarch had said that the Ephors of Sparta had built a temple in honour of Fear ‘d’aultant que la Républicque est maintenue par Crainte’.¹¹¹ Where the king was not feared, the state would quickly be overthrown. But the speaker quickly drew a distinction between the notables (‘gens de bien’) and the rest.¹¹² A notable ‘ne fault craindre de remonstrer à son Prince, à son Roy, à son supérieur ce qui est de raison’.¹¹³ But those who were not notables were ‘méchants’ and would necessarily and rightly fear ‘d’une vive crainte’ the indignation of their prince. So a prince should recognize the fear of his subjects for what it was and use it as a means for reinforcing good rulership. The noble passions of the prince, in short, were legitimate means, part and parcel of the armoury that served to govern the concupiscent passions of the state at large. All the more reason, therefore, for the prince to have a detailed understanding of how the passions worked within individuals and among those individuals in groups. It was vital for good government. ¹⁰⁷ Frémy, 350. ¹⁰⁸ Kelley, ‘Murd’rous Machiavel in France: A Post-mortem’; Beame, ‘The Use and Abuse of Machiavelli’; Stewart, Innocent Gentillet; Rathé (ed.), Innocent Gentillet. Anti-Machiavel. ¹⁰⁹ Antoine de Laval, Plvsieurs Advis et conseils (1576). ¹¹⁰ Ibid. 329. ¹¹¹ Ibid.; Burgess, Platonism, 152. ¹¹² Frémy, 329. ¹¹³ Ibid. 331.

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We should make no claims for the ethical originality or psychological novelty in these lectures beyond the significance accorded to the subject of the passions, of fundamental importance in educating a prince in the ways of government.¹¹⁴ The texts encapsulated the wisdom with which the French notables sought to understand the paroxysms that had convulsed the kingdom. The succeeding lectures at the academy on various moral virtues, and then aspects of natural philosophy, are hardly documented at all and it is only with some ingenuity that their subject matter and chronology can be reconstructed.¹¹⁵ The central significance of the passions and their regulation can have hardly remained completely absent from their agenda, however, in the sense that earlier speakers had regularly posited a link between human passions and the wider macrocosm.¹¹⁶ That centrality was reinforced when, in the first half of 1579, meeting first in Paris and then at the new royal palace at Ollainville, they returned to consider the intellective capacities of the soul. These lectures at Ollainville were accompanied by three odes in Italian by Bartolomeo Delbene. He presumably used them to illustrate his arguments in a succession of lectures on the subject. The odes are all that survive of the lectures themselves. The final series of discussions at the academy of which we have any knowledge concerned the power of eloquence. The ‘projet d’éloquence royale’, as it has become known, was a particularly appropriate way for the academy to provide the king with a summation of the practical knowledge and outlook that had been offered by the academy to a prince determined upon the disciplining of himself and his realm. They are the final set of texts that we need to consider before we embark on the parallel history of the articulation of an agenda for national reformation at the first estates of Blois in 1576–7 and the efforts for peace and reform thereafter.

THE PROJET D’ÉLOQUENCE ROYALE There was an undeniable link between the effects of the civil wars on political authority and the emphasis upon eloquence as a means to win over people’s hearts and minds and reinforce the authority of the royal state. Montaigne himself said that it was only during periods of civil strife that eloquence was allowed the significance that his contemporaries were prepared to accord ¹¹⁴ But see Neubert, ‘Die Akademie du Palais unter Heinrich III’. ¹¹⁵ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, chs. 3–5. ¹¹⁶ Burgess, Platonism, 152.

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it.¹¹⁷ The understanding of how language could soothe the passions was regarded as essential for all those close to royal authority in the early years of Henri III’s reign. Henri Estienne’s treatise De l’eloquence françoise, published in 1575, had already foreshadowed the possibility of a ‘royal’ eloquence, equipped with a ‘celestial grace’ and an almost infinite capacity to conquer ‘leurs sauvages affections’ and reconcile ‘leurs differentes volontez à la société civile’.¹¹⁸ Three years later, he tackled the more delicate subject of the ‘effeminate’, Italianizing influences on the French language, noticeable at the royal court.¹¹⁹ He returned to Paris in November 1578 and, probably at the instigation of his erstwhile protector, Pomponne de Bellièvre, found an entrée to the court at the end of January. There the king encouraged him to write a book on the pre-eminence of the French language.¹²⁰ In the preface, Estienne echoed his earlier sentiments on the importance of language in rulership. Eloquence was the preferred means to ‘[ . . . ] commander mieux aux cœurs des hommes que la force des armes, voire ployer les plus endurcis courages’.¹²¹ And royal eloquence was beyond compare. No language equalled that of French for its richness of vocabulary and its ‘gravité’, ‘brièveté’, and ‘douceur’. The subject of the forthcoming academy lectures on rhetoric had, in other words, been foreshadowed. The first lecture was preserved among the papers of its author, Jacques Davy Du Perron, and then printed a generation later.¹²² He conceived it as something of an ‘introduction’ to the subject. He began with the conventional wisdom that rhetoric was more significant in republics than in principalities. Yet, he continued, there were many occasions when princes also needed to deploy eloquence. And it was never more necessary than in periods of internal dissension, accompanied by religious strife.¹²³ Contemporary examples abounded of how ‘le peuple veut prendre cognoissance de cause & estre luy mesme rendu capable de l’Estat des affaires, & sur ces occasions ceux qui montent aux chaires publiques & se sçauent aider des armes de l’eloquence, peuuent beaucoup pour le precipiter aux desordres, insolences & confusion, ou pour l’en rappeller & diuertir’. Hence the need for a ‘royal’ ¹¹⁷ Montaigne, 1, 41—cited Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 494. ¹¹⁸ Henri Estienne, De l’eloquence françoise (1575), fos. 12–14v . ¹¹⁹ Henri Estienne, Deux dialogues (1579)—originally published in 1578. See Clément, Henri Estienne, 41–2. ¹²⁰ Ibid. The preface is dated 23 April 1579. ¹²¹ Ibid. 3. ¹²² Du Perron, Les Diverses Œvvres, ii. 759–70; cf. Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 154–5. ¹²³ Du Perron, Les Diverses Oevvres, ii. 760.

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eloquence. Because eloquence was a two-edged sword, so its power could be used either to inflame or to soothe the passions. Yet this reinforced the significance of deploying it to good effect. Were not the discourses of the academy themselves testimony to its persuasive and beneficial effects? Du Perron explained how rhetoric was a culmination of their discussions. The orator needed ‘vn fonds & vn magasin de toutes sortes de sciences’—which is what the academy had sought to provide. At the same time, he must be able to ‘cognoistre parfaictement toute la nature des passions, des mouuements & des affections, dautant que le principal office de l’eloquence consiste à les exciter ou à les appaiser [ . . . ]’.¹²⁴ That, too, was knowledge that the academy had assembled. There remained the techniques of rhetoric itself—for the orator was required to be ‘riche & abondant de beaux mots, de belles constructions, de belles figures pour reuestir & orner les conceptions de son esprit’. Did those techniques amount to ‘vne science & vn art de l’eloquence’? The remainder of Du Perron’s lecture was devoted to proving that rhetoric was a practical art.¹²⁵ It was at least the equal of the skills required of a general leading an army into battle. The following lectures were, in all probability, devoted to these practical aspects of rhetoric. Although we cannot be sure of the fact, it seems possible that the text, known as the Projet d’eloquence royale and attributed to Jacques Amyot, constituted a version, presumably reworked, of the three following lectures.¹²⁶ Amyot, it is true, had apparently given none of the earlier lectures, no doubt because of his implicit rivalry with Pibrac.¹²⁷ But, from September 1578, Pibrac was absent from Henri III’s court, and the path was open for Amyot to participate. The internal structure of the work has always appeared problematic. It has no preface and the subject matter is developed in an elliptical fashion. It is perhaps not too fanciful to imagine that it might have begun life as three lectures, the first of which was devoted to defining the subject (‘royal’ eloquence) (chs. I–IV); the second to some practical advice on how to acquire the necessary and appropriate knowledge to deploy in public speaking engagements, and to demonstrating that it was a useful art for a prince (chs. V–IX); and the third to examining its technical aspects within a practical framework appropriate ¹²⁴ Ibid. 763. ¹²⁵ Ibid. 764. ¹²⁶ The edition published in 1805 relies on a manuscript now lost. The only contact we have with that original is through a surviving copy in a late sixteenth-century hand—BN MS Fr 19130. It carries the name ‘J. Bruslard’ on the top right-hand corner of its first folio—perhaps Jacques Brulart, a brother of Pierre Brulart, secrétaire du roi. Salazar (ed.), Jacques Amyot: De l’eloquence royale replicates the 1805 edition. ¹²⁷ Boucher, ‘Un grand aumônier engagé’, 150.

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to a prince (chs. X–XV). If so, however (and it is pure supposition that it had originally been organized thus), the material must have been extensively reworked into the version that we now know. Jacques Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, tutor and royal almoner to both Charles IX and Henri III, was 66 years of age when he probably gave the lectures.¹²⁸ He had used his contacts at court and a good deal of native shrewdness to consolidate the family’s fortunes.¹²⁹ Already a conseiller d’état before Henri III’s succession, his political role was not negligible even though it was his scholarship and churchmanship that won him the respect of men of letters and favour at court.¹³⁰ His translations of Plutarch had been runaway publishing successes. He had visited Italy in the late 1540s and 1550s and knew at first hand the humanist currents in the Italian peninsula. Marc Fumaroli presents these in two contrasting modes. On the one hand, in Florence, the republican rhetorical traditions of Cicero held sway—embodied in the orator as hero and the senate as a place of gladiatorial combat. In Mantua, and then later in Tridentine Rome, however, a contrasting tradition emerged, in which the prince was the rhetorical hero and the court was a theatre of receptivity—trends represented in the writings of Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Bembo, and his disciples.¹³¹ Amyot’s lectures offered Henri III a simplified version of this ‘royal’ eloquence, liberally laced with Plutachian influences. It was no small matter, Amyot said, to ‘sçavoir par bien dire manier une multitude d’hommes, chatouiller les cœurs, maîtriser les volontés et passions, voire les pousser et retenir à son plaisir, et, par manière de dire, en porter l’éperon et la bride pendus au bout de la langue’.¹³² For a king, however, his ‘word’ was ‘une principale partie de la puissance’.¹³³ This did not mean that a king should descend to the ‘vulgar rhetoric’ of the marketplace, the pulpit, or the town hall. Royal eloquence took place in a different context, with distinctive subject matter and techniques, each aiming to ‘imprimer certaines passions dans les esprits des auditeurs, qui ont plus de pouvoir que les arguments, et par lesquelles ils se laissent mener et transporter ça et là où bon semble à un homme ¹²⁸ For details of Amyot’s life, see Sturel, Jacques Amyot; Cioranescu, Vie de Jacques Amyot. Cf. Aulotte, ‘Jacques Amyot et les rois’. ¹²⁹ Descimon, ‘La Fortune de Jacques Amyot’. ¹³⁰ Boucher, ‘Un grand aumônier engagé’. ¹³¹ Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, chs. 2–3. ¹³² Salazar, (ed.), Jacques Amyot: De l’eloquence royale 43 (BN MS Fr 19130 fo. 1); cf. the remarks of Plutarch in Amyot, Les Œvvres morales de Plvtarque, i, fos. 161–178v ; esp. fo. 163. ¹³³ Salazar (ed.), Jacques Amyot: De l’eloquence royale, 49 (cf. BN MS Fr 19130 fo. 3).

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éloquent’.¹³⁴ He did not expect to ‘envoyer les Roys en quelque Escolle de Rethoricque les faisans descendre de leur siege Royal’.¹³⁵ Amyot offered Henri III a royal rhetoric that could be acquired without formal training or complicated linguistic analysis, within the grasp of a king beset by affairs. The last text from this final set of lectures devoted to eloquence is more or less in the form of a lecture as it might have been presented to the king. Discovered by Giulio Camus in what is now the State Archives at Modena, it is an undated and incomplete French manuscript that had once been in the library of the Jesuit college in Paris and which carries the title: ‘Rhetorique françoise faicte particulierement pour le roy henry 3’.¹³⁶ Camus attempted to date the manuscript by means of the various citations in it, one of which is to the first verses of a sonnet from the Cléonice of Philippe Desportes, first published in 1583. We now know, however, that many of these poems had circulated in manuscript well before that date and so it is possible to assign the text to the cycle of lectures in 1579, where it naturally belongs.¹³⁷ Amyot had already suggested that the king should commission a programme of regular ‘readings’ to provide him with a stock of apposite examples upon which he could draw. A compendium of readings on warfare would be a suitable place to start.¹³⁸ This lecturer reinforced the same advice.¹³⁹ The king might even command some learned person to translate ‘les offices de Ciceron en francois et en fera lecture d’un chapitre pout chacun jour, puis l’explicera [sic] a Votre Maiesté’.¹⁴⁰ Similar suggestions were made for the study of geography and chronology. The author then offered simple explanations of basic oratorical devices. The text is incomplete, but the author had covered the most important points, and particularly stressed that eloquence was the disciplined display of moral authority that would restore the fortunes of the French monarchy in the aftermath of the civil wars. Was this wishful thinking? The re-establishment of the moral authority of the monarchy was a key political problem for the Valois in these years. It was not foolish to entertain the notion that such authority was to be acquired by breathing new life into the application of law, by the reasoned renewal ¹³⁴ Ibid. 79; cf. the remarks on the control of passions in Plutarch’s essay ‘De la vertu morale’ in Amyot, Les Œvvres morales de Plvtarque, i, fos. 35–6. ¹³⁵ BN MS Fr 19130 fo. 3v . ¹³⁶ Camus, ‘Precetti di rettorica scritti per Enrico III re di Francia’. ¹³⁷ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 158–9. ¹³⁸ Salazar (ed.), Jacques Amyot: De l’éloquence royale, 62. ¹³⁹ Camus, Precetti di rettorica scritti per Enrico III re di Francia, 79. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid. 80.

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of the state and the revival of moral discipline in public life. If peace with the protestants could be achieved, it would be on the basis of an amnesty for past events, a just peace, and the creation of a new moral order under royal authority that they would accept. The king seems to have followed the advice of his informal academy at least in so far as he embarked on a regular programme of having works read to him during his meals and bath-times from around the middle of 1579.¹⁴¹ The success of the enterprise would depend, however, not merely on the king himself but also on the kingdom’s notables and their commitment to the same moral and reformist agenda. That would be an uphill task. The French aristocracy, in particular, for the most part understood power and authority in different—more militaristic and realpolitik—terms. They would need refashioning to make them into suitable ‘praelocutors’ for the new order. In his own, somewhat curious fashion, the king had begun to do just that. At his accession to the French throne, he dispatched Nicolas Boucherat, the senior abbot of the Cistercian order at Cîteaux, with an ambitious proposal to establish two new noble orders (the ‘Order of St Louis’ and the ‘Order of the Passion’), funded partly on the secularized abbatial lands in the kingdom.¹⁴² The king wanted to announce their establishment at his coronation, an auspicious moment for him to be elected their new Grand Master. Despite the backing of the cardinal of Lorraine and lobbying in high places in Rome, it ran foul of papal suspicions that such creations were a way of secularizing church property. Other abortive proposals included one for a new Order of the Phoenix as well as an Order of Christian Charity, the latter being for soldiers wounded in the king’s service.¹⁴³ Eventually, on New Year’s Eve 1578, Henri III attended the ceremony of inauguration of his new Order and Militia of the Blessed Holy Spirit. It was designated as a measure of reform for the French nobility. As the statutes decreed, the new order was to: ‘le remettre en son ancienne dignité & splendeur, comme celuy, auquel par inclination naturelle, & par raison nous auons touiours porté tres-grand amour & affection’.¹⁴⁴ The hundred newly created Knights Commander of the order were from the court aristocracy, ¹⁴¹ Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henry III, 165–6; cf. Le Person, 247 citing BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 555 [François d’O to Pomponne de Bellièvre, Blois, 6 December 1580]. ¹⁴² The proposal, and Boucherat’s fortunes in promoting it in Rome, can be followed in BN MS Fr 3321 fos. 1–13. ¹⁴³ Mentioned in Favyn, Le Théâtre d’honneur, i. 675. The ‘Order of Christian Charity’ would include the right to wear a cross of gold carrying the legend: ‘Pour avoir fidelement servy’. The project was revived by Henri IV and established at Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie in Paris. ¹⁴⁴ Le Livre des statvts (1629), 12.

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personally selected by the king.¹⁴⁵ They made their oaths of fidelity to the king as its first Grand Master and assumed the obligations of the order. These included confession and communion at a mass on the first day and at Pentecost each year and, in addition, the recital of a daily office.¹⁴⁶ They were also required to wear at all times a pendant cross on a sky-blue silk ribbon around their necks and a smaller cross in golden velvet sewn onto their outer garments. The king invested them, each clad in a ceremonial black cloak (over the shoulders of which was a mantelet of gold cloth) and the golden necklace of the order.¹⁴⁷ Bordering the mantelet and on the necklace itself was the device of the king’s interlaced initials, interspersed by fleur-de-lis, the petals of which were transformed into flames of eloquence, representing the Holy Spirit, or Pneuma—the gift of speaking in tongues that had descended upon Christ’s disciples at Pentecost.¹⁴⁸ There, enveloping the vocal chords of the king’s closest aristocrats, was the most powerful reminder—to them and others—of how the king saw their responsibility in governing the passions of the kingdom. ¹⁴⁵ Boucher, ‘L’Ordre du Saint-Esprit’. ¹⁴⁶ Le Livre des statvts, article 110. ¹⁴⁷ Ibid., articles 8; 85 and 86, pp. 15 and 40. The scene is presented in an illuminated manuscript prepared by Martin Courtigier, sieur de La Fontaine, herald, which formed part of the royal library at Fontainebleau, and is now in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale—Quentin-Bauchart, La Bibliothèque de Fontainebleau, 168. Cf. L’Estoile, iii. 11–12. ¹⁴⁸ Le Livre des statvts, article 87.

3 The Estates of Blois and the Bien Public So far, we have concentrated on the Palace Academy of Henri III, emphasizing that its moral philosophy was not an escape from the emerging national crisis of 1576, but an approach to the kingdom’s reformation. It is now time to examine the estates general of Blois, summoned there for 15 November 1576. As an instrument for the pacification and reformation of the realm it proved a broken reed, incapable of delivering the reformation implied in the discussions at the academy. Yet contemporaries had high hopes of what it could achieve. Its delegates arrived equipped with cahiers which had carefully considered the issues of peace and reform, committed to a sense of the ‘commonwealth’. What can their deliberations tell us about the depth of commitment to the reformation of the kingdom more broadly in the kingdom? Why were the estates a failure?

A B ENEFICENT MY TH The convocation of an estates general was a rare event in Renaissance France. It had only occurred twice in living memory for those deputies summoned to Blois, and only three times in the previous century. Ten months of deliberations over a period of a century hardly count as an institution. And, since the estates general had only reached maturity towards the end of the fifteenth century, the delegates at Blois had the distinction of being the first summoned by a king in the plenitude of his power. The rarity of the event should be contrasted, however, with the near-universal beneficence accorded it. If the estates was not a well-established institution, it was a powerful idea. Its rarity merely contributed to further the fiction that its convocation was a beacon of counsel and a balm to every ill in society. Sixteenth-century French society was composed of a variety of corps. Each created its own sense of belonging, and with it, responsibilities—these latter being what Renaissance humanists never tired of describing in Ciceronian

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terms as an ‘office’. The benefit ascribed to the estates general was that it embodied the corps mystique of the kingdom, the sum total of the offices that constituted its organic whole. The fiction of the health-giving effects of holding the estates general was as compelling for royal servants as anyone else in public life in sixteenth-century France. Only anachronistic nineteenthcentury liberal notions of ‘government’ and ‘opposition’ have misled us into thinking otherwise. When the chancellor of the kingdom, Michel de L’Hospital, rose to address the estates general summoned to Orléans in 1561, he won the approval of his audience with an evocation of their fundamental utility and necessity. We shall probably never know exactly what he said. But a contemporary protestant presented his arguments in terms that would find repeated echoes in the pamphlet literature of the later 1560s.¹ French kings of old held frequent estates general, allowing them to consult their subjects on important matters of state, take counsel from them, hear and answer their petitions. The people received ‘great good’ thereby, and not at the expense of the king’s authority, since it never diminished a king to do justice. The estates revealed the truth about the government of the realm to kings from whom it was often hidden by their close servants. Royal advisers who set their face against the estates were self-interested flatterers who sought to concentrate power in their own hands. The ‘bien commun’ accorded the estates was thus centrally located in important myths about royal counsel, civilized rule, and the dangers of tyranny. The estates general summoned to Orléans in December 1560 and then again to Pontoise in August 1561 reflected this beneficent fiction in its cahiers. In the subsequent civil wars of the 1560s, the summoning of the estates general became a central tenet of protestant political demands, justified by the manifest corruption in the kingdom and the exclusion of the nobility from its ‘natural’ role in the councils of the realm by malevolent, cunning Italians installed in high favour around Catherine de Médicis. This was not the first time in the history of the French polity that such themes had been deployed. The movement against Louis XI led by the dukes of Bourbon, Berry, Dunois, Nevers, and Armagnac almost a century earlier in 1465, and known as the War of the Public Weal, served as model, justification, and manifesto for the protestant opponents to Charles IX. In the Mémoires des occasions de la guerre (1567), the reference points were transparent. As in the fifteenth century, ‘bad government’ had resulted in disorder in the state which only the estates ¹ Descimon (ed.), Michel de L’Hospital: Discours, 73 f.

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general (as in 1484) would remedy.² The ‘Memoirs’ in the title were the Cronique et hystoire of Philippe de Commynes. An accompanying pamphlet, De la nécessité d’assembler les états (1567), linked citations from the same source with extracts from the speeches of Michel de Marillac, archbishop of Vienne, to the Assembly of Notables at Fontainebleau in August 1560 and Michel de L’Hospital’s discourse before the estates of Orléans in December 1560 to argue that the assembly of the estates was a necessary prelude to the reform of the state.³ The virtues of the estates general were thus well established in contemporary minds before the writings of François Hotman saw the light of day. The latter used this to make a fundamental point that the estates general was a Frankish birthright. He argued in the preface to his famous Francogallia, published in 1573, that the French commonwealth had flourished for a thousand years with a constitution in which a ‘public council of the people’ (‘publicum gentis consilium’) had played a determining role in its affairs.⁴ The abandonment of the ‘orders’ (‘ordines’) of the estates had led to its ‘inward corruption’. With the restoration of the estates general, ‘we may confidently trust that our commonwealth will return to health when it is restored by some act of divine beneficence unto its ancient and, so to speak, its natural state’.⁵ In successive chapters, Hotman explored the chroniclers of Merovingian Gaul to prove that the estates had protected the kingdom’s laws and deposed kings who failed to abide by them, or who were on the slippery slope (‘lubricum locum’) towards tyranny.⁶ Towards the close of his book (chapter 18 of the original edition) he turned his attentions briefly to the more recent history of France under Louis XI. The estates general remained ‘sacrosanct’ until that ‘most shrewd and crafty’ of kings.⁷ Since he proved unwilling to accept the necessary advice of the estates general, the magnates of the kingdom assembled an army to (in the words of Philippe de Commynes) ‘secure the public welfare and be able to show the king by force the corruption of his administration of the commonwealth’.⁸ The addition of the ‘vi’—‘by force’—was made to the second Latin edition of Francogallia, published in the late spring of 1576, a chilling grace-note to contemporaries who were at that very moment watching a king being brought reluctantly to the peace table to ² ³ ⁴ ⁵

Mémoires des occasions de la guerre (1567). De la nécessité d’assembler les estats (1567), unpag. Cf. Commynes, bk. 5, ch. 18. Giesey and Salmon (eds.), Hotman: Francogallia, 136–45. Ibid. 143. ⁶ Ibid. 155. ⁷ Ibid. 441. ⁸ Ibid.

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concede the summoning of an estates general by the military forces of the ‘confederates’. Hotman’s argument was powerful because his views about the estates general were shared across a spectrum of political opinions and the religious divide. On the eve of Henri III’s accession to power in 1574, the lieutenantgeneral in Burgundy reported that the provincial estates wanted the estates general to be summoned.⁹ The same demand was presented as the key to reforming the kingdom by the confederate princes who joined forces with the protestants in revolt in 1574–5. Henri de Montmorency-Damville’s ‘Declaration’ of 3 November 1574 culminated in the rallying cry of the estates general.¹⁰ That of François d’Alençon, the king’s brother, dated 18 September 1575, said that the estates general was a route to the reformation of the kingdom that was sanctified by precedent.¹¹ Like his brother (now Henri III), François d’Alençon understood well enough the link between an aristocratic ‘reversionary interest’ and the clarion call for reformation. From 1576 onwards, Alençon served as a pole of attraction for reformist sentiments, an ‘esprit vif et ambitieux’ who had, as the Venetian ambassador Lippomano noted, ‘toujours montré le désir de reformer le royaume’.¹² Both Damville and Alençon linked the estates general with the closely allied myth of the summoning of a French council of the church to resolve, once for all, the religious discords that divided France.¹³ Sceptics mainly kept their opinions to themselves. Writing in his private diary, the royal secretary, Jules Gassot, was equivocal.¹⁴ Thinking heads of the clerical order knew only too well their wealth and privileges had come under threat at Orléans and Pontoise. They could hardly say so publicly, but it could happen again. One of their number, probably Jehan Le Monnier, archdeacon of Sablé in the diocese of Le Mans, sub-dean of the cathedral chapter of Chartres, vicar-general to the Cardinal de Bourbon at the abbey of Notre Dame de La Coulture, put his doubts on paper. He recognized that the estates general was generally regarded as a good thing. But, in times of religious strife, it could be used for political ends. Protestants would seek to have the free exercise of their religion enshrined by the estates general. The other two orders would probably accept the proposition in order to keep the ⁹ ¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴

Tavannes (ed.), Mémoires, in Michaud and Poujoulat, viii. 466–7. Devic and Vaissète, xii. cols. 105–111, esp. col. 111. Declaration de Monseigneur Francois fils & frere du Roy (1575). Tommaseo (ed.), Relations, ii. 625; 627. Patterson, ‘The Huguenot Appeal for a Return to Poissy’, 247–57. Gassot, 29.

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peace. Heretics would thus become recognized in the state and the catholic church would be emasculated. Protestants would demand the payment of their ministers from clerical resources and their exemption from tithes, and challenge the separate status of the clerical order in the estates. Was that not the inevitable implication of Hotman’s presentation of the estates general in Francogallia?¹⁵ In any estates general, clerical revenues were under threat, ‘car cest laumosne ou tant de chevaulx harissent’. It is essential to keep these fears in mind alongside the chorus of optimism that greeted the convocation of the estates general in August 1576. The latter was a clear recognition of a national crisis.¹⁶ ‘Chacun crie après l’assemblee des Estats, comme après l’vnique remede de tous nos maux,’ wrote Philippe Du Plessis Mornay.¹⁷ The estates general became a vehicle for hopes and desires that no such institution, even one more mature and less subject to political management and interference than that summoned to Blois, could realize.

THE PEACE OF MONSIEUR (6 MAY 1576) AND ITS AFTERMATH The estates general at Blois in 1576 was the only national assembly whose convocation was the result of an edict. That edict was the only pacification inextricably to link religious peace and reformation. The king signed the edict of Beaulieu, later known as the peace of Monsieur, on 6 May of that year. By clause 58, the king bound himself to summon delegates to a forthcoming assembly within six months. The agent for the summoning of the estates general, the peace of Monsieur was also responsible for its failure. The edict of Beaulieu, as I have argued elsewhere, was based on principles that were different from all the other attempts at state-inaugurated religious pacification in the wars of religion. The edict proposed a genuine religious pluralism, unrestricted by place and unfettered by legal definition.¹⁸ The ¹⁵ BN MS Fr 5303 fo. 191v [endorsed in another hand: ‘Aduis de plusieurs grandz et notables personages pour scavoir sil estoit expedient de faire une assemblee generalle des troys estatz de france en la ville de bloys en lan 1566 regnant henry 2 de ce nom’—on internal evidence, it dates from 1579]. ¹⁶ BN MS Fr nouv acq 7738 fo. 288 [‘Protestation faite par ceux de la Relligion sur la tenuë des Estats generaux de france’]; cf. Jacques de Bauquemare in October 1576—Robillard, i. 233. ¹⁷ [Philippe Du Plessis Mornay], Remonstrance avx Estatz pour la Paix (Lyon, 1578), 42. ¹⁸ Greengrass, ‘Pluralism and Equality’.

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principle it enunciated was not privilege but equality. The protestants were to be ‘compatriotes’ with the catholics and to have the same rights of worship as catholics. The principle of equality was extended to the legal system and, in protestant demands, the estates general. It was these principles that lay at the heart of the hostile reactions that it generated in the minds of catholics. The edict was hastily registered in the Parlements on the grounds of political prudence and necessity. In reality, however, there was a dichotomy in the months afterwards between the public acceptance of its terms on the one hand, and private hostility on the other. That antipathy became more public in the secure places where the protestants were given rights of garrison under the edict. Angoulême and Bourges refused to have any protestant troops in their midst before the signing of the peace. They were joined shortly afterwards by the Picardy frontier stronghold town of Péronne. In the articles particuliers of the peace of Monsieur, the king had granted the governorship of the province of Picardy to the young protestant prince of Condé, where the latter had much of his landed wealth and family’s influence.¹⁹ Péronne was destined to be a pledge of security for Condé and the protestants of Picardy. But the local gentry around Péronne saw the situation differently. They argued (as they had successfully in 1563) that to hand the town to a protestant garrison weakened northern frontier defences, and the more so since Don John’s imminent arrival in the Low Countries was expected to provoke an expatriation of that region’s protestants who would look to places like Péronne for their survival. Fortified by the success of that earlier petition, Péronne sought to achieve exemption from the terms of the pacification. Our knowledge of how it did so comes from evidence provided by a cathedral canon of the city, Gabriel Du Préau. In 1581, he completed a ‘general and universal’ history of the ‘state and success of the church’, publishing it two years later.²⁰ Du Préau’s first publication, as it happened, had been a treatise on ethical philosophy in 1559.²¹ In it, he presented a detailed picture of the soul and the role of the passions within it and revealed the considerable influence upon him of Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophy. It would have made interesting reading to the members of the Palace Academy. His history, however, was a more mature work, a mirror of the deformity of the times and the means to their reformation. Princes should remember that their deeds would be judged. Tyranny was always and ever the same. Tyrants came to a ¹⁹ Neuschel, Word of Honor, esp. ch. 5. ²⁰ The preface is dated: Péronne, 1 November 1581. ²¹ Préau, De la cognoissance de soymesme (1559).

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bad end. God’s providence protected his church from them, and equally from false prophets and heretics. And, in the apparitions and strange events that he chronicled, Du Préau detected a pattern. These were signs of a cataclysmic change. In such periods, realms were humbled, people renounced their kings, rulers were governed by favourites, and disordered human passions reigned. When it came to contemporary events, the evidence that he was living at the end of an age was overwhelming. The events at Péronne in 1576 were one manifestation of it. Organizing the petition to exclude Péronne from the terms of the peace of Monsieur were two of the more wealthy local gentry around Péronne, Antoine d’Estourmel, sieur de Pleinville, and Jacques de Moujan, sieur de Morlevront and Ablincourt (var.: Happlincourt). Du Préau describes in detail how they went about it.²² It proved to be a frustrating business, not least because the local lieutenant, Jacques d’Humières, was under instructions to assist in the handover of the stronghold. But d’Estourmel and Ablincourt rallied the nobility in the town, where they agreed upon a covenant of association. Du Préau does not give its precise terms, but there was something in writing, probably a signed formulary, that they submitted to d’Humières, who forwarded it to the king.²³ But by then, the Péronnais were acting as a public conduit for the wider disquiet in northern France. Almost despite itself, the so-called ‘League of Péronne’ had been born. Jean-Marie Constant has referred to it as the ‘mystery’ of Péronne.²⁴ In reality, it is a double mystery. What exactly were the terms of the formulary? And how far did its influence extend? Two contemporary pamphlets were published without imprint or authorization in the name of the ‘prelates, nobles, gentlemen, captains, soldiers and inhabitants of the towns and countryside of Picardy’.²⁵ In the first (the Articles), they seemingly agreed on oath to commit themselves to the last drop of their blood ‘pour la conservation de ladicte ville et de toute la province en l’obéissance du roi et en l’observance de l’Eglise catholique apostolique et romaine’. To do so, they established a ‘saincte et chrestienne union, parfaicte intelligence et correspondance de tous les fidèles, loyaux et bons subjects du roi’. A local militia was envisaged, led by a military chief who would also be advised by a council which would keep in contact with others in the province as well as its neighbours in the ²² ²³ ²⁴ ²⁵

Greengrass, ‘Pluralism and Equality’. Préau, Histoire de l’estat, ii, fos. 632–4; LH3, ii, Nos. 1879–80. Constant, La Ligue, 70. Articles de la ligue & association (1576); Conspiration faicte en Picardie (1576).

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Southern Netherlands. They would keep a gentleman at court, and a secret roll of signatories to the League. The second text (the Conspiration) amplified the reasons for wanting to oppose Condé. In recent years, however, doubts have been expressed about these texts’ authenticity.²⁶ No signed originals of the articles exist, the printed versions have no provenance, and they are first highlighted by the protestant historian La Popelinière in his Histoire de la France published at La Rochelle in 1581.²⁷ Internal evidence marks them out as protestant-inspired propaganda pieces, repackaging recent confederate ideas in catholic wrapping and seeking to discredit the catholics in the immediate prelude to the estates general. If so, it is significant that Du Préau devoted so much energy in his ‘History’ to counter La Popelinière’s account, and the privilege to the 1583 edition explicitly mentioned that it was to be stocked by booksellers in preference to the latter. Should we not see Du Préau as seeking to set the record straight, and especially in so far as events at Péronne were concerned? In which case, he succeeded, but only up to a point. In a panorama of world history which placed God at the heart of events, the local legitimacy of the Picardy nobility was defended. But there had been a league. Whether it involved local militias, councils, signatories, and paramilitary paraphernalia, or whether this was a protestant propagandist gloss, we shall probably never know. But we should not dismiss the testimony of the mayor and aldermen (échevins) of Amiens, eyes and ears of the capital of Picardy, who warned the king in the middle of July of levies of men and money in various places by ‘many gentlemen in this country’ who sought to ‘pratiquer’ the towns to join their ‘party’.²⁸ How far did such sympathies extend? It is difficult to know for sure. The League spread like clover in grass, underneath the veneer of apparent public compliance with the terms of Beaulieu. The king wrote of ‘leagues’ in Picardy centring on Abbeville, Amiens, Saint-Quentin, Beauvais, and Corbie and the Venetian ambassador Morosini had word of similar movements too.²⁹ In Poitou, there was something similar ‘in imitation of certain other provinces’.³⁰ Henri III sought to defuse the movement with a tactical retreat, of which some Picard nobles already had word on 12 July.³¹ Saint-Jean d’Angély was substituted for Péronne as Condé’s guarantee stronghold. Letters were ²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰

Orlea, La Noblesse, 37–8; Carroll, Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion, 163. La Popelinière, fos. 319–21. AC Amiens BB 42 fo. 131; cf. Pichon, Analyse, 37. LH3, ii, No. 1886; BN MS It 1729 fo. 757 (copy). La Popelinière, ii, fo. 316. ³¹ Préau, Histoire de l’estat, ii, fo. 637v .

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dispatched in July and August to the échevins of Amiens, Montdidier, and elsewhere, urging them to stay loyal and requiring others not to ‘entendre aux praticques de ces turbulens et factieux’.³² Signed affidavits were exacted from the dukes of Guise, Mayenne, and Nemours on 2 August to the effect that they would not oppose the terms of the edict of pacification, and copies of them sent on to Condé as a pledge of good faith towards its implementation despite the leagues.³³ But, by the end of August, the Péronne League had spread further. L’Estoile reported its existence in Paris in October.³⁴ Its activities threatened the electoral season of the forthcoming estates general, whose convocation was proclaimed at Blois on 6 August.³⁵ The summons specified the holding of estates in which the petitions, complaints, and grievances of everyone ‘sans exception de personnes’ would be heard.³⁶ It was important, therefore, that the elections were not manipulated. In the summer of 1576, catholics with a long memory remembered the elections for the estates general of Pontoise sixteen years earlier. Then, sensing destiny on their side, the protestant minority had bent the electoral process to their own advantage.³⁷ Pre-formulated protestant articles of grievances were circulated for localities to insert into their cahiers. Protestant nobles turned up in arms to their seneschalcy meetings. At Poitiers they tied their handkerchiefs to their hats and around their necks in order to be identified by their coreligionists. In various places protestants acted as a ‘party’ to ensure that candidates favourable to their cause were elected to the estates, especially among the third estate. Péronnais sympathizers used the memory of such tactics to their advantage. One of the memoranda in circulation in the late summer of 1576 was to the effect that the Huguenots already had a league, within and without the realm, and that catholics should not await the outcome of such ‘designs’ but anticipate them.³⁸ But how was the king to intervene to prevent manipulation without himself being charged with interference in the arcane electoral procedures?³⁹ So Henri III acted circumspectly. To Picardy, he dispatched François Le Roy, sieur de Chavigny, with orders to assemble those overseeing the elections ³² AC Amiens, BB 42 fo. 133 [Henri III to the mayor and aldermen of Amiens, Paris, 24 July 1576]. Cf. Beauville, Recueil, i. 227. ³³ L’Estoile, ii. 50; LH3, iii, No. 1999. ³⁴ L’Estoile, ii. 60. ³⁵ Charleville, Les États généraux de 1576, 21–31. ³⁶ Ibid. 23; cf. individual letters of convocation in Lalourcé and Duval, Forme générale, ii, No. 6 (pp. 12–14). ³⁷ Valois, ‘Les États de Pontoise’. ³⁸ Leroy (ed.), Chronique de Troyes, ii. 818. ³⁹ Major, The Deputies . . . in Renaissance France.

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and cahiers of the estates.⁴⁰ Chavigny had seen military service with the duke of Guise, been a king’s lieutenant in the Touraine, and was currently one of the two captains of the gentlemen of the king’s household.⁴¹ He was Loyalty Writ Large. To the assembled estates of the government of Péronne, whom he met on 7 September, he announced that the king knew of their illegal associations. His Majesty suspected that the artifices of wicked men ‘pour troubler vn chacun & seruir à leurs passions’ had deflected their true loyalty. He would protect the catholic church, his nobility, and his poor subjects, and together they would reform the realm. Meanwhile, the evidence was growing that something was up in Normandy, Champagne, and Brittany and envoys were dispatched there too to find out what was happening.⁴² A general letter sent out on 5 October to all provincial governors and lieutenants sought to ensure that everyone was given the opportunity to attend the meetings and submit what cahiers they wanted, without political interference.⁴³ What was the impact of these leagues and associations on the elections? Protestants had no doubt that there was a systematic effort to exclude them. They had anticipated a parity of delegates at the estates general but, by September 1576, when they presented a petition to the king, they feared being excluded altogether.⁴⁴ The protestants of Paris, amongst others, complained of sharp practices.⁴⁵ Some of their fears were self-induced. They had the opportunity, if they wished, to deposit billets de plaintes at the hôtel de ville and Henri III insisted on 28 September that the prévôt des marchands establish ‘un coffre ayant ouverture en forme de tronc’ at the town hall to receive all such bills anonymously.⁴⁶ It is possible that the king had seen the celebrated bocca or stone postboxes erected in Venice to receive anonymous complaints about the Venetian state. These were the architectural adjuncts of the Roman ‘censors’ that humanist-trained French notables like Pierre Ayrault admired ⁴⁰ Préau, Histoire de l’estat, ii, fos. 640 f. Cf. AC Amiens BB 42 fo. 135 [report of his arrival on 16 August 1576]. ⁴¹ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, 74; 77; 113; 189. ⁴² BN MS Fr 3321 fo. 35 [Henri III to Louis de Bourbon, Paris, 2 September 1576]—in Nevers, i. 110–13. ⁴³ BN MS Fr 3329 fo. 114 [Henri III to François Gouffier de Bonnivet, sieur de Crèvecœur, Paris, 5 October 1576]. ⁴⁴ BN MS Fr 4765 fos. 79–107 [‘Cayer des articles concernans le faict de la paciffication Presentees au Roy estant a Paris le mars 1576 de la part de Monseigneur le duc dallencon Par les deputtez des prouinces Associez’], esp. ¶ 75 (fo. 93); BN MS Fr 7738 fos. 288–91; cited at 289v –290. ⁴⁵ La Popelinière, ii, fos. 332 f. ⁴⁶ Lalourcé and Duval, Forme général, ii. 311–12. The idea was also adopted at Blois (Bergevin and Dupré, Histoire de Blois, ii. 105).

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and wanted to see adopted in France.⁴⁷ But the reality was that, after the massacre of St Bartholomew, the protestants in northern France had been reduced to a minority which the procedures of electoral colleges and the drafting of cahiers would marginalize. Many protestant nobles may well have been frightened off by the prospects of attending an electoral convention in person. Baillis and seneschals, however, appear often (as at Le Mans and Montdidier, for example) to have done their best to ensure that proceedings did not descend into public quarrels or brawls.⁴⁸ Even so, there were threatening incidents in various localities, such as one recorded by the curé of Provins, Claude Haton, where catholic nobles attending the noble convocation of the bailliage of Provins found the demands of the protestant minority too much to bear. Some of them reached for their swords and invited the Huguenots on the spot to armed combat, demanding that the first clause of their cahier declare the protestants ‘une pure menterie et ydolâtrie’.⁴⁹ Not surprisingly, protestant nobles often attended by proxy. But in Blois, Poitiers, and probably elsewhere, these proxy votes were disallowed. So the protestant perception that there was a conspiracy to exclude them gathered strength. The preparations for the estates general, in short, raised political consciousness at a local level. Election meetings could act, as at Péronne, as a magnet for a league, but they could also demonstrate solidarity against one. When, for example, the sieur d’Eschelles, seigneur d’Ouches, one of the small number of protestant nobles attending the convocation of the bailliage of Blois, sought to raise the question of the edict of pacification, he was silenced by his compatriots: ‘Nous avons résolu de ne toucher et ne parler en aucune manière du fait de la religion; cependant nous vous tenons pour bons parents, voisins et amis.’⁵⁰ Even so, such issues had a tendency to take over. There must have been many instances where, rather than the catholic League influencing the elections for the estates general it was the reverse; the preliminary convocations of the latter provided a point of crystallization for opinions that had not taken shape up to that point. Discussions in and outside the electoral colleges were bound to take place and, as they did so, opinions consolidated. Individuals took the opportunity to rally their ⁴⁷ Ayrault, De l’ordre et instruction justiciaire (1576); Parsons, ‘The Roman Censors’. A proposal for a ‘petit coffret’ at the estates was, however, rejected—Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 122–3. ⁴⁸ Cauvin, États du Maine, 13–17; BN MS Fr 3329 fo. 40. ⁴⁹ BN MS Fr 11575 fos. 683v –684—cited in Orlea, La Noblesse, 90. ⁵⁰ Bergevin and Dupré, Histoire de Blois, ii. 108–9.

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kin and demonstrate their solidarities. So, perhaps with memories of the Huguenot handkerchiefs of a quarter of a century earlier in the sénéchaussée of Poithou and Maillezais, Georges de La Trémoïlle, marquis de Royan, wrote to his brother Louis III de La Trémoïlle to encourage him to attend the forthcoming Poitiers convocation on 8 October 1576.⁵¹ Louis de La Trémoïlle, already pulling the strings of the incipient catholic association in Poitou, answered the call. Two protestant gentlemen were in attendance, claiming that they had proxies from their coreligionists. After the election of Georges de La Trémoïlle as the deputy, the protestants petitioned the duke to the effect that they had been misled, but he overruled them.⁵² Noble connections and catholic kinship networks had gathered support from across this straggling seneschalcy, and the protestants in Poitou felt cheated.⁵³ The same subtle ralliement occurred in the convocation of the Picardy prévôté of Montdidier, which is where the frontier towns of Péronne and Roye submitted their cahiers. In the surviving procès verbal of the convocation, Jacques d’Humières, responsible for summoning the electoral college as governor and prévôt, was keen to demonstrate that everything was done by the book.⁵⁴ The process of summons to the meeting on 12 September was recorded in great detail. With over sixty clerical delegates (including a large contingent of curés), thirty-seven nobles, and over 250 representatives of the third estate (syndics, mayors, élus, and a fair number of laboureurs) in attendance, a large crowd gathered.⁵⁵ These delegates were then responsible for drafting the cahiers. Over a month was allowed for the submission of billets de remontrance before the college was reconvened on 23 October. Attendance at that second meeting was thin and a further summons was issued for the following week on 30 October, with instructions that church bells were to call the local inhabitants after mass to prepare their cahiers and with assurances that, if they brought their billets with them to the meeting, they would be heard. ⁵¹ Marchegay and Imbert (eds.), Lettres missives, 238–9. ⁵² BN MS 23986 fos. 258–60. ⁵³ Only a fraction of the delegates who attended were acknowledged protestants. François de Pons, seigneur de Mirambeau (sénéchaussée of Saintonge), and Claude de La Croix (bailliage of Sézanne, Champagne) were acknowledged protestant nobles, but protestant localities (the government and bailliage of La Rochelle, the sénéchaussée of Beaucaire in Languedoc, the town of Montpellier, the county of Armagnac, etc.) failed to send their quota. Du Plessis Mornay may not have been alone in being elected by his bailliage (Senlis) but refusing to attend. ⁵⁴ BN MS Fr 3329 fos. 20–44 [‘L’an mil cincq cens soixante seize le mercredy douziesme jour de septembre’—endorsed in a later hand: ‘Proces Verbal sur la commission des Estatz’]. Edited Loutchizkii, Feudal Aristocracy, pièce justificative No. 1. ⁵⁵ Ibid., fos. 20–38.

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On the afternoon of 30 October, the local estates of Montdidier set about confirming the cahier its deputies would carry to Blois. The most revealing debates occurred in the council chamber, which is where the nobility deliberated.⁵⁶ There, Jehan de Poix, seigneur de Séchelles, rose to say that he had ‘charge from many protestant gentlemen’ to read out a cahier, a copy of which he also handed to the clerk of the proceedings.⁵⁷ The copy of this document that accompanies the procès verbal is significant since it is one of the very few surviving protestant petitions prepared for the estates. It called for the estates to commit themselves to the peace of Monsieur.⁵⁸ The king should agree to summon a ‘National Council’ within three years ‘pour paruenir a quelque Reunion ou Refformation de doctrine et ceremonies’, its form to be determined by a council of suitably appointed advisers. Meanwhile, clerics and pastors would formally agree to guarantee one another’s safety. The church should be required to assume the burden of royal debts—with the proviso that they could appoint their own financial agents to do so and that they would be free of royal taxes (décimes). Jean de Rivery, sieur de Pothonville (var.: Botonville), the noble delegate already elected to represent the circumscription at Blois, politely declined to include these demands in the cahier on the technical grounds that Séchelles’s document was presented in the name of the third estate as well as the nobility (and he could not be expected to represent the views of the former) and also on behalf of the protestants of the whole province of Picardy, and not just Montdidier. Séchelles offered to redraft it, but Pothonville responded with a catholic cahier ‘quil a dit auoir este dressez et accordez par ung bon nombre des gentilzhommes dudit ressort’. Its key petition was that the kingdom should be declared a catholic realm and protestants should be invited to abjure their religion and return to the catholic faith. Those that did not wish to do so could sell their property and depart. This clause evidently circulated around many bailliages as a formulary, promoted by the catholic associations. It would be the central plank of the debates about catholicity in the forthcoming estates. Although it probably represented the core response of the majority of the local nobility present, it was not easy to look a fellow nobleman in the eye and vote for his exclusion from the local patrie and his inherited patrimony. Some doubtless felt uneasy as the discussion proceeded until one of their number, ⁵⁶ Orlea, La Noblesse, 94–5. ⁵⁷ BN NS Fr 3329 fos. 28 and 43. Jean de Poix had been a follower of the prince of Condé since 1561 (Potter, ‘The French Protestant Nobility’, 319). ⁵⁸ BN NS Fr 3329 fos. 48–9 [headed ‘Mémoire pour les Etats’].

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Jehan de Mailly, rose to ‘moderate’ the proposed clause.⁵⁹ Protestants who refused to abjure could stay in their lands and property so long as they were ‘paisibles’.⁶⁰ This went down much better, and the amendment was ‘received and approved by all’. Four protestant gentlemen besides Séchelles, unable to sign the resulting cahier, put their names to a revised version of what had been presented in their name. When it was not accepted, they asked for a signed statement to that effect. So, even among the Péronnais nobility, translating the catholic association into a cahier for the estates was not easy. The king asked for a copy of these proceedings to demonstrate that, even in Picardy, the elections had been ‘libres et seures pour tous ceulx qui y sont intervenus’.⁶¹ Electoral rallying was accompanied by manifestos in print and manuscript. A printed catholic ‘advertissement’, for example, was ‘envoyé en cachette par toutes les Prouinces du Royaulme’.⁶² The protestant Nicolas Pithou copied out one such anonymous handbill from Troyes.⁶³ Its author portrayed the League as a stalking ‘Troyan’ or ‘Trojan’ horse that used religion as a mask to disguise political ambition. The outcome would be the creation of an ‘infinité de Roitelets’ and ‘un vray turquisme’. The rich motifs of the politics of pretence, a mirror world where nothing is quite as it seems, of underlying and sinister plots to subvert the order of things and impose an oriental despotism all made their appearance in political literature on the eve of the estates general.⁶⁴ According to Madame de Mornay, her husband circulated ‘mémoires secretz’ among delegates at preliminary assemblies for Blois.⁶⁵ This was in addition to his Remonstrance aux Estatz pour la Paix, a substantial pamphlet that saw print runs in Lyon and Rouen as well as Paris before the year was out. In its opening pages, it read as the work of a moderate lay catholic (which was apparently why it was given an imprimatur by the ⁵⁹ Probably Jehan de Mailly, sieur Denviller[?], a modest nobleman with lands of a declared value of 60 livres in the ban et arrière-ban of 1575 (ibid., fo. 89). ⁶⁰ Ibid., fo. 43v . ⁶¹ Pichon, Analyse, 37 (analysis of a letter from François de Conty, seigneur de Rocquencourt, to d’Humières, 28 October 1576). ⁶² BN MS Fr 23040 fos. 51 f. ⁶³ Leroy (ed.), Chronique de Troyes, ii. 819–30. ⁶⁴ In late October 1576, the ‘memorandum’ of the Parisian lawyer Jean David circulated in Paris before appearing as two complementary pamphlets, published in Lyon in November under the titles Abrégé d’un discours faict avec sa Saincteté and Extraict du conseil secret. They exploited the ‘Menippean’ device of a confidential audience with the pope in order to reveal Guise’s hidden ambitions. Specialists have always regarded them as ‘vrais faux’ protestant pamphlets, albeit ones that may have influenced the king (Feist, ‘Le Mémoire de David’; Orlea, La Noblesse), 39–40; Constant, La Ligue, 73–5). ⁶⁵ Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 130.

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chancellor).⁶⁶ Only recently has Philippe Du Plessis Mornay been confirmed as its author beyond doubt. He argued for a free estates general to consolidate peace and reform the realm, two elements which marched hand in hand.⁶⁷ He cited an old proverb to the effect that good laws were never heard above the noise of trumpets.⁶⁸ Much of the text was devoted to defending the necessity, if not the desirability, of religious pluralism in the realm. Given recent history, it was evident that the war against the protestants could not be won at an acceptable cost. Those who refused to accept this necessity were creating castles in the air.⁶⁹ Since what everyone wanted, namely unity around one religion, could not be achieved, ‘il faut vouloir ce qu’on peut, si on ne peut tout ce qu’on veut’.⁷⁰ Protestants were Christians who shared the same God, sought the same Christ, believed in the same Bible as their catholic compatriots, with whom they shared the same paternity in the French kingdom. Like catholics, they also sought a fundamental reformation, the only difference being that they wanted to extend it to include the church. There were some catholics who accepted that some changes were needed there too. But such a reformation could only be achieved—in the state as in the church—by reasoned debate: ‘sur la teste, & sur le cerveau, il n’y a prise que par les oreilles.’⁷¹ The estates general of Orléans back in 1560 had been a missed opportunity. Such a tragedy must be avoided a second time. Why was there so much controversy about granting protestants the right to worship everywhere, in French cities as well as the countryside? What is ‘tolerable’ in the countryside ought to be equally ‘tolerable’ in the towns. The latter were dominated by markets and there ought to be a market economy in religions, a laissez-faire in truth. Contemporary examples from Germany, Poland, and elsewhere demonstrated that political entities could survive a plurality of religions. What they could not survive was corruption, and those who sought to frustrate or deflect the forthcoming estates misjudged the seriousness of the situation.⁷² The only remedy was ‘vne reformation en cest Estat’ and this is what the estates general must accomplish. In reality, however, as the issues became more politicized, so the likelihood of a successful outcome to the estates receded. The small and unrepresentative sample of surviving cahiers de remonstrance that accompanied the delegates to Blois reveals both a ⁶⁶ Mémoires de Madame de Mornay, i. 109–10. ⁶⁷ Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 118–19. ⁶⁸ Remonstrance avx Estatz pour la Paix (Lyon, 1576), 3. ⁶⁹ ‘ou le zele, ou la passion, ou le peu qu’ilz ont paty’ had led them astray, ‘Entant qu’en eux est des passions, ou illusions, qui leur ont iusques icy faict voir vne chose pour l’autre’. Ibid. 10. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 6. ⁷¹ Ibid. 12. ⁷² Ibid. 52.

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longing for peace and reformation, and profound divisions on how to achieve either.⁷³

SET TING AN AGENDA The inauguration of the estates general was an occasion for political theatre. By 26 November, many delegates had arrived and, on Friday, 30 November, official proceedings commenced with the invocation of God’s blessing.⁷⁴ Delegates processed from the church of Saint-Sauveur to the royal palace where a selection of senior clerics accompanied the king to the chapel to hear mass and watch him receive the sacrament.⁷⁵ There they heard Guillaume Ruzé, bishop of Angers and royal confessor, preach on the text: ‘Fear God. Honour the king. Seek Fraternity’.⁷⁶ Drawing together the season of Advent and the estates, he reminded delegates that all reformation of life began with penitence, inspired by a ‘filial’ fear of God’s wrath (a fear of displeasing God), rather than a ‘servile’ one (a fear of being punished).⁷⁷ The delegates at the estates general represented the realm, and God would hear and answer their prayers if they were truly penitent. Corruption from within was more insidious than threats from without. He reminded them of a remark by the cardinal of Lorraine to the effect that ‘il ne craignoit point que jamais les Hereticques nous puissent surmonter mais bien craignoit que de nous mesmes nous puissions nous deffaire’.⁷⁸ The French were descended from the Trojans and they should remember that the Trojan horse was their weakness. In the remainder of his sermon, he highlighted the immensity of the task confronting them. Delegates sniggered at his ponderous comparison of them to Jonah in the whale, discovering repentance.⁷⁹ The inauguration of the estates took place on Thursday, 6 December in what was already known as ‘the great hall of the estates’ of the palace at Blois. Artus de La Fontaine-Soliers, baron d’Ognon, a former client of the Constable Anne de Montmorency and lieutenant of his military company, ⁷³ Almost no clerical cahiers appear to have survived. I have examined six for the nobility, and twenty-three from the third estate. The preliminary cahiers from the Touraine and around Troyes are analysed in Constant, ‘Le Langage politique paysan en 1576’. ⁷⁴ Similar prayers, public processions, and fasts had been ordered by the king from Thursday, 29 November—LH3, iii, No. 2128 [Henri III to Pierre d’Épinac, 24 November 1576]. ⁷⁵ Taix, 8–9. ⁷⁶ 1 Peter 2: 17. ⁷⁷ BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 60–64v ; Taix, 9. ⁷⁸ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 63. ⁷⁹ Ibid., fos. 59v –60.

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superintended every aspect of the preparations.⁸⁰ He was a stickler for detail (not for nothing courtiers joked about ‘getting into Onion’s order’) and every aspect was meticulously planned.⁸¹ Henri III involved himself personally in the details.⁸² It was perhaps the nearest he would ever come to realizing his ideal of a well-ordered royal commonwealth. The ‘bien public’ (common wealth) was a notion as widely diffused as it was capable of different connotations. Who could possibly be against it? As Jean de La Haye, a leading confederate in Poitou, is reputed to have said in 1574, ‘il aymoit mieux estre chef d’vn bien public que d’vn mal public’.⁸³ Its common denominator was the allusion to the ‘well-ordered’ state which it inspired. Jean Bodin’s Six livres de la république, published less than four months before the inauguration of the estates general, had this as its reiterated leitmotif, linking it in the closing chapter to the geometric ‘harmonies’ that underpin such a state. The delegates that took their seats in the great hall on 6 December looked forward to embodying it in their deliberations. In civic festival entries, the king was a silent participant. By contrast, the inauguration of the estates general culminated in an address from the throne, a moment for the assembled notables to be beguiled by royal eloquence. Henri III’s speech was, by common consent, a triumph; the first major royal success of his reign. Jacques-Auguste de Thou recalled that it was rumoured to have been written by the former keeper of the seals, Jean de Morvillier, bishop of Orléans.⁸⁴ Whoever drafted it, they could not choreograph the performance and, as Bodin said, it was delivered ‘d’une grace & action tres-belle’.⁸⁵ Pierre de Blanchefort compared it favourably with that of chancellor de Birague who followed him.⁸⁶ It moved Guillaume de Taix, dean of the cathedral chapter at Troyes and abbot of Basse-Fontaine, to tears.⁸⁷ Guillaume Royer, one of the two deputies from the third estate of the bailliage of Dijon, a barrister at its Parlement, was rapturous in his report to the city’s mayor.⁸⁸ ⁸⁰ Bodin, fo. 4 and v ; BN MS Fr 3324 fo. 90 [endorsed ‘Advis enuoyé de la court durant lassemblee de Bloys’]; Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, 184. ⁸¹ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, 184. ⁸² See BN MS Fr 3328 fo. 6 [Henri III to Simon Fizes, Blois, 4 December 1576, copy] and accompanying ordinance—BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 378–81. ⁸³ [Pierre Brisson], Histoire et vray discours (1578), D iiij. ⁸⁴ De Thou, vii[bk. 63]. 448. The speech was attributed to Morvillier—see, e.g. the papers of Foucault de Saint-Just, de Thou’s contemporary as president in the Parlement at Rennes—BN MS Fr 11469 fo. 34. Morvillier had certainly drafted the king’s speech to the Parlement of Paris in August 1575—see BN MS Fr 5172 fo. 19 and Baguenault de Puchesse, Jean de Morvillier, 330–2. ⁸⁵ Bodin, fo. 4v . ⁸⁶ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 91v . ⁸⁷ Taix, 20. ⁸⁸ Garnier, Correspondance de la mairie de Dijon, i. 62 [No. 305]; cited Drouot, La Première Ligue, 98.

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Speeches of this kind made convenient printed pamphlets, and Henri III’s was widely distributed.⁸⁹ It became a manifesto of royal commitment to peace and reform. The king dexterously aligned himself with the ‘bien public’. The delegates (‘tant de gens de bien d’honneur & experience’) had the task of assisting him to restore it. The source of the malaise lay in the ‘estrange changement’ that had occurred in the realm since the days of his father. The ignorant often attributed everything that went wrong in a state to the mistakes of their prince. In reality, the situation was more complex. He had inherited fundamental divisions that neither his brother Charles nor his mother had been able to pacify. Since coming to the throne he had been compelled to resort to ‘extreme remedies’ in order to restore his authority, knowing all the while the ills that civil war fostered. This was why he had decided to pursue the way of ‘douceur & reconciliation’ (the nearest the speech comes to mentioning the peace of Monsieur). But the realm was full of corruption and division. The task of the estates was to secure the foundations of a secure peace, eliminate corruption, and ‘renger tous estats en bon ordre & discipline’. He called on the delegates to put ‘toutes passions . . . en arriere’ and ‘repurger les mauuaises humeurs de ce Royaume, pour le remettre en sa bonne santé, vigueur & disposition ancienne’. He committed himself to these endeavours, confident that nothing could prevent the ultimate success of their joint efforts. The next three months would prove the extent to which this was illusory.

CATHOLICIT Y A ND THE COMMONWEALTH The sources for what happened at the estates of Blois are inadequate. The foreign ambassadors to the French court, generally so fertile in reporting the latest rumours, were kept some distance from Blois. Each delegate swore to preserve the secrecy of their deliberations.⁹⁰ Fortunately, in addition to the procès verbaux of the proceedings at the clerical and third estates—the formal record of their conclusions—there are three extant private diaries from delegates. That of Guillaume de Taix records the atmosphere and debates of the clerical order from the perspective of an intelligent, Gallicanminded, chapter dean and royal almoner. The diary of Pierre de Blanchefort ⁸⁹ Many copies came off the provincial presses in Orléans, Tours, Troyes, and Poitiers. Two Latin translations were also published in Paris. ⁹⁰ e.g. the decision of the clerical order, Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 108.

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is a detailed account of the activities of a noble deputy who was genuinely interested in the prospects for reform by restoring the nobility to their traditional role in government and society.⁹¹ Jean Bodin, the delegate from the sprawling bailliage of Vermandois in the Île de France, not only kept a diary but published it the following year, partly to justify his conduct in the controversies over catholicity and the alienation of the royal domain in which he became embroiled. One further diary from this period is of exceptional interest: the extracts from that kept by Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers, during the period that he was at court during the estates are a unique record of the conseil d’en haut (so called because it generally met in the royal apartments on the first floor of royal palaces) that advised the king. The duke was a distinctive, even idiosyncratic, figure, never shy of committing his conscience, or his grand, reformist thoughts, to paper. His diary was perhaps compiled to defend himself from the faint mockery that his commitment to a grand crusading enterprise against the protestants evoked, even at court. It certainly exaggerates his personal influence. But it helps us to document the king’s own evolving political strategies in relation to the estates at this crucial time. The debate over catholicity absorbed all three estates for the first month of the deliberations at Blois. It went to the heart of the issues raised by the peace of Monsieur, signed by the king scarcely six months previously. It is customary to interpret this as the impact of politically inspired ‘League’ delegates who had exploited the electoral process to their particular advantage. But this, as we have seen, fails to understand the widespread and deep-rooted convictions of many delegates or the complexity of the political choice that faced them. Truth was one and indivisible. Ecclesiastical and secular authorities had long been responsible for punishing those who strayed from its path. To correct religious error was as necessary as to punish blasphemy or take steps against witchcraft. It was part of the necessary policing of a Christian society. To permit heretics to persist in their erroneous beliefs was morally reprehensible, since it condemned them to eternal damnation. Indulgence did them no favours. There was an elaborate edifice of Christian doctrine to support the view that religious coercion was necessary for the eventual salvation (‘wholeness’) of a sinner, and that of society at large. Persecution was by no means always a manifestation of ‘holy violence’, resulting from eschatological tensions or millenarian concerns, in the wars of religion. It was also an integral ⁹¹ Holt, ‘Attitudes of the French Nobility’.

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part of the necessary policing of a Christian society, a way of governing the disorderly passions that heresy necessarily implied. It relied on an active, reforming magistracy in town and country as well as an engaged, pastoral theology. One did not need to belong to the catholic League to subscribe to these fundamental beliefs, or to regard the peace of Monsieur as a recipe for inevitable chaos and continuing anarchy in the state. The immediate question facing delegates was how they interpreted their local mandate on the issue of catholicity in the light of the political circumstances that they confronted. That was not easy. Even the clerical order had its divisions over the issue for, if they voted for catholicity, were they not thereby committing the church and its resources to funding the subsequent war that would most likely occur? Had not the seriousness of the civil wars already revealed that military campaigns did more damage to the church than an admittedly compromised peace? These doubts clearly existed and the cardinal de Bourbon held separate meetings of deputies in his lodgings at the beginning of the estates, anxious that the clerical order should preserve its unity and moral authority.⁹² Similar hesitations over the catholicity issues also beset the noble order. Catholic grandees and senior prelates sought to influence individual delegates. ‘Messieurs de Guise’—most of the members of the Guise clan—arrived in Blois in the second week of December with an armed entourage of 1,000–1,200 cavalry.⁹³ These military escorts so alarmed the king that he mustered additional companies of cavalry in the environs of Blois, much to the disquiet of deputies. Once installed, the grandees and senior clerics began to influence delegates. Pierre de Blanchefort, the noble deputy from the Nivernais and Donziois, was not alone in being subjected to it. On 29 November he was invited to a ‘conference’, with others from his order, at the lodgings of ‘ung Prelat de ce royaulme’.⁹⁴ A ‘certain formulaire d’association’ (the terms of the catholic League) was read out and those present were invited to sign up to it. The document in question circulated widely around the deputies at the estates.⁹⁵ It was a repackaging of what had probably been the Articles of Péronne for noble delegates at the estates general. The preamble painted a picture of a monarchy that had become too weak to defend the catholic faith. It needed the assistance of its natural defenders (the nobility) who must swear an oath to restore it, if necessary with their lives.⁹⁶ They ⁹² BN MS Fr 3324 fo. 91. ⁹⁵ Ibid., fos. 384v –391v .

⁹³ Ibid., fo. 90v . ⁹⁴ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 54v . ⁹⁶ Ibid., fos. 385v –386.

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promised to obey the king’s provincial governors and lieutenants, or such individuals ‘qui sera esleu pour nostre chef’. If the latter proved complicit with the king’s enemies, they would be deposed and others elected in their place.⁹⁷ Each viscounty or locality within the bailliages should elect a gentleman of sufficiency to advise the elected provincial lieutenant, four of whom would serve as colonels of provincial cavalry units. They agreed to hold themselves in armed readiness to fight in the cause either in their own province or elsewhere, arrangements being sketched out for their reimbursement. Each provincial association would stay in touch with the others and devote themselves to the work of the estates general ‘pour faire une reformation des abbus et desordres qui ont continué de long temps en cedict Royaume esperant que Dieu nous enuoya une bonne reformation par une sy bonne et grande Assemblée’.⁹⁸ Their oath was to be sworn in the name of the Holy Trinity, the eucharistic body of Christ, on the Bible, and on the strength of an individual’s goods and possessions. The document was carefully designed to appeal to noble delegates, implying a promise to perform specific services in anticipation that God would grant his grace and keep France catholic. It echoed the votive obligations of crusading knights.⁹⁹ The solemnity of the oath-taking in the proposed association was itself an attempt to recover the sanctity of the oath as the basis for a godly commonwealth, an attempt that would readily resonate with clerical ideals and noble self-perception. That appeal was not universal. There is no evidence that Blanchefort had seen or read the document before it was read out at the meeting, but he was ready with his own answer to it: ‘[s]eullement Je dis qu’il me sembloit que le Roy ne deuoit estre conseillé a la Guerre pour la playe trop recente du Royaume qu’elle a apporté que celuy qui se plaist ez Guerres Ciuilles nest de Dieu, et fault prier pour luy.’¹⁰⁰ Like many provincial nobles, Blanchefort had a good knowledge of his Bible. Christ had not instructed us, he replied, to pull out the tares from the field but rather to leave them to God to winnow them out at the final harvest. He was also well read in the extensive literature dating back to the early civil wars in defence of religious pluralism. The examples of Germany and Switzerland proved that it was not necessary to impose one religion by force. The attempts to exterminate protestantism in France had gone on for over a generation and, since they had not achieved their objective, they did not carry God’s approval. The word of God had ⁹⁷ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 54v . ⁹⁸ Ibid., fo. 387. ⁹⁹ Brundage, ‘The Votive Obligations of Crusaders’, 77–118; Billacois, The Duel, esp. 201–2. ¹⁰⁰ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 387.

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not been spread by the sword but by persuasive preaching and the exemplary lives of the apostles. What was needed was ‘Une reformation en nostre Esglize Catholique Appostolicque et Romaine . . . par laquelle les hereticques peuuent estre vaillamment Combatus et ne fault douter que nous humiliants deuant Dieu il ne fasse par la assouppir et esteindre touttes heresies schismes diuisions et differents’.¹⁰¹ Such a reformation might occur through a national council of the Gallican church. The recent peace of Monsieur was not a ‘Paix extorquée’ but the measure of a magnanimous king, recognizing that sometimes peace is more important than victory. At all events, he could not in good conscience sign the League and be a king’s servant. When it came to the vote on the issue of catholicity on 19 December, the protestant noble deputy from Saintonge, Mirambeau, led the opposition on the grounds that the edict of pacification had been a legitimate, sovereign decision of the king.¹⁰² Blanchefort, too, opposed it on the grounds that his cahier specifically said the opposite and he regarded a vote for catholicity as a proxy declaration of renewed civil war. Although we do not know exactly how many nobles voted with him, he mentions four others by name from the neighbouring governments of the Orléanais and Burgundy.¹⁰³ The nobility, in other words, were not unremittingly bellicose in their attitudes. The most complex debates occurred among the third estate, since their numerous delegations had to reach a consensus view on the basis of their different mandates within the twelve lobbies, or gouvernements, into which each order was geographically divided. I have already analysed elsewhere these debates, which culminated in the crucial decision in favour of catholicity on 26 December 1576.¹⁰⁴ They graphically reveal the personal, geographical, and political divisions of the deputies over a crucial issue on which they were being subtly manipulated from several quarters. 26 December was a day of dupes in an estates general that has been described as a ‘prolonged day of dupes’.¹⁰⁵ It is difficult to be sure what the king was up to, and that obscurity was intentional. The king had come to regard the recent peace as unjust, because it had been signed under duress. The provincial leagues were a means of overturning it and, at the same time, neutralizing their potential danger. He would put himself at their head and be the principal beneficiary of the ¹⁰¹ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 58. ¹⁰² Ibid., fo. 133. ¹⁰³ Ibid., fo. 194v [Louis du Bueil, seigneur de Racan (deputy, bailliage of Amboise and the Touraine); Pierre Damas, sieur de la Mothe Marcilly (deputy, bailliage of Autun); René de Jousserand, sieur de Landigny (deputy, seneschalcy of Angoumois), and Jean de Languedoc, sieur de Vussay (var.: Pussay, deputy, bailliage of Étampes)]. ¹⁰⁴ Greengrass, ‘A Day in the Life of the Third Estate’. ¹⁰⁵ Chevallier, Henri III, 341.

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explicit oaths of association and loyalty that they existed to create. With their support, the estates general would become the true incarnation of the will of the realm. If each estate committed itself solemnly to catholic reunification, then (in due course) they would have to will the resources, military, moral, and financial, with which to carry it out. The king would graciously assent to the petitions of the three estates and declare the promises which he had made in May 1576 at the peace of Monsieur contrary to his coronation oath and the express will of his people. The protestant military leadership would have to take note of the incorporated will of the realm which was of one resolve on the matter, rallied in resources, strategy, and initiative behind the king. But, if this was his strategy, it was dissimulation on a grand scale. Anjou, the king’s brother, would have to be carried along. The queen mother, who had negotiated the peace, would have to be convinced. The provincial leagues had to be encouraged, but by stealth. There must be no hint of the king bowing to the inevitable, still less of creating an instrument by which individuals would, in the fullness of time, be committing themselves and their wealth to a cause the full implications of which would not be immediately evident to them. The formula and proposed oath for these catholic ‘associations’, as they would be known, was drafted around 2 December and circulated to various provinces. Deputies at the estates only knew of these documents through individual approaches to sign up to them. The king must have been reasonably sure that things were going in the right direction by the meeting of his close advisers on the weekend before Christmas Day. On the same day as the third estate’s debate, arrangements were set in train for Nevers to write a speech by which the grand almoner would announce the catholicity decision to the assembled delegates. But Henri III was keenly aware that a public announcement in the estates general could readily be turned into a so-called inviolable law that would tie his hands and those of his successors. So in the end the announcement was made to his council on 29 December.¹⁰⁶ The peace of Monsieur was never formally abrogated. Delegates came to hear of the king’s declaration before the council by the process of court gossip.¹⁰⁷ And that can only have heightened their concerns that they were pawns in an elaborate game in which the logic behind each move was as baffling as the ¹⁰⁶ BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 179–80; L’Estoile, ii. 87. ¹⁰⁷ So, for example, deputies at Blois quickly became aware of the substance of what had happened (Blanchefort recording it in his diary that same day—BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 177v –178); but the English ambassador, resident along with the others at Saint-Dié, only reported it on 3 January 1577 (CalSPFor (1577), 474).

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stakes were clearly high. If peace and reform failed at the estates of Blois, it was because they were hijacked by other short-term considerations.

CONFERRING FOR THE COMMON WEAL These internal divisions indicated a fundamental difficulty. How could 350 deputies from different backgrounds and divided into three chambers confer about peace and reform, especially when these were issues on which there were such divergent opinions. They were aware, of course, of the past history of failure at the estates general and were concerned to live up to the expectations of reform of the common weal that had been laid upon them. This led them to explore unusual avenues. Their failure was an important element in the eventual impotence of the estates general. The official records of the proceedings of the estates highlight their formal deliberations. At least as important, however, was the opportunity to meet informally. Inchoate notions of the bien public evolved into practical propositions over a dinner table. Members from different estates but the same government met to discuss how best to orchestrate their petitions or how to advance a cause in concert. The corridors of power were enlarged beyond the royal palace to embrace the whole town, its taverns and its lodgings, its churches and chapels. Our difficulty is that we only have fleeting glimpses of the conversations and informal conferences that were the life and soul of the estates general. The diary of Pierre de Blanchefort, noble deputy from the Nivernais, allows us to glimpse the social calendar of a deputy at the beginning of the estates. Blanchefort arrived in Blois on 11 November from Paris. Over a week later, on 23 November, he reported his first informal meeting with other nobles. Their discussions revolved around the sale of office and, in particular, whether one could use the gages that the abolition of office would release to compensate office-holders for their original purchase. They also touched on the exceptional fiscal privileges enjoyed by some towns such that they were now almost ‘villes franches’. At such moments deputies developed their political vocabulary. Blanchefort noted after this first meeting: ‘Jay appris ce mot, que cappituler auec son Roy apres s’estre contre luy esleué et faict guerre est vray felonnie fort subjects a punition.’¹⁰⁸ The next day, he ¹⁰⁸ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 35.

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was the lunch guest of Gratien de Pontville, sieur de Vuleismes, the noble deputy from the bailliage of Sens. There were over a dozen round the table, including various noble delegates at the estates, mainly from Burgundy and Champagne.¹⁰⁹ Blanchefort drafted a memorandum of twenty-eight points concerning judicial reform.¹¹⁰ He included ambitious proposals to recover the independence of seigneurial justice from interference by royal judges and the repatriation of justice to the localities. Blanchefort wanted to see regular assizes (grands jours), with judges chosen on an annual or triennial basis by the provincial estates and holding court for up to six months at a time. He also proposed creating more Parlements, with the present judges distributed to posts in them and joined by an equal number of others, chosen by the localities where the new Parlements were based. Elected judges would be deployed in areas where they had no family connections or local influence. Blanchefort’s line was practical. The superfluity of royal judges led those who purchased their offices not to contribute to the productive wealth of the kingdom. The election of judges on an unpaid basis meant, on the other hand, that ‘les subiects du Roy espargneront plus de temps pour employer en marchandise labeur ou manufacture . . . ’. Subject to scrutiny at the end of their terms of office, they would deliver prompt and expedient justice. Like his compatriots, Blanchefort was establishing his credentials, engaging in the business of the kingdom, and making contacts with like-minded individuals of his order. Proposals for reform were an integral part of these informal discussions. On 27 November, he was invited to join one of the two presidents of the noble order for dinner.¹¹¹ This time the discussion turned to the question of how the orders should present their cahiers. Deputies remembered the difficulties experienced at the estates general of Orléans and Pontoise in 1561. Blanchefort wanted the king to grant the estates the authority to nominate members of his council with whom they would then negotiate the ordinances that would subsequently be passed to the Parlement for approval.¹¹² He was not trying to limit the authority of the king on a permanent basis so much as provide a means whereby the estates general could achieve reform without hindrance. They were joined after dinner by various deputies from the third estate and managed to agree informally that each government should draft ¹⁰⁹ BN MS Fr 16250, fo. 43v . ¹¹⁰ Ibid., fos. 44v –49v . ¹¹¹ Either Adrien de Tiercelin, sieur de Brosses, the noble deputy from Amiens, or Charles de Malain, sieur de Laury. ¹¹² Ibid., fo. 51.

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its own common cahier before trying to concoct an overall set of petitions. There was a gathering sense of confidence and common purpose in their discussions. The next day, it was the turn of François de Pons, sieur de Mirambeau, to invite deputies to his table. The conversation turned to the history and precedents of the estates general. Was not the king a member of their noble order, ‘incorporate’ in the estates but not above them? Could they not raise a glass to the king’s health, confident that he was ‘made of the same wood’ as they were?¹¹³ Then Mirambeau steered the conversation towards the recent edict of pacification. Should deputies not make it a fundamental law of the kingdom? Others argued differently. All laws were subject to future change ‘pour la Congruitté du temps’. There was no such thing as a ‘fundamental law’ that could not, at some stage in the future, be altered when circumstances required. Having eaten well, the deputies dispersed. But it was not long before one of them was told in no uncertain terms that the king had been told of the ‘contrarietté qui estoit en cette conference’.¹¹⁴ It had even been rumoured that Mirambeau had said a protestant grace whilst his guests had followed it with a catholic grace. Blanchefort did not know which to deplore more; the fact that one of their number had apparently revealed their discussions, or such malicious rumours. But it was an incontrovertible sign that the informal activities of the deputies were under scrutiny in high places. On 7 December, deputies divided into their respective governments to begin harmonizing their petitions. That day, a proposal for the three estates to undertake the work of reform in concert with the king’s council emerged—the result of informal discussions over the previous fortnight. It was presented by Joseph Eymar, the Bordeaux magistrate. Erudite and respected, he was probably the person who gave Blanchefort a copy of the coronation oath of Pepin from an old Latin chronicle that he had found. This ‘thresor fort singulier et antique’, as Blanchefort calls it, proved to his satisfaction the ‘antiquité et authorité des Estats’.¹¹⁵ Eymar proposed a nominated commission of councillors from each order to work with nominated members of the king’s council to oversee the adoption of their petitions as ‘inviolable laws’ of the kingdom. Overcoming their hesitations, twelve deputies from each order were nominated on 9 December and the ‘Conference of 36’ had its first meeting. None of ¹¹³ Cited Jouanna, L’Idée de race en France, i. 373–4. ¹¹⁴ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 53v . ¹¹⁵ Ibid., fo. 77; Blanchefort copied the passage into his diary—to use if the legitimacy of the estates general were called into question.

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its deliberations has survived and we cannot even reconstruct its membership. Our only knowledge of its affairs comes from Guillaume de Taix who attended it on behalf of the clergy. Pierre d’Épinac, archbishop of Lyon, became its moderator and spokesman. The estates general was a place where intelligent and articulate clerics could make an impact, and Épinac was determined to do just that. He was from a relatively modest noble family in the Forez, albeit one with excellent connections. He was already dean of the prestigious chapter of Saint-Jean at Lyon when his uncle Antoine d’Albon resigned the archbishopric to him in 1573.¹¹⁶ Épinac had important rivals at court for the prestigious see and the succession had not been a smooth one. However, his colleagues in the clerical order voted him unanimously as the president of their order. He was neither a privy councillor nor a courtier. His energies and ideas as a diocesan reformer were directly reflected in the way he approached the reformation of the realm and the advancement of the bien public. The proposal that the Conference considered in detail on 10 and 11 December was straightforward enough. Where the three orders found themselves in agreement upon a reform, it should be automatically adopted by the king and referred to the Parlement of Paris as a ‘loi inviolable’.¹¹⁷ Where they were not in agreement, the king should be asked to nominate a member of his council to act as an arbiter. The Conference should meet with this (or these) royal councillor(s) to resolve matters of reform in the interests of the public weal. These propositions led to an animated debate on 11 December. Arnaud de Pontac, bishop of Bazas, spoke in favour, supporting it with instances from the past.¹¹⁸ He was followed and supported by a noble deputy whilst the succeeding third estate delegate disagreed. Some argued that, since the king could not know in advance what reforms the estates general might agree upon, he would be signing away his sovereignty. The king would demean his authority if he consented to having his council determined by others, becoming no more than ‘le valet des états’. Others replied that the estates would only agree measures of reform that were to the honour of God and in the interests of the public weal, and thus in the king’s interests as well. If the delegates were merely there to ‘bailler papiers de doléances’, they were no more than glorified messengers. The realm’s difficulties had been caused by the ‘mauvais conseil du roi’. It could hardly be right, therefore, that these same councillors should also be the judge of their proposed reforms. ¹¹⁶ Richard, La Papauté et la Ligue française, chs. 1–3. ¹¹⁸ Taix, 29. ¹¹⁷ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 93v .

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The estates general was merely exercising the legitimate right of récusation, accorded in all sovereign courts to suitors who believed that a judge could not be held to be impartial in his own cause. Had not the king himself, in his opening speech to delegates, declared that they were ‘councillors’ in his kingdom?¹¹⁹ It was legitimate that they should expect to have a voice in the king’s council. Pierre de Gondi, bishop of Paris, provided a way forward. The Conference should not commit its views to paper. Better than a memorandum, why not explore the possibilities with the king in an audience? So it was that the Conference waited upon the king before lunch on 12 December. Épinac, their spokesman, presented a ‘fort gentille & belle petite harangue’ along the lines of what they had discussed. The king, evidently primed (perhaps by Gondi), replied with a deft combination of firmness and tact.¹²⁰ He had no intention of being constrained to surrender his legitimate authority to the delegates. But he knew them to be loyal and faithful subjects.¹²¹ He believed all his councillors to be ‘gens d’honneur et de bien’ and he consented to provide them with a full list of them. They could then choose whomsoever they wished to handle the affairs of the estates, the king being pleased to know in due course ‘quel soupçon on pourroit avoir sur les autres’. Although it was not the ordinary way of doing business, the king was content that a small number of delegates from the estates join with his council. With a final remark to the effect that he expected their petitions shortly, the deputies went down once more on their knees and the audience was over. The momentum for reform had been preserved from being sidelined by a futile debate over royal sovereignty and the estates. Delegates to the Conference reported back to their estates in due course and they resumed the complex task of drafting their cahiers de doléances.¹²² On 16 December, a list of the 134 councillors of state was duly presented to the presidents of the estates and copies of it made for each of the ‘governments’.¹²³ On 17 December, Jean de La Guesle, procureur-général to the Parlement of Paris, spoke before the delegates of each of the chambers in turn.¹²⁴ La Guesle was a known royal quantity. His father had outgrown his Auvergne roots, thanks to his service as Catherine de Médicis’s maître d’hôtel. Under her continued protection he had blossomed in judicial service.¹²⁵ His speech ¹¹⁹ ¹²¹ ¹²³ ¹²⁴

In fact, the king had been less specific. ¹²⁰ Taix, 33; cf. BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 94v –95. Taix, 34. ¹²² Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 122; iii. 204. Ibid., iii. 204; BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 162–165v . ¹²⁵ Popoff, Prosopographie, 72–3. Taix, 35; BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 100v f.

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was to the effect that delegates should understand the ‘goodwill’ of the king towards reform. The king was naturally inclined to exercise a sovereign rule in his state to the end that good should come thereby. But when it came to positive proposals for reform, he was content to share his authority with others. Delegates should know that royal authority was a holy power, however, and he went on to remind them of examples of divine vengeance that befell those who interfered with it. Ozam, king of Israel, had the temerity to touch the Ark of the Covenant and his hand consequently withered away with leprosy. Theopompus was blinded by his deliberate misreading of the Book of Moses. Guillaume de Taix was probably not alone among clerical delegates in musing privately that these examples had a double edge. Did they not also highlight the misfortune awaiting kings who did not protect true religion?¹²⁶ Then La Guesle produced from his pocket a copy of a ‘cahier de réformation’, in reality, two documents that he deposited with each estate in turn.¹²⁷ These constituted an elaborately conceived project of reform of royal authority as it affected the church (on the one hand) and the judiciary (on the other). As he explained to delegates, they originated in the documents that Henri had drafted for consideration by the royal council of his brother Charles IX before he departed for Poland—the ‘testament of youth’ that we have already examined.¹²⁸ The renewed troubles in the kingdom had prevented their being carried forward. But, with the coming of peace in May 1576, the king had returned to them, drafting the proposed articles ‘de sa propre main, et vus exactement par lui seul’ for the estates. His intention was not to stifle their debates but to demonstrate his commitment to reform. The estates requested that the documents be read out to them and then ordered that copies be distributed to each of the twelve ‘governments’ for their deliberations. The proposals in the document relating to the clerical order still survive in a contemporary copy, probably one that was made for the governments.¹²⁹ In thirty-seven clauses, substantial changes were suggested for senior benefices in the church that were within the gift of the crown. No nomination to a senior benefice would be considered before at least six weeks following the resignation of the previous incumbent. The procureur-général was charged ¹²⁶ Taix, 35. ¹²⁷ Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 124; Taix, 36. ¹²⁸ See above, Ch. 1. ¹²⁹ BN MS Fr 16263 fos. 359v –364v [headed in a later hand: ‘Cayer du Roy envoyé à l’assemblée des estats par son Procureur General, 1577’]; Lalourcé and Duval, iii. 461–75.

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to investigate locally on the suitability of a nomination, and candidates must conform to the relevant canonical qualifications for office. In addition, each candidature must have certificates from two doctors of theology as to the catholicity of their doctrine. Once they had received their letters of nomination, they must proceed to obtain papal provisions within six months.¹³⁰ Ecclesiastical ‘reservations’ (i.e. nominations in favorem in advance of an ecclesiastical incumbency becoming vacant) were declared illegal, and pensions on a benefice in favour of the crown or its servants were outlawed. Abbeys and priories held by custodi nos and œconomes, straw men for their real holders, were to be investigated by bishops and archbishops and their reports submitted to the chancellor for further action in six months time.¹³¹ Several clauses encouraged senior clergy to repair churches whilst urging local judicial officials to prosecute those who had obtained rights to cut wood from ecclesiastical forests for repairs, only to divert the proceeds to their own benefit. Bishops and archbishops should take a lead in ecclesiastical reformation by organizing preaching in their cathedrals and holding provincial councils ‘pour la reformation des abbus et vices’.¹³² The crown and senior clerics should collaborate to ensure that parish clergy were canonically appointed. The law officers should bring any cleric suspected of simony before the royal courts.¹³³ Those found to be absent from their benefices without good cause risked seizure of their revenues.¹³⁴ Bishops and senior clergy were to ensure that benefice income was adequately distributed and that pluralism was eradicated.¹³⁵ Clergy serving in noble households were reminded that they were not to act as part-time legal solicitors for their patron.¹³⁶ Several clauses addressed the vexed problem of recovering ecclesiastical property illegally acquired by laymen during the troubles.¹³⁷ A final set of proposals hinted at limiting the rights of foreigners to benefices in the French church and summarized a miscellany of clerical reform issues.¹³⁸ In his reply, Épinac reminded the king that the difficulty lay in the execution of reform and not in its proposition. Henri III had not been the only person to draft reform proposals for the church in 1573. The cardinal of Lorraine had proposed a plan too.¹³⁹ But what had happened? They were passed to the Sorbonne and the Parlement, who approved them. The king had signed up to them too. But the chancellor never drafted the edict and ¹³⁰ ¹³³ ¹³⁶ ¹³⁹

BN MS Fr 16263 arts. 1–3. ¹³¹ Ibid., arts. 4–6. ¹³² Ibid., arts. 7–13. Ibid., art. 14. ¹³⁴ Ibid., arts. 15–16. ¹³⁵ Ibid., arts. 17; 21. Ibid., art. 20. ¹³⁷ Ibid., arts. 22–7. ¹³⁸ Ibid., arts. 30–7. See below, Ch. 9.

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they remained a dead letter. If ecclesiastical reform had stalled, it was not the fault of the clerical order. For his part, Taix noted that the king’s draft made ‘little or no mention’ of local and autonomous clerical election. If the king hoped to head off contentious debate over reform among the clerical order, he would be mistaken. The document on judicial reform, preserved for us by Blanchefort, was even longer. A summary of La Guesle’s speech, such as might have been recorded by a deputy taking notes as he spoke, hastily scribbled down and then folded into a pocket or hat-band, contains additional suggestions.¹⁴⁰ It began with various changes to strengthen the internal discipline of the judiciary, proposing a greater role for the procureurs généraux.¹⁴¹ The ‘judicial ordinances’ (presumably the ordinances of Moulins, February 1566) were to be read out in court every six months. The king’s law officers should report to the chancellor every six months on contraventions. Formal sessions in which all law courts should inspect their own procedures should be held four times a year and the law officers should report on them to the chancellor. The document went on to propose detailed measures relating to court jurisdictions and particular crimes.¹⁴² In his speech, he suggested that the much criticized police officers, the prévôts des maréchaux, should be replaced with a ‘cappitaine de justice en chasque bailliage, par eslection et pour trois ans seullement’.¹⁴³ He also voiced the case for two new Parlements (in Lyon and Poitiers), and a grands jours in Troyes. On the issue of venality, all royal offices sold since the estates at Orléans should be subject to progressive repurchase. Royal judges should be appointed by the king on nomination from the localities.¹⁴⁴ Seigneurial offices of justice should be forbidden for sale. Payments to judges, the hours of sessions, judicial absence, and the conduct of cases were the subjects for the remaining paragraphs.¹⁴⁵ He raised the question of selling parts of the royal domain to unmortgage the remainder. He suggested that contracts made with partisans and tax-farmers as well as all royal gifts in the preceding twenty years should be scrutinized for malversation and interest reduced to a maximum of 8 13 per cent (denier 12). The ordinance of Philipe V requiring all gifts over 150 livres to be registered at the Chambre des Comptes should be revived. In military and provincial life, there were substantial ¹⁴⁰ BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 112–131v [‘le Cahyer presenté aux Estats par monsieur de la Guelle . . . sur la pollice et Refformation de Justice’]. MS Fr 17310 fo. 54 and verso [headed in a later hand ‘Articles pour la Reformation de l’Estat de la Guesle’]. ¹⁴¹ BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 112–114v . ¹⁴² Ibid, fos. 115–21. ¹⁴³ BN MS Fr 17310 fo. 54. ¹⁴⁴ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 122. ¹⁴⁵ Ibid., fos. 123–31.

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changes also to be considered. The number of marshals could be reduced by a third, down to two as had been the case in the reign of François I. The gendarmerie should be capped at a realistic level (3,000 hommes d’armes) and infantry companies maintained at what was regarded as the optimum number in sixteenth-century Europe of 300. The proliferation of regional governors must be reversed and the traditional twelve large governments reinstated. The estates general should be held every five years and its unanimous resolutions, if accepted by the king, should become law without additional scrutiny by the sovereign courts.¹⁴⁶ This reformist zeal from a senior law officer with a document in the king’s own hand was a green light to considering changes of all kinds. The following day, clerical deputies approved the notion of a common cahier of reform and agreed that they would circulate each chapter of their document to each of the other orders.¹⁴⁷ In retrospect, this marked the high point of cooperative reform between the king and the estates general. Over the next fortnight, internal debates within the orders as well as the divisive effects of the catholicity decision fractured this unity of purpose. The three estates moved at different speeds through the chapters of their cahiers. The Conference of 36 apparently met one last time on 28 December.¹⁴⁸ The third estate sent delegates but declined to participate any further. They had not remotely finished drafting the first chapter of their cahier and they were concerned about being lured into a common cause that, far from advancing the bien public, made them fund an anti-protestant crusade. And when the nobility and clergy sought to harmonize their two drafts on the first chapter, it proved impossible, not least because of their disagreements over the reform of the church.

A GALLICAN INTERLUDE In retrospect, it is not surprising that the reception of the decrees of Trent should have caused dissension at the estates general at Blois. Forty years later, the issue would wreck its successor in 1614–15. The ‘canons’ of Trent were the most authoritative attempt by the catholic church to address the doctrinal and disciplinary issues raised by the protestant reformation. The authority of the Holy Spirit was ascribed to them and their application was ¹⁴⁶ BN MS Fr 17310 fo. 54 and v. ¹⁴⁷ Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 130. ¹⁴⁸ Taix, 50–2, although he confusingly terms it ‘l’assemblée generalle’ and dates it by a typographical error to 18 December.

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to be universal. In France, however, the decrees became controversial. At a council of notables summoned to Fontainebleau in Lent 1564, leading figures from the Parlement of Paris voiced opposition that varied from considerable to outright.¹⁴⁹ They objected to the disciplinary decrees since they raised questions about the French crown’s regalian rights, the authority of the papacy within France, and the relationship of the laity to the church in France. The jurist Charles Du Moulin was more forthright, publishing over 100 objections to the decrees and canons.¹⁵⁰ He was briefly imprisoned by the Parlement for his outspokenness. The reception of the decrees of the Council of Trent had all the makings of a battle royal in 1564. That it did not become so was quite simply because the crown never engaged in the lists. To have done so would have been to compromise peace with the protestants. It would have thrown into question well-established regalian rights which its law officers told Catherine de Médicis were coterminous with royal authority. She had no desire to be compromised by the decrees of a council which had failed to resolve France’s discords. From 1564 onwards, the reception of the decrees of the Council of Trent remained, therefore, a live issue, but without resolution and focus. In that limbo, and with the assistance of the cardinal of Lorraine and a group of senior clerics around him, the decrees became gradually symbolic of something much larger—a commitment to intransigent, militant catholicism. The debates at Blois in 1576–7 became a turning point in their ‘politicization’. Those who opposed the reception of the Tridentine decrees were accused of turning their back on the defence of the church militant. In reality, the issues were more complex. The French monarchy had long nourished opposition to papal primacy. During the Papal Schism and the Hundred Years War, it had become focused into statements of the ‘Gallican liberties’ of the French church. These were chiefly delineated in terms of supposed freedoms and exemptions, justified on the grounds of canon or public law and reinforced by conciliar theory. These defined France as separate from and independent of the jurisdiction of Rome in certain areas. This royal support for ‘Gallican liberties’ ended with the Concordat of Bologna (1516). But the traditions of ‘Gallican liberties’ were reconstructed by French jurists and scholars into a mos gallicus of French law, history, politics, and (ultimately) citizenship, infiltrating little by little into fundamental debates over the nature of French ¹⁴⁹ Dumesnil, Advertissement (Lyon, 1564); cf. Martin, Le Gallicanisme, ch. 2. ¹⁵⁰ Mignot, Histoire de la réception, i. 212–334.

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monarchical authority. Had such views penetrated further among lawyers and jurists by 1576, the divisions at the estates general of Blois on the issue of ecclesiastical reform would have been even more pronounced. As it was, the divisions were mainly confined to the clerical order. Clerical deputies from the corporations of the French church, especially its cathedral chapters and abbey foundations, interpreted ‘Gallican liberties’ in terms of an inherited Christian tradition, associated with their founding saints and an apostolic lineage independent of the papacy.¹⁵¹ Kings of France, however, regarded such elections as little more than an invitation for local power-brokers to exploit ecclesiastical wealth. This did not stop deans and chapters from dreaming of recovering a golden age of locally elected clerical worthies. And this added substance to their dislike of courtier prelates, royal nominee abbots, and absentee clerics which surfaced in billets circulating at Blois.¹⁵² Divisions emerged when the clerical order came to debate the issue of the Tridentine decrees on 18 December.¹⁵³ D’Avançon put the case for a clause in their cahier for their acceptance. He argued that this was what the other two orders expected from the clergy. One of the cathedral deans responded that the Council of Trent decrees were a mixture of doctrine, customs, and discipline. Representatives of France’s cathedral chapters had not been present at Trent and, had they been, they would not have accepted them since they were repugnant to Gallican liberties.¹⁵⁴ At this point, the bishop of Évreux intervened. Claude de Sainctes was an able theologian but a brutal controversialist. He drew on St Augustine as well as scriptural testimony to insist that you could not pick and choose in a text. Those who wanted to accept some parts of the decrees of Trent but not others behaved like protestants towards authority; indeed they were ‘pire que huguenots et heretiques’.¹⁵⁵ That brought Guillaume de Taix, dean of the cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Troyes, to his feet, ‘piqué au possible’ at this insulting suggestion. He was just one in a queue of deans and canons waiting to say their piece. Louis Séguier, dean of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, told delegates that he was mandated to oppose their publication. Gabriel le Genevois, dean of the cathedral chapter of Saint-Mammès in Langres (which had exercised its powers of election well into the fifteenth century), challenged Claude de Sainctes’s credentials. ‘Qui estes vous?’, he demanded. ¹⁵¹ Tallon, Conscience nationale et sentiments religieux, esp. ch. 1. ¹⁵² Guillaume d’Avançon had been a royal councillor since the accession of Henri III to the throne—BN MS Fr 3321 fos. 21 f. ¹⁵³ Martin, Le Gallicanisme, 132–6. ¹⁵⁴ Taix, 37. ¹⁵⁵ Ibid.

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‘Que pensez-vous estre? Vous n’avez point de place icy.’¹⁵⁶ As the debate turned acrimonious, Épinac called for an early lunch. During the brief recess, the bishops put their heads together to produce an emollient response. When they reconvened, the learned and venerable Pierre de Villars, archbishop of Vienne, rose to say that, in accepting the decrees of Trent, he did not seek to increase his authority over his chapter and that he was prepared, for the common good, to put that fact in writing. The bishop of Évreux followed him to say that he had already given such an undertaking. But cathedral deans were far from reassured. Such documents would not bind their successors. The temperature of the debate began to rise once more. Vienne intervened to propose that the decrees of Trent be recommended for publication as law in France with the reservation that a petition from all the clergy in France to the papacy should be drawn up in defence of the liberties of the Gallican church. What would happen, however, if the Tridentine decrees were accepted in France but the petition to Rome was refused? Deputies were divided, aware of the risk that the king might decide to accept the decrees of his own accord, and conscious of their responsibility to the other orders to give a lead on the issue. The bien public had become a matter of conscience, and the sum of the consciences present produced an impasse. The best they could decide was that it should be left pending just as deputies were being invited to make up their mind on the fundamental issue of catholicity.¹⁵⁷ The clerical order returned to the issue in their debate on 23 December; it spilled over to Christmas Eve. Even the proposition ‘qu’on supplieroit le roi de le faire publier, sans toutefois prejudicier aux libertez de l’Eglise Gallicane, priuileges, exemptions, & franchises, des Eglises Cathedrales’ was opposed by five governments. When Picardy changed its mind, this became six governments, thus splitting the clergy down the middle.¹⁵⁸ When the clerics attempted once more to get to grips with it on 26 December, various deputies complained that their cahiers gave them no lead on the matter. The bishops ‘vouloient à cors et à cry, qu’il fust publié’ but Taix was among several who held out until, towards lunchtime on 26 December, they reluctantly gave way, aware that the king could always decide to implement the decrees of Trent independently of them, that the bishops were unanimously in favour, and that the other orders expected a positive lead on the subject from them.¹⁵⁹ But Taix and others still wanted a separate clause on clerical elections. It ¹⁵⁶ Taix, 38. The intervention echoed the response in Tertullian to those who sought to persecute Christians in Rome: ‘Quid estis, de unde venistis . . . ?’ ¹⁵⁷ Ibid. 38–9. ¹⁵⁸ Ibid. 44. ¹⁵⁹ Ibid. 45.

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was a matter of conscience and the ‘bien de l’église’.¹⁶⁰ History was on their side—the race of Charlemagne had died out because of its interference in clerical elections. The Capetians had survived for three hundred years because they had accepted the limitations of their authority over clerical appointments. The estates of Orléans had already demanded clerical elections and so it was simply a matter of reiterating an important petition. To leave the nomination of senior clerics in the hands of the king was to be ‘traistre à nostre religion’. The bishops replied with the political argument to the effect that the king would never sanction such a clause. But the argument carried little weight since delegates had heard the contrary from La Guesle only the previous week. So Claude de Sainctes went further and argued that royal power to nominate to clerical benefices was a jure divino sovereign right. But Pierre Daffis, provost of the metropolitan church of Saint-Étienne in Toulouse, proved more than a match for him. He cited various texts to dismiss the proposition, including a preface to one of Claude de Sainctes’s own works.¹⁶¹ In the end, the clause on clerical elections was accepted into the cahier. The clergy had preserved their unity, albeit at a price. Their division was widely advertised to the other orders. It contributed to the collapse of the Conference. Third estate and noble delegates had to recognize the intractable issues that it raised. Delegates had come to Blois seeking to realize the ‘bien public’ in the king’s name and on his behalf. They discovered that the ‘bien de l’église’ was a minefield.

A PROJECT FOR THE COMMON GOOD Programmes for change surfaced at estates general or assemblies of notables. Jules Gassot remembered the assembly of notables at Moulins in 1566 as the moment when ‘projectors’ first surfaced with neat ideas to reform the kingdom, associating it with the influence of Florentine and Luccan bankers at the French court.¹⁶² Like many half-truths, it was not without some foundation since patents for developments, inspired by economically advanced north Italy, were often given an airing at the French court. But ‘invention’ was synonymous with fiscal devices. ‘Enterprise’ was a hazardous military engagement. Some delegates to Blois had clauses in their petitions advising the king to reject the ‘malicious inventions’ of ‘foreigners’.¹⁶³ The ¹⁶⁰ Ibid. 45 ¹⁶¹ Ibid. 48. ¹⁶³ e.g. BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 202v .

¹⁶² Gassot, 41.

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dislike for ‘inventions extraordinaires’ became widespread over the following years, linked to a cabal of court financiers who sought to exploit royal indebtedness for private gain at the expense of the public purse.¹⁶⁴ In the light of such scepticism, it is therefore all the more remarkable that Henri III was prepared to endorse just such an ‘invention’ before the estates—namely, a project to reform fundamentally the way in which taxation was collected. For a week, what was known as the proposal for a ‘taille égalée’ was given an airing before delegates.¹⁶⁵ The scheme was eventually rejected, but it reveals a good deal about the dilemmas confronting the monarchy and the estates general in working together for the bien public. Royal indebtedness lay at the heart of the crisis that almost overwhelmed the French monarchy in 1576. The problems were so grave that even the members of the conseil des finances were unwilling to contemplate them squarely.¹⁶⁶ Persuading the delegates at the estates general of the seriousness of the problem was the task assigned to Antoine Nicolaï (var.: Nicolay), premier président of the Chambre des Comptes in the closing days of 1576.¹⁶⁷ Armed with information drawn from summaries of previous accounts, Nicolaï toured each of the chambers at the estates to present a summary account of the crown’s financial position. He painted a sombre picture of the state of affairs. The capital debt was over 100 million livres, compared to 11 million livres on the death of Henri II in 1559.¹⁶⁸ It absorbed the majority of royal revenues. He invited the estates to consider the matter in greater detail and they formed a mixed commission of inquiry composed of one delegate from each of the participating twelve governments in each order. The inquiry’s initial task was to investigate the accounts back to the previous estates general. The figures cited by Nicolaï were treated with scepticism by delegates. According to the papal nuncio, it was commonly supposed that the figure of over 100 million livres of capital debt had been exaggerated for political purposes (the reality being, they thought, closer to 70 million).¹⁶⁹ When Épinac, the president of the clerical estate, reported on 9 January that royal revenues amounted, ¹⁶⁴ Drouot, La Première Ligue, 142; Robillard, i. 7; Sée, ‘Les états de Bretagne au XVIe siècle’, 205. ¹⁶⁵ Greengrass, ‘The Project for the ‘‘Taille égalée’’ ’. ¹⁶⁶ As Jean de Morvillier reported to his nephew: ‘Lon n’oze mestre le nez au fond, tant on craint de veoir le mal quel il est’ [Morvillier to Ormesson, Blois, 10 December 1576], in Baguenault de Puchesse, Jean de Morvillier, 431–2. ¹⁶⁷ Lalourcé and Duval, iii. 44; BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 179v –182. ¹⁶⁸ Bodin, 24; Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 145; Taix, 296; Blanchefort reports the speech before the nobility differently—BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 181v . ¹⁶⁹ ANG, xii. 576.

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following the accounts that the inquiry had been shown, to 12,609,000 livres, Guillaume de Taix (one of its number) noted in his diary that ‘toutesfois vn mien amy m’a dist secrettement qu’il montoit à seize millions’.¹⁷⁰ Delegates’ suspicions were not allayed by the fact that they were not allowed to see the original accounts.¹⁷¹ Pierre de Blanchefort copied into his diary some calculations undertaken by Pierre de Thouars, the noble deputy from Maine, on 1 January 1577.¹⁷² These were ‘back of the envelope’ figures and they give us a fascinating picture of how much a deputy at Blois thought royal income and expenditures amounted to (see Table 1). Thouars’s estimates were round numbers, the expenditures based on crude multiples. His, or perhaps Blanchefort’s, arithmetic was sometimes faulty. Blanchefort himself noted his own doubts about their reliability in the margins. The costs of the royal household were difficult to quantify and there were other expenditures that had been budgeted for, but not fully paid. He estimated royal expenditures to be of the order of 12 million livres. On the revenue side, it was even more difficult to know what the true picture was. Thouars relied on rough calculations, backed up by gossip. A gentleman had Table 1. Pierre de Thouars’s estimates of the royal budget per annum (in livres tournois) Category

Pierre de Thouars’s estimate

Military expenditure Naval expenditure Artillery expenditure Dowry and appanage costs Judicial costs Household guards and royal archers Foreign pensions Stables, post-horses etc Ambassadors Grand Prévôt Royal household expenses Total royal expenditure Total ordinary royal income Additional extraordinary income Alienations of revenue and debts Budget surplus/deficit

7, 630, 000 500, 000 500, 000 1, 500, 000 500, 000 275, 000 500, 000 100, 000 80, 000 50, 000 610, 000 12, 085, 000 12, 000, 000 8,000,000–10,600,000 — (at least) 7,500,000

¹⁷⁰ Taix, 69. ¹⁷¹ Bodin, 25. ¹⁷² BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 183v –187. Taix, 93.

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The Estates of Blois Table 2. Royal budget (´etat par estimation) for 1577 Categories (summarized) Ordinary and extraordinary income Charges and assignations on that income Net revenue clear of commitments Military expenditure Naval expenditure Artillery and fortifications Foreign pensions Royal houshold costs

(rounded to 000s) 12, 922, 000 10, 166, 000 2, 257, 000 3, 377, 000 276, 000 600, 000 420, 000

assured him that a year ago the king had told him his ordinary revenues were worth 17 million livres.¹⁷³ He accepted that there were various deductions to be made to this figure, bringing it down to 12 million, although none of this was ‘certain’. With extraordinary revenues counted in as well, overall royal income reached 20 million livres. So deputies started with the suspicion that eight million livres was disappearing into a black hole. It was not the case that the deputies were unwilling to be of service, or that they were completely ignorant of the public finances. But they had no appreciation of the scale and debilitating effects of royal debt. That failure of appreciation was heightened by the reluctance of the French monarchy to reveal the full details of its accounts and Blanchefort was not alone in suspecting that the financiers were dragging their feet.¹⁷⁴ Even when a more detailed projected budget was circulated among delegates on 12 or 13 January, it was not taken at face value. Many believed it would be better to dispatch commissioners to each financial generality and find out the truth. To concentrate their minds, the royal council dispatched the first gentleman of the chamber, René Villequier, to each estate in turn with a stark message. They must prepare for the possibility of war, and decide how to assist the king financially.¹⁷⁵ He came with a prospectus of fourteen propositions for new levies (‘partis’) drawn up by a consortium of royal financiers and under review at the council of finances. They would raise an estimated 11 million livres and, after six years, replace the taille altogether.¹⁷⁶ It was an ambitious proposal and, since delegates knew that their cahiers demanded no new taxes, ¹⁷³ BN MS Fr 16250, fo. 185v . ¹⁷⁴ Ibid., fo. 214. ¹⁷⁵ Ibid., fos. 216v –217 (11 January 1577); Taix, 75. ¹⁷⁶ Ibid., fos. 253v –255.

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they were faced with a dilemma.¹⁷⁷ In addition, there were rumours of other creations of offices, with perhaps more on the way.¹⁷⁸ These suspicions divided the orders at the estates and paralysed the commission of inquiry at a crucial juncture. Villequier returned to the council to report that there was no likelihood of a positive response to the initiative.¹⁷⁹ Meanwhile, the security situation was worsening by the day. News came in of the capture of Bazas in south-west France by protestant forces on 12 January, followed the next day by the fall of Gap in Dauphiné. The king repeated his determination to pursue catholicity before his council on 13 January, but the contradiction between ends and means that this created became more evident with each passing day. While the duke of Nevers and others busied themselves with strategic plans for capturing the protestants’ main strongholds on the basis of optimistic assessments of the resources available for war, other generals like Cossé were fundamentally pessimistic about their ability to find the means to do so. As Catherine de Médicis said in one of her perambulations around the gardens at Blois where, despite the winter weather, she discussed policy: ‘Les Estats les voient mis à la guerre, sans leur bailler le moyen d’en sortir.’¹⁸⁰ The taille égalée project was a means of squaring the circle. The first references to it occur just before Christmas on 20 December.¹⁸¹ It was promoted by a consortium of financiers and had some support in high places. The attractiveness of the project was that it did not abolish the fiscal exemptions of the clergy and nobility. Instead, it concentrated on the abolition of the tailles and indirect taxes on salt and wine. The proposal replaced them with a single tax, based on fiscal feux, or households, graduated in accordance with wealth. The households would be assessed into one of thirty tax-bands and pay tax accordingly. Those in the lowest tax-band would pay no more than 1 sol. Those in the highest category would not be expected to contribute more than 50 livres. It was important to know, however, how many individuals would be likely to be assessed into each category. To establish this, the scheme’s projectors undertook a pilot study. Their attempts to quantify the anticipated yield varied from 25 million to 35 million livres, the discrepancy resulting from variations in the estimated numbers of feux ¹⁷⁷ Taix, 74; cf. BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 212v . ¹⁷⁸ The issue had originally been raised on 12 December by a third estate deputy from the Orléanais (Lalourcé and Duval, iii. 203). The proposed offices were the regrateurs et revendeurs du sel, edicted in November 1576—F46853–3, published on 9 February 1577; also the proposed village clerks (greffiers) in each parish. ¹⁷⁹ Lalourcé and Duval, iii. 53. ¹⁸⁰ Ibid. 61. ¹⁸¹ Ibid. 19.

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in the kingdom.¹⁸² On Christmas Eve, 1576, the plans were put before the council of finance. On 22 January, the scheme was introduced before the commission of inquiry at the estates and, the following day, the king invited the heads of delegation from the governments at the estates to an audience. There he outlined the ‘necessity of his affairs’ and the proposed solution.¹⁸³ Shortly thereafter, the full details of it were presented before each of the estates in turn and copies made for the governments to consider in detail.¹⁸⁴ The delegates at the estates general were men of experience. They saw through the project’s naive optimism. How were individuals to be assessed into the various proposed tax-bands? They welcomed the removal of paid, royal tax assessors (élus), with their inflated salaries, ‘festins, bancquetz & buvettes’. But would their replacement work? What was proposed was that local baillis and juges ordinaires would publish the ‘neuf ordres ou classes’ with the attached descriptors for each category. These same local magistrates would then require parish priests to organize the election of a dozen or so individuals to act as assessors whose task would be to assign each individual in the parish into one of the tax-bands.¹⁸⁵ A register would then be prepared, which would include the names of all those gentry or ecclesiastical households which were exempt and a copy of the register would be kept in the parish chest. A nominated local collector would take the assembled revenues, along with a copy of the tax register, to the royal receveur for the élection. Each collector would receive a quittance and 4 deniers per livre for his pains, but those serving as assessors would receive nothing. Cases of fraudulent underassessment or over-assessment would be brought before local magistrates. Privately, some delegates were more persuaded by the scheme than they were prepared to admit in public.¹⁸⁶ But they doubted the statistical basis of the propositions. And the majority of the deputies for the third estate were from towns with extensive fiscal immunities which the proposed reform removed. Third estate delegates had not been dispatched to Blois to wave goodbye to local privileges and exemptions. When the twelve government heads of delegation reported back to the plenary session of the third estate on 29 January, it was to recommend that they had no authority to make any commitments.¹⁸⁷ The king received the formal response from the estates ¹⁸² ¹⁸⁴ ¹⁸⁵ ¹⁸⁷

Lalourcé and Duval, iii. 27, 44. ¹⁸³ Bodin, 54; cf. La Popelinière, fo. 345. BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 479v –514; BN MS Fr 7007 fo. 148. BN MS Fr 7007 fo. 154. ¹⁸⁶ Taix, 100. Bodin, 58; La Popelinière, fo. 345.

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on 1 February and asked it to reconsider, but it was to no avail.¹⁸⁸ The project was dead in the water. A delegate reported back to his friends back home that the only result was that the third estate had decided to put a clause in their petition asking the king ‘ne pas receuoir Inuention d’impostz nouveaulx qu’avec un licol au col de ceulx qui les proposent’.¹⁸⁹ In the end, they decided not to pass a motion of censure against the leading proponent of the scheme because he had supplied them with a memorandum against corrupt financiers. It was a signal lesson in how difficult fundamental reform of the French taxation system would be.

‘ADVICE ’ FOR T HE KING Henri III’s announcement of his decision to reunite the realm behind the catholic faith was to his council. It was there, rather than the estates general, that he looked for advice upon its implementation. Even before his accession to the throne, Henri III had resorted at critical junctures to having the views of his councillors in writing.¹⁹⁰ The written avis was a device that invited a councillor to commit himself to a particular policy outcome, the failure for which he might subsequently be held responsible, while at the same time preserving the king’s own freedom of decision. Sixteen councillors were invited to submit their opinion on how to implement the king’s catholicity decision.¹⁹¹ They included key members of the royal family, princes of the blood, leading dukes and peers of the realm, military figures, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and the surintendant des finances. They submitted their avis in the first few weeks of 1577, aware of the political engagement that it represented.¹⁹² Some of them (Montpensier and his son; and Charles, duke of Mayenne) wrote sparingly and in general terms. The duke of Guise ¹⁸⁸ Lalourcé and Duval, iii. 88. ¹⁸⁹ BN MS Dupuy 333 fo. 93v [Letter to ‘Monsieur’, Blois, 7 February 1577, copy]. The allusion is to the law code of Solon which proposed that those who suggested innovations in the state should do so with a cord around their necks to remind them of the dangers of change—a frequent allusion in French reformist literature. ¹⁹⁰ e.g. BN MS Fr 3177 fo. 139 [‘Advis et deliberation qui ont precedde la Bataille de Maucontour, pris sur les propres originaux’—contemporary copy]. For the aviso in Spanish government circles, see Ezquerra, ‘Unas ‘‘Reglas generales para remitir memoriales’’ del siglo XVI’. ¹⁹¹ These avis exist in numerous copies with minor variants (e.g. BN MS Fr. 17299; 6548) and printed in Nevers, i. 179–289. ¹⁹² The only avis to have dates are those of Nevers and Morvillier (2 January 1577) (Nevers, i. 181; 267); internal evidence suggests that they were submitted before the end of January.

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sheltered behind his youth.¹⁹³ Bellièvre blamed his brevity on his recent illness.¹⁹⁴ Biron was one of the few to ‘prendre la hardiesse d’escrire ce que I’en pense’.¹⁹⁵ Nevers, too, lived up to his idiosyncratic temperament of thinking with his pen, submitting the longest memorandum of all in favour of an anti-protestant mobilization, albeit with qualifications.¹⁹⁶ Nevers’s advice was the most distinctive. It is tempting to imagine that Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers, ten years the king’s senior and a dominant intellectual mentor during his adolescence, was closer to Henri III than was the case.¹⁹⁷ As we have seen, he enjoyed high favour in the aftermath of the massacre of St Bartholomew and during the siege of La Rochelle. He accompanied him to Poland and, with Albert de Gondi, comte de Retz, enjoyed his confidence.¹⁹⁸ Henri’s hasty departure from Cracow on the night of 18–19 June 1574, however, was undertaken without any prior consultation with the duke, apparently on the grounds that Nevers would have opposed it for the dishonour that such an ignominious flight represented.¹⁹⁹ As they returned through northern Italy, Nevers resented the fact that his services in Poland had gone unrewarded and that he was being humiliated before his compatriots.²⁰⁰ Even his advice about how the king should conduct himself in Italy went unheeded. Those now high in favour—Roger de Saint-Lary, duke of Bellegarde, and Emanuele Philibert, duke of Savoy—represented an implicit shift in French attitudes to northern Italy as Henri III abandoned claims to intervene across the Alps in favour of concentrating on France’s complex domestic agenda. The losers were France’s allies to the east of Savoy, especially the dukes of Mantua, Louis de Gonzague’s relatives, and Nevers himself who was relieved of his command of French forces beyond the Alps. Nevers retired from the French court for over a year until September 1575 when the crisis that threatened to engulf the French monarchy reactivated his former loyalties to Henri III. His strategy for reinsertion at the French court, supported by huge investments in loans to the crown, had an agenda that included reform. His starting point was that the monarchy was living ¹⁹³ Ibid. 247. He celebrated his 26th birthday on 31 December 1576—making him a year older than Henri III. ¹⁹⁴ Ibid. 284. ¹⁹⁵ Ibid. 255. ¹⁹⁶ Ibid., esp. 216–17. ¹⁹⁷ Champion, La Jeunesse de Henri III, i. 75–6. ¹⁹⁸ Champion, Henri III, roi de Pologne, i. 11; BN MS Fr 3258 fo. 5 [Charles IX to Nevers, Paris, 14 March 1574] and fo. 7. ¹⁹⁹ Champion, ‘La Maison et l’entourage de Henri III en Pologne’, 305; cf. Boltanski, ‘Les Nevers’, ii. 487. ²⁰⁰ BN MS Fr 3174 fos. 96–100; Cf. Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henri III, 22.

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through a critical juncture.²⁰¹ The king must seize the moment and become a charismatic leader. To Nevers, the royal coronation oath was a sacred vow to God.²⁰² Personal vows overrode other public commitments, such as those that he had made in the lit de justice at the Parlement of Paris for the registration of the peace of Monsieur in May 1576.²⁰³ In his coronation oath, Henri III had vowed to extirpate heresy. If he carried out his vow, God would protect him; if he failed to do so, his destruction was assured.²⁰⁴ His subjects, summoned to obedience, would assist him to carry it out. Those who refused to do so demonstrated by their disobedience that they were the enemies of the king and his realm. They must be defeated by force in a holy war to preserve God’s honour and the health of the realm. For Nevers, the reformation of the kingdom was therefore subsumed into a crusade. The rise to prominence of the reformist endeavour at the court of Henri III must be seen in part as the result of his renewed influence. The estates general was not up to the task and the king must look to other means. On the basis of rather speculative figures, he thought the minimum forces necessary for the army to fight the protestants in Gascony would cost 250,000 livres a month or three million livres for a year’s campaign. In addition, there would have to be an army in Dauphiné (140,000 livres a month), the mustering of the gendarmerie (a similar sum), and more to hire mercenaries. How were such resources to be raised? Nevers held out for a default on existing royal debts, loans from German bankers, assistance from the papacy and the French clergy, advances from the towns, and the mobilization of local military and political support, especially through the catholic associations. Above all, there must be no delay. War was the only way to make ‘une saincte paix’ after which there would be time for reform and reconstruction.²⁰⁵ For a monarchy that had just declared before the estates a capital debt of around 100 million livres, Nevers’s advice pointed firmly towards Jerusalem via Neverland. Although the other royal councillors did not question catholicity outright, they doubted that the means existed to achieve it on the scale envisaged by Nevers. Pomponne de Bellièvre, the surintendant des finances, could hardly bear to contemplate the cost implications of catholicity.²⁰⁶ Birague was also pessimistic about funding anything but a very short campaign, the corruption in the state being so widespread that it was ²⁰¹ Nevers, i. 216. ²⁰² Ibid. 184. ²⁰⁴ Ibid. 184. Jackson, Vivat Rex!, ch. 3. ²⁰⁵ Nevers, i. 215–16. ²⁰⁶ Ibid. 284.

²⁰³ Ibid. 182–4.

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fundamentally enfeebled.²⁰⁷ He was one of the few councillors to hold out hopes for a contribution from the estates general, although he admitted that it might be building castles in the air.²⁰⁸ Cheverny and Morvillier feared that time was not on their side.²⁰⁹ Cheverny, the keeper of the seals, was particularly concerned at the possible collapse of civil society from a prolonged war.²¹⁰ Meanwhile, the queen mother pinned her hopes on a diplomatic outcome that centred on negotiations with Henri, king of Navarre.²¹¹ Here again, opinion around the table was divided. Lenoncourt thought there was a chance that Navarre would be persuaded by protestant war-weariness to make concessions; but Biron was pessimistic.²¹² Anjou thought it would depend on how the issues were presented to his former partners in the confederacy—and reminded everyone that it was not just Navarre who would have to be persuaded.²¹³ Everyone agreed that Henri de Montmorency-Damville, the confederate leader in Languedoc, needed to be treated with kid gloves. Queen Catherine said that she feared him ‘the most’. When it came to the royal ‘associations’, royal councillors were similarly divided in their views. Nevers regarded them as useful agents to hold the northern provinces loyal, perhaps defending them against foreign incursion and thus freeing up forces for the southern ‘crusade’.²¹⁴ Louis, cardinal of Guise, stressed their political significance.²¹⁵ Charles, duke of Mayenne, and François, duke of Anjou, were more sceptical. They would only become useful when they were paid by the state—and the implication was that this would not happen.²¹⁶ Queen Catherine, too, was inclined to disregard them.²¹⁷ Jean de Morvillier thought that they would quickly disband unless they were promptly mobilized.²¹⁸ Lenoncourt was openly hostile to them as fundamentally alien to a monarchical state.²¹⁹ As Henri III mulled over their advice, he would have gathered that Louis de Gonzague’s advice was out on a limb. Among the rest, there was no consensus beyond the fact that diplomacy should be given a chance and that (in the event of war) the estates were unlikely to come to his aid. From all quarters, the news was that protestant fears for their safety were being manipulated in favour of hostilities. An ordinance of 30 January 1577 somewhat desperately urged governors and lieutenants to assemble moderate protestants, give them written guarantees ²⁰⁷ ²¹⁰ ²¹³ ²¹⁶ ²¹⁹

Nevers, i. 258–61. ²⁰⁸ Ibid. 265. ²⁰⁹ Ibid. 265–6; 281–3. Ibid. 282. ²¹¹ Ibid. 228. ²¹² Ibid. 277; 254. Ibid. 235. ²¹⁴ Ibid. 194–6. ²¹⁵ Ibid. 244–5. Ibid. 236; 249. ²¹⁷ Ibid. 233. ²¹⁸ Ibid. 264–5. Ibid. 278–9.

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of their personal safety, and invite them to nominate catholic friends to stand surety for their well-being.²²⁰ Henri III kept his own views to himself. Only one autograph letter to his secretary Villeroy, now surviving in a private collection, gives us any clue as to his thoughts. As was generally the case with these missives, it is undated and we may tentatively assign it on internal evidence to January 1577.²²¹ The king expressed his frustration: ‘Le diable opere bien avec ses huguenots [i.e. protestants: but also, perhaps, the deputies at the estates general], il use du mensonge et en emplit la bouche de ceulx qui prennent la parole.’ There remained one final way in which the estates might prove a useful weapon in securing a new peace on royal terms. A DIPLOMATIC OFFENSIVE What arguments would convince the French protestant leadership that the realm could be reunited in the catholic faith without bloodshed? How could such a mission be successful? The idea of sending a delegation from the estates to Navarre, Condé, and Damville was canvassed shortly after the king’s announcement to his privy council on 27 December.²²² The incorporated realm, united once more in the catholic faith, would declare its will before the protestant leaders. If they chose to reject it, they would be exposed for the rebels they were. If they accepted it, their personal well-being and the security of their supporters would be guaranteed, even though rights to worship in public granted in the peace of Monsieur would be withdrawn. The novelty of sending envoys from the estates general should not be underestimated. Nothing in their mandates gave them authority to act as plenipotentiaries on a matter of peace and war. It was an open question whether they had any powers beyond those of representing the views of the estates to the grandees in question. It was not even evident who would pay for their missions. If they had no authority to negotiate, the chances of success for their mission were surely slim. It was soon made clear that they would be accompanied by royal envoys with instructions to negotiate separately from those of the estates.²²³ In which case, were not the latter in danger of being manipulated? Several delegates (including Bodin himself) refused to serve as envoys. ²²⁰ BN MS Fr nouv acq 7178 fo. 520 [‘Ordonnance du Roy sur le faict de ceux de la nouuelle opinion & leurs associez’, Blois, 30 January 1577, copy]. ²²¹ LH3, iii, No. 2269. ²²² Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 144. ²²³ Armand de Gontaut, baron de Biron, was sent to Navarre; Artus de La Fontaine, baron d’Ognon, accompanied the delegation to Damville; and Camille Feré set forth with the delegates

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Even the drafting of the letters of instruction proved controversial.²²⁴ The delegations left Blois on 6–8 January and the estates general was kept in session three weeks after its cahiers were delivered in order to await their responses. The deputation to Condé arrived in Saint-Jean d’Angély in time to be handed a copy of his ‘Protestation’ of 23 January, a document for circulation around Huguenot gentry and protestant courts abroad.²²⁵ It savaged the legitimacy of the estates general. Condé drew on reservoirs of indignation, the harbinger of righteous revolt among the French higher nobility. When granted an audience on 28 January, the deputies arrived to find Condé surrounded by various protestant nobles. Three times, the archbishop presented his letters of accreditation, only to be humiliated, accused of belonging to a corrupt, puppet estates.²²⁶ Sweet revenge from a prince who had been denied the strongholds in Picardy and then left to stew in his own juice of debt. Before the deputies left, he made no secret of the fact that he was preparing for war. The deputies to the king of Navarre arrived in Agen on 25 January 1577. The king had already decided to treat with them.²²⁷ Navarre expected protestant deputies and their catholic allies to congregate in a political assembly in Montauban that Henri III had sanctioned before the close of 1576. What better way to counter the corporate legitimacy of the deputies of the estates general at Blois than to introduce them to a mirror image of themselves at Montauban? As it was, Henri III countermanded the assembly at the eleventh hour and so Navarre returned from his siege of Marmande to greet them in the company of his councillors. Navarre was adept at what Montaigne called ‘la science de l’entregent’, or ‘interpersonal skills’.²²⁸ The deputies were received in state on 26 January.²²⁹ The archbishop of Vienne reminded the king of the importance of their mission. The estates had been summoned for the ‘establissement d’une bonne & perpetuelle paix, par sy long temps desirée’ and for ‘le Reglement de ce qui peult concerner lestat bien et grandeur de ce Royaulme’.²³⁰ As the ‘troisieme personne de ce royaume’ he knew that to Condé. The latter was criticized in protestant circles—CalSPFor (1577), No. 116 [‘Affairs in France’]. A copy of the instructions to d’Ognon, dated 1 January, is in BN MS Fr 15534 fos. 280 and 282, summarized in LH3, iii. 124–5 n. 1; a draft of them in Bellièvre’s hand (undated) survives in BN MS Fr 15890 fos. 473–5. They were partially superseded by additional letters, also dated 1 January (LH3, No. 2219). Those to Biron are in a copy, dated 6 January 1577—CalSPFor (1577), No. 1181. ²²⁴ LH3, ii. 148; Bodin, fos. 9; 10v ; 11. ²²⁵ La Popelinière, ii, fos. 233v –234 (n. d.); copy (dated 23 January 1577) in CalSPFor (1577), No. 1198, 488–9 [SP 70/142 fo. 143]; cf. BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 519v –523. ²²⁷ Berger, i. 124–6; BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 317 and v . ²²⁶ Bodin, fo. 16v . ²³⁰ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 319. ²²⁸ Montaigne, i, ch. 13, p. 90. ²²⁹ Bodin, fo. 31v .

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‘le Royaume se void sy extremé et menassé dune sy Grande Chrise que sil ny estoit promptement pourveu lon ne pourroit qu’en bref attendre un entier deffallement et extinction avec la suppression mesmement de lhauthorité du Roy et de ceux qui y approche et y ont plus d’Intherets comme ledit sieur Roy de Navarre’.²³¹ The deputies held Navarre in high regard and were disappointed that he had not attended their proceedings in person. The archbishop then expatiated on the crisis in the realm. Navarre, knowing that his every gesture would be reported back to the estates, had tears in his eyes at this point.²³² The estates general attributed its misery to two principal causes: ‘la diversitté de Relligion’ and ‘la desunion des Princes et seigneurs et Grands du Royaume’. Deputies were convinced that ‘les hystoires anciennes et modernes’ taught that religious pluralism brought in its wake ‘une perpetuelle Guerre et enfin la Ruyne des uns et des autres pour servir de proyes et trophée a ceux qui auront enuye den triompher’. The archbishop highlighted the difficulties that had occurred in implementing the peace.²³³ Deputies accepted that the edict of pacification had been made under the ‘foy et parolle dun Roy’, a ‘precieux tresor et Gage’.²³⁴ But the king could not ‘donner sa foy au prejudice de tout son Estat et contre les antiennes et louables coustumes du Royaulme et de chacun pays’, more especially since the catholic faith represented not only the ancient customs of the kingdom but ‘la principalle et fondamentalle loy du Royaume et forme essentielle qui donne le nom et tiltre de Chrestien a nos Roys’. There was an important distinction to be drawn between the fundamental laws of an empire, such as the Holy Roman Empire, and those of a kingdom like France. The former were declared in the Diets of the Empire. In the latter, they were implicit in the investiture of a king. At the coronations of Clovis and Charlemagne, the catholic faith was accepted ‘des trois estats avec serment et promesse reciproquement faictes tant par les Roys que les subjects de n’en authoriser permettre ne tollerer autre’.²³⁵ Ever since, at each successive coronation and reception of every officer of the crown, they made a solemn oath on the crucifix to uphold the catholic faith. It could therefore hardly be doubted that ‘ils ne peuvent plus varrier pour quelque cause occasion et pretexte que ce soit, non plus que de la loy salique estant ladite loy de Relligion bien plus fondamentalle que n’est celle la, et du tout Inviolable’.²³⁶ The fealty offered by deputies to the king was on the basis of his coronation oaths ²³¹ Ibid., fo. 320. ²³² Bodin, fo. 32 and La Popelinière, ii, fo. 348. ²³⁵ Ibid., fo. 326 and v . ²³⁴ Ibid., fo. 325v .

²³³ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 325 and v . ²³⁶ Ibid., fo. 327.

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and they could not advise him to break them without undermining the foundations of his state. Of course, French kings claimed absolute authority in their kingdom.²³⁷ But they never claimed that their authority was contrary to reason and the laws of the kingdom, which is why all edicts had to be registered in the Parlements before any obedience to them could be required. And the Parlements were ‘une forme des trois estats racourcie au petit pied’. In any case, the recent peace of Monsieur had been extorted by force and violence and was, as a result, inequitable. Even the king of Navarre did not allow a plurality of religious beliefs in his own principality. The deputies invited Navarre to obey the king’s decision, reassuring him of their pledge to maintain protestants in their wealth and possessions.²³⁸ Finally, the archbishop associated the estates general with the king’s attempts to appease the ‘desunion et deffiances’ among his princes and invited the king of Navarre to join with the estates general and solemnly swear to obey these decrees, promising that, in so doing, ‘luy acquira une Gloire Immortelle de la paix et repos du Royaume’.²³⁹ The king’s reply came verbally, reinforced by a letter and instruction to the estates.²⁴⁰ In the letter, he regretted that he could not attend the estates in person and assist its ‘haute entreprise’ to restore the realm.²⁴¹ It was in need of sound advice and he was much afraid that individuals were exploiting the estates for their own ends. In which case, the restoration of the realm would not occur and the assembly’s noble purpose, to which (as first prince of the blood) he was committed, would stay elusive. Just as the ‘sage Medecin’ knew that he must adjust his physic in accordance with the condition of the patient, just so a ‘bon Juge & legislateur ne sarreste tant a la substilité comme a lEquitté et utilitté publique et au salut commun quy doibt estre & servir de loy publique a tous Royaume et Republicques’.²⁴² So the question was ‘non seullement ce quilz desireroient mais ce que ce pauvre Royaume peult comporter & ce quil peut faire’. Blanchefort commented in the margin of his copy of the instructions at this point: ‘laffection doibt ceder a l’utilitté’. He took the point. Passions must be governed by expediency. Even a state in healthy condition would hardly tolerate ‘un si soudain changement dune extremitté a une autre sans danger d’estre du tout renversé, beaucoup moins doncques le pourroit souffrir le nostre quy est sy mallade, sy basté ²³⁷ BN MS Fr 16250, fo. 327 and v . ²³⁸ Ibid., fos. 330v –331. ²³⁹ Ibid., fo. 333. ²⁴⁰ Bodin, fos. 32v –33; Berger, i. 129–31; La Popelinière, ii, fo. 348; BN MS Fr 16250 v fos. 335–346 . ²⁴¹ Ibid. La Popelinière reads ‘saincte’; the others ‘haulte’. ²⁴² Ibid., fos. 339v –40.

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et sy foible’.²⁴³ Delegates should remember that they proposed to deny to protestants precisely that which ‘faict mal au cœur des Catholicques’, namely the ‘jouissance de lexercice de leur Relligion’. The protestant experience was that, when they were denied the exercise of their religion, the catholic religion ‘n’a rien amendé, ains beaucoup empiré’. They referred to protestantism as ‘erreur et heresye’ which it was not. Such matters of faith were properly a question for ‘un Concille general libre & legitimement assemble ou bien par un Nationnal auquel touttes parties soient ouyes’.²⁴⁴ As for his own principality of Béarn, he had already introduced religious pluralism there.²⁴⁵ On the question of his own conversion to catholicism, the assembly would need to demonstrate to him the ways in which his religion was not the right one. In the meantime, he trusted that deputies at Blois would, in equity, allow protestants and their catholic allies to hold their own assembly shortly in Montauban, from which he would take further advice. In the meantime, they would find him ‘tousjours tres enclin et affectionné à tout ce qui appartient vrayement a lhonneur de Dieu au service du Roy et au repos de ce Royaume’.²⁴⁶ Navarre’s response was a model of tact and studied moderation, calling the estates’ bluff when it came to the possibility of excluding him from the succession to the throne. The deputies to Damville carrying an autograph letter from the king in addition to their instructions were received in Montpellier by him and his council on 8 February.²⁴⁷ Damville’s council was mi-partie, a mixture of protestants and catholics. The protestants were nominated by the political assembly of lower Languedoc, and they were complemented by catholic appointments by the marshal himself. The deputies presented their case. The king wanted only one religion in his kingdom. He was entitled to abrogate the edict of pacification since it had only been conceded until the convocation of the estates and the protestants had failed to uphold its terms.²⁴⁸ The protestants on Damville’s council lost no time in contradicting the latter claim. Both catholics and protestants cited the oaths that they had solemnly entered into with one another in Béziers at the meeting of the provincial estates of Languedoc to uphold the pacification.²⁴⁹ To abrogate those oaths would be to break the civil peace in the province. In ²⁴³ Ibid., fo. 340v . ²⁴⁴ Ibid., fo. 341v . ²⁴⁵ Ibid., fo. 342. ²⁴⁶ Ibid., fo. 345. ²⁴⁷ LH3, iii, No. 2226. An eyewitness account of the audience is in BN MS Fr 5045 fo. 62 [‘Nouvelles de Montpellier du x février’]. ²⁴⁸ The deputies referred explicitly to protestant preaching discovered in the city of Paris. ²⁴⁹ AN H748(16) fo. 97.

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Languedoc, religious pluralism was a fact of domestic, as well as civil, life. Cross-confessional marriage was a reality and the rupture of the edict of pacification ‘n’ameneroit seullement guerre es villes et campagnes mais aux familles’. Damville’s reply and accompanying instructions of 8 February back to the estates reflected these views.²⁵⁰ Addressed to ‘messieurs de l’assemblee en la ville de Blois’, he subtly threw doubt upon their legitimacy. As a ‘true and natural councillor’ of the king, he had a duty to offer his advice to the king and his councillors. Catholicity threatened ‘nous plonger au gouffre des mal-heurs’. It was God’s will that, for our sins and wickedness, there was now a difference of religion ‘dans le cœur des hommes’. The heart was a realm that ‘la force des hommes ne peut maistriser & domter’. Damville’s own heart was catholic in affection and will. His father had lost his life in defence of the catholic faith and he would willingly do the same. But protestants had hearts too. They had paid for their religion with their blood too. They could not be expected to depart from what had cost them so dear, or sacrifice what they judged as their ‘seul remede pour les faire vivre & demeurer en ce monde’. The edict of pacification had been solemnly entered into with the intercession of foreign princes. In Languedoc, it was being implemented with some success. In fact, in his province they have ‘prins telle habitude ensemble [ . . . ] qui se voyent meslez és villes, lieux, maisons, familles, voire iusques au lict, esquels il faudroit mettre vn entier diuorce’ if the edict were abandoned. To do so would be an act of violence. Damville turned the mission into a political lesson in the underlying realities of the situation in Languedoc. The envoys returned to Blois in successive groups. Condé’s were received in private on 2 February to avoid embarrassment.²⁵¹ Navarre’s were given a public hearing on 15 February and deputies agreed that they would not ‘enter into conference’ further with him. The essence of Damville’s response was known through an advance dispatch of the sieur Fogasse from the delegation, who found his way to Blois on 19 February.²⁵² The deputies themselves returned on 26 February. By then, the reaction of deputies to the diplomatic failure was apparent. On 25 February, Pierre de Blanchefort drafted a remonstrance that about half the nobility still at the estates put their names to.²⁵³ In it, they reaffirmed their adherence to the principle of catholicity. At ²⁵⁰ Bodin, fos. 41 f.; BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 362v –364; cf. CalSPFor (1577), No. 1253, 512–13. ²⁵² Ibid., fos. 338 and v . ²⁵¹ BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 300v –301. ²⁵³ Ibid., fos. 367–72 [‘Remonstrance au Roy et a luy presentée au nom de ceux de lordre de la Noblesse depputtez aux Estatz y ayant soubscript’]. Blanchefort indicates most of those who signed it.

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the same time, they accepted that there was an essential contradiction between the inevitable military conflict that this entailed and the task of reformation.²⁵⁴ They in no way approved of protestantism; ‘mais comme une fiebvre Intermittente est plus cappable a une medecine et a receuoir sa Curation qu’une continue, semble que deues laisser respirer les trop hastes et connoistre que les cendres des feux de ce tant accablé Royaume sont encore sy chaudes qu’il n’est possible les tenir en sa main sans ce brusler les doibts’.²⁵⁵ The experience of heresy in the past was that ‘lextermination ne se doibt viollenter mais abbolir par le temps’.²⁵⁶ A day or so later, Jean Bodin, Émery Bigot (the deputy from Rouen), and Joseph Eymar from Bordeaux drafted a similar remonstrance from the third estate. War achieved nothing. The king should seek to reunite his subjects by ‘les plus doux & gracieux moyens que vostre Majesté aviseroit, en paix, & sans guerre’. On Thursday, 28 February, thirtytwo third estate deputies committed to catholicity attempted to meet ‘secretly’ to oppose the petition, but they were disturbed by Jean Bodin, who reminded them that it was a capital offence to assemble without the king’s mandate to discuss questions of peace and war.²⁵⁷ That afternoon the grand finale took place. Louis de Bourbon, duc de Montpensier, who had also been dispatched to Navarre, entered the estates to present his advice. Bodin attempted to take it down verbatim.²⁵⁸ It was a powerful statement from the king’s uncle and it had an undoubted effect on the delegates present. War had achieved nothing but the enfeeblement of the state. Its disastrous impact was everywhere to be seen. He had received en route petition after petition from catholics and protestants begging him to alleviate its impact. The estates had been deflected from their objective: ‘un amandement de nos vies, auec une bonne reformation en tous les Estats de ce Royaume, laquelle est tres-necessaire’. Charles V had made peace with his protestant subjects in Germany. Philip II was in the process of offering the same to the protestant rebels of the Northern Netherlands. Henri III should do likewise. Montpensier returned from Navarre with the impression that he was willing to renegotiate, but not abrogate, the previous edict. As he finished speaking, president Eymar from Bordeaux broke rank and rose to thank him personally for what he had said. Montpensier’s intervention could not have been better timed. Each estate withdrew to consider its reactions. Épinac drew up a formal reply on behalf ²⁵⁴ Ibid., fo. 368v . ²⁵⁵ Ibid., fo. 370. ²⁵⁷ Bodin, fo. 46 and v . ²⁵⁶ Ibid., fo. 370v . v ²⁵⁸ Ibid., fos. 47–48 , repeated by La Popelinière, fos. 350v –351; Blanchefort, BN MS Fr 16250 fos. 275 and v .

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of the clergy, a defensive restatement of a hard-line position.²⁵⁹ In the third estate, the petition that had been drafted the day before was agreed upon a majority vote in a rowdy meeting. Some catholic delegates stayed away, and others expressed their dissent. Bodin was jostled and, at one point, thought he would be hustled out of the room. But their remonstrance was presented to the king before the end of the day along with that from the nobility, the last material act of the estates general of Blois. Ushered into the king’s cabinet, Blanchefort was gratified to learn that he was no longer out of favour. The king read their remonstrances attentively and, in the presence of the chancellor, was heard to say: ‘voyla une chose que ie trouue fort bonne et la garderay bien. Je connois bien mes bons seruiteurs.’ Montpensier interjected that, had it not been for the influence of ‘tel et tel’, all the nobility would have signed up to the remonstrance; to which the king replied: ‘Je le croy bien & scay qu’il y a bien des Brigues la dedans.’²⁶⁰ The engagement of the deputies in diplomacy had begun as a demonstration of collective will. It ended as an uncomfortable political education in the complexities of achieving the bien public in a divided polity. Reformation and pacification proved an elusive goal.

T HE E STAT E S, PE ACE , AND RE FORM AT I ON Delegates at Blois had failed to achieve either peace or reformation. The fact was noted by their localities. Delegates were in regular contact with their provinces. Taking advantage of their proximity to the court, individuals and corporations routinely asked their delegates to help them secure favour and access the latest gossip. As news of the royalist catholic associations began to circulate in the provinces, deputies faced searching questions. The articles of association left the decisions about how many troops each province would raise, and how they were to be funded, to the localities. How were these to be decided? The size of the potential burden was considerable. Local enthusiasm for the associations evaporated as the full impact of what was proposed began to sink in, replaced by prevarication. Many deputies faced awkward questions from their localities, who wanted to know how best to offer the appearance of conforming to the royal will without making commitments they might come to regret. The English ambassador Sir Amias Paulet caught the mood at the end of January: ‘The provinces begin to disavow their deputies, the ²⁵⁹ Lalourcé and Duval, ii. 217.

²⁶⁰ BN MS Fr 16250 fo. 376.

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deputies to disavow their speakers, the country cannot abide to hear of war.’²⁶¹ Deputies, sensing they were compromised, took their leave of the assembly in increasing numbers. The most documented case was that of the delegates from Paris, especially Pierre Versoris. Versoris’s family originated from Normandy and it was his grandfather’s brother who had first Latinized the family name of Le Tornœur. Pierre Versoris followed his father into the law and had made a reputation for himself as an advocate.²⁶² He may well already have become the convenor of the council that managed the duke of Guise’s affairs. His ample girth suggested he enjoyed the pleasures of the table. Versoris was a bustling figure at Blois who made no secret of his commitment to the local associations. He was a natural choice to be the orator for the third estate and present the loyal address to the throne on 17 January. Such speeches were carefully rehearsed and memorized by heart. Versoris went through it with the deputies of the third estate two days before the formal event; they asked him to add four critical points, all of which probably modified both the tone and substance of his proposed text. The king should be asked to achieve a reunion of the realm under the catholic religion by ‘soft means and without war’, to seek to maintain his people in peace, to reconcile the princes with one another, and to be mindful of the miseries of civil war.²⁶³ Two days later, deputies found themselves once more in the great hall of the estates. The only change to the layout of 6 December was a small desk placed facing the king, in front of which the orators of the estates were called to kneel and present their loyal addresses. Pierre d’Épinac, archbishop of Lyon, spoke first for an hour and a quarter. If the subsequently published text is what he said, it was a carefully constructed harangue, highlighting the main themes of the forthcoming clerical cahier.²⁶⁴ France was like a ship that had barely recovered from being battered by a terrible storm. Fortunately it had a prince who understood its misfortunes and listened to the petitions of his people. The estates represented such a dialogue, the prolegomenon to reformation. Religion in a state could not be altered without fundamental difficulty and it could not be construed as reforming the state to seek to do so. Since that was the objective of the protestants, their pastors must be expelled and the public profession of their faith curtailed. But this must be ²⁶¹ CalSPFor (1575–7), No. 1213. ²⁶² Descimon, Qui étaient les seize?, 122. ²⁶³ Bodin, fos. 16v –17. ²⁶⁴ d’Épinac, Harengve (Lyon, 1577); Lalourcé and Duval, iv, No. 47 (pp. 384–448); cf. the summary, perhaps by another delegate in BN MS Fr 5045 fos. 56–7.

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accompanied by an internal reformation of the clergy. He promised a cahier containing ‘vne reformation si canonique, que Dieu en demeurera loué’.²⁶⁵ Aware of the sensitivities that had emerged in the estates, he coupled the request to enact the decrees of Trent with a petition to allow the election of prelates in conformity with the canons of the church.²⁶⁶ On the issues of what he termed ‘police’, he stressed how the bien public was linked to the establishment of ‘concorde’ among his subjects. He proposed a law of ‘amnesty’ and coupled it with an additional ‘loy generale du consentement des Estats’, one which would have the same authority as the Salic Law, to the effect that, in future, no individual could make a treaty with a foreign power and solicit them to invade the kingdom without being automatically regarded as guilty of treason (lèse-majesté).²⁶⁷ With trenchant remarks on the reform of law and the magistracy, he returned to the question of foreigners in the French state, a leitmotif of his address. The invasion of the barbarians had signalled the decline of the Roman empire. All ‘well-ordered republics’ had laws that clearly distinguished between their native citizens and foreigners and limited the activities of the latter—he cited Lacedemonia, Rome, and, most recently, Venice. He recounted France’s debates on this during the Hundred Years War. Laws restricting the activities of foreigners in French public life were, he concluded, an important means to its reform. Although he went on to make some important comments on reforming royal finances, it was his remarks on foreigners that accorded with the mood of delegates.²⁶⁸ Épinac had managed to sound positive without committing his order to new impositions. He had not explicitly supported or condemned the local associations, though he had managed to sound unenthusiastic about them. Épinac’s speech was a defining moment in reformist rhetoric.²⁶⁹ He was followed by the spokesman for the nobility, Nicolas de Bauffremont, sieur de Sennecé, whose discourse lasted barely a quarter of an hour. He devoted himself to praising his order’s fidelity, recommending the need to incorporate the nobility into the state’s affairs, advocating military reform, and commending the forthcoming noble cahier.²⁷⁰ He expressed no enthusiasm ²⁶⁵ d’Épinac, Harengve, 25. ²⁶⁶ Ibid. 26. ²⁶⁷ Ibid. 28. ²⁶⁸ His began a debate—BN MS Fr 3177 fos. 152–76 [‘Remonstrances au Roy, sur ce qui a esté traité aux Estatz à Blois contre les estrangers, par Monsr l’Archevesque de Lyon’, n.d.]. ²⁶⁹ Highlighted e.g. by the sieur de Foultray in his selection of historical ‘lessons’ for the young Louis XIII on 20 June 1619: ‘Sire cette belle harangue merite bien destre veue et consideree par V. M. qui apprendra par Icelle la plus part de ce que les bons Roys doibuent observer’ [BN MS Fr 4805 fo. 164v ]. ²⁷⁰ Bauffremont, Proposition (1577).

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for local associations. His speech would be published and, significantly, reprinted in 1585 as a contribution to anti-League rhetoric. Finally came the turn of Versoris. It is never easy to speak last and he was not helped by being kept on his knees for the first half-hour of his discourse. Some said he spoke for two hours and others for an hour and a half—but the message was the same: he had gone on for too long. We have to reconstruct the speech from the comments made by those present since, although it was published, no copy of it has survived. They all agreed that he struck the wrong note. On the reforming agenda, there was little that had not already been said by Épinac. On catholicity, he did not change his original text to reflect the views of other delegates. Although he conformed to the best advice of the day, which was that the advocate should never be untrue to himself, he was easily construed as not reflecting the views of others. And, in a phrase that would be used against him in the weeks and months to come, he let his oratory get the better of him, promising that the third estate would commit themselves ‘guts and entrails and all’ to the support of catholicity.²⁷¹ His colleagues in the third estate were dismayed. Bodin, no admirer of Versoris, expressed it diplomatically: he ‘had not measured up to the hopes that they had entertained of him’. Unusually, he was openly criticized in a debate on 30 January.²⁷² Three days later, Versoris and Nicolas L’Huillier, prévôt des marchands of the city of Paris and heads of their delegation, left, unwilling to spend a moment longer in Blois. Not that they would be greeted as heroes of the hour when they returned—indeed L’Huillier reportedly knew he would be criticized.²⁷³ Perhaps neither of them was prepared for the ridicule reserved for them in handbills and writings at the Palais de Justice. L’Estoile, who collected them, thought they had probably been written by protestants, though the reaction was more probably linked to the opposition in the Parlement to making individual oaths to the association.²⁷⁴ Versoris ²⁷¹ Bodin, fo. 17 and v ; Taix, 85. ²⁷² The physician Paris de Luat, deputy from Limoges, accused him of going against the will of the third estate by not saying that they advocated catholicity ‘par douce & sainctes voyes’. Jacques Colas from Montélimar defended Versoris but other deputies from the Lyonnais and Guyenne weighed in with their own criticism. The leader of the Paris delegation, Nicolas l’Huillier, was president. He wanted Luat ejected, but finding himself in a minority, ignominiously withdrew by a door at the back of the stage—Bodin, fos. 22v –23. ²⁷³ BN MS Dupuy 333 fo. 93v (7 February 1577) ‘Il eschappe au president de dire apres lassemblee quil soit bien fessee a son Retour a Paris’ to which a Norman deputy replied ‘avec grande risee de tout . . . quil nen auroit guere car Il feroit beau cul.’ ²⁷⁴ BN MS Fr nouv acq 7178 fo. 526 [‘Ce qui se passa au Parlement en suite de ladite association’, copy, 25 February 1577].

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became ‘ce gros porc venerable’, ‘ce porceau Versoris’, ‘ce mignon Versoris, Procureur General des Badaux de Paris’. He conjoined the qualities of a worm (‘ver’) with a mouse (‘souris’). One set of verses said that the church had offered its tears, the nobility its blood, and the third estate its guts and entrails—a dainty dish to excite the king to arms.²⁷⁵ Behind this ridicule, which may have been contrived, lay real concerns that the deputies at the estates general had not stood up for what was important and that, in some way, they had been duped to support a war that was not for the bien public. When the engrossed cahiers from each estate were finally presented to the king on Saturday, 9 February, the event was less the accomplishment of a purpose and more the realization of a disillusionment. The task of reformation had been sidelined. As one placard, attached to the gates of the town hall in Paris on 22 January, said: ‘If war is reignited, justice and peace will be overturned . . . . Peace strengthens a state; foreign war weakens it, and civil war ruins it completely. Fools could not do it better.’²⁷⁶ Another sonnet, not in L’Estoile’s collection, expressed the ambiguity of the moment:²⁷⁷ La paix est ung grand mal la guerre est ung grand bien La paix est notre mort, la guerre est notre vye La paix tue les bons la guerre est leur soutien Paix est propre au meschant la guerre au vray experience [. . .] Je ne suys toutesfoys de la paix ennemy Je suis du bien publicq zelateur & amy J’ay en horreur les maulx qui regnent sur la terre Mais j’ose maintenir que nous estant pippez Plusieurs foys par la paix et par guerre eschappez Pour restablir la paix qu’il fault faire la guerre.

The estates general of Blois had politicized the issues of peace and reformation in the kingdom. It was left to Henri III and his advisers to see what they could make of the aspirations that had been raised. ²⁷⁵ L’Estoile, ii. 89–98. ²⁷⁶ Copied by L’Estoile from the door where it was posted—ibid. 99. ²⁷⁷ BN MS Fr 17310 fo. 87.

4 Le Chemin de la Paix, 1577–1579 Antiquity taught that civil wars were an evil, especially when accompanied by religious divisions. The Roman Empire had fallen prey to internal factions, interlaced by religious disputes. As Louis Musset put it in 1582: ‘Trauaillé de guerres intestines & ciuiles, qui devorent ses forces & autres moyens, & ainsi consomment ce qui seroit autrement immortel’ civil wars had ‘finie la gloire & altesse des anciens Romains par les armes de leurs membres ambitieux & enuieux’.¹ About ten years earlier, the Jesuit Émond Auger proclaimed the virtues of a ‘good (i.e. ‘‘just’’) war’, but prefaced his treatise with the recognition, drawn from antiquity, that warfare profoundly changes the personalities of those engaged in it.² Civil wars were most dangerous when religion was involved.³ It was also a commonplace that, without peace, there could be no justice. In short, peace was the precondition to any attempt at reformation. La Noue recognized as much: ‘si la guerre civile n’est chassee, c’est folie de parler de restauration’.⁴ Reformation of state and society was thus presented as the means by which further conflict might be avoided in the future. There was therefore a rhythm to reforming initiatives in the French state in the later sixteenth century which was imposed by successive attempts to pacify its religious divisions. The pacification at Amboise in 1563 had opened the door to reforming initiatives culminating in the Assembly of Notables and Ordinance of Moulins (1566). The pacification near Bergerac in September 1577 also heralded a period of reformist debate that would culminate in the Assembly of Notables at Saint-Germain (1583–4). Public discourses about peace had their commonplaces. ‘Une bonne paix’ was the daughter of God, ‘une paix universelle’ which passed human understanding.⁵ It was mediated to civil society from God through the soul of the rex pacificus. The dominant image remained that of King David. ¹ Musset, Discovrs, ch. 17 fo. 30. ² Auger, Le Pédagogue d’Armes (1574), fo. 5. ³ Ibid., fo. 8. ⁴ Sutcliffe (ed.), La Noue, Discours politique & militaires, 52. ⁵ Hutton, Themes of Peace in Renaissance Poetry.

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But not every peace was a ‘bonne paix’. A peace could be harmful, unjust, precipitate, a means of covering aggression with the mask of legitimacy. Empires in antiquity had disintegrated by failing to understand that peace without justice was a sham. Peace should not be made under constraint, or at any price. For the diplomats of the Renaissance, the making of peace involved the application of moral philosophy, the discernment of the virtue of prudence. This discernment, or science, included calculating the moment to conclude a just peace, mobilizing the arguments necessary to ensure that it was understood and embraced by both sides, and understanding the mechanisms which rendered it enduring. This science of prudence involved applying classical wisdom and contemporary experience in a calculus of probabilities.

MAKING PE ACE We have only fragments from which to piece together the genesis of the peace settlement that was concluded on 14 September 1577.⁶ What made it convoluted was that it involved a twin-track process. With the gathering of military forces went simultaneous diplomatic initiatives. At the same time as the king’s brother assembled the royal armies around Bourges to besiege La Charité in March 1577, Henri III also dispatched envoys to the conference table. In early April, he issued instructions for a delegation to assemble at Bergerac on 25 April.⁷ On the royal side, such negotiating teams generally included a titular head and a negotiating body. Both were important since there were political judgements as well as legal and administrative decisions to be made. At its head lay Louis de Bourbon, duke of Montpensier, ‘mon oncle’ (as both the king and Navarre affectionately referred to him).⁸ His family affiliations, not to mention his most recent public espousal of the case for reaching an accommodation with the protestants at the estates of Blois less than two months previously, made him an obvious choice.⁹ The remainder of the royal delegation were chosen for their experience. With extensive estates and relatives around Bergerac, Biron had as thorough a knowledge of the military situation in south-west France as anyone in royal service. Bertrand ⁶ The peace was concluded at Bergerac on 14 September; the edict of Poitiers (dated, as French edicts commonly are, by month only) is variously cited as being signed on 16 or 17 September. Henri III’s letter to Charles III of Lorraine of 23 September 1577 confirms that it received the royal signature on 17 September (LH3, iii, No. 2701 bis). ⁷ Cabié, Guerres de religion, 339. ⁸ e.g. LH3, iii, No. 2017. Cf. Gassot, 146. ⁹ e.g. Lafaille, Annales, ii, 350–1.

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de La Mothe-Fénelon was a fellow Périgordin whose skills as a diplomat had been learned at the school of Queen Catherine and tested in his long stint as France’s ambassador to the court of Elizabeth I from 1568 to 1575. François de Peyrusse, sieur d’Escars, was also from western France—the Limousin—and from the same generation as La Mothe-Fénelon. So too was the Quercinois Jean de Saint-Sulpice, who had served as the French ambassador to the Habsburg court in Spain in the critical years from 1562 to 1565.¹⁰ Others from the long robe had legal and rhetorical skills (Jean de Lasseran de Massencome, sieur de Monluc, former bishop—still count—of Valence; Paul de Foix, nominated archbishop of Toulouse; and Jean Daffis, the président of the Parlement of Toulouse).¹¹ They were of similar age, mostly from the same Médicis stable, and had diplomatic and legal experience. They were predominantly from western France, with firsthand knowledge of its geography and its sectarian divisions.¹² They enjoyed a shared camaraderie, seeing themselves as a ‘partie’ engaged ‘pour une si sainte occasion’. Treating with protestants was, however, problematic. We are in the dark as to how the twenty or so individuals who accompanied the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé to the peace table were chosen and how they were mandated by the movement at large. We cannot even be sure exactly how many there were. The scribe that produced the surviving collated copies of the secret articles, signed on 17 September 1577, had difficulty in reading the signatures.¹³ They included representatives from upper and lower Languedoc (Payan and Clausonne, possibly Senegas as well), a deputy from Montauban (Scorbiac) and one from the Rouergue (Davaux or De Vaux), at least one deputy from Guyenne (Durand and possibly Morin), and two from La Rochelle (‘Guyet’ or ‘Ginet’ and ‘Boignon’ or ‘Soignan’).¹⁴ Other provinces, particularly those north of the Loire, were less well represented, with one each from Dauphiné (‘de Signo’ or ‘de Segier’) and Provence (‘Roux’ or ‘Benet’) and a deputy from the Vendomois (‘Courtois’). Guillaume de MontmorencyThoré was there, like François de La Noue, in his own right but also as a ¹⁰ Cabié, Guerres de religion, 366. ¹¹ Articles secrets (1671), 20. ¹² See, more generally, Le Roux, ‘Les Négociateurs royaux’. ¹³ Cf. the printed version with BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fo. 75v. ¹⁴ Guillaume Rocques, sieur de Clausonne, conseiller at the présidial court in Nîmes, a veteran stage-hand of the protestant movement (AD Hérault B 22.547). Guichard de Scorbiac (var.: Escorbiac) was conseiller at the Parlement of Toulouse, where Jean Daffis was président, and had been appointed a judge in the chambre-mi-partie at Montpellier under the edict of Beaulieu in 1576 and would be nominated to its successor tribunal under the edict of Poitiers, 1577. He was maître d’hôtel to the king of Navarre (Berger, i. 158).

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figure from northern France. The delegation included representatives of the king of Navarre (Louis Du Faur, his chancellor, and Armand de Gontaut, sieur de Saint-Geniès, Biron’s relative) and the prince of Condé. Deputies were mandated—at least in the Midi—by regional protestant assemblies. They took time to assemble, and there was an inevitable feeling among royal negotiators that the protestants were dragging their feet.¹⁵ Running through the negotiations was a lack of common purpose. For the French crown and its notables, making peace was about deploying the virtues of grace and justice, establishing an environment of competitive emulation, in which each side in the talks sought to outshine the other in its commitment to these virtues. But for many of the protestant delegates, it was not a matter of grace and virtue but rights and equalities. This was a fundamental difference. So the negotiations drifted. There were threats that the conference would collapse in early June with the fall of La Charité.¹⁶ In response, the king dispatched the royal secretary Villeroy.¹⁷ This has been seen as a significant advance in the authority of the secretaries of state during the civil wars.¹⁸ Perhaps it would turn out to be so but, in reality, its purpose was to enable Henri III to be associated with the most intimate details of the talks and yet preserve his anonymity. We do not have a copy of Villeroy’s instructions, but his memoirs record how he tried to be excused.¹⁹ Navarre’s charm was beguiling, even to the king.²⁰ But when protestant demands became known, pessimism set in. They demanded a re-enactment (with modifications) of the pacification arrived at the previous year. Discussions broke up at Agen on 24 June 1577 with the parties far apart.²¹ Villeroy returned to the king, joined by Queen Catherine on 3 July, and it was on her encouragement he was once more dispatched with new instructions. The protestants still seemed hardly in the mood for talks. Their delegation did not muster until early August, by which time a rumour circulating at court that Navarre was dead gave them more excuse for ‘remises et longueurs’, and to demand the transfer of negotiations to Bergerac.²² We can glimpse something of the persuasion—rhetoric, inspired by virtue, deployed to political purpose—deployed in the first round of talks at Bergerac ¹⁵ Guillaume Rocques, sieur de Clausonne, conseiller at the présidial court in Nîmes, 366. ¹⁶ CalSPFor(1575–7), 351. ¹⁷ Ibid, 595. ¹⁸ Sutherland, The French Secretaries of State, 197. ¹⁹ Villeroy, ‘Mémoires’, 109. ²⁰ Desjardins, iv. 120. ²¹ Cabié, Guerres de religion, 361; cf. Desjardins, iv. 121. ²² Cabié, Guerres de religion, 368; BN MS Fr 3400 fo. 6 [Louis de Bourbon to Henri III, Bergerac, autograph].

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from a report by Saint-Sulpice.²³ Jean Daffis, the magistrate from Toulouse, presented the royal case on 6 August. His speech made much of the king’s ‘bonne et droite intention’ for peace and invited the protestants to make a similar declaration. In reply, however, the latter recited the arguments from the estates of Blois. If it was the case that the peace of Beaulieu was contrary to his coronation oath, what had changed to make a new edict possible? Some protestants suggested that the peace negotiations should be conducted with the king directly so that they could be assured of his good faith, a suggestion that Henri III deflected in a carefully ciphered passage within his letter to Montpensier of 6 August.²⁴ The king’s intentions were not to be impugned since to do so would be to doubt God’s hand in the peace process. At the same time, he gave his brother-in-law his word that he ardently desired to see him at his side once the troubles were ended. On the following day (7 August), discussion moved to substantive issues. The royal delegation had been provided with instructions on the concessions to be made for rights of worship. These were framed so as not to fuel catholic fears but to give some sureties to the protestants. Such a brief was ambiguous and that was what Biron feared: ‘[j]e ay tousiours creint que lon temporiseroit a fere la pes.’²⁵ Three months after the success at La Charité, the upper hand had been lost militarily and yet no concession had been made to bring the protestants to negotiate seriously: ‘vos magestes me pardonneront et [je] les ansupplie humblement sy je leur dis que je creins que vous prenies conseil pour la pes de ceuls quy ne la veullent Et pour la guerre de ceuls quy ny entandent guieres . . . ’. By 11 August both sides seemed far apart.²⁶ Then, after dinner, the protestants elected to keep on talking and, on 18 August, they were joined by the king of Navarre himself. Peace once more seemed possible. What had changed their minds? It was less the rhetoric of the negotiators than the situation on the ground that altered the equation. Protestant delegates at Bergerac waited and watched as their military fortunes faltered. In the Midi, the marshals Henri de Montmorency-Damville and Roger de Saint-Lary, sieur de Bellegarde, laid waste the countryside around Montpellier prior to besieging the town, whose defences Damville knew only too well.²⁷ ²³ Cabié, Guerres de religion, 367 (the document is incomplete and covers only the first two days of discussions). ²⁴ BN MS Fr 3400 fo. 12. ²⁵ BN MS Fr 3396 fo. 31 [Biron to ‘Madame’, ‘Braivirac’, 8 August (endorsed 1577)]. ²⁶ Cabié, Guerres de religion, 369. ²⁷ D’Aubigné, v. 296–7.

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Although the besieging army was in the grip of dysentery, the city could not hold out for long.²⁸ The protestants of lower Languedoc could also no longer be assured of the revenues of the salt-pans at Peccais, near Aiguesmortes, their most mortgageable asset when it came to raising forces from abroad.²⁹ More decisively, royal forces had strengthened their grip around Brouage (now Hiers-Brouage), a recently fortified town on the marshes at the end of the Broue canal on the west coast of France near La Rochelle. Brouage was a stronghold defended by several thousand protestants and it capitulated on 18 August in the face of a naval squadron commanded by Lansac.³⁰ With the collapse of Brouage, French protestants lost the second of the ‘deux boutiques de sa Maieste’ that they had used to sustain their credit abroad, the salt-pans around Brouage.³¹ Meanwhile, on 17 July, the king mustered all available gendarmerie companies. So, in the last couple of weeks of August, a different atmosphere emerged in discussions, assisted by public demonstrations of a yearning for peace. Sensing an advantage, Montpensier accused the protestants of bad faith, but Navarre reassured him.³² With royal instructions providing little room for manoeuvre, the king’s negotiators dispatched Biron and Villeroy to the king to seek more flexibility.³³ It has generally been thought that the instructions with which Villeroy and Biron returned to Bergerac on 2 September have not survived.³⁴ In fact, we have not only the instructions but also the negotiating brief and accompanying replies.³⁵ Such documentation is rare and we should examine it with care. The instructions, dated from Poitiers on 31 August, are drafted by secretary Brulart. Their first significance is to confirm the personal involvement of the king in every aspect of the negotiations. Unlike previous peace negotiations of this magnitude, only a few selected individuals were involved, in secrecy, while the council was excluded.³⁶ Behind his detachment Henri III awaited the moment for a decisive entrée en scène. The king’s comments as the documents were read to him are recorded in the margin. Besides the king’s signature on one of them, he adds in autograph: ‘Je veus en toute extremijte ²⁸ Rigal (ed.), Documents, 386–7; 390. For a detailed account of the siege, see the ‘discours’ prepared by a captain in Montmorency’s army in BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 110—reprinted in Devic and Vaissète, xii. 282 f. ²⁹ BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 84 [letters patent, Henri III to Henri de Montmorency-Damville, Chenonceaux, 22 May 1577 (copy)]. ³⁰ D’Aubigné, v. 265. For its capture, see the reports from Saracini of 17 and 24 August in Desjardins, iv. 1222. Cf. La Popelinière, iv, fos. 518–42. ANG, xii/2. 670. ³¹ Froumenteau, Le Secret des finances (1581), 20. ³² ANG, xiii/2. 671–2. ³³ Ibid. 672–3. ³⁴ Sutherland, The French Secretaries of State, 198. ³⁵ Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 4. ³⁶ Desjardins, iv. 124.

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que ce cy soyct accordé.’ The documents were drafted ‘affin que chascun soit clairement & auec toute certitude adverty du vouloir & Intention de sa majeste . . . Roy comme majeur de vingt cinq ans qui scait & cognoist par experience ce qui est utile et necessaire pour la tranquillite publicque de son Roiaulme’. The negotiators’ instructions are contained in thirty-five clauses distributed under three headings: ‘Religion’, ‘Iustice’, and ‘Seuretez’. What was envisaged was an edict on a different basis from that of 1576, one that would abnegate religious equality in favour of a ‘variable geometry’ based on privilege. In the instructions, the negotiators were authorized to offer a ‘culte seigneurial’ to nobles who had feudal rights to exercise ‘haute justice’, including those who only had the usufruct of a half of such rights, at one specified place on their estates (even during their absence) and at other places on their estates (but only when they were resident there).³⁷ Such a clause had already been the bedrock of pacifications in 1563 and 1570, a recognition of the fact that there were parts of northern France where the survival of rural protestantism depended on the local nobility. An additional instruction authorized the negotiators to permit a similar right to nobles who did not have the rights to exercise high justice in their manorial courts so long as it was only extended to their family and close friends and providing their chosen place of residence did not lie in places where catholics predominated.³⁸ This formulation too found its way into the edict. Similar concessions were offered on Huguenot rights to worship in and around urban centres. They would continue to enjoy rights of worship where these were de facto in existence at the time of the signature of the accord—but not in those places ‘appartenans aux catholicques’ which had been seized in wartime by protestants, nor where such worship had not featured before the hostilities began.³⁹ The Huguenots were permitted one place of worship in each bailliage district (thus resurrecting a clause that had featured in the 1563 pacification) but not in those areas where they already possessed two places of worship under the preceding clause.⁴⁰ Once again, these were formulations that had already made their appearance at Amboise in 1563 and (in a more restricted form) at Saint-Germain in 1570. Picardy, Paris, and some other locations were declared exemption zones where no protestant worship was ³⁷ Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 4, fo. 3 ¶3; cf. ¶5 of the edict of Poitiers (Stegmann, Édits des guerres de religion, 131–53; esp. 133). ³⁸ Ibid., ¶4; cf. edict, ¶6. ³⁹ Ibid., fo. 4 (¶6); cf. edict, ¶7. ⁴⁰ Ibid., fo. 4v (¶7); cf. edict, ¶8.

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permitted.⁴¹ Finally, the king was adamant that the provisional nature of the edict should be emphasized with a reference to a future council.⁴²His formulation, along with the first clause of the instructions concerning catholic worship throughout the kingdom, enabled the king to square his oath of catholicity with his agreement to the pacification. Henri IV would reiterate the final clause of the preamble when it came to the edict of Nantes in 1598. In the instructions relating to justice, there was a similar mix of politics and principle. The distinction between northern and southern France was clear in the clauses on the bi-confessional judicial tribunals (chambres de l’édit). Conceived as an institution on a national basis in 1576, they were abandoned in the instructions of 31 August 1577 so far as northern France was concerned. Instead, the king offered more extensive rights of ‘récusation sans cause’ in Paris, Rouen, Dijon, and Rennes when judging individual cases involving protestant subjects.⁴³ This was the only area in which the final edict differed from the instructions of 31 August.⁴⁴ In the Parlements of the Midi, by contrast, the king conceded judicial tribunals on a tripartite basis—with one third of the judges being specified as protestants nominated by the king of Navarre from serving bench judges.⁴⁵ In the case of Toulouse, however, the king accepted ‘les causes de soubson alleguées par ceulx de ladite Religion contre les officiers dudit parlement’ and offered to site the tribunal at a location where both worshipping communities could feel secure.⁴⁶ The catholic judges serving on its bench would be nominated by the king from the Grand Conseil in Paris or from other Parlements in the kingdom. In the final section devoted to security arrangements, the king wanted to attenuate past memories.⁴⁷ The instructions offered unmodified and prompt registration of the edict in all the courts of the kingdom.⁴⁸ Formal arrangements for military disengagement, release of prisoners, and surrender of fortifications were proposed.⁴⁹ The instructions envisaged public swearings to obey the terms of the edict by all significant figures in royal service. In addition, the king offered to sign an oath and exchange copies of it with the king of Navarre as a kind of peace indenture.⁵⁰ All cosignatories should ⁴¹ ⁴² ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁹ ⁵⁰

Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 4, fo. 3 ¶3; cf. edict, ¶9 and ¶3–7 of the secret articles. ⁴³ Ibid., fo. 6, ¶1 of the instructions relating to justice. Ibid., fo. 5v (¶10). Stegmann, Édits des guerres de religion, 137 (edict, ¶21); cf. ¶10 of the secret articles. Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 4, fos. 6v –7r (¶3); cf. edict, ¶22 and ¶11 of the secret articles. Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 4, fo. 7 and v (¶4); cf. edict, ¶23. Ibid., cf. edict, ¶¶1–2. ⁴⁸ Ibid., fo. 8v ; cf. edict, ¶64. Ibid., fos. 8v –9r ; cf. edict, ¶59. Ibid., ¶8–10 of the instructions relating to security arrangements (unpaginated); edict, ¶63.

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forswear intelligence with foreign powers and renounce the confraternities to which they had committed themselves.⁵¹ This left the question of the strongholds as guarantees of the peace and here the king nominated six places for Dauphiné, Provence, and Guyenne, but the names of the places for Languedoc remained blank, presumably because the status of besieged Montpellier was still in doubt.⁵² These were granted for a period of six years—the figure being filled in after the drafting of the instructions had been completed. These instructions, along with comments on the proposed ‘secret articles’ to accompany the treaty, were glossed by an additional negotiating brief.⁵³ The clauses on the ‘culte seigneurial’ could be modified for those with rights to a third part of a fief with haute justice rights if the protestants insisted. Navarre might be accorded up to eight places de sûreté (along with an additional two for Condé). As to the exemption zones, the king would concede additional rights of worship in Poitou and Provence (but not in Picardy) in lieu. On the final clause concerning the provisional nature of the edict until the holding of a council, there could be no concession: ‘sa Majeste Entend quil soit faict pour sa dignite & la satisfaction de sa conscience’, a statement reinforced by a marginal comment: ‘Sa Majeste le veulx resolument’. In the judicial arrangements, the king would concede tripartite tribunals in Dijon and Brittany, if pressed, but refuse them for Paris and Rouen. He was prepared to consider the Bordeaux tribunal meeting at another location, as in the case of Toulouse. The tribunals might be expanded to include up to fifteen judges and the protestant judges might be nominated by Navarre. If the protestants asked how long the tribunals would last, the king would prefer not to be specific but, if pressed, he would guarantee their existence for a decade. On matters of security, the king indicated his willingness to concede on various issues. The king’s permission to the protestants to levy 600,000 livres owed to Johann Casimir was confirmed. If they insisted on Aiguesmortes and Montpellier as security towns in Languedoc, they could have them, providing Montpellier had not fallen to the crown by the date of the pacification. In Dauphiné, they could have Livron as one of their security towns, but the king refused to consider Gap for security reasons. If they asked for Brouage and Fontenay in Poitou, the request should be rejected. And Condé should be content with the stronghold town of Saint-Jean d’Angély and ‘ne sera ⁵¹ Ibid., ¶12; cf. edict, ¶56. ⁵² Ibid., ¶14; cf. edict, ¶58. ⁵³ Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 3 [headed: ‘Lintention du Roy sur les difficultez qui se pourront presenter sur la conclusion de la paix pour la Religion’]; cf. BSHPF 32 (1883), 350–5.

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aucunement parlé de Péronne’ in Picardy. Overall, the king wanted a new edict, and on different foundations, from that of the previous year. Villeroy and Biron left Paris on 2 September and the next session of talks reconvened on 7 September.⁵⁴ The duke of Montpensier made the journey up from Brantôme to Bergerac on 5 September. On the evening of 6 September, the protestant leadership sent word that they were ready to hear the king’s latest proposals.⁵⁵ Montpensier began with opening words ‘fort honnorables et pleins de respect’ for the king.⁵⁶ It may well have been in reply that Navarre pronounced the discourse that is preserved for us in a later copy. It is the first sign that Navarre was prepared to talk the language of peace. He recognized the need for a new edict.⁵⁷ He was prepared to put his authority behind a renegotiated settlement. In a gesture of commitment, he offered to accept a decade of voluntary banishment and to commit half his patrimony in the service of the French king abroad if it would promote peace. Paul de Foix made the opening speech for the crown, ‘faisant toutes les belles et fortes Remonstrances que lon scaveoit dire pour les amener a quelque bonne Raison & les faire contanter des conditions de Paix’. In his youth, he had been imprisoned in 1559 for his protestant views and they still held him in high regard.⁵⁸ The chancellor of the king of Navarre—who had shared student days in Toulouse with Paul de Foix and also been imprisoned in 1559 for his suspect beliefs—responded ‘en termes fort expres disant ung grand mercyment a dieu et a votre majesté de la faueur et humanite et des benignes responces que leurz deputez ont eu d’elle’.⁵⁹ It was the kind of day that exemplified peace-making as contemporary moralists understood it. Yet, by supper-time the mood had changed. As the protestant delegation absorbed the full extent of what the king expected of them, of how each concession was girded round with caveats, they reacted negatively. Montpensier added an autograph postscript to his account of events—written up by his secretary during supper—to the king: ‘nous sommes demeuryes acroches dont ie suis infiniement marry et displaisant pour ne voir aucune esperance de pouuoir en cela vaincre ceulx a qui nous avons a faire.’⁶⁰ Later that same evening, Villeroy wrote an encrypted letter back to the king, ⁵⁴ Desjardins, iv. 124; BN MS Italien 1730 fo. 130 (2 September 1577); BN 500 Colbert 9 fo. 32 [Villars, archbishop of Vienne, to Henri III, Bergerac, 6 September 1577]. ⁵⁵ BN MS Fr 3440 fo. 1 [Montpensier to Henri III, 7 September 1577]. ⁵⁶ BN MS 500 Colbert 9 fo. 32 bis [Bertrand de La Mothe-Fénelon to Henri III, ‘Brageyrac’ (Bergerac), 7 September 1577, autograph]. ⁵⁷ Berger, 147. ⁵⁸ D’Aubigné, v. 220. ⁵⁹ BN MS 500 Colbert 9 fo. 32 bis. ⁶⁰ Ibid.

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dispatched surreptitiously via Montpensier’s lackey who was en route to the duchess at court.⁶¹ The fiction that the king was uninvolved in the negotiations still needed to be preserved in case they proved unsuccessful. Villeroy was candid: ‘Sire, Je me doubtois bien que ce dernier point du concile[,] couche de la facon que votre Majeste desire[,] accorderoit du tout ceste negotiation comme nous cognoissons maintenant par effect quil faict.’ The last clause of the instructions was the stumbling block. But for the king this was an essential fig-leaf to cover his promise to catholicity back in January. Villeroy sought something positive in the fact that all peace came ultimately from God. ‘Sire je croy que Dieu[,] comme Il vous a tousiours fauorise en toutes voz actions[,] faict naistre ces difficultez pour le mieulx.’ He would endeavour to keep the talks alive since the political conditions for a settlement were in place, and the science of prudence taught the virtues of hope. If the edict of Bergerac was Villeroy’s achievement, it was so mainly on account of the unremitting negotiations of the following week.⁶² He redrafted the terms of the edict and secret articles. Last-minute concessions were made on various issues. Tribunals to hear protestant cases were granted in all the Parlements north of the Loire, though protestant judges were not guaranteed as among those who would hear the cases. Clause 27 of the secret articles dealt with the complex issue of the pensions often charged by laymen and clerics on ecclesiastical benefices.⁶³ The 500 protestant soldiers paid for by the king to guard the Huguenot stronghold towns became 800 by 14 September.⁶⁴ The final articles included a promise, too, that Saint-Jean d’Angély would be Condé’s security town for six years ‘en attendant qu’il puisse effectuellement iouyr de son Gouuernement de Picardie, auquel sa Maiesté veut qu’il soit conservé’.⁶⁵ The English ambassador judged these negotiations savagely: ‘In principio plus quam viri, in fine minus quam feminæ’ (i.e. ‘in the beginning more than manly; in the end less than womanly’).⁶⁶ There was an ambivalence between the king’s role as peace-maker and his prowess as a military leader. War was the preserve of princes and nobles; the virtues of peace were more suited to women. Clemency was a virtue, but only when accompanied ⁶¹ BN MS Fr 3995 fo. 44 [Villeroy to Henri III, 7 September 1577, deciphered copy]. ⁶² BN MS 500 Colbert 9 fo. 32 and v; cf. fo. 32 bis. ⁶³ Bib Protestante MS 97 pièce 1 [‘Lintencion du Roy Sur les articles secretz faictz & accordez auec ceulx de la nouuelle oppinion et autres leurs associez dans l’edict de paciffication’]; cf. clauses 27–8 of the secret articles. ⁶⁴ Bib. Protestante MS 97 pièce 1, ¶17; cf. ¶33 of the secret articles. ⁶⁵ ¶35 of the secret articles. ⁶⁶ CalSPFor (1575–7), 536.

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by a sense of authority.⁶⁷ A prince, said Louis Musset, must be ‘doulx, mansuete et clement’ towards his subjects but only if he was ‘redoubté et crainct des mauluays, que aymé des bons’.⁶⁸ This was, however, the ‘king’s peace’. Physically distant, magisterially aloof, he dictated the shape of the agreement that Villeroy rescued from collapse in its final stages. Charles de Mayenne, showcasing his military victory at Brouage by parading his leg-wound from the siege, joined the court at Poitiers on 8 September with his retinue. His presence made the announcement of peace a week later a lonesome act of faith.⁶⁹ But the fact that it was the ‘king’s peace’ and not a revised version of the edict of Beaulieu rankled with many protestants, a sore that dissident elements within the movement sought to exploit in the coming years. Its compromises would be difficult to implement, especially since the edict contained no mechanisms for ensuring compliance beyond the tribunals of justice. Persuading his subjects that he was committed to it, and that it was workable, became the king’s Sisyphean task for the following nine years.

THE KING’S PEACE The peace at Bergerac was the moment for Henri III to seize the initiative. In the remaining months of 1577, the peace of Beaulieu became known as the ‘peace of Monsieur’ to distinguish it from the ‘paix du roi’ that Bergerac now afforded. In his correspondence Henri III defended it energetically. Its terms were, he told the lieutenant in the Lyonnais the day after it was concluded, ‘beaucoup plus honorables et a l’advantaige des catholiques que n’estoit le dernier edict’.⁷⁰ To the kingdom at large, he distributed a lengthy justification on 28 September.⁷¹ A suffering kingdom needed the healing balm of a just peace. That peace reflected his affection for his subjects, and it came from his heart. He had only agreed to it after mature reflection, and in consideration of the good of the realm. It was a virtuous peace in which ‘Dieu sera mieux servy et honoré qu’il n’a esté par le passé’. Justice ‘regnera à la conservation des bons et pugnition des meschans’. His subjects will be reconciled ‘en toute bonne amityé les ungs avec les autres’. These were the ‘vrays moyens de mectre mondit royaume en sa puissance, dignité et splendeur’. ⁶⁷ Waele, ‘Image de force’. ⁶⁸ BN MS Fr 1207 fos. 3 and 11v –12r . ⁶⁹ La Fontenelle de Vaudoré (ed.), Journal, 290. ⁷⁰ LH3, iii, No. 2689. ⁷¹ Ibid., No. 2708.

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The king left Poitiers (‘cette facheuse ville’) in early October 1577 to go north, drawn ‘vers ceste estrange pays de la douce France’ where its implementation would be unproblematic.⁷² In the following decade, the contrast between a civilized, ‘royal’ north, and an uncouth, disobedient south would take root in the mentality of France’s governing elites. ‘Jay trouue notre France tant doulce et treuue ce pais si rude et mal gratieus,’ wrote the bishop of Castres (who liked, it is true, the good things in life) on his way back from court in November 1577.⁷³ Its ‘execution’ (as contemporaries would refer to the uphill process of implementing the peace) involved educating the kingdom to virtue. Early responses were mixed. In Paris, the edict was published on 5 October and registered by the Parlement three days later. Bertrand de La Mothe-Fénelon, d’Escars, and the cardinal de Bourbon met the premier président and leading figures from the Parlement the evening before presenting the text before the Parlement and took them through its terms. They found it better than they feared.⁷⁴ The fact that the registration was on the eve of the patronal festival of St Denis was taken as a good omen.⁷⁵ It was printed and distributed widely north of the Loire.⁷⁶ Provincial Parlements mostly followed Paris’s lead, albeit with royal encouragement.⁷⁷ The court in Bordeaux, by contrast, dragged its feet.⁷⁸ Each registration was an opportunity for the monarchy to present the moral and prudential case for peace. La MotheFénelon, for example, was chosen to go before the Chambre des Comptes in Paris.⁷⁹ The objective was a godly peace, and also ‘le rétablissement de nos affaires’, familiar code for reform. The kingdom had come close to ‘la ruine et l’entière désolation de l’Estat’. Through the king’s prudence and the ‘sages conseils’ of the queen mother, this had been prevented. But its rupture would rekindle the ‘furieuse et obstinée opiniastreté de ceux de la nouvelle religion’. Peace would enable the king to ‘lead them back into union with the catholic, apostolic and Roman church’, the king’s ultimate desire. ⁷² Ibid., No. 2714; cf. LCM, vii. 111. ⁷³ BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fo. 49 [Claude d’Oraison, bishop of Castres, to Pierre de Masparraulte, 29 November 1577]. ⁷⁴ BN MS 500 Colbert 9 fo. 50 [Christofle de Thou to Henri III, Paris, 7 October 1577, autograph]; cf. ibid., fo. 55 [Cardinal de Bourbon to Henri III, Paris, 8 October 1577] and fo. 59 [Christofle de Thou to Henri III, Paris, 8 October 1577, autograph]. ⁷⁵ BN MS 500 Colbert 500 9 fo. 63 [François de Peyrusse, comte d’Escars, to Henri III, Paris, 8 October 1577]. ⁷⁶ e.g. BN F 46858(1)—Paris (Federic Morel): (2)—Poitiers (François le Page): (3)—Rouen (Martin le Megissier): (4)—Tours (Iamet Mettayer) etc. ⁷⁷ Drouot, La Première Ligue, 119; Lafaille, Annales ii. 351. ⁷⁸ BN MS Fr 22369 fos. 323 and 329v [secret register, Parlement of Bordeaux]. ⁷⁹ Boislisle, Pièces justificatives, 135.

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Whether these arguments registered with a wider public remains an open question. L’Estoile thought it an edict ‘dont le peuple tesmoigna peu de joye et les gens d’églize encore moins’.⁸⁰ The feu de joie organized by the municipality of Paris met with little enthusiasm. Maurice Poncet, doctor of theology and curé of Saint-Pierre-des-Arcis, preached a sermon at SaintSulpice. What did he think of the edict? ‘Tout n’en vault rien.’ He knew that there were those who argued that it would cool the ‘quartan fevers’ of the protestants, but he remained unconvinced.⁸¹ Christofle de Thou reported nervously on 14 October that three Carmelites had preached against the edict in Paris on the festival of St-Denis.⁸² Elsewhere, there was scepticism. An anonymous pamphlet entitled Francophile printed in Chartres reported sentiments as hostile as any that had yet been seen in print against the king. It was the peace of a military weakling, not man enough to have the courage of his convictions: ‘son courage foible, ravallez, impatients de peine, toutes ses complexions inégales, trop basses pour estre guerrières, il se tourna de tout point aux dances et aux voluptez efféminées que peut apporter une longue paix’.⁸³ Not far away, the University of Nantes was among several French faculties which openly opposed the edict. Only the ready acceptance of peace and its rapid implementation would enable Henri III to make ‘the king’s peace’ a basis for reform. A CE ASE FIRE Proclaiming a ceasefire was a solemn event. Local governors had to carry it out. In the Midi, however, protestants were suspicious of it. It surrendered objectives, enshrined in the peace of Monsieur, without their consent. One protestant in Millau wrote of it as ‘une paix de trahaïson car s’estoit un dormitoire à la Religion’.⁸⁴ The consuls there refused to admit the herald who arrived to announce it. Their reluctance was mirrored elsewhere in the Midi. The governor of Languedoc reported the common rumour that they were waiting until the spring to take up arms again.⁸⁵ In Provence, the suspension of arms was similarly reluctant.⁸⁶ If a captured report of a protestant assembly in Guyenne, meeting at Sainte-Foy on 21 December 1577, is to be believed, the deputies ⁸⁰ L’Estoile, ii. 144. ⁸¹ Ibid. ⁸² BN MS 500 Colbert 9 fo. 71 [Christofle de Thou to Henri III, Paris, 14 October 1577, autograph]. ⁸³ D’Aubigné, v. 346. ⁸⁴ Rigal (ed.), Documents, 407. ⁸⁵ LMC, vi. 465. ⁸⁶ Perussis, ‘Histoire’, 210.

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instructed each church to draw up registers of its congregation, determine the numbers of able-bodied who could serve the cause, and establish a fund for their payment.⁸⁷ Each minister was asked to ‘gaigner le plus de Gentilshommes quilz pourroient et de leur persuader de prandre & se saisir de places’. As for the peace, ‘on ne s’amuseroit aucunement aux belles promesses de sa majesté ny a sa paix, et quilz auoient este contrainctz par necessite de prandre les armes’. Languedoc exemplifies the problems encountered more widely in the Midi. The most immediate questions concerned the dispersal of the forces besieging Montpellier and the establishment of the two places de sûreté in the province. On paper, both were resolved in early October. The army commanded by Bellegarde and Montmorency-Damville was disbanded.⁸⁸ The fort at Peccais, of strategic importance for the salt trade, was dismantled. This abrupt provincial demobilization was, however, a cashiering without cash.⁸⁹ Captains would have to sue for an assignment on royal receipts; receiving anything was an uncertain prospect. Damville faced the task of winning consent from a reluctant protestant population without a military presence. Not surprisingly he dragged his feet when it came to disarmament.⁹⁰ By the terms of the peace, the protestants of Languedoc were allowed two places de sûreté. That at Aiguesmortes had been agreed. The second was proposed at Montpellier, but only if the town remained in protestant hands on the day of the declaration of peace. The protestants gambled successfully that the town would hold out. They gained a sizeable military fortress, a major royal town, the site of a bishopric and the province’s sovereign courts of finance. As agreed, Navarre and Condé called on the advice of twenty protestant gentlemen to propose candidates as governors of the strongholds. Their nominations were predictable. Jean de Saint Chamond (var.: Saint Chaumont), sieur de Saint Romain, former archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and leader of the protestant military operations in lower Languedoc, was proposed for Aiguesmortes.⁹¹ François de Coligny, count of Coligny, son of Admiral Coligny, inheritor of the protestant pallium after his father’s assassination, was nominated for Montpellier.⁹² A friend of the young prince ⁸⁷ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 180–2 [‘La resolution prinse par les depputtez des Eglises refformees a saincte foy’, copy]. ⁸⁸ F46859(3); BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 160. ⁸⁹ BM Toulouse fo. 161. ⁹⁰ BN MS Fr 3420 fo. 19 [Henri III to Henri de Montmorency-Damville, Paris, 29 November 1577]. ⁹¹ Dainville, ‘Contribution’. Letters patent of nomination [Poitiers, 4 October 1577, copy] in BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 148–9. ⁹² BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 150–1.

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of Condé, he had already earned the respect of the town by his attempt to break the siege on 25 September. The lieutenant of lower Languedoc, the sieur de Bellegarde, administered oaths of loyalty and conducted an inventory. The payment of these troops was (unlike disbanded royal units) assigned on provincial receipts.⁹³ Saint Romain eventually made the necessary declaration in early 1578, but refused to demolish the fort at Peccais.⁹⁴ Coligny, on the other hand, avoided an oath of loyalty on one pretext after another. In April 1578, the protestant military leaders of lower Languedoc gave orders to seize royal and ecclesiastical revenues in the dioceses of Montpellier, Nîmes, Uzès, the Vivarais, and Mende to support the garrisons in Montpellier, Aiguesmortes, and elsewhere.⁹⁵ The pretexts were that the edict of pacification had not been ‘entierement effectuee’. It was a sign of the emerging gap between the rhetoric of pacification at court and the reality on the ground. The demobilization of royal forces was repeated across the Midi. But creating a ‘demilitarized zone’ did not mean the suspension of armed conflict; rather the reverse. ‘Demilitarization’ exposed the fact that cumulative hostilities had turned military activity into a way of life, profitable for some, habitual for others. Contemporaries warned that war had damaged the fabric of civil society. There had been, of course, no mass mobilization of men at arms. But the material impact of the civil wars was everywhere to be seen in the fortified churches and strengthened town walls. Local populations recorded a litany of stolen property, burnt barns, captured cattle, and ransom demands of unpaid soldiers on the roads. The peace of Bergerac was a messy affair in which even the most basic elements of its implementation, the suspension of hostilities, remained in doubt in many places, giving the lie to the attempts at reform that would follow in its wake.

INSTRUMENTS OF PEACE Provincial governors and lieutenants were responsible for identifying places of worship allowed to protestants in each bailliage and re-establishing catholic ⁹³ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 152–5 [‘Estat du payement que le Roy veult & entend estre faict . . . ’, Poitiers, 27 September 1577]. ⁹⁴ Ibid., fos. 228–9; BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fo. 23 [Henri de Montmorency-Damville to Henri III, Pézenas, 4 March 1578, copy]. ⁹⁵ Ibid., fo. 85 [letters of commission from Guillaume de Montmorency-Thoré, Nîmes, 9 April 1578, copy]; fo. 87 [ibid. from François de Châtillon, Montpellier, 29 April 1578, copy].

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worship.⁹⁶ Their instructions, adapted to particular localities, urged them to rally support for the peace. They were to go on tour, summoning local officers to remind them of their responsibilities. They were to report back to the royal council on what they encountered, the prelude to what the papal nuncio regarded as ‘une riforma generale’. Their ‘bons et amples procès verbaux’ were expected before the council by the end of the year.⁹⁷ If any memoranda were forthcoming, none has survived. There was, however, one response to the royal initiative in the form of a letter to the king from Jean de Monluc. Invited to submit his views on the ‘moiens pour l’establissement et conseruation de l’edict de paix’, the former Dominican seized the opportunity to echo the leitmotifs of a long career in public service.⁹⁸ Monluc was old enough to recall the conflict between Emperor Charles V and his German subjects.⁹⁹ The emperor learnt the hard way that military force was no substitute for ‘la parolle’ and that the effects of war ‘souillent et prophanent la conscience’. If only those at the French court had understood that lesson, the kingdom would not now be ‘un theatre de tous vices et de toutes cruaultez plus abominables que celles des moscouittes et des tartares’.¹⁰⁰ With peace once more secured, the French King David must act. He should remember that there were protestants who favoured peace and who could be won over with reform in the state. The best means of doing so was to dispatch ‘quelqu’un des plus grandz de votre Royaulme’ to identify the ‘quatre pestes qui ont infecté et rendu Infame votre royaulme’—simony, force, fraud, and corruption. The sale of ecclesiastical office had brought the successors of Clovis to their knees and marked the end of the Carolingian dynasty. Armed hold-ups (‘guet à pens’) were now a legitimate means of getting one’s own way. A model king’s lieutenant would ensure there were no further acts of pardon for wanton violence. Fraud was perpetrated by a ‘grand amas d’amis et seruiteurs’. The ideal lieutenant would suppress such ‘tromperye et brigandage’. With the assistance of loyal and uncorrupt servants, the king would vanquish his enemies, reform all the estates of the realm, and see peace in ‘Israel’. Henri III found the discourse ‘fort agreable’. ⁹⁶ Garrisson, Essai sur les commissions; Roberts, ‘Religious Pluralism in Practice’, esp. 34. ⁹⁷ BM Toulouse 612 fo. 160 v ; cf. LH3, iii, No. 2717. ⁹⁸ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 170–2; Jean de Monluc, Lettre escrite (Paris, [1577?]). Cf. Reynaud, Jean de Monluc, 283–9, where it is dated 16 November 1577. ⁹⁹ Monluc’s career had taken him to Rome, Venice, Constantinople, and Scotland in the 1540s and 1550s, good vantage points to observe the imperial politics of the Interim and the Peace of Augsburg. ¹⁰⁰ Cf. Tamisey de Larroque, ‘Quelques pages inédites de Blaise de Monluc’, 320–1.

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But was it practical and, in particular, did he have ‘model lieutenants’ in the provinces?¹⁰¹ The reality in the Midi was that, in the autumn of 1577, there was a paralysing lapse in local authority, and it threatened the peace of Bergerac in the region where it was most vulnerable. Each province had its own conundrum and there was not a lot the king could do to resolve them. Let us tour the Midi, beginning with Provence, where Albert de Gondi, count of Retz, one of the six marshals of France, was the king’s governor and lieutenant in Provence. In early 1577, Retz fell from his horse, not far from Nice. The accident provoked an attack of gout that paralysed his right side and affected his sight and hearing. To aid his recovery, he retired to take the waters near Lucca. Even before his enforced absence, he was the subject of lampoons as an Italian lackey, a royal stooge.¹⁰² His brother Pierre de Gondi, bishop of Paris, wrote from Marseille after visiting his convalescent brother, in despair at the gathering factions in Provence. His brother was ‘suiet aulx Impostures et calomnies desquelles le pays est si plain que Je confesseray auec verite que je nay Iamais frequante nation plus barbare que ceste cy’.¹⁰³ The king appointed his illegitimate half-brother Henri de Valois, Grand Prior of the French Knights of Malta, as an interim successor, but Retz remained the titular lieutenant-general, returning to command troops around Avignon in August.¹⁰⁴ It was not long before the Grand Prior in his turn encountered similar hostility. He was compromised by the attempt to besiege the protestant stronghold at Ménerbes in the Comtat Venaissin. The Comtat had been excluded from the peace at Bergerac, all attempts at negotiating a compromise with the papal nuncio having failed. De Retz thought twenty days would suffice to bring the place down in October.¹⁰⁵ Three months later, it showed no sign of ending and had cost over 320,000 livres, its elaborate siege-lines an object of admiration.¹⁰⁶ A negotiated surrender was accomplished through the mediation of Navarre in March 1578. Scarcely two months later, Henri de Valois retired as provincial governor and lieutenantgeneral, accepting with the best grace he could muster the post of general ¹⁰¹ BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 166 [Henri III to Jean de Monluc, Paris, 30 November 1577]. ¹⁰² Reported in an anonymous memorandum from Provence in BN MS Fr 15904 fo. 463, which expressed the hope that the ‘calomnies’ would eventually confound their authors rather than the ‘gens de bien’. ¹⁰³ BN MS Fr 15904 fo. 415 [bishop of Paris to Pomponne de Bellièvre, Marseille, 2 May 1577]. ¹⁰⁴ BN MS 500 Colbert 9 fo. 18 [Albert de Gondi to Henri III, Avignon, 22 August 1577]. ¹⁰⁵ BN MS Fr 3902 fo. 184 [de Retz to the cardinal de Côme, Avignon, 16 October 1577, copy]; fo. 186 [ibid. to the cardinal d’Este, Avignon, 17 October 1577]. ¹⁰⁶ Perussis, ‘Histoire’, 210–16.

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of the galleys in Marseille on 10 July. This was in the face of an unusual transaction between de Retz and a provincial faction leader, François de La Baume, comte de Suze, in which the king must have been complicit. The latter acquired the governorship of Provence by letters of commission of 1 July 1578 and at the same time acquitted Retz of some debts. It was the beginning of a period of instability in Provençal politics and hardly the basis for implementing the peace of Bergerac in the south-east. In Dauphiné, the governor was, by custom, the Prince Dauphin, an absentee. As the son of the principal negotiator of the peace of Bergerac, François de Bourbon-Montpensier, Prince Dauphin and governor in Dauphiné from December 1569, put his weight behind its enforcement in the Alps, supporting the lieutenant his father had appointed to the province in 1565, Bertrand Raymbaud de Simiane, baron de Gordes. Gordes was from the Dauphinois nobility, his principal residence at Laval, outside Grenoble. Among his friends at court, he acquired the reputation of a steady pair of hands.¹⁰⁷ But catholic compatriots were less impressed. Had he not sold them out to satisfy protestant warlords in the Alps? In 1567, a semblance of a catholic league against him took shape, with Laurent de Maugiron, François de Baume, comte de Suze, and Guillaume de Saint-Marcel, archbishop of Embrun, as its leading figures.¹⁰⁸ After the peace of Bergerac, another challenge to his authority seemed on the cards but, by then, Gordes’s health was deterioriating and he died at Montélimar on 20 February 1578. Three months later, Laurent de Maugiron, comte de Montléans, was nominated as his successor—a candidate not best placed to win over the province’s protestant nobility. In the neighbouring province of Languedoc, the position of the king’s representative was still more delicate. Another of the king’s marshals, Henri de Montmorency-Damville, had been governor of the province since 1563, inheriting it from his father the constable. In the succeeding decade, Damville (as he would be known until he inherited the duchy of Montmorency on the death of his elder brother in 1579) had manipulated the provincial military administration to his advantage. He used the religious pacifications to put himself at the head of prudential royalists prepared to work with protestants.¹⁰⁹ In October 1574, he staged a revolt against Henri III. Proclaiming the need for reform in a widely published manifesto, he declared ¹⁰⁷ Taulier, Notice historique, 3. ¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 42–4. ¹⁰⁹ Tievant, Le Gouverneur de Languedoc.

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himself the leader of the ‘catholiques associés’ and made common cause with the protestants.¹¹⁰ Although formally reconciled with the king once more in May 1577, it would have been surprising if he had enjoyed the king’s trust.¹¹¹ In his military campaigns around Montpellier that summer, he was shadowed by the king’s erstwhile favourite, Roger de Saint-Lary, sieur de Bellegarde.¹¹² Damville was certainly not the king’s lieutenant most likely to inspire confidence in the province’s protestant community. His rapport with them had collapsed amidst mutual acrimony and suspicion in March 1577. He wrote openly of their avowed aim to subvert all authority.¹¹³ For their part, the Huguenots did not hide their hatred for ‘mossur Damville’ and his ‘paroles blandissantes’.¹¹⁴ When his company of gens d’armes entered Montpellier in triumph after the siege on 1 October 1577, the town’s protestants took revenge. Over a hundred of his cavalry were slaughtered, unable to defend themselves in its narrow streets.¹¹⁵ Damville withdrew from the city that had once been his capital, declining to set foot there again for the next six years. Fearing for his own safety, he established an alternative headquarters in Pézenas, building himself a country house nearby at La Grange-des-Prés.¹¹⁶ One possibility was to remove Damville from his command in Languedoc. But how? Even before the formal reconciliation with Damville, a contrivance had been placed before the king.¹¹⁷ Under the pretext of the peace negotiations, Bellegarde was to go to Languedoc and insinuate himself into Damville’s favour. In due course, there would come the moment to launch the strategem. On 14 August 1577, the king dispatched Louis d’Angennes, sieur de Maintenon, grand maréchal des logis at court, with letters in the king’s own hand.¹¹⁸ Maintenon was to soften up the redoubtable Damville for a further mission led by Maintenon’s brother Jean d’Angennes, sieur de Poigny.¹¹⁹ Poigny’s instructions laid out every step of the negotiation leading up to offering him the marquisate of Saluzzo as a personal fief with the ¹¹⁰ Greengrass, ‘War, Politics and Religion’, 168–70. ¹¹¹ AD Hérault B 22.355 and BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 61 [letters patent of pardon and reconciliation, Chenonceaux, 21 May 1577, copies]. ¹¹² Humbert, ‘Le Maréchal de Bellegarde’, 17–73. ¹¹³ Loutchizky, Documents inédits, 82. ¹¹⁴ Rigal (ed.), Documents, 400; 401, etc. ¹¹⁵ Ibid. 391; Cf. Perussis, ‘Histoire’, 207. ¹¹⁶ BN MS Fr 3420 fo. 19; BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 230 and v ; Bellaud-Dessalles, La Grange-des-Prés, 16 f. ¹¹⁷ See the king’s reply, Blois, 5 April 1577 [BN MS Fr 3324 fos. 12–13]. The memorandum had been drafted by Honorat de Savoie, comte de Tende, and Roger de Saint-Lary, sieur de Bellegarde. ¹¹⁸ LH3, 347. ¹¹⁹ BN MS Fr 11469 fos. 91; 91v ; Devic and Vaissète, xii, col. 1103.

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title of ‘governor and lieutenant general’ of the king ‘beyond the Alps’—all in return for his resignation from the governorship of Languedoc. Poigny was dispatched with the necessary letters of provision, signed and sealed, in his pocket. It was a gift-horse that Damville could hardly reject out of hand and Poigny returned to the court in Poitiers in early October with a reply that gave the king hope that a new lieutenancy in Languedoc was only a matter of time.¹²⁰ Papers were prepared for Bellegarde and Joyeuse, the intention being to split the provincial command, just as Brittany was divided in February 1578. By the end of October, however, Damville decided against it. His response, conveyed by his secretary Miles Marion and equerry Janyn Poyano, sieur de Villers, was pure realpolitik.¹²¹ He would not want the world to think that he could be ‘bought’ with a marquisate. He could easily imagine himself spending the entire fortune of the Montmorency family to defend ‘un petit Estat’ like Saluzzo, ‘un porc entre deux singes’. ‘Ses petiz princes’ (Saluzzo) were in perpetual anxiety over their security, surviving on ‘les Pentions quil fault donner aux mignons de la Court’. He would prefer to earn the good favour of the king as governor in Languedoc and ‘hoster la deffiance que les Esglises pourroit avoir conceue de luy pour les choses qui sont passees’. Bellegarde, seeing the lieutenancy slip away, was beside himself with anger.¹²² The king’s reply was wrapped in an ice-dry compliment.¹²³ The stratagem had not worked and, in the process, the king had disgruntled one marshal (Bellegarde), disappointed a lieutenant (Joyeuse), considerably alarmed a marquis (Charles de Birague, then serving as the king’s agent in Saluzzo), and compromised peace with Languedoc’s protestants. The provincial politics of Provence and Languedoc in the autumn of 1577 had, therefore, an underlying similarity. Although the provincial governors and lieutenants-general were technically the king’s to appoint and dismiss, in reality the situation was more complex, resembling an interlocking puzzle. Circumstances precluded a more personal reshaping of the provincial lieutenancies of the kind that the king had begun to undertake in his Council of Affairs in November 1577. That was when the ‘giovani’ (Saint-Luc and François d’O) joined it, much to the discontent of François de Montmorency ¹²⁰ LH3, 402; BN MS Fr 3320 fo. 36 [Roger de Saint-Lary to Henri de Montmorency-Damville, Beaucaire, 10 October (1577)]. ¹²¹ Devic and Vaissète, xii, cols. 1250–5. Cf. BN MS Fr 15573 fo. 347 [copy]. BN MS Fr 3420 fo. 19 [Henri III to Henri de Montmorency-Damville, Paris, 29 October 1577]. ¹²² BM Toulouse 612 fo. 178 [Roger de Saint-Lary to Henri III, Beaucaire, 6 November 1577, copy]. ¹²³ LH3, No. 2785.

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and Henri de Guise, heads of their houses at court.¹²⁴ Like old crocodiles, the latter lay grumpily in the mud, snapping at the ankles of those in high royal favour, resisting commands to take up station and execute the edict.¹²⁵ And around them in the provincial lieutenancies lay a political world that was stubbornly resistant to the virtues of peace and reform espoused by the king and his notables. Meanwhile, in Guyenne, the king was even more constrained by circumstance. Henri de Navarre had inherited the governorship of the province as a child in December 1562, shortly after the death of his father. Only after his flight from court in February 1576 had the government of Guyenne become his refuge, the focus of his dissidence and his apprenticeship in the great game of power politics.¹²⁶ The itinerary of Navarre plotted his preferred resting points in Guyenne: Agen, Nérac, Bergerac, Sainte-Foy.¹²⁷ It reflected his determination to control the protestant quadrant marking the arterial routes of the province from Bordeaux to Toulouse and La Rochelle to Montauban. Through the sequence of letters between Navarre and his brother-in-law Henri III during these years, we appreciate the elaborate contortions, the mixture of obstinacy, bluff, and beguilement that characterized Navarre’s politics. To contain the governor of Guyenne, watch over his movements, and give the lie to his every ruse, Henri III relied on the lieutenants in the province. The successor to Blaise de Monluc in 1570 was Honorat de Savoie, marquis de Villars, admiral of France after Coligny’s assassination in 1572. Like Damville, he used provincial military administration to establish his authority, challenging that of Navarre himself.¹²⁸ In rallying support for the king, Villars inevitably turned to the catholic constituency of Guyenne—including its ultra-catholic urban militias and the militants among its nobility. At the same time, however, he was in dispute with his predecessor, Blaise de Monluc, and, by the summer of 1577, their quarrel had ripened to the extent that the jurats of Bordeaux (its town councillors) feared an uprising.¹²⁹ Navarre made his confirmation as governor of Guyenne a non-negotiable element of the peace of Bergerac and used the peace talks to insinuate that Villars had become persona non grata as provincial lieutenant. Anxious to placate Navarre and commence the process of pacification in the south-west on a fresh footing, the king gave way. Among the paperwork ¹²⁴ ¹²⁶ ¹²⁸ ¹²⁹

ANG, xii/2. 709; 723; CalSPFor (1577–8), 355. ¹²⁵ Ibid. 733. Cocula, ‘Le Rôle de la Guyenne’, 125–43. ¹²⁷ Cuignet, L’Itinéraire d’Henri IV. Desjardins, iv. 118 (5 April 1577). Darnal, Svpplement des chroniques, (1629 edition), fo. 54.

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issuing from Poitiers in the first week or so of October 1577 were letters of provision for Biron to succeed Villars.¹³⁰ To save Villars’s face, however, he continued to remain in Guyenne until February 1578 and Biron did not arrive in the province until the summer.¹³¹ In the south-west, therefore, there would be yet another lame-duck lieutenant in the critical early months of the implementation of the peace of Bergerac. Would Biron succeed where Villars had not? The omens were not auspicious. His diplomatic and military abilities were not in doubt. He had authority as commander-in-chief of the royal artillery and as a marshal. In addition, he had family connections and wealth in the Périgord. But he was easily riled, and made no attempt to control a temper that Navarre could goad and (when necessary) match. So, although Biron knew how to talk the language of peace-making and reform with the best, he was less capable of demonstrating an equally important aseptic prudence. The enforcement of the peace of Bergerac was not simply the implementation of an act of state. Its success relied on informal power structures. Secretaries, écuyers, masters of the horse, illegitimate sons, friends of the family carried verbal messages, letters, and memoranda to curry friendship, beg favour, dispel a rumour, or divulge a secret. Between the king, his secretaries, and senior courtiers on the one hand, and the governors, lieutenants, marshals, and admirals of the French aristocratic firmament on the other, lay reticulations of influence which complemented the official state at every turn. The distant officialdom of the state was tamed by endless requests for a generous decision in this instance, the gift of an office for that relative, the imperative claims to respect a family connection or reclaim a past favour. Their letters were full of individual ambitions, hopes, envies, fears, antagonisms, affections, and loyalties in which the ‘boiling humours’ of individuals ‘se passionnent’. The essence of the royal attempts at peace and reform lay in coaxing the educable, noble passions of hope and love out from the raw and irreducible passions of fear, pride, and ambition. Henri III saw himself as a father, educating a wayward adolescent: ‘je desire m’y conduire tout ainsy qu’un bon pere de famille faict envers les siens: plus ilz se monstrent enclins au mal et mescongnoissans ses graces, plus il s’efforce de les redresser par doulceur au chemin de leur debvoir et leur faire sentir les effectz de sa bonté et paternelle affection . . . esperant que Dieu me fera la grace de toucher le ¹³⁰ AD Gironde 1B 12 fos. 410–413v [Poitiers, 2 October 1577]. ¹³¹ BN MS Fr 22369 fo. 323 [Registres secrets, Parlement de Bordeaux; 1 February 1578]; cf. fo. 326 and v .

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cueur de mes subgectz de telle recognoissance qu’a la fin je n’auray regrect d’en avoir usé de ceste façon.’¹³²

MISSIONARIES IN SEARCH OF PEACE The servants of the French state and its image-makers had already learnt how to present the intellectual justifications for a prudential modus vivendi between rival confessions. Equally important was the practical experience acquired in how to make it a reality, especially by the ‘commissioners’ dispatched by the king to implement the edict of Saint-Germain (17 January 1562), and subsequent edicts of pacification. Their brief was easily defined, though difficult to implement. They were to enforce the provisions of an edict where it had not already been established. The most delicate matters often concerned the location of burial sites and the identification of places for protestant worship.¹³³ Their undeclared objective was to bring the intractable issues of religious pluralism within the scope of royal justice. The majority of the commissioners were chosen from among the masters of requests and senior magistrates. They prepared the documentation for eventual decision by the royal council. Otherwise, they sought to reconcile conflicting local views within the framework laid down by law, leaving open the possibility of an appeal to the council for those who felt aggrieved by their judgments. It is easy to point to the difficulties that they encountered and to highlight their limited achievements. But their efforts served to contain the effects of religious divisions in local elites; and they formed part of the dynamic that moved sectarian tensions off the streets. The deployment of commissioners was, however, not straightforward in the case of the peace of Bergerac. Previous edicts of pacification had rested on the implicit fact that both sides of the conflict were willing to set aside their differences and enforce royal will. The peace of Bergerac was different precisely because it could not start from that assumption. The conditions still had to be created for that to be the case. Six months after the conclusion of the peace they were no closer to being in place in the Midi. Protestants opposed to Navarre were determined to exploit the fact that he had made peace without their consent. From Navarre’s court at Agen came news in mid-February, ¹³² LH3, iv, No. 3473. ¹³³ Roberts, ‘The Most Crucial Battle’ and ‘Contesting Sacred Space’.

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confirmed by Damville, that some churches were raising money for a renewed invasion by German mercenaries, and that they were about to send a deputy to Duke Johann Casimir.¹³⁴ By the end of March, intelligence from Dauphiné identified the deputy as the protestant minister La Place, and implicated the prince of Condé. Military preparations were in hand for Dauphiné, parts of the Rhône valley, Provence, and lower Languedoc, starting in mid-April, and protestant gentlemen had been contacted by letters under Condé’s name.¹³⁵ One would have expected such manoeuvres to have been countered by the king. But this would have highlighted protestant machinations and invited catholic critics of the peace to say that they had been right all along. So royal pronouncements continued to proclaim that the protestants were committed to the peace. Even that stout English protestant, Sir Amias Paulet, found the game of bluff hard to swallow: ‘I thank God that we Englishmen cannot dissemble so cunningly.’¹³⁶ To counter the renewed insurrection, the king dispatched ‘missionaries’ to preach the benefits of peace. Some documentation has survived from the mission of Jean de Monluc to Languedoc which exemplifies their uphill task. With every likelihood that Damville would refuse the offer of the marquisate of Saluzzo, a means had to be found to mediate between the province’s protestants and the king without invoking at the same time their antipathy towards its governor. Jean de Monluc was an obvious choice for the task. He had served as a commissioner for the peace edict of 1563 in Languedoc and carried royal confidence.¹³⁷ He was a born rhetorician and his subtlety as a debater was formidable.¹³⁸ He could scarcely turn down the opportunity to put his own advice into practice. Letters patent, issued at the end of November 1577, instructed him to ‘advise the governor’ of Languedoc, sit on his council, and preside in sovereign courts of justice. They gave him powers to implement the edict of pacification with authority of ‘oversight and superintendence’ in justice and finance.¹³⁹ He was to receive petitions from all parties and remedy just demands. Some remnants of the broader reform agenda were included too. Officers refusing to carry out the king’s will were to be investigated and suspended, their dossiers forwarded to the council, which would decide their fate. In financial matters, too, the king suspected that ‘plusieurs grosses sommes de ¹³⁴ BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 182 [‘d’Agen, du xiie fév. 1578’]; BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fo. 23 [Henri de Montmorency-Damville to Henri III, Pézenas, 4 March 1578, copy]. ¹³⁵ Roman, ‘Documents’, 265–8. ¹³⁶ CalSPFor (1577–8), No. 630, p. 488. ¹³⁷ LH3, iii, No. 2766. ¹³⁸ Reynaud, Jean de Monluc, chs. 3–4. ¹³⁹ BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fos. 77–80 [Paris, 29 November 1577]; also BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 164–5 (copies); cf. Reynaud, Jean de Monluc, 265–9 and LH3, iii, No. 2766.

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deniers’ were being raised in the province without his consent. His envoy was to find out the truth. He had powers to investigate accounts, summon witnesses, prosecute suspects, suspend officers, appoint others in their place with the normal proviso that the dossiers be dispatched in due course to the council for ratification. Monluc left for Languedoc the day after Christmas. Arriving in Languedoc, he spent several days in conference with Damville to familiarize himself with the problems and prepare a long report for the king.¹⁴⁰ M. Reilhac carried the paperwork northward.¹⁴¹ He returned with letters in his saddle-bag instructing Monluc to move the discontented Bellegarde as far as possible from Languedoc by giving him a commission to assist the ailing baron de Gordes to execute the peace in Dauphiné, and to nurture peace among the communities of Languedoc in every way possible. Towards the middle of February, Monluc met Bellegarde, then at Avignon with Georges, cardinal d’Armagnac, co-legate and archbishop of Avignon, to discuss peace-making in Dauphiné and the Rhône valley. It demonstrated that the problem began with the peace-makers.¹⁴² Bellegarde’s guards blocked Monluc’s way as he went to greet him at his lodging. Cardinal Armagnac finally brought the two face to face over supper at his lodging but it was not a happy encounter. According to Monluc, Bellegarde sought a quarrel, hardly able to look him in the eye as they greeted. As supper progressed, Bellegarde was unable to hide his chagrin at being removed from Languedoc and asked to play second fiddle to Gordes. He threw down the gauntlet by ridiculing the military reputation of Monluc’s natural son Balagny. He would tell the world that Monluc was a fool. The latter ‘respondit que mes maistres m’auoyent trouue fort saige et que si jestoys fol pour le moings pouuois Je dire que jestoys heureux fol car je nauoys jamais rien entrepris pour leur seruice que Je nen feusse venu a bout’—a reference to Bellegarde’s inglorious role at the siege of Livron. Leaping up, Bellegarde threatened revenge. When Monluc warned him that he would not hesitate to use his authority to restrain his insolence, Bellegarde breathed pure defiance: ‘Il n’[y] a que le Roy que me puisse chastier’. The elderly cardinal hustled Bellegarde to his chamber before retiring exhausted, ‘protestant quil navoyt jamais eu si mauvaise Journee’. Monluc complained bitterly that France was ‘un Royaume de liberté et où ¹⁴⁰ LCM, vi. 466. ¹⁴¹ Possibly Jacques Railhac, a commis for the duke of Montmorency in the Languedoc provincial war administration—AD Hérault B 22.440 and 444 (1589). ¹⁴² BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fos. 81–4 [Vray narré du different suruenu entre le mareschal de Bellegarde & moy [Jean de Monluc] en presence de Monsieur le cardinal d’Armagnac’ (dated in another hand ‘nov. 1577’ but from corroborative evidence to be assigned to February 1578)].

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l’on récite les commedyes contre les roys et contre tous les princes’. Throwing caution to the winds, he referred to Bellegarde’s ‘scandalous’ liaison to a ‘meschante femme’, a reference to Bellegarde’s affair with Louise d’Andron (var.: d’Androna), the wife of Jean Fons, garde de sceaux of Nîmes and Damville’s maître des requêtes. Fons had been murdered in Beaucaire in January 1578 and, in his final moments, he dictated a will that accused his wife of being behind his assassination. From Avignon, Monluc went on to investigate the seizure of a castle at Saint-Anastasie by some catholic soldiers before arriving in Uzès on 5 March. Uzès was a small Midi town, a Crussol family fief. Despite opposition to the peace in these parts, Monluc prided himself on his powers of persuasion. He presented his letters of accreditation and delivered a speech in favour of peace.¹⁴³ The town secretary transcribed it and Monluc forwarded copies to other consuls in the region.¹⁴⁴ Aware that he was talking to a protestant audience, he began with the prophetic vision of Isaiah, blessing the feet of those who bring peace to Jerusalem. This was God’s peace, not an artificial truce, constrained by foreign mercenaries or an errant royal brother in confederation against his lawful prince. It was entered into freely by a king ‘pour l’envie qu’il a de restaurer la iustice, la police, & toutes bonnes mœurs, & desraciner les vices que la guerre ciuille nous a apportez’. It was a generous peace. The protestants had been offered more places of worship than they had preachers to fill them. Why, then, did they refuse to let catholics return to their property, and insist on garrisons everywhere? The king had disarmed and they should do the same. Their security was guaranteed. Monluc then confronted those in the protestant movement who hoped to temporize on the peace until they had recovered strength. He hinted at what the king’s ministers knew about the negotiations begun with Duke Casimir. He ended his peroration with a personal reminiscence, appealing to the peace-loving instincts of the notables of Uzès. He brushed aside critics who accused him of trimming his views to suit the moment.¹⁴⁵ He wanted their deputies at the forthcoming estates of the province, which is where his peace mission would reach its apotheosis. For the consuls of the communities of Languedoc, the annual assembly of the ‘estates general’ was an event to conjure with. Historically it was an assembly of various vassals (ecclesiastic, noble, and urban laity) from the ¹⁴³ Jean de Monluc, Remonstrances [ . . . ], fo. 4; cf. BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 214–16; for the accompanying letters of accreditation, see fos. 212–13. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid., fos. 8v –15. ¹⁴⁵ Perussis, Histoire, 208.

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province, chosen for their significance and capacity to speak and vote for others.¹⁴⁶ In reality, urban notables predominated since three delegates were entitled to attend from each of the twenty-two dioceses, with the first consul of the ville capitale of the diocese generally serving as head of delegation. The estates were a social occasion and a political opportunity for a community to have its voice heard. They were the summit of local autonomous taxraising and self-government that had resisted royal encroachment.¹⁴⁷ Their decisions were studied by the province’s municipal elites, copies of their debates being carefully preserved in their archives. Above all, the estates of Languedoc embodied the consular ideal of the res publica. Many notables had been trained in the law schools of the Midi. They absorbed the notion of a community as a corpus mysticum in which their role was to deliver justice, reconcile enemies, administer the kiss of peace, and preserve local liberties. Monluc succeeded in persuading protestant delegates from Nîmes, Uzès, Montpellier, Marvéjols, and elsewhere to attend the estates. It was an opportunity for his peace-making to build on the province’s local, civic roots. Shortly after Easter, the estates of Languedoc congregated in the Dominican friary at Béziers. Presiding over its debates was Pierre Du Faur, vicar-general of cardinal Georges d’Armagnac and a brother of the king of Navarre’s chancellor Louis Du Faur, a member of the protestant negotiating team at Bergerac. Leading the king’s representatives was Damville, who repeated his solemn commitment ‘fère effectuer l’édict de pacification’.¹⁴⁸ Among those at his side was Jean de Monluc, who read out a letter from the king on the virtues of peace.¹⁴⁹ Monluc’s accompanying speech was a rhetorical gem.¹⁵⁰ He played on his age; forty-five years a servant of the king, he had not voyaged so far ‘pour tromper ny amuser personne’. He would not treat them to ‘belles parolles enrichies d’exemples et sentences tirees de Platon d’Aristote et de Plutarque’. Instead, he drew on his ambassadorial past. He wanted to liberate ‘cette grande & honnorable compaignie’ from its enslavement to conflict. War spawned brigandage and murder. No matter how holy and just the religion, warfare in its name does not make it more holy or just. This was why the earliest Christians had not used force. The wrongs of the past must be ¹⁴⁶ Gilles, Les États de Languedoc au XVe siècle, part 2, ch. 1. ¹⁴⁷ Brink, ‘The Estates of Languedoc’. ¹⁴⁸ AN H748(16) [this register was unavailable for consultation at the time of checking this manuscript; no folios are indicated]. ¹⁴⁹ Ibid. ¹⁵⁰ BN MS Fr nouv acq 22071 fos. 93–8; cf. Jean de Monluc, Remonstrances, fos. 15v f.

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forgotten; ‘Dieu nous commande d’oublier toutes Injures, dieu nous promect que ceulx qui seront amateurs de Paix seront tenuz et apelez enfans de dieu’. There was a great work of reformation awaiting their collective attentions. They knew from their own experience that ‘toutes manières d’estats’ were corrupt; Languedoc had its lawless soldiers, its overmighty nobles, its ignorant and corrupt magistrates, its wealthy exploiters of the poor. The king ‘a estimé qu’il ne scauroit faire chose tant digne de sa grandeur ny tant agreable a dieu, que de faire une Reformation generalle & extirper & desraciner la memoire de tant de crimes’. He then addressed more directly protestant fears and hopes. Justice and the rule of law were essential to this reformation. The need was clear. Why, then, had the chamber of justice not yet been established? It had been impossible to find catholic judges willing to serve: he had even tried to persuade some friends among the magistrates in Grenoble to serve. Protestants complained that the locations for worship had not yet been determined in the bailliages of Picardy, Normandy, and elsewhere in northern France. He doubted whether the protestants in the north showed themselves as concerned for their coreligionists south of the Loire. They will reply that the protestants are a separate ‘community’. Monluc begged to differ. ‘Si les reformez font ung corps et les catholicques ung autre, si le Roy est chef des deux partis ce serait ung chef monstrueux, et croiez que ce mot [‘‘parti’’] parmy ceulx qui n’ont point de passion sera tousjours trouué maulvais.’ Monluc contrasted this religious separatism with the cohesive political identity represented by the provincial estates. He concluded by inviting them to strengthen the latter by committing themselves to peace and reform. Monluc received the customary vote of thanks and it is impossible to evaluate the real impact of what he said.¹⁵¹ Around the taverns of Béziers, the gossip was of a renewed protestant military campaign, of who would be nominated to be magistrates in the new chamber of the edict, of protestant and catholic alternances and bi-confessional (mi-partie) local government. When Jean Philippi, président of the Cour des Aides in Montpellier and one of the royal commissioners at the estates, presented a petition on behalf of Montpellier’s catholics, deprived of divine worship, forbidden to enter or leave the city, charged punitive rates of taxation to maintain the protestant garrison, its first consul responded with a positive assurance that the pacification would be strictly adhered to. Although there were daily ¹⁵¹ AN 748(16).

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reports of military incursions and failure to allow catholics to return to their property, there was also progress of a sort. The atmosphere was encouraged by the officials of the estates, especially by its syndic, Mariet d’Averane. He had been in Paris to present the provincial cahier to the royal council, in the presence of the king. The cahier had eloquently expressed their views. Religious divisions were God’s way of punishing the province. They begged for the implementation of the peace, observed everywhere else better than in Languedoc. There was a risk of famine as cultivation had ceased in many quarters. They awaited ‘une prompte refformation’, especially in appointments to senior clerics, judges, and financial officers, since it was upon this that ‘dependra le bien & tranquilite de voz sujets’.¹⁵² D’Averane received a generous response. Wartime increases in duties on salt in the province were abolished; additional duties on exports down the Garonne were alleviated. The problems of communal and diocesan debts would be investigated.¹⁵³ In return, he was encouraged whilst in Paris to draft an ‘Accord and Reconciliation’, to which all the deputies at the estates would subscribe.¹⁵⁴ At the close of the estates on 15 April, each of the fifty-one delegates at the estates raised their right hand in turn to swear to it and maintain a ‘fidelle protection & sauvegarde les vns les autres, pour vivre en bons amis, & compatriotes en communication de mutuelles commoditez’. Syndics, consuls, vicars-general, and three representatives of the barons of Languedoc stepped forward to take the oath, including all the protestant first consuls. The latter would return to find that orders had been issued by their local military commanders to seize royal, ecclesiastical, ‘et autres publicques’ revenues. As he wrote to offer his resignation to the king, Monluc must have felt it was a good moment to quit. The peace of Bergerac was a triumph for the negotiators who had argued the case for peace and persuaded the king of Navarre to commit himself to it. Apparently aloof, Henri III determined the overall settlement and made the most of the coup de théâtre that a renewed peace on terms very different from those agreed at Beaulieu a year before represented. As Bodin explained, ‘generous’ princes do not sue for peace, they ‘accord’ it, and by its virtue, it enters the hearts of their enemies: ‘tout ainsi que la grandeur de courage et ¹⁵² BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 220–7 [Articles présentés au Roi, Paris, 2 March 1578]; AN H748(16). Cf. LH3, No. 2857. ¹⁵³ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 221; 222v ; 226v . ¹⁵⁴ Monluc, Remonstrances, fo. 15v etc.; cf. AN H748(17).

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magnanimité est la lumiere des autres vertus, et qui esleve les Princes au plus haut point d’honneur, aussi est-ce la seule vertu, qui plus abbat le cœur des ennemis.’¹⁵⁵ Thereafter, Henri III set about ambitiously linking peace and the restoration of the realm. According to Bodin, a ‘Republique fleurissante en religion, justice, charité, integrité de vie, et brief, en toutes sciences liberals, et arts mechaniques’ was impossible ‘si les citoyens ne jouissent d’une paix treshaute et asseuree’.¹⁵⁶ The reformist agenda that had begun at Blois was thus continued in the very different environment of the peace of Bergerac. But the credit would only accrue to Henri III and the notables if peace was accepted on the ground. That was a big ‘if’. Only a selected contingent of protestants had signed the peace accord. There had been no prior consultation of that wider protestant constituency which had begun to have a say in its affairs in the aftermath of the massacre of St Bartholomew. A significant fraction of the protestant movement was determined not to accept the peace negotiated by Navarre and to dispute his authority as protector. They remained sceptical towards the French king, whose peace-making was interpreted as no more than ‘la queue du renard’. They exploited royal demobilization, itself a sign of the king’s good intentions. And the crown’s own officers were ambivalent, caught between their defence of the catholic religion and their awareness of the need for the restoration of the realm. The royal lieutenants in the Midi were particularly compromised by these contradictory pressures. The year after Bergerac brought nothing but frustration for royal peace-makers. Every contravention of the peace was glossed as a minor setback. The English ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet, summarized the pregnant atmosphere of the period in January 1578 in a much-cited phrase: ‘All things continue here after the French fashion; we can abide neither heat nor cold. War is too sharp and peace is too sweet.’ Biron put it another way in a letter to the consuls of Agen of November 1577: ‘ce n’est que comme après le vant cesse, la tourment dure.’¹⁵⁷ These are epitaphs on peace-making dependent on initiative from above and lack of trust from below. The slow road to peace cast doubts on its achievability; and that overshadowed for the present any more sustained effort at reforming the fundamental ills of the kingdom. ¹⁵⁵ République, v/v. 150. ¹⁵⁶ Ibid. 131. ¹⁵⁷ AC Agen BB 33 [Biron to the consuls of Agen, Fleurance, 14 November 1577].

5 Dissent in the Country Peace and reform were brought into sharp focus by the estates of Blois. Expectations had been raised, but their fulfilment proved illusory. Pacification and reformation was more talked up than acted upon. The result was a swirl of provincial unrest that spread from the estates of Burgundy around the northern provinces in 1578. Although noticed by historians, it remains difficult to analyse in detail, much of the evidence being lost.¹ We must therefore reconstruct the political movement that energized parts of the realm in 1578 and 1579. This chapter explores how the issues of pacification and reformation affected it. Burgundy first came to prominence. Was de Thou correct to ascribe this precocity to its provincial nobility, ‘accustomed to liberty’, impatiently bearing ‘the yoke of new taxes’, and disliking ‘young men without merit’ in the ‘first posts’ of the kingdom?² Although all nobility having the tenure of a noble fief had the right to attend the Burgundian estates, they were mostly absentee.³ It is possible that the Burgundian nobility were especially influential in the estates that convened in Dijon on 21 May 1578, but it seems unlikely.⁴ It is equally possible, albeit more prosaic, that they were simply the first major provincial estates to meet in 1578, and therefore the first to confront the failure of the estates of Blois, the ambiguous enforcement of the peace of Bergerac, and the grim financial legacy that the king and his council were attempting to manage. The royal commissioner, Jean Vétus, appeared before them, accompanied by the governor and lieutenant-general of the province, Charles de Mayenne. Vétus was a master of requests who had once been a councillor in the Parlement at Dijon. His instructions included presenting the case for a large subsidy from the estates, attending ¹ Drouot, La Première Ligue, ch. 4; cf. Greengrass, ‘Dissension’. ² De Thou, vii [bk. 66]. 729. ³ Major, Representative Government, 81–3; AD Côte d’Or C 7495 fo. 93v ; and fo. 96 for the form-letter drafted to be dispatched to each noble [11 February 1578]. ⁴ AD Côte d’Or C 3067 fos. 35–55v .

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the Parlement, ensuring that the edict of pacification was implemented throughout the province, and investigating financial abuses.⁵ The Burgundian estates was not naive. Instead of replying immediately to the demand for an unprecedentedly large subsidy, it adjourned, sending Vétus home with a cahier that reflected back to the king its sense of failure to deliver upon his promises.⁶ It wanted ‘quelque bonne et saincte reformation pour veoir faire cesser le grande desordre qui a donné licence a ung chascun de oser tant contre votre Majeste que le publicque’. In the church, the misappropriation of ecclesiastical benefices was aggravated by royal taxation. In judicial affairs, the number of newly created offices was excessive and they were sold at ever higher prices. Like senior clerics, judges should be elected locally, their numbers reduced to the level under Louis XII or, failing that, François I. The estates highlighted increased taxes. It understood that these were to reduce the king’s debts, a laudable objective. But the solution did not lie in further and novel exactions which, past experience taught, simply increased profligacy. The king must show his commitment towards ‘quelque bonne reformation’ by enacting the resolutions of the estates of Blois. Royal indebtedness was a matter for the council of finance. When it had a credible solution, the estates would consider its ‘Iuste quotte’. The nine-man delegation dispatched by the Burgundians was led by Nicolas Boucherat, abbot of Cîteaux. He was an energetic defender of his abbey and had been employed by the cardinal of Lorraine and Henri III in 1574 in pursuit of a new order of nobility. Boucherat had already served as president of the clerical order of the estates in 1577 and was a conseiller at the Parlement in Dijon.⁷ He was well placed to reflect provincial opinions and he exploited the opportunity when the deputies received an audience with the king at Rouen on 16 June.⁸ Boucherat’s speech exploited classical and biblical references to a prince’s obligations to succour his people. The exordium began with a reference to Emperor Tiberius, culled from Tacitus’ Annals. Tiberius was the ruthless and manipulative ruler whose rule provoked ⁵ Drouot, La Première Ligue, 136; Breunot, 230; Etchechoury, 268. ⁶ AD Côte d’Or C 7495 fos. 136v –143 [‘Ce sont les remonstrances des Estats de Bourgongne et la response sur Icelles faictes par le roy en lan (1578)’—replies dated Fontainebleau, 13 October 1578]; cf. AD Cote d’Or C 2979 fo. 141. ⁷ AD Côte d’Or B 12083 fo. 17v [registre d’enregistrements, Parlement de Bourgogne, 12 May 1578]. ⁸ A manuscript version of his remonstrances and some of the printed versions carry this date—BN MS Fr. 10 191 fo. 77; cf. Boucherat, La Remonstrance faitte av roy, le XVI. Ivn [1578] en la ville de Roven (Dijon, 1579). Other printed versions carry the date of 18 June; ed. Loutchizkiˇı, Feudal Aristocracy, pièce justificative No. 2.

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civil war in the empire. Yet even he used a natural disaster that decimated his empire to explain that, in such circumstances, a good prince did not overtax his subjects.⁹ It was from Plutarch that he drew the next example of Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, an absolute ruler surrounded with favourites. When counselled by ‘ung sien faveuri’ to overtax his people, he replied that ‘un bon jardinier’ must learn to ‘bien culturer son jardin et en tirer proffict’ and not overcrop it.¹⁰ Plutarch furnished a further example, this time from the life of Marc Antony. A civil war in the empire had just been pacified and a close relative (Octavian Caesar) had been bought off. Marc Antony paid off his soldiers by a huge tax on his subjects. But an ‘excellent orateur’ told him that, if the emperor wanted to tax his subjects twice, he must provide two summers. The emperor understood, and ‘fit rendre compte à ses thresoriers & financiers’. To reinforce the point, Boucherat turned his attentions to present-day Burgundy, where the devastation of the reiters in 1576 led people to expect taxes to be reduced. Summarizing previous remonstrances from the estates of Burgundy, he linked them to keynote demands already made at Blois. To end his discourse, Boucherat turned to two examples, the second being the story of Rehoboam, son of Solomon.¹¹ Faced with complaints about the ‘heavy yoke’ placed on the Israelites by Solomon, Rehoboam rejected the advice of the elder statesmen he had inherited from his father to accept the mutual obligations between king and people. Instead, he ‘consulted the young men’ who had grown up with him and dismissed their petitions. The result was a provincial revolt among the tribes of David, renewed civil war in the kingdom of Israel, and, in the fifth year of his reign (Henri III had just entered his fourth), a major invasion from Egypt. Henri III, praised by Boucherat for being ‘très debonnaire’, refrained from replying, and referred the cahier to his council. But the parallel was not lost on him—he would refer to it six years later in one of his autograph letters to Villeroy: ‘Il y eut un roi dans la Judée, je ne sais si ce fut Roboam ou un autre, qui par mauvais conseil fut perdu.’¹² It went the rounds of the court and reappeared as a chosen example among League preachers.¹³ Boucherat spent over two months at court and, when he returned, ⁹ La Remonstrance, sig aij. ¹⁰ Ibid., sig. aij and (more elaborately) BN MS Fr 10191 fo. 77r . ¹¹ 1 Kings 12; 2 Chronicles 10–12. ¹² Chevallier, Henri III, 510. ¹³ See, e.g., the Tuscan ambassador who reported on 7 July 1578: ‘Nel principio, si mostrorno tanto ostinati, che ebbero ordine di allegare al Re l’historia di Roboam [ . . . ] ’; also Viennot (ed.), Marguerite de Valois, 178. Cf. the preaching of Antoine Muldrac, théologal at Senlis, who incited the town to sign the catholic Union with the example of Rehoboam (BN MS Fr 11120 fo. 9r ).

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a published version of his speech made its appearance in Dijon with a subvention from the estates of 6 écus.¹⁴ It was reprinted a year later, when provincial dissent reached its climax. Boucherat’s reputation had been made and he was again chosen as one of the estates’ triennial officers (or ‘élus’) in 1581. An initial reply to the Burgundians’ demands came on 14 July 1578, though the important issues were postponed, the council promising to answer them in due course and to send a highly placed commissioner to the estates which reconvened at Dijon on 31 October.¹⁵ Jean de La Guesle, chosen as the latter, arrived in the provincial capital the day before. Procureur général of the Parlement of Paris, he was well placed to represent His Majesty. A former premier président in the Parlement of Dijon, he was also ‘bien veu’ in Burgundy.¹⁶ He had already served as a commissioner to the estates. Dijon made sure it was represented at court and in council and Edme de Chantepinot, avocat du roi in the bailliage of Dijon, long-serving member of the town’s government, was their man about Paris in 1578. He reported on the efforts to persuade La Guesle to accept the commission.¹⁷ La Guesle sought his advice, especially on what had transpired since the remonstrances of June 1578. All but one of the twenty-four fiscal edicts announced in May 1578 were about to be revoked.¹⁸ Even the edict on the avocats du roi in lesser courts was to be bought out.¹⁹ The décime and a half that the king had demanded of the clergy were also to be revoked. The message back in Dijon was clear. Compromise was in the air. La Guesle visited the estates on 1 November 1578. He arrived to find a memorandum awaiting him ‘clos sur la table de la salle des Estats’. It quickly circulated in print too, a statement of the mutual obligations between governor and governed and the nature of ‘counsel’.²⁰ A good counsellor should offer advice that was ‘just and useful’, and not merely that which was ‘agreable’. There were too many ‘gens lasches, faillis de cœur, desloyaux et perfides à leur patrie’ around the king. With a hint of the ‘patriot’ cause that was the political creed of the moment in the former Burgundian Netherlands, the estates sought to protect their ‘patrie’ against ‘many [fiscal] novelties’. The Burgundians accepted that ‘le mouvement et l’ardeur d’une première passion peut exciter un chacun’ and that to act upon such populism would ¹⁴ ¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸ ²⁰

AD Côte d’Or C 3368 fo. 192. ¹⁵ AD Côte d’Or C 3067 fos. 133–136v . NBG, 28, cols. 867–8; Breunot, i. 244. Garnier, Correspondance de la mairie de Dijon, ii. 69–70. Fontanon, i. 474–5. ¹⁹ F46862–4; Fontanon, i. 433–4. Le Memoire trouvé clos (1578)—ed. Drouot, La Première Ligue, 141–3.

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be to be governed by ‘un cœur vil et abject’. To persevere in a just cause, however, was the ‘acte d’homme magnanime et prudent’. It was possible to become overcome with passion, to pursue something with ‘trop d’aigreur et vehemence, et par moyens illicites’, which would discredit the cause for which one was fighting. One must proceed within the ‘bornes du devoir, suivre les moyens qui sont licites et avoir en horreur les autres’. It was the estates’ delicate task to follow ‘le chemin qui reste entre deux’. Where did such a middle way lie in the matter of royal debt? On the one hand, if the king was encumbered with debts, it was reasonable for his people to come to his aid. Provincial privileges should not stand in the way of public necessity. But the proposed way of relieving them was a prelude to the ruination of the state. The middle way was for the king to take the ‘avis de toutes les provinces de son Royaume’ on how to separate ‘legitimate’ debts from the ‘illegitimate’ ones (i.e. those not contracted for the public good). The estates of Burgundy would then agree to pay its share, but in ways that were least damaging to the province at large. More generally, the document advocated ‘la reformation de l’estat suyvant les cayers generaux de toutes les provinces du Royaume’ and a royal council in which ‘les Princes et principaux officiers de la Couronne’ and notables of proven virtue served. Jean de La Guesle had instructions, similar to those issued to other provincial estates’ commissioners.²¹ Aware of a wider political forum, he warned against rumours. He promised a response to the remonstrances from Blois and made uncompromising statements against the illegal levying of troops that had accompanied Anjou’s first Flanders expedition to Mons in July 1578. On the fiscal measures to tackle royal debts, however, he said nothing. The estates went on to make its regular triennial offer of an octroi of 50,000 livres per year, conditional upon the abandonment of newly created offices and all extraordinary subsidies. Delegates were dismayed to discover that one of the latter, the grand parti or aggregated gabelles on salt, had already been registered with modifications by the Parlement. La Guesle sought an audience with the judges on 7 November. He knew how to play the theatre of politics, entering the court with several bows to the assembled magistrates before assuring them how pleased he was to be again in their midst.²² He expressed royal satisfaction at their registration of the grand parti, but wanted to know ²¹ e.g. the commission to Nicolas d’Angennes, sieur de Rambouillet, 16 October 1578 (BN MS Fr nouv acq 233 fo. 97). ²² Breunot, i. 244–5.

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why they had modified it.²³ The first president defended the court’s decision as good government, reminding La Guesle that ‘ce qui est règlement à Paris est dérèglement en ce pays’.²⁴ La Guesle left Dijon on 8 November having achieved nothing beyond becoming a postman for unwelcome proposals back to Paris which invited other provincial participation.

‘PERNICIOUS ENTERPRISES’ Although the political sophistication of the French polity was not comparable to that evolving, for example, in the urban environment of the Low Countries, the mutual awareness between the northern provinces in the autumn of 1578 should be emphasized. There was a ‘bush telegraph’, as in the aftermath to the edict of pacification of May 1576. Urban and provincial deputies at court and in Paris exchanged information. There were issues on which a trans-provincial consensus existed and they had already been highlighted in Burgundy. Henri III’s ministers kept abreast of these links, but it was difficult to predict where the undercurrents of discontent would break into the open, and even more difficult to forestall them. The news from south of the Loire was disturbing. From the Lyonnais and the Forez came rumours of illegal assemblies, possibly incited by clerics. A manuscript handbill did the rounds of the nobility, dismayed at the failure of Blois and fiscal oppression.²⁵ The king complimented his lieutenant-general Mandelot on his vigilance, and issued letters to be distributed to town governors to keep them loyal.²⁶ In the Auvergne, there were reports of illegal assemblies which refused to pay the new impositions, especially the traite foraine.²⁷ Queen Catherine linked the difficulties that she was experiencing in bringing peace to Guyenne with the frisson of provincial dissent.²⁸ She focused on the unrest at Agen, whose consuls were the syndics of the provincial estates of the Agenais, where the levying of taille was contentious.²⁹ She detected ambiguity in the lieutenantgeneral Biron’s attitudes. Already suspected of fomenting the catholic nobility against the peace, Biron used the word ‘union’ rather too meaningfully for her liking.³⁰ The more she travelled, the more she was aware of ‘bruict’, ²³ Ibid.; cf. Fontanon, i. 50–1. ²⁴ Breunot, i. 246. ²⁵ AN [papiers de Simancas] K 1548 No. 22 (edited Loutchizkiˇı, Feudal Aristocracy, pièce justificative No. 4). ²⁶ LH3, No 3117; 3129; 3149. ²⁷ MS It 1730 fo. 470. ²⁸ LCM, vi. 65. ²⁹ Major, Representative Government, 112–13; Tholin, ‘Des tailles’. ³⁰ LCM, vi. 72.

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‘mauvaises délibérations et praticques’, of ‘pernicieuses entreprinses’, and the circulation of news by letters and word of mouth.³¹ At the end of October, she had reports from the Limousin and Périgueux that ‘il s’est faict et continue encores de faire de très mauvais offices, qui viennent de la source de ceux de Bourgogne’.³² She met up with François de Peyrusse, sieur d’Escars, after the obsequies for his wife, the daughter of the late Claude de Bauffremont. Three generations of d’Escars (or Des Cars) had served the house of d’AlbretNavarre and been seneschals in the viscounty of Limoges for the Valois.³³ Profiting from royal service, he saw his patrimony and influence expand. He rebuilt his country seat, his lands in the Limousin became a county, and he was given a cavalry company. In keeping with his fortune, François d’Escars married the daughter of the lieutenant-general in Burgundy, Claude de Bauffremont—a trans-provincial match among the noblesse seconde.³⁴ Following her death in 1578 he remarried, this time to the daughter of the former lieutenant-general in Guyenne, Blaise de Monluc. D’Escars’s younger brother Charles had an ecclesiastical career that took him to the ducal see of Langres (Burgundy), abbot of Gaillac (in Guyenne), Fontaine-Bèze, and La Creste (in Burgundy). Claude de Bauffremont’s brother was bishop of Troyes in Champagne.³⁵ They all congregated at the funeral for the late Madame d’Escars—an assemblage linking Guyenne, the Limousin, Burgundy, and Champagne. Further, d’Escars had recently been told that his services were no longer required as a royal councillor—a casualty of the new slimmed-down council. No wonder Catherine found him ‘froid quand je lui ay parlé’. She urged the king to anticipate trouble by writing a ‘bonne lettre’ to all and sundry among the Limousin nobility. Although d’Escars was rewarded as one of the first rank of chevaliers of the king’s new order in 1578, Queen Catherine rightly detected the first signs of detachment from the royal cause in this future supporter of the house of Lorraine. It was in the northern provinces that dissent took deepest roots. Already in spring 1578, there were ‘movements’ in Brittany.³⁶ By October, the annual meeting of the estates of Brittany was overdue and the region was agitated. As elsewhere, the imposition of export tariffs (the traites foraines et domaniales) in February 1577 was bitterly contested. The levy was contrary to the accords made at the time of the marriages of Anne of Brittany, first to Charles VIII ³¹ ³³ ³⁴ ³⁵

LCM, vi. 72 and also 74. ³² Ibid. 93. Cassan, Le Temps des guerres de religion, 198–9. Aubert-de-la-Chesnaye-Desbois, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, 19 vols. (1863–77), vi. 64–5. Ibid. ii. 70. ³⁶ Reported by, among others, the papal nuncio Salviati in ANG, xiii 2. 763.

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in December 1491 and then to Louis XII in January 1498.³⁷ It recreated taxes that had been proposed by Henri II and for which the province had purchased an exemption. Equally odious was a further measure, specific to the province of Brittany, known as the ‘deux feux de fouage’.³⁸ This was an alienation of part of the fiscal basis of the province, the ‘feux’ or notional households in each parish on which the repartition of taxation in the province was based. The levying commissioner had to suspend it in the face of local hostility.³⁹ By the autumn of 1578, with both measures still pending and further office creations proposed, there was much to do, and to explain, in Brittany. Nicolas d’Angennes, sieur de Rambouillet, a senior figure in royal circles, was sent to the estates of Brittany. His letters of instruction, dated 22 October, testify to the king’s intentions and dilemmas.⁴⁰ Gossip abounded to his discredit. Although he accounted to God alone, he invited his subjects to be dispassionate. Since his accession, he had neglected no opportunity to procure the good of his subjects. He had summoned the estates general to Blois ‘[e]n Intention de Remectre les choses en quelque chemin de leur pristine dignité et splendeur’. His efforts had been thwarted by renewed hostilities, but these had been pacified. Now the cahiers had to become practicable ordinances. His council had worked assiduously on their drafting since February 1578. The king wanted to take them before the Parlement but hostilities had not fully ceased and to publish them now ‘leust rendue Ridicule et en eust faict euanuoyr le fruict que lon en espere’. He intended to do so in due course. Meanwhile, d’Angennes should detail the measures against illegal levies of troops. On the proposed new royal offices, ‘toutes ces choses se font plus a son regret et non aultrement et quelle vouldroit bien sen pouuoir passer’. His finances had been eroded by war, not to mention the appanage created for his brother, and the portions for the dowager queens and the dowry for his sister. D’Angennes should consult with René de Bourgneuf, the first president of the Parlement of Brittany, experienced when it came to managing the provincial estates.⁴¹ He and the other commissioners would advise him on whether there should be any concessions on the traite foraine. It would be difficult to concede much since these revenues underpinned the ³⁷ BN MS Fr 8276 fos. 250–60; also La Lande de Calan, ‘Documents inédits’, ii. 96–110. ³⁸ Introduced by the edict of Chenonceaux [May 1577]. ³⁹ BN MS Fr 8276 fo. 254 and v . ⁴⁰ BN MS Fr nouv acq 233 fos. 97–100 [Henri III: lettres d’instruction à M. de Rambouillet, 22 October 1578]. ⁴¹ Etchechoury, 210.

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payment of debts to the Swiss. To surrender in one province would mean giving way in them all. The instructions present a very different picture from that of the enfeebled Caligula depicted by the English ambassador Paulet, idle at ‘Olinville as a prisoner without confort or counsell, either careless or senseless of the ruin of himself and his realm’.⁴² Yet circumstances frustrated the royal will. The Breton estates was summoned to Ploermel on 31 October but the letters of summons, issued in Paris on 19 August, did not reach their recipients because the duke of Montpensier, governor of Brittany, was ill.⁴³ He could not even sign his name, let alone attend the estates. Even before d’Angennes left Paris, the rumour in Brittany was that the king intended to dispense with the estates and use force to establish the new fiscal measures. The towns were ready to unite against any such move. A surrogate meeting of the estates, attended by its herald and clerk, was held at Fougères on 15 October, where it was in contact with disaffected lower Normandy.⁴⁴ Eight hundred Breton nobles were rumoured to have turned out for it.⁴⁵ The lieutenant-general in inner Brittany, La Hunaudaye, advised the queen mother to summon the estates urgently.⁴⁶ At the least hint of garrisons or further taxation, the province would rise. Time and patience were needed to ride out ‘ceste fureur de peuple’, itself ‘forcez par raisons et persuasions du bien publicq’. The queen mother’s advice to the king was to make concessions and ‘le plus tost que vous pourrez’.⁴⁷ The Breton estates eventually assembled on 22 December 1578 at Rennes. Montpensier’s place was taken by La Hunaudaye. To his left, the Breton nobility crowded in, headed by a controversial celebrity—René, vicomte de Rohan.⁴⁸ Protestant captain, trusted military lieutenant of Jeanne d’Albret, Rohan had not attended the estates since becoming heir to the title. Taking advantage of Montpensier’s absence, his cultivated austerity hovered over its proceedings. Some deputies came with an agenda to ‘oppose the tyrannies, unaccustomed and unprecedented impositions that the Italians in the king’s entourage sought to enforce on France’.⁴⁹ La Hunaudaye began with a

⁴² CalSPFor (1578–9), 301. ⁴³ BN MS Fr 3320 fo. 43. ⁴⁴ Sée, ‘Les états de Bretagne’, 198–9; BN MS Fr 8227 fo. 18. ⁴⁵ BN MS Fr 3220 fo. 63 [‘Memoire & Instruction que le Controlleur Gefronneau fera entendre . . . ’ (Rennes, 31 October 1578, orig.)]—reprinted in LCM, vi. 403–4; Nassiet, Noblesse et pauvreté. ⁴⁶ René de Tournemine, baron de La Hunaudaye, lieutenant-general for the seneschalcies and bishoprics of Rennes, Dol, Saint-Brieuc, and Lentreguer. ⁴⁷ LCM, vi. 103. ⁴⁸ René II, vicomte de Rohan—Haag, viii, cols. 471–3. ⁴⁹ Joxe, Les Protestants, 149.

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measured reproof of the assembly at Fougères.⁵⁰ He was followed by the appearance on Christmas Eve of Claude Barjot, president of the Grand Conseil, a special envoy sent from the king to warn the estates against ‘malins esprits’.⁵¹ The estates replied that it was loyally responding to popular will. As duke of Brittany, the king had no rights to levy taxation without its consent, despite which export tariffs had been imposed and two feux de fouage had been alienated.⁵² After negotiating with Barjot, it reluctantly granted ordinary subsidies but no more. When it came to the king’s debts, the estates asked its deputies at court to bargain alongside deputies from elsewhere. From the king’s point of view, it was a stand-off. Pacification and reform had adopted a regional face and become implicit, rather than explicit issues. A similar outcome emerged in Normandy. The news from there was pessimistic in the autumn of 1578. The lieutenant-general for lower Normandy, Jacques de Matignon, sent his agent Peloquin to the king, who asked to be kept closely informed of all ‘ceulx qui vont et viennent pour emouvoir le peuple et l’aliener de l’affection et obeissance qu’il me porte’.⁵³ Matignon replied on the day the Breton assembly met at Fougères with what he had gleaned. There was a ‘bruict commung’, fomented ‘par nos voisins’. Manuscript handbills were circulating, originating among the lower Norman gentry.⁵⁴ They included a flood of fiscal edicts that were about to deluge the poor Normans. The elections to the forthcoming provincial estates mobilized dissent. The bailli at Coutances avoided paying his respects to Matignon on his way there, carrying ‘beaucoup de bonne Instruction du Costé de la Bretaigne’.⁵⁵ At Falaise there was a riot against the tax officials raising the new crues on the tailles.⁵⁶ In Rouen, nobles signed petitions to be presented to the estates. For Bellièvre, this was reminiscent of protestant petitioning before the ‘sedition d’Amboyse’.⁵⁷ Letters patent for the Normandy estates were issued on the same day as those convoking that of Brittany. In Normandy, however, there was more at stake. The province generated about a fifth of royal revenues. Taxation was raised through royal officials (the élus) and the estates struggled to find its independent voice. It had protested in vain in October 1576 against an ⁵⁰ BN MS Fr 8276 fo. 268– v . ⁵¹ Ibid., fo. 271. ⁵² Ibid., fos. 282v ; 289. MS Fr 8277 fos. 17–18. ⁵³ BN MS Fr 3389 fo. 84 [Henri III to Matignon, ‘Dollinville’, 1 November 1578]. ⁵⁴ BN MS Fr 3389 fo. 91 [Bellièvre to Matignon, Rouen, 24 November 1578, orig.]. ⁵⁵ BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 199 [Matignon to Bellièvre, Saint-Lo, 26 November 1578, orig.— recalling the contents of an earlier letter]. ⁵⁶ LH3, iv, No. 3169. ⁵⁷ BN MS Fr 3389 fo. 91.

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extraordinary levy.⁵⁸ Although the elections encouraged participation in its preparatory meetings, the prelates and nobility often did not turn up. As delegates gathered at Rouen on 15 November 1578, they had no syndic or independent treasurer to advance their cause and their clerk doubled up as one of the royal commissioners.⁵⁹ In the light of Matignon’s reports, however, instructions (similar to those for La Guesle) were prepared for the surintendant des finances, Pomponne de Bellièvre, a high-profile commissioner for the estates.⁶⁰ His mission was clear: to ‘rabatre beaucoup de mauvais impressions desquelles l’on a imbu mon peuple pour l’alterer et devoier de l’obeissance qui m’est deue’.⁶¹ Before leaving, he took advice from Cheverny, who had just replaced cardinal Birague as keeper of the seals.⁶² We have no official record of the deliberations at Rouen. Apart from the opening speech by the first president of the Parlement of Rouen, Jacques de Bauquemaure, a pamphlet published in Paris before the end of 1578 constitutes all we know.⁶³ Printed as a letter dispatched by one Émond de Panygrolles to an aristocrat in Burgundy, it is a reminder that private letters were an important element in the formation of political opinions. Its author has not been identified but one of the Panygrolles family was a conseiller in the Parlement of Rouen. The author had ferreted his information out of the Norman delegates, and had perhaps been sent to do so. He was certainly sympathetic to the provincial cause. Forty-nine delegates met on 17 November in the archepiscopal palace in Rouen, the majority of whom had been elected from the third estate. Tanneguy Le Veneur, sieur de Carrouges, governor of Rouen and lieutenant in upper Normandy, presided, flanked by over a dozen commissioners, mostly treasurers for the duchy. Delegates objected to the presence of so many of the latter. Jacques de Bauquemaure then gave his address.⁶⁴ It was to him that a Rouen printer had just dedicated his latest edition of Jean Nagerel’s Histoire et cronique de Normandie. The history had been brought up to date, ending with Henri III’s reform speech at Blois in 1576. Bauquemaure’s discourse was an elegant piece of political philosophizing.⁶⁵ He began with ⁵⁸ LCM, v. 21; Robillard, i. 238; 247–8; Prentout, Les États provinciaux, i. 301–2. ⁵⁹ Major, Representative Government, 142–3; Prentout, Les États provinciaux, i. 278–80; ii. 168–72; 417–21. ⁶⁰ BN MS Fr 15 905 fos. 187–9 [Henri III to Bellièvre, Ollainville, 11 November 1578]. ⁶¹ LH3, iv, No. 3163. ⁶² LH3, iv, No. 3158; BN MS Fr 3902 fo. 149. ⁶³ Coppie d’vne lettre escrite par Emond de Panygrolles (1578)—printed Robillard, i. 309–27. ⁶⁴ Jean Nagerel, L’Histoire et cronique, preface ‘A mondit seigneur de Bavquemare . . . ’. ⁶⁵ Robillard, i. 298–306; cf. BM Rouen Fonds Martainville Y4 fos. 72–9.

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Isocrates’ ‘Administration of a Kingdom’.⁶⁶ ‘Tout l’office d’un bon roy et prince souverain’ consisted in the well-being of his subjects. Bauquemaure’s exordium sought to replace the martial myth of the Valois with its peaceloving and reformist endeavours. Reform was vital because the king had come into a bankrupt kingdom, racked by civil war. He had now made peace. Henri III was no Lycurgus (the example was drawn from Plutarch) who enforced a peace that militarized the state with laws ‘pour rendre les hommes vaillans, non pas droicturiers, tempérans et prudents’.⁶⁷ His peace was with justice. To explain further, Bauquemaure turned to moral philosophy. The passions of the state were, he said, like the four elements. They had to be held in ‘amytié et concorde’ just as fire and earth were kept in equable mean by water and air. The elemental balance existed ‘pour tempérer par proportion la dissimulitude des extresmes, assavoir qu’il y eust température telle des choses qu’elles ne peussent tarir par sécheresses, ou brusler d’ardeurs, ou se noyer d’humeurs desbordées, ou se roidir de froidures excessifves’. In the same fashion, the political humours of force and justice must be balanced by prudence and temperance. The king would use the latter pair of elements, with occasional recourse to the first pair, ‘pour faire apprendre à ses subjects à vivre en telle obéissance et concorde que les uns ne blessent les autres de faict ny de parolle, et pour faire naistre et durer telles pensées en leurs cœurs, ordonner loix pour faire vivre les bons et vertueus en liberté et honneur, et les meschans et vicieux languir en pauvreté et déshonneur’. Sadly there were those in France who did not respond to the king’s rule. They preferred ‘leur utilité particulière’ to the common weal. But the pursuit of private grievance led to a latent distrust for authority. Bauquemaure was, by now, on the home straight via well-rehearsed biblical histories of what happened to those who revolted. God would punish the land—and Bauquemaure offered contemporary Flanders as an example. From the Book of Proverbs, Bauquemaure chose: ‘When the wicked rule, the populace groans’ and followed it with God’s curse upon the Israelites for their disobedience (Deuteronomy 28: 29 and 31). So, concluded Bauquemaure, the task of the Norman estates was to assist the king in reforming his kingdom. Respect, stability, justice, order, all required rebuilding. This was because there was endless ‘mutation’ in human affairs—Bauquemaure borrowing here from Louis Le Roy’s De la vicissitude.⁶⁸ The king was determined to reform his realm so that its people were not visited by the wrath of God. ⁶⁶ Isocrates’ treatise had already been published in French—Jourda, ‘Une traduction inédite’. ⁶⁷ Girard du Haillan, Recueil d’advis, fo. 6. ⁶⁸ Le Roy, De la vicissitvde.

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This was why he had established a new council of state—a reference to the conciliar regulations of August 1578. The estates of Normandy should assist the king in his endeavours with its resources and moral support. The delegate who had called for the removal of the treasurers was chosen to respond to the opening speeches. Nicolas Clérel was a clerical deputy from an old Norman family, a canon of Rouen cathedral and promoteur (i.e. an episcopal official in the church courts). He had the favour of the archbishop of Rouen, Charles de Bourbon, and would become his vicar-general in October 1580. He too knew his classics, noting that Spartan kings knew how to command well because their people knew how to obey well. The Normans were renowned for their blind, Spartan, obedience but it was a loyalty that had its limits when they could no longer satisfy the king’s demands. With that, delegates got down to business. On 19 November, Bellièvre arrived and he treated them to the same diet as La Guesle offered the Burgundians. The king would be holding a ‘notable assembly’ in early January to commence the tasks of reform. He praised the Normans for their loyalty and warned them against false rumours. He offered to assist them in the councils of state to achieve their just demands. He was cautiously pleased with how his message was received.⁶⁹ The deputies spent the following day drawing up their petition. Their previous cahiers had met with little success; that of the estates general had received no response. So they settled for a crisp summary, not dissimilar to the document that greeted La Guesle in Dijon. Following mass on Friday 22 November this text was presented to Carrouges by Clérel in the great Norman cathedral of Notre-Dame in Rouen. His speech had none of the subtleties of Boucherat’s. It was a sermon, and its force lay in the clerical rhetoric with which Clérel was familiar. Panygrolles had a copy of it, perhaps not a full and entirely reliable copy, but enough to comprehend how it moved some to tears.⁷⁰ Clérel began with a text from Jeremiah: ‘How are we spoiled! We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings [‘tabernacula’] have cast us out’. Although he did not mention peace with the protestants, he had no love for it. The catholic religion was insecure in its tabernacles. There was no ‘dévotion et ardeur de courage’. Ecclesiastical authority was in ruins, the promotion of virtuous clerics abandoned, clerical resources wasted. This was a mirror to what was happening in society at large. Addressing Carrouges, he presented a picture of rural desolation:

⁶⁹ Copie d’vne lettre —Robillard, i. 316.

⁷⁰ Ibid. 319.

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Représentez-vous, s’il vous plaist, les povres villageois de Normandie, ayans la teste nue, prosternez aux pieds de vostre grandeur, maigres, deschirez, langoureux, sans chemise en dos ny souliers en pieds, ressamblans mieux hommes tirez de la fosse que vivans, lesquels, levant les main à vous comme à l’ymage de Dieu, vous usent de ces paroles: ‘Jusques à quand sera-ce, monseigneur, que les playes dont nous sommes affligez auront cours?’

Eight times and sequentially Clérel used the formula: ‘Jusques-à quand . . . ?’ Each time he came closer to the king. When would it be that the ‘mauvais conseil’ around the king would alert him to the endless taxes against the privileges of the duchy and without the consent of its people? When would its flattery end?⁷¹ From Basel, the archipresbyter of the sovereign remedy to be found in representative institutions, François Hotman wrote to his son in Paris that he had ‘lately receved a letter from one of Normandy’. He replied that ‘if those of his country would do their endeavour they should not want assistance’.⁷² The commissioners in Rouen reported to the king on 19 November. Despite their negotiations, they had only succeeded in extracting an additional 20,000 écus from the deputies in addition to ordinary tailles.⁷³ And the Normandy cahier followed the tone of that of the Burgundians.⁷⁴ It circulated widely and was printed as well.⁷⁵ The delegates expressed their loyalty but also their alarm at the ‘plus grandz & excessif imposts que iamais’ raised without provincial consultation. They wanted taxation and royal offices reduced to the levels that had existed under Louis XII. They sought the confirmation of their privileges under the ‘Norman charter’ of 1315, a guarantee ‘par forme de contract faict auec les Roys predecesseurs de sa Majesté’. Its clauses outlawed the ‘infinité de Commissaires estrangers qui Affluent de toutes parts audit pays’. Bellièvre returned from Rouen soberly aware of the problems he faced as surintendant des finances. It was ‘sans exemple’ that loyal subjects of the king should seek to bargain in this fashion at a moment of the greatest delicacy in the peace process. Their audacity would not be lost on the protestants who ‘pourront peult estre changer dopinion’ and ‘nous deurions auoir horreur quant Il se parle de rentrer en nouueaux troubles’.⁷⁶ Although only a minority of those who assembled at Rouen, he judged, were ⁷¹ Ibid. 320–1. ⁷² CalSPFor (1579–1580), 74. ⁷³ BN MS Fr 15 905 fo. 197 [Commissioners at the Normandy estates to Henri III, Rouen, 19 November 1578]. ⁷⁴ BN MS Dupuy 87 fo. 101; cf. Robillard, i. 5–8. ⁷⁵ Articles de remonstrances (Lyon, 1579); printed from the Rouen edition—copy in BN MS Fr 17 324 fo. 111. ⁷⁶ BN MS 3389 fo. 91v .

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determined to make mischief, ‘les ungs donnent couraige aux aultres’.⁷⁷ He was convinced of a gathering provincial consensus, fearing that Normans, Burgundians, and Bretons would arrive in Paris ‘tout a un coup et en mesmes temps . . . de toutes les provinces’ and that ‘il sera bien malaise de satisfere’ their conjoined demands. ‘Ils ne parleront que de Reformation et soulager et exempter de charges en chacun des trois estats.’

‘A GENERAL REFORMATION OF THINGS’ From 300 miles away, Catherine responded to these ‘dangereuses brouilleryes’ with advice.⁷⁸ The king should reconsider the budgets for the forthcoming year. Various ‘petites parties qui se lèvent et qui ne viennent en vos finances, mais au proffict de plusieurs particulliers’ could be scrapped. The deputies from the estates should meet first with his council, who would be candid with them. He could then play the beneficent ruler and seek their advice on how best to handle his debts. He need not resist further meetings of their assemblies.⁷⁹ She favoured the idea of hypothecating specified portions of crown debt to particular provinces ‘pro rata’ for them to amortize over a period of years. At the same time, the king should send out envoys to dissipate discontents. The latter was already happening. Individuals were dispatched to various provinces in December with instructions to stiffen the loyalty of local notables, investigate the causes for discontent, and counter rumours.⁸⁰ Letters patent of 7 December acknowledged ‘les turbulents esprits de nostre Royaume’ and specifically denied ‘plusieurs meschantes inuentions’ to tax chimneys, town houses, milled grain, christened children, and other fantastic innovations.⁸¹ So Claude Barjot left the estates in Rennes for Nantes on 2 January ‘pour s’asseurer des dispositions du peuple’.⁸² The sieur de Miraumont, a king’s equerry, was likewise dispatched to Normandy, visiting Caen where ⁷⁷ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 37 [Bellièvre to Catherine de Médicis, undated—c. mid-December 1578]. ⁷⁸ LCM, vi. 202. ⁷⁹ Ibid. 297—citing the ‘Mémoire baillé à Mr Doron’ in BN MS Fr 3319 fo. 13. ⁸⁰ See the form-letters headed ‘[ . . . ] pour accompagner les Commissaires par luy [Henri III] enuoyez es prouinces pour donner ordres aux maluersations commises a loccasion des Troubles en lxxix [1579]’ in BN MS Fr 4766 fos. 234v –236v . ⁸¹ Declaration du roy (1578]—BN F 46862(20). ⁸² Travers, Histoire . . . de Nantes, ii. 478; AM Nantes BB 14 fos. 349– v .

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he lectured the treasurers of the generality and the city fathers on loyalty.⁸³ Jacques Amyot, the king’s almoner, was already there to keep an eye on things.⁸⁴ Caen was certainly disturbed. Six hundred peasants invaded the town in January, returning their tax demands (mandements) to the élus.⁸⁵ From there Miraumont went to Rouen, where the city corporations were similarly harangued.⁸⁶ In Champagne, the maître d’hôtel du roi, Jacques de Germigny, sieur de Germolles, was instructed to tour the province’s notables.⁸⁷ He was to reassure them that the king ‘na Riens tant desire que de mectre la main a bon essient au soulaigement de son peuple’. Germigny should scotch the ‘inuentions colorees de plusieurs faulx et diuers pretextes’ of ‘infinite edicts’ that he was supposedly on the point of publishing. On the contrary, the king had nothing ‘tant a cœur que de faire en son Royaume une generalle refformation des choses qui en ont besoing au soulaigement de sesdits subiectz’. Indeed, a meeting was planned with the princes of the blood, and the chief officers of the crown and of the kingdom early in the coming year. The reference was to an assembly which followed the first elevations to the new royal Order of the Holy Spirit that took place on 1 January 1579. Matignon had been specifically invited to it and there seems little doubt that the occasion was used to review generally the options for reform, including of the crown’s military forces.⁸⁸ Nine Burgundians, headed by Charles Ailleboust, bishop of Autun, met up, as Bellièvre had predicted, with the Normandy delegation in Paris towards the end of January. If it had been intended to be secret, it was not so for long.⁸⁹ The king met them on 8 and 9 February, having just returned from his Lenten penitential retreat to Notre-Dame de Chartres.⁹⁰ By then the Brittany delegation was also in Paris and reported to be ‘leagued together’ with the rest.⁹¹ Queen Catherine’s conference with Henri de Navarre at Nérac had just convened but its outcome would not be known in Paris for ⁸³ BN MS Fr 3889 fo. 99 [Henri III to Matignon, Paris, 16 December 1578]; Carel, Histoire de la ville de Caen, 130. ⁸⁴ Boucher, ‘Un grand aumônier engagé’, 154. ⁸⁵ François, ‘Noblesse, réforme et gouvernement’, 306–7. ⁸⁶ Floquet, Histoire du Parlement de Normandie, iii. 178. ⁸⁷ BN MS Fr 4125 fo. 1 [Lettre d’instruction au sieur de Germigny, Paris, 16 December 1578 (Brulart), orig.]. ⁸⁸ BN MS Fr 3389 fo. 103 [Brulart to Matignon, Paris, 16 December 1578, orig.] and fo. 105. ⁸⁹ It was reported by, amongst others, the Tuscan ambassador, in his dispatch of 27 January 1579—Desjardins, iv. 246. ⁹⁰ The replies to the Norman cahier are dated 8 February (Articles de remonstrances —cf. Robillard, i. 5); those for the Burgundians are 9 February (AD Côte d’Or C7495 fo. 130). ⁹¹ CalSPFor (1583), 516.

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several more weeks. The king had to gamble on her securing a workable peace, the alternative (renewed hostilities) being almost inconceivable. The Normans presented their case ‘with vehemence’.⁹² The king’s reply, dated 18 February in the printed version but delivered a week earlier, demonstrated that he needed no lessons from his mother in covering the hand of royal authority with velvet gloves.⁹³ Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to reduce the tailles and all royal subsidies but their demand was unrealistic.⁹⁴ He had already undertaken a retrenchment of his household expenditures. He would instigate a review, however, of tax inequalities. The latter was no idle promise. Matignon had already advised the king that it was needed.⁹⁵ One of the treasurers from Caen, the sieur de Besse, was summoned to report on the problem.⁹⁶ Meanwhile, to demonstrate his goodwill, the king repeated his offer to discharge Normandy of 100,000 livres of taille. In addition, he waived what remained to be levied from the 5 per cent crue (the so-called vingtième de la taille). He also indicated his willingness to rescind the payment of one and a half décimes on the clergy. On the new office creations, he was sympathetic to all requests to buy out those that were particularly burdensome. He was also concerned about the ‘plusieurs fautes & maluersations’ reported against his officials and he proposed to commission some magistrates from the Parlement of Rouen to investigate such allegations, the profits being put to suppressing new offices in the province. He was anxious to maintain the Normans’ privileges, especially in legal matters such as the appeals of legal cases outside the province, but he would need to be more fully informed about the Norman charter and would take advice from the Parlement at Rouen. The estates were free to meet in further session to consider his response, providing that there was no interruption to tax collection. We have a much briefer report from the Burgundian deputation.⁹⁷ The deputies had several meetings with the Conseil d’état leading up to an audience with the king. La Guesle and Cheverny were particularly solicitous. The deputies were treated ‘fort bénignement’ and assured of the king’s goodwill to ‘les soulager par dessus toutes ses aultres prouinces’. The recently introduced cinq sols on each muid of wine would be abandoned and the arrears remitted —an important concession in a province where wine taxes were a sensitive ⁹² ⁹³ ⁹⁵ ⁹⁶ ⁹⁷

CalSPFor (1583), 242. LH3, iv, No. 3252; BN MS Fr 17 324 fo. 11. ⁹⁴ Ibid., fos. 11 f. BN MS Fr 15 905 fo. 219 [Matignon to Bellièvre, Coutances, 23 December 1578]. Robillard, i. 330. AD Côte d’Or B 2979 fos. 146v and 172; 3068 fo. 1; BN F46863–1.

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subject. The new traite foraine would be suspended. These were contained in verbal promises by the king so as (he said) not to awaken the envy of other provinces.⁹⁸ The king had followed Catherine’s advice and played a waiting game. The provinces were held loyal by promises of redress, invitations to talk, attentiveness to grievances, and prospects of reform. A release of tension came with the cementing of the peace of Bergerac, made by the queen mother at the conference of Nérac on 26 February. The king could now capitalize on that agreement. Envoys were once more dispatched to the forthcoming provincial estates in Burgundy, Normandy, and Brittany. It was the Burgundian estates where events were again played out first. La Guesle came accompanied by de Retz to the Burgundians on 16 March with a speech that stressed the king’s trust in their loyalty, the progress of pacification, and his commitment to the fiscal concessions offered.⁹⁹ La Guesle went one step further. A great reforming ordinance on the basis of the cahiers of Blois had been prepared. With the peace at Nérac now secured, the edict had been ‘mis y auoit plus de quinze jours passez par deuers la Court de Parlement de Parys pour le voir et veriffyer’.¹⁰⁰ It would shortly be sent to Dijon and they would find their petitions answered. He even read out sample paragraphs to them. The king shared their long-term objective, namely that taxes on the third estate in the province should be reduced to their levels under Louis XII. For the present, however, the king could not undertake his ‘holy desires’ for reform without additional resources. The holding of another ‘general assembly of all the provinces’, as their delegation had suggested, would merely result in delay (‘longueur’). Far better would be for each province to make its own contribution. Burgundy would serve as an example ‘aux aultres prouinces’. The separate orders went into conclave over the following two days. If there were discussions of the national issues raised by La Guesle, they were not recorded. More likely they took place off the record before the orders reassembled on 18 March. They applauded the king’s desire for ‘une generall et entiere Reformation comme necessaire du tout pour empescher la Ruyne et subvertion de lestat’. That desire encouraged them to prepare their remonstrances for, while they applauded the promise of a reforming edict, they were not duped. Such measures ‘ne respondent pas du tout a la ⁹⁸ Ibid., C 4729 and 3068 fo. 2 and v . ⁹⁹ BN MS Fr 15 905 fo. 3. ¹⁰⁰ The ordinances were presented to the Parlement of Paris on 28 February 1583—S. Daubresse, Le Parlement, 253.

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grandeur du mal’.¹⁰¹ They wanted the province’s clergy exempt from décimes, its towns liberated from subventions, and the abolition of the grand parti. As to the request to contribute to the king’s debts, the king would recall that, at the estates general of Tours, Charles VIII had exempted them from the extraordinary contributions to which other provinces of the realm were subjected. They would only agree to assist the king once an overall calculation of royal debts had been made. What they wanted was not a treasury statement of royal debts, but a verified schedule of those which had been incurred legitimately for the defence of the realm, enumerated separately from those which had been illegitimately extorted by particular favourites. It was unfair to ask the deputies of one province to make a contribution in isolation.¹⁰² They stood by the proposal for a ‘general council’ of the provinces. Given the concessions offered by the king, this response was hardly a victory for La Guesle. He accepted it with the best grace he could muster but, having failed to persuade Burgundy, it was unlikely that other provinces would react differently. Seeing the way things were going, Henri III sought to appeal over the heads of the provincial estates in Burgundy in order to win over a province whose deputies had so singularly failed to be convinced in March.¹⁰³ Duke François de Montmorency was dispatched with Bellièvre and the master of requests André Hurault, sieur de Maisse, to Normandy. Bellièvre knew more about the state of the royal finances than anyone else. Montmorency, a marshal, had impressive credentials as head of delegation, even though he was so ill he had to be carried in a litter.¹⁰⁴ Their instructions were identical to those issued to La Guesle and Retz.¹⁰⁵ They were to charm, coax, and persuade the delegates to collaborate in managing the king’s debts. They should begin by reminding them of concessions already made. They should then declare the king’s affection for his Norman subjects. He had pacified the realm, but this starved him of the resources to undertake reform. The replies to the cahiers from the estates of Blois were on their way. There remained, however, the question of royal finances. The crown’s debts had grown since the days of François I, been exacerbated by the civil wars, and were now consuming his ordinary revenues.¹⁰⁶ This threatened the integrity of the ¹⁰¹ BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 6. ¹⁰² Ibid., fo. 6v . ¹⁰³ Lebeuf, Mémoires, i. 222. ¹⁰⁴ BN MS Fr 15 905 fo. 8 [Villeroy to Bellièvre, Paris, 3 March 1579]. ¹⁰⁵ BN MS Fr 15 905 fo. 19 [endorsed: ‘affaires de Normandie’, copy, countersigned Brulart, Paris, 10 March 1579] and headed ‘semblable a celluy qui est baille pour la Bourgogne et la Bretagne’. ¹⁰⁶ The deputies were to be given a schedule of royal debts ‘lesquelles comme elle s’asseure se trouveront beaucoup plus grandes que plusieurs ne les ont voulu penser’.

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kingdom. An accompanying memorandum outlined how their negotiations might proceed.¹⁰⁷ Reducing revenues and officers to the levels in Louis XII’s reign was impossible in the short term. Delegates might consider repurchasing alienated royal domain in Normandy, maintaining part of the royal army in that province, or repurchasing superfluous offices. The measures could be planned to take effect over a number of years.¹⁰⁸ The king had already reduced household expenditures and would consider any further proposed reductions they suggested. Additional resources raised by the province could be administered by the estates themselves, rather than by royal officers. If the deputies replied that such questions should be addressed by a general assembly of all the provinces, this should be rejected as a recipe for procrastination. The king wanted a decision, and only reluctantly would he accept a deputation of two or three individuals from each province to a general conference. The Normandy estates met on 30 March, two weeks after that in Burgundy, ample time for the Normans to know the decisions in Dijon. There is more evidence of royal pressure on prospective deputies for this meeting than any other in Henri III’s reign. Bellièvre was dispatched to lower Normandy, the heartland of discontent.¹⁰⁹ Town mayors and aldermen were reminded of their duties and told not to listen to false rumours. Local lieutenants were put to work to secure the loyalties of dissidents.¹¹⁰ The king wrote personally to disaffected Norman nobles and blank letters were forwarded to Bellièvre to distribute to others as he saw fit.¹¹¹ Bellièvre had powers to moderate the levels of the taille in the generality of Caen.¹¹² The treasurers of Caen published the king’s concessions.¹¹³ When Bellièvre received reports from Matignon of scuffles between his soldiers and the local population in Vallongues over the collection of the taille for the January quarter, he approved a reduction of 60,000 livres to win people over.¹¹⁴ ¹⁰⁷ BN MS Fr 15905 fos. 10–12v [‘Mémoire pour Messieurs les ducs de Montmorency et president de Bellièvre’—Paris, 4 March 1579], ¹⁰⁸ Ibid., fo. 19. ¹⁰⁹ BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 14 [endorsed: ‘Mémoire pour M. de Bellièvre’, Paris, 4 March 1579]. The main purpose was to ‘Rendre ung chacun cappable de la droicte volunte et Intention que a sadite majeste au bien et soullaigement de ses subiectz’. ¹¹⁰ LH3, iv, No. 3296. ¹¹¹ LH3, iv, No. 3314; BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 42 [Brulart to Bellièvre, Paris, 19 March 1579]. ¹¹² BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 35. ¹¹³ BN MS 15905 fo. 304 [arrêt, trésoriers généraux de Caen, 15 March 1579—copy]. ¹¹⁴ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 24 [Matignon to Bellièvre, Thorigny, 13 March 1579]; fo. 29 [Matignon to Bellièvre, Thorigny, 15 March 1579]; fo. 50 [Matignon to Bellièvre, Thorigny, 23 March 1579]; BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 33 [De La Besses and Mouynier to Bellièvre, Caen, 15 March 1579].

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Such persuasion was not entirely productive. Once more handbills circulated on the streets of Rouen. One of them, addressed to the city fathers, targeted the ‘hateful financiers’ and offered a rallying cry to ‘Messieurs nos concitoyens’ that ‘if you do not come to our aid you cannot be called Frenchmen but slaves’.¹¹⁵ The estates’ cahier of complaints was a substantial document, more appropriate to a national than a regional assembly. It proposed fundamental and wide-ranging issues of the reform of the church, schools, hospitals, the council of state, extraordinary commissions, and the suppression of offices. ‘Officiers malversateurs’ were to be prosecuted (¶23–6), the tax-levying system reformed with the abolition of the provincial treasurers and élus (¶27) and their replacement by officials of the estates. All extraordinary impositions (defined as everything that had not been levied in the reign of Louis XII) were to be abolished (¶32). New export tariffs (traites domaniales) should be abandoned. Newly created offices should be cancelled. As in November 1578, it referred to the ‘Charte normande’, the Norman charter issued by Louis X le Hutin in 1314. On 30 March, there was, however, constructive discussion. Bellièvre and Montmorency accepted the proposal that the estates nominate magistrates from the Parlement of Rouen, the ‘Chambre sur le faict de la reformation des Officiers de Normandye’, to investigate malversation. They suspended a commissioner investigating forests and water resources. The sale of 1,000 new noble titles in the province to meet the national emergency in 1576 was watered down. Letters of amnesty were issued on behalf of several delegates at the November 1578 assembly whose activities had led to legal proceedings.¹¹⁶ A royal commission to reform the province’s tax collection was promised.¹¹⁷ Even the Normandy charter was reissued in letters patent of 30 April 1579.¹¹⁸ On the central issues, however, the estates gave the king cold comfort.¹¹⁹ Pending a general assembly of all provinces, Normandy offered no more than the ordinary tailles, the payment of the salaries of royal officers in the province to the complement as it had been under Louis XII, a modest contribution to the fortifications of the province, and a firm injunction that there should be no additional levies of the taille without the estates’ consent. Bellièvre returned to Paris empty-handed. The delegates sent to the king to present their cahier included the sieur de Moigneville, not a choice that earned them the king’s favour since he was ‘recogneu avoir manyé beaucoup de factions en ¹¹⁵ AC Rouen, Chartrier, tiroir 400(2). ¹¹⁸ Ibid. 126–7. ¹¹⁹ Ibid. 15–19.

¹¹⁶ Robillard, i. 344.

¹¹⁷ Ibid. 39–40.

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ceste partie’.¹²⁰ Nevertheless, the king responded positively to the delegation in meetings from 15 to 18 April 1579. When asked to put this in writing he demurred, hypersensitive to any suggestion of ‘contractuality’. But he cautiously approved of their suggestion for ‘une assemblee des provinces pour l’acquict de mes debtes’, adding that he would seek the queen mother’s advice before proceeding further.¹²¹ Privately, in a letter to Villeroy, he was more dismissive: ‘mesmemant que je croys que ses deputez ne les demandent, a ce que je pance, que pour filosopher, et y trouver quelque point a redyre pour s’y accrocher la dessus’.¹²² With Burgundy and Normandy having spoken negatively, Brittany was bound to follow suit. It was summoned on 7 March to meet in Rennes on the 25 April.¹²³ Montpensier remained too ill to attend the estates and there was a protracted dispute between Rohan and Laval over the presidency, resolved with new letters via Retz inviting delegates to attend at Rennes on 6 May.¹²⁴ In early April, it was decided that the duke of Montpensier’s grandson (the ‘Prince Dauphin’, François de Montpensier) would preside, with real negotiations being undertaken by Retz.¹²⁵ Assembled at Rennes were numerous faces that had been present at the end of 1578.¹²⁶ The Prince Dauphin opened proceedings on a defiant note, making no secret of the ‘calamiteux estat’ of the realm and the ‘evidente ruine’ with which it was menaced. In his replies to their previous cahier, the king had been generous. Now he summoned them to put an end to the ‘Clameur et plainte que fait tout le peuple d’iceluy’. Once informed of the true state of the ‘grandes debtes’ created by the civil wars, deputies must assist the king to avoid the ‘perilleux inconvénients’ that would inevitably result were nothing done. Over the next few days, however, Rennes turned into a rumour factory. A receiver of royal décimes appeared before delegates to recount how he had been imprisoned in Paris for non-payment of his receipt, although since the contract of Poissy had expired at the end of 1577, the tax was illegal.¹²⁷ In Paris, he said, many new exactions were rumoured to be under consideration—provincial financiers, venal offices of parish clerks, royal auctioneers. With the assembly turning ¹²⁰ LH3, iv, No. 3341. ¹²¹ Ibid. ¹²² LH3, iv, No. 3427. ¹²³ BN MS Fr 8277, 2 [Henri III to Louis de Bourbon, duc de Montpensier, 7 March 1579, Paris]. ¹²⁴ CalSPFor (1579), 517. ¹²⁵ BN MS Fr 8277, 5 [Lettres de commission to Louis de Bourbon, duc de Montpensier, Paris, 7 April 1579]. ¹²⁶ e.g. the manuscript copy of the Normandy estates among the papers of the Nantes mayor and échevins —AC Nantes AA 78. ¹²⁷ BN MS Fr 8277, 14.

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against them, Retz, Cucé, and the seneschal of Rennes made an unscheduled visit to the assembly on 10 May, offering to respond to complaints.¹²⁸ Still hoping for a loan of 200,000 livres, they held out the prospect of further talks. On the following day, the estates heard that it had received ‘plusieurs fauorables responces’ from the commissioners, although delegates pressed for them to be enshrined in a document signed by the Prince Dauphin himself. The cahier that the bishop of Dol signed off on 12 May was a more introverted document than that prepared by the estates of Normandy. Breton privileges, its church and judicial independence, were issues more in evidence than the wider discontents of the realm. Of its twenty-eight paragraphs, twelve were adjudged by the commissioners to have been answered by previous legislation or the forthcoming ordinances of Blois.¹²⁹ A further five pleas were accepted on the spot. Two were remitted to the estates for further information. Only two were rejected outright. The remaining seven clauses were forwarded to the king. These were the central clauses in which the estates opposed recent royal exactions. On the issue of the crown’s debts, however, there was not a whisper. The demand for 200,000 livres was cold-shouldered. The commissioners returned empty-handed, save for another cahier of Breton grievances for consideration at the king’s council, which gave it considered, and emollient, replies the following June.¹³⁰

‘ T ROUB LE-M AKERS’ After the cluster of provincial assemblies that culminated in May 1579, there was a lull. Only Brittany (September), Normandy (November), and Languedoc (December) reconvened in 1579. The opportunity for a common agenda of reform slipped away, effaced by the 363 articles of the great ‘Ordonnances de Blois’, published in May 1579. Optimists discerned a consolidation of peace in the summer of 1579. The reform agenda was gradually transfused in the summer of 1579 into scintillas of more popular agitation, less coherent than the movement within the provincial estates. In Normandy, tax rebellion had already begun. Having made concessions, the king hoped to contain it.¹³¹ In reality, it simmered on around Caen. In July 1579, the king, taking no chances, replaced his lieutenant in lower Normandy ¹²⁸ BN MS Fr 8277, 19. ¹²⁹ Ibid., 27–37. ¹³⁰ Morice, Mémoires, iii, cols 1445–51. Cf. F46863–11.

¹³¹ LH3, iv, No. 3341.

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with the loyal premier gentilhomme de la chambre François d’O. That same month, the parish of Martragny, near Creully in the élection of Caen, which had refused to pay any tailles since before the beginning of the year, attacked a tax sergeant and resisted soldiers sent to assist him.¹³² The king blamed a handful of provincial nobles for stirring things up, naming La Roche-Guyon, Chantelou, and Pont-Béranger, and commissioned an investigation from d’O and Antoine Séguier, a master of requests dispatched to assist in the enforcement of the edict of pacification and to examine complaints about the apportionment of tax.¹³³ Séguier epitomized the culture of the notability. Already experienced as a royal commissioner (he was sent to Provence as surintendant de la justice in the wake of the peace of Monsieur in 1576), he wrote back to his father in Latin from Caen in September.¹³⁴ His task was daunting. It was easy to make laws, so much harder to see them carried out in the real world. But he put his trust in God to render equity to all and to fear none. In an initial report, written at the end of August, he found people ‘fort durs, pesantz et opigniastres’.¹³⁵ Local magistrates, judging the culprits, made things worse. His speech to the présidial court was pessimistic. After twenty years of civil strife, the country was beginning to feel some respite and yet, in Martragny, ‘nous voila, pis qu’auparauant’ with revolt finding new soil in which to take root. The incident led Séguier to an extended reflection on the nature of legitimate authority. Later, in November, he presented a verbal report to the king on the causes of the incident, explaining it as part of the ‘licence’ in the kingdom.¹³⁶ He did not rule out the possibility of ‘trouble-makers’ inflaming the situation but the root cause was, he made clear, the unequal tax system and its nefarious effects on Norman society. The king was sufficiently impressed to commission an inquiry into taille collection in lower Normandy with an investigation of false claims to tax exemption. Normandy was not alone. Simmering discontent, reported assemblies, and meetings in various parts of the kingdom created rumours that were difficult to ignore. In Picardy, there was talk of a new league of disaffected towns, led this time by Saint-Quentin. The duke of Nevers was greeted by some of its ¹³² BN MS Fr 18 941 fo. 46 [‘Sur une espece de sedition Arriuée en la paroisse de Martraigny en basse Normandie le 28 Aoust 1579’]. Cf. Foisil, ‘Harangue et rapport’. ¹³³ BN MS Fr 6646 fo. 86 [Henri III to François d’O, 23 August 1579]. ¹³⁴ Etchechoury, 262; BN MS Fr 18587, 605 [‘Epistola ad patrem 1579 Sep Cadonis’]. Kerviler, Le Chancelier, 8. ¹³⁵ BN MS Fr 18 941 fo. 46 etc., ed. Foisil. ¹³⁶ BN MS 18 941 fos. 49 f. [‘Au Roy sur le desordre Arriué en basse Normandie au sujet des Tailles de Novembre 1579’].

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leading figures when he arrived in Abbeville in October 1579.¹³⁷ Champagne, too, was restive. In October 1579, a dissident group of Champenois nobility met at Bassigny and secretly put their names to an association whose adherents swore to defend provincial autonomies, catholic virtues, and to promote the reformation of the kingdom.¹³⁸ The memorandum did not take long to reach the king and his reactions were predictably hostile: ‘les espritz des hommes’ tended to ‘toutes sortes des plus enormes perversitez’.¹³⁹ As in Normandy, it led to the replacement of the provincial lieutenant.¹⁴⁰ The new incumbent, Joachim de Dinteville, convoked a meeting of the Champenois nobility at Chaumont, securing oaths of loyalty and disavowals of the Bassigny league from those who attended.¹⁴¹ Meanwhile, from the Forez, the Bourbonnais, and the Auvergne came murmurs of a projected noble league.¹⁴² Henri III suspected they were being stimulated by trouble-makers elsewhere.¹⁴³ Further to the west, there were reports of a league in Poitou in June.¹⁴⁴ ‘Toutes ces ligues et menées’, said Queen Catherine in September 1579, were covert.¹⁴⁵ The agitation seems to have been fomented by manuscript handbills—‘faulx et pernicieulx escriptz, plains d’impostures et mensonges’ and ‘bruits’, ‘murmures’, ‘excitations’, and ‘impostures’.¹⁴⁶ In January 1579, the avocat du roi at Saint-Maixent in Poitou received an anonymous letter asking him to enquire of, and punish, those who ‘faussement avoient semé qu’il vouloit faire édits, pour lever un sol de ventre, par chascun arpent de terre, cinq sols pour chasque cheminée pour une fois, cinq sols pour chascun pied de maison estant aux rues des villes, cinq sols pour chascun muid de bled moulu, cinq sols pour le baptême de l’enfant mâle, et deux sol six deniers pour la femelle’.¹⁴⁷ Within a month, he had read Nicolas Boucherat’s remonstrance, copying extracts from it into his journal. When Queen Catherine received the printed disavowal of the ‘descornisseurs’ whose ‘maulvais offices’ had published anonymously various fiscal edicts and attributed them falsely to the king, she sent copies to the Parlements of Toulouse and Bordeaux at the end ¹³⁷ BN MS Fr 3362 fo. 103. ¹³⁸ BN MS Dupuy 537 fo. 131 [‘Articles de la société secrète formée par quelques gentilshommes du Bassigny’ (5 October 1579)]. Cf. Bourquin, Noblesse seconde, 96–7. ¹³⁹ LH3, iv, No. 3634. ¹⁴⁰ Hérelle, La Réforme, ii. 97–8; BN MS Dupuy 537 fo. 142 [letters of instruction to Joachim de Dinteville, 10 January 1580]. ¹⁴¹ Ibid, fo. 136 [‘Ce sont les seigneurs gentizhommes et cappitaines qui se sont trouvez à Chaulmont avec Monsieur de Dinteville’]; fo. 138 [‘Relation d’une assemblée tenue à Chaumont’, 2 February 1580, copy]; cf. LH3, iv, No. 3683. ¹⁴² LH3, iv, Nos. 3317; 3327. ¹⁴³ Ibid., No. 3682. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid., No. 3420. ¹⁴⁵ LCM, vii. 117. ¹⁴⁶ LCM, vi. 177 [16 December 1578]. ¹⁴⁷ La Fontenelle de Vaudoré (ed.), Journal, 306.

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of December 1578 ‘pour effacer les bruictz et mauvais feu que les malicieux qui veullent troubler ce repos’.¹⁴⁸ She warned Montmorency-Damville in Languedoc that the demands of Normandy and Burgundy were circulating around fairs and markets. Montmorency replied that such documents had ‘venu aux oreilles de plusieurs’. His secretary Marion had received manuscript copies of them as well as the deliberations of the estates of Burgundy.¹⁴⁹ They joined his collection of pasquilades and verses against the French court.¹⁵⁰ Letters played an important part in spreading news of disaffection. Embroiled in the Razats uprising in Provence, Joseph de Pontevès wrote his father a second letter of the day from the stronghold at Ampus, near Draguignan, on 12 January 1579. News had just reached him that ‘en Bourgoigne y a soixante ou 80 compagnies levées sans adveu; de quoy on jette le soubçon sur les principaux gouverneurs, joint que Monsieur le duc du Maine passa à troys lieus de la Cour sans aller veoir le Roy. En Normandie s’est tenu une assamblée où y avoit de sept à huict cens gentilshommes qui ont resolu de fere maintenir les privileges de leur païs suivant les Estatz generaux.’¹⁵¹ It was against this background that the estates of Normandy and Brittany held their annual deliberations in the autumn of 1579. The Breton estates was summoned to Nantes for September.¹⁵² It included some familiar faces, the ‘men of business’ of the province such as François Favorel, the chantre from the cathedral chapter of Dol, François Thomé, the independent-minded bishop of Saint-Malo, Gilles Lezot from Rennes, and Rolland Charpentier, the procureur des bourgeois from Nantes. Presiding over the estates once more was the Prince Dauphin, who wanted his lettres de survivance as governor of the province registered there. The président of the Parlement at Rennes, François de Kermadec, sieur de Cucé, set the scene by reminding delegates of concessions already made. They responded by avoiding wider issues. Attention concentrated on the estates’ lawsuits (they had cost 40,000 livres).¹⁵³ The delegates negotiated the repurchase of new office creations ¹⁴⁸ AN K 1547 [‘Déclaration du roy contre un mémoire naguère donné au préjudice de la vérité Touchant l’érection de plusieurs prétendus édits de nouvelles impositions’ (Paris, 7 December 1578)]; LCM, vi. 178. ¹⁴⁹ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 320; 332. ¹⁵⁰ BM Toulouse MS 613 fos. 216 (a variant of the well-known ‘Le Coq à L’Asne’); 218 (a satire against court life); 222 (satirical verses on the deaths of [Louis de] Maugiron and ‘Saint-Maignen’ [i.e. Saint-Mesgrin], 27 April 1578 and 21 July 1578). ¹⁵¹ Poupé, ‘La Ligue’, 286–7. ¹⁵² BN MS Fr 8027, 33 f. for the proceedings; article 15 of the remonstrances of December 1578 for the petition concerning the date of the assembly [BN MS Fr 8026, 285]. ¹⁵³ Ibid., 42–3; 48–9.

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and politely declined to help the king repurchase his debts with the reply that they had their own to attend to. A cahier of purely provincial issues was drafted and dispatched with deputies, headed by Nicolas Langelier, bishop of Saint-Brieuc.¹⁵⁴ In his speech before the king in January 1580, he worked hard to gloss the cooperation to the king’s cause displayed by the estates.¹⁵⁵ The conseil privé gave the cahier attention, and there were some concessions on minor provincial matters. It was, once more, business as usual at Nantes. That left the estates of Normandy. If its delegates were to carry the torch for reformation, they would do so alone. They were summoned to Rouen on 15 November and Queen Catherine advised the king to go in person. In the event, the commissioners were headed by Tanneguy Le Veneur, sieur de Carrouges.¹⁵⁶ The opening speech was presented on 16 November by Jacques de Bauquemaure.¹⁵⁷ It sought to open delegates’ minds. There was, he said (citing Plato), nothing more perilous or difficult to manage than reforming a state.¹⁵⁸ It meant changing the laws and altering established customs. Such reformation must be undertaken gradually ‘à l’imitation du gouvernement de ce grand Dieu de nature, qui faict toutes choses lentement et quasy insensiblement’. Pulling out his Plutarch for another example, he fell upon Agis, the Lacedemonian who wanted to reform the state and recover the old discipline of Lycurgus the law-giver. He gave orders that all property deeds should be surrendered and publicly burnt so that he could proceed to a new and equitable division of land. But the result was far from his hopes since ‘il embrase un feu de sédition qui brusla sa maison’. Bauquemaure drew an important lesson from this. Last year, the estates had sought to change things precipitously by pressing demands concerning ‘l’Estat universel de ce royaume’. The reduction of taxes that it demanded was impossible; that for the reduction of the number of offices was contrary to the order of justice and the ancient laws of this realm. Both ought to be erased from the memory but ‘il semble les dits articles avoir esté si bien gravez et imprimez au cœur d’aucuns subjectz de cette province qu’ils se sont promis l’effect de leur demande comme possible et raisonnable’. The fiscal burdens of the state were considerable and it was no remedy to suggest ¹⁵⁴ Copy of the cahier at 66–73. ¹⁵⁵ MS Fr 12 795 fo. 253 [‘Remonstrance des estatz de Bretagne faicte au Roy par leuesque de St Brieu le ix januier 1580’]. ¹⁵⁶ LCM, vii. 115; 201–2. ¹⁵⁷ BM Rouen Fonds Martainville Y4 fos. 79v f. in Robillard, ii. 359–72. ¹⁵⁸ Ibid. 360, citing Plato’s Laws, ch. 7.

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that royal debts and engagements could somehow be written off by others. Bauquemaure supported his argument with classical allusions; the first to Nero’s extravagant promise to remove all taxes, wisely rejected by the senate, and the second to Leosthenes’ promises of the abolition of taxes and reform following the death of Alexander. Phocion’s wise comment on the latter had been that they were like cypress trees, ‘beaux, grands et droict, mais ils ne portent point de fruit’. To cement his case, however, Bauquemaure invited delegates to consider affairs in the Low Countries. Contemporary French accounts presented the Dutch revolt as a tax rebellion led by the Flemings, hostile to the authority of their prince. The result was the dissolution of that state. Delegates should take comfort from the modest discharge of 120,000 livres that their envoys had secured and accept that the king would relieve Normandy of other burdens as soon as his finances permitted. The king had proposed a gradual reduction of office-holding, in the Ordinances of Blois, amortizing it progressively by death or forfeiture. The Normans should recall what happened when the three estates of the realm had tried to abolish office-holding abruptly in the regency of Charles V.¹⁵⁹ Reform of the state did not lie in summary deprivation of those who had done the most to assist it by providing it with the revenue from their offices when it most needed it. More important was the investigation of corruption among office-holders. The king had established a tribunal, but the estates had produced no evidence for the procureur du roi to pursue. The remainder of the speech was an exhortation to each of the estates in turn to fulfil their responsibilities in accordance with the king’s will. Of the deliberations of the Normandy estates in 1579, we have no record. It is impossible to gauge how contentious the issues that had been raised a year previously still were. In its cahier, agreed on 20 November and presented to the council on the 27 December, it retained the prospect of a ‘general assembly of the provinces’ in which the king’s debts could be examined.¹⁶⁰ It pressed for the reduction of the tailles to those under Louis XII. It had noticed that Burgundy and Brittany had both gained exemptions to the traites domanialles and that Normandy had not done so. The ‘inegalité’ of various taxes as between one province and another was of concern. On royal offices, its demand did not change. It wanted the summary dismissal of all office-holders in offices created since the ¹⁵⁹ Citing the text reprinted by Jean du Tillet in his Recueil des roys de France (1580). ¹⁶⁰ Robillard, i. 57–78.

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reign of Louis XII with the limited compensation of a lifetime annuity of just over 8 per cent. The replies to the clauses were polite but dismissive. The Ordinances of Blois covered many of the issues; the rest had been presented before, heard, and dismissed. The estates realized that it was in a weaker position. Royal commissioners had already authorized the collection of tax to begin on 1 January 1580 at levels that the king asked for.¹⁶¹ The king chose (exceptionally) to attend the council meeting where the demands received their hearing. The Normans were taught a lesson in the realities of monarchical rule and the ‘royal way’ of pacification and reformation. Historians of representative assemblies in the early modern period have often sought to present their political roles in terms of opposition to royal power, or the ‘seizing of the initiative’. In France, as elsewhere, there were longer-term fiscal trends that would eventually call into question the significance of such representative institutions in the body politic, especially in the first half of the seventeenth century. No doubt the claims to absolute monarchy would also, in due course, create a sharper sense of contrast. These are the long-term perspectives of James Russell Major’s thorough study of the representative assemblies of Renaissance France.¹⁶² The difficulty with this meta-narrative is that it creates a teleology that constrains our understanding of the reality of these bodies in the political context of the moment. This chapter has sought to recover that reality, and to do so in a way that analyses the provincial estates in relation to one another. The main documentation of the provincial estates—their cahiers —has to be read between the lines. The cahiers observed their own formulae. They blended old and new grievances, local and broader discontents, and sought to reflect the varied and sometimes contradictory demands of the three estates that they formally represented. They had their own political context: an uneven rhythm of provincial assemblies, matched by the unpredictable pressures on the royal coffers. Their petitions were written in the conscious fiction that each province acted individually and apart, but were understood as part of a wider political realm. The cahiers were not generally confrontational. Even when inspired by the reform agenda of the years following the estates of Blois, they sought to formulate demands for change in a cocktail of loyal subjection and antique example. King and ¹⁶¹ Robillard, i. 71–8; 126–9; 359–72.

¹⁶² Major, Representative Government.

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ministers worked to secure fiscal contributions from the provinces without creating points of crisis, using skilful presenters and offering concessions on important issues to prevent overt confrontation. Both sides appealed to notions of peace and reformation. Everyone was to some degree a winner and a loser. The crown gave significant concessions on important fiscal initiatives whilst seeking to retain the cooperation of the estates and preserve the king’s reputation for another day. The estates made no progress in enforcing their simplistic agenda of reform on the king or his ministers, but they won important concessions for their localities. This was the functioning reality of a politic monarchy. Delegates in the provincial assemblies accepted these rules of engagement because they believed themselves to be an essential part of that reality. So their role was a contributive and reductive process, without climax and overt resolution. It is an important reminder that pacification and reformation were debated in a wider political context. The estates justified their meetings on all sorts of grounds; historical, legal, and institutional. At the heart of their activities, however, lay deliberation and debate. This was accepted by the monarchy and its representatives, who sought, with preparation and patience, to present the position of the king and his ministers, and (in turn) to listen to local delegates. That was because they and the king’s ministers were aware of a political debate conducted around them. It was one which had all kinds of possibilities, creative and destructive of the established order, and it was far from clear in which direction it would proceed. What drew them together was that they upheld the notion of a ‘political’ monarchy, a ‘rhetorical republic’ in which reasonable individuals recognized the weight of an argument in favour of a privilege, a petition to advance a particular liberty, and the fundamental primacy of the king. The monarchy accepted the case for a substantial reformation of the state that, individually and collectively, the provincial estates had made. In doing so, it accepted the need to argue the case for change, since all reform implies advocacy. The arguments came, as Bauquemaure had said to the delegates in Normandy, down to prudential and practical issues. The members from the estates were mostly men of affairs (ecclesiastical and lay) who appreciated such practicalities. Their rhetoric may now strike us as dense to the point of obscurity. But it was designed to convey an important message. The notables shared, for the most part, assumptions about the way a political society was conducted and the role of argument and debate within it. In October 1582, the archbishop of Lyon, Pierre d’Éspinac, came before the provincial

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estates of Normady as royal commissioner. In his speech, he summarized this shared political philosophy.¹⁶³ He painted a picture of ‘ung grand corps de la communauté ciuile’ with a multiplicity of different functions and organisms. Holding it all together was the ‘soul’, represented by the king, the fons et origo of the harmony that held the parts in obedience with one another. Without that shared sense of political values: ni maison ne cité ni le œuure uniuersel des hommes, ni la nature des choses mesmes ne pourroient subsister ne durer dont Il sensuict que la fœlicité des republicques ou Royaume gist seulement en la correspondance du commandement & de l’obeissance et que le default de l’un ou de l’autre est la Ruine & subuersion de l’estat. Car d’un costé si ceulx qui sont néz pour obeir se departoient de leur debuoir voulants secouer le joug de l’obeissance ciuile Il en aduiendroit . . . que les liens de ce corps politic seront tantost desjoinctz et dissolutz et d’une autre part si celui qui tenant le lieu de la Raison doibt commander, se laisse transporter a diuerses affections et passions iniustes: Il aduiendra aisément a ce corps commun et public comme aulx membres d’un homme, fol et furieulx qui estantz Agitéz sans Reigle & Poulséz a diuerses actions Irraisonnables tombent en Beaucoup de Grandz & diuers accidents & dangers Ireparables.

The provincial estates were tableaux vivants of this shared culture. Eloquence was a demonstration that the human passions were restrained by reason. The framing and presenting of petitions by the estates, like the engagement in an action at law, was a means by which the disorderly passions of others were trammelled. This political culture was fundamental to their distinction between their reasoned opposition to the crown and the impassioned revolt of individuals. During their debates, discord occurred largely outside their chambers, off the pages of their official records. The degree to which the agenda of reformation became involved in challenges to royal authority is best measured by examining the circumstances that confronted Catherine de Médicis on her journey of reconciliation to the Midi in 1578–80. ¹⁶³ BN MS Fr 17 870 fos. 86v –87 [‘Proposition de monsieur l’archevesque de Lyon aulx Estatz de Normandie’, undated (1582)]. Cf. BN MS Fr 8277, 180 and Richard, La Papauté et la Ligue Française, 199–201.

6 The Perfection of Peace, 1579–1580 The only surviving signed and dated oil painting of the Valois court painter Antoine Caron is Les Massacres du Triumvirat of 1566.¹ The central part of the picture is defined by Trajan’s column to the left and an Egyptian obelisk to the right. In the middle distance is a cut-away depiction of the remains of the Roman Colosseum. Two balustrades run across the picture. The foreground is dominated by gruesome scenes, painted in the sixteenth-century equivalent of technicolour. Praetorian guards are ‘cleansing’ the city of the Triumvirate’s opponents. Caron depicts the account of these events by Alexander Appianus, a text known to French notables through Claude de Seyssel’s translation.² In the left foreground, a soldier has his hand in a decapitated woman’s stomach. To the right, another has a sword raised over the head of an old man with a white beard—Cicero, the most famous of the Triumvirate’s victims. In the centre, standing on an elliptical stairway, is a young soldier, splendidly apparelled, surveying the head of Salvius, whom he has just decapitated. The latter’s body, wearing the clothes of a tribune of the people, lies at the foot of the stairs, blood gushing from the severed neck. Along the balustrades are victims’ decapitated heads, lined up as trophies. As though to emphasize the intermingling of the antique past and the active present, two impassive statues survey the carnage. Apollo is to the left and Hercules to the right, the latter carrying an imploring child, Telephus. Beneath each statue are two terrorized women.³ In the middle ground, civilians are chased, mutilated as they seek shelter in a well, or fall to their deaths from the tops of neighbouring buildings. Surrounded by Praetorian Guards, Publius Titus is reading out the proclamation of the Triumvirs telling Roman citizens that they assumed power in Rome, ‘& seroient appellez reformateurs, ainsi que les Lacedemoniens appellerent iadis ceux qui ordonnoient & reformoient leur chose publique: & si ne donnerent aucun terme, n’assignerent aucun iour ¹ Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, 28. ³ Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, 30–1.

² Seyssel, Appian, fos. 332–51.

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au peuple pour confirmer ladicte loy, ainsi qu’il estoit de coustume’.⁴ In the distance, beneath a portentous sky, Caron depicts ancient Rome, especially the Colosseum where sit the Triumvirs themselves at an imperious distance with Lena, Cicero’s assassin, carrying the orator’s head aloft on his spear towards them. Yet Caron does not depict the Rome of the Triumvirate, but the antique Rome of his own day, such as he knew it from the engravings of Antoine Lafréry.⁵ The massacre takes place amidst ruins. The message of the painting is expressed in the Mannerist tradition with its anti-classical allusions, its love of the grotesque, and its desire to shock. He presents the sectarian killings of his day as emblematic of the decay and perversion of an empire and a political system, of tyranny itself, dressed up in the guise of reform. This was an uncomfortable message for France’s ruling dynasty and its elites. The French monarchy sought adoration from its subjects. Its kings were descended from a saint, anointed with a chrism at their coronation, and imbued with powers to touch, and thereby heal. They imbued its established institutions and social groups with grace. They historicized the world, investing places and events with meaning. French kingship was a magnum mysterium. It deployed the valour of Mars, the chivalric hand of grace, the magic of touch, the eloquence of a Gallic Hercules, and the transforming power of favour. The hyperbole underpinning the Valois dynasty was an incessant, recursive, and widely shared ideology. The civil wars imperilled that ideology. Protestantism sat uncomfortably alongside sacral monarchy. The sectarian and political divisions in the kingdom were symptomatic of the latter’s decay. They cried out for the propitiatory power and thaumaturgic magic of the French monarchy. But, in the circumstances of fundamental religious division, these were compromised. It was not difficult, in the circumstances, to mount a case for an ideological adjustment. Denis Crouzet argues that just such an adjustment was proposed.⁶ He finds it in the writings of that avatar of clerical catholic polemicists, Artus Désiré. He traces it through the sermons and pamphlets of Melchior Flavin. It is abundantly present in the publications of the politically engaged theologians Claude de Sainctes and Jean Talpin. The latter drew on the models of the great kings of Israel in the Old Testament to argue that sacral monarchy must wield God’s sword on earth. The king must intervene and reform with violence, exact his vengeance, and offer up the purified kingdom ⁴ Appian, fo. 334v .

⁵ Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, 30–2.

⁶ Ibid. 191–205.

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as a peace offering to God. The legitimacy of the kingdom’s institutions and social groups was to be judged in accordance with an ideal of purity, instituted by a kingly ‘reformator’ acting through reform and violence. What made Antoine Caron’s painting so disturbing was that it presented the chilling consequences of such an adjustment for the nature of the French monarchy. Ideologies that underpin political systems work best when they are unconsciously shared. The first decade of the French civil wars undermined Valois monarchical commonplaces, making them more dependent upon their propagandists. Court painters and poets turned to the Petrarchan conceits of the triumph of love. And beyond Petrarch, there beckoned the intellectual scenography of a neo-(new) Platonic conception of a philosopher-king, by whose art, opposites could be turned into a harmonious whole. Pierre de Ronsard depicted the young Charles IX as a magus, one who speaks from an inner wisdom and who, like Prospero, would quell the concupiscent passions of the kingdom by the exercise of his art.⁷ Antoine Caron represented Catherine de Médicis as an incarnation of the widow Artemis of Halicarnassus, supervising the instruction of her son Lygdamis. The scene is dominated by the triumphal statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom.⁸ There was an open door to explore the world of Christian Hermetic philosophy, with its emphasis on a prisca theologia in which the contemplation of the divine leads to the hidden harmonies of the universe and creation. Such currents ran strong at the French court, not least among those who sought religious reform from within. The intoxicating effect of the vision of reform and renewal that they afforded should not be underestimated.⁹ The massacre of St Bartholomew represented, Denis Crouzet says, the ‘loss’ of this ‘Renaissance dream’. The fact that the monarchy had become implicated in the events of August 1572 brought the disturbing aspects of Antoine Caron’s painting to life. The massacre deflated the hyperbole that had been so artfully created around Charles IX. The Petrarchan, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic pack of cards tumbled down. But perhaps this vision of the ‘perfection of peace’ through the transforming power of the monarchy was not ‘lost’ but rather ‘postponed’. This chapter examines how, despite initial difficulties, those around Queen Catherine still hoped to quell the concupiscent passions of the kingdom by the exercise of their art. ⁷ Crouzet, La Nuit de Saint-Barthélemy, 213–25; cf. Ménager, Ronsard. ⁸ Crouzet, La Nuit de Saint-Barthélemy; 220–1; Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, 78–9. ⁹ Crouzet, La Nuit de Saint-Barthélemy, 240–63.

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‘OUR GUYENNE EXPEDITION’ It was in the Midi that the peace of Bergerac encountered its greatest difficulties. It was there that Queen Catherine persuaded Henri III that she should go, taking her leave of the king at Ollainville on 2 August.¹⁰ Queen Marguerite of Navarre accompanied her.¹¹ The latter’s desire to be reunited with her husband Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre, had been further kindled by recent events at court. The scope of ‘nostre voyage de Guyenne’ altered as Catherine went.¹² At Chenonceaux (11 August), she expected to be back two months later.¹³ In fact, it was eight months before she left Guyenne in April 1579 to undertake a further mission to Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné. Again, she thought it would not last long.¹⁴ In reality, she would not be reunited with the king until she returned to Orléans on 9 November 1579. Queen Catherine knew that Guyenne was a ‘laboratory’ of destructive sectarianism.¹⁵ She was aware of the expectations that rested on her shoulders. From Bordeaux, she expressed her hopes that the realm would feel the effects of ‘mon travail’.¹⁶ She posed as the alter ego of a peace-loving king, her overriding motive being ‘l’amour maternelle que j’ay ausdits Roy et Royne mes enfans joincte à la grande affection que je porte au bien et grandeur de ce royaulme, par l’obligation et parfaicte amour qu’aussi je ressens y avoir’.¹⁷ She assured herself that, when the king’s subjects heard of his ‘vraie bonté et affection’ for peace, ‘chascun se rangera à l’éxécution et establissement d’icelluy’.¹⁸ Privately, it became a political pilgrimage, an act of love towards Henri III.¹⁹ Everywhere, Catherine appealed to the ‘cœur’ and ‘affections’ of local notables to ‘embrace’ peace and live in ‘amityé’, such as she remembered it ‘pendant le bas aage de mes enfans et despuis’.²⁰ Catherine’s letters are full of snatches of songs from a distant opera, replayed in concert to an often sceptical audience. The chronology and incidental detail of her itinerary are well known. Her energy was formidable. She exhausted those around her. In the midst of difficult negotiations in Nérac on 11 February, she was up betimes for mass at 6 a.m., sending messengers to the cardinal de Bourbon, the duke of Montpensier, and Guy Du Faur de Pibrac to join her. Then it was down to business with her council, keeping the protestant deputies waiting ‘une ¹⁰ ¹³ ¹⁵ ¹⁷

Philippe de Lauzun, Itinéraire. ¹¹ Ibid. 25–30. ¹² LCM, v. 32. Ibid. 35. ¹⁴ Archives historiques de la Gironde, 8 (1860), 346. Crouzet, Les Guerriers, i. 523–4. ¹⁶ LCM, vi, 38. Ibid. 58–9; 60–2; 391–2. ¹⁸ Ibid. 58. ¹⁹ Ibid. 59. ²⁰ Ibid. 453.

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grosse heure’ in her antechamber before they met to deliberate on three of the eventual ‘articles’ of Nérac at 11 a.m. Thereafter it was back to work until 5 p.m., by which time Paul de Foix had excused himself and retired to bed ‘pour une dessente de rhume’ and Jean de Monluc had to be revived with glasses of wine.²¹ Next morning, she was up once more at 6 a.m., walking the gardens of the chateau before breakfast to clear her mind before meeting her council. It was an energy that dazzled those around her, even Navarre. She understood the power of spectacle, letting it be known that a ceremonial entry was expected for the young queen of Navarre. Bordeaux (18 September), Agen (12 October), Toulouse (26 October), Auch (21 November), and Nérac (15 December) duly obliged. Besides providing set-piece occasions for rhetoric and the parade of monarchical splendour, they included exchanges of the kiss of peace and the release of prisoners, gestures redolent of the hand of grace and politics of oubliance. Queen Catherine understood that Bergerac would only become a reality in Guyenne if the local notability supported it. John Bossy has emphasized the underground reservoirs that fed the wells of amity and peace in the postReformation.²² They also watered the sentiments of civic peace. Generations of city notables, consuls, and capitouls in the Midi settled local feuds, kept the peace, and nurtured the sense of belonging to a res publica. This led many of them, despite the sectarian tensions of the early civil wars, to steer as moderate a course as possible. Some sank their differences and exchanged the kiss of peace or signed local accords.²³ Upon such local roots Queen Catherine hoped to build. She mulled over the possibility of assigning a gentleman ‘bien affectionné à vostre service, à la paix et au bien public’ in every town of Guyenne, ‘pour, et avec l’assistance de vostre justice, faire vivre les habitans en paix’.²⁴ The idea came to her after mass (‘que je tiens estre du conseil de Dieu’). She wondered about organizing local petitions for peace.²⁵ She summoned local notables to swear oaths, share the kiss or handshake of peace, or harangue them over a meal.²⁶ Two of her discours survive, both delivered at Agen to the Guyenne nobility.²⁷ She emphasized the king’s desire for a ‘good and assured peace’ and to restore the realm to its former splendour.²⁸ She held out the opportunity for Gascon cadets (‘ces braves cœurs’) to serve him at court.²⁹ But they must forget their ‘haynes et inimitiez qui pourroient ²¹ ²³ ²⁶ ²⁸

Ibid. 441. ²² Bossy, Peace in the Post-Reformation. Christin, ‘La Coexistence confessionnelle’. ²⁴ LCM, vi. 99. Ibid. 60. ²⁷ Ibid. 398–400; 452–4; 76; 77 and 129. Ibid. 398. ²⁹ ibid, 399.

²⁵ Ibid. 74.

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rester des choses passées’ and swear to keep the peace, knowing they could not have a king ‘plus catholicque zellateur de sa relligion, qui plus ayme ses subjectz et qui ayt plus de soing de les garder et maintenir’.³⁰ Queen Catherine was accompanied by a phalanx of royal councillors. They included (from the aristocracy) Louis de Bourbon, duke of Montpensier, and the cardinal de Bourbon—Navarre’s close relatives. Those from the robe du conseil were the cream of the diplomatic talent, including four former foreign ambassadors. Three of them were directly involved in the negotiations at Bergerac, and the rest were known mediators in matters of religion. Four had implemented previous edicts of pacification. They were all from south-west families, with close connections to its local military and governing elites. Their task was to assist her in resolving tensions. As they moved south, Catherine noted the shortage of parish priests and the absence of resident bishops. Arriving in Poitou, she discovered that law had collapsed outside the towns.³¹ Her first report from Bordeaux was damning—a veritable Augean stable.³² The problems lay not with the people but with their betters, and especially the divisive impact of a catholic ‘confrairie’. She was referring to the confraternity of the Holy Sacrament. Confraternities had played a significant role in mobilizing catholic activists in the south-west of France from before the beginning of the civil wars. As Kevin Gould has recently proved, the proposal for a ‘syndicat’, open to others beyond judges and lawyers but administered and financed by the confraternity, can be dated to May 1558 although it was not until May 1561 that it was sanctioned by the Parlement.³³ By then, the sectarian pressures in the city were at their height and the syndicat offered military help to defend the city against protestant incursion. The former treasurer of the confraternity, elected its commissaire in May 1560, was Jean de Lange (var.: L’Ange), an avocat who had been delegated to the estates general of Orléans in 1560, where he distinguished himself by an outspoken speech against clerical abuses.³⁴ He was abetted by judges from the Parlement, especially the président Christophe de Roffignac. To defend the catholic faith, the syndicat organized petitions, sought support from outside, and acted as a thorn in the side of moderating influences in the province. On 3 February 1578, Jean de Lange and Charles Dusault, avocat du roi in the ³⁰ LCM, vi. 297. ³¹ Ibid. 44. ³² Ibid. 40. ³³ Kevin Gould, ‘ ‘‘Vivre et mourir en la religion ancienne, romaine et catholique’’: Catholic Activism in South-West France, 1560–1570’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick (2003), ch. 1, 50–5. ³⁴ Tamizey de Larroque, ‘Jean Lange’.

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Parlement, reported the king’s misgivings at the confraternity’s activities.³⁵ Navarre repeatedly complained too, believing it to be behind the opposition of the Parlement to the pacification.³⁶ Catherine was far from naive about the nature of Bordeaux politics. She told the judges of the Parlement on 29 September that she knew of ‘beaucoup de grands désordres qui se faisoient par ceulx de la justice’ and, in the presence of the queen of Navarre and the other members of the council, she delivered a withering critique of their behaviour.³⁷ Paul de Foix, who followed her, warned the judges that they risked the king’s displeasure unless they published the edict of pacification in full, regulated their own affairs properly, and abandoned secret associations.³⁸ The confraternity was voluntarily wound up, its register surrendered to the queen mother. That same day, Biron reformed the security arrangements for the city.³⁹ For good measure, she recommended that magistrates ‘par trop passionnées les ungs à ung party, les aultres à l’aultre en ladicte ville’ be removed entirely from Bordeaux. Jean de Lange, now président, was suggested for transfer to Rouen. Charles Dusault, currently organizing a catholic phalanx in Bayonne, was ‘sy turbulent’ that he should be banished.⁴⁰ During her stay in Bordeaux, Queen Catherine also attempted to defuse the resentments among the clergy, and made an example of the head of the local Franciscan monastery who rashly cast doubts on Valois rule in her presence. She was optimistic about what she had achieved in Bordeaux, but the reality was that it remained a thorn in the side of peace. Less than six months later, Biron returned post-haste to confront the ‘monopoles et poursuittes que font aucuns sindics de par dela’.⁴¹ Biron pointed the cannon in one of the two city fortresses inwards, raised troops, and entered the Parlement, urging magistrates to keep the peace, and watched while they outlawed ‘certaines ligues et assemblées’. Evidently the queen mother’s visit had not permanently transformed the situation. In other, smaller towns, Queen Catherine’s approach was similar. She worked to resolve conflicts, dissolve sectarian associations, make an example of a few trouble-makers, find a moderate local gentleman to put in charge, and persuade the gens de bien to share a sign of peace. In Condom, for example, there were two opposing confraternities that had become instruments for a factional dispute between two of the town’s legal officials.⁴² Catherine, ³⁵ ³⁸ ³⁹ ⁴⁰

BN MS Fr 22369 fo. 324. ³⁶ Berger, i. 156; 176; 186, etc. ³⁷ LCM, vi. 40. Ibid. 41; extracts in Boscheron des Portes, Histoire, i. 267–8. BN MS Fr 22369 fo. 330; Leroux (ed.), Archives, vi. 350; LCM, vi. 41; 49. LCM, vi. 42. ⁴¹ LH3, iv. Nos. 3392; 3396. ⁴² LCM, vi. 194.

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detecting the hand of Bordeaux, dissolved them and ordered the officials to take their differences before the chambre de l’édit. She authorized new regulations for the police of the town and required the seneschal to search out known trouble-makers, appointing him as the new town governor. Then she released various prisoners and ordered all the notables to come to the town hall and swear ‘par acte publiq [ . . . ] amityé, oubliant les choses passées’.⁴³ Even Catherine had few illusions that she had achieved a permanent change for the better.⁴⁴ Biron was still dealing with factions in Condom two years later.⁴⁵ Reform by ‘visitation’, arriving in situ and sorting things out, satisfied the personalized and unspecialized nature of local rule. In reality, however, bringing monarchy to a locality made the monarchy more aware of the changes needed if peace were to be truly restored. But in the conservative and aristocratic mentality of Queen Catherine, the exercise became one of consolidating and re-energizing local elites, applying monarchical sticking plaster to the Midi’s more open wounds. THE CONFERENCE AT NÉRAC The journey’s climax was the conference with Huguenot deputies at Nérac, beginning on 4 February and concluding three weeks later on 28 February. It ended with the signing of an accord that is sometimes misleadingly referred to as an ‘edict’ or ‘treaty’.⁴⁶ In reality, it was neither. Its juridical status was not that of an ‘edict’ since it was not issued separately as a legal enactment. Its clauses did not even concern the whole kingdom. Dauphiné was the object of separate negotiations because Navarre’s writ scarcely ran there.⁴⁷ The agreements at Nérac were not a treaty in the formal sense of concluding hostilities with a foreign power. They were legalized by letters patent of ‘approbation’, appropriate to a ‘clarification’ of the original edict of Poitiers of 1577.⁴⁸ We should regard them as an ⁴³ LCM, vi. 188; 193–4; 213; 215. ⁴⁴ Ibid. 259; 329. ⁴⁵ BN MS Fr 15906A fo. 168 [Armand de Gontaut to Bellièvre, Bordeaux, 19 February 1581]. ⁴⁶ e.g. Sutherland, The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition, 273 and 363. ⁴⁷ A draft agreement was concluded between Lesdiguières and Maugiron at Jarrie on 12 June 1578 and ratified by the protestant assembly at La Mure on 28 July 1578, from which Calignon and Saussac were mandated to present it to the queen mother at Nérac. She accepted it as an object lesson to other protestant deputies—LCM, vi. 183. For the petition and its responses, see BN MS Fr 3319 fos. 123 f.—also Roman, ‘Documents’, 285–93. The agreement was approved by Henri III on 20 January 1579 but disavowed by the protestants at Die on 19 February 1579, acting in collusion with the synod of Montauban—Dussert, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, 128. ⁴⁸ LH3, iv, No. 3355.

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‘accord’ (a favourite word in the royal lexicon), reached on the king’s behalf, declaratory of the edict of Poitiers. It was only following the ‘peace’ of Fleix (this time a ‘treaty’, concluding a period of declared war) on 26 November 1580, issued as letters patent (the letters patent of Blois, 26 December 1580), that the ‘articles’ of Nérac, along with those of Fleix, became better known.⁴⁹ The complexity of having a pacification consisting of several elements led the law courts in the Midi to have recourse to all three measures as a bound set so that they could determine royal will in difficult cases.⁵⁰ Catherine was a gifted negotiator. She knew by instinct and experience the rules of the game. She understood how to use patience and bluff, and how to wrong-foot others. She had a good grasp of how to balance public and private encounter. She was a past mistress at theatrical gesture and reading the deportment of others. She sensed the power of rhetoric in negotiation. These skills she had inculcated into a generation of French ambassadors. Above all, Catherine knew how to keep her eye on the longer-term strategy. In this instance, her overall objective—never explicit, but always clear—was to achieve the ‘perfection’ of the king’s peace by making Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre, an essential element in its implementation—to ‘lock’ him into the ‘peace process’. In return, she would provide Navarre with the means to reinforce his uncertain authority in the leadership of the protestant movement.⁵¹ This meant weaning him away from the ‘opiniastres’, those protestants who regarded peace as a royal deceit. Queen Marguerite lay at the heart of this strategy. Her installation at Navarre’s court symbolized the union of Valois and Bourbon, epitomized the power of love to unite those of contrary faith, and politically consummated the marriage which had taken place in 1572 but been ruptured by the massacre of St Bartholomew. It was a strategy of beguilement. Like all such strategies, it ran the risk of what is now termed ‘spin’. Key elements of the strategy were set in place in the first encounters at La Réole on 2 October. Navarre summoned a retinue of some 150 gentlemen and met the queen mother in the neutral environment of a manor at Casteras before they both retired to the protestant-dominated place de sûreté at La Réole, where the two households lodged opposite one another. With Navarre came ‘quelques ungs des principaulx’ at his court, negotiators whom he trusted. Jacques de Ségur, baron de Pardaillan, was one of them, the superintendent of his household, a Bordelais with extensive connections, proven military ⁴⁹ F46865–29. ⁵⁰ Archives historiques de la Gironde, 6 (1864), 9. ⁵¹ e.g. LCM, vi. 113–14.

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service, and recent scars from St Bartholomew.⁵² Abdias de Chaumont-Gitry (var.: Quitry; Guitery), sieur de Bertichères, accompanied him too. He had been brought up in Navarre’s household.⁵³ Henri de Lusignan, baron de Lusignan, was from another noble family from the south-west (the Agenais) with military experience, a protestant of moderate leanings whom the queen mother grew to respect.⁵⁴ Above all, there was Henri de La Tour, vicomte de Turenne. Heir to the fortune of his father, including the substantial and independent viscounty of Turenne to the north of the Périgord, he held on to his hopes of high favour through service to the king’s younger brother until, in 1575, he declared himself a protestant and retired to the south-west. Navarre’s reliance on him was considerable in 1578.⁵⁵ Catherine exploited the fact that he was her kinsman.⁵⁶ Among the robe du conseil who accompanied Navarre there was, above all, his chancellor, Louis Du Faur, sieur de Niort

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Map 1. Security strongholds conceded to the protestants at the peace of Bergerac (1577) and the accords of Nérac (1579) with the route of Catherine de Médicis’s southern journey in 1578–1580 ⁵² Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants, 26; Haag, ix, 247. ⁵³ He was the youngest son of Antoine de Chaumont, another family with wide ramifications from south-west France. In due course, he married Madeleine Du Pleix, daughter of Antoine, baron de Lecques, the governor of Aiguesmortes, and exercised Navarrist influence in lower Languedoc. ⁵⁴ LCM, vi. 80. ⁵⁵ Ibid. 405; cf. other letters, mostly undated but from around this date, in BN MS Fr nouv acq 453, fo. 43, etc. ⁵⁶ Catherine de Médicis’s mother Madeleine was a La Tour d’Auvergne.

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Grateins (var.: Glattens), brother to Guy Du Faur de Pibrac, the recently appointed chancellor to the queen of Navarre. Navarre’s secretary Jacques Lallier, sieur Du Pin, was also there, a specialist in the king’s religious affairs, trusted by Navarre’s Béarn councillors as a guarantee against any sell-out of the protestant interest.⁵⁷ There was not a protestant minister in evidence. The preliminary accord, signed by Navarre and Queen Catherine at La Réole on 5 October, indicated how far she had achieved her objectives.⁵⁸ Under the guise of ending infractions to the pacification, they agreed to the dispatch of joint commissioners for the edict, nominated by the crown (catholics) and by Navarre (protestants). The concept of bi-partisan commissioners was a significant novelty in 1578—one which would become an essential part of the application of the later edict of Nantes. It gave Navarre the authority to nominate commissioners in each locality. These nominees helped to decide questions of disputed property, strongholds, and locations for protestant places of worship, thus strengthening his hand with local protestant communities. At the same time, it implicated him in the enforcement of the edict, and not simply in his own government of Guyenne. Catherine symbolized the agreement in a characteristic gesture. With Navarre’s consent, she cut a tuft of his hair that he tucked around his right ear; the obstacles to pacification would be ‘coupés’, its opponents ‘razés’. Six months later, with the accords at Nérac being implemented, he rode all night to meet her at Carcassonne. He had breakfast whilst she attended mass; and then he escorted her on foot from the church door to the gates of the town where, before his assembled followers, he solemnly allowed her to cut the equivalent tuft of hair from around his left ear.⁵⁹ She understood the symbolism: ‘c’estoit ung signal entre ceulx de la Relligion prétendue réformée qui ne sera plus [i.e. who would no longer be ‘prétendue’—i.e. ‘determined’], puisque Dieu nous a donné la paix.’⁶⁰ Such symbols were important since Navarre’s authority in the protestant cause was as a figurehead. The extension of his role was one that he and his negotiators contemplated reluctantly, aware of how he might become compromised, his influence in Guyenne subordinated to the wider interests of the French crown. There was nervousness in the wider protestant movement too at the prospect of a Valois, catholic presence at the court, ⁵⁷ Cabos, Guy Du Faur, 259–76. ⁵⁸ LCM, vi. 388–90. ⁵⁹ Ibid. 359. ⁶⁰ Ibid. Catherine reported that Navarre returned to his followers and told them all to cut the hair from behind their ears as a symbol of their adherence to the peace: ‘Il les fault tous coupper et oster.’

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and in the bedroom, of Navarre. From Dauphiné, the king’s lieutenant reported their ‘extrême deffiance’.⁶¹ It was significant that the document agreed at La Réole nominated no commissioners for Dauphiné, concentrating uniquely on Guyenne, Languedoc, and, to the north, the smaller governments of Poitou, Angoumois, the Limousin, and Saintonge. And, when the protestant commissioners arrived in the localities, what reception would they receive? Would the young Henri, prince of Condé, ill lodged at Saint-Jean d’Angély, indebted and bored, his mind still occupied by his recent exile in the Rhineland and the rhetoric of a pan-European protestant cause, support their mission?⁶² He had ostentatiously refused to visit Queen Catherine on her way through Poitou, even though she waited five days for him. Would the equally impecunious Franc¸ois de Coligny, count of Coligny, the dominant political influence in lower Languedoc protestantism, welcome them with open arms?⁶³ Reports were not auspicious—he was rumoured to be raising a host in the Rouergue to intervene in lower Languedoc. In Geneva, Beza was still inclined to put more trust in Condé than Navarre, regarding the peace of Bergerac as too accommodating of the ‘Sardanopolus’ at the French court.⁶⁴ These tensions explain why the queen mother contemplated a ‘conference’ with delegates of the protestant movement. Together she and Navarre would confront these fears. His weight in the protestant movement would be strengthened and the king’s peace consolidated. Such a ‘conference’ was not without risks. The following four months were replete with comedies of ‘chance’ encounters between various parties whilst out hunting and complications over the appropriate location. There were histrionics because of the public hostility between Navarre and Biron. There was a security disaster (the capture of La Réole itself by catholic activists on 22 November) that almost capsized the whole endeavour.⁶⁵ Assembling protestant delegates from across the Midi took time. Provincial assemblies had to be summoned, delegates nominated, petitions drafted.⁶⁶ Navarre invited their advice and support. To Guichard de Scorbiac, he wrote to explain that ‘je ne pouvois rien presenter sans l’advis et consentement des Esglises qui y ⁶¹ BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 207 [Laurent de Maugiron to Bellièvre, 3 December 1578]. ⁶² LCM, vii. 209. ⁶³ Coligny rallying of 2,000–3,000 troops to beseige Marsillargues in April 1578 was hardly calculated to inspire confidence in his likely reaction. ⁶⁴ Manetsch, Theodore Beza, and the Quest for Peace in France, 98–9; 102–5. ⁶⁵ Dartigue, ‘L’Occupation’. ⁶⁶ e.g. Devic and Vaissète, xii [part 1]. 101; Berger, i. 193–4.

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ont interest, n’estant raisonable que je dispose de ce qui n’est mien, ne que je vuide un differend sans que les parties soient ouyes’.⁶⁷ Now was the moment for the churches to ‘donner order à faire dresser remonstrances, requestes, plainctes et protestations’. They must send deputies.⁶⁸ Eventually, the queen mother faced the protestant deputies congregated at Nérac on Wednesday, 4 February and received their cahier de doléances.⁶⁹ We are more reliably informed about the negotiations at Nérac than for any comparable talks. There is a negotiating summary prepared by someone with experience in high-level diplomacy—perhaps Claude Pinart.⁷⁰ A more unvarnished account survives in a diary, kept by Miles Marion, secretary of Henri de Montmorency-Damville, who was at Nérac and who attended some of the negotiations.⁷¹ The queen mother’s own letters reveal her strategies. Finally, we have the protestant cahier de doléances of 4 February, along with the replies from the queen mother and her council two days later.⁷² We can compare these with the eventual accord, agreed on 28 February.⁷³ We only know the names of a dozen of the twenty-five to thirty protestants who attended.⁷⁴ Those from Languedoc predominated. The nobility tended to support the king of Navarre (Yolet, Scorbiac) although there were exceptions (Vignolles). The pastors and the deputy representing the prince of Condé did not. The main issues turned on the protestant petition. It consisted of thirtyeight paragraphs. The preamble sketched a picture of a kingdom whose ⁶⁷ Capot, Justice et religion, 389–90. ⁶⁸ LCM, vi. 250. ⁶⁹ Ibid. 441. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 449–52. ⁷¹ Ibid. 441–8. ⁷² Ibid. 417–35. ⁷³ Stegmann, Édits des guerres de religion, 158–70; LCM, vi. 282. Those who signed for the protestants, besides the king of Navarre, were: the sieur de Bouchart (for the prince of Condé); Chaumont-Quitry; Louis Du Faur, sieur de Grateins; Guichard de Scorbiac; Pierre de Malras, baron d’Yolet; the sieur de Vaux. Languedoc’s deputies continued to negotiate with Guy Du Faur de Pibrac over the issue of the chambre mi-partie in Languedoc (LCM, vi. 290–1). ⁷⁴ They included (with the protestant province from which they were delegated, where known): the sieur Dupont (var.: Du Pont), a noble deputy from lower Languedoc who had already served at the protestant assembly of Nîmes in 1569; the sieur de Vaux, a noble deputy from the Rouergue who would later serve at the assembly of La Rochelle in 1588; Michel Béraud, a pastor from Béziers and representing lower Languedoc, who would be vice-president of the assembly at Mantes (1593) and president of the assembly of Sainte-Foy (1595); the sieur Bouchart (var.: Bouchard), a noble deputy representing the prince of Condé; the sieur de Meaupré; the sieur de Pocquerais (var.: Poucaires), a deputy from the lower Languedoc; Jacques de Causse, a deputy from Montpellier and representing the lower Languedoc; Fulcrand des Vignolles, a deputy from Montpellier and representing the lower Languedoc; Pierre de Malras, baron d’Yolet, noble deputy from the upper Languedoc; Guichard de Scorbiac, a deputy from Montauban, representing the province of Guyenne; the sieur de La Place, deputy (presumably the pastor from Montpellier or a relative); Jean de La Mer (var.: Lamer), a syndic from the diocese of Castres and representing the province of upper Languedoc; the Sieur Gébelin (var.: Gebealin), a deputy representing the province of Guyenne.

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ordered polity had come close to shipwreck.⁷⁵ They presented four fundamental demands. The first was for civic and religious equality, a demand reflecting protestant perceptions of a ‘just’ peace after the massacre of St Bartholomew.⁷⁶ The second was for a chambre mi-partie (i.e. an equal number of judges among protestants and catholics) in Guyenne and Languedoc.⁷⁷ The third was for a substantial increase in the number of garrison towns guaranteeing their security (fifty-nine places for six years). Finally, they demanded an extension of the clauses of immunity (‘abolition’) granted at the peace of Bergerac to cover operations which had been mounted in its aftermath. Queen Catherine had little room for manoeuvre. She rejected the first demand, and everything that lay behind it: ‘C’est contre l’édit et contre la fin et intention d’iceluy, qui est la paix et repos,’ came the reply on 6 February.⁷⁸ There was nothing to negotiate about, although she eventually allowed a minor ‘clarification’ concerning the exercise of protestant worship on noble estates.⁷⁹ On the second, she refused to concede any chambre mi-partie although she accepted the need for a ‘bon reiglement’ on the jurisdictional divisions between the Parlements and the chambres de l’édit.⁸⁰ On the third, the contentious debates at Nérac resulted in the queen mother agreeing to an additional three places de sûreté in Guyenne, accorded to the protestants for a limited period of six months (until the end of August 1579), with an equivalent eleven places in Languedoc for a similar period (until the end of September 1579).⁸¹ An extension of immunity from prosecution was eventually conceded too. Queen Catherine told the delegates at the opening session that she had no powers or desire to renegotiate the edict of Poitiers. She was there to see it enforced. What she could not offer in concessions, she had to make up for in persuasion. In the sixteenth century, persuasion was the practical application of the moral virtues. Catherine’s letters indicate that she did not underestimate the ⁷⁵ LCM, vi. 417. ⁷⁶ The protestant deputies at Nérac regarded ‘une égalité’ as ‘le vrai moyen d’une concorde entre plusieurs de mesmes obéyssance, concitoiens d’ung royaume et compatriotes’. Equality was the ‘mère et nourisse de paix’. If the peace of Bergerac had not worked, it was because it was inequitable. ⁷⁷ Only the tribunal at Agen had opened its doors by the time of the Nérac conference. The edict of Poitiers had only permitted ‘tripartite’ (‘tri-partie’) tribunals, staffed by one-third protestant magistrates (to be chosen, where possible, from among protestant judges already serving as magistrates) and two-thirds catholic. ⁷⁸ LCM, vi. 419. ⁷⁹ Accord of Nérac, ¶ 1—Stegmann, Édits des guerres de religion, 158. ⁸⁰ Ibid., ¶ 5, p. 159—F47863–8. ⁸¹ The three places de sûreté in Guyenne (Bazas, Puymirol, and Figeac) became four with the addition of Mur-de-Barrez in the letters of commissions issued on 3 March 1579, presumably a late concession—LCM, vi. 457.

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task. ‘Toutesfoys je veoys la contenance et les parolles d’aucuns, quand je parle de la paix, si contraires à cela, que je ne n’en puis asseurer que ne la veoye effectuer’.⁸² In the faces of protestant deputies, she detected ‘quelque arrière-pensée en leur cœur’.⁸³ She admitted: ‘il faudra emploier beaucoup de temps pour réparer les maulx.’ ‘Ceux qui vivent de rapines durant les troubles et quelques autres poulsez de passions particulières’ would not prevent ‘ce bon œuvre de l’establissement de la paix.’ Patience implied stoic determination and a labour of love. Paul de Foix and Guy Du Faur de Pibrac wove an elaborate tapestry with these themes for the benefit of the protestant delegates. They emphasized the king’s determination for peace, the advantages that it would bring to the protestants themselves, and the necessity for an end to past conflicts. Foix used the analogy of the ‘good physician’ who did not give bitter medicine to please his patients but to make them better.⁸⁴ Many arguments centred on the importance of ‘oubliance’—a major issue at Nérac. Contemporary legists used it to mean legal ‘amnesia’ rather than ‘amnesty’, a moment when the events of the past would not be ‘remembered’ in the courts of law.⁸⁵ The concept was already known to French legists and princely councillors towards the end of the Hundred Years War, and it re-emerged after the peace of 1570, the first of the edicts of pacification to contain an article on ‘oubliance’. The concept of legal memory raised important questions on the relationship between ‘justice’ and ‘peace’—especially the degree to which the king could voluntarily limit his own authority to dispense the former (‘justice’) in the name of the latter (‘peace’). These issues assumed a greater immediacy in the wake of the peace of Bergerac because, although military hostilities had been declared at an end in September 1577, there had been little peace on the ground in the Midi since that date. To Foix and Pibrac, ‘oubliance’ was a positive recasting of memory, the fons et origo of the exempla upon which the educative power of moral virtue depended. If the exempla could be refashioned, the perfection of peace would follow. The argument would be more explicitly enunciated by the magistrates of the chambres de l’édit and the chambre de justice in the Midi. Antoine Loisel’s famous discours d’ouverture before the chambre de justice at Agen on 2 October 1582 was a thoughtful evocation of them. He sought to prove ⁸² Ibid. 195. ⁸³ Ibid. 228. ⁸⁴ Ibid. 443. ⁸⁵ Greengrass, ‘Amnistie’; Parsons, ‘The Political Vision’.

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that lasting peace came about with the forgetting of past wrongs. The title page of the printed discourse carried a text from Cicero: ‘Optima belli civilis defensio, oblivio est.’ Legal ‘amnesia’ was the application of the moral virtues associated with ‘prudence’ and ‘patience’. The magistrate who could ‘forgive’ and ‘forget’ the past was the individual who mastered his own passion and was swayed uniquely by reason and his prudence.⁸⁶ The way to a durable peace was to use the authority of law to ‘shape’ public memory. Such views introduced a degree of temporal (and therefore moral) relativism into questions of ‘justice’; and, where justice went, ‘religion’ would follow. Fulcrand des Vignolles, a conseiller at the présidial in Montpellier, exploited the arguments to suggest that, if the king could ‘forget’ past wrongs, he should also (like the Roman emperor who had condemned someone to death whilst asleep, only to awake and pardon him later) set aside his past decisions and grant the protestants what they demanded.⁸⁷ He himself had been condemned to death before the Parlement of Toulouse in 1569, only to find the judgment rescinded a year later.⁸⁸ Jean de Monluc, ill and exhausted, reflected his doubts as well as his loyalties when he told the queen mother ‘que tous qui consentiront à ladicte impunité [i.e. ‘oubliance’] estoient dampnés, quoy qu’il feust de cest advis’.⁸⁹ Among the protestant deputies at Nérac, too, there were those who remained to be persuaded. D’Aubigné recalls being told how they were invited into Queen Catherine’s chamber and treated to an impassioned speech by Pibrac. The latter was ‘bien préparé’ and ‘harangua devant ces fronts d’oerain (comme on les appelloit) merveilleux en délicatesse de langage, exprès en ses termes, subtil en raisons [ . . . .] il fut si pathetic, qu’il rendit comme en extase les plus délicats de ses auditeurs.’⁹⁰ The queen mother, ‘ayant les yeux comme larmoyans’ addressed the sieur de La Meausse, the protestant governor of Figeac: ‘Que pouvez-vous répliquer?’ His reply was the authentic voice of the ‘opiniastres’: ‘Je dis, Madame, que monsieur . . . a bien estudié, mais de payer ses estudes de nos gorges, nous n’en pouvons pas comprendre la raison.’ Meausse had broken the spell. The queen mother ‘rompit le pourparler sur le courroux qu’elle en prit’. Queen Catherine’s public ‘patience’ sometimes gave way to exasperation at the ‘oyseaulx nuisans’, the ‘oyseaus de rapine’, the ‘mauvès ayspris’ among the protestant deputies.⁹¹ Some of them merited ⁸⁶ Delumeau, ‘Fondements idéologiques’. ⁸⁷ LCM, vi. 254. ⁸⁸ Capot, Justice et religion, 373. ⁸⁹ LCM, vi. 444–5. ⁹⁰ Thierry (ed.), L’Histoire universelle, v. 343–4. ⁹¹ Perhaps a reference to capitaine Merle (lit.: a blackbird), whose troops captured Mende, treating the town and its surrounding countryside with savagery.

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the rope—‘gens de peu, mal affectionnez au bien de ce royaulme, et qu’au lieu d’y désirer la paix . . . faisoient tout le contraire’.⁹² They reminded her (all too explicitly, all too often) of St Bartholomew—it being no doubt significant that the only time that she ever directly mentioned the massacre in her surviving letters was on the eve of the negotiations at Nérac.⁹³ She prevailed on Navarre at one difficult moment (Monday, 9 February) to meet the protestant deputies and let them know ‘qu’il [Navarre] désiroit d’entretenir l’édict de la paix qu’il avoit juré, que s’ils faisoient des oppiniastres par des requestes incivilles, il les larroit battre leur saoul [i.e. ‘soûl’—i.e. ‘he would let them shout until they were blue in the face’] en Languedoc et ailleurs, et qu’ils ne s’attendissent poinct d’en avoir aulcung secours’. She found Michel Béraud, the protestant minister from Béziers, ‘un grand maistre fascheux et plein de mauvaise volonté’.⁹⁴ Bouchart, the delegate representing Condé, was ‘aigre et plein de défiance’.⁹⁵ Fulcrand de Vignolles, the Montpellier deputy, was ‘difficile et mal traictable’.⁹⁶ Even the well-spoken Guichard de Scorbiac from Montauban told her to her face that there was no polity so perfect that it could not be reformed.⁹⁷ On the evening of Friday, 13 February came the moment when, faced with a threatened walk-out from the negotiations by the protestants, the queen mother’s patience turned to plain speaking. She addressed them ‘royallement et bien hault, jusques à leur dire que les feroit tous prendre comme rebelles’.⁹⁸ The issue was the protestant demand for additional garrison towns. On the following day, she dined with leading protestant negotiators—aware of the rumours of social unrest emerging in the Rhône valley and elsewhere. ‘Les ministres leur preschoient ladicte deffiance,’ she told them, ‘eulx qui ne vont poinct à la guerre, sont cause de la mort de la noblesse de France, qu’on les y devoit faire aller et les mectre au premier rang comme les Suisses.’ Queen Catherine resorted to a ripe vernacular when necessity demanded: ‘Que les gentilshommes font très mal de les croyre s’ils pensent de s’agrandir par ce bout-là [i.e. a continuation of hostilities], car ils demeureront cul en terre entre deux selles, comme l’on dict.’ On the following day, Sunday, 15 February, the deal was struck over the garrisons and a successful conclusion to the conference began to emerge. The protestants had their strongholds to guarantee their security. What did the beleaguered catholics of south-west France have to show for their loyalty? The queen mother offered them the ‘précieulx gaige’ of Queen ⁹² LCM, vi. 228. ⁹⁵ Ibid. 169.

⁹³ Ibid. 245. ⁹⁶ Ibid. 262.

⁹⁴ Ibid. 259. ⁹⁷ Ibid. 250.

⁹⁸ Ibid. p. 446.

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Marguerite.⁹⁹ ‘Addressez-vous à elle et asseurez-vous qu’elle y apportera tout ce que vous pouriez désirer,’ she told them as she prepared to take her leave. It would be the most delicate role and her daughter played it in the only way she knew. Assembling the elaborate furnishings in Nérac that the well-endowed house of Navarre afforded, she set about replicating the Valois court culture into which she had been born.¹⁰⁰ She had the gardens at Nérac refashioned and extended to include a ‘garenne’ across the river Baïse where, after separate Sunday devotions, ‘nous nous rassemblions pour nous aller promener ensemble’.¹⁰¹ Gardens were well known in the Renaissance as harbingers of peace. The court entertainments included bals and tables rondes, just as she remembered them at the courts of her brothers.¹⁰² Perhaps she acted as a stimulus for the academy that Agrippa d’Aubigné, who had (like Queen Marguerite) been present at Henri III’s, recalled at the court of Henri de Navarre.¹⁰³ She read avidly, and her library included a presentation volume of discourses at an academy, perhaps Charles IX’s, that now survives in a private collection.¹⁰⁴ Her court attracted humanists from the south-west.¹⁰⁵ Franc¸ois de Foix-Candale, bishop of Aire, for example, presented her with his translation and commentary on the Pimander that he had completed in 1572. He described it as a ‘philosophie véritable’ in the epistle dedicatory, dated 21 December 1578, offering to reconcile antique learning and Christian wisdom and, by implication, opposing faiths as well. She was chosen, too, by Guy Le Febvre de La Boderie as the dedicatee of his new translation of Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on the Banquet of Plato, published in 1579. Michel de Montaigne, nominated a gentilshomme de la chambre du roi de Navarre in 1577, may have spent the winter of 1578–9 at Nérac. The result, it has been argued, was the Apologie pour Raymond Sébond, the most substantial part of the first two books of Essais published at Bordeaux in 1580.¹⁰⁶ She was a recipient of poetry in books and manuscripts.¹⁰⁷ In a private album of love poetry from this period, she recorded their Platonic and Petrarchan ‘triumph of love’.¹⁰⁸ She used four interlocking ‘s’s—standing ⁹⁹ LCM, vi. 453. ¹⁰⁰ Schrenk, ‘Marguerite de Valois’; Laprade, ‘Un inventaire’. ¹⁰¹ Viennot (ed.), Marguerite de Valois: Mémoires, 199; Laffargue, En visite. It was in this park that Shakespeare set ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’. ¹⁰² Her Mémoires recall her describing Henri III’s court to Navarre in February 1583. ¹⁰³ Weber, Bailbé, and Soutié, (eds.), Agrippa d’Aubigné: Œuvres, 852–3. ¹⁰⁴ Droz, ‘La Reine Marguerite’, 85; see Furstenberg, Ex libris, 15. ¹⁰⁵ Boucher, Louise de Lorraine, 236 f. ¹⁰⁶ Choppin, ‘Marguerite de Valois’. ¹⁰⁷ Magnien-Simonin, ‘La Jeune Marguerite’. ¹⁰⁸ Droz, La Reine Marguerite

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for the Spanish (her preferred foreign language): ‘Sabio: Solo: Solicito: Secreto’. These four qualities (‘Sage, Seul, Solliciteux, Secret’) defined for her the intense, secret, and lonely wisdom of love.¹⁰⁹ The verses themselves delighted in everything which beguiles and ravishes the heart. There are odes celebrating the ‘essence of love’, the dangers of love of oneself (‘filaftie’), the constancy of love, and love’s valour. Jean de Gontaut-Biron, baron de Salignac, Armand’s eldest son, governor of the Périgord and (in due course) a member of Navarre’s council, wrote how love turns swords into Cupid’s darts. He compared the conquests of love with the dangers of a military campaign.¹¹⁰ Another contributor described a gentleman captured by love and turned from war.¹¹¹ It was not so much the governing of passions, more their deflection; a ‘feminine’ perception of the problems of the civil wars and one which Queen Marguerite shared with her mother. We should not underestimate Queen Marguerite’s impact. The scruffy Gascon squirearchy reacted to the philosophy of love, or at least to its lubricious connotations. Sully’s memory was probably accurate: ‘l’on n’y parloit que d’amour et des plaisirs et passetemps qui en dependent.’¹¹² D’Aubigné, who contributed twenty-one stanzas and thirty-four odes to her collection, reflected the censure of protestant pastors and sarcastic hindsight when he recalled the atmosphere at Nérac in 1579. Navarre’s court became like that of the Valois, Navarre a little Sardanopolus of the south-west. Impact there was, but it was personal, theatrical, and (literally) ‘sexed up’. Queen Marguerite overestimated her influence on the parties that mattered. As in the case of the massacre of St Bartholomew, the seeds of tragedy were sown in the antecedent hyperbole. The politics of the south-west in 1579 and 1580 do not concern us directly here, but (in outline) the deterioration in relations between Navarre and Biron was related to the former’s difficulties in persuading the protestants of the south-west to abide by the accords of Nérac and surrender the additional places de sûreté granted them until August 1579 (in Guyenne) and September 1579 (in Languedoc). On 3 July 1579, Navarre met the assembled deputies of the protestant churches at Montauban.¹¹³ An unusually large number of delegates came from regions north of the Loire (seven of the sixteen). A further seven came from western France. The final two were from the Lyonnais and the Vivarais. No delegation represented Dauphiné or Languedoc (though some from Castres, Albigeois, and the Haut Languedoc arrived later on 23 ¹⁰⁹ Hobson, Les relieures. ¹¹⁰ Droz, La Reine Marguerite, 88. ¹¹² Buisseret and Barbiche (eds.), Les Œconomies royales, i. 65. ¹¹³ BP MS 97 [pièce 8].

¹¹¹ Ibid. 118.

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July). None had attended the conference at Nérac and they did not feel bound by it since its terms had not been fully complied with. Navarre persuaded them eventually to shoulder the war-debts of the movement. But it was an uphill struggle, since they did not see why they should do so whilst also contributing to those of the catholic majority through royal taxation.¹¹⁴ The less willing the protestants were to abide by the accords of Nérac, the more Biron was left in the hands of catholic activists. All the evidence suggests that Queen Marguerite did everything she could to prevent the outbreak of renewed hostilities in the spring of 1580. She rightly foresaw any military campaign as putting her ‘between two fires’. When Navarre departed Nérac to attack Gourdon on 10 April 1580, he left a somewhat embarrassed letter for Marguerite, explaining his decision to go to war on the grounds (amongst others) that her dowry had not been paid.¹¹⁵ It was this letter that she forwarded that same day to the king and to which Catherine de Médicis replied, hoping against hope to save the peace through Queen Marguerite’s mediation: ‘Vous verrez comme il est mal conseillé. Dites-le-lui, ma fille . . . . Faites-lui connaître le tort qu’il se fait.’¹¹⁶ The renewed military hostilities were concluded at the peace of Fleix in November 1580. They are still called the ‘Lovers’ War’ (the ‘guerre des amoureux’) though, at the time, contemporaries referred to the military engagements as the ‘guerre de Montaigu’ or the ‘guerre du roi de Navarre’.¹¹⁷ The campaign went badly from Navarre’s point of view, exposing his military weakness and the divisions in the protestant movement. It was only Navarre’s siege and capture of Cahors that turned the tables.¹¹⁸ It was then that Henri III began to suspect his sister Marguerite of duplicity, which is when the Tuscan ambassador reported how the hostilities were being interpreted at the French court.¹¹⁹ There was a rumour that Queen Marguerite had been courted by Turenne and that Henri III had informed Navarre by letter of his sister’s duplicity. Navarre’s military offensive was a lover’s revenge. In reality, there was never such a letter and almost certainly never such an affair. But the rumour served a purpose. It enabled elements in the Valois court around the king to distance themselves from the old-fashioned and (once more) discredited ‘triumph of love’ whilst making fun of the gap between the Calvinist moral principles that notionally prevailed at the Navarre court and the Neoplatonic ideas that had so easily overcome ¹¹⁴ LCM, vii. 53. ¹¹⁵ Berger, i. 285. ¹¹⁶ LCM, vii. 254. ¹¹⁷ Viennot, Marguerite de Valois, 130; cf. Archives curieuses, viii. 416. ¹¹⁸ De Thou, viii [bk. 72]. 376. ¹¹⁹ Desjardins, iv. 320.

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them. The ‘guerre des amoureux’ was the dismal conclusion to the dream of the ‘triomphe de l’amour’. For Sully, d’Aubigné, Turenne, and the other guardians of the protestant memory, the hostilities of 1580 had been an embarrassing flop. It served their turn, too, to cast the blame for it all upon Queen Marguerite and the divas among her ladies in waiting. It was not their fault; they had been beguiled, wooed, diverted. And it would not happen again. After the peace of Fleix, the dominant influence at the court of Navarre would be the steady, unbeguilable hand of Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay who, in touch with reforming elements at the Valois court through his uncle Philippe du Bec, bishop of Nantes, would introduce the theme of ‘reform’ to the Navarre household as well. Although there is not a scrap of evidence that Shakespeare had ever been near the court of Navarre, he grasped an imaginative truth when he entitled his comedy about the education of young gentlemen in the ways of love and its beguilements at the little court in Nérac: ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’.

‘QUE LES PETITES CHOSES CROISSENT PAR CONCORDE’ Royal policy-makers knew that peace could not be achieved on a purely local basis. What happened in one province affected another. That is why Queen Catherine decided in April 1579 to extend her trip to include the rest of the Midi—Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné. As she travelled, she began to sense that she was beginning to make an impact. In May, she reported to the king that the effect of the Nérac accord was beginning to be felt ‘mieulx et beaucoup plus aizément’ in Languedoc.¹²⁰ As she left Languedoc for Provence, she allowed herself the thought that she had ‘lésay cet [i.e. ‘ces’] deux provinse [sic] en pays [i.e. ‘paix’] et repos et en l’antière aubéysance deu Roy mon fils, de quoy je loue Dieu’.¹²¹ A month later, she added Provence to the list of triumphs.¹²² Religious pacification was ‘accorded’ slowly, town by town, province by province. Franc¸ois de La Noue reflected from his confinement in a prison in Flanders in 1584 upon how religious pacification was achieved. He came to a rather similar conclusion. In a discourse entitled ‘Que les petites choses croissent par concorde, & par la discorde les grandes se ruinent’, he drew on ¹²⁰ LCM, vi. 364–5.

¹²¹ Ibid. 383.

¹²² Ibid. vii. 38.

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a phrase from Sallust’s Jugurtha.¹²³ In the text, he focused on the meaning of the word ‘concorde’.¹²⁴ He defined it as ‘une loüable affection, qui nous lie & joint estoitement avec nos semblables, en tous devoirs necessaires & honnestes’.¹²⁵ ‘Concord’ relied, in other words, on an implicit consent of the kind that exists in a well-disciplined society. ‘Sans un tel consentement, il seroit difficile que non seulement les grandes societez, mais aussi les petites, peussent longuement se maintenir à cause des contrarietez elles sont composees, qui vienent à faire alteration, si par ceste saincte vertu elle ne sont reglees.’¹²⁶ What held good for domestic environments necessarily was true for states as well. La Noue, reflecting his aristocratic background, detected that such social harmony was even more a necessary virtue in monarchical states than in republics.¹²⁷ Religious pacification grew out of a settlement of particular ‘courroux’ and local disputes. In such quarrels, there was often an interlocking nexus of problems rather than one difficulty to be resolved. It was only in a progressive, piecemeal fashion that any impact could be made. The prolonged implementation of the peace served to create a liminal period which opened people’s minds to possibilities of change. For France’s notables, it opened their eyes to the weaknesses in France’s institutions and social fabric, ones that invited reform. With each successive ‘implementation’ of peace (post-Bergerac, 1577; post-Nérac, 1579; post-Fleix, 1580–1), there was a corresponding lesson for France’s notables in the need for reform. Once the Nérac accords had been reached, Catherine began to issue instructions to catholic and protestant ‘bi-partisan’ commissioners to set to work. Those for Guyenne were signed off on 3 March 1579, and those for Languedoc over a month later.¹²⁸ Sent out by seneschalcies, they began by gaining the assent of the notables in the principal town to the pacification. They then toured the region, administering the ceasefire. They investigated wrongfully seized ecclesiastical property and ensured that catholic clergy were allowed to live in peace.¹²⁹ They then discussed with the local bishop those parishes whose fabric had been damaged or destroyed, or where clergy were not resident. One of their principal tasks, however, was to ensure that the protestants were not inhibited in their rights of worship. One of their articles of commission invited them to serve as mediators in any individual feuds and quarrels between local gentlemen or among urban notabilities. If they ¹²³ ¹²⁴ ¹²⁷ ¹²⁹

‘Nam concordia parvae res crescunt, discorda maximae dilabuntur’—Jugurtha, 10. 6. Sutcliffe (ed.), La Noue, Discours, ii. 59–86. ¹²⁵ Ibid. 61. ¹²⁶ Ibid. Ibid. 68. ¹²⁸ Ibid. 454–9; BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 348–349v . LCM, vi. 455.

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could not find a solution to a quarrel, they advised the queen mother of the problem. The complexity of their allotted task should not be underestimated.¹³⁰ Queen Catherine paid particular attention to the smaller, autonomous jurisdictions to the south of Languedoc and Guyenne, reaching into the Pyrenees—the counties of Île-Jourdain, Armagnac, Comminges, and Foix.¹³¹ As she crossed Languedoc, she monitored their efforts. The chambre de l’édit was a particularly thorny issue, not least since the Parlement of Toulouse opposed the proposition that the tribunal be staffed by catholic judges from the Grand Conseil and outside Languedoc.¹³² Catherine seized the possibility of a compromise: that protestants accept the presence of moderate Toulouse judges in return for a larger (increased from twelve to sixteen) and mi-partie tribunal, a deal reached ‘avec tant de labeur conduict au poinct de perfection’.¹³³ The judges in Toulouse remained suspicious; but nothing now prevented the court from opening its doors to the half million or so protestants of Languedoc looking to it for justice.¹³⁴ As she approached lower Languedoc, she reached the area where prolonged military conflict had made its mark. Montmorency-Damville led the welcome for the queen mother at the annual session of the estates of Languedoc, held at Castelnaudary from 27 April to 4 May.¹³⁵ The delegates from the protestant parts of Languedoc refused to attend so it could do little to advance the peace. But their grievances left Queen Catherine in no doubt as to the breakdown of law in their province.¹³⁶ They emphasized its economic and political dislocation, stressing the organized gangsters who disrupted its civil life. In reality, agricultural production, measured by the tithe returns, was at its lowest for a generation. That, in turn, created pressures on the fiscal state. In Languedoc, the twenty-two ‘civil’ dioceses were responsible for taxation. ¹³⁰ Ibid. 43–4; 349; 362; 366. ¹³¹ Ibid. 459–60; 355; 360–2. ¹³² The Parlement of Toulouse was softening its hostility to the chambre —Capot, Justice et religion, 53. ¹³³ LCM, vi. 353. ¹³⁴ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 368– v [letters of commission, Henri III to Guillaume de Joyeuse, Paris, 18 May 1579]; LCM, vi. 491–2; Capot, Justice et religion, 55. ¹³⁵ LCM, vi. 481; Typical of the speeches of welcome the queen mother received around the Midi is that of the sieur de Villespassans for her entry into Béziers on 17 May 1579, recorded in BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 370–375v . ¹³⁶ The representatives of the estates included the bishop of Mirepoix (a nephew of his namesake, the archbishop of Vienne, Pierre de Villars) for the clergy; Franc¸ois de La Jugie, baron de Rieux, a baron of the estates and governor of Narbonne, for the nobility; and the capitouls of Toulouse, the consuls of Carcassonne, and the syndic of the pays, Mariet Daveranne, for the third estate. For their cahier, see BN MS Fr 3324 fos. 93–5 [n.d., c. 26 April 1579].

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Each diocese had its receivers (some of which had become royal and venal offices) and collectors, responsible to its assiette, a body composed of the representatives of local notables, the diocesan syndic, and treasurer. Their financial affairs were in a mess, as Catherine readily appreciated.¹³⁷ Even the provincial treasurers could not hide from her that the finances ‘sont très mal maniées et conduites par dec¸a’.¹³⁸ Catherine did what she could in the limited time at her disposal. There were quarrels to mediate, for example, that between the bishop and seneschal of Mirepoix over the château de Terrride, a delicate matter since the seneschal was also the local commissioner for the pacification.¹³⁹ In Narbonne she sorted out a squabble between the consuls and governor, Franc¸ois de La Jugie, baron de Rieux, over the keys to the city’s gates and chains across the port. The consuls regarded themselves as the guardians of its civic independence; the commercial life of the city depended on free traffic. In the past, such disputes had led to disorder in the streets. The provincial governor tried, and failed, to achieve a ‘concord’ in ordinances of 30 May and 26 June 1578. Catherine heard all the parties involved before promulgating a ‘regulation’ that protected the ‘privileges’ of the consuls without infringing the ‘authority’ of the governor.¹⁴⁰ The latter was enjoined to ‘se comporter modestement, sans injurier de parolles ny de faict[s] les consulz et habitans’—an indication that Catherine had understood part of the problem to be Rieux’s maladroit handling of it. Elsewhere sectarian conflicts were grafted onto other confrontations, local rivalries, or social tensions. The queen mother carefully avoided residing in Lodève, where protestants exploited the hostility between its self-appointed governor, Claude de Narbonne-Caylus, baron de Faugères, and the local population. He had quartered troops there since 1576 and was detested by the populace.¹⁴¹ The town was strategically important. Like Carcassonne, it had a ‘ville haute’ (around the fortified cathedral and garrison) and a ‘ville basse’. Protestants took the lower town in January 1579 and Faugères was assassinated in the chateau above. His mother, Béatrice de Faugères, was implicated in the assassination of her own son, whom she suspected of having killed his brother and brother-in-law in a family feud. Faugères’s head was transported to the lower town to be kicked around the narrow streets like a football ‘comme en le passé il avoit faict de celle de Sainct Folcrand’.¹⁴² ¹³⁷ LCM, vi. 361. ¹⁴¹ Gaches, 309.

¹³⁸ Ibid. 366. ¹³⁹ Ibid. 347; 352. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid. 485–7. ¹⁴² LCM, vi. 207; 251; BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 353.

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Montmorency-Damville held on to the upper town and the queen mother relied on him to overcome the obstacles to the ‘perfection’ of peace that this insurrection represented. Montpellier itself did not put out flags for Queen Catherine. The city was full of plague and she kept her distance. She toured its perimeter walls and arrived at the main gates, where the militia poked their halberds close to her carriage.¹⁴³ The pacification commissioners for lower Languedoc were Guillaume de Montmorency-Thoré, Montmorency-Damville’s younger brother, and Franc¸ois de Coligny, comte de Coligny. On paper, the choices were shrewd ones. The former was a poacher turned gamekeeper, a protestant captain with kinship to the provincial governor. The latter was a poacher’s poacher whom she hoped might turn gamekeeper, the most committed military activist of lower Languedoc whose influence could hardly be ignored. In the event, Coligny disappeared towards Millau in search (it was said) of a bride, and to avoid an encounter with the queen mother. She eventually replaced him, with Navarre’s acquiescence, by the sieur d’Andelot, Coligny’s brother.¹⁴⁴ Montpellier’s divisions were religious, political, and communal. A cathedral city with a proud commercial past and a distinguished university, it was also the seat of the two financial sovereign courts, other components of royal administration and, until they decamped to Béziers, the treasurers-general of lower Languedoc.¹⁴⁵ But it had a turbulent past. Protestants had taken it over in the earlier civil wars, damaging every one of the clerical buildings within its walls, expropriating ecclesiastical wealth, and threatening its clergy with expulsion. Latterly, from November 1574 to March 1577, it served as the operational base for Montmorency-Damville during his revolt. Everything testified to its divisions. Queen Catherine had already adjudicated on disputed consulate elections.¹⁴⁶ The cathedral canons were exiled to their former monastic site on the island of Maguelonne where they found themselves in dispute with a local seigneur.¹⁴⁷ To Catherine, its citizens were ‘les plus revèches et mauvès que je veis jeamès, et tent d’oyseaulx de rapine: il ne veulet ni la pays, ni rien de bien’.¹⁴⁸ The demands of the edict of pacification focused the various disputes onto one contested space: the ruins of the church of Notre-Dame des Tables. Its nave was the only significant church left standing in the city and it was used by the protestants. By the terms ¹⁴³ LCM, vi. 379. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid. 377; 379. ¹⁴⁵ d’Aigrefeuille, Histoire; Guiraud, La Réforme à Montpellier; Baumel, Montpellier. ¹⁴⁶ LCM, vi. 307; 372; 376; 379. ¹⁴⁷ Ibid. 180. ¹⁴⁸ Ibid. 339.

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of the edict, it should have been returned to the catholics. But adjoining the nave was the tower which had become a defensive emplacement and thus part of the place de sûreté granted to the protestants. And adjacent to the tower was the town hall, which housed its armoury. Attempts at mediation failed before Queen Catherine heard the parties. She found the protestants obdurate but eventually found a formula to which they would agree. Protestants kept control of the tower but surrendered the nave. The gallery leading to the former was blocked off so that worshippers in the latter could not be overlooked by protestant soldiers.¹⁴⁹ For good measure, she appointed a bi-partisan council of reconciliation. Despite their divisions, Montpellier’s notables had managed in the past to sit round a table and agree to differ. She moved on from ‘ce tourment véhément’ to Beaucaire on 30 May.¹⁵⁰ Her relief was short lived. Beaucaire was a site of strategic significance, a royal outpost overlooking two protestant places de sûreté nearby at Aiguesmortes and Montpellier. In each Midi province, there was a black hole, a point of intense energy to which all the residual tensions gravitated. Catherine de Médicis had already encountered a similar place in Guyenne: Langon, the fortress town on the Garonne that overlooked the protestant stronghold at La Réole. There, the military governor of its fortress, the sieur de La Salle du Siron, a catholic but nominated to the post by Navarre, was killed in a popular uprising against his garrison in late 1578. His young son killed some inhabitants in vengeance. The queen mother sent Nicolas Molé, a treasurer-general, to investigate and, in May 1579, Franc¸ois de Candalle and the young marquis de Trans took possession of the fortress, leaving open the question of what justice should await the unfortunate son. In the case of Beaucaire, the recent past was also grim. On 7 September 1578, the eve of the feast of the nativity of the Virgin, the governor of Beaucaire, Pierre de Baudéan, seigneur de Parabère, and his mistress, Marguerite de Bourdic, daughter of a former governor of Montpellier, went to mass.¹⁵¹ As they left, the tocsin sounded from a nearby monastery, and the townspeople assassinated them—Marguerite in the church itself and Parabère not far away along with another thirty or so, mostly soldiers. Marguerite’s body was ¹⁴⁹ LCM, vi. 376. ¹⁵⁰ Ibid. 378. ¹⁵¹ Pierre de Baudéan was from a Gascon noble family who had served the provincial governor as page before being given command of the regiment of Claude de La Guiche, sieur de Saint-Géran, Damville’s lieutenant. His brother Jean de Baudéan, comte de Parabère, ended his career of service to Navarre as the king’s lieutenant in Poitou.

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stripped, bound to that of her lover and both dragged through the town before Parabère’s corpse was beheaded and his head, crowned with a crown of straw or, according to another source, dressed like a morris dancer, stuck on one of the town gates.¹⁵² Parabère was by no means the innocent victim of what the town council, to exculpate itself, described as a ‘furie et esmotion populaire’.¹⁵³ He had been young, arrogant, and high-living and it had not gone down well.¹⁵⁴ In March 1577, he had openly quarrelled with the first consul, Jean des Rois, sieur de Lédignan, and threatened to kill him. The latter declared that he would rather endure a Turkish despotism than Parabère’s rule. It was left to Parabère’s lieutenant, Paul Baudonnet, to make light of his commander’s capricious behaviour.¹⁵⁵ Two months later, the town offered Parabère a gift of 1,000 écus as a sign of its goodwill.¹⁵⁶ A year on, however, the consulat complained about the ‘infinite de tiranyes, extortions et violances’ to which they were subject.¹⁵⁷ The annual payments due in interest charges and pensions to the creditors of Beaucaire in 1576 totalled (including arrears from the previous year) 4,090 livres and these increased over the following two years. Some of its creditors were members of the provincial governor’s own household. They included his equerry Janin Poyano, sieur de Villers-sous-Saint-Leu, and Catherine de Guillem, Madame de Richier (var.: Richeri), Damville’s mistress and the mother to several of his illegitimate children. The uprising at Beaucaire was part of a movement of consular and popular hatred at the extortions of local garrisons which, given the supposed peace, had outstayed their welcome. Only the previous month, Pont-SaintEsprit had expelled its governor, Honoré d’Albert, seigneur de Luynes.¹⁵⁸ Montmorency-Damville told Catherine about the peasant armies forming in the Vivarais to expel the unwanted soldiery from the pays and to refuse to pay taxes on the grounds that they were exempt.¹⁵⁹ He had doubtless seen a copy ¹⁵² Desjardins, iv 198; Guiraud, La Réforme à Montpellier, 186; Perussis, ‘Histoire’, 218; LCM, vi. 400–1. These details are taken from an unpublished paper by Dr Joan Davies. I am grateful for her permission to use them here. ¹⁵³ Davies, citing AM Beaucaire BB14 [8 September, 11 October 1578]. ¹⁵⁴ LCM, vi. 401. ¹⁵⁵ Davies, citing AM Beaucaire BB 14 [14 March 1577]. ¹⁵⁶ Ibid. [9 May 1577]. ¹⁵⁷ Ibid. [13 August 1578]. ¹⁵⁸ ANG, viii. 211. ¹⁵⁹ BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 429 [‘Pour remonstrer a la Royne Mere du Roy sur lestat du Gouuernement de Languedoc’ and endorsed in another hand, perhaps Miles Marion’s, ‘Les Memoires donnez a la Royne sur le faict du gouvernement de Languedoc. Lun fut donne a Beaucaire et le deuxieme a Grenoble [ . . . ] en May & en Octobre 1579’].

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of the ‘Requête des Ligues du Vivarais’, drawn up in the name of ‘les pauvres gens de notre pauvre et désolé plat pays de Vivaretz’, lamenting the effects of warfare and insecurity in the region.¹⁶⁰ They wanted a special judicial assize to offer justice to ordinary people against noble depredations. They asked for a strengthened force of prévôts ‘pour prendre ceux qui commettent lesdits crimes et les punir exemplairement’. They refused to pay taxes until local receivers were investigated. They complained at the new royal offices for local tax receivers. Money-lending at usurious rates of interest was, here as elsewhere, a major concern in the wake of the monetary disorders of 1577–8. The local nobility were accused of impropriating tithes and usurping ecclesiastical property. In Dauphiné in the summer and autumn of 1578 there were similar movements.¹⁶¹ In Montélimar, the artisan confraternities elected a syndic, which demanded the town accounts be investigated, and taxes reduced by half.¹⁶² In the surrounding villages, consuls petitioned the provincial lieutenant with their grievances. By October 1578, they had organized a peasant army. At a meeting of a conseil général of Montélimar, twenty-four representatives from the urban fraternities and village delegates proclaimed a ‘Ligue des amis de la paix’. There was much talk of the failure to implement the peace of Bergerac and the lack of security. In November, the Montélimar League recruited the local vis-sénéchal, Jacques Colas, to its cause. By February 1579 he had coordinated local military forces to mount a military operation against some local brigands. University trained, a catholic of some political experience (he had attended the estates general at Blois as deputy for the third estate of Dauphiné), Jacques Colas organized, mobilized, and persuaded.¹⁶³ In the political fabric of later sixteenth-century French politics, as we have already seen in the dissent in northern France, we should not ignore the local ‘lateral’ networks. Subordinate officials of the calibre of Jacques Colas were mobilized by their objectives for ‘peace’ and ‘reform’.¹⁶⁴ By the time Catherine de Médicis arrived in Beaucaire, Montélimar had established its links to Romans, Valence, and Crest. In Romans, on the feast day of St Blaise, patron saint of drapers (3 February 1579), the confraternity of drapers elected Captain Jean Serve (known as ‘Paumier’), a master craftsman of the guild, to be ‘un chef non tant pour leur particulier [ . . . ] que pour ¹⁶⁰ ¹⁶¹ ¹⁶² ¹⁶³ ¹⁶⁴

Mazon, Notes, ii. 343–5; cf. Salmon, ‘Peasant Revolt’. Dussert, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, 140; Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 98–9. Ibid. Cf. Lacroix, L’Arrondissement, vi. 173 and Coston, Histoire, i. 392–5. Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 102–3; Colas de La Noue, Un ligueur, 43–61. Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 183.

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embrasser une cause qu’ils appellaient le repos et soulagement du peuple’.¹⁶⁵ A week later, on 10 February, he presided over a tumultuous public meeting in the town, demanding the immediate suspension of the tailles and the investigation of town accounts. They also required the keys of the town to be handed over to Captain Paumier and his lieutenants.¹⁶⁶ To the north, in Valence, five days later, another popular leader, this time a miller named Bonniol, was elected leader and the garrison was ejected. Montélimar, Crest, Romans, and Valence were in touch with one another and the Ligue de la Paix, the Ligue de l’Équité, or Ligue des Vilains (depending on the observer’s point of view) had become a reality. Meanwhile, to the south of Montélimar at Arles, a town riven by a feud between two factions, its leading inhabitants assembled on 10 April 1579 to declare their union against ‘les factieux’ within and without their walls.¹⁶⁷ For the popular movement for the expulsion of garrisons among the communities of Provence was gathering steam whilst neighbouring pays in Languedoc formed leagues of self-protection.¹⁶⁸ Down the Rhône valley the fureur populaire was a mistral, blowing where it listeth. But popular uprisings in the sixteenth century were rarely as spontaneous or as simple as they seem; and that in Beaucaire, a test case, was no exception. Events were orchestrated, sanctioned from above. Montmorency-Damville wanted to unencumber himself of a town governor whom he had initially appointed, but who had become an embarrassment. One of Parabère’s close companions, in Tarascon just across the Rhône at the time he died, was Roger de SaintLary, sieur de Bellegarde. The latter, as we have already seen, had every reason to make life difficult for the governor of Languedoc, and Parabère was one of his means of doing so. Together they plotted to destabilize the Rhône valley in whatever way they could. It was therefore under the provincial governor’s secret orders that Parabère’s assassination took place.¹⁶⁹ Those reportedly leading the townspeople included a former canon from Nîmes, ¹⁶⁵ Venault, Blon, and Farges, Un soulèvement, 42; cf. Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 117–20. ¹⁶⁶ The meeting can be reconstructed from Brun-Durand, Mémoires, 65. ¹⁶⁷ ‘Mémoires d’Antoine du Puget’, 225–6. For the attempted insurrection in Arles on behalf of the Carcistes in Provence in June 1579, see LCM, vii. 9; 12; 13. Its perpetrator, capitaine Espiart, was a companion of Parabère in Beaucaire and became an agent of the maréchal de Bellegarde. The insurrection failed, and Espiart managed to join Bellegarde in Saluzzo, only to blow himself up with his own explosive at Arles in a later insurrection in 1584. ¹⁶⁸ BM Toulouse MS 613 fos. 71–9 [diocese of Nîmes]; 118 [Uzès]; 138 [Vivarais]; 146 [Carcassonne]. ¹⁶⁹ AM Beaucaire BB 14 [letters of commission, Henri de Montmorency-Damville to the consuls, manans et habitans of Beaucaire, 11 August 1578]—in Cazenove, ‘La Capitulation de Beaucaire’, 584–5.

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Mathias de Roquefeuil, seigneur de Convertis; the first consul (Jean Des Rois, seigneur de Lédignan); and a Franciscan monk called Bernard Dupuy.¹⁷⁰ They were all, as Joan Davies has proved, Montmorency clients. But, like many stage-managed affairs, that at Beaucaire did not end as its instigators had anticipated. Parabère’s lieutenant, Paul Baudonnet, seized control of the castle and called on the protestants to help him. Franc¸ois de Coligny was only too ready to exploit this opportunity to disturb the peace and a long siege ensued resulting in a capitulation in early February 1579.¹⁷¹ Three months later, when Catherine arrived, the consequences were still everywhere to be seen; an abandoned town, a half-ruined castle, and an indebted municipality.¹⁷² She entered with Montmorency-Damville at her side, the first time he had set foot in Beaucaire since the siege. Following events from afar, she understood enough to realize that ‘oubliance’ had been achieved in Beaucaire by casting a veil over unpalatable events, and that its ‘concord’ had been arrived at by grubby means. For Montmorency-Damville, however, it was a moment to praise Queen Catherine’s efforts.¹⁷³ Exploiting his ‘success’ at Beaucaire, he sought rewards for himself and what remained of his forces. With his accustomed, brutal prescience, he presumed that the province would remain quiescent in the immediate future. The salt-pans near Peccais had recently been flooded and its production, the major mortgageable asset available to the protestants at moments of hostility, was literally a wash-out. But, come September 1579, which was when the protestants would have to surrender the extra stronghold sites that had been accorded, it might be a different story. His prediction was accurate. At their assembly, held in Anduze in November 1579, they drew up a list of supposed ‘contraventions’ to the pacification, which they took as grounds not to surrender the additional places de sûreté granted at Nérac.¹⁷⁴ They presented their case to the estates of Languedoc on 4 December ¹⁷⁰ Mathias de Roquefeuil, seigneur de Convertis, had close connections with Montmorency’s service, his cousin being Damville’s ensign, Guillaume de Caylar, seigneur d’Espondeillan. They both had a further cousin, Catherine de Guillen, who was Montmorency’s mistress. Jean des Rois, seigneur de Lédignan, was married to Tiphaine de Rozel and two of Montmorency’s secretaries would eventually become married to the Rozels. Bernard Dupuy had been installed in the Franciscan monastery at Beaucaire in 1576 on Damville’s recommendation and the latter would nominate him to his bishopric at Agde as custodi nos in 1583. ¹⁷¹ Cazenove, La Capitulation de Beaucaire, 596–601. Cf. BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 449–52. ¹⁷² A stone inscription in the hôtel de ville, reads: ‘1.5.7.8. | Du mois neufviesme, | Le jour dixiesme, | Parabéristes | Plus qu’athéistes | Au château cette | Bresche ont fette: | Au Dieu la gloire ! | Au Roi victoire!’ [Cazenove, La Capitulation de Beaucaire, 587]. ¹⁷³ BM Toulouse MS 612 fo. 429. ¹⁷⁴ The initial draft exists in a partially legible document, lacking its conclusion, in BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 487–503. The completed cahier, dated 22 November 1579, probably for presentation

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at Carcassonne.¹⁷⁵ The churches of upper Languedoc had already done likewise to Navarre in September 1579.¹⁷⁶ If we judge the queen mother’s efforts from the perspective of the willingness of the protestants to surrender the extra garrison strongholds granted them at Nérac, we must conclude that they had bought limited time for the consolidation of peace, but at a price. At Beaucaire, the queen mother contemplated the divisions that beset Provence. She knew that local notables vied with one another to present their demands. Pre-emptive petitioning was part of the political process, so she sent her servants ahead to investigate on her own account, collect petitions, and advise claimants on when to seek an audience. Joachim de Saint-Georges, sieur de Vérac, Alphonse d’Elbène, abbé de Maizières (himself from a Beaucaire family with knowledge of Provenc¸al affairs), and the sieur Montmorin, seigneur de Saint-Héran, her equerry, went ahead to prepare the ground, setting to work in Aix and Marseille. Their reports revealed a province in which the nobility was divided by factions, a magistrature seriously enfeebled, and the towns in near-revolt.¹⁷⁷ The divisions went back over a generation. Among the clannish, urbanized Provenc¸al nobility, they turned into feuds. On the eve of the outbreak of the civil wars, these coalesced into bitterness between those who, on the one hand, were protestants and their sympathizers, and, on the other hand, catholic activists and their adherents. The former were known as ‘Razats’ by their opponents. The etymology of the term is obscure but its implications are not. It implied ‘levelling’, a roturier agenda of social change and religious reform. The catholic activists found a local hero in the premier consul for Aix-en-Provence in 1561–2, Durand de Pontevès, sieur de Flassans, who, flamboyantly wearing a white cross in his hatband and proclaiming himself a ‘chevalier pour la foi’, opposed the provincial lieutenant of the moment (Claude de Savoie, comte de Tende) and his efforts to impose the crown’s edict of toleration. Such divisions continued into the 1570s, which is when catholic activists began wearing crescent badges and bushy beards to make them look like Turks, calling themselves the ‘Marabouts’ to Navarre, is to be found at 465–70. Catholic complaints at the failure to uphold the terms of the pacification, probably presented to the estates at Carcassonne, are at fos. 487–98 [‘Récit des contraventions commises à l’encontre de l’edict de pacification’]. ¹⁷⁵ BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 471–83. ¹⁷⁶ We know its contents from Navarre’s replies to the petition (signed at Nérac, 23 September 1579) in BN MS Fr nouv acq 7178 fos. 462–3; BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 462–4; printed Devic and Vaissète, xii. 1282–3. ¹⁷⁷ LCM, vi. 368.

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(var.: ‘Marrabez’)—the reference points being ‘La France-Turquie’ and the despotic Valois ‘sultans’ who rode roughshod over provincial liberties. These fissures re-emerged in the wake of the peace of Bergerac when, as we have seen, there was a power vacuum in Provenc¸al politics. Franc¸ois de La Baume, comte de Suze, had been appointed to the post of gouverneur and lieutenant-général by letters of commission dated 1 June 1578, to which he accumulated the admiralcy of the Levant two days later on 3 June 1578. It was a catastrophic appointment of a Dauphinois noble who was easily painted as having leanings towards the Razats. When he arrived in Avignon on 9 September 1578, he found himself relying on the good offices of cardinal Georges d’Armagnac to negotiate his entry into his province. He reached Aix surreptitiously on 8 November 1578, against the advice of the Corsican military captain Alphonse d’Ornano (himself a member of the Carciste clan by marriage).¹⁷⁸ The Aixois made fun of him, ‘criant quant ilz voyent ung asne: ‘‘Arry! Que tant Suze!’’ ’¹⁷⁹ He left ignominiously three months later, frightened by threats to his personal safety.¹⁸⁰ Queen Catherine was withering in her criticism of a noble who had not the courage to withstand calumny in the king’s name.¹⁸¹ Georges d’Armagnac’s appointment as his successor on 9 March 1579 was a holding arrangement until, on 10 May 1579, Henri de Valois (the Grand Prior) was reinstated to the post from which he had been forced to retire a year previously. He had local knowledge, proven loyalty, and he stood above the feuds.¹⁸² The opposition to Suze had been orchestrated by Jean-Baptiste de Pontevès, baron de Cotignac, comte de Carces (var.: Carcès; Garcès). He had already served as lieutenant-général in the province from 1566 to 1573. His replacement by Albert de Gondi, comte de Retz, as lieutenant and demotion to the post of grand sénéchal was presumably at the roots of his ambition to regain his old post. But his habitual taciturnity (he was known as ‘Le Muet’) kept everyone guessing. Instead he relied on a clan retinue which he assembled around him to do the talking.¹⁸³ Jean was brought up in the household of Durand de Pontevès.¹⁸⁴ His sister Honorée married Hubert de Garde, sieur de Vins, the son of Gaspard, a noted président in the Parlement at Aix-en-Provence.¹⁸⁵ Hubert became a controversial political ¹⁷⁸ Alphonse d’Ornano, later lieutenant du roi in Guyenne, married Marguerite-Louise de Grasse de Pontevès-Flassans, dame de Mazargues, in 1576. ¹⁷⁹ Poupé, ‘La Ligue’, 193. ¹⁸⁰ CalSPFor (1579–80), 517. ¹⁸¹ LCM, vii. 7. ¹⁸² Ibid. 8. ¹⁸³ Gaufridi, Histoire, ii. 507. ¹⁸⁴ Ibid. 597; Masson (ed.), Les Bouches-du-Rhône, iv. 119. ¹⁸⁵ Gaufridi, Histoire, 598; Masson (ed.), Les Bouches-du-Rhône, 504.

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figure in the 1560s, being briefly imprisoned for his opposition to the pacification of 1563. He then pursued a successful military career and became a Carciste by adoption, his ability in public speaking and organization being an asset to the clan along with his influence around Brignolles. Jean de Pontevès’s leadership of the Carciste clan was cemented when a more distant relative, Jean-Baptiste de Pontevès, seigneur de Bargème, a lieutenant du roi for Franc¸ois I in Provence, adopted him (according to Gaufridi) as his son and heir when they were both imprisoned during the Roussillon campaign of the early 1540s.¹⁸⁶ This gave Jean a provincial network which he cemented with his marriage to Marguerite de Brancas, the sister and heir to the fortune of Gaspard de Brancas, baron d’Oise, a former premier consul of Aix. The sense of ‘belonging’ within the Carciste clan is revealed in a cache of correspondence, captured by Razat soldiers when they seized Callas and murdered its owner, Pierre de Pontevès, sieur de Brovès, on 24 March 1579.¹⁸⁷ Their theme is mutual protection and family interest, promising one another ‘advertissement’ and ‘intelligence’. Joseph de Pontevès reported on the burnt houses, scorched gardens and saffron fields, the almond trees and vineyards of the Carciste enemies around Tourves that they had ‘razés’. How their enemies hated to see the Carcistes united, he added.¹⁸⁸ The Carciste clan became a focus for discontented catholic military interests in the south-east and a target for anti-noble sentiments. The Razats were a much looser confederation of protestant nobles and discontented provincial elements. Their strength lay to the north and east of Provence. What they lacked in dynastic and religious cohesion, they made up for in their ability to exploit popular anti-soldatesque and antifiscal sentiments. The latter were expressed by their delegates in the annual meetings of the provincial estates.¹⁸⁹ When Catherine arrived in Beaucaire, she was presented with the ‘Articles’ of delegates from eastern Provenc¸al communities meeting at Fréjus.¹⁹⁰ It was another ‘union pour la paix’ in which those present swore to maintain the peace. In pursuit of this objective, ¹⁸⁶ Gaufridi, Histoire, 507. ¹⁸⁷ Brieu, ‘L’Assassinat’. ¹⁸⁸ Ibid. 191. ¹⁸⁹ Hildesheimer, Les Assemblées. ¹⁹⁰ BN MS Fr 3324 fos. 73–4 [headed: ‘Articles accordes par les Commis A lassemblee tenue a Frejus le unziesme Apuril mil cinq cent soixante dix neuf par auctorité de la court’]; cf. BM Toulouse MS 612 fos. 338–41. The meeting was a ‘continuation’ of the estates of Provence, which had been summoned to Lambesc in February 1579, where sentiments of a popular league and resentments against the nobility were already much in evidence—see AD Bouches-du-Rhône C 3.

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each commune agreed to elect its own military chief and raise peace-keeping forces. They wore blue hats with plumed feathers as their distinguishing mark. By the time Catherine reached Beaucaire, the chateau at Trans was being besieged by peasant armies, led by Razats, with Claude de Villeneuve, marquis de Trans, and his wife and children within. Hubert de Garde tried to mount a rescue but was overwhelmed and the chateau succumbed to its besiegers in early June.¹⁹¹ In the massacre which followed, the marquis was killed in cold blood and many of his followers assassinated, whilst his wife and children were taken prisoner. The queen mother was under no illusions as to the depth of local hatreds.¹⁹² It was difficult to imagine ‘oubliance’ in these circumstances. Justice was needed but the magistrates at Aix-en-Provence were compromised by their ties to the parties involved. It would be better to send a chambre de justice from another Parlement.¹⁹³ There were precedents in Provence for doing so and now, once more, it was urgent.¹⁹⁴ What could Queen Catherine do with the limited time and resources at her disposal? The grievances of the communities of Provence—wartime indebtedness, fiscal corruption, lack of peace and justice—were not issues that could be settled immediately. In any case, they were overlaid by more immediate ones that they laid at the door of the Carcistes. She heard the dossier of complaints presented before her by a young avocat from Aix whilst she was at Marseille.¹⁹⁵ It was charge after charge of ‘meschancetez les plus inhumaines, villaines et exécrables’. Catherine asked for it in writing. In the meantime, she let it be known that there was no circumstance in which the comte de Carces, or any of his house, would be considered as king’s lieutenant. But she declared herself ready to hear Carciste grievances in due course. Arriving in Aix-en-Provence on 28 June, she summoned the magistrates of the Parlement for their advice.¹⁹⁶ Then she urged the formation of a chamber of the edict at Aix.¹⁹⁷ Finally came the meeting with Jean-Baptiste de Pontevès and other leading Carcistes at La Bastide de Beauvoisin on 1 July. Carces arrived from Salon with an impressive retinue. He spoke slowly and with menace in defence of his family’s loyalty. The queen mother replied to his face that he and his clan had taken up arms ¹⁹¹ LCM, vii. 2. ¹⁹² Ibid. 11. ¹⁹³ Ibid. ¹⁹⁴ Ibid. 17. ¹⁹⁵ Ibid. 20. ¹⁹⁶ Ibid. 34. ¹⁹⁷ BN MS Fr 15563 fo. 263 [undated petition to the king from ‘Les depputez des eglises refformes de prouence’].

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without the king’s permission and that he could only expect his clemency if he accepted peace with his enemies forthwith. Carces tried to interrupt several times and, humiliating him before his clan, she told him to be quiet and let her finish. It was left to Hubert de Garde to reply, which he did with a pre-prepared text, attacking the Razats as ‘stay-at-home’ soldiers who had never lifted a finger in the king’s cause. The queen mother replied that past service to the king was not at issue. The central question was their raising of arms without permission. To earn the king’s clemency they must be prepared, that same day, to meet with leading Razat nobles ‘pour achever d’appoincter tout ce qui restoit de la querelle généralle’. It was, the queen mother reported, not without ‘grande et extresme peyne’ that she managed to get the Carcistes and their enemies into the same room together and swear, each and every one of them, to keep the peace, obey the new governor, sign a formal act to the same effect, and formally exchange the kiss of peace.¹⁹⁸ In due course and in return, she distributed letters of pardon from the king.¹⁹⁹ She was, as usual, over-optimistic in her assessment of her own achievements. After concluding the agreement with the Carcistes, she wrote: ‘le tout est si heureusement passé que j’en loue Dieu grandement, et croy certainement que ceste réconciliation est si bien faicte que tout le dict païs sera doresnavant en autant de paix, repos et tranquillité comme il estoit en désordre et danger’.²⁰⁰ Yet the grievances of the communities of Provence had not been resolved and the popular suspicion of the local nobility was not appeased. At Avignon, she summoned before her council ‘la pluspart des députez de tout le reste des communes du dicte païs de Provence’ and persuaded them to swear to keep the peace and dismantle their leagues. But the reluctant delegates refused to fund the peace-keeping forces of Alphonse d’Ornano, the mainstay of the Grand Prior’s authority in Provence. And, as the town syndic from Tarascon told her, many fundamental issues had been overlooked.²⁰¹ The Carciste–Razats feud did not recede immediately. So, although the queen mother took care to instruct the Grand Prior in how to avoid being the prisoner of either faction, his position remained contested by both sides.²⁰² In August, the bishop of Marseille, Frédéric Ragueneau, one of the sustainers of the communities of Provence, reportedly wrote to their deputies ‘qu’ilz n’obéissent à chose que le Grand Prieur leur commande ¹⁹⁸ LCM vii. 34–8. ¹⁹⁹ Ibid. 45. ²⁰¹ Ibid. 45 ²⁰² Ibid. 48

²⁰⁰ Ibid. 37.

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et qu’il le dye aux communes’.²⁰³ When the estates of the communities of Provence met once more at Saint-Maximin on 3 February 1580, it still complained at the exactions and high-handed attitudes of the nobility and cited examples of their continued feuding.²⁰⁴ The reformist agenda of the communities of Provence had not disappeared even though the immediate divisions had been appeased. Catherine de Médicis left Provence for Avignon in the first week of July and, after a week in the Comtat Venaissin, went northwards towards Grenoble. We have such reliable guides to this finale to her southern expedition that we need do no more than refer to their conclusions from the twin perspectives of the queen mother’s efforts to secure the peace in the Midi and the evidence of the reformist agenda in Dauphiné.²⁰⁵ Dauphiné was a frontier province with statutory autonomy and distinctive local taxation arrangements that had been written into the so-called ‘transport’ or transfer of Dauphiné to the French crown in 1349. This guaranteed the ‘liberties’ of the people of Dauphiné, the maintenance of its estates and other provincial institutions, granted its nobles the right to fortify their castles and fight private wars, and assured its commoners of immunity from regular, direct taxation. In reality, French monarchs found ways of limiting Dauphiné’s autonomy and imposing a taille. But the tax arrangements favoured the locally powerful—the nobility and clergy, but also the privileged towns and rural properties which urban notables purchased—at the expense of the villages. This was because provincial tax contributions were levied on the basis of a fixed proportion, calculated in accordance with the enumeration of feux in each community worked out in the middle of the fifteenth century. In most of Dauphiné, these contributions were then distributed around the taxpayers and, where taxable holdings were exempted, the remaining taxpayers were required to make up the difference.²⁰⁶ Townspeople, although subject to the taille on their urban and rural properties, sought to conceal their purchases of the latter from city ²⁰³ LCM vii. 118. ²⁰⁴ AD Bouches-du-Rhône C 3. ²⁰⁵ Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, ch. 5; Hickey, Coming, chs. 1–2; Dussert, ‘Catherine de Médicis’; Roman, ‘Documents’, 156–60; 293–305; Van Doren. ‘War, Taxes and Social Protest’; Van Doren, ‘Revolt and Reaction’; ‘Civil War Taxation’; Venault, Blon, and Farges, Un soulèvement. ²⁰⁶ In one region (the bailliage of Embrun, Gap, Brianc¸on, Du Buys-des-Baronnies, and parts of the Graisivaudun, known as ‘les Montagnes’—the easterly province), however, the principle of taille réelle, predominant in neighbouring Languedoc and Provence, prevailed. Under the taille réelle, all village property was listed in a register (cadastre) and classified as being owned by nobles or roturiers. Thenceforth it was exempt from taxation or taxed on the basis of that initial classification. Dauphiné was unique in having two, contesting ways of handling taxation and this was significant in its long-running ‘struggle for tax reform’.

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assessors; and walled towns exploited the French monarchy’s urgent need for money to purchase exemption from tax. Nobles and office-holders exploited their rights to tax exemption when they purchased rural properties—and the alienation of royal domain transferred a significant amount of property into noble hands. So, from 1548 onwards, some urban notables in Dauphiné found themselves paying much larger amounts of taxation, whilst others from the same group were exempt. And, in the rural world, the tax burden rose. An important section of the urban notability became alienated and they acted as a voice for the grievances of the commons. This sense of alienation was exacerbated by what Daniel Hickey describes as the ‘fiscal squeeze’ of the wars of religion. This explains the vocal determination of the third estate of the pays of Dauphiné to pursue an agenda of reform which extended from its fiscal arrangements to other aspects of its public life. Reform underpinned the more militant and popular movement that overtook the towns of the Rhône corridor in the spring of 1579. The agenda had already been formulated by the third estate of Dauphiné for the estates of Blois, expressed in a cahier drafted by Jean de Bourg, juge épiscopal in Vienne and delegate for the third estate from the bailliage of the Viennois. Its 100 clauses elaborated a general reform of provincial affairs, including a case for the third estate to become a separate entity in the Dauphiné estates, responsible for its own affairs. In particular, it presented the arguments for the inequity of tax levies in Dauphiné and the need for reform. In 1578, as villages and towns began to discuss armed resistance to the excesses of soldiers, seigneurs, and tax-collectors, the nobility and clergy at the estates of Dauphiné offered concessions.²⁰⁷ Against the background of the popular movements at Valence, Romans, Montélimar, and elsewhere in the spring of 1579, Jean de Bourg prepared another cahier for presentation at the estates of Dauphiné, meeting in Grenoble in April 1579.²⁰⁸ This document, drafted in forty-four articles, carried the signatures of ninety-six delegates from the third estate, a wide spectrum of towns and villages. This became the cahier that, along with additional documents, constituted the case for reform presented before the queen mother by delegates of the third estate of Dauphiné in Grenoble on 6 August 1579. These demands recapitulated the case already presented at Blois. The document began by associating one, recent ‘contract solempnel’ between the ‘estates general’ of Dauphiné and its prince with an older one. If the people ²⁰⁷ Hickey, Coming, 53–4.

²⁰⁸ Ibid. 55.

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were to maintain the peace, as they had solemnly sworn to do the previous year, the prince must, by mutual obligation, obey the ‘donation, rémission et transport’ of 1349 to which King Philippe had solemnly sworn.²⁰⁹ Their freedom from direct taxation had been infringed and the civil wars had afflicted the province, especially its poor people.²¹⁰ If the king could issue ‘lettres d’abolition’ for the pacification, why could he not also grant a fiscal amnesty?²¹¹ Recognizing the impossibility of this happening in the immediate future, the document pressed the case for a limit to tax exemptions.²¹² The central issue was the exemption claimed by nobles and office-holders for the rural properties which they had acquired and which were not subject to the arrière-ban. Those who had usurped the title of noble, office-holders, and land acquired by the older nobility in the more recent past (defined as the previous twenty years) should be subject to taille. In order to establish clearly which properties were, and were not, subject to tax, ‘sera faict ung catastre [i.e. ‘cadastre’]’ following the practice in the mountain bailliages.²¹³ Future levies would be on the basis of the cadastre, which would thereby eliminate lawsuits over disputed tax exemptions, prevent the erosion of the fiscal base, and reduce the numbers of non-payments.²¹⁴ ‘Par le moyen dudit catastre’, the third estate told Catherine de Médicis, ‘l’égalité sera entretenue et observée et le fort portera le foible, estant chose naturelle et raisonnable par disposition de droit tant divin que humain, que les charges réelles suivent les possesseurs des fonds esquelz elles sont annexés.’²¹⁵ Dispersed through the remaining articles of April 1579 were demands to change the provincial estates. No tax demands would be legal unless supported by letters patent of the crown, properly registered in each of the bailliages (¶¶ XXI; XXV). The provincial estates should once more become responsible for the tax on salt, and its contracts should only be open to tender from ‘patriots’ (i.e. Dauphinois) (¶XXII). The provincial estates should be held in rotation around the towns rather than always in Grenoble (¶XXIII). The third estate should have its own procureur and syndic (¶XXIV). It should have the rights to as many commis in the particular assemblies of the estates as the other orders (¶XXXI).²¹⁶ Some of these demands were innovations but, borrowing the crown’s own rhetoric: ‘lorsque la nécessité le requiert, comme elle faict à présent, il [n’y a] ny loy, statut, ²⁰⁹ Dussert, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, 166 [¶ ¶ 1–3]. ²¹¹ Ibid. 167 [¶ 8]. ²¹² Ibid. 167–8 [¶ 9]. ²¹⁴ Ibid. 168 [¶ 14] and 176–7. ²¹⁵ Ibid. 176.

²¹⁰ Ibid. 166–7 [¶ ¶ 4–7]. ²¹³ Ibid. 168 [¶ ¶ 10–13]. ²¹⁶ Ibid. 170–2.

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coustume, ny privillège, par dessus lesquelz il ne soit permis de faire novelles ordonnances, notamment quand l’évidente et manifeste utillité le requiert.’²¹⁷ Many of the issues raised by the articles of April 1579 were addressed in the Ordinances of Blois, issued in May 1579. As the lieutenant du roi in Dauphiné, Laurent de Maugiron, remarked when he received them: ‘la responce sur les cahiers de Bloys, si elle estoit arrivée à temps’ would have been able ‘beaucoup servir et arrêter la plupart des doléances’ from the estates of Dauphiné.²¹⁸ Queen Catherine had come into contact with the Ligue as she passed north on her way to Grenoble and did not like what she saw. In Montélimar, she took Jacques Colas on one side to dissociate him from it. ‘C’est ung esprit présumptueux et fol, duquel les sieurs de la noblesse ont avec occazion fort grande jalouzie,’ she remarked.²¹⁹ At Valence, the town militia refused to appear before her and so she assembled the notables to remind them of their duties.²²⁰ At Romans, Captain Paumier wanted to refuse her entry to the town.²²¹ But the ligueurs relented and, once inside, she met them and listened to a speech from Paumier. The following day she had two meetings, one with Paumier and another, later in the afternoon, with the notables.²²² In the morning, she asked him bluntly why he opposed the authority of the king. His reply is given in two versions, but they amount to the same thing: ‘Je suis serviteur du Roi, mais le peuple m’a élu pour la conservation du pauvre peuple affligé de la tyrannie de la guerre, et pour poursuivre humblement leurs justes remontrances contenues en leurs cahiers.’²²³ In the afternoon, she told notables that she would ask the king to pardon their wrongdoing so long as they swore to be ‘plus saiges’ henceforth.²²⁴ As she passed up the Rhône corridor, the gens de bien reported to her their fears that the Ligue menaced the noble order. Even at Grenoble, she found the ligueurs influential on the streets and in the minds of its inhabitants.²²⁵ This influenced the replies she gave to the cahier from the third estate, presented to her in August 1579. Jean de Bourg tried, without success, to argue that the document should be forwarded to the king. But Queen ²¹⁷ Ibid. 178. ²¹⁸ Ibid. 144. ²¹⁹ LCM, vii. 49. ²²⁰ Ibid. 49–50. ²²¹ Venault, Blon, and Farges, Un soulèvement, 58. ²²² LCM, vii. 55. ²²³ Brun-Durand, Mémoires, 78 f.; cf. Venault, Blon, and Farges, Un Soulèvement, 58 f.; cf. Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 173. ²²⁴ Venault, Blon, and Farges, Un soulèvement, 60. ²²⁵ Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 91–2.

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Catherine recognized its ‘égalité’ as coming from the same stable as that encountered at Nérac and would have none of it. Her replies gave no concessions, siding instead with the cahiers of the clergy and nobility.²²⁶ Where the demands of the third estate accorded with the Ordinances of Blois or previous ordinances, she was more emollient. As elsewhere, she extracted an oath to observe the pacification. But she failed to meet Lesdiguières and could not solve the problem of the incorrigible Bellegarde. The latter’s invasion of the marquisate at Saluzzo in the early summer of 1579 was as deliberate an act of defiance to royal authority from a former servant and favourite as it was possible to imagine. It reduced the king to nearapoplexy. Catherine eventually used Bellegarde as an intermediary to meet with some of the province’s leading protestants—those who had distanced themselves from the authority of Lesdiguières—at Montluel on 20 October 1579. The protestant delegation wanted seven additional strongholds and the queen mother demurred on the grounds that an agreement had already been made at Nérac.²²⁷ Reluctantly, however, she conceded funds to pay for their garrisons whilst they put their demands before the king, so long as they ceased their ‘engaries [i.e. seizure of beasts], corvées et aultres charges quelqueconques’. To oversee the implementation of this non-accord, she made Bellegarde commissioner for the peace in Dauphiné. Within a month he would be dead, poisoned (so it was believed by some) at the hands of a royal agent. Her own estimate of her achievement in Dauphiné conceded the failures, but dwelt on the success. ‘Aussy m’assuré-je que cest œuvre demeure si parfaict, qu’il y a longtemps qu’il ne leur adveint ung plus grand bien, ny pareillement une meilleure chose pour votre service.’²²⁸ Henri III was less prepared to take the signed accords and the answered petitions at their face value. ‘Bref, toutes ces paroles et lètres des uns et des autres ne sont que songes et mensonges: bien abylle qu’il s’an peust guarder.’²²⁹ In reality, the Ligue des Vilains was far from over, as the bloody events at Romans the following year would demonstrate.²³⁰ She had failed to win the consent of the Dauphinois protestants to the accord of Nérac and this potentially compromised the whole agreement across the Midi.²³¹ In the hearts and

²²⁶ ²²⁷ ²²⁸ ²³⁰

Dussert, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, 185–9, 185–6. BN MS Fr 3319 fos. 131–2; printed in Roman, ‘Documents’, 373–5. LCM, vii. 78. ²²⁹ Ibid. 77 n. 1. Ibid. 120 and Le Roy Ladurie, Carnaval, 118; 128–30. ²³¹ Ibid. 131.

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minds of determined Dauphiné lawyers and syndics, the issue of reform remained active. Queen Catherine’s expedition has taken us to concrete examples of the intractability of peace-making at a local level. It was a period of armed truce, exhaustion, frustration, settling of old scores, local rivalries, and the alienation of local notables from royal authority. As Henri de Guise said in April 1580: ‘nous sommes icy le bec dans l’eau entre paix et guerre.’²³² The Midi lived with the consequences of as prolonged a militarization of local society as France would experience anywhere from the end of the Hundred Years War to the last decade of the sixteenth century. It was a liminal period in which regions of southern France became testing grounds for competing notions of power and leadership. Some of these latter were local, pragmatic, and home-grown, drawing their strength from their capacity to protect, act, and make people afraid. They had not inherited their authority and they disdained power and leadership that had been acquired by birth and favour. Catherine de Médicis’s voyage sought to bring royal authority closer to local roots and to re-engage it in the hearts and minds of those who might otherwise be persuaded of the efficacity of these local competitors. It was a brave exercise but it ran the risks that the monarchy would become compromised, favouring one side rather than another, manipulated for local ends in regional quarrels, exploited to act as a cover for the less than savoury acts of feud, revenge, and private quarrel that were the inevitable detritus of an intense period of civil war. One important consequence of Catherine’s perambulation was that it brought elements of the high notability in France’s governing elite face to face with these different sources and conceptions of power and leadership. The individuals in Catherine’s entourage, the members of her council, doubtless saw what they wanted to see but, like the queen mother herself, they knew well enough when they looked into the eyes of local syndics that they claimed a different authority. For these hard-nosed, experienced diplomats and public servants, the popular revolts of the Rhône valley were ‘émotions populaires’—the equivalent of emotions in the individual psyche, and as unpredictable and dangerous, unless contained. But they also understood that the ‘perfection’ of peace would not be achieved simply by superficial agreements locally to live and let live, but by a profound ²³² Hérelle, La Réforme, ii. 102.

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change in other aspects of the social and political order and a revival in the moral ‘authority’ of the monarchy. With each attempted implementation of religious peace—Bergerac, Nérac, Fleix—Henri III’s government was faced anew with fresh evidence of the need for reform in different local contexts, and with that same insistent message.

7 France through the Looking Glass, 1581–1582 ‘La Réforme’ was synonymous with Calvinist protestantism in later sixteenthcentury France. Calvin offered a reformation that embraced not simply the church but all human society. Calvinist churches believed themselves to be ‘reformed’ communities where Christian worship had been stripped of the pollution of popery and superstition. Congregations were restrained in upright behaviour through the educative and disciplinary authority of church officers, collectively embodied in the consistory courts. They felt themselves in a position of moral superiority when it came to reform. In this chapter, we investigate protestant reformist literature in the wake of the peace of Fleix (November 1580). Its halting and uncertain nature provided the context to these writings.

FRENCH CALVINISTS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF THE PASSIONS The Huguenot Psalter was the great Genevan publishing success on the eve of the French civil wars. The sound of psalms being sung echoed in the streets of French cities in the summer of 1561. Calvin had published his Commentary on the Psalms not long before (in Latin in 1557; in French a year later). They offered an ‘anatomy’ of human emotions.¹ In the preface, he wrote: J’ay accoustumé de nommer ce livre une anatomie de toutes les parties de l’ame, pource qu’il n’y a affection en l’homme laquelle ne soit icy representee comme en un miroir. Mesme, pour mieux dire, le S. Esprit a yci pourtrait au vif toutes les ¹ The ‘anatomy of the passions’ was a phrase employed by (among others) Rabelais, Boistuau, Montaigne, and Paré to indicate that a ‘pathonomy’ of human emotions was as achievable as a ‘physiology’ of the human body.

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douleurs, tristesses, craintes, doutes, esperances, solicitudes, perplexitez, voire iusques aux emotions confuses desquelles les esprits des hommes ont accoustumé d’estre agitez.²

The Psalms are a purifying mirror with which to examine our own human weaknesses.³ As Olivier Millet has explained, Calvin drew on Philipp Melanchthon’s anti-Aristotelian perception that, in the human psyche, there was no hierarchy of ‘head’ over ‘heart’.⁴ The affective elements of our personality may not always be in our control; but, to a Christian justified in faith, ‘good sentiments’ do battle in the heart with ‘bad ones’, and it is faith alone that ‘pacifies the heart’.⁵ Like other humanists, Calvin was both fascinated and alarmed by the contradictory potential of human emotions—their capacity to lead us astray and turn us aright. He looked to the educative power of persuasion to harness our passions for good. For Calvin, the emotional condition of mankind tended towards a kind of torpor before the sinful nature of the human condition. We are the prisoners of our fears and despairs until we are shaken out of our stupor, awoken from our lethargy. The Psalms are precisely this ‘Reveille’, the awakening of our hearts to respond to the divine will. It is this quickening of the heart, the moment when we feel a total confidence in God’s word and providential will, that constitutes the beginning of our ‘reformation’. The human emotions become, through faith, a strength rather than a weakness. They form a kind of equilibrium, a stoic compendium or ‘compositio’ of ‘constancy’ which accepts all that the world can throw at us, with faith in God’s ultimate will. Calvin uses the word ‘instauratio’ more frequently than ‘reformatio’ to describe this process, equating it with the journey of the prophet Isaiah towards the Promised Land. Such an ‘instauration’ would not happen everywhere and to everyone. It would occur by God’s providential decree. As Calvin said to the sieur de Falais: ‘L’esperance qu’on pourroit avoir de reformation par le moien des hommes, est encor bien petite.’⁶ There were always and everywhere the impious, those whose emotions were out of control. The world was polluted with sin and superstition and there was little that an individual could do except to pray to God for ‘constancy’ in its midst. The reformed churches, of course, served as a refuge where the word of God was purely taught and the ² ³ ⁴ ⁶

Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss (eds.), Calvini in librum psalmorum commentarius, col. 16. Ibid. Millet, ‘La ‘‘Lec¸on des émotions’’ ’. ⁵ Ibid. 166. Bonali-Fiquet (ed.), Jean Calvin: Lettres, 45–6.

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sacraments rightly administered to those who swore to obey its Confession and Discipline. But the Discipline, unlike the Confession, was a domestic matter, a ‘private’ affair of the Reformed themselves. The churches were the outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual Reformation. France’s protestants were not, thereby, discouraged from engagement in the world. Had they not set about reforming it in the early 1560s? But their experience of the wars of religion to 1576 was that ‘reformation’ would not happen either by persuasion or by force. They had not succeeded in converting the majority of their compatriots; instead, the massacre of St Bartholomew had winnowed away the members of their flock. France’s protestants were left with an attenuated voice in national life, whose self-righteousness, coupled with their sense of grievance, created a distance and perspective between themselves and the rest of French society. Franc¸ois de La Noue, writing in 1583–4 during his imprisonment in the Low Countries, pitied France, ‘ce pauvre Estat decheu de son ancienne felicité’.⁷ Its failure to reform had brought it close to ‘une lourde cheutte’. He pictured ‘malversation’ and ‘corruption universelle’ everywhere. France was a tree that was dying, its roots exposed and its branches decayed. ‘They’—his disengagement reinforced the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’—suffered the consequences of ill-disciplined emotions.⁸ By indulging their base passions their opponents ‘sont devenus brutaux’, ‘bestes eschauffees & irritees’.⁹ France was, therefore, a world of superficiality, deceit, masquerade, and oppression. Its magistrates ‘se sont envelopes dans des retz tres-subtils de plaiderie’.¹⁰ Its governors use their nobility as a mask for exploitation. Everywhere there are excesses of deportment and demeanour—‘les ordures italiennes’ that have corrupted ‘l’ancienne simplicité’. France was close to ‘un grand saut’. Even the last plinth for effigies of French kings had been assigned in the great hall of the Parlement of Paris, he noted, to Henri III.¹¹ These images were not unique to La Noue. As the delegates from the colloquies of France set out in the wake of the pacification of Fleix to meet at the synod of Vitré in the early summer of 1583, Theodore Beza composed a letter from the Company of Pastors in Geneva, to be read out before the assembly. ‘Nous avons rendu et rendons graces à nostre bon Dieu et Pere’ he wrote, ‘de ce que par une singuliere benignité et bonté inestimable, il luy a ⁷ Sutcliffe (ed.), Discours, 7. ⁸ Ibid. 177. ⁹ Ibid. 22; 398. ¹⁰ Ibid. 29. ¹¹ Ibid. 34–5.

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pleu tellement moderer les très grands, très-longs, et très aspres assaux qu’ont soustenu les Eglises franc¸oises par-dedans et par-dehors, qu’il s’est contenté de purger sans consumer, et de chastier sans tuer . . . ’.¹² The purpose of the national synod was to advance ‘l’instauration et administration de sa [God’s] maison surtout pour remedier aux plus dangereux adversaires à savoir aux esprits ambitieux et fretillans’ so that it would continue to be the beacon and mirror of God’s word. Their task, too, was one of reform. But it was made the harder because, like its predecessors, the pacification of Fleix proved slow to implement and fragile.

THE PEACE OF FLEIX Fleix, a small fortified town on the river Dordogne to the west of Bergerac whose chateau belonged to Gaston de Foix, marquis de Trans, was where the ‘guerre du roi de Navarre’ was ended. Peace terms were agreed on 20 November and the formal signing of the forty-seven articles of the agreement before witnesses occurred on 26 November 1580.¹³ The royal negotiators were led by the king’s brother Franc¸ois, duke of Anjou. He left Tours for the south-west with a small entourage, having accepted the offer from the States General of the Netherlands to be their ‘prince and lord’ in the treaty of Plessis-lès-Tours in August. With the larger goal of an expedition to the Netherlands in mind, Anjou played a constructive role in the negotiations that began in October. He was accompanied by Louis de Bourbon, duke of Montpensier and Villeroy. Also present towards the close of the negotiations was the surintendant des finances, Bellièvre, and Artus de Cossé. Navarre was accompanied by the delegates from the protestant churches of upper Languedoc and Guyenne, and his own close servants, including Turenne, Beaupré, and Fleurac. The estates of Languedoc sent its own observer, but he was robbed and imprisoned on the way.¹⁴ Bellièvre and Villeroy were convinced that Navarre wanted peace, but they had doubts about Turenne and the others.¹⁵ The negotiations were based on articles presented by the ¹² Registres CPG, v. 235. ¹³ Bib Inst MS Godefroy 96 fos. 154–60. ¹⁴ The sieur de Cambiac, commis for the baron de Saint-Felix at the estates of Languedoc: see BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 522 [Henri de Montmorency to Henri III, Carcassonne, 16 November 1580] and BM Toulouse MS 613 fo. 379 v [procès verbal of the estates of Languedoc, Béziers, 2 January 1582]. ¹⁵ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 70 [Bellièvre to Catherine de Médicis, Fleix, 30 October 1580].

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protestant delegates.¹⁶ There was mutual recrimination as to who was to blame for the failure of Bergerac. There were important issues to settle, not least relating to the protestant seizure of the salt at Peccais and the stronghold at Montpellier.¹⁷ Eventually they reached an accord. Among the forty-seven paragraphs, the most significant concerned the south-west and Navarre.¹⁸ They included the establishment of a bi-partisan chambre de l’édit in Guyenne. There was also an agreement—confirmed the following month at Coutras on 16 December—to eliminate the contested protestant stronghold on the Garonne at La Réole and replace it by two other strongholds at Figeac in Quercy and Monségur in the Bazadois, both of which the protestants were permitted to hold for the term of six years originally accorded by Bergerac—i.e. until the end of September 1583.¹⁹ Anjou offered to spend two months in Guyenne after the conclusion of the peace to secure its implementation, an offer that an attack of jaundice in December 1580 readily enabled him to fulfil.²⁰ Peace and reform remained close cousins. The accords at Nérac had opened a window of opportunity for reform; but it had existed for no more than a year. So much remained to be done and the fragility of the kingdom was evident, as Villeroy and Bellièvre were among the first to recognize. In a memorandum of 28 January 1580, Villeroy placed the problems of the pacification in the south-west in the context of the wider reform of the realm, without which everything would go ‘en pipée’.²¹ Peace would come when the state was worthy of obedience and king’s servants lived up to their ‘pallium’ of authority. Villeroy supported the queen mother’s recommendation of two further chambres de justice to tackle difficult local feuds and corruption, one in Guyenne and one in Provence.²² He was concerned that Biron was compromised as lieutenant in Guyenne, a prisoner of its catholic factions. The king should consider replacing him with someone in whom Navarre had ¹⁶ BN MS Fr 4805 contains various papers relating to the negotiations at Fleix; Bellièvre’s surviving correspondence also records the progress of the negotiations—BN MS Fr 15891 fos. 68 [Bellièvre to Henri III, Fleix, 30 October 1580]; 70; 72 [6 November 1580]; 74 [22 November 1580], etc. ¹⁷ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 78 [undated list in Bellièvre’s hand]. ¹⁸ Haag, x. 171–8 [No. xlv]. Letters patent of Blois, 26 December 1580. ¹⁹ Ibid. 175 [art. xxxi] and codicil to the agreement, 177–8 [art. xlvii]. In the negotiations following Fleix, Puymirol was offered instead of Figeac. But it was close to strategically significant Agen, and Bellièvre counselled Figeac instead; BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 88 [Bellièvre to Henri III, n.p., n.d., endorsed 15 December 1580, autograph]. ²⁰ BN MS Fr 15563 fo. 210 [Franc¸ois d’Anjou to [?], [c. end] November 1580, ‘Flaye’, copy with annotations in Villeroy’s hand]; cf. Holt, The Duke of Anjou, 144. ²¹ BN MS Fr 15562 fos. 50–60. ²² Ibid., fo. 50 and v .

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confidence. At the same time, he recommended changes to the personnel of the governing council advising Navarre. Law enforcement lay at the heart of the problem. In many places in the Midi, catholics suspected the seneschals of being enfeebled and protestant-inclined. They supervised the law enforcement officers (prévôts des maréchaux). At Nérac, Pibrac and others had proposed the nomination of a well-respected, law-abiding gentleman in each locality whose authority would be reinforced by a company of local nobles on horseback, independent of the traditional seneschals.²³ Villeroy preferred to strengthen the hand of the seneschals since Navarre and the protestants trusted them more. He conceded that military discontent compromised the peace at every turn. Bellièvre echoed the same sentiments as he headed southwards to Fleix for the negotiations. Peace would only be solidified if ‘l’experience du mal eust peu fere changer dopinion a ceux qui nous ont mis a la guerre’.²⁴ South of the Loire, he found unpaid cavalry companies on the rampage, the peasantry ready to abandon their farms, and highway robbers who made even the main roads dangerous.²⁵ In Poitou, many royal servants were supine. M. de Courcelles, a local magistrate and member of Mary Stuart’s council of affairs, ‘faict son debvoir’. But the provincial treasurers at Poitiers were all absent from their posts. The provincial governor (Gui de Daillon, comte Du Lude) was enmeshed in a feud. The bishop reported great difficulty in persuading the clergy to pay their décimes. The lieutenant-général of the présidial was ‘bonne personne mais mol’. And the provincial prévôts des maréchaux ‘font mal leur debvoir’, one of whom should be replaced by ‘un homme de valleur a fontenay nomme Rapin’.²⁶ This was an epitome of the larger picture in many parts of the Midi.²⁷ Once he joined Anjou, Bellièvre fought a losing battle to keep the duke’s mind from the impending Flanders campaign.²⁸ Expecting to lead an expeditionary force of at least 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 cavalry in the ²³ See Biron’s memorandum of 28 February 1580 in Archives historiques de la Gironde, 4 (1863), 179–80. ²⁴ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 60 [Bellièvre to Henri III, Poitiers, 17 October 1580]; for Bellièvre at Fleix, see Poncet, Pomponne de Bellièvre, 86–90. ²⁵ BN MS Fr 15891 fos. 62–4 [Bellièvre to ‘Monseigneur’ (probably the chancellor, Charles de Birague), Poitiers, 19 October 1580]. ²⁶ Ibid., fo. 63v —i.e. Nicolas Rapin, vice-sénéchal at Fontenay-le-Comte in the élection of Niort. Rapin had come to the notice of Achille de Harlay and other members of the Paris magistrature, partly through his poetry and Plaisirs d’un gentilhomme rustique, published in 1576, dedicated to Guy Du Faur de Pibrac. ²⁷ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 74. ²⁸ Duquenne, L’Entreprise, 85–9.

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spring of 1581, the duke authorized captains to muster forces in France in contravention of the king’s instructions. From the French provinces bordering the Somme came worried missives about uncontrolled levying of troops.²⁹ In truth, there was a lot of smoke and mirrors in the relationship between the king and his brother in these months. In the official letter, dated 26 December at Blois, and carried south by Jacques de La Fin in the last days of 1580, the king committed himself to assisting his brother to fulfil the treaty of Plessis-lès-Tours.³⁰ But the promise contained a condition: it was dependent on the establishment of a firm peace within France.³¹ That limitation was essential.³² What he had agreed to was ‘à conniver selon nostre coutume’ in order to keep peace with his brother. But if the Flanders expedition meant sacrificing peace within France, it was out of the question. For her part, the queen mother reminded Anjou of the dangers in confronting the military power of the Spanish Habsburgs, and of his duties as heir apparent.³³ The ambiguity was still more evident in the documents carried southwards in the pocket of the trusted gentleman of the chamber Méry de Barbézières, sieur de La Roche-Chémerault.³⁴ Chémerault was ostensibly on his way to Philip II to express Henri III’s condolences on the recent death of his wife. But his instructions were also to explain his efforts to dissuade Anjou from the Cambrai expedition. And, en route, he was to seek out Anjou and try once more to change his mind.³⁵ But Henri III stopped short of an outright prohibition of the Flanders affair. In royal counsels, the calculation went something like this. It would be better if the duke did not engage in this reckless expedition. But to prohibit it would simply encourage an open disobedience to the king’s wishes and bad blood between the brothers. So, if he went ahead with the Flanders expedition, it had better succeed. For, if it failed, and especially if that failure could be laid at the door of the king his brother, it would have incalculable consequences.³⁶ By the time Chémerault arrived in the south-west, Anjou was on the point of giving his word to the deputies from the Dutch States to lead the expedition that spring (he did so by a declaration of 23 January). On 18 April, the duke had ²⁹ LH3, v, Nos. 4082; 4093–4; 4122; 4134; 4142, etc. ³⁰ Duquenne, L’Entreprise, 98–103; Dumoulin, ‘Jacques de La Fin’, 19–20. ³¹ Duquenne, L’Entreprise, annexe 4, 263. ³² LH3, v, No. 4094. ³³ LCM, vii. 302–3; 304–9. ³⁴ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, 96, 99, 101 etc. ³⁵ British Library King’s MS 112 fo. 174 f. and BN MS Fr 3301 fos. 1–2 [first set of instructions]; 2–3 [second set of instructions]. ³⁶ De Thou, ix [bk. 77], 29–35.

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word from Cambrai that Balagny’s regiment was on the point of capitulating before Parma’s forces.³⁷ Whatever the state of the Midi, he prepared to go north and informed the king and queen mother of his decision on 20 and 23 April.³⁸ Henri III was reduced to issuing an ordinance on 6 May outlawing all levying of troops and authorizing their disbanding by force, if necessary.³⁹ The reality was that royal authority was compromised by the Cambrai expedition, and at a critical juncture in the peace process within the kingdom. From the perspective of the advisers in Anjou’s council, however, the Netherlands expedition was part of the pacification, not an obstacle to it. It was reformation by diversion. There was an established tradition, especially among the protestant nobility, of regarding a foreign enterprise (so long as it was just, realistic, and feasible) as the best way of healing the kingdom. Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay’s memorandum to admiral Gaspard de Coligny of early August 1572 argued the case in its classic formulation: ‘c’est d’entreprendre une guerre dehors pour entretenir la paix dedans’.⁴⁰ The French nation had a naturally bellicose spirit, a reflection of all that was best in its nobility. But, like a pack of hounds, they needed regular exercise—a hunting expedition from time to time. That would have the additional merit of emptying the disruptive dross from the kingdom, thus preventing ‘mauvaises humeurs’ from causing a new civil war in the French kingdom. Of course, he added, the expedition must be ‘just, achievable and useful’. Similar arguments appeared in a memorandum, presumably from a member of the duke’s entourage and probably in the early months of 1581, offering a risk assessment of the duke’s enterprise.⁴¹ To counter the king’s opposition to it, and the charge of opportunism on Anjou’s part, the duke should emphasize that it was a means to ‘la pleine restauration du roiaulme’, an argument that appeared prominently in Anjou’s declaration to the Parlements of France of 21 May 1581.⁴² ‘Tout l’orage et toute la tempeste’ could now be tapped away from France to the Netherlands.⁴³ ³⁷ BN MS Fr 15906A fo. 375 [Bellièvre to Henri III, Coutras, 18 April 1581, copy]. ³⁸ Ibid., fo. 399; cf. LCM, vii. 373–4. ³⁹ Kervyn de Volkaersbeke and Diegerick (eds.), Documents, ii. 244–6. ⁴⁰ Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 73–80. ⁴¹ BN MS Fr 17318 fos. 55–64 [although headed (in a later hand) ‘Discours à Monsieur le duc d’Alenc¸on frère du Roy Henry III’, it clearly should be ascribed to the period between December 1580 and May 1581]. ⁴² Muller and Diegerick (eds.), Documents, iv. 47–55. ⁴³ Sully, who had been attracted by the Flanders expedition, later expressed the same sentiments, according to the Dutch envoy Aerssen—Nouaillac, Villeroy, 390.

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But the provinces of the Midi proved difficult to drain. Frustrated by Anjou’s desire to be on the march, Bellièvre acted as the eyes and ears of the royal court on the comings and goings in the Anjou entourage during these months. His papers provide us with a valuable perspective on how a senior figure in royal service viewed the implementation of the peace.⁴⁴ In public, he remained optimistic. If there were difficulties, these were tiresome setbacks that would eventually be resolved. In private, however, he was more pessimistic. He had the sense that, the more he sought to achieve, the less successful he was.⁴⁵ It was the most taxing mission of his career.⁴⁶ On his way back to court in late February, Villeroy reported that conditions in Poitou and Angoumois were as bad as or worse than those that had prevailed during the war.⁴⁷ From across the Midi, envoys and petitioners told Anjou similar stories. Bellièvre’s hopes of seeing the registration of the edict followed up by the establishment of the chambre de justice in Guyenne in the spring of 1581 and the equivalent tribunals in Languedoc and Dauphiné proved premature.⁴⁸ Many protestants were reluctant to recognize a peace which offered them, as they saw it, less by way of security than the accords negotiated at Nérac and at the hand of a royal mediator who was more interested in pursuing glory on a foreign field. We can go some way to measure protestant opinion by examining, first, the articles presented before Anjou at Cadillac on 6 March 1581 by protestant representatives from lower Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné.⁴⁹ An assured peace would only be realized, they said, in conditions where no party can prevail over the other. That meant broadening the terms of engagement for the peace. In twenty-six articles, they delineated how this would happen in three areas: their public worship, protection before the law, and security. In his replies, Anjou played a straight bat, unable to concede anything beyond the terms already agreed. He did, however, undertake to seek a generous amnesty. The garrison towns became a matter of separate negotiation with Navarre, to be accorded so long as the terms of Fleix were accepted within the three months agreed for its initial implementation. The implementation of the peace became a game of cat and mouse in the spring of 1581. Each ⁴⁴ BN MS Fr 15891 and 15995–6. ⁴⁵ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 173 [Bellièvre to Villeroy, Bordeaux, 17 March 1581]. ⁴⁶ Ibid. ⁴⁷ BN MS Fr 15906A fos. 192 [Villeroy to Bellièvre, Châtellerault, 23 February 1581] and 197 [Blois, 26 February 1581]. ⁴⁸ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 92 [Bellièvre to Henri III, Coutras, 20 December 1580]. ⁴⁹ BM Toulouse MS 613 fos. 253 [‘Articles présentés au duc d’Anjou [. . .]’ with replies (10 March 1581) and signatures of the deputies].

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sought to extract the maximum advantage for themselves, exploiting the fact that the peace had not been put into practice. Protestant opinions were most clearly reflected, however, in the assembly summoned by Navarre to Montauban on 26 May 1581. Anjou, not awaiting its outcome, left south-west France, which unsettled its deputies.⁵⁰ We know of thirty-six deputies who attended its proceedings.⁵¹ Only eight of them were ministers, although they were more important than this suggests since they drafted the assembly’s petition to the king.⁵² They included Claude de Sommain, sieur de Clairville, the pastor from Loudun who had been one of the few ministers at Navarre’s side in September 1577 at Bergerac. He attended Montauban as ‘ministre de la maison de Navarre’ and worked for a closer union between the churches and their ‘protector’.⁵³ Only two deputies came from north of the Loire, the majority being from western and southern France, especially Guyenne (18), Languedoc (7), and Dauphiné (3). They included noble deputies with responsibilities for the military protection of the protestant movement, some of whom would support Navarre through thick and thin. The allegiance of others was unclear. The deputies were experienced in administrative and political affairs, but they were torn between their hearts (which told them that the hasty departure of Anjou was an ill omen, and that they would never secure a satisfactory peace from Henri III) and their heads (which counselled caution after a military conflict had weakened their cause). Navarre and those around him thought they would be susceptible to peace, but Bellièvre was uncertain.⁵⁴ Condé and his operators (Claude-Antoine de Vienne, sieur de Clervant, and Pierre (Peter) Beutterich (var.: Beutrich)) were on hand, looking to play on the historic and emotive elements in the protestant cause. Who could tell how things would go? The most that royal servants could do was to ‘parler, de prier, [et] penser’. The assembly began inauspiciously in the town hall of Montauban. Condé and Navarre were absent and Clervant was elected as interim moderator. They began preparing their grievances on Saturday, 6 June and when Navarre arrived the following day he was ill. ⁵⁵ Only on Tuesday, 9 June did he appear before them to justify the peace at Fleix as a political necessity.⁵⁶ The military hostilities had revealed a lack of unity within the movement. They should ⁵⁰ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 196 [Bellièvre to ‘Messieurs’, no place, dated April 1581 in another hand at the head of the letter]. ⁵¹ Bib Mazarine MS 2604 fos. 86–122 [copy]; Mazuric, ‘L’Assemblée de Montauban’, 424–5. ⁵² Ibid., fo. 90v . ⁵³ DBF, viii, col. 1344; Haag, iv., cols. 380–1. ⁵⁴ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 174 [Bellièvre to Villeroy, Bordeaux, 17 March 1581]. ⁵⁶ Ibid., fo. 94v . ⁵⁵ Bib Mazarine 2604 fos. 92 and v .

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make the best of what they had in the hopes that their legitimate grievances would be answered by the French king. The following day, the deputies began to consider the petition of grievances drafted by the ministers, starting with the religious clauses of the edicts. They painted a picture of a peace that had not gone beyond the drawing board. In many parts of the Midi, it was not even proclaimed, save in the Parlements.⁵⁷ The places of worship accorded them in each bailliage had not yet been decided by provincial governors and lieutenants in accordance with Bergerac ¶6 (Fleix ¶8).⁵⁸ The same was true of burial grounds (Bergerac ¶20, Fleix ¶7).⁵⁹ The commissioners had not settled disputed questions of where the protestants had, or had not, exercised their religion publicly on 17 September 1577, the date prescribed at Bergerac for determining where they had established de facto rights of worship (Bergerac ¶XX; Fleix ¶¶7–8). There were numerous particular demands too, such as the rights of protestants to public worship in Metz, the question of private tutors to teach children the elements of the protestant faith wherever the family happened to reside (Bergerac ¶X; Fleix ¶4), and the rights of towns to appoint a protestant schoolmaster and to reimburse him on the proceeds of a cathedral prebend if they so chose. Underlying their discussion was suspicion of local officialdom and its unwillingness to respect the letter of the law. On 11 June, their attention passed to the enforcement of the judicial clauses, especially the chambres de l’édit. Not one of the tribunals had yet been constituted. The deputies from Dauphiné and Provence pressed for theirs to be bilateral like that of Languedoc.⁶⁰ They all wanted Navarre (and, through him, the local churches) to have rights to be consulted on the nomination of judges (catholic and protestant), and for the courts to sit in places without a garrison or commander.⁶¹ The location of the tribunal in Languedoc occupied a good deal of discussion, resulting in a proposal for an ambulant chamber, spending six months in upper Languedoc at L’Isle-en-Albigeois and the remainder of the year in lower Languedoc at Montagnac.⁶² A commission was established to meet with Navarre’s chancellor and draft a ‘règlement’ that would govern the relationship between the chambres de l’édit and the parlements to avoid jurisdictional conflicts.⁶³ The final day (12 June) was spent on matters of military security. They were particularly concerned not to surrender strongholds before the other aspects of the pacification were ⁵⁷ Ibid., fo. 95v . ⁶¹ Ibid., fo. 99v .

⁵⁸ Ibid., fo. 97. ⁵⁹ Ibid., fo. 96v . ⁶⁰ Ibid., fo. 99. ⁶² Ibid., fos. 99v –100. ⁶³ Ibid., fo. 100.

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carried out. They wanted a staged withdrawal, beginning with the mutual exchange of strongholds captured by Navarre in return for the surrender of chateaux belonging to him or accorded to the protestants under Fleix ¶¶29–30. Only then should the protestants withdraw from the temporary strongholds granted to them at Nérac.⁶⁴ The deputies from Dauphiné wanted to exchange the strongholds at Nyons and Serres for those of Gap and Livron. Clervant, Esperandieu, and a deputy from Dauphiné were chosen to go to court and, with Navarre’s representative there, Imbert de Biothière, sieur de Chassincourt, to present their petition. Behind the scenes, Beutterich worked on the deputies to persuade the king to reimburse Condé and Casimir’s debts.⁶⁵ Reluctantly, they committed the protestant movement to a new allocation, and promised payment by the end of the year. Such outstanding obligations were a reminder that peace had come at a heavy price, that it had yet to be paid, and that they had yet to feel its benefits in the Midi.

THE ‘CREDIBILIT Y GAP’ IN GUYENNE, 1581 – 1583 The implementation of Fleix mirrored that of Bergerac. It was not until 1582 that any appreciable progress was measurable in most of the Midi, and not until 1583 that normality began to return to ordinary life. Yet, the longer the peace of Fleix remained unfulfilled, the wider the gap between the promise of peace and its practical implementation. The resulting ‘credibility deficit’ was reflected by those responsible for carrying out the peace, echoed by the judges in the province’s law courts and tribunals whose authority was implicated in its implementation, and keenly felt by Navarre and his advisers. The full documentation of the faltering implementation of Fleix must await another occasion. Here, by way of exemplification, we concentrate on the difficulties encountered in making the peace of Fleix a reality in the king of Navarre’s own back garden of Guyenne. Navarre’s authority was essential to Fleix. Undermined by the military campaigns of the preceeding year, it was now exposed further in the failure to secure a peace which he had negotiated and to which he had put his name. The demands upon protestant congregations and individuals to meet the financial obligations of the movement created further internal tension in the summer of 1581. By early September, Anjou determined to send ⁶⁴ Bib Mazarine 2604, fos. 102v –103.

⁶⁵ Articles secrets (1671).

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an agent to Navarre’s court to examine ‘tous les moyens et ouuertures possibles’ to implement the peace. The agent in question was synonymous with the murky politics of the Midi: Mathurin Charretier, conseiller et secrétaire des finances to the duke of Anjou.⁶⁶ His instructions laid out the problem of a poorly received peace and its impact on the Netherlands enterprise. The duke had accepted the invitation from the Netherlands to ‘ouvrir le chemin à tous gens de guerre Indifferemment qui doibuent auoir l’honneur et le bien de leur patrye en recommendation s’abstenir à l’advenir de toutes querelles et dissentions interieures pour aller ailleurs s’exercer soubz les commandemens de sadite altesse’. But many refused to follow the call. The duke found himself ‘en grande perplexité’. Charretier’s role was to assist Navarre in accelerating the peace.⁶⁷ Charretier found Condé and Navarre frustrated. They had surrendered important strongholds—Cahors, Montagut, Mende—and received nothing in return. Périgueux, a key strategic location and one of a few major towns held by the protestants, had been snatched from them in July 1581. In Dauphiné, the protestant fortress of Livron had been dismantled by the duke of Mayenne. The Parlements refused to establish the judicial tribunals. The protestants were on the point of taking up arms and, so Charretier reported, Navarre ‘extremement presse de tous costez, et si le malheur estoit tel en franc asseurez vous quil ny aura remede que d’aller le plus fort au plus foible’.⁶⁸ In Guyenne, where Navarre was notionally governor, royal power was exercised by the king’s lieutenant, Armand de Gontaut, baron de Biron. The latter had also become compromised in the hostilities of 1580. He had failed to prevent the fall of Cahors to the protestants, a calamity in the eyes of south-west catholics.⁶⁹ They feared Agen would be the next target and, with it, the surrender of the strategic axis from La Rochelle to Béarn. There were many recriminations and Biron became the scapegoat. His defence was that he had predicted such a disaster, and that he had not been provided with the resources to fight a campaign on the necessary scale.⁷⁰ Loyal seneschals complained that they were left on their own, whilst towns like Agen pleaded their poverty and vulnerability. The army, such as it was, became afflicted ⁶⁶ BM Toulouse MS 613 fo. 263 [accreditation of Mathurin Charretier, Castellet, 7 September 1581, copy] and fos. 267–70 [letters of instruction, copy]; Greengrass, ‘Mathurin Charretier’. ⁶⁷ BM Toulouse MS 613 fo. 268v . ⁶⁸ Ibid., fos. 273–4 [Charretier to Franc¸ois, duc d’Anjou, n.d., copy], cited fo. 274v . ⁶⁹ Archives historiques de la Gironde, 7 (1865), 192–3. ⁷⁰ BN MS Fr 15563 fos. 24–5 [Biron to Henri III, 25 May 1580; and ‘advis’]; fos. 64–5 [ibid., 19 June 1580].

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by whooping cough and Biron fell ill too. In Bordeaux, Agen, and elsewhere there were whispers of catholic leagues.⁷¹ Biron’s lieutenancy in Guyenne, already foreshadowed as an obstacle to peace, was a casualty of Fleix. Replacing a provincial governor or lieutenant was, as we have already seen, a delicate matter. These individuals encapsulated military, administrative, and political authority in a regional context. Their removal provoked unforeseen political consequences. Rumours of Biron’s impending political demise were widespread in Guyenne in early 1581, fanned by Navarre and his supporters. They undermined Biron’s efforts to implement Fleix. Protestant contraventions of the ceasefire lasted into the spring.⁷² These then became excuses for catholics to refuse to carry out their own obligations under the pacification.⁷³ A petition from the ‘catholics of the provinces of Guyenne and Languedoc’ openly sought a new ‘Hercules’ as their protector.⁷⁴ The protestants were inveterate rebels (they claimed), which was why they needed a strong lieutenant—by implication, a replacement for Biron. Biron’s successor was officially announced at the end of August 1581.⁷⁵ Jacques de Matignon was the first provincial lieutenant in the south-west for a generation without local roots. He was from lower Normandy, where he had served in the earlier civil wars. Militarily, his experience stretched back into the 1550s and he was one of the few individuals in the 1580s who could recall the battle of Saint-Quentin. He had been nominated a marshal on 14 July 1579 as a reward for being removed from the lieutenancy in Normandy in place of the royal favourite, Franc¸ois d’O. But he earned his baton at the siege of La Fère in 1580. Not the least of the reasons for appointing him to Guyenne in 1581 was the knowledge that Condé would respect Matignon’s military talents after being on the receiving end of them. Politically, there ⁷¹ Tamizey de Larroque, ‘Franc¸ois de Noailles’, 221. ⁷² BN MS Fr 15906A fo. 5 [‘Memoire de ce qui ses faict & passe depuis le commencement de decembre 1580’] and fo. 207 [Biron to Bellièvre, Bordeaux, 28 February 1581]. Ibid., fo. 72; fo. 259 [letters patent of commission to the sieur d’Ussac from the duke of Anjou, 12 March 1581]; fo. 203 [d’Ussac to Bellièvre, La Réole, 28 February 1581], fo. 300, etc. For the contraventions at Monségur, one of the strongholds to be handed over to the protestants, see the reports of the président des Aigues to Bellièvre [ibid., fos. 111 and 141]. For the extortions by the protestant garrison at Mas-de-Verdun on commercial traffic along the Garonne, see ibid., fo. 183 [Biron to Bellièvre, Bordeaux, 21 February 1581]. Other difficulties are reported by Biron in his dispatch of 18 February 1581 to Bellièvre [fo. 163]. ⁷³ Ibid., fo. 174 [Villeroy to Bellièvre, ‘St Andréas, près Clusac’, 19 February 1581]. ⁷⁴ Remonstrance des catholiques, 5. ⁷⁵ BN MS Fr 11469 fo. 98 [lettres patentes de commission for Jacques de Matignon, copy, dated 29 August 1581]; the same commission, dated 28 August, is also to be found in BM Bordeaux MM 369, v, fos. 222–3. The king of Navarre was forewarned, however, about the decision on 1 August 1581—see LH3, iv, No. 4296.

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were gibes about Matignon being a royal favourite (‘monsieur le maréchal mignon’) but they were hardly justified. Although he had earned the king’s respect and was included among the first promotions to the chivalric order of the Holy Spirit in 1578, his background was as a protégé of the queen mother, whose political astuteness he emulated. Matignon’s appointment to the most sensitive post in provincial France in 1581 turned out to be a success. If Fleix was made to work in Guyenne, it was in large measure Matignon’s achievement. Matignon made his way south in the late autumn of 1581. His difficulties were encapsulated by the situation at Périgueux. Capital of the Périgord, it had a large protestant minority and was one of the stronghold towns granted for six years by Bergerac, confirmed at Nérac and reassigned at Fleix. Nevertheless, the catholic nobility of the Périgord invaded the city in late July 1581, expelling a rapacious protestant garrison under Captain Bellesouffle. In a manifesto to the seneschal of the Périgord, André de Bourdeille de Brantôme, they justified their action as a liberation from oppression.⁷⁶ Bourdeille, sympathetic to their cause, supported their suit for pardon from the king. For years, he had heard of nothing other than ‘des violences, cruaultes, meutres inhumains et en grand nombre dextorssions qui ont este commises par la garnison de ladicte ville [i.e. Périgueux] du temps quilz lont tenue sans que jamais en soyt este faicte de justice.’⁷⁷ Such a contravention of the peace could not be overlooked, however, by Biron, for whom it proved the crowning ignominy. In a draft letter to Navarre, Henri III promised that prompt justice would be meted out to the perpetrators by Matignon, his replacement.⁷⁸ In return, he asked Navarre to restrain those in his party who wanted to use the incident to make trouble elsewhere. Matignon understood that the situation called for the most delicate of touches. Given its history of extortion, the former protestant garrison would simply not be accepted back into Périgueux. His solution was to offer an alternative stronghold outside the Périgord at the stronghold Puymirol, to the east of Agen.⁷⁹ But therein lay a further problem. The sieur de Lusignan was its incumbent governor. Sheltering behind a promise that he said he had received from the queen mother, and despite reiterated blandishments from Navarre, there he ⁷⁶ BN MS Fr 15565 fo. 19 [copy, unsigned]. ⁷⁷ Ibid., fo. 25 [André de Bourdeille, sieur de Brantôme, to Henri III, Bourdeille, 28 September 1581]. ⁷⁸ BN MS Fr 15565 fo. 43 [Henri III to Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre, 14 August 1581, draft in the hand of Villeroy, no place]; cf. BN MS 500 Colbert 29 fo. 446 [ibid., 22 August 1581]. ⁷⁹ BN MS Fr 15565 fo. 156 [Matignon to Henri III, 2 December 1581].

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remained, refusing to move. It took further negotiations (lasting into 1582) before he was persuaded to move on.⁸⁰ In addition, Matignon offered the protestants 50,000 écus of compensation for those of their number who had been murdered in the Périgueux incursion. The problem was that such a sum would have to come from local sources, possibly the Périgord itself.⁸¹ That was hardly welcome news, doubtless one of the reasons for the ‘certains bruits et assemblées de gens de guerre’ among Périgord catholics in the autumn and winter of 1581–2.⁸² Matignon and Henri III may have been correct to suspect that Biron had a hand in this movement. Matignon’s most delicate mission was to try to effectuate a reconciliation between his disgraced predecessor and Navarre.⁸³ Biron made no secret of his discontent, arriving in Bordeaux on 3 December 1581 and letting it be known that he thought Fleix was a sham.⁸⁴ With some delicacy, however, Matignon secured Navarre’s assent to a public reconciliation with Biron.⁸⁵ The two men eventually met under Matignon’s watchful eye in the spring of 1582 and made their peace. Matignon issued an assignation in the king’s name for the payment of 50,000 écus to Navarre early in 1582, although he admitted that he did not know when or how it would be honoured.⁸⁶ For his part, Navarre refused to surrender the stronghold of Bazas until he received the promised sum. Bazas was an episcopal town with a seneschalcy and présidial court, a strategic location between Bordeaux and Béarn.⁸⁷ The affair dragged on through 1582, the ostensible reason for Matignon’s continued presence in the south-west despite his insistent wish to be relieved.⁸⁸ By the end of the year, Navarre had begun to receive some of the amount promised, it being borrowed by Matignon from the Bordeaux treasurer Ogier de Gourges in advance of its being raised as a forced loan from the bourgeois of Bordeaux.⁸⁹ But Navarre refused to give way at Bazas and Henri III, never really confident that he could rely on Navarre, became more doubtful: ‘je recognois tant de légèreté et incertitude ez volontés et actions de mondit frère [Navarre] que j’attribue aux artifices des huguenots ⁸⁰ BN MS Fr 3354 fo. 119. ⁸¹ Monaco, Matignon Papers, MS J59 fo. 143 [Henri III to Matignon, Paris, 18 November 1581, copy]. ⁸² Ibid., fo. 140 [Henri III to Matignon, Paris, 27 October 1581, copy]; fo. 160 [Henri III to Matignon, Paris, 13 December 1581, copy]. ⁸³ Ibid., J59 fo. 143. ⁸⁴ BN MS Fr 15565 fo. 172 [Henri III to Bellièvre, Paris, 5 December 1581]. ⁸⁵ Ibid., fo. 164 [Henri III to Matignon, Paris, 16 December 1581]. ⁸⁶ Monaco, Matignon Papers J57 fo. 8. ⁸⁷ Ibid., fo. 165 [31 March 1583]. ⁸⁸ Ibid., fo. 89 [1 September 1582]; fo. 110 [12 October 1582]; fo. 123 [4 November 1582]. ⁸⁹ The negotiations began in May 1582—BN MS Fr 22369 fo. 353v .

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que je ne me puis assurer de ses promesses qu’elles ne soient effectuées’.⁹⁰ By the spring of 1583, half the payment for Périgueux had been made and, although Bazas had still not been returned, there were grounds for optimism.⁹¹ Another complexity concerned the Parlement of Bordeaux. Fleix was registered there on 9 January 1581, but the secret articles and letters patent attached to the edict were not confirmed until 5 January 1582.⁹² ¶11 of Fleix decreed the dispatch of a chambre de justice to Guyenne. It was to be composed of two présidents, fourteen conseillers, and two law officers from Paris, ‘gens de bien, amateurs de paix, d’intégrité et suffisance requise’, the nominations being submitted to Navarre for his approval.⁹³ The Parlement of Bordeaux did not relish the prospect of magistrates from outside the duchy meddling in its affairs.⁹⁴ The list of proposed magistrates was forwarded to Navarre’s chancellor for confirmation before the end of January 1581.⁹⁵ But magistrates were not easily persuaded to spent two years away from Paris on a commission which would set them at odds with colleagues in Bordeaux.⁹⁶ Navarre used the delay to seek an extension in the tribunal’s authority.⁹⁷ Meanwhile, the judges at Bordeaux were in no mood to compromise since they had just been constrained to agree to an additional chambre des requêtes.⁹⁸ In the end, the tribunal opened its doors at Bordeaux on 26 January 1582. On the bench were two présidents (Pierre Séguier and Jacques Violle) and thirteen conseillers, all of them serving members of the Parlement of Paris. At least two had seen service in pacifying Guyenne in the past. Among the remainder were two close relatives of Séguier (Pierre II Séguier and Jean Séguier, master of requests) and a pléiade of Parisian juridical talent. Its avocatgénéral was the distinguished jurist Antoine Loisel. He personally oversaw the presentation of some 2,000 cases, earning himself letters of nobility for his zeal.⁹⁹ His speeches at the opening and closure of each session were duly ⁹⁰ Ibid., fo. 140 [Henri III to Matignon, Paris, 26 January 1583, orig.]. ⁹¹ e.g. Franc¸ois de Noailles, bishop of Dax, to Villeroy on 14 February 1583: ‘Je voiois ce me semble les affaires en bons tems et en train d’aller mieulx par sa [Matignon’s] prudante et patiante conduite’—Tamizey de Larroque, ‘Franc¸ois de Noailles’, 280. ⁹² Brives-Cazes, ‘Le Parlement de Bordeaux’, 354; BN MS Fr 22369 fos. 337v –342; fo. 349v . ⁹³ Haag, x. 173. ⁹⁴ BN MS Fr 22369 fo. 344 [3 March 1582]. ⁹⁵ BN MS Fr 15906A fo. 85 [(Philippe) Hurault (de Cheverny) to Bellièvre, 27 January 1581]. ⁹⁶ BN MS Fr 15905 fo. 131 [Henri III to Joseph Eymar, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 12 February 1581]; cf. BN MS Fr 15906A fo. 129 [Henri III to Géoffroy de Mauléon, same date]—LH3, iv, Nos. 4144 and 4145. ⁹⁷ BN MS Fr 15906B, fo. 413. ⁹⁸ BN MS Fr 22369 fos. 346 [27 May 1581]; 348 [21 July 1581]. ⁹⁹ Brives-Cazes, ‘Le Parlement de Bordeaux’, 29.

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published.¹⁰⁰ In his discourse before the assembled dignitaries at Bordeaux, Loisel began with an elaborate compliment to the history and traditions of the duchy of Guyenne.¹⁰¹ These had been compromised, however, by the civil wars. As befitted this son of a physician, he included various medical analogies. The civil wars were ‘vne paralsie ou mal caduc’. The remedy was ‘ceste premiere medecine de nos grands peres’—peace, law, and justice. Loisel then launched into an exposition on the theme of justice as ‘the eye of the ruler’. Justice was not a matter of dispensing favour as between one individual and another. It was an all-seeing, ever-present watchfulness, a detached and impassive presence that saw into the hearts and minds of individuals and was capable of discerning the right from the wrong, the meum from the tuum. Justice was an eye that was not ‘farouche’. Fearless, it created no fear in those who had nothing to hide. It saw clearly, discerned truthfully. It had no need for a looking glass. His speech was followed by another from président Séguier: ‘le Roy témoigne de son vif désir de rétablir la paix dans la province par la justice.’¹⁰² The first decision of the court was to require all local officials to obey the recent peace. After listening to the discourse, the magistrates from Bordeaux retired to consider what had been said. Some of them were inclined to take Loisel’s speech as a calculated insult—had he not implied that they did not have the capabilities to be ‘the eye of the ruler’? Matignon and the acting master of requests in his entourage, Geoffroy de Camus, sieur de Pontcarré, came before them to smoothe their ruffled feathers. In due course, they sent two of their number to the chambre de justice to assure them of their cooperation. When they made a rather pointed reference to Loisel’s discourse, Séguier leaned forward and, in a low voice, assured them: ‘que le Roy les auroit envoyez en Guyenne contre leur volonté et quilz avoyent tous moyens de se nourrir sans telles commissions quilz n’auroyent recherchées, que toutefois ils estoyent au seruice de la Cour et quilz ne feroient rien qui luy desagrea.’¹⁰³ Despite these assurances, tensions between the chamber and the Parlement of Bordeaux quickly developed.¹⁰⁴ On 16 February 1582, Loisel published regulations governing access to the tribunal which bypassed the Parlement. The visiting judges pointed the finger at Bordeaux’s lax judicial practices, ¹⁰⁰ Antoine Loisel, Deux remonstrances (1584); La Guyenne (1605). Cf. Parsons, ‘The Political Vision’ and Greengrass, ‘Amnistie’. ¹⁰¹ La Guyenne, 6–17. ¹⁰² Brives-Cazes, Le Parlement de Bordeaux, 49 f. ¹⁰³ BN MS Fr 22369 fo. 352 [26 January 1582]. ¹⁰⁴ Brives-Cazes, ‘Le Parlement de Bordeaux’ and La Chambre de justice.

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offering the contrasting spectacle of the fearless eye of royal justice when a soldier from Toulouse (Jean Daporte), accused and convicted of various crimes, was sentenced to be dragged around Bordeaux on a hurdle before being hanged at the Porte Sainte-Catherine. Jean de Rostaing, a Huguenot gentleman from Poitou whose exploits were notorious, became their most publicized victim, decapitated at Bordeaux on 1 June 1582. Others, however, prudently took cover and escaped with impunity, the court not having the means to secure their conviction. Writing to Matignon on 19 August 1582, Henri III urged him to support the work of the judges, especially since he was not convinced that Navarre would prove cooperative.¹⁰⁵ But the chambre de justice was not to be the panacea for peace that its protagonists claimed. It was difficult to determine whether cases were covered by the amnesty at Fleix or not. Judges were often reduced to enjoining peace on the parties involved. In the case of military strongholds like Monségur, Bazas, and Périgueux, judicial officials found it impossible to gain access and pursue cases. Even when they did, they were frustrated by witnesses refusing to come forward and conflicting testimonies. The issues were often far from straightforward. For the protestants in Guyenne, a bench of catholic judges from Paris was no substitute for a bicameral tribunal. But, in the short term, Navarre and Condé were prepared to give it their qualified support. Navarre welcomed them to his duchy.¹⁰⁶ He enjoined his coreligionists to cooperate with their enquiries.¹⁰⁷ When the judges were confronted with having to investigate and adjudicate on the sectarian insurrection at Monségur in early June 1582, they sent their most experienced judge, Adrien Dudrac, to investigate. He was supported by Condé.¹⁰⁸ In the course of their two years in Guyenne, the judges from Paris experienced the reality of continuing sectarian suspicion. But they also glimpsed the possibility of peaceful coexistence. Benefitting from the ‘quasimodo’ two-week vacation in 1582, de Thou, Pithou, and Loisel took off to explore Gascony. Their visit took them to Tarbes and Pau before going on to sample the medicinal baths of Béarn and pay a visit to La Bastide de Clarence. There they witnessed protestant and catholic church services taking place in the same building at different times of the day: ‘la diversité de religion ne causait entre eux aucune querelle, et ils étaient accoutumés à vivre ensemble paisiblement’, one of them noted in the same ¹⁰⁵ BN MS Fr 22369, fo. 83 [Henri III to Jacques de Matignon, 19 August 1582]. ¹⁰⁶ BN MS Dupuy 569 fo. 32 [Henri de Navarre to the judges of the chamber of justice, Nérac, 14 January 1582]. ¹⁰⁷ Brives-Cazes, ‘Le Parlement de Bordeaux’, 79. ¹⁰⁸ Ibid. 106.

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way that they might have recorded a hot medicinal spring or a curious rock formation.

THE MIROIR DES FRANC ¸ OIS Satire works best when there is a credibility gap. The Miroir des Francois was, as its subtitle indicated, a contribution to the literature about the reform of justice, finance, the major institutions of the kingdom, and its economy.¹⁰⁹ It was published in an initial edition of 497 pages, the preface being signed off (probably fictitiously): ‘De Nancy, ce premier octobre 1581’. The date tallies, however, with the internal evidence of the text where no event later than July 1581 is referred to.¹¹⁰ There was then a second edition in 736 pages where the title page specified 1582 as the date. Although it went to some lengths to disguise it, there is no doubt that it was the product of the Genevan print-shops, probably that of Laimarie.¹¹¹ The French king suspected as much and complained about it and the Secret des finances (with which it was already associated) to the Genevan envoy in Paris in February 1582.¹¹² Its authorship, however, has long been a matter for speculation. The title page carried the pseudonym ‘Nicolas de Montand’. Who was Montand? The author covered his tracks and we do not know. There is a tradition going back to the Burgundian seventeenth-century érudit Bernard de La Monnoye linking its authorship to the Réveille-matin des Franc¸ois (1573). The internal evidence for doing so is not compelling. Somewhat more persuasive is the possibility that the author was also that of the Secret des finances. The latter was a product of the Genevan presses of Jean Du Bois and Jean Berjon and had been published in the early part of 1581.¹¹³ On the title page it was attributed ¹⁰⁹ ‘Le Miroir des francois, compris en trois livres. Contenant l’estat et maniement des affaires de France tant de la iustice, que de la police, auec le reglement requis par les trois Estats pour la pacification des troubles, abolition des excessiues tailles, & gabelles: dons gratuits & charitatifs equipolans à decimes, suppression des supernumeraires officiers, demolition des citadeles, restauration des vniuersitez, colleges & hospitaux, taux & appreciation de viures, & autres marchandises: punition contre les vsuriers, tyrans, & rongeurs de peuple. Et generalement tous les secrets qu’on a peu recueillir pour l’embellissement & enrichessement du Royaume, & soulagement du public.’ ¹¹⁰ Confusingly, some of these initial editions in 497 pages are dated to ‘1582’ in library catalogues although they are all one and the same edition—Cazauran, ‘Le Miroir’, 59 n. 3. ¹¹¹ Hutton, Index aureliensis, 113.193. ¹¹² Fazy, ‘Genève, le parti huguenot’, 122. ¹¹³ William Waad, for example, forwarded a copy to Sir Francis Walsingham from Paris in May 1581, by which time it was already making its impact—CalSPFor (1581), 153; Chaix, DuFour, and Moeckli (eds.), Les Livres imprimés à Genève, 101.

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to another pseudonym: ‘Nicolas Froumenteau’ (var.: Fromenteau). Once more, the identity is a matter of mystery, though Roman d’Amat offers the possibility that it may have been Jean de Frotté, a former secrétaire des finances of Marguerite de Navarre.¹¹⁴ The author of the Miroir alludes to a further text in his dedicatory preface. Addressing the queen of France, Louise de Lorraine, he refers to the treatise which he had already written on the ‘palais royal’ which lays out ‘tous les thresors du monde’, including the ‘superstitions & idolatries Papales’ into which it has fallen. The reference could be to the Secret des finances but it is more likely to the Cabinet du roi de France, also published in Geneva, albeit (since its preface is dated 1 November 1581) slightly after the Miroir.¹¹⁵ Surviving copies often have the Miroir bound in with the Cabinet. The Cabinet was published under the author initials ‘N.D.C.’ These have been decrypted as possibly ‘Nicolas Barnaud de Crest’, a much-travelled and mercurial Dauphiné physician with alchemical interests, a protestant who later translated an important work by Fausto Sozzini (L: Socinus) into Latin, someone who courted controversy in what he wrote and took care to cultivate his anonymity.¹¹⁶ There is a tradition, going back to the seventeenth-century protestant avocat and philologist Jacob Le Duchat, which assigns all or some of these works to the same hand (‘Froumenteau’, ‘Barnaud’, ‘Montand’, or whomever).¹¹⁷ But there is another—reflected in the contradictory biographical entries for ‘Barnaud’ and ‘Froumenteau’ in La France protestante —which hesitates to do so (and particularly to associate the Cabinet and the Miroir with one another) on internal, stylistic grounds.¹¹⁸ The internal evidence does not take us further than that there was a ‘family’ of satiric writing emanating from Geneva in 1581.¹¹⁹ The works have several features in common: pseudonymous authors, satirical dedications to the king or queen of France, a closely observed knowledge of recent events in France (often dressed up in invented statistics), lengthy expositions, sometimes in dialogic form, a familiar voice (they mostly ‘tu-toie’ their interlocutors, and thus the reader), an interest in revealing the hidden ‘secrets’ of its governing echelons, and ‘reform’ as a central issue. They each reflect a frustration with ¹¹⁴ DBF, vi, col. 498; xiv, cols. 1406 and 1414—accepted circumstantially by Wood, ‘The Impact’, 132 n. 4. ¹¹⁵ Le Cabinet du roy de France (1581). Cf. Harvez (ed.), La Polygamie. ¹¹⁶ Brun-Durand, Dictionnaire, i. 61–73; DBF, v, cols. 497–8. ¹¹⁷ Bulletin des amis du château de Pau, 15 (1973), 15–23. ¹¹⁸ Haag, i, cols. 843–53; Cazauran, ‘Le Miroir’, 59 n. 2. ¹¹⁹ To this ‘family’ of writings we should add La Supreme Restavration du royavme de France (1581).

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the slow pace of the pacification and seek to explain the underlying causes for it. Underneath these similarities, which may have been the result of emulation, there are also differences of technique, target, tone, and range. ‘Froumenteau’ is a political arithmetician, seeking to show that there was a ‘black hole’ in the French monarchy’s finances. ‘N.D.C.’ exploits political arithmetic to develop a scabrous attack on the Gallican church and prove that it absorbs a revenue of 92 million écus to maintain its corrupt hangers-on. ‘Montand’ offers a wide-ranging and sophisticated satire, replete with biblical citations and a profound reformation at its core. Of these works, the Miroir francois had the most lasting impact. Agrippa d’Aubigné read it in the 1590s with ‘admiration et plaisir’.¹²⁰ Its influence may be detected in his satiric writings.¹²¹ Louis d’Orléans, the catholic League’s most eloquent advocate, alluded to its ‘plan du gouvernement renversé’ in 1590 and used it to paint the protestants as dangerous to the state.¹²² Pierre de L’Estoile knew the text well.¹²³ There are at least two passages where he either wrote or reworked passages in his journal with the Miroir in front of him.¹²⁴ The themes of the text were refashioned to suit the climate of reform in the wake of the pacification at Nantes in 1598.¹²⁵ ‘Montand’ had a good knowledge of the French situation and especially Dauphiné. He was well read in contemporary political literature. In addition to familiar reformist discourses about the institutions of the state he also examines the informal political processes of favour and reward, corruption and malversation, and the redress of grievances. He delineates what a thorough reform of its key institutions (universities, hospitals, abbeys and monasteries, citadels) might look like. He is practical about how economic reform might improve the well-being of the commonwealth. He sustains a Genevan sense of what a well-governed and regulated community should be like. The structure of the work is complex and Menippean. It is composed of a sequence of informal dialogues of varying lengths, occasionally interspersed with (mostly) anonymous, borrowed sonnets and odes that loosely connect with the argument and act as an assumed voice of popular authority. It ends with a lengthy diatribe from the author. Some of the dialogues take us ¹²⁰ Weber, Bailbé, and Soulié (eds.), Agrippa d’Aubigné: Œuvres (1969), 877. ¹²¹ Céard, ‘Le Style satirique’. ¹²² Cazauran, ‘Le ‘‘Miroir des Franc¸ois’’ et ses réformes’, 162. ¹²³ He mentions its publication, albeit pre-dating it several years—L’Estoile, ii. 155. ¹²⁴ Smith, The Anti-Courtier Trend, 191–2; compare Le Miroir (1582), 17–18 with L’Estoile, ii. 145 [October 1577] and 116 [July 1577]. ¹²⁵ Le Miroir francois (1598).

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outside real time and place (the book begins with the sons of Noah arriving at the court of the king of France after the Flood). Others take us to the precise time and place of the estates of Blois in 1576–7. Two interlocutors are well-known contemporary personalities. In the dialogue between Claude Marcel, intendant des finances, and Pierre Versoris, avocat and Paris delegate at Blois, ‘Montand’ adopts the familiar device of allowing these characters to reveal their ‘private’ views, at odds with their ‘public’ ones. The rest are emblematic figures with suggestive, ambiguous names. The third dialogue, for example, is between two ‘projectors’, ‘Honorat’ and ‘Tubalcain’. ‘Honorat’ is the honest homme de bien. ‘Tubalcain’ is the descendant of Cain described in Genesis 4: 33. In none of the dialogues is there a clear dichotomy of views. Instead, the reader is invited to choose within a deliberate ambiguity as to which character to side with. ‘Montand’, in other words, is a ‘speculator’. He consciously unsettles the reader, creating a world which is, by turns, familiar and strange, one where the reader has to follow his own sense of the right way forward. This textual openness is reinforced by the abrupt changes in subjects under discussion and the lack of a programmatic treatment of issues. In the dedicatory preface ‘Montand’ describes his magic mirror. It is a ‘miroir luisant’ illuminating the secrets from the hidden corners of the realm. Just as the natural world has its secrets, revealed by alchemists, so the political and social world has its hidden aspects.¹²⁶ The mirror’s reflection is so clear that it ‘perce les tenebres . . . & monstrent la tache & macule aux hommes vicieux, contempteurs de Dieu, blasphemateurs, Epicuriens, Sardanapales, atheistes, sodomites, meurtriers’.¹²⁷ The queen has only to go into her cabinet and hold it up in her right hand and, by its light, she will discover the hidden secrets of the kingdom. The text similarly invites the reader to hold the book in one’s right hand in order to uncover the unfamiliar aspects of the political world around. The mirror is parabolic, a truth-telling ‘mirror of vanities’ that reflects the corruption and malversation in the world around, a ‘mirror of prudence’ in which the precepts for good government are revealed.¹²⁸ But it is also enigmatic—telling the truth only to those who have eyes to see, after the fashion of the Mirror of Alchemy of Roger Bacon (which, as it happens, had been translated and published in French ‘par un gentilhomme du Dauphiné’ signing himself ‘N. Bernaud’ (namely Nicolas Barnaud?) in ¹²⁶ MF, preface, unpag. This sense of a ‘mirror’ that could reveal the secrets of nature was already familiar to natural philosophers—see Gabriel Chappuys’s translation of Leonardo Fioravanti, Miroir universel (1584). ¹²⁷ MF, ibid. ¹²⁸ Highet, The Anatomy, 148 f.

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1557).¹²⁹ Its interlocutors underline each other’s ambiguities. The Mirror of ‘Montand’ invites those with eyes to see to explore the political world in a way that enlarges the possibilities for its transmutation. The topology of the treatise is the world in transformation: the Flood in the first dialogue; the estates general of Blois in the succeeding dialogues. Its agenda is that of peace and reform—the words appear on almost every page. The speakers at Blois parody the efforts of their eponymous contemporaries and produce memoranda on these twin subjects. The dialogues are then united through the convenient fiction of different speakers commenting on the documents produced by their predecessors. Versoris first puts pen to paper:¹³⁰ Et affin que nostre Roy aye moyen de soulager son peuple, avec la paix je m’envoy preparer des memoires pour desgager son domaine, payer ses debtes, exempter son peuple de tailles et luy faire trouuer autant de finances qu’à nul autre Prince qui soit en la Chrestienté.

Honorat then takes up his and Marcel’s propositions ‘concernant l’augmentation du Royaume et bien public’.¹³¹ Tubalcain in turn refers back to reforming proposals by Honorat. The first three dialogues of the Miroir are then shown to the delegates at the estates in the fourth dialogue, who readily appreciate their intention ‘à une reformation de l’estat de ce Royaume et enrichissement d’iceluy’.¹³² By centring the dialogues on Blois, the assembly becomes its own mirror of the kingdom at large. The implication is that its delegates could ‘see’ what the Valois were incapable of discerning, no matter how hard they tried. So ‘Montand’ takes the reader back to the estates of Blois and imagines what the world would be like if the king had followed the delegates’ advice. Through the dialogues, the reader gradually acquires an idealized image of a realm that was ‘well-policed’ in every detail of its public life, a utopian vision of a reformed France. As Honorat put it:¹³³ tu verras désormais le Roy seant en son throsne de Iustice, les Princes estre vertueux, et magnanimes, les Officiers de la Courronne graues & modestes, les Conseillers du priué Conseil conscientieux et doctissimes, les gens de Iustice ronds et equitables, les Gentils hommes benins, doux & amiables, les marchands loyaux et fideles: et les pauvres villageois humbles, & bien obeissans.

This vision is consolidated by the implication that ‘l’embellissement et enrichissement du Royaume’ could have been realized, if only France were ¹²⁹ [Roger Bacon], Le Miroir d’alquimie (Lyon, 1557). ¹³⁰ MF, 101–2. ¹³¹ Ibid. 105. ¹³² Ibid. 220–1.

¹³³ Ibid. 211.

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not labouring under a blind autocracy. This message is reinforced by the comparison between this potential for change and the unreformed reality that was currently preventing the coming of a genuine peace. Behind this corruption lies a world in which the concupiscent passions have taken over. The ‘macquignons de justice’ piously echo the platitudes of the mercuriales but are ruled by their base natures. The ‘mignons de cour’ are ‘du tout confits en vices & voluptez’. The clergy are open to every corruption. The Italians, ‘viuans delicieusement en toutes ordures & lasciuité’, are the worst of all. When passions rule, the polity perishes. We become like snakes that eat the entrails of their mothers, or scorpions that feast on the blood of their young—these being the images ‘Montand’ selected from Du Bartas’s La Sepmaine to insert into his first dialogue.¹³⁴ But ‘Montand’ does not stop at a simple antithesis between utopian dream and grim reality. The dialogues are also about how, in practical terms, reality could be transformed. That is why they include the ingenious metal-working son of Cain (Tubalcain), the practical-minded military expert (Scipion—identified with ‘Strozzi’ in the text to associate him in the reader’s mind with Pierre Strozzi, the military entrepreneur), and a philosopher who wants to understand the world in order to use knowledge for the benefit of mankind (Archimedes). France is a kingdom to which God has given much. The task of the delegates at Blois is to realize that cornucopia. They do so by depicting a climate of virtue through reform of France’s laws, institutions, and customs. So, to take the most pressing issue of finance, the king had presented the estates with a ‘black hole’ in the royal budget. ‘Montand’ promises that his ‘mirror’ will increase royal revenues by 60 million livres, 50 million of which were the result of finding ‘parties inopinees & qui ne seruent d’aucune chose en ce royaume, sinon de faire idolatrer le peuple spirituellement & corporellement’.¹³⁵ At this point the Miroir draws on the agenda (though not the statistics) of the Secret des finances which had sought to ‘demonstrate’ that the king should have 175 million écus to spare in his coffers rather than the debt of 100 million livres that he declared to the delegates at the estates.¹³⁶ In the subsequent debate between Pierre Versoris and Claude Marcel, the intendant des finances frankly concedes that the royal finances are riddled with corruption.¹³⁷ If he told Versoris the details of half of the ‘larrecins, & monopoles qu’on fait sur le pauure peuple’ he would not ¹³⁴ Ibid. 11. ¹³⁵ Ibid., preface. ¹³⁶ Nicolas Frovmenteav [Froumenteau], Le Secret des finances, 143.

¹³⁷ MF, 53.

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believe him. Montand often hints at a ‘world’ of malversation, but then subtly draws a veil over the details. When Versoris presses Marcel, he declines to say any more on the grounds that it might corrupt others too. Marcel parries Versoris with a reference to the ‘os de bœuf’, slang for the coin that was given to people to stop them from talking too much. And when Versoris accuses Marcel and the preceding intendants of having ‘mains gluantes’, the intendant replies with an accusation that Versoris had himself received a royal pension whilst at Blois. In a corrupt society, ‘Montand’ wants us to understand, everyone becomes tainted. As the dialogue proceeds, the reader is gradually presented with a picture of a financial system that is compromised by the debt charges that it carries.¹³⁸ When treasurers present their accounts: ‘ils font recepte de grandes & notables sommes; mais quand on vient à la despense, les parties des deniers comptez & non receuz, culebutent & aneantissent tout la recepte.’¹³⁹ Versoris is attracted to the possibility that law could redress such malversation—a French version of the Roman Lex Calpurnia (149 ) and Julia (59 ) to establish courts ‘de rebus repetundis’ for the recovery of wealth stolen from the state.¹⁴⁰ Versoris readily concedes, however, that such a right of redress would criminalize those ‘des meilleurs maisons’ who had purchased rentes sur l’hôtel de ville de Paris, one of the major planks of funded royal debt. So the text leaves it to Claude Marcel to propose fiscal reform through a repurchase of the royal domain to be funded by ‘deniers qui prouiendront des amandes des vsuriers, recherche generale sur les Italiens, & ventes des reliques restantes aux moustiers és temples des Catholiques Romains’. ‘Montand’ delights in the paradox of the corrupt financier offering a proposal for reform that itself depended on the profits of the corrupt. Versoris applauds Marcel’s dexterity.¹⁴¹ One beneficent reform, the reader is led to suppose, begets another. Once the repurchase of the domain had begun, ‘vous raclez, abolissez, & supprimez ceste formiliere d’arpies de financiers; vous donnez congé à tant de Presidents, Maistres de comptes, Semestres, correcteurs, Auditeurs, grand & petit Bureau, Chambre nouuellement cree des Thresoriers . . . & autres innumerables officiers de ceste academie de sansues’. In no time at all, the whole elaborate bureaucracy would be swept away and the king would simply rely on a bureau of forty ‘correctors’ of accounts for the whole realm. The bureaucratic lags would have to make an honest living for themselves and the kingdom. The text opens out to a utopian vision of a productive economy ¹³⁸ MF, 56.

¹³⁹ Ibid. 57.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid.

¹⁴¹ Ibid. 58.

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in which ‘les vns employeront leurs deniers à la manufacture, les autres en la marchandise, autres à l’agriculture. Bref, quand tout le monde mettra à bon escient la main à l’œuure, toutes choses retourneront à vil pris, & verra on vn siecle doré en France sous vne telle armonie.’¹⁴² Reform created, in other words, a ‘virtuous circle’ that is replicated in the dialogic narrative itself as it moves between ideal and reality. In the third dialogue between Honorat and Tubalcain, the speakers offer ways in which corruption itself could provide the means to its own reform. They begin with a disquisition on the profits that could return to the public from the pursuit of usurers.¹⁴³ That leads to a longer analysis of the reform of the judiciary. Honorat and Tubalcain accept that there are many upright magistrates, especially in the sovereign courts.¹⁴⁴ In the lesser courts, though, the picture is mixed. Tubalcain asks searching questions of the attorneys and court clerks with their ‘mains gluantes, & graissees’.¹⁴⁵ There is room for reform here, they both agree, especially since the Ordinances of Moulins (1566) were poorly observed. The ecclesiastical courts offer an easy target for their derision: ‘ceste cabale de iustice’, ‘la chiquanerie des prebstres’.¹⁴⁶ Seigneurial justice is equally flawed since those in charge of the courts are often judges in their own cause. Like their clerical counterparts, they profit from justice and waste the time of honest people seeking to earn their living.¹⁴⁷ Lesser nobles who claim false titles to nobility are another area where reform would recover resources to redeploy to the general good, though the interlocutors shake their heads over the excessive licence of the gendarmerie ‘au rang des pirates & escumeurs de mer, ou des bandoliers qui sortent aux montaignes de Foix & autres lieux circonuoisins’.¹⁴⁸ After an aside to prove that those that seek power by conquest and dominion are less secure than those who seek power by love and consent, the two speakers conclude by demonstrating that corruption in the church is another rich vein, ready to be mined for the public good. Simony could be heavily fined and the profits returned to the commonwealth. Church wealth encouraged all kinds of corruption. Relics could be minted down and turned into coinage or placed at the disposal of the poor—at this point, ‘Montand’ could not resist borrowing from Calvin’s satirical treatise on Relics, by then a rare text.¹⁴⁹ On the way, the speakers propose a reform of charitable provisions, including a compulsary levy on the clergy for the poor, an end to the fraudulent impropriation of ¹⁴² Ibid. 59. ¹⁴³ Ibid. 108. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid. 111–17. ¹⁴⁶ Ibid. 122. ¹⁴⁷ Ibid. 123. ¹⁴⁸ Ibid. 132. ¹⁴⁹ Ibid. 170–2; Cazauran, ‘Le Miroir’, 63.

¹⁴⁵ Ibid. 120.

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hospital foundation income, and the distribution of poor-boxes in public places around towns. The most important ‘virtuous circle’ of reform lies in the way that the state is constituted. At every point, the underlying objective of the author is to suggest that the real roots of France’s deformation lie in its monarchy. The ideal to which ‘Montand’ often alludes is that of a ruler who governs with the consent of the people. The treatise ends with a direct appeal to Henri III, ‘Roy debonnaire’:¹⁵⁰ Vous y verrez . . . l’entier de tous les affaires de vostre estat, & comme elles doiuent estre regies & gouvernees. Et vous peuple qui auez esté tourmenté iusques au bout, vous verrez icy toutes sortes de bien . . . la paix vous y est promise, la douceur, la bonté & loyauté du Roy . . . il fera devoir de Roy et vous [people of France] luy rendrez l’obeissance de bons sujets telle que Dieu vous commande. Bref il y aura entre vous & luy vn lien & societé humaine inseprable, qui rendra ce Prince & monarque souuerain le plus riche & heureux qui fut iamais au monde.

The present reality, however, is an autocracy that corrupts all it touches. For ‘Montand’, history is a ‘mirror’ in which the reality of the present is depicted. So, in the dialogue between Versoris and Marcel, the speakers gradually perceive the historic relationship between the abusive taxation of an autocracy and the popular revolt that it invites.¹⁵¹ To document the hostile reactions to the introduction of the gabelles under Louis XI, ‘Montand’ deploys the well-known compilation of the late fifteenth-century chronicler Robert Gaguin (the ‘Mirouer hystorial’).¹⁵² This then acts as a backdrop to his analysis of the provincial dissension of 1578–9.¹⁵³ In a later dialogue, Milo presents the sceptical Scipion with Hotman’s propositions for the historical origins of a ‘Free Gaul’.¹⁵⁴ Milo affects not to be entirely convinced by the arguments of Hotman and Beza. The people can depose kings (Hotman).¹⁵⁵ The magistrate is subordinate to the popular will (Beza).¹⁵⁶ Scipion, by contrast, presents the arguments for absolute rule where ‘les sujets sont faits pour servir et obéir’, and where all-powerful kings are ‘institutez de Dieu’—but only to undermine them immediately thereafter. What we want, he says, is an end to ‘tant de contrerooleurs, escrivains et barbouilleux de papier’. We want a France that is a ‘France Franc¸oise, qui est à dire libre et franche’ rather than a France ‘rendue et baptisee Nonfrance, Nonfranchise et du tout infranchise’. ¹⁵⁰ MF, 497. ¹⁵³ Ibid. 65–7.

¹⁵¹ Ibid. 327–8. ¹⁵⁴ Ibid. 306.

¹⁵² Ibid. 62–5. ¹⁵⁵ Ibid. 307.

¹⁵⁶ Ibid. 312.

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This is, in short, a text that seeks to ‘limit’ power in the hands of the ruler by making it dependent upon implicit or explicit popular consent. ‘Montand’ gradually acclimatizes the reader to a ‘Mirror’ through which power is relativized, disaggregated from an absolute locus, turned into a dependency. The sons of Noah are used as faithful mouthpieces for the propositions of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, translated that year for the first time into French. As Japhet put it:¹⁵⁷ . . . le Roy est seulement premier & souverain gouverneur, et serviteur du Royaume, qui n’a pour maistre & seigneur que le peuple, duquel les Roys recoiuent la dignité royalle, tellement que tout le peuple consideré en vn corps est par dessus & plus grand que le Roy.

And if the ruler fails to relieve his oppressed people, the consequences are clear:¹⁵⁸ Car puis que le Roy est estably en ce degré par le peuple, & pour amour du peuple, et ne peut subsister sans le peuple, . . . qui ne voudra choisir vn autre de ses freres du royaume pour luy estre tuteur, procureur, & legitime administrateur de ses corps & biens.

Versoris emphasizes the oath that French kings make before they are consecrated, citing it word for word as it appears in the Vindiciae.¹⁵⁹ To show that tyrants generally come to a sticky end, Versoris borrows, this time straight out of the ‘Discours des jugements de Dieu contre les tyrans’ published in the Mémoires de l’estat de France sous Charles IX.¹⁶⁰ To prove that kings must care for their subjects, Tubalcain cites the testament of St Louis as it appeared in the Remonstrance of December 1575.¹⁶¹ To show that the people will exact a high price for tyranny, he alludes to the reaction of villagers to the depredations of Anjou’s troops en route to Flanders.¹⁶² Past example and present experience are repeatedly interwined. In the next dialogue, Honorat uses the recently published ‘Apology’ of the prince of Orange to demonstrate ‘la tyrannie du roy d’Espagne’.¹⁶³ But this leads into a further, longer list of tyrants and their bloody ends, which comes (once more) from protestant sources. Little by little, ‘Montand’ allows the discourses to open up to the reader the possibility that the French king could be regarded as a tyrant. Claude Marcel poses the question:¹⁶⁴ ¹⁵⁷ Ibid. 30; cf. Jouanna et al. (eds.), Vindiciae contra tyrannos, 148. ¹⁵⁸ MF, 31. ¹⁵⁹ Ibid. 94; Cazauran, ‘Le Miroir’, 75 n. 46. ¹⁶⁰ MF, 70–1; Cazauran, ‘Le Miroir’, 62. ¹⁶¹ MF, 176–7. ¹⁶² Ibid. 71–4. ¹⁶³ Ibid. 140. ¹⁶⁴ Ibid. 70–1.

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Ne sc¸ais-tu bien quon vend les estatz en France, que le peuple se destruit de guerres, que les plus vicieux tiennent les grands offices, qu’on a tué & inhumainement massacré les subiets du Roy, que les conseilleurs & gouuerneurs du Royaume ayment plus la guerre que la paix, qu’il n’y a que tailles, imposts, gabelles & decimes sur le peuple, & que la plus part de nous ont mis les mains basses, ou bien auons conseillé ce malheureux massacre, voire les Princes & grands seigneurs, se sont ensanglantez les mains . . . ?

So, obedience to authority is conditional upon its behaving in accordance with God’s will. It was the failure of Henri III to do so that explains the current predicament. Underlying the work is the reiterated message that the Valois monarchy had failed to listen to the word of God and sacrificed the trust of its people. One of the consistent strands in early modern utopian writing was how it reflected contemporary perceptions of a well-disciplined public life.¹⁶⁵ The notion of ‘police’—meaning an underlying ethic that sustained the ‘bien public’ (rather than the more modern notion of an executive authority for enforcing the will of the state)—is central to sixteenth-century political thought and practice. The term was common currency among French notables since it was the obvious vernacular for the Latin ‘politia’ (from the Greek: ‘politeia’) which they had absorbed from humanist political writings. In the age of the Reformation, ‘police’ encompassed the establishment of a reformed Christian discipline.¹⁶⁶ The ethos of the well-ordered community—reflected in the regulation of daily living in utopian writings—was that of a mutual monitoring of public life, a shared censorship of the bien public. For ‘Montand’, it is revealed in his regulations for hospitals, high schools, and reformed monastic foundations. The ethos in these establishments is one of godly labour, healthy living, and a precisely planned polity. In his reformed hospital, ‘Montand’ delineates a functional, utilitarian, and differentiated environment where the sick are segregated, where children are taught a trade, and where guardians ‘eussent la crainte de Dieu, gens modestes & graues’.¹⁶⁷ The model for reformed high schools emphasizes the significance of professional teaching, a disciplined environment, and an education in moral living—a bien public in miniature.¹⁶⁸ In the later dialogue between the geometer Bezeleel and Archimedes, they outline plans to turn a monastery into a college of higher education.¹⁶⁹ In these ‘reformed environments’, ¹⁶⁵ Dietz, ‘Utopie und Policey’. ¹⁶⁶ Durand, ‘La Notion de police’. ¹⁶⁸ Ibid. 207 ¹⁶⁹ Ibid. 419–24.

¹⁶⁷ MF, 185.

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the author of the ‘Miroir’ delineates the group monitoring of behaviour to ensure virtue. This is why he is interested in the Roman law notion of the ‘censor’, and why he praises the otherwise absolutist Louis XI for creating the Order of St Michael in which the knights subject one another to mutual examination.¹⁷⁰ Towns, universities, schools, hospitals were all to have a form of auto-correction, a fraternal discipline. And that is what ‘Montand’ envisages as essential for the French monarchy as well. The estates general becomes the ‘elders’ in its reformed polity. There must be a reason why the final book of the Miroir is not in dialogue form. It does not serve as a ‘conclusion’ to the treatise. The subjects that preoccupy the author in this last section are (mainly) the regulation of commercial markets, inflation, the control of public morality, arguments in favour of a population census, the introduction of a taille égalée, and practical proposals for increasing wealth (including the planting of nitrogenous crops like lucerne and the more productive use of forests). By advocating a limited monarchy, ‘Montand’ had already taken issue implicitly with Jean Bodin’s République. The Miroir must surely be read as the first, extensive engagement with his arguments about sovereignty.¹⁷¹ Now, in the last book, ‘Montand’ enters into a dialogue en cachette with his nemesis and, through him, with the estates where he had played such a controversial role. It is Bodin’s analysis of inflation which is directly at issue at one point.¹⁷² At an earlier moment, he returns to Bodin’s chapter on ‘censure’ from the opening of the sixth book of the République. There, Bodin examines at length the project for fiscal reform, the taille égalée put before the deputies at Blois.¹⁷³ It depended upon a census of the population that included a record of their wealth, locality by locality. Bodin wanted a more elaborate census, one that recorded age and social status. He saw it as a means to effect all sorts of reform in theory but accepted that there were arguments against it in practice. For ‘Montand’, a census attracted the political arithmetician in him. He was much less equivocal towards the proposal than Bodin. Among the many advantages, he noted:¹⁷⁴ [t]outes les séditions qui sont ordinaires en toutes republiques, pour l’inequalité des charges cesseroient . . . , les concussions . . . [des] officiers qui ont charge d’esgaler les imposts, seroient descouvertes . . . . On verra aussi par ce moyen, qui sont les ¹⁷⁰ Ibid. 333; cf. ¶ 38 of the Order of St Michael’s statutes. ¹⁷¹ Cazauran, ‘Le Miroir’, 164–72. ¹⁷² MF, 463. ¹⁷³ République, vi/1. 605–6. ¹⁷⁴ MF, 460.

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prodigues, les cessionnaires, les banqueroutiers, les riches, les pauures, les safreniers, les vsuriers, & à quel ieu les ungs gagnent tant de biens, & les autres despendent tout, pour y remedier, puisqu’il est ainsi que de la pauureté extreme des uns, & richesses excessiues des autres, on void tant de seditions, troubles & guerres civiles.

In reconfiguring the realm ‘Montand’ saw the path to true peace and justice in the commonwealth. Satire uses rhetorical constructions, beginning with an evocation of the world immediately around in hapless crisis. The perspective of the satirist is that of the hyper-realist, seeing beyond the superficial and transient. It is that of the ‘all-seeing’ divine eye, the ‘regard surplombant’ of Agrippa d’Aubigné’s great satiric verse epic Les Tragiques. Through this larger picture, the satirist can embrace a new world. In the case of ‘Montand’ this new world is expressed through a utilitarian utopianism, a practical reformation that was capable of being realized in the real world of France as it was in 1581. Equally, satirical writings exploit the antithesis between anger and impotency. That antithesis contains the seeds of its own weakness.¹⁷⁵ Hyperbole, an essential instrument for the satirist, leads to a form of linguistic inflation in which language is devalued. This is what had happened in the years after the massacre of St Bartholomew. There was little left to be said that had not already been said by protestant commentators in the wake of the massacre. Their hyperbole generated its own consequential hypertrophy. There was a danger that the same thing would occur in the debates about the reformation of the kingdom. The hyper-realism of ‘Montand’ and the associated writings in the early 1580s would become caricatures of themselves. In 1582, a long, anonymous poem appeared in print, probably from a protestant stable, once more on the theme of ‘peace’ and ‘reform’.¹⁷⁶ In it, the familiar figure of Diogenes the Cynic is represented as a Portuguese gentleman arriving for the first time on French soil to discover a realm which is no longer ‘vn petit monde, vn petit paradis, | Vn monde d’honneur, de vertu, de sciences’. It is, instead, a world that is in desperate need of peace and reform. On the possibilities for peace, his cynicism is profound: Tous ces edicts fardez & ces armes posees Ne sont (pardonnez moy) qu’autant de reposees Pour mieux se battre apres, comme de deux mastins ¹⁷⁵ Gorce, ‘Le ton prophétique’.

¹⁷⁶ Diogenes.

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S’aguinans de trauers les ventres contre terre puis à coup herissez recomencer leur guerre.

It would require a profound revival in the fortunes of the monarchy to answer such cynicism, especially since the protestant perception of reform was, although it was difficult for contemporaries to admit it, shared by many catholic contemporaries.

8 Restoring Virtue, 1579–1582 ‘QUATRAINS’ OF VIRTUE In 1574, Guy Du Faur, sieur de Pibrac, published a modest volume of fifty four-line poems containing ‘preceptes et enseignemens utiles pour la vie de l’homme’. The result was a runaway hit. He added a further fifty-one in 1575 and completed it in 1576.¹ The work was republished in over twenty French editions before Pibrac’s death in 1584. It was set to music in six different settings, including twenty-five four- and five-part voice motets by the Flemish composer Roland de Lassus (1583) and a collection by the choirmaster of the cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Toulouse, Guillaume Boni (1582).² Boni may have known Pibrac since the latter was from a family of Toulouse magistrates, his father being a président of the Parlement there.³ Pibrac received the best humanist education that money could buy. In 1543, he won the ‘Jeux Floraux’, the noted Toulouse poetry competition, and became its judge in 1558. In 1557, he acquired the office of juge mage (the equivalent of lieutenant-général in the seneschal court) in Toulouse and made his mark at the estates general of Orléans in 1560–1, drafting the cahier for the estates of Languedoc. It was the beginnings of a glittering political career that took him to become avocat général in the Parlement of Paris, Henri d’Anjou’s chancellor in Poland, and one of the negotiators at Bergerac in 1577. His political success was not the reason for the success of the Quatrains. Nor was the quality of the poetry. The quatrain form was derived from one of the exercises in the ‘Jeux Floraux’ in which contestants were placed in a room and asked to improvise a vernacular quatrain on a sentence (generally a proverb) that they were given. The result was the sixteenth-century equivalent of the haiku, encapsulating biblical, classical, and humanist gnomic wisdom. ¹ Petris (ed.), Les Quatrains, 126. ² Boni (ed.), Les Quatrains du sieur de Pybrac, esp. pp. xi–xiii.

³ Cabos, Guy Du Faur.

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To explain its success, we must understand why these somewhat didactic, morally improving verses had such immediacy. The reality was that Pibrac was able to reflect on what it was to be virtuous. Others attempted to do the same, but none since Erasmus’ Adages succeeded so effectively. What was more, he said things in a way that avoided platitude and controversy. He took his inspiration from an eclectic range of sources. Increasingly he based his verses on his own experience too. The result was a picture of how the ‘gens de bien’ acquired, ‘par l’estude’ and ‘par constante et par longue habitude’, wisdom and virtue in affairs.⁴ The last quatrain was an invitation to reflect on the fact that the pursuit of virtue was complex and ceaseless.⁵ Pibrac’s Quatrains are a reminder that reform must not be interpreted simply as administrative changes but as a struggle for virtue. Virtue was the cornerstone of classical moral philosophy. It was, as we have seen, a principal focus of the Palace Academy’s lectures. It would also preoccupy Pierre de La Primaudaye’s Academie francoise.⁶ The author, a protestant gentleman from Anjou, explained in his dedicatory epistle to Henri III that he had fashioned the work following a discussion at the king’s dinner table at Blois—probably during sessions of the Palace Academy, where the conversation had turned to how the court ought to be ‘a schoole erected to teach men that are borne to vertue’.⁷ Offering the king ‘a dish of divers fruits’, he envisaged a school for young gentlemen in which four of them showed what they had learned in dialogues divided into ‘days’. The result was an encyclopedia of the moral world, the virtues (and their contraries), literally from cradle to grave.⁸ The passions? La Primaudaye had not finished. In 1580 there followed the Suite de l’Academie françoise in which (as the title to the English translation put it) ‘a naturall history of the body and soule of man, the Creation [ . . . ] and use of all parts of the frame of man are handled, with the naturall causes of affections, virtues and vices’.⁹ Here was yet another ‘mirror’ for self-knowledge, in which the organizing principle was the body as a building, the head being ‘as it were the upper lodging of this house’, the breast a first storey with the heart as a ‘dining chamber’ and also a workshop where the vital spirits are generated. Below this factory is ⁴ e.g. Q[uatrain] 115 [‘Les gens de bien’] and Q.59 [‘Vertu és mœurs’]. ⁵ e.g. Q.126 [‘Plus on est docte’]. The sentiments recall de L’Hospital’s hexameters to his father: ‘De amore et ignorantione sui’. ⁶ La Primaudaye, Academie françoise —citations from the English translation by Thomas Bowes (1586) in the 1619 edition. ⁷ Ibid., sig Aj. ⁸ Prescott, ‘Pierre de La Primaudaye’s French Academy’. ⁹ La Primaudaye, Suite de l’Academie françoise, foreshadowed in the Academie françoise, ch. 3.

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the ground-floor stomach, with all the gutters and sinks, an opportunity for disquisitions about the seats of the affections and their management. La Primaudaye’s point was that virtue was a tireless pursuit. As Aristotle had said, there was no excess (by definition) of virtue. The same was true of strength, a word to which it was etymologically related. When he considered ‘Les recompenses d’honneur’ (Essais, ii, ch. 7), Montaigne reminded his reader of the connection between ‘vis’ and ‘virtus’, and between ‘vertu’ and ‘vaillance’.¹⁰ Virtue was competitive, emulative, and rare. Was reform a route to virtue? Montaigne was at one with most of his contemporaries in being sceptical about radical change and its rejection of tradition and habit. ‘Nothing presses a state so hard except innovation’, he writes. ‘Change alone lends shape to injustice and tyranny.’ Pibrac agreed:¹¹ Changer à coup de loy et d’ordonnance En faict d’estat, est un poinct dangereux Et si Lycurgue en ce poinct fut heureux, Il ne faut pas en faire consequence.

This raised the question: to what extent was it wise to restore virtue by legislative change? Lycurgus (the mythical reformer of Sparta) and Solon (the Athenian legislator) were common points of departure for the debate, and Plutarch the universal source. Bernard de Girard, sieur du Haillan, the king’s historiographer, published a digest of practical advice on statecraft from Plutarch in 1578. In the dedicatory preface to Pierre Forget de Fresnes, conseiller du roi, trésorier des parties casuelles, and grand audiencier de France, he explained that he had been engaged in a more general collection of statecraft based on the chronicles of the past, recognizing that ‘le plus common discours qui soit aujourd’huy en la bouche des hom[m]es est celuy des affaires d’Estat, qui [est] manié selon la passion, le iugement, l’experience, ou l’interest de celuy qui le faict’.¹² The idea for a collection of applied Plutarchian wisdom had emerged, he said, during conversations with Forget at Poitiers in the making of the peace of Bergerac in the autumn of 1577. After Theseus and Romulus (tendencies to populism and tyranny respectively) he turned to Lycurgus. The latter ‘commença à vouloir remuer tout le gouuernement de la chose publique, & changer entierement toute la police, estimant que faire seulement quelques lois et ordonnances particulieres ne seruoient de rien: non plus qu’a vn corps tout gasté & plein de toutes sortes de maladies, rien ¹⁰ Montaigne, ii. 55.

¹¹ Q.91.

¹² Girard, Recueil d’advis, preface.

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ne proffiteroit ordonner quelque legere medicine qui ne donneroit ordre de purger, resoudre, & consumer premierement toutes ses mauuaises humeurs, pour puis après luy donner vne nouuelle forme & reigle de vivre’.¹³ Du Haillan went on, however, to explain that Lycurgus’ success rested on his ability to make his reforming legislation part of people’s lives, ‘emprainct par la nourriture és cueurs & és mœurs des hom[m]es pour y demeurer à iamais immuable’. It became an instrument of virtue: ‘Car en sommeil il estima que le but principal d’vn bon establisseur & refformateur de chose publique deuoit estre faire bien nourrir & instituer les hommes’. After a discussion of Numa Pompilius, the great reconciler (who demonstrated how eloquence, in the hands of a ‘sage philosophe’, could produce a stable rule), he turned to Solon. Once more Du Haillan indicated that reform was not simply making new laws. Solon had grasped that laws had to be framed such that the Athenian citizens themselves would feel that ‘il leur estoit plus vtile d’obeir aux lois & à la iustice que de les violer’.¹⁴ He therefore did not try to reform everything. Above all, Solon understood the need for an Athenian sovereign court as well as a popular assembly.¹⁵ Du Haillan’s discussion raised the central issues in any attempt to restore virtue to the state via legislative action. Needless change bred more disquiet than good.¹⁶ Only the experience of a law in practice could determine whether it contributed to public virtue and so it was impossible to know, in advance, whether a new law was likely to do good or not. Legislation could, however, lose its impact over time. The best of polities were subject to corruption. Correcting a ‘loy dépravée’ was the duty of a sovereign legislator and the restorer of peace. The French king was often presented as both, the dual role being symbolized by the hand, or scales, of justice and the sceptre, or sword.¹⁷ There was no difficulty in accepting that an essential royal duty was to be informed of, and to correct, abuses in the state. The preambles to royal edicts often referred to the inevitable decay that occurred in institutions over time, implying a royal imperative to renew them.¹⁸ In civil wars, the best institutions in the world were easily perverted, as Henri III acknowledged.¹⁹ The French sixteenth-century judicial state thus witnessed a sequence of general ‘ordinances’ devoted to the ‘réformation de la justice’—in reality, the whole governing enterprise: Blois (1499), Villers-Cotteretz (1539), Orléans (1561), Roussillon (1564), ¹³ Ibid., fo. 6. ¹⁴ Ibid., fo. 10. ¹⁶ e.g. Villeroy, ‘Mémoires d’État’, 108. ¹⁸ Chevalier, ‘La Réforme de la justice’.

¹⁵ Ibid., fo. 11. ¹⁷ Reulos, ‘La Justice, attribut essentiel’, 101–7. ¹⁹ LH3, ii, No. 1692.

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Moulins (1566), culminating in the reforming Ordinances of Blois (1579) ‘sur la police générale du royaume’. The names of reforming chancellors were frequently mentioned in the same breath as these ordinances—Guillaume Poyet, François Olivier, and, above all, Michel de L’Hospital. The latter especially left an intellectual legacy as well as a judicial agenda which outlived him.²⁰ Jules Gassot, for example, recalled his ‘droicte intention à la justice’, his ‘bons reiglemens’, and his ‘utiles et necessaires suppressions’ of offices, all subsequently thrown into confusion by the second and third civil wars.²¹ Gassot was influenced, as were many others among the notability of our period, by de L’Hospital’s Latin verse hexameters, the Carmina, which de L’Hospital wrote in private and which mostly circulated in manuscript. Gassot cited them, perhaps from memory: ‘Nostre mauvaiseté est trop grande, car ledict sieur chancelier de l’Hospital avoit dict en ses vers et avoit monstré par effect Durant son temps, tant qu’il a peu tenir la main aux suppressions [of offices]: Revocandus in arctum Ille ingens numerus, frænanda licentia furum.’²² The passage was typical of de L’Hospital’s belief that a public servant should protect the commonwealth against individual affections and appetites. The notable could only make virtue triumph, thought de L’Hospital, by bridling the passions, brokering a deal with the noble passions in order to restrain the ignoble ones. The process involved utilizing powers of persuasion, including eloquence, to establish a mean (‘modus’) between them. In ironic and bitter satires, he mocked venality of office, courtly favour, servility, and luxury, drawing on his experience as a senior magistrate in the Parlement of Paris as well as his period of office as chancellor and keeper of the seals. In his verse letter to his friend Jacques Du Faur (Guy Du Faur’s father), he advised him against becoming a magistrate: ‘Work, instead’, he advised, ‘to reform the state and your name will remain immortal and engraved in the hearts of our most distant descendants.’²³ The Carmina were also well known to Pibrac, who dedicated himself to their publication, a project cut short by his death in 1584.²⁴ They were also familiar to Philippe Hurault de Cheverny, who had purchased Michel de L’Hospital’s office as conseiller in the Parlement. Cheverny had been educated at the law schools in Poitiers and Padua (where he was a student ²⁰ Crouzet, La Sagesse et le malheur; Kim, Michel de L’Hospital. ²¹ Gassot, 51. ²² Ibid. 50; Duféy (ed.), Œuvres complètes de Michel de L’Hospital, iii, 356—from ‘De Sacra Francesci I’, one of the few which was published prior to 1585 (in 1560). ²³ Duféy (ed.), Œuvres complètes de Michel de L’Hospital iii. 85–9. ²⁴ CalSPFor (1585), 135.

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alongside Bellièvre) and he had an outstanding reputation as a linguist and a diplomat.²⁵ He knew the problems of peace-making in the civil wars at first hand. There were high expectations of his being a reforming figure in the tradition of de L’Hospital when he became keeper of the seals in September 1577, and then chancellor from November 1583.²⁶ François de Noailles, bishop of Dax, for example, writing to Cheverny on 1 June 1579 in the month following the publication of the Ordinances of Blois, lauded him as ‘un tel restaurateur’ from whom ‘chascun commence desia de s’apercevoir du merveilleux amandement qu’il y en a’ as a result of his ‘non moins désirée que necessaire reformation’.²⁷ In reality, Cheverny, his fingers in lots of lucrative pies, hardly became ‘le grand Nestor de la France’ depicted in Père Boulanger’s eulogy at his funeral in 1599.²⁸ But when de L’Hospital’s Carmina finally saw the light of day in 1585, the preface (addressed to Henri III) made clear that the publication had been encouraged, if not instigated, by Hurault de Cheverny.²⁹ In any case, de L’Hospital’s public discourses, and possibly some fragment of a treatise on the reformation of justice, later reworked by Eustache de Reffuge, were part of the enduring reformist legacy of this self-proclaimed Cato, willing patiently to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in order to restore France to virtue by means of reform.

‘BEAUCOUP DE BELLES ET BONNES ORDONNANCES’ ‘Apud nos, aula in luxum effusa, rex novis rebus studet’ (‘At home, in a profusion of courtly pomp, the king applies himself to new things’). This is how another stern stentor, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, begins his history for the year 1579.³⁰ In the studied ambiguity of his Latin (‘luxum’ as ‘ceremonial’; but also ‘extravagance’), de Thou’s first paragraph linked the founding of the king’s new chivalric order with the publication of the ‘ordonnances de Blois’ in May 1579. The ordinances were the largest single legislative enterprise of the sixteenth-century French state. The text consisted of 369 separate articles, six of which were subsequently removed to ensure its registration by the Parlement. It took nine months before it was confirmed by the latter ²⁵ Durand, ‘Philippe Hurault de Cheverny’. ²⁶ Barbiche, ‘De la commission’, 392–4. ²⁷ Tamizey de Larroque, ‘François de Noailles’, 143. Noailles’s praise (he was seeking an évocation of a lawsuit to the conseil privé at the time) may have been self-serving. ²⁸ BN MS Fr 16216 fos. 168–71. ²⁹ De L’Hospital, Epistolarum, preface. ³⁰ De Thou [Latin], iii. 667.

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(25 January 1580), eleven months before it passed the financial sovereign courts (4 March, 11 March 1580). It was widely circulated in print over the next few years.³¹ Unabridged, it ran to 200 pages and was the only edict of the period to have a subject index. Towns and individuals bought their own copies of it for future reference. The avocat du roi in the Lyon présidial, Philibert Bugnyon, published commentaries on its articles, harmonizing it with other previous ordinances.³² Bugnyon already had a reputation as an opponent of venality, a legal reformer, defender of Latin as a legal language, and an eloquent supporter of the peace of Bergerac.³³ He even tried his hand at writing sonnets on the vices of the time.³⁴ The acclaim of his commentaries (they ran to three editions by 1585) was a measure of the significance that the Ordinances of Blois had already begun to acquire. They would be referred to in petitions and cahiers de doléances from provincial assemblies and frequently alluded to at the second estates of Blois (1588–9), one deputy there describing them as ‘fort sainte et nécessaire’.³⁵ The ordinances were used as a way of reminding the king how far reality departed from the ideal they embodied. As had been the case with preceeding legislation of this kind, they were patchily enacted. They were ‘holy decrees’ that, because of the ‘licence of the times’ did not ‘hold sway’.³⁶ L’Estoile agreed: ‘beaucoup de belles et bonnes ordonnances’, which would have satisfied people’s grievances, but ‘apres trois jours non valables’.³⁷ Although in French administrative history the Ordinances of Blois have an honoured place, it is not for their efficacy that they should detain us, but rather to understand the vision of reform that they embodied, and why it was so difficult to realize. We know almost nothing of how the ordinances were drafted, beyond the fact that a group of royal councillors began work on the cahiers from the estates in about February 1578.³⁸ René de Birague chaired their deliberations as chancellor. Cheverny, dividing his time between being keeper of the seals and magistrate in the Grand’Chambre, played a leading role. The rest included a cross-section of the royal council, some of whom could not have attended through most of 1578.³⁹ When presented before the Parlement on ³¹ F46863–2. ³² Bugnyon, Commentaires. ³³ NBG, vi. 124; DBF, vii, col 638; cf. Bugnyon, Reiglement provisionnel and De la Paix. ³⁴ Bugnyon, Sonnets. ³⁵ Zeller, Les Institutions, p. ix. ³⁶ De Thou [Latin], iii. 668. ³⁷ L’Estoile, iii, 91–2. ³⁸ CalSPFor (1577–8), 515; the preamble to the ordinances says that they began in March 1578. ³⁹ The commission included, in addition to Birague and Cheverny, Bellièvre (who could not have attended many meetings), Mayenne (in Burgundy in 1578), Artus de Cossé-Brissac, comte de

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28 February, they were referred to as ‘l’Edit fait sur les Cahiers Généraux’. Yet, although pronounced at Paris, they were almost immediately known as the ‘Ordinances of Blois’.⁴⁰ The monarchy wanted to spread the impression that it had embodied delegates’ recommendations, especially since it was widely believed that the Ordinances of Orléans (1561) had failed to reflect the wishes of the preceding estates general.⁴¹ In reality, the relationship between the cahiers and the ordonnances was more complex than a superficial reading implied. Royal councillors were faced with a difficult drafting exercise. The three estates painted a picture of a realm that needed renovation, ‘comme un beau tableau s’est effacé par l’âge, soit rafraîchi de ses vives couleurs, et remis en son premier lustre’ (C:2). But they pointed to different aspects and suggested divergent remedies. Even when speaking with a common voice there were often good reasons not to proceed to legislation. Issues may have been covered by recent edicts. The jurists on the royal council had a cautious approach to positive law-making, believing that it should reflect custom and precedent and be in harmony with preceding legislative statements on the subject. So they were reluctant to innovate, not least because the Parlement of Paris had opposed the previous Ordinances of Orléans and would probably do so again to the Ordinances of Blois. As things turned out, and despite their best endeavours, the Parlement spent twenty-one sessions examining the text, an entire month on drafting its remonstrances, and the best part of a year in pursuing its objections to them. Six weeks after their eventual registration by the court on 25 January 1580, its magistrates were still minded to draft ‘modifications’ to the text, seeking further changes to its clauses on office-holding (the suppression of the forty-day clause from letters of provision) and clerical nominations (the return of the Pragmatic Sanction and abandonment of all économats).⁴² This was despite the council’s efforts to avoid contentious issues. Secondigny, Christofle de Thou, Pierre Séguier, Philippe de Lenoncourt, Paul de Foix (absent for most of this period), Albert de Gondi, comte de Retz, Henri de Mesmes, sieur de Roissy, Jacques Amyot, Augustin de Thou, Pierre de Villars, archbishop of Vienne, Tanneguy de Carrouges, François de Mandelot (who was in Lyon), Michel de Seurre, grand prieur de Champagne, Antoine de Senneterre, bishop of Le Puy (absent from council that year), and Pierre de Gondi, bishop of Paris. ⁴⁰ BN MS Fr 0942 fo 538v . ⁴¹ Cahiers —5:T. References to the ¶ s of the cahiers of Blois are to Lalourcé, Recueil des cahiers généraux, ii and are abbreviated as follows; ‘C:’ = clerical cahier; ‘N:’ = noble cahier’; ‘T:’ = third estate cahier. All references to the Ordinances of Blois are from Isambert, xiv. 380–463. ⁴² Information kindly provided by Sylvie Daubresse from her examination of the registers of the Parlement (AN X1A) and BN MS Fr 4.398 fos. 466–71.

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Table 3. Comparison between the cahiers from the estates general and the Ordinances of Blois Affairs concerning:

First estate cahiers

Second estate cahiers

Third estate cahiers

Ordinances of Blois

Secular clergy Regular clergy Hospitals Higher education Nobility Justice Royal offices Finance (inc. currency) ‘Police’ Other

139 16 5 31 33 45 71 68 20 8

31

84

1 59 121

15 71 154

25 9

45 67 13

2 22 73 121 46 25 10 —

Total

436

246

449

363

64

Table 3 lays out the numbers of ‘paragraphs’ devoted to the major subjects on which the estates offered their advice to the king (excluding the cahiers from the universities and the Order of Malta). These are then compared with the ‘articles’ of the Ordinances of Blois on the same subjects. The statistics should be treated only as an approximate guide to the attention that was given to each subject. By way of indication, there was an ‘overlap’ of issues raised by the various estates in rather under half the paragraphs indicated. Those raised in the cahiers were covered in the ordinances in a similar fashion to that proposed by at least one of the estates in about 60 per cent of the cases. In a further 34 per cent or so, the issues were raised in at least one of the cahiers but treated in a rather different way in the legislation. In the remaining 6 per cent of the articles, the ordinances tackled subjects which had not been raised at all in the cahiers. To reveal further the vision of reform that the ordinances embodied, and to explore why it was so difficult to realize, let us now examine a handful on the issue that they treated at greatest length—judicial reform. The underlying problem to which the cahier and ordinances often allude was that the judicial system was slow and costly, and that laws and judicial decisions were not obeyed.⁴³ The ordinances aimed at royal justice that was cheaper and quicker. It was a utopian objective, but for reasons that were not apparent to contemporaries. For over a century, the French kingdom had ⁴³ Carey, Judicial Reform, ch. 1; Chevalier, ‘La Réforme de la justice’.

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developed two different regimes of justice: one was traditional (seigneurial, ecclesiastical, and communal), delivered by châtelains and prévôts, consuls and échevins, officiaux and juges ecclésiastiques. Courts were local, pleas were entered in person, proof roughly and readily determined, and judgments delivered without legal reasoning. It was cheap, quick, and unpredictable. Then, superimposed on top, and growing out of the complaints generated within this traditional justice, lay the king’s justice. Here, the opposite was the case. Royal courts were not local to most suitors. Procedures were determined by law and precedent. Business was conducted on the basis of written dossiers and pleas, enabling proof to be much more precisely determined. Legal argument as to the merits of the particular case in relation to law and precedent was expected, prior to a written and reasoned judgment. Appeal on the basis of procedure or law wrongly applied was integral to it. This was the professional justice which wealthier suitors wanted, which was why they appealed cases away from subordinate jurisdictions. And, in the circumstances of long-standing civil disorder, coupled with the pressures created by the breakdown of local means of arbitration, it is not surprising that the royal courts were faced with more suitors. But royal justice was expensive and slow. The deputies at Blois wanted an incompatibility; a judicial system that was sophisticated, locally delivered, professional, and equitable, but also cheap and quick. The framers of the Ordinances of Blois sought to satisfy their demands by means of elaborate regulation of technical matters—appeals, judicial expenses, etc. When that failed to produce the anticipated results, it merely increased their frustration. The failure of the Ordinances of Blois was not, therefore, for lack of commitment. Rather, a great deal of effort was devoted to implementing many of its clauses in the years after 1579. ¶91, for example, outlawed the évocation (i.e. appeal) of cases to the Conseil Privé by privileged individuals.⁴⁴ It echoed an earlier article in the Ordinances of Moulins (¶70) and earned the approval of Pasquier and others.⁴⁵ Such appeals, like the related committimus (i.e. appeals to the Chambre des Requêtes of the Parlement of Paris, or before the masters of requests, sitting as a court), were emblematic of professional justice. They attracted the complaints of provincial estates, parlements, and lesser jurisdictions, who regarded them as an infringement upon their jurisdictions and a way of frustrating justice for less privileged suitors.⁴⁶ But ⁴⁴ Doucet, Les Institutions, i. 91. ⁴⁵ Thickett (ed.), Lettres historiques, 71. ⁴⁶ e.g. Robillard, i. 99; 153; cf. Valois (ed.), Inventaire, i, p. liii.

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courtiers and others did not take much notice of the ordinances. Within two months of their announcement, Henri III wrote to Biron to tell him that he could not grant the bishop of Dax an évocation of a suit involving the latter’s nephew.⁴⁷ The Conseil Privé took the message to heart, however, and declined illegitimate appeals, even from determined suitors like JeanneGermaine d’Espagne, Madame de Noailles, or those with impeccable court credentials like the king’s illegitimate brother.⁴⁸ A persistent legal chimera in the sixteenth century was that the costs of suits could be reduced and their longevity ‘abbreviated’ if the law was ‘codified’—i.e. organized and published in a structured way. It is an interesting question as to how the legal profession came to know what the law was. In the case of customary law, their understanding seemingly relied on local wisdom, inherited through oral transmission. Codification of customary law was an integral part of a professional, written legal culture. Well before the advent of printing, the Ordinances of Montils-lès-Tours (1454) had envisaged the drafting (rédaction) of French customary laws, with the lead being taken by the senior judges, part of the way in which the relationship between ‘local’ and ‘royal’ justice was redefined. But codification turned out to be a slow business, involving the consultation of local people, who often had varying, even contradictory, notions of their custom. The consolidation of the results required the skills of a professional jurist.⁴⁹ Normandy provides a good example of how painstaking a procedure it was. The provincial estates of Normandy sent its deputies to Blois in 1576 with a petition to begin work on drafting the province’s customary laws.⁵⁰ Over the following five years, memoranda were invited from local communities. Then, beginning in August 1582, they were asked to send deputies to the October sessions of the estates, where a first draft was read out. This was then submitted to local scrutiny and amendment, the final version being given its last reading before the estates on 1 July 1583 before it received royal assent in letters patent of 14 October 1585. Even then, however, the Normandy custom had not managed to encompass all the seigneurial ‘usages locaux’ and the premier président Claude Groulart was dispatched around the seven bailliages to codify them too, the most significant of which were in the county of Eu, around Dieppe, where Henri, duc de Guise, claimed that it was not subjected ⁴⁷ LH3, iv. 3431. ⁴⁸ Dumont, i, Nos. 7; 316; 840; 921, etc. ⁴⁹ Martin, Histoire de la coûtume; Filhol, ‘La Rédaction’; Yver, ‘Le Président Thibault Baillet’. ⁵⁰ Letters patent of Blois, 11 March 1577, cited Floquet, Histoire du Parlement de Normandie, iii. 201.

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to the Normandy custumal, and where Groulart (who was from that part of the world) set about writing a variant.⁵¹ So, although many customs were ‘reformed’ in the first half of the sixteenth century, much depended on whether provincial estates could be persuaded to invest in the process, how strong seigneurial interests were, how juridically homogeneous a particular region was, and whether there was a jurist capable of undertaking the task. Much remained to be done in the later sixteenth century and, even when they were ‘reformed’, codified customs were sometimes incoherent. That of Paris in 1511 was re-‘reformed’ through a new inquiry leading to a further revised custom in 1580, supervised by the premier président Christofle de Thou.⁵² In the preface to the published version, Louis de Saintyon hoped that it might serve as the basis for a general customary law, valid throughout France.⁵³ It was an aspiration with a long history but it proved obstinately difficult to achieve. The Ordinances of Blois (¶207) committed the king to do so. Henri III put his weight behind the reform of the Parisian (1580), Breton (1581), Orléanais (1583), Calaisis (1583), and Norman (1588) customs.⁵⁴ But there remained a good many areas without a written customary law by the end of Henri III’s reign. And the codification of customary law simply strengthened the hand of professional lawyers, without any lessening of the costs or time spent at law. Could the same ‘codification’ take place with royal laws? Professional lawyers were taught their Roman law through studying the Institutes of Diocletian and Justinian, but there were no equivalents for French royal law. They learnt the law of the land presumably by hearing it declared in the registration of edicts, discussed in law courts, and published in individual edicts. Only the few specialists like Jean du Tillet, greffier civil at the Parlement of Paris, had access to the archives to compile his Recueil des ordonnances, on which he spent half a lifetime. But it only went up to the reign of Jean II (1350–64) and remained unpublished before 1600. This was why ‘compilation’ ordinances carried significance. More specifically, ¶207 of Blois responded to the unanimous petitions from the estates (C: 281; N: 91; T: 201) with the promise to produce a one-volume compilation of French royal law. Before the king had time to carry out his promise, a private initiative saw the light of day which attempted just that. Antoine Fontanon, avocat at the Parlement of Paris, published the first edition of ⁵¹ Ibid. 206; Génestal, ‘La Rédaction des usages’. ⁵² Filhol, Le Premier Président. ⁵³ Coûtumes de Paris (1580), preface. ⁵⁴ Doucet, Les Institutions, i. 64; cf. Yver, ‘La Rédaction officielle’.

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his compilation in 1580.⁵⁵ The preface explained that the mammoth task had been a collaborative enterprise, based on earlier attempts, especially that of Pierre Rebuffy.⁵⁶ He was assisted by Adrien DuDrac, Pierre Pithou, and others.⁵⁷ Fontanon’s compilation was impressive in its scale and accuracy. It was organized primarily not by date, but by subject matter, following the categorization (though not the order) of the Ordinances of Blois. Fontanon made careful ‘abstracts’ of many edicts, noting alterations during their registration by the Parlement. Explicit in the work was therefore a defence of the authority of the Parlement and a vision of the French monarchy as, since its institution ‘sous le nom du peuple François’, always moderated by ‘loix tres-sainctes & coustumes louables’. That was not at all what Henri III had in mind. So, three years later, to coincide with the Assembly of Notables at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he asked the premier président of the Parlement of Paris, Barnabé Brisson (whose legal knowledge the king once declared beyond compare in Europe), to coordinate a new ‘official’ compilation. Brisson was a busy, senior magistrate and he employed legal clerks to do the donkey work.⁵⁸ Brisson himself came in, it seems, to organize it, and add the embellishments. His objective was, as the title page made explicit, a Theodosian or Justinian code for a French imperium, the legislative laurel for a reforming prince.⁵⁹ In the letters of privilege that accompanied the publication, Henri III referred explicitly to the demand of the estates at Blois. The printer, Frédéric Morel, was granted an extensive privilege, and deposit copies were promised for all the sovereign courts.⁶⁰ It was, in many ways, a curious work. Organized into twenty ‘books’, beginning with ‘De l’Ordre et Estat Ecclesiastique’ and ending with ‘Des Estats, & Offices, & autres Charges militaires’, its structure often broke down. There was no table of ordinances by date, and no subject index. The embarrassingly large number of ‘articles omitted’ (it runs to eleven folios) indicates haste in its publication. And, unlike Fontanon (whose work he drew on extensively), Brisson could not resist embellishing the king’s legislative energy by adding his name to acts ‘à la façon de Tribonien’ (as the distinguished jurist Charles Loyseau icily put it, alluding to a long-running academic argument between Brisson and Hotman). These additions are hidden in the tell-tale references ‘Henry ⁵⁵ Fontanon. ⁵⁶ Rebuffy, Les Édits et ordonnances des roys de France. ⁵⁷ Fontanon, preface sig. a∼iv. ⁵⁸ Barnavi and Descimon, La Sainte Ligue, 80–1. ⁵⁹ The title page to the 1587 edition contains the title, an ornamentation consisting of an imperial eagle with a superimposed fleur-de-lis heart, interlaced by a monogram ‘H’, and ‘A Paris’ with the date. In later editions, the comparison with Roman law codes was made even more explicit. ⁶⁰ Ibid., sig. a ij-v (Paris, 6 May 1587).

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III, 1585’ and ‘Henry III, 1586 ’ scattered through the work, and which bear no relation to any specific royal act at all.⁶¹ Another theme of the juridical articles in the Ordinances of Blois concerned criminality. The issue was not at the top of the agenda for the deputies at Blois, but the view from the royal council was clear: local criminal elements had been encouraged by the civil wars, and judges were not containing them. There were articles on hired assassins and hit squads (¶195), ambushes (‘guet-apens’) (¶194), masked men committing highway robbery (¶199), restricting clemency for those dispatched to the galleys (¶200), against those who sheltered criminals (¶193), and calling on notables to intervene against those who resorted to swords and pistols in quarrels (¶197). The provostsmarshal and sergeants-at-law (prévôts; sergents) were familiar whipping boys for a judicial system in which it was hard to pursue justice for the common good and at public expense. The clergy and third estate delegates joined the king in regarding the holding of grands jours as the panacea of the judicial state in criminal matters (C: 257; T: 172; ¶206). Grands jours were sessions of the Parlement of Paris (the equivalent could also be held in provincial Parlements) on assize in remote parts of the Parlement’s jurisdiction, held in the long judicial vacation.⁶² These assize courts epitomized the contemporary ideal of royal judges, impartially delivering the king’s justice without fear or favour. The Ordinances of Blois stipulated that they should be held annually and, once more, there was a genuine attempt (led by the royal council) to enact what was promised. Although the resumption of hostilities in 1580 prevented the assizes happening that year, letters patent summoned the grands jours to meet at Poitiers in August 1579, Clermont d’Auvergne in August 1581, again in September 1582, and in Troyes in September 1583.⁶³ It was the most intensive intervention by royal justice in the French provinces in the sixteenth century. The letters patent proclaimed the benefits of justice done to all, great and small. In reality, it was judicial theatre, in which the royal advocates played leading roles. There were long opening speeches and show trials of criminous gentry and miscreant lesser officers. Reluctant Paris magistrates made the best of their enforced provincial vacations, ordering the affairs of the municipality where they held court, and busied themselves with the cases that came before them. Three months was not long enough, and ⁶¹ In the first book, e.g. ‘Henry III, 1585’ appears on fos. 2 [twice]; 4; 8; 9v [twice]; 16v . ‘Henry III, 1586’ appears on fos. 10v ; 11; 13; 14v ; 15; 17. ⁶² Doucet, Les Institutions, i. 217–20; Trotry, Les Grands Jours. ⁶³ F46863–15; F46866–8; F46872–15; F46876–5.

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there were always jurisdictional disputes. But, by sixteenth-century standards it was the best that could be hoped for. Protestants feared that they would be the target of the catholic judges from Paris. But the judges knew too well how destabilizing of the fragile peace their efforts could be. They were instructed by the king to enforce the amnesty clause of the edicts of pacification equitably, and to be prudent.⁶⁴ ‘Truly justice is done in them [grands jours] marvellously severely’, commented the English ambassador on the assizes at Troyes in 1583. ‘At first it was thought that it was taken in hand to ‘‘attrappe’’ them of the Religion, but truly it is common to all men, and more to Catholics than Protestants. Men of great quality have been executed in it.’⁶⁵

T HE SA LE OF OFFI CE S The estates general condemned the sale of royal offices, and judicial offices in particular.⁶⁶ It was indefensible. Venality created a dropsical state.⁶⁷ Far from cultivating virtue, it encouraged vice. Judges and financial officials who purchased their posts tended to be socially ambitious, greedy, and corrupt.⁶⁸ The deputies had in front of them a horror story of fairy-tale proportions.⁶⁹ It concerned the goings-on of Jean Poisle (var.: Poille), conseiller in the Grand’Chambre at the Parlement of Paris, a cousin of Barnabé Brisson.⁷⁰ He was accused of profiting from some 200 lawsuits, exploiting legal procedures in some instances, falsifying paperwork in others, suborning or threatening witnesses, protecting his own relatives, and using the law to protect his property interests at Saint-Gratien in the Brie.⁷¹ If only a fraction of the charges against him were true, it was a terrible indictment of a magistrate who, by definition, was immune from prosecution and whose removal from office was rendered almost impossible because of venality. Purchasing a judicial office implied that learning (the nursery of virtue) counted for little.⁷² The chorus of complaint against venality was couched in moral terms.⁷³ Venality resulted in ‘merit’ going unrecognized ‘et la vertu mise sous le pied de cette corruption’. The monarchy created a ‘million ⁶⁴ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ ⁷⁰ ⁷¹ ⁷²

Trotry, Les Grands Jours, 202. ⁶⁵ CalSPFor (1583–4), 252. C: 253; T: 110–13. ⁶⁷ C: 297. T: 110–11 but reflected in the cahiers of the other orders. La Legende de Maistre Iean Poisle; cf. Barnavi and Descimon, La Sainte Ligue, 166–72. Maugis, Histoire, iii. 252. The pamphlet listed nineteen extensively documented depositions against him. T: 128. ⁷³ Bitton, ‘History and Politics’, 390–413.

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d’offices pernicieux & Insupportables, tant de Iudicature que de finances’. Those who have purchased them do so uniquely ‘pour l’auarice et l’ambition, et ne seruent que de ronger la substance du peuple’.⁷⁴ Michel de L’Hospital had been unambiguous: those that sell judicial offices sell the commonwealth, the subjects’ lifeblood, sentiments expressed in almost identical words by Jean Bodin.⁷⁵ Étienne Pasquier and others focused on the perjury that venality necessarily entailed. Senior magistrates swore three oaths before the presidents of the court. The first was on bended knee, their right hand on the Bible, to serve the king, not to take bribes, to obey the ordinances of the court, and to keep its deliberations secret. The second (abolished in 1597) was sworn standing up with hand upheld, promising not to have parted with or promised any sum of money in order to obtain the post. The third, introduced in 1565, was an oath of catholicity. Venality was morally objectionable because it required judges to commit a falsehood as their first act of office. Pasquier dreamed of the ‘siecle d’or, auquel les Estats se donnoient au poids de la vertu, non de l’argent’.⁷⁶ For Du Perron, venality of judicial offices was an invention of the devil, depriving the king of his choice of judges, and of the emulative virtue that seeking the king’s favour inculcated.⁷⁷ The royal defence of venality was that it was undertaken with reluctance and only in the exigency of the civil wars ‘à nostre très grand regret.’⁷⁸ The French monarchy had fought the early civil wars without increasing the commissioned revenues (tailles, crues, aides, etc.). It had relied on the alienation of clerical wealth, borrowings from all and sundry, and the parties extraordinaires, the revenues from office sale. With other lines of credit drying up, the latter was the only means of obtaining credit quickly and at ‘rates’ that were better than other long-term rates of interest. If necessary, offices could always be repurchased at a later stage; the damage would not be permanent. The military campaigns of 1574–6 were accompanied by a ‘desbordement general’ of office creation.⁷⁹ It was felt throughout the kingdom, even in those provinces which had been customarily exempt, such as Burgundy and Languedoc. Deputies at the estates general were told on 17 January 1577 that the gages of royal office-holders absorbed almost half the ordinary revenues of the king.⁸⁰ ⁷⁴ ⁷⁶ ⁷⁷ ⁷⁹ ⁸⁰

Sée, ‘Les États’, 205. ⁷⁵ Lloyd, The State, 73. Fragonard and Randout (eds.), Etienne Pasquier, Recherches, iv, ch. 17 [ii. 949]. Du Perron, Les Diverses Oevvres, ii. 3; 4; 14. ⁷⁸ ¶ 100. Fragonard and Roudout (eds.), Étienne Pasquier; Recherches, iv, ch. 17 (ii. 949: 947). Picot, Histoire des états généraux, iii. 5–6.

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Selling offices depended on there being purchasers. Buyers had to be tempted into the market with perks. The one that became common was an exemption from ordinary taxation, partly a compensation for low levels of remuneration (gages) in the middle and junior ranks. The market reflected complex legal, economic, and social realities upon which office creation and sale depended. How was the occupancy of a royal office to be legally regarded? French jurists had not spoken with one voice on the matter, and their debate went to the heart of the issue of how virtue was to be exercised in office for the bien public. Could an office-holder, for example, be dismissed at the whim of a monarch? Charles Du Moulin had argued that an officer enjoyed only the ‘bare exercise’ of the rights inherent in the office, and could be deprived of it at any moment at the pleasure of the king. Did not their letters of provision contain the phrase ‘autant qu’il nous plaît’?⁸¹ More conservative jurists (and their view increasingly prevailed) regarded an office as patrimonial, i.e. akin to a vassal’s ‘dominium’ over the property for which he owed homage to the king.⁸² An office-holder could be dismissed only if he failed to manifest the necessary virtue in the discharge of his responsibilities. That was a more comfortable notion, protecting the judicial state against monarchical caprice, and equating royal offices with the ecclesiastical notion of a benefice. It was readily understood that the tenancy of an office was separable from its administration since that was a distinction which went to the heart of the later sixteenth-century perception of property and office. French customs of inheritance differentiated between the inherited family ‘domain’ (the ‘propres’), of which the household had the usufruct but which could not be alienated, and the property that they had ‘acquired’ for themselves otherwise than by inheritance (the ‘acquêts’). Separating the holding of an office from its exercise was an equivalent distinction—reflected in the curatorships of ecclesiastical benefices or a ‘régence’ (wardship) on behalf of a minor. Virtue lay in the exercise of an office, not in its proprietorship. Virtue and patrimony were not incompatible; virtue and venality were. If an office was a patrimony, was it heritable? The reality was that letters of resignation were being sought to office-holders to hand their office on to whomever they chose, and to do so by sale as well as by inheritance (so-called ‘survivances en blanc’). In April 1568, 1574, and again in July 1576, edicts offered lettres de survivance on all venal offices in return for a third the price ⁸¹ Lloyd, ‘Constitutional Thought’; The State, 72–3; 149–51; 162–7. ⁸² Mousnier, La Vénalité, 53–4.

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of the office (the ‘tiers denier’).⁸³ Such resignations and survivances were another indication of a market in offices in which there was a transactional price, this market being symptomatic of a further economic and social reality. Office-holding was part of a strategy of individual capital investment at a time when other forms of fixed investment were uncertain. It was a more secure long-term deployment of family capital, with distinct possibilities of upward social mobility and eventual personal nobility for a shrewd investment in the right sort of office. Across the kingdom the rapid expansion in numbers of royal offices, especially at the higher and intermediate levels of the officialdom, cemented the existence of local corps of notables within regional capitals and urban centres. These were significant groups in French society, whose loyalty was essential to the monarchy and who would be essential to the practical success of any reforming programme. But venality did not entirely compromise public virtue. Faced with the task of bridging the gap between revenues and expenditures, the royal council listened to proposals from interested parties (partisans) for how to do so. These were often couched as the creation of offices whose task was to eradicate a particular abuse. Office creation could, in other words, be presented as contributing to the public good, a necessary reform that conveniently squared the circle between raising revenues and assisting the commonwealth. The arguments emerged in the preambles (‘dispositifs’) to the resulting edicts. The latter were presumably drafted by the secretary who countersigned the particular edicts in question, but the sentiments echoed the debates round the council table.⁸⁴ So offices to regulate customs duties, order mercantile life, and control taverns were all aimed at controlling the moral fabric of the kingdom. An edict of February 1578 established bureaux to monitor the import and export of grain, wine, cloth, and dyestuffs—justified in moral terms—each bureau being staffed with its controllers and clerks, all paid for by levies on the goods in question.⁸⁵ Another in December 1577 created parish clerks as royal offices, requiring them to write up and keep the registers of the taille which the local receveurs notoriously failed to maintain accurately or up to date.⁸⁶ Another in May 1575 created royal notaries (notaire gardenotes) to take over the storage and archiving of notarial registers (the loss of which caused legal delays).⁸⁷ They would be supplemented by an edict of June 1582 creating an official to register all titles to property (a contrôleur des titres) in ⁸³ F46852–2; F46856–1. ⁸⁴ Babeau, ‘Les Préambules’. ⁸⁵ F46861–9. ⁸⁶ F46859–1 ; Robillard, i. 225–6; ii. 108. ⁸⁷ Fontanon, i. 714–15.

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each bailliage in order to eliminate complex searches to confirm titles.⁸⁸ Each measure involved the increased regulation of civic life, an extension of the processes of task specialization, ordering, documenting, and monitoring in disciplined civil society. The efforts to reform society in this decade witnessed the creation of bureaux, clerks and controllers, the panoply of the written state, the tyranny of the rôle and the règlement, inevitably intrusive upon traditional social norms. But each measure was also presented as a worthwhile reform of an acknowledged abuse. Even the creation of alternatifs (offices whose occupancy was shared by more than one person in rotation) could be justified on the grounds that, if there were two officers in a post, it would prevent one single officer favouring ‘ceux qui bon leur semble’.⁸⁹ It also allowed those involved in the king’s finances time to prepare and submit their accounts. The hatred for the entrepreneurs who proposed office creation was often on the grounds that they were corrupting the state under the guise of wanting to improve it. They were like the clever entrepreneurs who proposed selling offices to Emperor Theodosius, said Pasquier, under the guise of contributing something positive to the commonwealth.⁹⁰ If offices were to reform society, their virtue had to be nurtured. Henri III attempted to do so by elaborating a hierarchy of emulative virtue in the officialdom, strengthening their internal structures of discipline, and by abolishing venality. In October 1578, an additional component to the process of acquiring an office was introduced. It was known as the ‘marc d’or’ (a marc of gold).⁹¹ To embody the virtue expected of an officer when letters of provision were solemnly issued to him at the Chancellery, he had to ‘recognize’ the ‘beneficium’ that he had received from the king, and embody his oath of fidelity in a ‘gift’ that was the quintessence of virtue, a quantity of pure gold. The notion had echoes of the tribute levied upon Roman senators at the accession or birthday of the emperor.⁹² It was not primarily a fiscal measure (by 1583, the annual income from the ‘droit d’or’ was only 16,900 écus).⁹³ In the economy of exchange implied in gifts, there was always a sense of proportionality. Gifts were commensurate with the amount of honour that was being transacted. The gift expected from each office-holder varied, therefore, in accordance with the perceived value of the office. By the second half of 1583, and most likely during the Assembly of Notables at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a complete tariff of the amounts of gold expected ⁸⁸ Fontanon, i. 724–5. ⁸⁹ Ibid. ii. 369–70. ⁹⁰ Pasquier, Œeuvres, ii. 328 [lettres, bk. XII, No. 2]. ⁹² Ibid. 26. ⁹³ Ibid. 90.

⁹¹ Nagle, Le Droit de marc d’or.

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from each category of office-holder was drawn up, seemingly by the king’s secretary, Villeroy.⁹⁴ How were the categories to be defined? The original edict specified that it was the ‘title’ and ‘quality’ of the office that determined its honorific value. The title was clear enough; its quality, however, depended on its location and, to a lesser extent, on its level of remuneration and other factors. An office in a larger, older, more prestigious ‘corps’ was worth more than a newer and smaller one. An office in Paris was worth more than one in the provinces; an office in a town with an archbishopric or bishopric was more valuable than one in an unwalled town. Judicial offices were worth more than financial offices. A financial office handling a significant amount of revenue was worth more than one handling less. The premier président of the Parlement and Chambre des Comptes in Paris paid 3.5 marcs of pure gold (i.e. 252 écus) as compared with the five présidents, the avocat du roi at the Parlement, the premier président at the Cour des Aides, and the trésoriers de l’Épargne who paid 3 marcs of pure gold (i.e. 216 écus), along with the premiers présidents in the provinces.⁹⁵ The premiers présidents in the more prestigious présidial law courts in the provinces (the ‘bons sièges présidiaux’) paid 1.5 marcs alongside the intendants des finances, the grands audienciers in the Chancellery, the conseillers des requêtes in the Parlement of Paris, and others. But those presiding in the less prestigious présidiaux (the ‘moyens sièges présidiaux’) only paid one marc, alongside the conseillers in the Parlements outside Paris. These were the subaltern office-holders. Below them lay the office-holders obliged to offer the king a fraction of a marc for the privilege of having title to their office, down to the humblest receveurs particuliers des sièges présidiaux, or élus des élections particulières (scheduled to pay 1 12 ounces of gold worth 13 12 écus) or the sergens in the newly created official fish-distribution agency, the petites élections, compteurs et deschargeurs de poisson de mer frais sec et salé (committed to 3 gros d’or or 3 34 écus).⁹⁶ For the first time, France’s office-holding cadres were categorized by virtue of their office, hierarchized in accordance with the honour accruing to them through their post. It was an attempt to counteract the value system accorded offices by venality and purify the link between office-holders and monarchy.⁹⁷ Bodin would have said that it was not quite the ‘geometric’ configuration of offices that he would have advocated, whereby the honour of each office was attuned to another like the notes of a musical scale. But it certainly demonstrated the royal art of ‘métritique’, as Louis Le Roy ⁹⁴ Ibid., ch. 3. ⁹⁵ Ibid. 107–23. ⁹⁶ These agencies were created by the edict of Paris ( January 1583)—F46874–2. ⁹⁷ Nagle, Le Droit de marc d’or, 14.

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termed it, in which equity was moderated by honour, the superior balanced with the inferior, each being accorded the rank and virtue which it deserved.⁹⁸ The greater part of sixteenth-century institutional life was self-regulating. Municipal corporations, tribunals, and law courts were expected to govern their own behaviour. Nurturing virtue in public life involved, therefore, a process of ‘moralization’ from within. The Ordinances of Blois sought to change the behaviour of the magistrates by means of a corporately enforced censorship. Before any magistrate was accepted into his post, local figures were to be approached for testimonials on ‘leurs vies, mœurs et conversation’.⁹⁹ They were also asked to confirm the candidate’s, that being a guide to moral rectitude. Senior judges and royal officers were responsible for discipline, administering the ancient system of client-based remuneration (épices) and regulating the behaviour of advocates pleading before their court. The ordinances emphasized the public examination of newly nominated judges and the policing of objections to particular magistrates judging cases on the grounds of their affinity with plaintiffs or defendants (récusations), often used to frustrate a lawsuit.¹⁰⁰ The responsibilities of senior judges and royal counsel were encapsulated in the article requiring them to harangue their court on its internal discipline (mercuriales). According to the third estate, this was ‘un des principaux moyens de contenir chacun de vos magistrats en leur devoir’.¹⁰¹ Transcripts of these harangues in the présidiaux were to be handed on to the Parlements for scrutiny, with those from the Parlements lodged with the chancellor. De L’Hospital had strongly supported this ‘animadversio censoria’ (‘discursive discipline’). He was not alone among the French magistrature to draw on the Roman example of the ‘censor’, whose role was to preserve civic virtue and prevent the otherwise inevitable cycle of decay and degeneration.¹⁰² The mercuriales proposals had been included in previous ordinances. They were not new. But reiteration was fundamental to the educative function of early modern legislation in a culture where law was expected to be reinforced by being read out. Henri III took such ‘auto-discipline’ seriously and it had an impact on judicial culture. The increased significance accorded to the mercuriales at the Parlement of Paris in the 1580s was also reflected in the provincial parlements. At Bordeaux, for example, where the Parlement had ⁹⁸ ⁹⁹ ¹⁰⁰ ¹⁰¹

Le Roy, De l’origine, fo. 19; cf. De l’excellence du gouvernement royale. ¶ 109; reflecting T: 131. ¶ 108; cf. T: 128; ¶ 117–18; 121–2; cf. C: 255, N: 108 and ¶ 122, T:114–16; 261b. T: 157; cf. C: 290. ¹⁰² Parsons, ‘The Roman Censors’.

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a reputation for being a law unto itself, there was a renewed emphasis on the mercuriale tradition with the arrival of Geoffroy de Malvyn as président in 1582, and Gérard Coton, sieur de Sugy, as the new premier président in 1584.¹⁰³ Judges were expected to be seen in processions and at church on feast days. Their behaviour in court was required to be modest, their public discourse grave. The first president undertook to prevent clients using récusations as a way of questioning their integrity. To take a further example, Claude Groulart used his inaugural discourse as premier président in the Parlement of Rouen on 6 April 1585 to remind the assembled lawyers and judges that the king and the chancellor had both urged him to instigate mercuriales.¹⁰⁴ Two months later, he inaugurated his first session with a speech that compared them to the early provincial councils of the church, of which Justinian had approved, and to the maintenance of good military discipline, as recommended by Valerius Maximus.¹⁰⁵ The judicial toga was like a military uniform, he went on. Unlike ancient Rome, France does not have censors, but mercuriales are the nearest equivalent ‘où plus doucement nous sommes censeurs les ungs des autres qui enthrone en la compagnie avec un desir et zele de vivre fraternelement promettans de ne laisser passer convenientibus oculis ce qui peut obscurcir la splendeur qui doit reliure le plus quil est possible’.¹⁰⁶ There was, in short, a progressive ‘moralisation de la magistrature’ whereby, in the face of public criticism for tolerating protestants in their midst and being complaisant towards corruption, the semiology of the ‘perfect magistrate’ was articulated as never before.¹⁰⁷ In Paris, Grenoble, Toulouse, and elsewhere, incoming judges presented more elaborate testimonials as to their probity, orthodoxy, and virtue.¹⁰⁸ In the Paris Cour des Monnaies, where such documents have survived in quantity, candidates rivalled one another to produce anything up to seven glowing references, replete with assurances that they were ‘un homme de bien’ and of ‘bonne conversation’. Law courts were the focus for the emerging local official notability. Gossip about the goings-on of judges was common currency. The published mercuriales were part of an emerging culture of moralizing, subaltern virtue. ¹⁰³ Courteault, Geoffroy de Malvyn, 111–12. ¹⁰⁴ Bib Mun Rouen MS Y 202 fo. 75 [endorsed ‘ce que ie dis a la court de parlement de Rouen lors quils me receurent premier president le 6 avril 1585’]. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid., fos. 67–73, partially in Floquet, Histoire du Parlement de Normandie, iii. 219–20. ¹⁰⁶ Bib Mun Rouen MS Y 202 fo. 70. ¹⁰⁷ Kaiser, ‘Les Cours souveraines’, 15; Dewald, ‘‘The ‘‘Perfect Magistrate’’ ’. ¹⁰⁸ For Grenoble and Toulouse, see Gal, Grenoble au temps de la Ligue, 71.

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We have already encountered it in the writings of Philibert Bugnyon, the avocat du roi from the important présidial in Lyon.¹⁰⁹ Taking his oath of office there on 3 April 1582, he would have paid 6 ounces of gold marcs, d’or, for the privilege.¹¹⁰ He regarded his commentary on the Ordinances of Blois as an effort to recover the ‘droit, symmetrie, identité, vnion, & accord des loix, constitutions & edicts de ceste Gaule’ which had been unbalanced by the civil wars.¹¹¹ The harmony of the law was essential to ‘vn renouuellement d’aage, & reduire la vertu en sa premiere & beaucoup plus louable splendeur & chrestienne forme de vivre’.¹¹² The treatise was a sustained commentary on the way by which reform was achieved by law. Meanwhile, in the présidial at Angers, his counterpart François Grimaudet published his political writings. Their underlying message was that the study of moral philosophy underlay good government.¹¹³ His reflections were based on a long, often thankless, career in public office. Magistrates were in the public eye, the subject of endless gossip. He had been obliged numerous times to interpose his authority, ‘faire remonstrances & harangues, quelquesfois aux gouuerneurs, quelques à l’assemblee du peuple, les autres fois en Iugement’.¹¹⁴ Like Du Haillan, he dedicated his treatise to Pierre Forget de Fresnes, whom he praised for his understanding of moral philosophy. In fourteen chapters, his overriding theme was how law, applied with equity, was the essence of public virtue. He examined the question uppermost in the minds of the notables of his generation: how the letter of the law needed to be maintained, but sometimes also ‘interpreted’ to suit the circumstances and ‘fléchir quelque peu la discipline comme pour maintenir l’estat, ou autre affaire publique’.¹¹⁵ The reference point was the recent edicts of pacification—necessary acts of state, but carrying with them the potential for injustice. The ‘amnesty’ from crimes that they contained was the best way of calming civil dissension, but it was also capable of being abused.¹¹⁶ He advocated a reformation based upon justice.¹¹⁷ Meanwhile, in Toulouse, the reform-minded Pierre Belloy exalted the ancient and sober virtues of the subaltern magistrate, represented in the red togas worn by the présidial judges in Angers, Tours, Lyon, and elsewhere.¹¹⁸ He himself was the distinctively ¹⁰⁹ Pallasse, La Sénéchaussée. ¹¹⁰ DBF, vii, col. 638; Nagle, Droit de Marc d’or, 111. ¹¹¹ Bugnyon, Commentaires, author’s preface, 3. ¹¹² Ibid. 5. ¹¹³ Grimaudet, Les Opuscules; cf. Moizard, ‘Un contemporain de Jean Bodin’. ¹¹⁴ The treatise ends with reflections on ‘la force d’éloquence’, a ‘grande vertu ou à bien ou à mal induire l’homme’—fos. 87 and v . ¹¹⁶ Ibid., fos. 37–9. ¹¹⁵ Ibid., fos. 34v –35. ¹¹⁸ Belloy, Panégyrique. ¹¹⁷ Ibid., fos. 76 and v .

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named juge mage (i.e. ‘judge major’—an ‘intermediate’ officer in name and fact) in Toulouse’s local seneschal court. His successor paid 1 12 marcs d’or for the privilege of holding it. Pierre de Belloy was a proud, reforming, defender of local civic virtues and judicial decorum.¹¹⁹ These subordinate magistrates were fond of their own voices, their published treatises wordy and worthy, now unread. Their sentiments are not far from those to be found in the more readable diary of Pierre de L’Estoile, the audiencier in the Chancellery, a post rated at 6 ounces marcs d’or. Through its pages, we glimpse the gossiping, moralizing world of the lesser magistrate and how he judged it in accordance with the exalted values of an idealized civic virtue. Another potential recruit to the reforming endeavour, L’Estoile was endlessly fascinated by the gap between publicly declared virtue and privately practised vice, the hypocrisy that he increasingly identified as the worm within the royal apple. Venality epitomized that hypocrisy. Could the sale of offices be curtailed? The most striking articles of the Blois Ordinances committed the king to its progressive elimination from the judicial state on the death of current incumbents (¶100). In their place, the sovereign courts would recommend suitable magistrates of merit to fill posts in their own tribunals (¶101–3). In the subordinate tribunals, the estates would come forward with a list of recommended names every three years. The benches of magistrates in the sovereign courts would be reduced to their complement at the death of François II (N: 105; T: 117; ¶234). The présidial courts were to be similarly reduced in scale (¶235–6). There appeared initially to be some backbone to this commitment. But with the resumption of hostilities in the Midi in the early summer of 1580, the office-creating cavalcade began once more. In June 1580 came the edict officially rescinding all the office suppression that had occurred since May 1579. The edict, which required the king’s presence at the Parlement on 26 July to ensure its registration, was presented as a temporary and emergency measure.¹²⁰ It was accompanied by the creation of a second Chambre des Requêtes at the Paris Parlement.¹²¹ Similar creations took place in Normandy in July (a new Chambre des Comptes, a project resurrected from 1543), in Guyenne in August (a new Chambre des Requêtes in the Parlement), and in Brittany in September (a new Chambre des Requêtes, mi-partie Breton and French).¹²² The wave of office creation continued into ¹¹⁹ Maynard, Notables et singulières questions, ii, bk. 6 (discours 4 and 6). ¹²⁰ F46865–7. ¹²¹ F46865–8; cf. Maugis, Histoire, ii. 254–6. ¹²² F46865–8,–26,–27.

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1581 as the government struggled to replace the revenue stream that was lost during the previous year’s hostilities. Henri III was anxious, however, to make good the promise of 1580 that the recourse to venality had been but a wartime necessity. At a series of extended council meetings at Fontainebleau in the king’s presence in July 1582, the abolition of venality was debated once more. The options for alternative revenue streams were limited, but the council eventually settled on a subvention from the walled towns of the kingdom.¹²³ This then opened the way for a discussion about office-holding. It included, if I have dated the document correctly, a long speech from Jacques de La Guesle.¹²⁴ The abolition of venality, he readily conceded, had been much discussed, but its realization had been repeatedly compromised.¹²⁵ The king had commanded all those present to speak their mind freely.¹²⁶ He went on to some plain speaking about venality, ‘une maladie que tous voient et appercoiuent, tous sen fachent & sen plaignent, tous en gemissent, et toutefois pour crainte des troubles et dissentions qui ont este Il ne sest trouue personne qui ait osé s’avancer d’y apporter remede’.¹²⁷ God had, however, in his wisdom engineered such a calamity so that, as a Roman historian had said of Marc Antony, he had the honour of reforming it. Even the church was now corrupt ‘affin Sire que vous aiez cest honneur et louange Immortelle de le purger’. La Guesle then reviewed the impact of venality in every aspect of public life. Offices were now openly sold between individuals.¹²⁸ It had been spreading to military posts, where governments were treated like private fiefs, bought, sold, and inherited. Even in the royal household, every post had its price. The worst infamy, however, was the sale of judicial offices. The truth was that those who have purchased offices ‘s’en recompensent sur ceux qui plaident vendant en detail ce quilz ont acheptez gros’. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that there was such a growth in legal business. Things were hardly any better in the church, ‘et si la Justice doit estre reformée, L’eglise n’a pas moins besoin de reformation laquelle aussy est assubjectie a ces marches damnables et Illicites’.¹²⁹ He then felt obliged to soften the message for the senior churchmen on the royal council listening to him. The problem was more deeply embedded than their abilities to reform it. It was rather the ¹²³ F46872–10. ¹²⁴ BN MS Fr 17318 fo. 165 [‘Discours sur la venalité de toutes sortes d’offices et charges par Monsieur de la Guesle’]. S. Daubresse, Le Parlement, 356–8 suggests alternatively that this speech was delivered to the Assembly of Notables in November 1583—see below, Ch. 9. ¹²⁵ Ibid., fo. 165v . ¹²⁶ Ibid., fo. 166. ¹²⁷ Ibid., fo. 166v . ¹²⁹ Ibid., fo. 176. ¹²⁸ Ibid., fo. 169– v .

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French nobility that was ‘corrompue et depravée’ by purchasing bishoprics, abbeys, and simple benefices. This was part of a more general decline in the virtue of the French nobility, so far removed from the brave gentlemen of yore.¹³⁰ The seeds of decline were sown, as so often, at moments of greatness—in this case, the epoch of Charles Martel, whose efforts to defeat the Saracens had been accompanied by rewarding ‘valiant gentlemen’ with ecclesiastical rewards. He ended with a plea that venality be approached by the royal council like a physician treating a very sick patient. His last sentence left the words of St Ambrose about money being the root of evil hanging in the air.¹³¹ La Guesle’s speech was a sustained philippic, a mercuriale for the royal council itself. We do not have a record of other deliberations at that meeting but La Guesle’s views held sway and some of his arguments were reflected in the preamble to the edict of Fontainebleau.¹³² Claiming that its abolition had always been the king’s intention, the edict realistically limited itself to judicial officers, who would now be appointed simply on the basis of royal scrutiny as to the merits of each candidate. No requests for favour would be entertained. Meanwhile, the Jean Poisle affair was instructive on how the legal fraternity would probably seek to protect itself. At least six years after the initial depositions against him, Poisle had been finally arrested in August 1581, tried and condemned in May 1582.¹³³ The leading investigating magistrate was Mathieu Chartier, whose integrity was doubted by nobody. Poisle was eventually sentenced to a public apology and fine, stripped of his office, and banished from the prévôté of Paris for five years. Even then, the accused maintained that he had been framed by his opponents, initially refusing to kneel before his fellow judges to make his apology, and then seeking an audience with the king to obtain an appeal.¹³⁴ The word on the streets of Paris (as reported by L’Estoile) was that, if he was guilty as charged, he should have been hanged. Instead, the magistrates had protected their own, as the sons of Jacob had sheltered the black sheep of their family, Joseph: ‘Frater noster est, non accidamus eum’ (‘He is our brother, we shall not kill him’). From his pulpit in the parish church of Saint-Pierre-des-Arcis, Maurice Poncet compared the judges to his chambermaid—the latter being ¹³⁰ Ibid., fo. 178. ¹³¹ Ibid., fo. 180. ¹³² F46872–5. ¹³³ L’Estoile, iii. 152–4; iv. 20–4. ¹³⁴ There was perhaps substance to Jean Poisle’s defence, to the extent that he had a history of being an engaged catholic, and his principal accuser (René le Rouillié, sieur d’Hérivaux) was from a family of Montmorency servants.

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rather more conscientious when it came to tidying the place up (‘mettre à poil’). In retrospect, it is easy to dismiss the abolition of venality as doomed to failure. In reality, its success was dependent on the fragile internal peace. When the latter collapsed three years later, judicial venality returned and, in September 1585, the edict of Paris revoked the office suppressions which had occurred.¹³⁵ Nine months later, and with renewed military hostilities a reality, all offices were declared hereditary, subject only to the payment of the marc d’or, a down-payment of half the value of the office, and the forty-day provision.¹³⁶ Abolition of venality had lasted just over three years. In retrospect, it was arguably the last and historic moment when the French monarchy had a realistic opportunity to set another course for the nature of its judicial and financial institutions. But this retrospective vision is flawed. Contemporary office-holders were more likely to have remembered from these years the unsettling prospect of holding their posts by virtue of the king’s favour. Which was more preferable—to have the anxiety of purchasing an office, or to have one’s merits determined by those who had the king’s ear? The rising chorus of disquiet at the malign influence of the king’s favourites in these years cannot be dissociated from the reform endeavours. In public offices, it proved very difficult in practice to conjugate virtue and reform.

THE ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY AND THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH, 1579 – 1580 Nowhere was the language of reform more deeply embedded than in the western church. When he convened the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) in 1213, Pope Innocent III announced its task as: ‘to extirpate vices and promote virtue, correct abuses and reform customs’.¹³⁷ In the course of the thirteenth century, the idea of a general reform broadened and became a central debate. The notion of a ‘reformatio tam in capite quam membris’ was a neat encapsulation which made a deep impression that lasted through to the sixteenth century. The idea that reform had to start at the top and work downwards was open to all kinds of interpretation. In the church it had papal, conciliar, and episcopal resonances. The trouble was that, in the ¹³⁵ F46880–4. ¹³⁶ Letters patent of 16 June 1586—see Mousnier, La Vénalité, 36. ¹³⁷ Duval et al. (eds.) Les Conciles œconomiques, ii/i. 227.

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fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the papacy was unable to live up to these ideals of reforming leadership. The later medieval councils of the church brought schism to an end but were unable to achieve the general reforms of the church in head and members that they so often discussed. So in France, as elsewhere in Europe in the later Middle Ages, individuals, religious orders, and intellectual movements began reforms that were from the bottom up. These efforts were inevitably localized, sometimes ephemeral, and did not always meet with the approval of those in authority. The dominant characteristics of this ‘reformatio in membris’ were that it sought to bring about a church that relied upon its moral authority, was more sacerdotal, and more devoted to pastoral care. There are many examples of these local initiatives in France on the eve of the Reformation.¹³⁸ By then, too, reformers owed a good deal to the powerful currents of Christian humanism in France. And reformers drew on protection from those in positions of authority in church and state. Such protection became increasingly important as the Lutheran threat was seen in France as unwittingly advanced by those who sought the reform of the church, or actively encouraged by those among them who were attracted by the reductive reformist appeal of ‘sola fide’ and ‘sola scriptura’. What made the issue of reform in the church so complex? First, the church was a large set of institutions, functioning in different contexts, each with inherited traditions and esprit de corps. These institutions created internal tensions around which issues of reform coalesced and became divisive. Secondly, with the coming of the protestant Reformation, reform from within was frustrated by contradictory views of how to counter the challenge of a new heresy whose appeal was imperfectly understood. In addition, there were fears that the church was about to be engulfed by divisions in its senior ranks. So, although there was a sense of urgency about the need for reform within the church, the resulting paralysis over what to do fostered resentments among the laity about the failure of the clergy to deliver on its promises. Thirdly, the law of the church universal lay in the six great compilations that made up the Corpus juris canonici. But this legislative framework was only selectively applied within France, where legal weight was accorded to ‘anciens usages’ to determine those parts of the canon law which were to apply within the Gallican church. Behind this lay the conviction that ¹³⁸ Lemaître, Le Rouergue flamboyant; Paravy, De la chrétienté romaine; Venard, Réforme protestante; Le Gall, Les Moines au temps des réformes.

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France, the most Christian kingdom, converted directly by Christ’s apostles, had held onto the purity of the primitive church better than other parts of Christendom. No one defended these claims better, or believed these convictions more sincerely, than Gallican lawyers and magistrates. For them, these inherited customs and traditions represented an indigenous moral virtue and capacity for self-renewal. This French exceptionalism became a matter of renewed controversy when it came to the question of ‘publishing’ (i.e. ‘registering’ as an integral part of French law) the canons of the Council of Trent. Herein lay a further complexity surrounding reform of the church. Its eventual decrees offered, for better or worse, a clearly demarcated dogmatic frontier and pathway of reform. After 1563, there was a choice in France between an ill-defined indigenous, gradual reform, based on releasing the inherent moral virtues within the kingdom, and an external, ‘off-the-peg’ reform that was precisely delineated. The ensuing debate became polarized between those who regarded the canons of Trent as a reform affording the best rampart for protecting catholicism in France against the twin dangers of heresy and a rapacious monarchy, and those who persisted in the belief that an indigenous ‘Gallican’ reform was possible and preferable. The balance of the argument turned upon whether a state-sponsored pacification of religious divisions was going to work, on whether French clerics were convinced that Tridentine reform offered the best hope of renewal, and on whether a ‘Gallican’ indigenous reform was a plausible option. The answer to that last question rested with the French monarchy. In the famous Concordat of Bologna of 18 August 1516, François I appropriated the Gallican liberties enshrined in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 and converted them into a kind of ‘royal Gallicanism’. By its terms, the French crown acquired rights of nomination to the major benefices of the kingdom within those regions which had constituted France back in 1438. In so doing, it also consolidated its regalian rights (the régale) to the revenues of vacant sees and the rights of collation (nomination) to benefices during the vacancy. At the same time as the Concordat, Pope Leo X also granted François I the right to levy a royal tithe (décime) upon the French church without consulting the clerical order in France. Although the precedents for such an exaction went back to the Saladin tithe of 1188, it was upon that of 1516 that the French monarchy would rely for the exactions that it imposed in the second half of the sixteenth century. The décime was a repartition tax, levied (at least in theory) in accordance with the distributed wealth of the church, sometimes with the prior consent

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of the papacy, and more often on the basis of a vote in an assembly of French clergy. Clerical assent was important in the sense that the repartition and collection of such revenues relied on the collaboration of the church itself. One of the unintended consequences of the décimes was the consolidation of an ‘assembly of clergy’ to provide that consent and oversee their collection. This consolidation was further enhanced by a ‘convention’, referred to by the clergy as the ‘contract of Poissy’, signed on 21 October 1561 at SaintGermain-en-Laye.¹³⁹ By its terms, the clerical assembly summoned to Poissy in August 1561, to coincide with the estates general at nearby Pontoise, offered to assist the king in writing off royal debts over sixteen years. For the first six years (to 31 December 1567) they agreed to pay annually to the king a sum equivalent to four décimes (or 1,600,000 livres) to be hypothecated towards the repurchase of royal domain and alienated royal revenues, mortgaged as rentes sur l’hôtel de ville de Paris. Then, for a further decade (to 31 December 1577) they agreed to take responsibility for the interest payments and gradual repayment of the principal sum of rentes to the capital value of 7,560,000 livres, payable directly to the prévôt des marchands of the city of Paris and the receivers responsible for the rentes. Alongside the contract of Poissy went a separate (but related) set of twenty-one articles presented by the clergy, to which the council, acting in the name of Charles IX, formally replied on 19 October 1561.¹⁴⁰ The articles solemnly undertook that the clergy would be subjected to no further impositions during the lifetime of the contract and promised to protect the church. Royal protection against its protestant enemies rather than reform was what the clergy sought in 1561. That protection was purchased at a high price. The contract of Poissy turned into a stone around their necks. Within a year, the ensuing civil war forced the French monarchy to contract new rentes, with interest payments assigned on the annuities of the clergy. By 1568, not only had royal debts not been amortized in accordance with the agreement, but additional ones had been added.¹⁴¹ Further, by an edict of 17 May 1563, the crown unilaterally authorized the sale of part of the temporal wealth of the church, the proceeds of which would be received in the royal treasury.¹⁴² This ‘alienation’ was evaluated in accordance with the repartition of church wealth established for the first décime at the time of the Concordat in 1516. It was undertaken by ¹³⁹ Serbat, Les Assemblées, 24–30; 32; 36. Laferrière, Le Contrat, 107–202. ¹⁴⁰ Fontanon, iv. 521–4. ¹⁴¹ Serbat, Les Assemblées, 37–40; 44–5. ¹⁴² Cloulas, ‘Les Aliénations’, 6–19.

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royal receivers who were under instruction to ensure that the majority of the burden fell on larger asset-holders. The process was fraught with difficulty and subject to fraud. Less than a year later (by an edict of January 1564), the crown agreed that the clergy could repurchase their assets, providing that they reimbursed the purchasers.¹⁴³ To fund this repurchase, the clergy were permitted to levy a charge upon themselves, the tax being in exactly the same proportions as the décimes, the resulting receipt being then redistributed by the ‘receivers’ of the clergy appointed to collect the revenue of the royal tithe and used to indemnify the purchasers of church assets for what they had bought. To fund the repurchase in advance, the receivers issued rentes in the name of the clergy on the hôtel de ville, but the amounts collected failed to meet the anticipated revenue, thereby compounding the rolling stone of debt of the French clergy in the later sixteenth century. Further alienations followed, their impact being (along with the décimes) to create an unwillingness or inability in the church to pay the levies asked of them, thus exacerbating their overall indebtedness.¹⁴⁴ This mounting and chaotic royal fiscality is the context within which clerics assessed the reforming endeavours of the monarchy in the church. By comparison with the decrees of Trent, the ordinances of the French monarchy were judged wanting by French clerics. It was not that the various ordinances ignored the church. Indeed, many of the clauses at Blois (1579) found common ground with the disciplinary canons of Trent. But the royal ordinances necessarily contained no doctrinal statements capable of reinforcing the church’s intellectual defences against heresy. In addition, their tone and content was protective of the regalian rights of the crown and intrusive upon the privileges of the clergy. Equally, as debates at Fontainebleau in 1564 revealed, there was a parallel, but contrary, opposition to the Tridentine decrees among the king’s law officers, reflecting a downright hostility towards them in the Parlement of Paris.¹⁴⁵ Applied strictly, the decrees threatened the papal indult (permission), an important vested interest of the magistrates in Paris, whereby each judge had the right to nominate a cleric to a benefice to the value of at least 200 livres once in their lifetime. The fact is that clerical disdain for royal attempts to reform the church and Gallican (mostly legal) dislike towards the Tridentine decrees reflected parallel and contrary suspicions, fed by conflicting vested interests. In the resulting ¹⁴³ Fontanon, iv. 537–8. ¹⁴⁴ Cloulas, ‘Les Aliénations’, 19–56; Michaud, L’Église et l’argent, ch. 5. ¹⁴⁵ See S. Daubresse, Le Parlement, 217–19.

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paralysis, royal fiscality came more and more to symbolize a monarchy that cared little for church reform. At a meeting of bishops summoned to Paris in May 1573, the cardinal of Lorraine attempted to square the circle. With the support of Pope Gregory XIII, he organized commissions of inquiry on various aspects of ecclesiastical change.¹⁴⁶ At meetings in Paris and Fontainebleau Lorraine sought royal approval to introduce a version of the Tridentine decrees into France through meetings of the provinces of the French church.¹⁴⁷ To that end, he concocted a text of 135 ‘extracts’ of the conciliar decrees that would not offend Gallican legal sensitivities. He was backed by Henri, duke of Anjou, whose reformist testament was (at that moment) being considered by the royal council.¹⁴⁸ Lorraine’s ‘cahier spirituel’, of which no example apparently survives, was discussed among clergy summoned to the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in August 1573, and then at the council of notables at Fontainebleau in September 1573.¹⁴⁹ This was, however, as far as it went. The clerical assembly was viewed in Rome as nothing more than a royal vehicle for extracting resources from the French church. Equally, there are signs that Lorraine had difficulty in securing the acquiescence of the clergy. The clerical assembly had been summoned to satisfy the resource demands of the siege of La Rochelle and the cardinal had suggested various means of raising additional revenues from the clergy with the least damage to the ecclesiastical fabric. The most substantial measure was to sell the offices of receveurs des décimes, estimated to be worth at least the value of two décimes (800,000 livres). From various dioceses, there were the first signs of vocal disquiet from among the lesser clergy at yet more fiscality—not least from among the influential Paris curés, who solicited the protection of the nuncio from exactions ‘under the colour of reform and piety’.¹⁵⁰ The conjuncture between ecclesiastical reform and clerical discontent began to coalesce more palpably at the expiry of the ‘contract’ of Poissy on 31 December 1577. The clergy expected, and with good reason, to be released from their engagement of 1561. But the rentes which the ‘contract’ had been designed to repurchase were still outstanding, having not been redeemed. ¹⁴⁶ ANG xii/1. 515–20 and 521–7; cf. Serbat, Les Assemblées, 279–83; and Martin, Le Gallicanisme, 116–18. ¹⁴⁷ ANG xii/1. 548. ¹⁴⁸ Serbat, Les Assemblées, 281. ¹⁴⁹ ANG xii/1. 616–17; 686. For the clergy’s efforts at Melun to recover a copy of Lorraine’s cahier, see Collection, i. 124. Jacques Faye d’Espeisse seems to refer to a copy in the hands of Jacques de La Guesle in 1588—BN MS Fr 15909 fo. 122 [du Faye to Bellièvre, 20 July (1588)]. ¹⁵⁰ Serbat, Les Assemblées, 359–68; ANG xii/1. 570–1; 574.

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There were no other royal revenues to service these investments of preference for notables, bons bourgeois in Paris, and others. There was no alternative but to instruct the receivers to continue levying the décimes as though the contract were still in existence. From many regions, however, there were clear signs of a refusal to do so.¹⁵¹ In the provinces of Bordeaux and Dax, documentation suggests that the roots of clerical unrest went back to Easter 1577.¹⁵² Assembling in Bordeaux, the clerical representatives from these provinces debated how to reform the fabric of the church. The Guyenne clergy prided themselves on their order’s capacity for national organization and habits for ‘bonne communication & Intelligence . . . ensemble’.¹⁵³ They distributed letters and memoranda around the dioceses of the two provinces.¹⁵⁴ They appointed a syndic, saw to the payment of deputies to court, drew up a provincial petition against the proposed additional levy on the clergy to pay for the 1577 campaign, and agreed to meet again on 10 December 1578, ready to add their weight to the growing chorus of demands for a clerical assembly to address the needs of reform. The clergy had a capacity to organize, petition, and present their grievances that was second to none and their inherited guardianship of moral virtue gave them a privilege to be outspoken that was difficult for the monarchy to gainsay. Similar movements took place in other provinces. They culminated in informal meetings of delegates in Paris in June and early July 1578 that we can document through the diary of Guillaume de Taix.¹⁵⁵ On the basis of a memorandum drafted by a cathedral canon from Troyes, they signed a petition, focusing on the illegal continuation of the levies of décimes. The remedy sought was the summoning of a clerical assembly. Anxious not to be portrayed as seditious, they were equally determined not to be compromised. Gabriel Le Genevois, dean of Langres cathedral, did the honours on their behalf, presenting their case before the king on 8 July. Henri III gave him short shrift, replying ‘en peu de mots’ that his demand would have been received sympathetically ‘en vne autre saison’ but that ‘maintenant beaucoup de difficultez se presentent’.¹⁵⁶ This was code for the provincial unrest which was then at its height.¹⁵⁷ In due course, with the estates in Burgundy, ¹⁵¹ Michaud, L’Église et l’argent, 127–9. ¹⁵² BN MS Fr 1912 [‘Memoire estans du clergé des prouinces de Guienne tenu a Bordeaux pour s’opposer a la leuee d’un million de liures et a la solde de quatre mil hommes de pied et mil hommes de cauallerie demandee par le roy en 1577’]. ¹⁵³ Ibid., fo. 4v . ¹⁵⁴ Ibid., fos. 5–8. ¹⁵⁵ Taix, 132–7. ¹⁵⁶ Ibid. 138. ¹⁵⁷ When, a week later, clerical representatives were still pressing the case for an assembly they were told ‘que quelques malueillans auoient fait entendre au Roy que Monseigneur de Guyse auoit

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Normandy, and Brittany out of the way, the archbishop of Lyon chose his moment to press the case for summoning a general assembly of the French clergy.¹⁵⁸ With mounting evidence of refusal to pay the décimes and a possible imminent collapse in interest payments on the rentes, the king issued letters patent on 12 January 1579 for the convocation of a small number of prelates.¹⁵⁹ This was modified after further pressure by letters of 23 March, allowing clerical representatives from the ‘ordre inférieure’ to attend as well. Table 4. Clerical composition of the Assembly of Paris/Melun, 1579–80¹⁶⁰ Archbishops [Cardinals] Bishops Vicars-general Cathedral deans and canons Abbots Others (secular) Others (regular) Total

4 [1] 13 3 29 3 8 1 61

The resulting assembly was half the size of the clerical delegation at Blois. But it was the most independent-minded gathering of its kind in sixteenth-century France. All fourteen indigenous ecclesiastical provinces were represented although two-thirds of the delegates came from south of the Loire. The regular orders hardly featured at all. Instead, the majority were from the middle ranks of diocesan wealth and privilege—cathedral deans, chapter canons, treasurers, sacristans, and diocesan experts in theology. Only one of the delegates was a simple curé. The majority were vocal individuals with knowledge of church affairs and good local connections. They had their own ideas of why the church had been so badly served. Among the assortment of bishops present, they had some natural allies. Arnaud de Pontac, bishop of Bazas, a leading figure in the delegation from the province of Auch, was described by Guillaume de Taix as suscité le Clergé à demander l’assemblee generale, & qu’elle ne tend à autres fins, sinon pour simbolizer [i.e. ‘to consort’] auec les Estats de Bourgongne, & se reuolter de l’obeïssance qu’ils doiuent à sa Maiesté’. Ibid. 141. ¹⁵⁸ Richard, La Papauté et la Ligue française, 100 f. ¹⁵⁹ BN MS Fr nouv acq 3560 fo. 227; cf. Collection, 110 and Serbat, Les Assemblées, 91. ¹⁶⁰ Collection, i. 116–19.

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a ‘chef de parti’ at Melun. Pontac had already, as we have seen, demonstrated his capacity to mobilize the clergy locally. He was from a well-connected family of Bordeaux lawyers and magistrates. Son of Jean de Pontac, seigneur de Sales, clerk (greffier civil et criminel) of the Parlement of Bordeaux and a secrétaire du roi, he was educated in theology at the university of Toulouse in the 1560s.¹⁶¹ There he fell under the influence of the archdeacon of the cathedral church of Saint-Étienne, Jean d’Albin de Valsergues, a local model of ecclesiastical reformation ‘by example’. After the latter’s death, he went to Paris and studied Hebrew under Gilbert Génébrard, helping to complete the latter’s study of biblical chronology. In due course, he accompanied Charles d’Angennes to Rome where he enjoyed the patronage of the papal Datary and the confidence of Pope Gregory XIII. Once promoted bishop of Bazas in 1572, Arnaud de Pontac began the task of rebuilding the cathedral, on which he was believed to have spent up to 100,000 écus by the time of his death. Meanwhile, his brother Raymond de Pontac had inherited the clerkship at the Parlement of Bordeaux and (at the time of the assembly of Melun) was busy organizing the local campaign against the recently created offices of committal clerks (greffiers de présentation). The bishop of Bazas would emerge in due course as a thorn in the side of the royal lieutenant in Guyenne, Matignon, the family becoming one of the filaments in the web of ultra-catholic intrigue in the south-west. In a lower register and from a different region of France, Nicolas Langelier, bishop of Saint-Brieuc, led the delegation from the ecclesiastical province of Tours. Elevated to the see in 1564, he was a respected local figure, prominent in the provincial estates of Brittany. He would take time out of the clerical assembly at Melun to attend the provincial estates at Nantes in September 1579. Like Pontac, he was from a family with influence and connections, and was reputed a reformer in his own local diocesan setting. His Breton diocese was, like Bazas, modest in terms of its income. But it was outside the remit of the Concordat and therefore dependent on a papal indult for the crown’s right of nominations, one that the provincial estates of Brittany were contesting in the late 1570s. Pontac and Langelier were politically inclined prelates who were not in the court’s pocket. They used the experience they gained at Melun in the future assemblies of the clergy in the 1580s and also at the second estates of Blois.¹⁶² For Henri III and his council, the only issue for discussion at Melun was the servicing of the rentes and renegotiation of the décimes through ¹⁶¹ Tamizey de Larroque, Arnaud de Pontac. ¹⁶² The following table indicates these continuities:

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a new clerical contract. The delegates had another objective. Ecclesiastical reform was uppermost in their minds. In their opening session, the assembly’s ‘Promoter’ (the individual who proposed the business of the day) outlined an agenda for reform that included their own behaviour at the assembly and a ‘réformation selon le concile de Trente’. For the deputies at Melun this became the only way forward. Their unanimity contrasts strikingly with the divisions about the Tridentine decrees among the clerical deputies at Blois in 1576/7. That change reflected a more profound evolution in attitudes among French clergy. In the last week of June 1579, the debates at Melun were dominated by Tridentine reform. Should they envisage the decrees being put into place by the church itself, perhaps through the assembly itself, or by means of provincial councils? Delegates were unconvinced that they had the authority to take such a step themselves. Declaring the Tridentine decrees through provincial councils of the church raised fewer objections. Indeed, there had been a proposal to do just that, emanating from the Sorbonne in November 1578.¹⁶³ But, as delegates at Melun knew, the decisions of provincial councils were subject to appeals comme d’abus to the Parlements. The remaining option, that of publishing the Tridentine decrees as royal law, registered in the Parlements, confronted the outright opposition of the magistrates to some of its canons.¹⁶⁴ The premier président Christofle de Thou and the keeper of the seals Cheverny thought the decrees were unnecessary. Their deeper objection was to the fundamental disparity between ecclesiastical authority represented by conciliar decrees and royal authority represented by royal laws. The nuncio’s solution was to propose that the decrees be registered by the Parlement with the general proviso that it was ‘without prejudice to the

Clerical Those who representatives attended the at the Assembly estates of Blois of Paris/Melun, (1576/7) 1579–80

Those who attended clerical assemblies of 1582; 1585–6

Those who attended the estates of Blois (1588–9)

‘Ordre supérieur’

19

5

5

6

‘Ordre inférieur’

42

3

5

6

Total

61

8

10

12

¹⁶³ ANG, viii. 252; 266.

¹⁶⁴ S. Daubresse, Le Parlement, 220–8.

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authority, privilege and jurisdiction of the king’.¹⁶⁵ But, as clerical delegates observed, this meant that the Tridentine decrees were subject to the authority of the crown which, under the circumstances of the peace of Bergerac, led to ‘dix mille absurdités’.¹⁶⁶ Ecclesiastical reformation (Tridentine or otherwise) was a convoluted quadrille. On 27 June the clergy chose their delegation to present the case for ecclesiastical reform to Henri III. It was composed mostly of those who had already spoken up and headed by the bishop of Bazas. Three days later, he read out a draft of the speech that he had prepared before the deputies and a week later (3 July), the delegation had their audience. Pontac’s speech was a powerful admonition, modelled on that of St Ambrose to Emperor Theodosius. Its contents were widely reported in dispatches, not least by the papal nuncio Anselmo Dandino back to Rome.¹⁶⁷ The printed version that followed carried the scriptural text from 4 Kings 7 on its frontispiece: ‘Si nous nous taisons, & ne voulons l’anoncer, nous serons coulpables de crime; venez & le faisons entendre en la Cour du Roy.’¹⁶⁸ Pontac focused on the issue of ecclesiastical reform, linking the re-establishment of ‘ecclesiastical discipline’ through the introduction of the decrees of the Council of Trent into French law with the ‘scandal’ of royal nominations to senior posts in the church. He provided chapter and verse for the latter.¹⁶⁹ Pontac reinforced the point with evidence from delegates and his own personal experience. In the thirty-five dioceses of Languedoc and that part of Guyenne south of the Garonne, no bishop had been present that year to hear Easter confessions or anoint communicants at Easter mass. This was important since, in southwest France, ‘estre de bon Chresme n’est autre chose, que d’estre de bonne religion’. Those provided with bishoprics regarded them as a fief. The king’s personal commitment to the well-being of the church was not in doubt. It had been at his insistence that his brother Charles IX had made a promise before the previous assembly of the clergy in 1573 ‘de ne nommer aux Eueschez & Abbayes que personnes de grand valeur & merite. Toutesfois, si vostre bonté nous permet le dire, comment y a il esté pourueu depuis vostre règne?’¹⁷⁰ ¹⁶⁵ S. Daubresse, Le Parlement, 442–3. ¹⁶⁶ Taix, 173. ¹⁶⁷ ANG, viii. 449–50. ¹⁶⁸ [Arnauld de Pontac], Remonstrance. Extracts in Mignot, Histoire de la réception, ii. 1–22; cf. Recueil des remontrances du clergé, 1 f. Cf. Serbat, Les Assemblées, 288–90; AN G8* 599 fos. 73v –88v . ¹⁶⁹ Pontac, Remonstrance, 11. The document was not, as Serbat surmised, the ‘Rolle des éveschez tenuz en œconomats [ . . . ] ’ (edited in his appendix XVII, 383–5), though it was perhaps an earlier recension of it. ¹⁷⁰ Remonstrance, 15.

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The audience can hardly have been welcome to the king. With the accords of Nérac scarcely in place south of the Loire, the protestants in assembly at Montauban, and the Ordinances of Blois going through the Parlement of Paris, there was little he could say about the Tridentine decrees that would not be misconstrued. So the king took up Pontac’s allusion to his ecclesiastical reforming inclinations, an opportunity to remind the clergy that ecclesiastical reform was their responsibility as well as his.¹⁷¹ He saw little genuine desire for reform on their part.¹⁷² As to the royal rights of nomination, enshrined in the Concordat of Bologna, they had papal approval and were by no means unique in Christian Europe. True, a minority of appointments had not proved to be worthy of their nomination. But, confronting the bishops of Nevers, Noyon, and Bazas squarely, he had nominated the first two and shown favour to the third. Were they not all three examples of the overlooked virtues of royal nomination? To return to the world of elected bishops would be to open the door to ‘brigues, actions, menées, querelles, corruptions & simonies’. The reality was that the pressures from the lay nobility would stop at nothing to influence senior clerical nominations if they were opened up to elections. And, he concluded, when it came to simony, it was dealt with in his recent ordinances. He denied having personally benefited from such transactions. Once again, he invited the clergy to put its own house in order. It was a skilful performance, hinting at a commitment to reform without compromising royal authority. Pontac was obliged to respond to the pint of royal candour with a clerical quart of his own. The assembly sought the ‘bien public’ of the church as a whole. The fact was that the local election of bishops was so essential to the well-being of the church that when kings accorded it, their dynastic line was assured (Charlemagne; Hugh Capet; St Louis). When it was refused, God saw to it that it was blighted. It was the closest that he dared come to linking ecclesiastical reform with the dynastic legitimacy of the prince. The delegation returned to the assembly on 6 July. The clergy’s dismay turned into a renewed debate on the Tridentine decrees, aided by the papal nuncio.¹⁷³ They drafted a petition, signed unanimously, and aimed specifically at making the king responsible for instituting ecclesiastical reform. Agreed on 28 July and presented at a further audience at the Louvre on 30 July, this time led by Pierre d’Épinac, archbishop of Lyon, its articles began ¹⁷¹ Recueil des actes, cos. 15 f.; AN G8* 599 fos. 88v–95. ¹⁷² Ibid, fo. 89. ¹⁷³ Collection, 172–3; AN G*8 599 fos. 142–6; ANG, viii. 454.

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by expressing their commitment to reform and linking it directly to the well-being of the monarchy.¹⁷⁴ The church was dependent on its leaders, the quality of which was measured by how the Concordat of Bologna was creating abuse. Épinac handed over an updated list of those twenty-four or twenty-five bishoprics which were currently unfilled, in the hands of administrators, or held in commendam.¹⁷⁵ For good measure, the petition gave examples of rulers whom God punished for their abuse of clerical appointments by denying them heirs—Julian the Apostate (Flavius Claudius Julianus, who died in battle in  363), Gontran I (the long-haired king of Burgundy whose realm passed to Childebert II in  593 because he died without direct descendants), and King Louis VI (‘le Gros’) ‘qui en fut chêtié rudement en son premier né [Louis VII]’. Henri III had promised Pontac that he would send an envoy to Melun to inform the clergy of his intentions. On 23 July, Bellièvre came before them to deliver a speech designed to redirect the clergy’s attentions back to the décimes and a new contract. The account of it in the assembly’s proceedings accurately reflects the draft preserved among Bellièvre’s papers.¹⁷⁶ Beginning with an explanation as to why the assembly had not been summoned earlier, he then addressed the delegates’ desire for reformation. They would find that this had been mostly satisfied in the recent Ordinances of Blois.¹⁷⁷ Of the Tridentine decrees, there was not a word. The real issue before delegates was their agreement to continue servicing the rentes which had not yet been redeemed. One million, two hundred thousand livres was the best estimate of the amount needed. What were the options? His Majesty could raise the money by taxation elsewhere—but the experience of the past year had shown that there was a real resistance to further burdens. He could default on the interest payments—‘chose qui me semble n’est pas moins miserable et qui pourroit mectre ce Roiaume en aussy grand danger et confusion’.¹⁷⁸ Bellièvre ¹⁷⁴ Recueil des actes, cols. 15 f.; cf. AN G*8 599 fos. 135–149v ; Collection, i. 126–8; ANG, viii. 461–3. ¹⁷⁵ The list included seven from Narbonne province, four from Auch, three from Bourges, two each from Toulouse, Tours, and Bordeaux, and one each from Lyon, Vienne, and Rouen. Of the remaining provinces, the deputies did not know the current situation in Aix, Arles, and Embrun. Only the provinces of Reims and Sens were exempt. As for the abbeys ‘il se peut dire avec vérité y en avoir plus des deux tiers’; and in the priories and other benefices under the Concordat ‘il y en a un nombre infini, et d’occupez et possédez par force par les gentilshommes et aultres personnes layes’—see Serbat, Les Assemblées, 383–5. ¹⁷⁶ BN MS Fr 15891 fo. 43 [endorsed: ‘Double de la proposition faicte aux Messieurs du Clergé de France estant assemblez a Melun le [ . . . ] Jour de Juillet 1579’]; cf. AN G8* 599 fos. 96–100v . ¹⁷⁸ Ibid., fo. 44. ¹⁷⁷ BN MS FV 15891, fo. 43v .

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would rather not lay any obligations on the clergy.¹⁷⁹ But the principle of a royal tithe for the protection of the church had long been accepted. As to why the previous contracts had not redeemed the debt, the answer was simple: ‘Lesdits deniers ont esté emploiez pour repoulser l’Injure de ceulx qui auoient prins les armes contre le Commandement du Roy, et que vous estimiez auoir conspire contre votre Ruyne.’¹⁸⁰ The money had not been spent in new conquests or private quarrels but for the whole commonwealth, the security of the state, and the maintenance of the catholic faith. The church should not abandon its king at this time of need, especially when the objective was ‘pour ne laisser allumer un feu en son Roiaume dont la plus noble et principalle partie en seroit embrasee’. Throughout August and early September 1579, the deputies at Melun became involved in a game of hide and seek with the king and his ministers. The king moved between Paris, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Ollainville, and Fontenay. A further delegation from Melun managed to secure an audience on 16 August, led once more by Épinac, where they again pressed the case for ‘une bonne et heureuse réformation’.¹⁸¹ The king replied that he had asked the chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and his council to prepare a response. The following day they returned once more, resolved to await the king and to say nothing, effectively forcing the king to respond. He received them in his cabinet at Saint-Germain, offering them seats (for the senior order) and benches and stools (for the lower order). There they sat in menacing silence with (as they later realized) the councillors next door trying at that very moment to concoct an appropriate response to their petition.¹⁸² Eventually, having sat for a long time in silence, Épinac said pointedly that they had expected a prompt resolution of the urgent issues of ecclesiastical reform. The chancellor René de Birague, himself a prelate, replied on behalf of the king. The king’s will was to treat spiritual and temporal matters together and not separately. They should not expect a reply on the issues of reform until something positive was on the table concerning the décimes. The bishop of Noyon replied stiffly that what concerned the honour of God should not be traded off against lesser issues. The chancellor retorted that nothing prevented the clergy from putting their own house in order. Indeed, a reform from within was a ‘vraie réformation’. Noyon’s response betrayed some impatience. The clergy knew ¹⁷⁹ Ibid., fo. 45. ¹⁸⁰ Ibid., fo. 46. ¹⁸¹ Collection, i. 129. ¹⁸² Ibid. The numerous erasures in the draft reply indicate how difficult it proved to be—BN MS Fr 15891 fos. 51 and 53.

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that reform lay in their own hands. What they sought was ‘l’exécution & l’autorisation’ for ‘une réformation publique, de laquelle dépend la bonne discipline, qui est tellement corrompus, que nous connoissions que, pour cela, l’ire de Dieu est répandue sur nous’. To reinforce the point, he furnished a learned disquisition on the origins and manifestation of abuses before reiterating his personal commitment to reform in his own diocese. Nicolas Boucherat followed with a similar account of how, since Emperor Constantine, the prosperity of princes had depended more upon the wellbeing of the monasteries than the chivalry of their nobility, since God was more moved by prayers than prowess. The deputies were eventually shown out with no more for their pains than that their petition would be answered in due course. There matters rested until mid-September when, the king incapacitated by a serious infection, a further deputation was received by Anjou.¹⁸³ Épinac launched into a (by then) familiar speech about the connection between ecclesiastical corruption and civil wars. A reform of the state must begin with the cleansing of its sanctuary. He ended by asking the duke to intervene in their favour with the king. When he had finished, there was a long silence, broken by the chancellor asking the archbishop of Lyon whether he had not something further to say. Whispering with the remainder of the delegation, Épinac eventually replied to the effect that they were prepared to offer the king 1 million of the 1.2 million livres that had been demanded.¹⁸⁴ The clergy had been forced to accept that they could not discuss ecclesiastical reform on its own. Reform was part of a political process, played out in a context of competing needs. They simply could not ignore other issues, including the needs of the royal treasury and the rentiers. The reply from Anjou was in the form of an arrêt, authorizing clerical receivers to continue collecting the décimes as though the assembly had given its permission for the full 1.2 million livres to be levied. The cardinal of Guise, present at this declaration, pointedly reminded those present that he simply could not accept this decision, since he had put his hand to the oath, solemnly entered into by the clerical deputies at Blois on 22 February 1577, to accept no further encroachment upon their immunities.¹⁸⁵ On the wider issue of ecclesiastical reform, deputies received the response of the royal council on 12 ¹⁸³ The audience is fully reported in AN G*8 599 fos. 210–22; partially edited in Collection, i. 130–1. ¹⁸⁴ The offer was agreed at the assembly on 4 September—AN G*8 599 fos. 204t – v . ¹⁸⁵ ANG, viii. 503.

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September.¹⁸⁶ It categorically rejected clerical elections, defended the right of nomination enshrined in the Concordat, promised worthy appointments in the future, and ignored Trent. It was a depressing conclusion to six weeks of lobbying and a critical moment for the assembly. Some deputies wanted to leave, despairing of further progress. On 25 September, they solemnly renewed the oath made at Blois on 22 February 1577 and brought things to a close.¹⁸⁷ The following day, the majority of the delegates left Melun for Paris where they sought an audience en masse with the king. Their leading spokesman on this occasion (3 October) was Nicolas Langelier, bishop of Saint-Brieuc. Noted for his experience in public speaking at the estates of Brittany, he was not a royal nominee. Langelier began by accepting, on behalf of the clergy, the king’s peace with the protestants. Force of arms achieved nothing against schism. What had caused the schism in the first place was ‘les abuz & pechez enormes, introduits & soustenuz en l’Eglise’.¹⁸⁸ That was why the clergy wanted Trent ratified and why, similarly, they wanted elections to the heads of dioceses and monastic houses. The Tridentine decrees were not a declaration of war upon their protestant adversaries. On the contrary, they were a means by which ‘par saincte doctrine & exemple de bonne vie, nous desirons les rappeller & reduire en la bergiere de Iesus Christ’. And elections were there to prevent the promotion of unworthy prelates, of which there was ample evidence in the recent past. Justifying a return to elections, Saint-Brieuc ranged wide in his points of reference, from rulers who despoiled the church and suffered God’s wrath, to princes who repented of their sins and profited thereby. Moving on to the décimes, it was unjust that the church should be constrained to continue to pay 1,200,000 livres a year on the basis of contracts that were either past their term or manifestly null and void. Why should they be constrained to levy money to pay the rentes due at the hôtel de ville when the churches were in ruins, with people in need huddling in their porches? The speech ended with a threatening peroration. The king and his kingdom stood under God’s anathema. That explained his difficulties. ‘Si vous voulez faire cesser l’anatheme qui est au milieu de vostre Royaume, qui empesche que Dieu ne bataille voz batailles, & ne pacifie voz pacifications, Si vous desirez auoir vn Empire asseuré, vn Royaume paisible, vn people bon & obéissant’—then he must set things right with God by agreeing to ratify Trent in French law. ¹⁸⁶ Ibid.; full extracts in AN G*8 599 fos. 235–9. ¹⁸⁸ [Langelier], Seconde hanangue, 6.

¹⁸⁷ AN G*8 599 fos 238t – v .

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The clerical assembly continued its deliberations in the chapel of the monastery at Saint-Germain-des-Prés for another five months. The tortuous negotiations over who was responsible for the accumulated debts on the rentes have been analysed elsewhere.¹⁸⁹ The deputies eventually offered a new contract, signed off by the king on 18 February 1580. By it the clergy undertook to pay 1,300,000 livres a year for the following ten years. The assembly achieved nothing by way of remission from royal fiscality, but a line was drawn under the burgeoning arrears and there was the promise of a better administration in the creation of the receveurs généraux and accompanying mechanisms for collecting the décimes, an institution destined to have an illustrious future in ancien régime France. The overt refusals in dioceses and province to pay their quota evaporated since there was little doubt that, for better or worse, the contract had been formally entered into by a properly constituted assembly of the church. A reform of a kind had been achieved in the administration of the décimes and their accountability, and it would prove to be an enduring one. But that was not what the clergy had wanted. There remained a sense that the clerical order had been cheated of the reform that it had wanted, and that the monarchy was careless of its well-being. Nothing contributed more, it has been said, to ‘tridentiniser’ the French episcopate than its battle with the French monarchy over this issue.¹⁹⁰ This was despite the fact that the French crown went further than the clerical deputies were generally prepared to admit in incorporating the disciplinary elements of the canons of Trent into French law. The sixty-four articles on ecclesiastical affairs of the Ordinances of Blois, finally registered by the Parlement on 25 January 1580, included paragraphs on the provision of benefices, the prevention of simony, the institution of seminaries, the residence of clergy in their benefices, episcopal visitations, the maintenance of discipline in monasteries, abbeys, and convents, measures against judicial astrologers and the publication of scandalous books, articles for the proper conduct of church services and the provision of liturgical texts and plate, and strengthened guarantees for the clergy against unjust exactions by the laity as well as excessive intrusion in their affairs by the judiciary. The Parlement of Paris did not succeed in amending the articles so as to overturn the Concordat of Bologna. It was doubtless partly with the judges in mind that the clergy at Melun had made such a display of the imperfection of royal nominations and elaborated the case for elections. The ordinances did, ¹⁸⁹ Serbat, Les Assemblées, 89–108.

¹⁹⁰ Venard, Réforme Protestante, 153.

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however, allow for a limited election of the heads of monastic houses and, in a further clause, required nominations to be put forward within nine months of the vacancy being declared. So the issue of the election of senior prelates was not curtailed in 1580. If anything, it was given a new lease of life by the abandonment of venality among the judges in July 1582 and the institution of a process of local nomination. If such a procedure was acceptable in the judiciary, what made episcopal appointments so different? The issue was pressed by the clergy in the summer of 1582 and would resurface at the Assembly of Notables in 1583–4. Many of the measures outlined in the sixty-four ecclesiastical articles of the Ordinances of Blois were replicated in the formal response to the final cahier from the clerical delegates, issued as a royal edict that same month in February 1580.¹⁹¹ But there were additional elements too. The first clause enjoined archbishops and metropolitans to summon provincial councils within six months and then to hold them triennially. Judges were specifically instructed not to use the appel comme d’abus as a means of interfering in the decisions taken by those councils. This was a crucial measure. It opened the door to the Constitutions of Melun of 1580, whose Formulary for a diocesan visitation paralleled that adopted at the first Borromean Council of Milan in 1565. The Formulary inspired those adopted by other provincial councils, the beginnings of an ‘auto-reform’ within the French church in which individual bishops like Nicolas Langelier, Arnaud de Pontac, Claude de Sainctes, and others played a notable part. ¶4 and 5 imposed clearer limits on any legal rights to seize church property for failure to pay décimes. Other articles limited the powers of judges to intervene in ecclesiastical matters (¶6, 8). Between the thirty-three articles in reply to the clergy and the sixty-four articles of the Ordinances of Blois, something of an indigenous, Gallican, pragmatic, royal reform was sustained, one which allowed room for the French clergy to take the lead within a framework of royal law. In the process, however, the clerical assembly had contributed to the public frenzy over reform that culminated in the early 1580s. ‘NOSTRE SOUVERAINE NOURRICE, L A PÉNITENCE’ Between 10 and 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 2 March 1580, an unknown individual, about 40 years of age and modest in appearance, made his way ¹⁹¹ F46864–2.

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to the centre of the great courtyard of the Louvre palace where the king and the queen mother were in residence. The English ambassador describes how this person ‘first knelt down, and with a loud voice lamented greatly the disorders of the realm, of the little justice with the calamities and oppressions which the people daily sustained, praying with fervent words to God to have mercy on the people of this realm; and concluded that except the king should more carefully discharge his duties towards God and give audience in affairs, God would shortly send vengeance upon him.’¹⁹² Palace courtyards were public spaces, accessible to all and sundry. They were the natural theatre of the court, sometimes adapted to stage plays, places where the comings and goings could be monitored by observers from the windows on all sides. The man spoke ‘with a very loud voice, the people coming about him’, so the king could hardly escape hearing his message. With the peace of Fleix barely holding, Henri III had temporarily withdrawn from public life (he no longer dined in state), though not from affairs. At that moment, he was busy with Pibrac in the queen mother’s apartments and gave orders for the newly appointed captain of the guards, Joachim de Châteauvieux, to arrest and imprison the individual in question.¹⁹³ It was the week before the beginning of Lent and the king had been seen attending masques in the houses of prominent courtier-favourites in the city; the week of disorder (‘maugouvert’) would be the prelude to the period of penitential reform (‘bongouvert’) in Lent. A week or so later, the king would go ‘on pilgrimage’ to the Dominican convent at Poissy to undertake his Lenten devotions.¹⁹⁴ The incident is a telling illustration of how the issue of reform could become embodied by well-meaning, self-appointed prophets of virtue. The French monarchy had long been susceptible to such auguries. Guillaume Postel had made a career of it, after having a vision from God that he must warn François I to reform his kingdom since the latter had been chosen to lead the universal restitution of all things.¹⁹⁵ Still alive in the monastery of Saint-Martin des Champs, Postel would tell anyone prepared to listen to him of the French monarchy’s unique providential role in reform. Only the previous year, he had called on the king and the newly appointed knights ¹⁹² CalSPFor (1579–80), 182–3. ¹⁹³ Le Roux, La Faveur du roi, 259. ¹⁹⁴ Boucher, ‘Henri III, mondain ou dévot?’, 115–16. See the (undated) autograph note from the king to the duchess of Uzès: ‘[ . . . ] le saint temps de Caresme m’y fait [i.e. to Poissy] aller en toutes œuvres qui se doibvent’—cited 116 from Cabinet historique, 19 (1873), 67; cf. L’Estoile, iii. 62. ¹⁹⁵ Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 52; cf. Secret, ‘De quelques courants prophétiques’.

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of the Order of the Holy Spirit to espouse their reforming destiny.¹⁹⁶ Postel once recounted how a wood-craftsman came before François I to expound his vision of how a man dressed in white had told him to warn the king that God was angered because of the bad example set by his court. He must reform public life or else God’s anger would fall upon him and his people. The king remained depressed for three days after the encounter until a courtier assured him that there was nothing to fear. If God had intended to send him a sign, it would have appeared to the king himself. All men are sometimes overcome by ‘feminine’ melancholy.¹⁹⁷ French monarchs, in short, were open to the prophetic vision for imminent, profound change. It derived from the perception that the realm was suffering from God’s wrath for its sinful ways. Penitence and amendment of life were the only human agency for assuaging divine anger. So when Nicolas Langelier, bishop of Saint-Brieuc, told the king that the realm was under God’s anathema, it had an impact. When Claude d’Angennes, bishop of Noyon, urged the royal council in August 1583 to reform the kingdom because it was evident ‘que la main de Dieu jettera en bref sur nous & sur l’Etat, si nous ne nous convertissons’ it was a powerful message.¹⁹⁸ Henri III was convinced of its truths.¹⁹⁹ In private conversations with his secretary Jules Gassot he spoke of the wrath of God afflicting his kingdom, and of his search for a moral reformation to alleviate it. Individual and collective penance was the accepted mechanism for appeasing God’s wrath. Emond Auger, the Jesuit whose influence over the king was of considerable significance in 1583, wrote that penance was a kind of medicine, a ‘spiritual syrop’ against the ‘bitterness of the times’.²⁰⁰ The soul was washed clean of its sinfulness in the church’s central ritual, and thereby inspired anew to Christian virtue. In Métanœologie, the ‘treatise on penitence’ that he published in 1584, Auger explained that penance was an essential precondition for reform. The body and soul of a king ‘s’entre-commandent & s’entreseruent à tour’ just as, in the state at large, ‘police’ and ‘religion’ constitute a ‘diamantine soudeure’.²⁰¹ Henri III was the descendant of priests and kings who had worked for the restoration of public virtue. Now that the realm was ‘remise en paix’, the king was offering ‘une solide & entiere ¹⁹⁶ ¹⁹⁹ ²⁰⁰ ²⁰¹

Ibid., 1. ¹⁹⁷ Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 53. ¹⁹⁸ Ibid. 130. Chevallier, Henri III, 543. Pernot, ‘L’Univers spirituel du père Emond Auger S.J.’ Auger, Metanœologie, Epistre (dated 22 July 1584), * iij.

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reformation de vie’.²⁰²His periodic retreat from the world and immersion in a systematic régime of penitence mirrored Christ’s own precepts and was rooted in Christian practice.²⁰³ It was not new. If there were novel aspects to the royal penitential foundations, they should be judged by their fruits, which were to ensure a spiritual renewal to ‘soustenir le parti de l’Esprit contre la chair, de la mortification contre la vanité du Monde’. This relation between the ‘holy spirit’ and ‘the world’ was of central significance to the king. His birth, his election to the Polish throne, and his accession to the French throne had all occurred at Pentecost and his decision to name his new chivalric order the ‘Order of the Holy Spirit’ indicated its centrality in his religio-reformist mentality.²⁰⁴ It was only in the confines of the ‘holy’ spirit, which had moved the earth from before the beginning of time and now endlessly consoled the afflicted, that true renewal would emerge. The world, by contrast, was full of ‘toil’, ‘misery’, and frustration. In the instructions that he drafted for de L’Aubespine of 16 October 1578 to seek papal approval for the foundation of the new order, the king emphasized that the Holy Spirit was the source of all virtue.²⁰⁵ The king’s own device, first used in a published context at the time of his entry to Lyon in September 1574, was of three crowns, to which were added the legend: ‘Qui dedit ante duas Triplicem dabit ille coronam’ (‘The one who gave hitherto two crowns, will give that third crown’). The third crown was that of virtue, worn in heaven. ‘Manet Ultima Coelo’ was how the device was translated on the face of the clock the king donated to the Palais de Justice in Paris in 1587, indicative that this ultimate virtue would only be won by time and patience. The king explicitly welcomed the role of propitiator for the sins of his people. Bernard d’Osimo, provincial of the Franciscan order in Paris, recalled (according to d’Aubigné) that the king was ‘tellement attaché au crucifix que ce n’estoit plus, disoit-il lui-mesme mais Christ qui vivoit en lui’. The king’s personal crucifix incorporated an anagram to that effect.²⁰⁶ At the heart of this penitential reformation lay personal and collective self-discipline. The engagement of the kingdom in processions and prayers for a royal heir was an example of harnessing disciplined penitence for reasons ²⁰² Auger, Metanœologie, Epistre (dated 22 July 1584), fo. * iij. ²⁰³ Ibid., chs. 4–7. ²⁰⁴ Boucher, ‘L’Ordre du Saint-Esprit’, 129–42. ²⁰⁵ BN MS Clairambault MS 111 fo. 18. ²⁰⁶ e.g. Henri III’s recorded comment in the immediate aftermath of the peace of Fleix: ‘La paix est faitte mais nous payons les tabourineurs comme la coutume porte que le battu paye l’amande. Ancores d’un mauvais marché il est bon dan estre dehors [ . . . ] ’—LH3, iv, No. 4054.

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of state. The prayers were drafted in late 1581.²⁰⁷ Royal letters urged localities to undertake parochial and civic processions on a daily and weekly basis for the year beginning in Advent 1581 and a plenary indulgence was sought from Rome to encourage those who participated in them. The response was widespread, although some protestants refused to join in.²⁰⁸ The king’s involvement was highly publicized, beginning with his participation in solemn processions in Paris. Thereafter, the king undertook regular processions every Friday. In January 1582, he went on his first much-publicized pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Chartres, accompanied by the queen.²⁰⁹ The processional calendar was strengthened by the grant of a papal jubilee in aid of the national intercessions in the following Lent. The first reports of the king’s intention to found a community of penitents were to foster the movement in aid of a royal heir.²¹⁰ The penitential movement was at its strongest in the south of France and Henri III had already come into contact with it on his return from Poland, in Lyon, Avignon, and Marseille. For Henri III, these fraternities were a model of the disciplined society that he yearned to establish. Jacqueline Boucher has written of the king’s ‘definitive spiritual conversion’ in 1582.²¹¹ Although it may not have been as dramatic as that, the year of prayer and processions for a royal heir was certainly accompanied by an intensification of the king’s rituals of mortification. Dieting was a form of penance, recommended by penitential fraternities. Henri III undertook a strict regime in January 1580, again in 1581, and then again in Lent 1582, by which time regular dietary austerities had become a significant part of his life. Other prominent members at court took to extreme fasting too.²¹² Seasoned observers at court noted the change in the king’s language, with more references to ‘conscience’ and his ‘fear of displeasing God’.²¹³ There were reports of a chapel constructed near his private study in the Louvre to have regular access to a sung mass and his interest in endowing a Franciscan monastery nearby the Louvre.²¹⁴ The king’s own intensive work habits, already formidable, also increased.²¹⁵ The phase culminated with a further pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Chartres in June 1582, a council meeting in July 1582 to discuss reforming initiatives, and the king’s taking ²⁰⁷ Jusselin in Mémoires de la Société archéologique d’Eure et Loir, 16 (1923), 55; cf. ANG, vii. 198; 215; 227. ²⁰⁸ Rigal (ed.), Documents, 466. ²⁰⁹ L’Estoile, iv. 12. ²¹⁰ PRO SP 78/7 fo. 17 [Cobham to Walsingham, Paris, 14 January 1582]. ²¹¹ Boucher, ‘Henri III, mondain ou dévot?’, 116; cf. Chevallier, Henri III, 543–4. ²¹² SP 78/7 piece No. 6 [‘News from France’, 4 January 1582]. ²¹³ CalSPFor (1581–2), 569. ²¹⁴ Ibid. 623. ²¹⁵ Gassot, 131.

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his leave of the court at Fontainebleau on 11 August, creating a temporary regency for the queen mother, to go on a three-month retreat. There was speculation that he would visit the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto, and then (in November) that of Notre-Dame de Liesse, already an important centre of Marian devotion.²¹⁶ In reality, he spent much of the time at the waters of Bourbon-Lancy, and in private visits to Marian shrines in the vicinity and an unpublicized visit to Lyon, postponing his trip to Notre-Dame de Liesse until January of the following year. In the meantime, he sustained a reformist retreat, summoning the energies to commit himself to personal and public renewal thereafter. As Auger reminded him in his treatise on penitence two years later, a penitential retreat was the Christian equivalent of Plato’s academy for a philosopher-king.²¹⁷ The king was accompanied during this retreat by ‘two or three boys, who write for him daily in his cabinet, after his direction, such causes as every day passes, and the ‘‘memorials’’ which he takes from them; locking those writings up in a desk and keeping the key about his arm’.²¹⁸ It is tempting to see these as the king’s own agenda for change, elements of which would emerge in the reformist endeavours of the following year. The king’s intensifying interests in the penitential movement were complemented by his commitment to Marian devotions and the observant wing of the Franciscan order. These coalesced in the creation of the Congrégation des Pénitents de l’Annonciation de Notre-Dame, its inaugural service being held on the first Wednesday of Passion week, 1583.²¹⁹ The cardinal de Bourbon was elected its first rector; but its spiritual dynamics were driven by Émond Auger, Maurice du Peyrat (its vice-rector), and Justinien Panse, the latter two being leading lights of the pénitents blancs of Lyon. After a sermon from Auger himself, the penitents gathered in groups before the altar, with their habits over their shoulders. They were blessed, and had their garments tied about them before being given a candle, a rosary, and a white crucifix. After a mass, where they communicated six at a time, they participated in a communal meal where they signed a confession and heard the statutes of the order read out. Widely published, these committed each penitent to ‘la reformation des vies et mœurs de tous estats’. Recognizing the ‘faueur ²¹⁶ CalSPFor (1582–3), 279; 452. Cf. Gislen, ‘Lettres’, 59; 66. For the mass processions to the shrine at Notre-Dame de Liesse in 1577–8 and its significance in the ‘processions blanches’ of 1583, see Crouzet, Les Guerriers, ii. 302. ²¹⁷ Auger, Metanœologie, fo. * iij. ²¹⁸ CalSPFor (1582), 279. ²¹⁹ Les Statvts (1583).

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secrete du sainct Esprit’ which had accompanied the king since an early age, he now felt ‘ce sainct zele, comme vn puissant & robuste moyen d’auoir tousiours le secours du Ciel à poinct, & sentir Dieu à ses bonnes intentions & œuures, tous les iours courtois & fauorable’. The purpose of this extreme mortification was exemplary, propitiatory, and educative. The principle was that the purer the soul, the more effective the expiation, and the more likely they were to recover ‘la saincte police de ces anciens Chrestiens’. Its subscribers (and they included ‘divers courtiers of quality’ as well as the ‘chief president, with other presidents of the courts of Parlement’) were required to say three pater nosters and ave marias before retiring to bed, to celebrate a mass with the congregation once a month on Wednesdays, and to take part in processions three times a year.²²⁰ Particular emphasis was placed on the need to be reconciled with one’s enemies and to disregard rank and status in one’s social behaviour within the order. In public, the brethren were committed to visiting hospitals and prisoners, preferably dressed in their penitential habits, to forswear oaths, and to wear a white rosary and symbolic scourge at their belts. There were additional obligations imposed on brethren who sought a stricter obedience. The first public processions of the new congregation took place on 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation. They left the monastery of the Grands-Augustins in pouring rain, dressed in grey serge cagoules and singing psalms, and processed to Notre-Dame cathedral, the king taking part simply as one of their number. Three days later, on the evening of Maundy Thursday, they made the return parade, imitating Christ’s Passion with ritual flagellation.²²¹ Many of these rituals can be traced back to Franciscan roots. Franciscan obedience emphasized the importance of mortifying the flesh through fasting, chastity, and corporal punishment. The Franciscan ideal of extreme poverty, living from alms, preaching, and seeking God in mystical communion, challenged contemporary worldly values. French Franciscans had gained a reputation for outspoken criticism of secular society and of their own order. Their willingness to encourage lay penitential organizations, epitomized by their ‘Third Order’, or lay ‘Tertiaries’, allowed spiritual regeneration to take place ‘outside’ as well as within the cloister. The king’s patronage of the Franciscan order included a large donation in support of the Franciscan general congregation, summoned to Paris by the general of the order, ²²⁰ CalSPFor (1583), 184; L’Estoile, iv. 76. ²²¹ L‘Estoile, iv. 76; 79; cf. Yates, ‘Religious Processions in Paris, 1583–84’.

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Christophe de Cheffontaines, in May 1579, and a further gift to assist in the reconstruction of the Franciscan monastery’s chapel in Paris, the Église des Cordeliers, badly damaged by fire in November 1580.²²² In August 1583, returning from a further regime at Bourbon-Lancy, the king oversaw the construction of a new Oratory in the Bois de Boulogne to house a small group of Hieronimite monks, a Franciscan Tertiary Order from Spain whose houses included that of Yuste, where the Emperor Charles V had retreated after his abdication, and the monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, the preferred residence of Philip II. In January 1584, they were transferred to Vincennes and reinforced by Minim friars (whose Franciscan austerity was even more scrupulous), thus emphasizing Franciscan reformist attitudes among the court elites. Henri III’s Congregation of Penitents was to be, Auger wrote the following year, an ‘Echolle de Pénitence’. Like many reformist endeavours, it was easily mocked. A hundred and twenty or so of the king’s domestic servants were caught in the lower hall of the Louvre the day after the first procession, wearing handkerchiefs on their heads with slits for the eyes in mock parade. The veteran Paris preacher Maurice Poncet, abbot of Melun, was imprisoned for five months for preaching a Lenten sermon at Notre-Dame against the ‘Confrairie des hypocrites et atheistes’, royal hangers-on who marched on a full stomach and who could do with a good scourge.²²³ L’Estoile made a collection of twenty-six verse lampoons that circulated at court and in Paris. They were so direct in their attack on the king that he subsequently erased them from his journal.²²⁴ They were, to some extent perhaps, Guisard in their inspiration, openly alluding to the possibility of ‘régime change’.²²⁵ But they also reflected the views of those on the streets.²²⁶ There was, indeed, a politically fatal incongruity in God’s anointed one, the inheritor of the fleurs-de-lis, becoming a less than transcendent, indeed abased, ‘suffering servant’ of God for the sins of his kingdom. But we should be wary of taking such criticism as telling us the whole story, even in the capital city itself. Notables were expected to take part in religious processions as a matter of course, a way by which community solidarities were reinforced.²²⁷ Prominent figures at court saw no incompatibility in patronizing and participating in penitential congregations a few years later, and without attracting criticism. In Champagne and Picardy to the east (and with resonances elsewhere), the ²²² L’Estoile, iii. 30. ²²³ Ibid. 77; he was eventually released in August—p. 99. ²²⁴ Ibid. 80–7. ²²⁵ e.g. Quatrain 6 of the collection (p. 81). ²²⁶ CalSPFor (1582–3), 202–3. ²²⁷ Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 38–48.

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movement of penitential processions and Marian devotions known as the ‘processions blanches’ was just beginning in the Easter of 1583. Orchestrated (it is now suggested) at least in part by the ecclesiastical hierarchy to pressurize the king into accepting the Council of Trent, and having some connections with the Guises, it was also a sign of the degree to which a penitential movement could capture the imagination of contemporaries.²²⁸ So there may have been, as de Thou and other commentators implied, more than a hint of political expediency in Henri III’s donning the mantle of the royal penitent. For its defenders, like Christophe de Cheffontaines, the former Franciscan minister-general, the king’s Congregation set a moral example for the rest of the community to follow.²²⁹ Émond Auger sought to answer the charge that it was a hypocritical novelty. Not all novelty was to be deplored, he said. What made a novelty worthwhile was whether it had fruitful results. The penitents were true disciples of Christ. The penitential rule taught the meaning of true obedience and was a constant reminder of wider obligations to society. It was a microcosm for the world of governed passions that became the focus of the king’s reforming endeavours in the Assembly of Notables later that same year. ²²⁸ Crouzet, ‘Recherches sur les processions blanches’; on their inspiration, CalSPF (1583–4), 103. ²²⁹ Cheffontaines, Apologie de la confrérie, 25.

9 The Assembly of Notables, 1583–1584 On Friday, 18 November 1583 Henri III welcomed delegates to the Assembly of Notables that he had convened in the great hall at the chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The meeting was the climax of eighteen months of preparations. Commissioners of inquiry were dispatched throughout the kingdom. Background papers were researched and produced on many aspects of French public life. The Assembly was the ‘apogée du mouvement réformateur qui marqua le règne de Henri III’.¹ That phrase comes from an article published by Aline Karcher(-Vallée) in 1956. She presents the Assembly as demonstrating the administrative potential of Henri III’s régime—its capacity to collect information, manage royal debts and domain, and regulate the economy. The resulting proposals for reform were practical solutions to deep-seated problems. The Assembly of Notables embodied the bureaucrat’s belief that knowledge was power. No doubt the French court of Henri III kept a close eye on developments at the court of Philip II, whose obsession with collecting, handling, and controlling information, it is now thought, contributed to his failures.² The Spanish Habsburgs were precocious in regarding knowledge as the basis for government—and Spanish administration was the envy of those in France with knowledge of it. The crown-promoted encuestas (‘inquests’) were already a significant development of the Spanish colonial administration under Charles V.³ Historians have emphasized Philip II’s initiatives in encouraging the applied sciences and knowledge of the natural world.⁴ He collected information on every aspect of Spanish public life, most notably in the Relaciones geográficas, 1575–80. But the commissioners dispatched by Henri III in August 1582 did not share these objectives. For Henri III, knowledge and power must always be linked to virtue. To dissociate power and virtue ¹ ² ³ ⁴

Karcher, ‘L’Assemblée des notables’, 115. Parker, ‘Philip II, Knowledge and Power’, 11. Bustamente, ‘El conocimiento como necesidad de estado’, 5. Goodman, ‘Philip II’s Patronage of Science and Engineering’, 49–66.

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was to follow Machiavelli; to disaggregate knowledge and virtue was to follow Faustus. Henri III’s commissioners were dispatched to discover wrongdoing, receive petitions, and answer complaints. The background to the Assembly of Notables was a moral reform agenda that had failed to win over the sceptical hearts and minds of people. The objective was to come to terms with the fundamental malaise in French public life created by sectarian conflict and civil war. Saint-Germain-en-Laye was the royal chateau to the west of Paris, still amidst major reconstruction and the only one large enough to accommodate the whole court. It was chosen for the Assembly because the capital was plague-ridden.⁵ The seventy or so individuals could be easily accommodated in the hall, laid out as for an estates general.⁶ The opening session began with one of the king’s carefully crafted speeches, the text for which survives in a contemporary copy.⁷ It gives us a glimpse of his aspirations. He invoked God’s blessing on its deliberations and welcomed delegates, to whom he did not need to explain his commitment to the well-being of the state. The fact that he had called them together was, he admitted, a measure of his disillusion with the attempts so far to reform the commonwealth.⁸ Their task was to assist him to ‘reparer les miseres passees’. The king took his share of responsibility for the latter, though they were more readily attributable to others. He invited those present to unite ‘vos cœurs en effect auec le mien pour lexecution et lobseruation des resolutions que nous prendrons’. The king, by implication, acknowledged that his reformist rhetoric had raised expectations beyond what could readily be achieved. Now it was important that what was decided was also implemented, ‘& nous fermerons la bouche a ceux qui disent nos resolutions estre belles, mais sans aucune execution’. The ‘memoire tres recente des calamitez que les Guerres ciuiles y ont apporte’ needed the ‘régime’, ‘labeur’, and ‘commun debuoir’ of the gens de bien. This was why he had dispatched commissioners round the kingdom. They had discovered fundamental weaknesses in justice, military administration, and royal financial affairs. Delegates would scrutinize the ‘innumerables debtes’ which meant that his revenues were ‘quasi tout engages’. In fact, he had been obliged to anticipate their deliberations and decide the budget for next year. ⁵ Châtenet, ‘Une demeure royale’, 20–30. ⁶ De Thou, ix [bk. 78]. 82. ⁷ BN MS Dupuy 87 fos. 151–2; cf. BN MS fr 17870 fos. 96v f.—the latter is a contemporary copy, preserved in a volume of papers from one of the commissioners for reform, possibly Pierre d’Épinac—see Richard, La Papauté et la Ligue Française, 198. ⁸ BN MS Dupuy 87 fo. 151.

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In July, the meeting had been planned to take place in Paris on 15 September, a good moment in the financial planning cycle.⁹ By November, however, financial officers had to know the dispositions for 1584. But delegates would see all the proposed budgets and were invited to make fundamental proposals concerning the tailles and other taxes for the future. Several times, the king evoked the possibility of ‘la ruine de lestat’ unless change was carried through. It was this sense of ‘fundamental reform’ that had inspired his dispatch of commissioners ad limina in August 1582.

‘PERSONAGES OF AUTHORIT Y AND QUALIT Y TO SEE AND VISIT OUR SUBJECTS’ We should not exaggerate the novelty of the dispatch of commissioners in the summer of 1582. The literature on European state-building is replete with approving murmurs when agents are sent from the centre to enforce the will of government on the localities. In reality, early modern governments hesitated before being too interventionist, aware of the opposition they might encounter. The dispatch of commissioners to the localities was as often a response to a structural or systemic failure, a measure of controlled desperation rather than a smooth segue to state formation.¹⁰ The French crown had many ways of being in touch with its provinces, not least the flow of local petitions and requests received at court. One of the original tasks of the office of maîtres des requêtes had been to receive petitions and present them in due course at the royal council. In the course of the fifteenth century, the practice of their undertaking annual chevauchées in the localities became common, enabling the maîtres des requêtes to claim a lineal descent from the missi dominici of the Carolingian period.¹¹ By the advent of Henri III, although their numbers had increased, such chevauchées were things of the past. But they had not been forgotten and ¶209 of the Ordinances of Blois called for their reinstatement.¹² Henri III’s dispatch of his commissioners in August 1582 could be seen as partly the realization of that article. ⁹ BN MS Fr 3306 fos. 104–5. ¹⁰ For Michel de L’Hospital’s advocacy of the dispatch of commissioners in 1560, see Duféy (ed.), Œuvres complètes de Michel de L’Hospital, i. 350. For the genesis of the French intendants, see, among others, Antoine, ‘Genèse de l’institution des intendants’ and ‘Des chevauchées aux intendants’; Cosandey and Descimon, L’Absolutisme en France, 147–54 and refs. ¹¹ Etechechoury, 134–5. ¹² Cf. ¶ 7 of Moulins (1566) and ¶ 33 of Orléans (1561).

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Annual chevauchées were not the only function of the maîtres des requêtes. Their formal court heard suits involving the use of the Great Seal and other legal matters affecting the royal household. So an increasing number of contentious lawsuits affecting the crown and its administration came their way, their acting as rapporteurs before the royal council. The appointment of a procureur général to the conseil du roi in the later 1530s prefigured the evolution of a distinctive branch of the council, meeting on particular days of the week to handle such business, which became known in the 1560s as the conseil des parties. The maîtres des requêtes put in regular appearances there, their casework sometimes entailing local investigations concerning the suit. Such business affected privileges or delicate political questions, and this made their jurisdiction contentious. There were complaints within the judiciary and elsewhere about it.¹³ The maîtres des requêtes retaliated with the claim that their authority pre-existed that of the Parlement itself.¹⁴ Far from seeing themselves as linchpins of royal administration, they felt that their authority was threatened.¹⁵ Towns, law courts, and corporations in the provinces were particularly suspicious of the proliferation of ‘commissaires étrangers’. Drawing on the distinction—familiar to sixteenth-century French legists—between ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ powers, they implied that the maîtres des requêtes sent for ‘extraordinary’ purposes involved unjustified uses of the ‘potestas absoluta’ of the monarchy.¹⁶ So the king’s decision to dispatch commissioners round the kingdom in August 1582 was regarded in, at best, an ambiguous light. Perhaps for that reason, only two were chosen from among the maîtres des requêtes. But it remained unclear in the circumstances whether they were an ‘ordinary’ or an ‘extraordinary’ authority which concealed ulterior fiscal motives. A preliminary text of their instructions was read out at the enlarged meeting of the Conseil des Finances at Fontainebleau on 16 July 1582.¹⁷ At that meeting, the king also ordered that, until further notice, his council of state should spend each morning dealing with the backlog of provincial cahiers to ensure that their replies were issued before the commissioners were dispatched. Each afternoon, royal councillors should convene in special session, again until further notice, to prepare advice on how best to repurchase ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷

e.g. BN MS Fr 23677 fo. 8v ; cf. ¶ 99 of Blois (1579). See their undated petition (post 1578) in BN MS Fr 23677 fos. 16–20v . Etchechoury, 128. Cosandey and Descimon, L’Absolutisme en France, 45–49; e.g. Robillard, i. 7; 34; 325. BN MS Fr 16231 fo. 45 and v .

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the royal domain.¹⁸ The letters were eventually signed off at Fontainebleau on 6 August 1582.¹⁹ They began with the king’s concern to bring relief to his suffering people. This was no mere polite preamble. Royal fiscality was a sensitive issue. Each proposed new imposition created a crop of petitions for rebate and exemption before the royal council. As localities prepared their cases, they sought out what had happened elsewhere—who had gained what rebates, on what grounds, where and when. New impositions energized the corporations of provincial France. The budget for 1582 involved a new imposition on the clergy (an additional ‘extraordinary’ décime) which harvested a crop of petitions for exemptions. It also entailed forced loans from villes closes in January 1582, most of which managed to negotiate a rebate.²⁰ These were followed in March by requests to wealthy individuals in Paris to assist the king.²¹ At the same time, 100,000 écus, assigned to the rentes sur l’hôtel de ville, were diverted for other purposes.²² There were also increases in import and export duties in October 1581 to pay for the renewed alliance with the Swiss. Because of the commitments to the latter, the council of finance refused all pleas for judicial review—which made it particularly resented. There was also a levy of 20 sols per muid of wine from late the previous year.²³ Above all, an edict of February 1582 imposed a sol pour livre on all sales of wool and manufactured draperies. The edict justified the levy as a royal prerogative right and established offices to apply a lead seal to all cloth prior to its sale. The operation was contracted out to a consortium of Lyon-based financiers headed by Arrigo and Manfredi Balbani, ¹⁸ BN MS Fr 16231, fo. 45v . ¹⁹ Printed in Nevers, i. 605–26 with the date ‘1579’, reproduced by Hanotaux from a copy in the archives des affaires étrangères, dated ‘1582’. For that issued to the Breton commissioners, see Morice, Mémoires, iii, col. 1467, dated ‘3 August 1582’. However, their commission, included in the registers of the estates of Brittany, is dated ‘6 August 1582’ (AD Île-et-Vilaine C 2642, 240 f.; cf. BN MS Fr 8277, 182–7). This is also the date of other surviving copies (e.g. AM Lyon BB 109 fos. 328–34) and confirmed by surviving accompanying letters to provincial lieutenants (LH3, v, Nos. 4610–12). ²⁰ BN MS Fr 16231 fo. 61; Le Mans, Moulins, and Reims, for example, were granted rebates of 25% in April 1582 [BN Mélanges Colbert MS 87 fos. 39; 47v ; 57]. Other provinces were offered the same, but towns in Normandy were offered a third, as was Marseille [ibid., fo. 48—reply to the cahier de doléances from Burgundy, and marginal note in the hand of one of the king’s secretaries and fo. 57—reply to a petition from the Forez; fo. 92 and v ]. The Agenois achieved a complete exemption [ibid., fo. 115]. ²¹ Estoile, iv. 15. ²² Ibid. 17. ²³ Complaints against the import and export duties were heard at the Conseil d’État in April 1582. The cahier de doléances of Burgundy, heard before the council on 21 April 1582, also raised the issue, as did that of Languedoc, heard on 26 April—BN Mélanges Colbert MS 87 fos. 38 and 47v ; 61v and 70. Marseille was told that no exemptions were possible. The impost on wine, however, was radically reduced—e.g. in Picardy (ibid., fo. 110v ).

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whose advances to the French crown it was to cover. The measure outraged the weavers in the towns of Picardy, Normandy, and Champagne since it required down-payments on each newly manufactured bale of cloth (upwards of 6 écus per bale) prior to sale.²⁴ Rouen and Troyes sent delegations to the council of state, heard on 9 April and 21 May 1582.²⁵ In Dieppe, there was a ‘grande émotion et sédition’. Cloth-workers at Beauvais besieged the house of the contractor’s agent. The council of finance dispatched councillors to find out what lay behind the troubles and on 26 June the merchant clothiers and workers from Troyes sent a delegation to the king, claiming that the measure would result in unemployment in Champagne.²⁶ The king referred them to the council of finances where the issue was considered on 3 July. The speed of the response was a sign of its urgency, and on 14 July the report from the councillors was considered and a ‘regulation’ drafted to meet their objections.²⁷ The English ambassador Sir Henry Cobham noted in his dispatch of 5 August that ‘the king had been of late ‘‘signified’’ by sundry that the people of France are evil-satisfied with him’.²⁸ From elsewhere, too, there were signs of a regrouping of the provincial elements of dissent that had proved so potentially damaging in 1578–9, connected partly with the illegal levies of troops on their way to join Anjou’s Flanders campaign. Numerous incidents provoked the king in April 1582 to authorize local military leaders to take up arms against them.²⁹ All the signs are that the king wanted to pre-empt more provincial dissent through an attempt to (as the letters of commission said) ‘remettre toutes choses au pristin estat’. Perhaps reflecting the ressorts that had been conventionally used for the chevauchées in the 1550s, the commissioners were dispatched to six groups of provinces. Each team contained a senior ecclesiastical figure as a head of delegation and included a privy councillor, a magistrate, and a financial expert. They were the epitome of Henri III’s reform-minded notability. ²⁴ F46871–3. ²⁵ BN Mélanges Colbert MS 87 fo. 31; fo. 129 and v . ²⁶ BN MS Fr 16230 fo. 41v . ²⁷ F46871–16; cf. BN MS Fr 16230 fos. 32v –33 and 42–42v (the published regulation is dated ‘14 July’ but the manuscript register dates it ‘16 July’, probably in error). Henri III did not attend the meetings but he wrote a marginal note on the petition: ‘Sa Majesté veult que ce quelle a surce commandé de bouche a messeigneurs du conseil pour aduiser a lexecution & establissement dudit subcide le plus commodement pour les menuz ouuriers que faire ce pourra.’ The regulation reduced the amount per piece of cloth (of 10–12 aulnes) to 5 31 écus for cloth from central France which was not of the same quality as that from northern France. In addition the cloth finishers (‘façonniers’) were given leave to have their cloth sealed, obtain an invoice, and return with the payment after they had sold it—their key concern being cash-flow. ²⁸ CalSPFor (1582), 234. ²⁹ BN MS Dupuy 537 fo. 185; LH3, v, No. 4512.

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Table 5. Provincial commissioners for reform, August 1582 Lyonnais, Dauphiné, and Provence

Languedoc and Guyenne

Normandy and Brittany

Île de France, Champagne, and Picardy

Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Poitou, Orléanais, and Berry

Burgundy

Philippe du Bec, bishop of Nantes (*) Louis de Chasteigner, seigneur d’Abain (var.: Abin) (*) Jacques Baillet, conseiller in the Grand Conseil Charles Le Comte, maître in the Chambre des Comptes, Paris Pierre de Villars, archbishop of Vienne (*) (+) Louis d’Angennes, sieur de Maintenon (*) (+) Jean Forget, conseiller in the Parlement of Paris Denis Barthélemy, maître in the Chambre des Comptes, Paris Pierre d’Épinac, archbishop of Lyon (+) Bertrand de Salignac, sieur de La Mothe-Fénelon (+) Nicolas Potier de Blancmesnil, maître des requêtes Pierre de Fitte de Soucy, former trésorier de l’Épargne Philippe de Lenoncourt, bishop of Châlon-sur-Saône (*) (+) Antoine de Pons, comte de Marennes (+) Jessé de Bauquemaure, sieur de Verclives et Du Mesnil, maître des requêtes³⁰ M. Beaurains (var.: Beaureins; Borin) Pierre de Gondi, bishop of Paris (*) (+) Michel de Seurre (var.: Sèvre), grand prieur de Champagne (*) (+) Jean Bochart, sieur de Champigny, conseiller in the Parlement of Paris Jacques Pleurs (var.: Pleurre), maître in the Chambre des Comptes, Paris —

Notes: (*) indicates conseillers du roi on the list provided by the king to the estates general of Blois, December 1576; (+) indicates conseillers du roi who are noted as attending in the surviving résultats of the Conseil d’État and Conseil des Finances for 1580–2.

Their accompanying letters explained how they were to conduct their investigations. They (or any three of them) should present local governors and lieutenants with their mission and gain their support. Their main business was then to visit all the main towns. There, they should summon a meeting of local notables in order to advertise the king’s ‘bonne et droicte intention et l’affection que nous avons à la réformation et restablissement de ³⁰ Karcher, ‘L’Assemblée des notables’, 121 and 132, which conflates Jacques de Bauquemaure, sieur de Bourdény, premier président at the Parlement of Rouen, with his brother Jessé de Bauquemaure, maître des requêtes, the latter being the commissioner.

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nostredict Edict de pacification et à ce que chascun de nosdicts subjectz puisse doresnavant vivre en bonne seureté sous notre protection et observation de nos Lois et ordonnances’.³¹ They should then begin their more detailed enquiries. To ensure that their investigations were not limited to the urban world, the commissioners were required to stop regularly en route and conduct enquiries of local tax-collectors, domain officials, and churchwardens, receiving and answering petitions as they went.³² In provinces where there were estates, they should visit them. They should explain how the civil wars had left an indebted monarchy. It was not the king’s wish to increase taxation but it was ‘plus que nécessaire de remédier à ce mal qui pourroit en bref trainer apres soy la ruyne de l’Estat’.³³ This was a subject in which ‘tous les Estatz du Royaume ont très notable intérest’ and the king welcomed their advice. There may be localities that ask to meet ‘par formes de petitz Estatz’ or hold public meetings. This was not discouraged. But the commissioners should deflect any suggestion of holding another estates general since recent experience taught that this was ‘de longue discution et exécution’.³⁴ However, to demonstrate the king’s goodwill, the commissioners should let it be known that he would be ‘very content’ if localities wished to depute some individuals to his court whose task would be the oversight of expenditures raised by any means they might suggest to alleviate the debts of the monarchy.³⁵ This suggestion was taken up, and the convocation of the Assembly of Notables was delayed because of negotiations with these provincial delegates in the autumn of 1583. The instructions required the commissioners to investigate independently and take decisions when they found malversation, suspending royal officials, fining them, or replacing them where appropriate. The church was not excluded.³⁶ The commissioners were encouraged to work with provincial governors and lieutenants in their enquiries about the nobility. At the same time, the latter were left in no doubt that the king would be informed of illegal garrisons and military levies, illegal fortification of chateaux, private quarrels disturbing the peace, and nobles oppressing local people or appropriating ecclesiastical revenues.³⁷ The instructions laid the greatest emphasis on investigating the behaviour of royal officers. They had powers to investigate and prosecute them in cases of suspected malfeasance. Everywhere the king ‘désirant à l’advenir pourvoir aux offices de Judicature de gens suffisans, ³¹ Hanotaux, Origines de l’institution, 201. ³² Ibid. 207–8. ³³ Ibid. 216. ³⁴ Ibid. 217. ³⁵ Ibid. 218. ³⁶ Ibid. 202–4. ³⁷ Ibid. 204.

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capables et vertueux, lesdicts Commissaires feront un roolle en chacun Bailliage ou Seneschaussée, tant des officiers qui tiennent aujourd’hui les offices . . . que de ceulx qui sont dignes et capables de succéder en leur lieu quand il adviendra vaccation’.³⁸ Here was the counterpart to the edict of Fontainebleau of the previous month in which judicial venality was officially abolished and replaced by local nomination.³⁹ Commissioners would collect nominations towards the creation of a feuille of worthy candidates. Officeholders must have regarded this with considerable suspicion. They could all agree that venality of office was an offence to moral virtue. But would their peers recognize merit and virtue? Was this not an invitation to settle old scores or further private grievances? Corruption was believed to be worst among the lesser financial officials. Here the instructions invited the commissioners to undertake Herculean tasks. The accounts of the élus were to be scrutinized, going back to the beginning of the reign, selective accounts being double-checked by on-site inspections with the greffiers des paroisses who held the taille registers.⁴⁰ The accounts of regional trésoriers were also to be inspected. The commissioners were asked to investigate alienations of the royal domain and compile registers indicating to whom they had been alienated, for how much, and include an estimate of the true current value of the domain involved.⁴¹ Similar investigations were demanded of royal forests and the farms of indirect royal taxes.⁴² Tolls on public highways and the payment of subventions by the clergy were also to be scrutinized. The commissioners were, in short, to leave no stone unturned. To undertake their task fully would have been beyond the resources of whole tribunals of commissioners operating on a semi-permanent basis.

TOURS OF DUT Y Accompanying letters were prepared for the commissioners.⁴³ In addition, heads of delegation were provided with sealed letters from the king advising them of particular issues in each locality.⁴⁴ This ‘private’ agenda—royal efforts to liquidate its debts—gradually became public knowledge, creating ³⁸ ⁴⁰ ⁴² ⁴⁴

Hanotaux, Origines de l’institution, 205–6. ³⁹ F46872–5. Hanotaux, Origines de l’institution, 208 and 212 ⁴¹ Ibid. 208–9. Ibid. 210–11. ⁴³ Ibid. 219–26. For those issued to Pierre d’Épinac, see BN MS Fr 17870 fos. 161–8.

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a climate of scepticism around their mission.⁴⁵ When the commissioners arrived in south-west France, they were greeted with rumours of ‘daces’ and ‘impositions’ that they were likely to propose. Local syndics sought the king of Navarre’s protection.⁴⁶ L’Estoile recalled the dispatch of the commissioners under the subtitle: ‘Peuple oppressé de fait, sous belles paroles’.⁴⁷ Sir Henry Cobham, the English ambassador at the French court, and his Venetian and Imperial counterparts, Giovanni Moro and Augier de Gislain, sieur de Busbecq, relayed similar views to their governments back home.⁴⁸ De Thou scorned their failures and highlighted the inadequacy of their oratory.⁴⁹ He rightly emphasized the significance accorded to their powers of persuasion. The king had said as much in his ‘long oration’ before his assembled councillors at Fontainebleau on 9 August.⁵⁰ Three surviving texts of the speeches given by heads of touring delegations enable us to assess how they went about it. The first is an undated copy of a script used by Philippe de Lenoncourt, probably adapting it to suit local circumstances.⁵¹ The second was delivered by Pierre d’Épinac before the estates of Normandy, meeting at Rouen on 10 October 1582.⁵² The last is the discourse pronounced by Philippe du Bec before the estates of Provence, meeting at Aix-en-Provence on 11 February 1583.⁵³ They each worked up the subject in different ways. Lenoncourt elaborated on the royal ‘zeal’ for reformation.⁵⁴ He adduced the king’s reform of the arrangements at court for receiving and answering petitions, instituted back in September 1574.⁵⁵ The king’s recent commitments to abolish judicial venality and appoint more capable senior clergy were ‘les deux premiers et principaux fondemens d’une bonne et universelle reformation’.⁵⁶ Reformation ‘descend ⁴⁵ LH3, v, No. 4722. ⁴⁶ Archives de Monaco MS J 57 fo. 181 [Henri III to Jacques de Matignon, 22 June 1583]; cf. BN MS Fr 3902 fo. 255 [Henri III to Henri de Navarre, Mézières, 3 July 1583]. ⁴⁷ Estoile, iv. 37. ⁴⁸ e.g. Gislen, ‘Lettres’, 68. ⁴⁹ De Thou, ix [bk. 78]. 82. ⁵⁰ Cal SPFor (1582), 279: ‘The king [ . . . ] discoursed in a long oration to his councillors the inconvenience and disorder he found to be in his State, showing the great zeal he had that it might be redressed by way of justice and reformation. Which speech he delivered with such apt terms that his councillors have given him great commendation.’ ⁵¹ BN MS 23830 fos. 39–44 [endorsed ‘Harangue du Sr de Lenoncourt allant par les prouinces par commission du roy recepuoir leurs plainctes et doleances’]. ⁵² BN MS Fr 17870 fos. 86v f. [headed ‘Propositions de monsieur l’archevesque de Lyon aulx Estatz de Normandie’]. BM Rouen, Fonds Martainville MS Y4 fos. 98 f.; ed. Robillard, ii. 241–9. ⁵³ BN MS Fr 17870 fos. 80–6 [headed: ‘Proposition de messieurs les commissaires deputez par le Roy aux provinces de Lyonnais, Daulphiné et Provence sur leur commission et intention de Sa Majsté, faicte par monsieur l’evesque de Nantes’]. ⁵⁴ BN MS Fr 23830 fo. 39. ⁵⁵ Cheverny, Mémoires, 66–7; Gassot, 130. ⁵⁶ BN MS Fr 23830 fo. 39v .

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tousiours du chef sur les membres’ according to the wisdom of antiquity, operating through the nerves upon the ‘animal spirits’ of the kingdom. Naturalists have noted the ‘occult property’ of sea-holly (eryngium) upon cattle. When one of them eats it, they all stop in their tracks. Something similar was at work. Through a ‘pareille force et secrette communication’ the king was inviting change ‘par une douce haleine d’un vent salubre et gratieux’. Not content with being an ‘exemple et patron de Reformation’, the king sent commissioners to ‘voir a lœil et toucher a la main Iusques aux plus secrettes plaies’. So far, so good, though whether the good people of the Île de France, Champagne, and Picardy wanted such an intrusion was another matter. They would certainly have been alarmed by the second half of the speech, when Lenoncourt evoked the ‘reformation et restablissement du Royaume de Juda’ delineated by the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel.⁵⁷ Ezekiel had assigned royal domain and taxes for the king and they must do likewise. The king was willing to be as transparent as the Roman tribune of the people, Drusus, welcoming everyone into his house and letting them see how he spent the resources allotted him. Only his enemies fomented the false view that there were ‘secrets’ to hide in the royal finances.⁵⁸ On the contrary, kings were ‘tutors’ of the public good, that embodiment of a ‘liaison naturelle du chef et des membres du Roy et des subiectz’, citing Seneca’s De clementia: ‘ille enim Vinculum est, per quod respublica cohaeret’. Henri III accepted his duties as successor of the ‘bon roy Sainct Loys’.⁵⁹ He had reduced his own expenditures.⁶⁰ His subjects must now fulfil their part of the bargain by helping him acquit his debts. There were many examples from antiquity of people spontaneously offering to assist their leaders—he cited Hannibal from Rome and Artabanus from the Persian empire. The registers of the Chambre des Comptes in Paris contained evidence of ‘les dons et praesens’ that their ancestors had donated to the common good. The reformation of the kingdom was, in short, a liquidation of the past.⁶¹ He ended by linking the Psalmist’s vision of justice embracing peace with Seneca’s image of a morally purified realm leading to an Augustan age.⁶² It conjured up in his mind the image of the just monarch pictured by the first-century  orator Dio Chrysostom, accompanied by the ‘trois heureuses dames’ of Justice, Peace, and ‘Good Governance’ (‘bonne police’). Pierre d’Épinac tackled the task rather differently. He began where Lenoncourt had ended, with the underlying mutuality of civil society, mirroring the ⁵⁷ Ezekiel 47–8. ⁵⁹ Ibid., fo. 41v .

⁵⁸ BN MS Fr 23830 fo. 41–41v . ⁶⁰ Ibid. ⁶¹ Ibid., fo. 43.

⁶² Ibid., fo. 43v .

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organic composition of the human body. In civil society, the Magistrate serves as the ‘interior soul’ of the commonwealth, responsible for its well-being. When civil society let itself be unbalanced by ‘diuerses affections et passions iniustes’ the task of the Magistrate was the equivalent of that of the soul in the human body, to regulate its affections.⁶³ Civil war had unleashed such passions. Now, the ship of state was badly damaged: ‘la nef se trouue beaucoup fracassée et a Besoing quasi d’estre reparée de fondz a cime.’ Like Augustus himself, the king had set about that restoration. He had tried once before when he summoned the estates general. But they had been ‘Muettes, Inutiles & quasi Ridicules’ and the king’s ‘sainctes ordonnances’ of 1579 were a measure of his continuing commitment to reformation despite that setback. He had encouraged archbishops to hold provincial councils and reform church discipline. Épinac highlighted the role of Charles, cardinal de Bourbon, archbishop of Rouen, in this collective, episcopally led ecclesiastical reformation, of equal importance as a model to the state as to the church.⁶⁴ The abolition of judicial venality was another sign of the king’s commitments. In the ancient world, venality had undermined the republic of Carthage. Sale of judicial office was made an offence punishable by death in the Roman republic until corruption undermined it. It was Augustus Caesar, and then Alexander Severus, who had recovered its ancient values. With peace now in prospect, the king wanted to be a second Augustus. Like a good physician, he was attempting to diagnose the illness of his realm by a careful review of all its symptoms. The task of the commissioners was to play the physician, feel the pulse, clean the wounds, and help nurse the patient back to health. Like Lenoncourt’s speech, the second half of Épinac’s was devoted to royal finance. All war was cripplingly expensive and Henri II’s campaigns had left a deficit at his death in 1559 of 40–5 million livres. The civil wars had simply added to it. Debt created necessity and, as Henri III had already remarked in other contexts, necessity not only knew no law, it also knew no morality. Necessity, Épinac reminded his Norman audience, was the enemy of the public good, the subverter of law, and the perverter of virtue.⁶⁵ The estates had a responsibility to assist the commonwealth to recover its moral virtue ⁶³ BN MS Fr 17870 fo. 87; cf. Richard, La Papauté et la Ligue Française, 99–101. ⁶⁴ Saulnier, Le Rôle politique, 98. As it happened, Épinac lodged in Rouen (where he gave his speech) with one of the cathedral canons who was particularly beholden to the cardinal de Bourbon—see Robillard, ii. 271. ⁶⁵ BN MS Fr 17870 fo. 91v .

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by removing the burden of necessity. The king had declared earlier that same year that he did not want his council to consider any further proposals for extraordinary means of taxation. But such endeavour required their support. He ended his speech with an evocation of the shipwreck that the French ship of state had come close to suffering. Now, they were close to port ‘et nous actendons de veoir en noz jours le commancement d’un plus heureulx siecle’. Philippe Du Bec’s speech before delegates at the estates of Provence reflected his episcopal and conciliar experience.⁶⁶ Nominated bishop of Vannes in 1559, he had been translated to Nantes in 1566, where he had played a prominent part in the local governance of the city.⁶⁷ He was a respected preacher.⁶⁸ He had attended the final session of Trent and refused to be installed at Nantes with the usual ceremonies, preferring to enter the town on foot. In 1576, his diocesan visitation was a model of Tridentine energy. More significantly, he was one of only two commissioners to be a recent attender at the council of finance.⁶⁹ His speech was more informed on the financial affairs of the kingdom. Latest estimates, he said, put royal debts at 78,200,000 livres. The king wanted to return to the offer he had made at Blois, namely, to surrender the servicing and amortizing of a portion of the debt into the hands of deputies of the realm. He even mentioned an amount that might be involved, and how the king was prepared to surrender the taillon and forced loans on walled towns (subvention des villes closes) as his contribution towards its repayment.⁷⁰ The commissioners spent over six months at work and one team (that for Picardy) was still at it on 30 June, when the king announced their recall to Paris by 10 September.⁷¹ That same 30 June, the secretary of state Claude Pinart drafted their summons to a forthcoming assembly on 15 September.⁷² None of the registers of the chevauchées has survived. The nearest that we have ⁶⁶ For the procès verbal of the session of the estates of Provence at which the speech was delivered, see AD Bouches-du-Rhône C 4. ⁶⁷ Du Bec, Exhortation; cf. Catta, ‘Les Évêques de Nantes’ and ‘Essai sur l’état religieux’. ⁶⁸ Du Bec, Sermons; cf. Travers, Histoire . . . de Nantes, ii. 559–60. ⁶⁹ Among the commissioners dispatched in 1582, only Pierre de Villars and Philippe du Bec were regularly present at the council of finance. ⁷⁰ The amount involved was suggested as 1,500,000 écus per annum, presumably calculated both to cover the servicing of the debt as well as an element of gradual amortizement. ⁷¹ BN MS Mélanges Colbert 87 fo. 353v ; most of the teams appear to have completed their travels by the end of April 1583—e.g. BN MS Fr 15566 fo. 124 [Pierre de Villars to Henri III, Vienne, 5 May 1583]. ⁷² BN MS Fr 3306 fos. 104v –105 [‘Maisieres’ [i.e. Mézières], 30 June 1583, minute].

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to a direct record of their proceedings are copies of remontrances produced before the commissioners to western France by clergy for the dioceses of Poitiers, Tours, and Chartres.⁷³ There is, however, a good deal of indirect evidence of their activity in local archives, from a sample of which we can also glimpse the problems they encountered. The ecclesiastical cahiers are revealing. That for Poitiers has the replies of the commissioners too. The Poitevins were responding to a seven-part questionnaire that had been put to them in advance.⁷⁴ Asked to say what prevented the exercise of divine service and if they were able to enjoy their wealth and revenue, they replied that they had managed, despite the destruction of churches, to re-establish their presence in the towns. The problems were more serious in rural parishes. There were a few (‘two or three’) whose churches were unusable and where, if religious service took place, it was in barns or ‘maisons prophanes’. About two-thirds of the parishes had benefices so small no one would serve.⁷⁵ Asked to provide a register of the names and qualifications of all the benefice-holders in the diocese they declined on the grounds that it would be too complicated; but the bishop undertook to provide a complete list of the abbeys and other benefices in the king’s gift. Asked to itemize where soldiers prevented the clergy from carrying out their duties, they responded with places where the gentry had usurped ecclesiastical revenues. They also described recent troop movements in the diocese. Around Faye-la-Vineuse, for example, Captain Lallemant (‘soy disant Capitaine Sainct Catherine’) had been condemned by the grands jours of Poitiers for his depredations, although it had not stopped him.⁷⁶ The remainder of the cahier answered questions about whether the clergy had any complaints against magistrates, whether they could recommend anyone worthy of promotion, whether they knew of any crimes that had gone notoriously unpunished, whether there were complaints against the king’s financial officers, and whether they had examples of those who had been assigned reimbursement on provincial receipts and not received payment. The clergy of Poitiers knew how to turn questions whose answers might well compromise them to their advantage. They responded with generalized statements about the abuses that they knew of in the farming and alienation ⁷³ BN MS Fr 15746 fos. 231–244v [‘Remonstrances du Clergé du dioceze de Poictiers a Messieurs les Commissaires Deputez par sa Majeste pour la visitte des Prouinces d’Orleans, Touraine, Anjou, Berry et Poictou, l’an 1582’]; ibid., fos. 245–61 [ibid., Chartres]; ibid., fos. 261v –271 [ibid., Tours]. ⁷⁵ Ibid., fo. 233v . ⁷⁶ Ibid., fo. 237. ⁷⁴ The questionnaire is itemized at fo. 261v .

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of ecclesiastical property and slipped in a complaint about places where protestant worship was practised, although not officially permitted under the edict of Poitiers. They accused, but did not name, local magistrates before whom cases of default in the payment of décimes had recently been heard. They avoided making any recommendations of individuals who might be worthy to serve as magistrates and confined themselves to general complaints against recent royal fiscality. The commissioners asked identical questions of the clergy in the diocese of Tours on 4 November, and received their response less than a week later, along with two separate cahiers of complaints. The movements of troops in their diocese had disrupted their revenues for the past twenty years, sometimes leading to the loss of half their income. They had managed to maintain divine service except when the soldiery were actually present, when ‘les grandes molestes, Injures et oppression’ occurred. The vicar-general undertook to provide a register of those nominated to benefices in the presentment of the crown. When it came to the questions about local judicial officials, they declined to make any specific complaints, although they nominated four local advocates whom they thought worthy to serve when future vacancies arose.⁷⁷ The two separate cahiers from Tours illustrate how local groups made use of commissioners to their own advantage. That from the cathedral chapter was drafted to win them a six-year reprieve from paying décimes.⁷⁸ The cahier from the clergy was longer.⁷⁹ They presented a diocese in distress, where royal and episcopal ordinances were ignored. They wanted the canons of Trent published. They were against the edict of pacification on principle and mentioned the specific problems that it had caused at Noizay.⁸⁰ The abbots and priors of the diocese were all commendataires, for the most part married laymen, some suspected of protestantism, more interested in the economic profits to be made from these abbatial foundations than in sustaining their educational, charitable, and religious purposes. The rural clergy were mostly non-resident because their benefices were inadequate. In most parishes, tithes were collected by laymen and they paid no canonical portion because, so they claimed, the passage of troops had disrupted their returns. Tithe income was reduced by an average of three-quarters and attempts to gain legal redress ⁷⁷ The questionnaire is itemized at, fo. 264. ⁷⁸ Ibid., fos. 260–1. ⁷⁹ Ibid., fos. 245–59 [headed ‘Remonstrances du clergé de Tours a Messieurs les Commissaires de sa Maiesté, 1582’]. ⁸⁰ A place with a seigneurial residence where protestants congregated, adjoining the catholic church.

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had proved fruitless.⁸¹ They wanted a royal ordinance to strengthen the hand of the archbishop of Tours in forcing tithe-holders to pay their dues. They also asked for him to be given the authority to impose, if necessary, a local ecclesiastical rate to maintain their parish priest.⁸² There were similar difficulties when it came to the ‘fabriciens’ (i.e. individuals responsible for church fabric) who refused to institute repairs or prepare their accounts.⁸³ Once more, the clergy asked for a royal declaration to strengthen the hand of the archbishop. They acknowledged that some abuses had been perpetuated by the church itself, especially when it came to the ‘plusieurs Symonies’ to which ‘grand Nombre d’Ecclesiastiques’ turned a blind eye, allowing gentlemen to enjoy a pension on benefices ‘a titre de confidence’ by using a priest as a custodi nos for the purpose. In this instance, they wanted letters patent prohibiting any cleric from acting as a sleeping partner on pain of being dispossessed of their benefices and, on a subsequent offence, defrocked and ordered to repay the money that had been diverted.⁸⁴ The clergy of Tours were not afraid to criticize recent fiscality. The extraordinary décime, authorized in February 1582, was contrary (they said) to the agreement of February 1580 made with the king.⁸⁵ The contract of February 1580 had specifically exempted them from any further exactions but they found themselves having to pay the subsidy on wine as well as increased impositions on salt. They completed their cahier by mentioning particular instances where local gentlemen were obstructing church worship. The clergy of Tours returned finally to the demand they had presented at Blois, to see the number of judicial offices reduced to the level in Louis XI’s reign. They added pointedly that the alienation of royal domain could be solved by revoking the excessive gifts which had contributed to it. One must imagine the commissioners accumulating fistfuls of such remonstrances as they went about their business—more numerous and disparate than those presented at the estates of Blois. As always, it was not the harvesting of alleged abuses, but the means to reform them that constituted the greatest headache for sixteenth-century rulers. The king made arrangements with local governors to protect, escort, and lodge the commissioners.⁸⁶ They were paid a daily rate for their expenses. Some localities treated them to banquets, gifts, and speeches of welcome. The occasion was one for local notables to demonstrate their prowess and advance ⁸¹ Ibid., fo. 248. ⁸² Ibid., fo. 251. ⁸³ Ibid., fo. 255v . ⁸⁵ Ibid., fo. 253. ⁸⁶ e.g LH3, v, No. 4657. ⁸⁴ Ibid., fos. 252v –253.

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a local cause. Jean Magnien, for example, conseiller and procureur du roi in the présidial court of the bailliage of Chaumont, showed off his learning before the commissioners when they arrived there.⁸⁷ Previously known only for a translation of Euclid (if it was indeed the same ‘Jean Magnien’ who was responsible for the latter, published in 1558), he welcomed his guests to ‘ceste pauure sterile contree’. This part of France had been scarred by ravaging troops. But his main point was to explain to the commissioners that the ‘judicial state’ (or, as the Romans had called it, the ‘Senatorius’) was separate from the ‘noble’ estate and embraced the ‘popular’ estate. Over the dinner table he perhaps explained that the custumal of Chaumont (the text went back to October 1509) specifically mentioned the existence of three estates—clergy, nobility, and ‘praticiens’, the latter being always understood to comprise the ‘popular’ and ‘plebeian’.⁸⁸ Acting in this capacity, he was therefore entitled to express their demands for them and he proceeded to do so in an uncompromising fashion. They had seen ‘tant de belles assemblees, tant de belles Ordonnances & Constitutions, les estats si solemnellement conuoques & tenus à Orleans, puis à Bloys, les Colloques & Assemblees de Poissy, Molins, Paris, & autres lieux, le tout plein d’vne grande expectation pour le soulagement du peuple: toutesfois nous voyons le tout n’auoir rien apporté’.⁸⁹ Laws had never been better conceived; enforcement had never been worse. This was because of the ‘multiplicité & nombre effrené d’Officiers, & la venalité des offices’, a moment for some invective against the rising tide of youth and ignorance in the lower magistracy.⁹⁰ ‘De quoy seruent tant de Conseilliers [sic] nouueaux és Sieges Presidiaux? A quoy sont bons les alternatifs en tant de iurisdictions? [ . . . ] Et faire non seulement d’vn Officier deux, mais d’vn Siege le diuiser, & le coupper en deux & en trois [ . . . ]. cela est pratiqué au rebours de ceste belle loy de Solon, par laquelle cautam erat ne Iudices in ciuitate multiplicentur: Mais au contraire c’est faire comme de la gendarmerie, vne creüe d’Officiers tous les ans.’⁹¹ Magnien adopted the Menippean rhetorical device of projecting his speech as though he pronounced the thoughts of others, the praticien acting as the mouth of the plebs. The manant would say that ‘les guerres plus que ciuiles, & intestines seditions’ have constrained us to mount a guard, day and night, ⁸⁷ ⁸⁸ ⁸⁹ ⁹⁰

Magnien, Remonstrance faicte pour le tiers Estat (1583). Gousset, Les Loix municipales, preface. Magnien, Remonstrance faicte pour le tiers Estat, 5–6. Ibid. 7. ⁹¹ Ibid. 8–9.

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to the walls. Our products are taxed five or six times before they arrive. Salt, originally worth 50 sols the minot, is thus put up for sale in Chaumont at eight or nine livres.⁹² The laboureur would say that he sees the results of his labour carried off by the ‘depravé gendarme’ who enters unannounced into our houses and commits terrible outrages.⁹³ And, as though the soldiery were not enough, the laboureur and his family contend with the sergeants for the tailles who take whatever they please from those who have defaulted on their payments.⁹⁴ This doubtless went down well with the local notables, and maybe the commissioners registered Magnien’s plea for drawing a line in the sand, a ‘Loy d’Amnistie’ to all the ills of the past, in order to ‘faire nova renasci saecula & vita nos reddere priori’. This was the prelude to Magnien’s final appeal to create an age of which, in a thousand years’ time, they would treasure its medals ‘comme on faict encor’ aujourd’huy de cest Auguste, d’vn Nerua, d’vn Traian, & d’autres, ausquelles sont ces belles qualitez de Pater Patriae empraintes’.⁹⁵ The evidence of the commissioners’ activity comes mostly from town records. Here we find the brokering of royal demands and local petitions at its most delicate. Take, for example, the commissioners’ visit to Amiens. They were behind schedule and it was almost their last point of call before returning to the council. They arrived on 24 May 1583, ready to carry out their general instructions, but with particular tasks to fulfil.⁹⁶ These included hearing and receiving the complaints of the estates of Picardy, summoned to meet there on 27 May, and asking for a subvention from the walled towns of 30,000 écus. They also embraced the mediation of various private quarrels, and the investigation of the town accounts. The city fathers saw to their lodging in the best part of town and solicited grievances, summoning a meeting of the third estate of the bailliage for 5 June.⁹⁷ Written petitions were encouraged, but oral ones were permissible. Jean Dubois, seigneur de La Thieulloye, the current mayor, a trained lawyer, and two of his predecessors, were nominated to receive them and prepare an abstract.⁹⁸ Meanwhile, they bent the ears of the commissioners about an important local project to canalize the river Somme from Pierrepont to Moreul. An on-site inspection was authorized ‘pour sçauoir si la chose est aysée à faire, et combien le tous pourra couster’.⁹⁹ The resulting report was doubtless added to the bulging ⁹² Ibid. 11. ⁹³ Ibid. 11–12. ⁹⁴ Ibid. 12–13. ⁹⁵ Ibid. 14. ⁹⁶ Reported by the English ambassador Cobham in his dispatch of 31 May 1583—CalSPFor (1583), 373. ⁹⁷ AM Amiens BB 46 fo. 25. ⁹⁸ Ibid., fo. 36. ⁹⁹ Ibid., fo. 39.

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portfolio of those with which Lenoncourt and his colleagues returned to Paris a month later. At the opposite end of the kingdom, the commissioners arrived in Marseille in early April. They were accompanied by the grand prieur as provincial governor and the premier président of the Parlement at Aix-en-Provence, the sieur Des Arches.¹⁰⁰ We may surmise that they had additional instructions concerning Marseille, given the replies of the council of state to their petition of April 1582.¹⁰¹ The Marseillais had entrusted their grievances then to Charles de Casaulx, captain of one of its quartiers and future tumultuous premier consul during the League.¹⁰² The petition wanted them to be exempt from the lattes, a local Provençal tax (denied), and from the tailles upon rural properties of those nobles and officers living in Marseille (accepted). They opposed the opening of a salt warehouse, envisaged over a decade previously (postponed pending further investigation). The insanitary condition of the town’s narrow streets, believed to have contributed to the plague of 1580, was a matter for concern. Above all, the petition presented Marseille as a dangerous maritime city, in which there were ‘querelles & Inimitez’. The queen mother had attempted to broker an ‘abollition generalle’ of its feuds during her visit there in June 1579 but the impact had not lasted long. There was still at least one quarrel being fought out between the relatives and friends of a captain who had been killed in a duel by capitaine Jehan Meffroys. Casaulx himself became involved in a dispute with an official of the bishop on his return to Marseille, for which he was banished from the city, although he obtained the protection of its consuls in October 1582. If the commissioners knew anything about Marseille politics, they understood that their mission would be difficult. At some point in their visit, the grand prieur invited the consuls to join the commissioners at the town hall. He told them that it was time for them to do the king a special service and asked them to raise their hands and promise to undertake it. They could hardly refuse. Having gained their assent, he then told them they should accept Claude-Antoine Bon, baron de Méolhan, as the military governor in the town, responsible directly to himself for its security. Claude-Antoine’s father, Pierre Bon, was a noted privateer and captain of the galley fleet who had finished his days as lieutenant particulier in Marseille, ¹⁰⁰ CalSPFor (1583), 259—apparently based on the report from the young Henry Unton, a future English ambassador to France, then in Marseille. ¹⁰¹ BN Mélanges Colbert MS 87 fos. 1–2 [Résultat du conseil d’état, 2 April 1582]. ¹⁰² Kaiser, Marseille au temps des troubles, esp. 190; 218; 243; 251.

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a post which led him to style himself as ‘governor’ of the city. Its consuls, however, never accepted the claim. When Pierre Bon died in 1578, the Grand Prior hoped to install his son as his client in the city, and Charles de Casaulx was dispatched to court in November 1582 by the consuls to stop it. Hardly surprisingly they refused to accept the Grand Prior’s demand. When the latter threatened to imprison them, a crowd mustered outside the town hall, issuing threats to the lives of the governor and the commissioners. Charles de Casaulx was prominent in its midst. It was only with difficulty that the consuls secured the commissioners’ safe passage out of the building. When the viguier of the city tried to arrest Casaulx for his part in the tumult, the latter was protected by the second consul. Before the end of April, Casaulx fled the city to join the Carciste remnants in the military company of Hubert de Garde, seigneur de Vins. There were (contrived) rumours that the protestants were behind the nomination of Méolhan, that the king of Spain had fomented the riot, and that the consuls were ready to seek the support of the dissident governor of Languedoc, Henri de Montmorency-Damville, in order to oppose the Grand Prior.¹⁰³ At all events, there was not much that the commissioners could do, except counter the rather colourful report on the affair sent to court by the consuls in defence of their actions. They must have left Marseille feeling that they had been duped into playing a role in a provincial struggle with possibly wider ramifications, but one that had nothing to do with their own mission. We should not be too negative in our assessment of the commissioners’ efforts. They doubtless managed to achieve something of value in their brief visits. At Lyon, where the commissioners arrived on 22 October, they spent three weeks reforming the procedures of the présidial court and persuading the élections (local financial officials) to be more scrupulous in their accounting.¹⁰⁴ At Toulouse, they assembled a meeting of delegates from the civil dioceses of upper Languedoc along with two capitouls. Delegates arrived with their complaints about brigands, problems with new office creations and their repurchase, their dilemmas in handling their communal debts.¹⁰⁵ In some places, inhabitants revealed prima facie evidence of local corruption that would probably not have come to light by other means. At Blois, for example, the contrôleur des tailles was accused of accepting large payments in return for accepting registers of taille which he ¹⁰³ CalSPFor (1583), 383. ¹⁰⁴ Pallasse, La Sénéchaussée, 364–9. ¹⁰⁵ AD Haute-Garonne C 2294 [‘Cayer des doleances Que les scindics, consulz et habitans du dioceze de Thoulouze Remectent par deuers vous treshonores seigneurs Mrs les commissaires depputes par sa Majeste en Guyenne et Languedoc’].

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knew to be false. One of the élus was required by the commissioners to attend the council in Paris and received a fine of 120 écus for miscreancy. Elsewhere, it was more often municipal accounts that were found to be wanting. How did the commissioners themselves assess their achievement? In October, the king invited them to present a report to the royal council.¹⁰⁶ To draft this, they convened at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, preparing their response under forty-eight headings prepared by the king.¹⁰⁷ This was accompanied by memoranda from each province, summarizing the ‘general’ and ‘particular’ heads of grievance they had encountered. Of these provincial reports, only two (those for Normandy and Brittany) have survived.¹⁰⁸ This documentation cannot have been easy to draft. On the one hand, the commissioners wanted the king to be impressed with their energy; but how should they do so and, at the same time, gloss the fact that there was much that they had not achieved? They had entered into commitments with localities to bring matters to the king’s attention; but how could they do justice to all these engagements, and yet keep their report to a realistic length? Their task was to report what they had found; but it had to be a sanitized account, for they had seen suffering among the people that ‘ny lescript ny la parolle ne pourroict pas representer . . . avec tant d’efficace comme l’effect les leur a faict veoir pitoyables & dignes de votre commiseration’.¹⁰⁹ So they concentrated on process as much as substance. They had duly assembled the three estates in the bailliages as they passed. Most local officers cooperated, although many governors of military strongholds did not attend. Several of the latter had, however, submitted written reports and those who failed to do so were required to forward them directly to the king.¹¹⁰ Among those they interrogated, there was often a refusal to speak out and incriminate others. Overall, the commissioners had followed their instructions as best they could, attempting to make judgments in equity on particular matters where they felt competent to do so, and assigning many others to a hearing in appropriate judicial settings. Their resulting reports are the nearest that we have to a first-hand account of France in these post-war years. ¹⁰⁶ BN MS Fr 3306 fo. 123v [‘Memoire des poinctz dont sera traicte en ceste prochaine assemblee’—drawn up around 9 October 1583]. ¹⁰⁷ BN MS Fr 17870 fos. 107v –119 [Headed ‘Rapport des deputtez envoyez par les provinces, contenant les doléances générales de tous les Estatz’, copy]. ¹⁰⁸ Ibid., fos. 120–3 [‘’Plainctes sur ce qui touche le peuple et les finances du pais de Normandie’] and 174–177v [‘Plaintes de Bretagne’]. ¹¹⁰ Ibid., fo. 111v . ¹⁰⁹ Ibid., fos. 107v –108.

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In the church, they found ‘many places’ in the provinces of Poitou, Guyenne, Languedoc, and Dauphiné where, despite the edict of pacification, catholics still could not freely exercise their religion because protestants prevented their doing so. They itemized places where protestant intimidation provoked such fear that catholic clergy refused to return, or had only been able to restore a token presence in the locality. They reported the widespread complaint that a substantial number of benefices were usurped by the laity. The latter had seized ecclesiastical property ‘by force’ or, using the fig-leaf of being ‘patrons’ of benefices, disposed of it as though it were their ‘property’. Lay impropriators often made no provision for divine worship and refused to pay the décimes, the diocese being obliged to make up the shortfall. The commissioners acted to reintegrate the clergy with the property to which they were entitled where the cases had been ‘deubëment et suffisamment prouvés’. More often, however, the information came to them ‘comme de secret a l’oreille’ and they then asked local judicial officials to conduct their own investigations.¹¹¹ The commissioners were disappointed at the widespread clerical absenteeism. Bishops engaged in special pleading. In some parishes, soldiers threatened the lives of priests. There was a shortage of trained priests. In Poitou, Guyenne, Languedoc, and Dauphiné, the destruction of ecclesiastical fabric was ‘plus que Gothiques’.¹¹² The clergy themselves complained bitterly about the impossibility of any reformation in the church until the edict of pacification was revoked and the decrees of Trent a legal fact in France. In Montauban, the commissioners reported a treasurer for the protestant church who constrained local tithe-farmers to pay over a proportion of the tithing to him.¹¹³ Everywhere, they encountered complaints from the parish clergy about the quality of senior ecclesiastical appointments.¹¹⁴ The trade in benefices by means of confidentiaires and the emasculation of the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts through the use of the appel comme d’abus were singled out. Royal taxation of the clergy had increased and the resentments at the two additional décimes since the contract of 1580 were noted. The clerical order was, in general, presented as weakened and demoralized, requiring a reform from without in order to sustain a renewal from within. When it came to the nobility, the commissioners recognized that ‘many nobles’ had demonstrated their loyalty. The same could not be said of the armed bands that still had the upper hand in some parts of the country. Their ¹¹¹ Ibid., fo. 109.

¹¹² Ibid., fo. 109v .

¹¹³ Ibid., fo. 110v .

¹¹⁴ Ibid., fo. 110.

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grotesque violence shocked the commissioners, although they spared Henri III the details. There were localities where people were ready to ‘abandonner le pais pour aller a la garde de dieu faire nouuelles colonies’. The commissioners acknowledged that, unaccompanied by military forces, they could do nothing beyond sympathize with their plight and bring it to the king’s attention.¹¹⁵ In the clauses concerning royal officialdom, the commissioners felt on stronger ground. They had delivered the message that the king expected integrity, vigilance, and assuidity from his servants. On the whole, the complaints about judicial officials were rather vague. It was commonly believed that justice ought to be freely available but, in reality, venality made it a purchasable commodity. The king’s recent ‘holy resolution’ to abandon judicial venality was thus welcomed.¹¹⁶ They noted that in ‘most provinces’ they had found evidence of intimidation of the judiciary.¹¹⁷ Capricious use of appeals by powerful individuals frustrated the course of justice—the commissioners raised in particular the contentious issue of ‘commissions extraordinaires’ on behalf of ‘Partisans & Amodiateurs [i.e. ‘Agents’] de quelque ferme’. The ‘grande multitude des ordonnances’ had contributed of late to the ‘confusion & obscurité’ of the law at a local level. Although going to law had become increasingly expensive, sergeants, provosts, prison bailiffs, and other officials were still irregularly paid. As for the king’s financial officials, the commissioners were anxious to explain that they had conducted their enquiries scrupulously. In general, they had found no evidence of systemic corruption. Their procès verbaux would reveal that they had suspended a few individuals but the major irregularities that they had uncovered were in regions where there were no local royal financial officials (élus). They discovered what Sully would confirm a generation later, that ‘syndicz et estatz se sont lesuées plusieurs grandes sommes de deniers sur le peuple sans authorité ne commission de vostre majesté’. In the pays d’états the people were, in reality, more heavily taxed than the king intended or realized.¹¹⁸ In the penultimate section of their report, the commissioners reflected general themes from the petitions they had received—the increased burdens of fiscality being the consistent complaint. This led to final paragraphs on their efforts to estimate the current state of the royal domain. They gave no indication of the response to the proposal to persuade localities to take on the servicing of the monarchy’s capital debt—and thus cover the 1.5 million ¹¹⁵ BN MS Fr 17870, fo. 111v . ¹¹⁶ Ibid., fo. 113. ¹¹⁸ Ibid., fo. 115. ¹¹⁷ Ibid., fo. 113v .

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écus shortfall on the royal budget. The lacuna was not surprising. Sending handfuls of officials without detailed knowledge of the local environment to bargain with canny provincial estates was a hazardous enterprise. Even primed with the promise that the king would listen to their just complaints and reform his state, theirs was an uphill struggle and, so far as we can judge, the results were discouraging. At Vannes, where the commissioners asked for 86,000 écus as their contribution, the provincial estates of Brittany replied: ‘ils n’ont moyen d’y entrer, ne icelle supporter’ and advised the king to hold an estates general.¹¹⁹ Such an ostentatious refusal in public was good politics; a quiet ‘perhaps’ in private negotiations was even better, as the Breton delegates knew. Without giving anything away, they held out for a deal in which they would offer 70,000 écus per annum over five years towards royal debts in return for securing exemptions from various new impositions.¹²⁰ Their deputies at the council of finances returned with some important concessions. Breton delegates were past masters at driving a hard bargain and, on 31 March, they rejected the deal on the grounds that the revenues were being contracted out to financiers. It was not the end of the affair and talks were still ongoing in the autumn of 1583. In the Normandy estates, too, first responses were not encouraging when they met at Rouen on 10 October 1582. Once more, however, it was not the end of the story. At court and in the corridors around the council, the Norman deputies were to be seen, cautiously sounding out the possibilities in the summer of 1583. In the provincial estates of the Midi, the commissioners also met with public refusal. At Toulouse, delegates refused to consider the request for 33,000 écus in advance of a properly constituted meeting of the estates.¹²¹ Meanwhile, the commissioners asked the treasurers to ‘anticipate’ the decision of the next estates and send out mandements for the sums asked for by the king to the individual dioceses, although nothing had happened by May 1583. The king could always summon an emergency meeting of the estates, but the archbishop of Vienne counselled caution. The estates might prove an important lever in negotiations with the protestants over the surrender of the stronghold garrisons later that year. Languedoc’s syndic went to court to continue discussions. In their negotiations with the representatives from the estates of Dauphiné, the commissioners pressed hard for ‘quelque chose de bon’ as a sign of their goodwill towards the king’s efforts at reform. But, as Jean de Bellièvre, sieur ¹¹⁹ BN MS Fr 8277, 211.

¹²⁰ Ibid. 212.

¹²¹ BN MS Fr 15566 fo. 124.

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de Hautefort, the premier président of the Parlement in Grenoble, reported to Villeroy, the representatives from the Dauphiné towns were skilled at prevaricating: ‘lesdites villes s’aduertissent les unes les autres de ce qu’elles ont a faire et tout ensemble sont aux escoutz de ce que se fera par leurs voisins Mesmement par ceux de Provence.’¹²² The consuls of Vienne were the ringleaders. Preachers there and elsewhere openly attacked royal taxation and the Parlement had been obliged to issue an admonition.¹²³ To coax the estates into taking the king’s demands seriously, the commissioners suspended the additional levy of 15 écus par feu, imposed by Mayenne in the wake of the Ligue des Vilains. Such a concession was greeted, however, with astonishment by Hautefort. In a province that had scarcely recovered from a major insurrection, suspending the tax which sustained the garrisons keeping the peace was the wrong signal. What was worse, provincial delegates had presented the commissioners with a petition against new taxation and been rewarded with a reply ‘plaine de bonne esperance’. How, the premier président mused, was he to proceed in respect of the various new fiscal measures that awaited registration in the Parlement, such as the creation of offices of clercs des greffes and receveurs des deniers communaux? He could hardly ask the Parlement to register them in the light of such a reply. The implication was clear; commissioners who made promises with no understanding of the local scene, however well intentioned, were a liability. With negotiations still proceeding at Grenoble, the commissioners moved on to Aix-en-Provence and the estates of Provence, meeting on 10 February 1583. There they were treated to a lively debate over precedence between Marseille and Arles and an account of the efforts of a Jesuit in the protestant stronghold at Seyne. They heard about Turkish pirates, a hermit outside Aix-en-Provence, and a good deal on the province’s chaotic finances. The latter were used to explain why they could provide nothing towards the king’s debts.¹²⁴ Such was their public stance. In private, however, as with the Normans and Bretons, the Provençals were more flexible. As the sieur de Montreal said, they were not averse to considering taking on their proportion of the monarchy’s capital debt. But they wanted assurances that they were not on their own, that there would be no further extraordinary levies, and that such resource as they provided for the debts would be administered by ‘ceux qui seront commis par le pais’.¹²⁵

¹²² BN MS Fr 15566, fo. 82 [(Bellièvre de) Hautefort to Villeroy, Grenoble, 7 March 1583]. ¹²⁴ AD Bouches-du-Rhône C 4. ¹²³ Ibid., fo. 82v . ¹²⁵ BN MS Fr 15566 fo. 153 [Montreal to Villeroy, Aix, n.d. (c. February–March 1583)].

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The provincial commissioners could not, therefore, report on the outcomes from their financial negotiations with provincial estates, which were ongoing. In October 1583, the incoming English ambassador Sir Edward Stafford reported the ‘heartburn’ in which Brittany stood ‘stiffest to their privileges of any other’.¹²⁶ By then, the Breton provincial delegation had been joined in Paris by others from Burgundy, Languedoc, Guyenne, Provence, and Dauphiné, seeking conjoint negotiations over the recent royal proposal. With them were syndics from larger towns and a delegation from the clergy. The latter presented the king with their own blueprint for a reformation of the church—a long petition of fifty-three articles dealing with all the major issues.¹²⁷ There was a rumour that the king delayed the holding of the Assembly of Notables until the provincial deputies gave up and returned home.¹²⁸ Henri III and his advisers knew that the spirit of the provincial dissension of 1578–9 had never been crushed. The agents for Normandy and the city of Paris were still about on 14 December, which is when Stafford reported that they had both ‘made . . . a very bold speech to the King. He of Paris declared that the King had broken promise with them . . . . He of Normandy added further that Kings were as well tied to keep promise to their subjects as their subjects to them, and that one being broken of his parts his subjects should be driven (being no more able to bear the burden) either to seek somebody that might succour them, or else to go as men in a ship without a stern, that in a storm let all go in a venture.’¹²⁹ The latter found himself in the Bastille for his pains, the king reportedly ‘in a marvellous choler’ at his temerity, threatening that ‘he would teach his subjects their duty and not to use their tongues in that sort as he did’. When the notables convened at Saint-Germain, it was in the knowledge that the provincial estates had not agreed to relieve the debt burden that threatened the financial stability and political well-being of the monarchy.

MINES OF INFORMATION The work of the commissioners was complemented by reformist endeavour at the royal council. The complaints of the clergy of Tours, for example, made it to the royal council, which ordered an investigation into their benefice ¹²⁶ CalSPFor (1583), 162. ¹²⁷ Articles accordez au clergé de France. ¹²⁸ CalSPFor (1583), 162 and also 172. ¹²⁹ Ibid. 267–8.

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difficulties. This was supplemented by a more general regulation governing the practices of those involved in collecting décimes.¹³⁰ The investigations of the commissioners into the royal domain contributed to the edict on the management of royal forests and water resources, which established a national network of forest masters, promulgated in January 1583.¹³¹ The commissioners’ evidence also fed into the edict of March 1583 on the régalement of the tailles.¹³² This legislative activity had the hallmarks of Henrician reforming endeavours—a desire to ‘codify’ and ‘police’, and a willingness to adopt measures that appeared to have a ‘virtuous circle’ in their effects—i.e. that contributed to solving the monarchy’s debts (through creating offices for sale) and to the welfare of the nation. The royal council instigated other enquiries, whose results would also be available to the notables at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. On 17 May, the Conseil des Finances established a commission to examine the financial implications of the abolition of venality on judicial offices.¹³³ The following month, the Conseil d’État set up a commission, headed by Jacques Amyot, the king’s almoner, and Jean de La Guesle, the président of the Parlement of Paris, to investigate hospital reform.¹³⁴ A list of benefices in the nomination of the king, produced for the Assembly, was most probably compiled on the basis of evidence returned by the commissioners, supplemented by that obtained by means of an instruction issued by the king to all bishops on 26 June.¹³⁵ A document itemizing the revenues of the French clergy was also produced by a similar route.¹³⁶ The most extensive report of all was the ‘Estat du domaine et des finances de France’. Drafted by four maîtres des comptes and drawing on the evidence from the commissioners, it itemized the royal domain for each generality—perhaps the only document to do so for the sixteenth century.¹³⁷ The aim was to repurchase selected parts of it, as already foreshadowed in the Conseil d’État in May 1583.¹³⁸ Accompanying this document was a study of ¹³⁰ F46873–18. ¹³¹ F47874–3 and Isambert, xiv. 526–38. ¹³² F46875–5. ¹³³ BN MS Fr 16231 fos. 177–8. ¹³⁴ BN MS Fr 3306 fo. 103; Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fos. 69–71. ¹³⁵ BN MS 20641 fos. 327–327v [headed ‘Liste des archeueschez eueschez Abbayes & prieurez a la disposition du Roy’]; cf. BN MS Fr 3306 fo. 103. ¹³⁶ BN MS Fr 18481 fo. 121. ¹³⁷ BN MS Fr 11165 fo. 1 [includes the marginal note: ‘Ce discours et traitté est fait par commandement du Roy a la diligence de Quatre maistres des Comptes 1583 pour lassemblee de St Germain en laye’]—cf. Karcher, L’Assemblée des notables, 123. BN MS Fr 18271 fo. 78 is also headed: ‘ce recueil a esté faict du commandement du Roy Henry III’. ¹³⁸ BN Mélanges Colbert MS 87 fo. 353v [Résulat du conseil des finances, 21 May 1583, considering a petition from the treasurers of the generality of Amiens: ‘Sera pourveu a la reunion dudict domaine en l’assemblee generalle que le roy fera faire au moys de septembre prochain’].

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royal income from 1494 through to 1581, a précis based upon the official états au vrai in the archives of the Chambre des Comptes and probably prepared under the direction of its premier président, vital evidence for the evolution of the royal budget in a long-term perspective. As a kind of aide-mémoire there was also a traitté des finances, which explained in simple terms the basic categories of royal income and their evolution during the Valois dynasty. It was designed to be read to the king before the assembly.¹³⁹ The notables who made their way to Saint-Germain-en-Laye were provided, in short, with background briefing papers, especially on royal finance. Noting the existence of a corpus of manuscript copies around the Estat du domaine et des finances de France from the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, Aline Karcher also identified several treatises that frequently occur in the same collections, from which she deduced that they all had a common origin in the documentation prepared for the Assembly of Notables.¹⁴⁰ The difficulty with the argument is that manuscript collections are the result of miscellaneous agglomerations, like entries in a commonplace book. It is impossible to trace a stemma back to an original manuscript identified with a delegate at the Assembly. The existence of groups of items in a manuscript corpus is not, on its own, satisfactory evidence of provenance. In this instance, we have evidence of a direct connection with the Assembly of Notables in respect of the items [1] to [6] (see Table 6). For items [7] to [13] there is no such evidence. Even if they were related, it is not clear how they would have been relevant. The text on the origin and significance of estates general in French history was written by Louis Servin.¹⁴¹ Although it is not impossible he had done so by 1583, it is much more likely that it was drafted after he became avocat du roi in the exiled Parlement at Tours in 1589. One of this latter group of treatises provides a clue. Entitled ‘Des Fondemens de l’estat et les moiens de Regner’, one of the copies tells ¹³⁹ BN MS Fr 11165 fo. 67 is described at the beginning of the volume [fo. ‘A’] as: ‘Autre traitté des finances et de leurs origine et progrez sur un original, escrit à la main trouvé au Cabinet du Roy Henri 3, que M. Le Vayer substitut a de la succession de feu Mr Du Alde, 1er valet de chambre du Roy, qui semble avoir esté fait par M. le premier président de Nully au mesme temps de 1583. Jen ay une autre coppie mieux escritte au 1er livre des extraitz de plaideoirie [ . . . ] ’. The piece is endorsed [fo. 81v ] ‘discours universel de toutes les aydes et finances de France non imprime soubs Henry 3’. ¹⁴⁰ Karcher, ‘L’Assemblée des notables’, 124. ¹⁴¹ NBG, 43, cols. 818–19; the attribution is made in several copies, e.g. BN MS Fr 18255 fos. 1–33; BN MS Fr 18475 fo. 2.

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Table 6. Surviving manuscript corpus of avis prepared for consideration at the Assembly of Notables Avis with direct or indirect evidence connecting them to the Assembly of Notables: [1] ‘De l’estat du domaine et des finances du Roy [ . . . ]’ [2] ‘Des finances du Royaume’—including the ‘Traitté des finances’ [3] ‘Brief estat des debtes et engaigementz de la couronne envers lan 1580’ [4] ‘Liste des archeueschez [ . . . ] a la disposition du Roy’ [5] ‘Les Archeveschez Eueschez et abbayes du Royaume de France ensemble la valleur dicelles [ . . . ] ’ [6] ‘Declaration des bailliages, seneschaussees & autres sieges royaulx de ce Royaulme’ Avis with no direct or indirect evidence connecting them with the Assembly of Notables: [7] ‘Traitte de tous les estats d’Espagne. Du revenu et Despenses d’iceux’ [8] ‘Estat du revenu du Portugal’ [9] ‘De l’estat de Florence’ [10] ‘De l’estat du Turcq’ [11] ‘Catalogue de tous les seigneurs qualiffies d’Espaigne’ [12] ‘Des Fondemens de l’estat et les moiens de Regner’ [13] ‘De l’origine de la convocation des trois estats de France qui estoit (jadis soubz la premier et seconde lignée de Nos Roys) Tenir le parlement’

us that it was translated from Italian and we can identify it as a French translation of a work by the Sicilian humanist Scipio (var.: Scipion) di Castro. He had seemingly composed it during his service in Rome as a hydraulic engineer to Pope Gregory XIII, where he arrived in 1574.¹⁴² We know nothing about when the translation was undertaken, or by whom, although it eventually found its way into print.¹⁴³ It is possible that his work was known at Henri III’s court in, or around, 1583. Its theme—the moral virtues required of a prince in order to govern well—was certainly one that would have attracted his attention. But it is more probable that the translation was made after the publication of the Italian original in Scipio di Castro’s Thesoro Politico.¹⁴⁴ The latter was a collection of ambassadorial ‘relazioni’ and other writings that exemplified the practice of geopolitical surveys to identify the comparative strengths and weaknesses of states. In its first section, it contained the Italian version of the treatise in question, and was probably printed in Paris in 1589.¹⁴⁵ The notion of political economy that the rest of the work contained was that of organizing material on the history, individuals, instititutions, and ¹⁴² For Castro’s career and writings, see Saitta (ed.), Avvertimenti di Don Scipio di Castro. ¹⁴³ Des fondemens de l’estat. ¹⁴⁴ Thesoro Politico, pp. A–Dij (‘Delli Fondamenti dello stato [ . . . ] ’). See Testa, ‘Per una interpretazione’ and ‘Alcune riflessioni sul Thesoro Politico (1589)’. ¹⁴⁵ Balsamo, ‘Les Origines parisiennes’.

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resources of ‘the state machine’, as Scipio de Castro called it, and the relations of one state with another. Behind such acccumulations lay the belief that there was a ‘method’ or ‘ratio’ to political activity; and within that belief lay the expectation that it was possible to retain the notion of moral virtue in political activity alongside the necessity of maintaining the fabric of the state. This loose assemblage of ideas was epitomized in the works of Giovanni Botero, himself resident briefly at the French court in 1585, a great exponent of geopolitical economy as well as the author of Della ragion di stato (1589), the work that gave its name to the tradition of writing in which Scipio di Castro was also located.¹⁴⁶ So, if there was any connection between, on the one hand, the preparatory avis that we can link to the Assembly of Notables and, on the other, the disparate treatises that we cannot, it is likely to have been forged post facto. The common denominator in the minds of the early copyists is the methods of political economy and the linking of moral virtues with the practices of statecraft. ‘Reason of state’ would have a powerful and continuing influence upon the administrators of the French state in the first half of the seventeenth century. They sought copies of such treatises and early exemplars of such political economy in action. There was none better for later sixteenth-century France than those prepared for the Assembly of Notables of 1583–4. Henri III’s attempted reformation had a longer afterlife than its eventual inconsequentiality would suppose.

THE DELIBERATIONS OF THE NOTABLES The notables were summoned personally to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Claude Pinart dispatched letters dictated by Henri III during his return from the Bourbonnais on 5 October 1583.¹⁴⁷ They were invited there for 11 October ‘a y regarder aux afferes que jay delibere dy traicter’. Other more personal missives reinforced the invitation. To the cardinal de Bourbon, for example, the king wrote about his recovery from illness and urged him to attend.¹⁴⁸ The président of the Parlement of Paris, Jean de La Guesle, was instructed to ‘mectre en ordre tous les pappiers memoires & Instructions que vous ¹⁴⁶ Headley, ‘Geography and Empire’. ¹⁴⁷ BN MS Fr 3306 fo. 123 [marginal note to the minute: ‘Depesche generale aux princes qui se doibuent trouuer en lassemblee’, ‘aux Mesniz pres Monfort Lamaulry’—i.e. near Montfort-l’Amaury in the diocese of Chartres]. ¹⁴⁸ Ibid. [marginal note: ‘A Mr le cardinal de Bourbon’].

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en auez scauant ce que fut aduise aux Estats de Bloys et encores depuis a Fontainebleau et a Paris et me venir trouuer’.¹⁴⁹ Antoine Nicolaï, président in the Chambre des Comptes, and Nicolas du Gué, avocat du roi in the Paris Cour des Aides, a frequent rapporteur at the Conseil des Finances, were also invited to bring the relevant paperwork.¹⁵⁰ Given his involvement in past reforming initiatives, it is not surprising that the duke of Nevers was urged to attend.¹⁵¹ Queen Catherine was dispatched to Anjou at Laon to persuade him to come, but he had returned from Flanders in no mood to take part in public affairs. Navarre also received a personal invitation. It was an opportunity to lure him away from his Gascon heartlands, and especially at the sensitive moment when the period of six years, for which the protestants were allowed their garrison security towns under the peace of Bergerac had just expired. With his accustomed adroitness, Navarre excused himself on the grounds that it was not becoming for a prince to act as a porter for petitions.¹⁵² Instead, Claude-Antoine de Vienne, sieur de Clervant, already Navarre’s key negotiator over the garrison strongholds, was sent to the king with a petition, though he was not invited to the Assembly itself.¹⁵³ Those summoned to the Assembly were divided into three ‘chambers’ (two of twenty-two notables and one of twenty-four). Thanks to the list (or ‘département’) of these chambers, we are able to identify those who attended the Assembly, in some if not all of its sessions.¹⁵⁴ In addition to the commissioners already mentioned, they included three princes of the blood (Charles, cardinal de Bourbon, and his nephews, Charles, cardinal de Vendôme, and the marquis of Conti) and four princes (the dukes of Guise, Mercœur, Aumale, and Nevers). Among the officers of state, there were the grand maître and grand chambellan (Guise), the grand maître de l’artillerie (Biron), and three maréchaux de France (Retz, Biron, and Aumont). They had all, without exception, seen service at court and owed their pre-eminence to the king’s favour or confidence. Of some of them, of course, it was said ¹⁴⁹ BN MS Fr 3306, fo. 123v . ¹⁵⁰ Ibid. ¹⁵¹ BN MS Fr 3350 fo. 135 [Henri III to Louis de Gonzague, 5 October 1583]. Catherine de Médicis urged him to be there with his spouse, Henriette de Clèves, duchess of Nevers (Madame ‘La Pistère’ of the Salon Vert)—see Baguenault de Puchesse, ‘Vingt-sept lettres inédites’, 149–50. Other copies of the invitation include those to the prince of Conti [BN 500 Colbert MS 29 fo. 735] and the prince of Condé [ibid.]. ¹⁵² BN MS Fr nouv acq 7745 fos. 275–9 [‘Instruction au seigneur de Clervant allant en Cour de la part du roy de Navarre pour response aux lettres de Sa Majesté’—copy, n.d.]. ¹⁵³ CalSPFor (1583), 165. ¹⁵⁴ BN MS Fr 16631, 641–4 [‘Departement des trois chambres de l’assemblee qui fut faicte a Saint Germain en Laye en l’annee mil cinq cens quatre vingts trois’, copy].

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that they monopolized royal favour or belonged to families that sought to do so (Épernon, Villequier, Bouchage, La Valette). Some acted as the eyes and ears of others. Claude Clausse, sieur de Ponts, for example, was the colonel of an infantry regiment. But he owed his place to the fact that his brother (Pierre Clausse, sieur de Marchaumont) was surintendant des affaires for Anjou, whose interests he was there to protect. Equally Scipion, count of Fiesque, had no formal office; but he was an intimate servant to Catherine de Médicis and he served as her alter ego. At least twenty-six notables were conseillers d’état and, more importantly (since the title did not necessarily imply service), the majority of them had been among the most active recently at the council. In each chamber, there was at least one senior magistrate in law. The notables included the incoming chancellor and former keeper of the seals (Hurault de Cheverny), who also acted as porte-parole for the king. Also among those invited were three présidents of the Parlement of Paris (Brisson, La Guesle, and Faucon de Ris) and two conseillers (Jean Forget and Jean Bochart de Champigny). Two maîtres des requêtes and a conseiller at the Grand Conseil added the experience of senior legal counsel to the Assembly. Senior magistrates in financial matters were also assigned to each of the chambers. They included four maîtres des comptes (Michon; Pleurs; Le Comte; Barthélemy), a former trésorier de l’Épargne (Pierre de Fitte) and the avocat du roi in the Cour des Aides. The ranks of the military were not forgotten, since the notables included over ten commanders of companies of gens d’ordonnance, half a dozen provincial governors and lieutenants, four governors of important town defences, the head of the royal artillery, and a maréchal de camp. There were also some surprising absentees. Bellièvre, the surintendant des finances, was engaged in a mission to Navarre. Pibrac was serving Anjou as his chancellor. The protestant aristocracy (Condé, La Trémoille, Châtillon) ostentatiously stayed away. It is inconceivable that the secretaries of state were not present from time to time. Their names do not feature among the participants but we know that Villeroy, for example, was often at Saint-Germain during this period.¹⁵⁵ The premier présidents from Paris could not come, not even Antoine Nicolaï from the Chambre ¹⁵⁵ See his letters to Jean de Bellièvre, sieur de Hautefort, signed from Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on 20 November and 9 December 1583 in BN MS Fr 15566 fos. 175 and 188. In a letter dated 1 October, also to Hautefort, Villeroy had mentioned the forthcoming assembly ‘quil [the king] pretend faire pour pourveoir a ses affaires’—B Institut de France MS Godefroy 260 fo. 154. This is interpreted pejoratively by Sutherland, The French Secretaries of State, 242–3. But ‘prétendre’ in sixteenth-century French means ‘to be determined upon’. Far from being sceptical, Villeroy acknowledged the king’s single-minded intention.

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des Comptes, who received a personal invitation. From other evidence, we know that Claude Fauchet, président at the Cour des Monnaies, and several colleagues spent time there around Christmas. Fauchet took the opportunity to present a manuscript copy of his Origine des dignitez et magistrats to the king, as the preface to the later printed edition noted.¹⁵⁶ It would help the labours of reform for: ‘Qui entendra bien la première forme de l’Estat, tant en chef qu’en membres, il sera plus aisé de remettre ce que le temps y peut avoir alteré.’ His colleagues Roland, Dam, Gilles, Riberolles, and Desjardins were present, the latter three signing the remonstrances presented to the council of state on 28 January 1584.¹⁵⁷ Yet their names do not figure on the surviving lists. It is curious, too, that there is no representative of the magistrature of the city of Paris or the provincial sovereign courts. The surviving list is perhaps incomplete, indicating the assignment of those individuals present when the assembly was divided into its three chambers in the middle of December. The king determined the notables’ agenda. On 9 October, Pinart took down a draft of ‘points’ that the king wanted them to discuss, part headings (‘du faict des finances’), and part proposals that he wanted them to investigate.¹⁵⁸ The latter included a suggestion that the various tailles and crues might be accumulated into an aggregated tax and that the venality of financial offices might also be abandoned. The alienation of the royal domain, aides, gabelles, grosses fermes, and royal debts was a principal subject for discussion, focusing on memoranda compiled by Antoine Nicolaï and de Ficte, présidents in the Chambre des Comptes in conjunction with a senior intendant des finances, Robert Miron, sieur de Chenailles, and Nicolas Du Gué, the avocat-général in the Cour des Aides. The king expected ‘une bonne resolution de ce qui se deuera faire particulierement sur chacune desdites prouinces’ and anticipated the possibility that ‘en chacune prouince Lon doibt Choisir Cinq ou six personnages dauctorité & bien affectionnez qui se chargeront dexecuter ce qui sera aduise’. In judicial affairs, it was Jean de La Guesle who was asked to ‘apporter tous les pappiers quil a tant des estatz de Bloys que de ce quil a depuis projete & dresse’. Albert de Gondi, now duke of Retz, was asked to do the same for military matters. The final item on the agenda was how to remedy the ‘entreprinses’ and ‘empeschemens’ that the clerical order had suffered in their property and possessions. ¹⁵⁶ Espiner-Scott, Claude Fauchet, 52 and 323–4. Cf. Fauchet, Les Œuvres, ii. [preface ‘Au tres-chrestien roy’ 30 January 1584]. ¹⁵⁷ Espiner-Scott, Claude Fauchet, 52–3. ¹⁵⁸ BN MS Fr 3306 fos. 123v –124.

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Over the following month, this agenda was revised into ‘articles’ to which the notables were asked to provide comments. Remarkably, the ‘articles’ and accompanying ‘advice’ from one of the chambers were published in an unauthorized, and certainly inaccurate, version in the spring of 1584.¹⁵⁹ Because of its sloppiness, it has to be used in comparison with a surviving, later (but less corrupt) manuscript copy.¹⁶⁰ The 207 ‘articles’, paragraphed and enumerated, were more than the notables could comfortably discuss, even in two months of deliberations.¹⁶¹ Table 7. Chapters and articles discussed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye ‘Eglise’ ‘Noblesse’ ‘Justice’ ‘Articles des crimes et forfaits & offices qui se commettent contre la Maiesté du Roy’ ‘Des droicts, authoritez & prerogatiues de la Couronne’ ‘Gendarmerie’ ‘Finance’ ‘Police generale’ ‘Police qui est establie à la suyte de la Cour’ ‘Articles concernans les Mareschaux de France, Gouuerneurs des Prouinces, Baillifs, Seneschaux, Capitaines des villes & chasteaux, & des Mareschaux’ ‘Divers’—of which ‘conseruation et manutention de son état’ ‘autres poincts generaux’ ‘concernans les rangs & seances’ ‘concernans la dignité de sa majesté & le respect deu à sa personne’ ‘articles pour le Conseil’ ‘articles des hospitaux & malladeries’ ‘articles du port d’armes’ ‘article des monnoyes’ ‘concernant le faict des querelles’ Total

12 7 15 27 19 21 13 23 23 11

4 7 1 10 3 1 3 1 6 207

We should note their uniformity of tone. They sought the ‘moyens’ for change. Their underlying concerns were with enforcement (‘gardé’; ‘faire ¹⁵⁹ A&P. For its date, see the reference to it in a dispatch from the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Moro, of 27 April 1584—BN MS It 1733, 373—‘Mi e stato mostro in grand confidenz un libro nel quale si contengono tutte le propositioni fatte in quell assemblea con le riposte.’ ¹⁶⁰ BN MS Fr 16257 fos. 73–121v [copy, headed ‘Articles Concernans la Police, et bon gouuernement du Royaume deliberez en l’assemblee des notables a St Germain en Laye en nouembre 1583’. In another hand, a scribe has added: ‘Double Gardé pour plusieurs differences et quelque chose de plus a la fin’]. ¹⁶¹ The avis often refer to the articles to which they relate by number.

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garder’ ‘entretenir’ . . . ), with ‘mesnage’, ‘police’, ‘faire valloir’, and ‘peines’. Their premiss was that the laws were too disparate and too badly applied. They also had a manuscript afterlife—often known as the ‘articles concernans [ . . . ] le bon gouuernement du royaume’—and influence on the French state well into the seventeenth century as can be seen in the number and provenance of surviving manuscript copies.¹⁶² There are no surviving procès verbaux of the deliberations at Saint-Germainen-Laye. We do have, however, an unofficial record of what happened during the first week, several speeches and consultative documents presented to the notables, and the advice of one of its chambers. The unofficial record of the first week was probably written by Richard Cooke who had accompanied his Kentish compatriot Sir Henry Cobham on his French embassy and probably stayed on to assist Sir Edward Stafford. It is particularly valuable because it demonstrates how political and personal considerations easily deflected the notables from the business in hand.¹⁶³ The first two days (Friday and Saturday, 18–19 November) passed off quietly enough. The king’s speech was followed by that of the keeper of the seals, Cheverny (the chancellor Birague being ill—he would die five days later). Cheverny recommended the king’s ‘ardente et sincere affection’ for the ‘restablissement de toutes bonnes choses en leurs ancienne splendeur’.¹⁶⁴ The dispatch of the commissioners for reform was an unprecedented initiative.¹⁶⁵ The king’s quest for the welfare of his subjects should inspire them all. This affection was what bound prince and people, the ‘lien’ between ‘lesprit et lame de tous le corps Politic du Royaulme’.¹⁶⁶ Cheverny then invited deputies to appoint spokesmen to report on their deliberations. Saturday was spent in hearing a detailed report from Benoît Milon, the serving intendant des finances, outlining the deficit on the ¹⁶² I have examined the following: BN MS FR 4805; 6399; 16257; 23393; 25016; 23702; BN MS Fr nouv acq 7248; Archives des affaires étrangères MS 31. ¹⁶³ PRO SP78/10 fos. 186–187v [endorsed: ‘18 november 1583. The Effect of the Speches in the Assemblyes at St Germain’]—the date indicated is OS. A French version of the text—with some differences—is to be found in Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.146 [entitled ‘La premiere partie du compte de Richard Cooke de Kent pour son voiage et temps employe en France’]. The text is confusingly headed ‘Protestation et promesse du Roy de France de ne faire iamais guerre contre ceux de la religion reformé[e]’—although the title probably indicates the main reason why Richard Cooke had thought this first week’s events were of particular significance. For a discussion of another document in the Richard Cooke collection, see Potter and Roberts, ‘An Englishman’s View’. ¹⁶⁴ A copy of his speech is to be found in BN MS Fr 23830 fos. 57–9 [misleadingly described in the table of contents to the volume as ‘Harangue faite de la part du Roy aux habitans d’une ville pour etablir quelque impost’]. Rumours apparently circulated after the speech, claiming that it had contained implicit criticisms of the estates of Normandy, and of clerical privileges. ¹⁶⁵ Ibid., fo. 57v . ¹⁶⁶ Ibid., fo. 58.

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king’s current revenues and possibilities for retrenchment.¹⁶⁷ On Monday, the notables reconvened to hear a speech from cardinal Lenoncourt on behalf of the commissioners.¹⁶⁸ Lenoncourt praised the king as the embodiment of justice, wisdom, and prudence. After ‘une si longue et punible tormente’ they had reached ‘la tyge et periode de tous nos maux’ but, ‘sous le compas de la raison’ of the king, his sovereignty (‘qui est un pas fort glissant et ou plusieurs principautés ordinairement choppent’), dexterously moderated by laws (reformed for the purpose), the kingdom ‘recouurera necessairement sa force et sa valleur et comme restitue de nouueau dans peu de temps en sa virilité et en la fleur de son aage’. To this end, the commissioners had ‘decouvert la malladie. Nous auons sonde la playe. Brief nous auons de la bouche mesme de votre peuple reconnu les causes de son mal et auons ouy leurs plaintes et doleances generalles et particulieres.’ In the exordium, Lenoncourt alluded to God’s promise to Solomon, linking the cause of reform to the king’s search for a successor: ‘Si tu chemine[s] . . . devant moy comme ton pere David a chemine deuant moy d[e]’ung cueur entier et droict guardant mes commandemens et ordonnances ie confirmeray le throne de ton royaume sur Israel a Iamais et ne moura point sans successeur Issu de toy et ne sortira point le royaume de ta lignee.’¹⁶⁹ The following day, Jean de La Guesle began the more detailed discussion of the commissioners’ report with an example of what, as a magistrate in the Parlement of Paris, he wanted reformed. It concerned the annual right of the archbishop and chapter at Rouen to sue for the unconditional release of one condemned prisoner in the hands of the Parlement each Eastertide.¹⁷⁰ The privilege had already been criticized at Blois. For the Gallican-inclined La Guesle, it went to the heart of the way privilege obstructed justice.¹⁷¹ ¹⁶⁷ PRO SP 78/10 fo. 186; I take it that the written avis that Milon presented, then or later, is that to be found in Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fos. 71–6 [headed ‘Moyens advisez par le Roy pour le supplement de faulte de fondz pour satisfaire’]—which begins with the articles from the avis and then provides a detailed response to each proposition. ¹⁶⁸ PRO SP 78/10 fo. 186; BN MS Fr 23830 fos. 45–48v [undated and unascribed copy, but from internal evidence, undoubtedly the speech in question]. ¹⁶⁹ Ibid., fos. 47v –48, echoing 1 Kings 9. The speech indicates that Catherine de Médicis was also in attendance at this session. ¹⁷⁰ Floquet, Histoire du privilège, 2. ¹⁷¹ PRO SP78/10 fo. 186v . Cf. the account in de Thou, ix [bk. 78]. 85 who said that La Guesle had described it as ‘la chasse de Rouen’ because of the extent to which the cardinal became the focus of the annual solicitations for this pardon. The release of Claude d’Aubigny, baron de la Roche (1582), who had wounded the sieur de La Roche d’Aillon and killed three of his men, had recently been supported by Guise (Floquet, Histoire du privilège, 351). The latest case in the public mind was the release in 1583 of the Du Breuil brothers, convicted of having assassinated Nicolas Lacroix,

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Present, however, was cardinal Charles de Bourbon, archbishop of Rouen, ultra-sensitive to the Gallican sentiments implicit in La Guesle’s intervention and anxious to protect a local privilege. At the same time, he was aware that the chancellor was close to death and that there was a battle royal ensuing over his succession. Above all, he wanted to put down a marker about the negotiations over the protestant garrison strongholds. As the oldest prelate in France, a member of the blood royal, and close to the royal succession, his voice counted. He staged an angry intervention, accusing La Guesle of personal ambition and the judiciary of corruption. When La Guesle swept aside his objections, the cardinal left his seat and sank to his knees before the king, begging him, in the name of his catholic subjects, to restore catholicity as the sole religion in France and the only means of reforming the realm. At this point, Henri III intervened and (as the English ambassador recounted) ‘in a collere said unto him: Uncle theise speaches come not from yourself: I know from where they come; speake no more to me of yt.’¹⁷² The pacification was not under discussion. Briefly defending, and with energy, the decision to make peace with the protestants, he then ‘departed in a choller’. Later that evening, the duke of Guise came to the king’s cabinet to excuse himself from the rumours, already circulating, that he was the ‘author’ of this outburst. He had thought of no such a thing and, if he had, ‘he wold have found a more Abile Homme as he termed yt, to have delivered yt then the Cardinall of Burbon’. The king, a past master in exploiting the ambiguity of such encounters, both managed to say that he did not believe the rumour and to imply that there might be some truth in it nevertheless. The undeniable fact is that the discussions at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were pursued in the midst of a court in turmoil in which Joyeuse and Épernon ruthlessly advanced their competitive interests for the king’s favour, creating vortices of faction that threatened to swamp everything around them. The notables at Saint-Germain continued in session until February, with a brief intermission for the funeral of chancellor Birague in Paris on 6 December and a further break for Christmas and Epiphany. The king’s commitment to the cause remained undiminished, even when he returned to Paris on 12 January. He instructed Nevers to stay and ensure that it reached its abbé d’Orbais, whom they believed to have instigated the murder of their father, a case in which both Henri de Guise and Étienne Pasquier solicited the grace of Saint-Romain (ibid. 352). ¹⁷² PRO SP78/10 fo. 191v [Stafford to Walsingham, Paris, 17 November 1583 (OS)].

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conclusions speedily.¹⁷³ On 8 February, Jean de La Guesle, Barnabé Brisson, and Pierre d’Épinac were asked to draw up conclusions.¹⁷⁴ A week later, the notables considered the articles relating to the maréchaux de France. We do not know exactly when they finished their deliberations but it cannot have taken them longer than another week. Their business was at an end by the close of February. The proceedings at Saint-Germain-en-Laye have an affinity with the Palace Academy with which we began this book. Speeches of advice directed to particular questions, defined by the king, texts presented in writing, dignified discussion among notables, carefully recorded, structured, academic encounter—we have met this before.¹⁷⁵ This similarity is not coincidental. None of the later Valois chose to educate themselves in moral virtue quite like Henri III; none chose to inform himself of the ways of political virtue as he did at Saint-Germain. As with the Palace Academy, we can reconstruct something of the sequence of speeches. Deliberations began with individual speeches from notables. Philippe de Lenoncourt argued, in what may have been an early intervention, that change should be undertaken slowly. In the political turmoil of the Hundred Years War, France had turned into a monarchy with an aristocratic oligarchy. It was now assuming the characteristics of a monarchy with an ‘estat populaire, si ce n’est qu’on use d’une preuoyance, saige & accorté’.¹⁷⁶ Religious reformation must be considered in the context of the reform of the republic at large. The reform of the republic must be undertaken ‘doulcement’, ‘peu a peu’. He linked the relief of grievances to the repayment of royal debt. The notables should become a Sanhedrin council assuming responsibility for royal debts from 1 January 1584, leaving the king to live off the royal domain and ordinary revenues. The council would gradually pay them off with extraordinary taxes that would be reduced as the debt burden lessened, reducing the officialdom to the size that it had been under Louis XII and maintaining a cavalry at the complement established under François I. He coupled this with proposals for a ‘citizen army’, 50,000 ¹⁷³ BN MS Fr 3350 fo. 150 [Henri III to Louis de Gonzague, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 12 January 1584, orig.]. ¹⁷⁴ BN MS Fr 15567 fo. 74. ¹⁷⁵ Although mostly drafted in a style to be read out before the king, the avis were also to be presented in writing. The duke de Nevers refers to the king’s instruction to that effect, issued on 28 November in an effort to speed up discussions—BN MS Fr 3961 fo. 45; François de La Baume, comte de Suze, began his discourse on the judicial articles: ‘Sire parce quil plaist a votre majeste que nous en mettions nostre aduis par escrit [ . . . ] ’—Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fo. 81. ¹⁷⁶ BN MS Fr 23830 fo. 55.

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strong, raised from each province. These were interesting, albeit unrealistic, proposals in the light of the difficult and inconclusive negotiations with provincial deputies. By the middle of December, the notables had only covered the first three chapters—or thirty-four of the 207 questions.¹⁷⁷ At that rate of progress, they would take over six months to complete their agenda. It was already difficult to envisage any practical policy emerging. So the king decided to divide them into three ‘colleges’, each chaired by a senior prelate and required to present its considered advice at the end. For the remainder of the session, we do not therefore have any of the individual speeches, simply the concluding ‘advice’ from the chambers—and then mainly from only one of them.¹⁷⁸ Although twenty-seven speeches, memoranda, and avis survive from the Assembly—far more than for any other comparable body in sixteenth-century France—the record is far from complete.¹⁷⁹ With so many articles on which to give their advice, individuals concentrated on some areas more than others, drawing on their personal experience and aware that they were often intervening in the affairs of a social order to which they did not themselves belong. In the case of the twelve articles on the clergy, they were particularly concerned with ¶¶1 (clerical elections), 2 (clerical residence), and 3–7 (benefices in commendam (4) and the alienation/usurpation of clerical wealth (6, 7) ). The overwhelming advice was that the king should retain his regalian rights over clerical nominations. As the sieur de Sessac said, clerical elections had worked in the primitive church ‘par ce quil n’y auoit que bon zelle au seruice de dieu sans ambition ny gloire que porter sa croix & respandre son sang pour la diuine maiesté’.¹⁸⁰ But, with time, Christian zeal had diminished. The king’s commitment to investigate each candidature prior to issuing letters of nomination would ensure a godly prelature in future. Nevers came to similar conclusions by a different route. If, in conscience, the king thought that he could not acquit himself of the responsibility of making senior clerical appointments, he should restore elections.¹⁸¹ However, the duke noted Henri III’s ‘bonne et saincte volonte ¹⁷⁷ The (dated) speech of the duke of Nevers to the Assembly of 16 December must have been among the last presented to the plenary assembly before they completed their consideration of the first three chapters and divided into chambers. ¹⁷⁸ The full title to the A&P makes clear where the Assembly had reached in terms of its agenda by the time of the division into colleges. ¹⁷⁹ That said, in the one instance where we can make a comparison between the views presented by one chamber (Vendôme) and those of another (Bourbon) in the chapter concerning the marshals, there was little substantial difference between them. ¹⁸⁰ Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fo. 82v . ¹⁸¹ BN MS Fr 3961 fo. 45.

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Table 8. Discourses and memoranda on the royal articles presented at the Assembly of Notables, 18 November 1583–c.15 February 1584 Description [date of probable delivery or consideration] [1] Memorandum—‘Moiens advisez par le Roy pour le supplement de faulte de fondz’ [Benoît Milon, sieur de Videville ?19 November 1583] [2] Speech by Philippe de Lenoncourt, presenting the main conclusions of the commissioners [21 November 1583] [3] ‘Avis’ on the overall direction of the proposed reformation by ? Philippe de Lenoncourt [?end November 1583] [4] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘l’église’ by François de Cazillac, baron de Sessac [end November 1583] [5] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘l’église’ by Antoine de Pons, comte de Marennes[?] [end November 1583]c [6] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘l’église’ by Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers [29 November 1583] [7] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la noblesse’ by Antoine de Pons, comte de Marennes [n.d. early December 1583] [8] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la noblesse’ by Louis de Saint-Gelais, sieur de Lansac [n.d. early December 1583] [9] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la noblesse’ by Louis Chasteigner, sieur d’Abain [n.d. early December 1583] [10] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la noblesse’ by Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers [3 December 1583] [11] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la Justice’ by Pierre de Villars, archbishop of Vienne [n.d. December 1583] [12] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la Justice’ by Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers [16 December 1583] [13] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la Justice’ by François de La Baume, comte de Suze [n.d. December 1583] [14] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘la Justice’ by Antoine de Pons, comte de Marennes [n.d. December 1583] [15] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning the ‘Articles de crimes forfaictz & offances [ . . . ] ’ from the Vendôme chamber [n.d. end December 1583] [16] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘Des droicts, authoritez & prerogatiues de la Couronne’ from the Vendôme chamber [n.d. end December 1583]

Source Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fos. 71v –76—henceforth ‘MAZ’a BN MS 23830 fos. 45–48v —henceforth ‘FR’ FR fos. 55–6b MAZ, fos. 82v –84 MAZ, fos. 84–5 BN MS Fr 3961 fos. 45–9d MAZ, fo. 85v –85v MAZ, fos. 85v –87 MAZ, fos. 87v –88v BN MS Fr 3961 fos 51–5e MAZ, fos 77v –81 BN MS Fr 3961 fos. 56–65f MAZ, fos. 81–82v MAZ, fos. 87–87v A&P, 19–24

Ibid. 37–8

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Table 8. continued Description [date of probable delivery or consideration] [17] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘La gendarmerie’ from the Vendôme chamber [n.d. early January 1584] [18] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘Le faict des finances’ from the Vendôme chamber [n.d. early January 1584] [19] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘La police generalle’ from the Vendôme chamber [n.d. January 1584] [20] Memorandum—‘au Restablissement des manufactures de toutes sortes de Marchandises dans le Royaume de France & recullement des estrangers [ . . . ] ’ [n.d. January 1584] [21] Memorandum—‘Moiens d’anricher le Royaume’ [n.d. January 1584] [22] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘La police [ . . . ] de la Cour’ [23] ‘Avis’ on the articles concerning ‘La police de la Preuosté de l’Hostel’ [24] Avis on the articles concerning ‘Messieurs les mareschaux de France & autres’ from the Bourbon chamber [n.d., c.16 February 1584]g [25] Avis on the same from the Vendôme chamber [n.d. February 1584] [26] Memorandum—‘Hospitaux’ [n.d.—prepared by Jacques Amyot?] [n.d. January 1584] [27] Avis on the articles concerning ‘autres poincts generaux’

Source Ibid. 46–52 Ibid. 59–81 Ibid. 89–115 MAZ, fos. 67v –68v

Ibid., fos. 68v –69v Ibid. 115–22 Ibid. 123–6 Ibid., fos. 76–77v

A&P, 128–41 MAZ, fos. 69v –71v A&P, 141–68

a MS 2635 of the Bibliothèque Mazarine is a bound volume, entitled on the spine ‘Domaine Royal. 2’. It contains miscellaneous copies of avis concerning royal finances and others matters of state, including an interesting, unedited discourse on warfare by Armand de Gontaut, baron de Biron. A miscellaneous note on fo. 217v gives some indication as to the volume’s provenance and approximate date. b Described (in a later hand) in the volume’s tables of contents simply as ‘Harangue pour la reformation de l’estat’; its ascription to Philippe de Lenoncourt is tentative, based on its existence among other papers in this volume that were copies of his speeches. c Here, as in items [5] and [15] in the table, referred to simply as ‘Mr de Pons’ in the documents. This could be either Antoine de Pons, comte de Marennes, or Claude Causse, sieur de Pontz, probably the former. d Orig., endorsed ‘Aduis donne au Roy par son Comandement sur aulcuns articles quil luy plaist nous bailler concernant le faict de Lesglise’. e Orig., endorsed ‘Avis au roi sur la noblesse du duc de Nevers, 3 décembre 1583’. f Orig., endorsed ‘Avis sur la justice du duc de Nevers’ and dated in another hand ‘16 de déc[embre] 1583’. g This date is deduced from BN MS Fr 15567 fo. 74 [‘Articles contenans les mareschaulx de France, gouuerneurs, lieutenants generaulx, baillifs et senechaux du [10] [Febrier] 1584’—a draft in Villeroy’s hand].

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[ . . . ] de restaurer cest estat’, and he owed it to his successors to uphold royal rights. He recommended the practice already in use in the Spanish Habsburg monarchy of inviting recommendations of those thought to be worthy of episcopal office and storing these on a register of potential nominees.¹⁸² The register would need to be regularly updated—he suggested every five years. Many notables brought copies of the Ordinances of Orléans, Moulins, and Blois with them. In the case of clerical residence, the sieurs de Pons and de Sessac went back to ¶14 of the Ordinances of Blois, which edicted the canonical residence of a minimum of eight months in each year. Nevers wanted to go further, recommending ‘at least nine months’, and comparing their service with that of a captain in a frontier fortress.¹⁸³ As for parish priests, the king’s law officers should prosecute absentees. The notables had harsh words for the ‘fentosmes de custodinos’ who impropriated church wealth. Sessac wanted magistrates and nobles dispatched to investigate alienations of clerical property at artificially low prices. He and others wanted to permit the church to repurchase their property at advantageous rates. Nevers thought that dioceses would need up to forty years to recover. He emphasized that poor parishes could not rebuild their fabric without outside assistance. His own personal experience was that about eighty parishes in the Nivernais were without any priest in residence. He proposed that parishes which could not provide a minimum stipend (he mentioned an implausibly high minimum of 60 écus per annum) should be exempt from paying the décimes.¹⁸⁴ The seven clauses on the nobility raised predictable issues such as false claims to nobility (¶1), the status of the illegitimate sons of nobles (¶3), the royal sale of nobility for profit (¶4), and restricting certain offices such as baillis and sénéchaux to the robe courte (¶7). The surviving avis are all from members of the noble order and they reflected ambiguities on these issues within the noble order. The nobility was the ‘principal foundation’ of the state, Lansac and Pons advised.¹⁸⁵ Nevers’s memorandum depicted the chivalric valour of the French nobility, nurtured by the French monarchy. He contrasted this with the empire of the Turks, where the nobility were oppressed rather than loved by their sultan, and with the neighbouring Swiss cantons where the nobility had never been cherished by a monarchy.¹⁸⁶ They all agreed that the ideal of nobility was shaped by virtue, and that its privileges and immunities should be preserved.¹⁸⁷ Yet they were ambiguous ¹⁸² Ibid., fo. 45v . ¹⁸⁵ Ibid., fo. 86.

¹⁸³ Ibid., fo. 46v . ¹⁸⁶ Ibid., fo. 51.

¹⁸⁴ BN MS Fr 3961 fo. 48v . ¹⁸⁷ Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fo. 85v .

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about enforcing noble exclusiveness. They admitted that there could be no rule about nobility being dependent on proof of at least three generations of lineage which did not admit of exceptions for valour on the battlefield, or other signs of prowess.¹⁸⁸ At the same time, they were concerned about adulteration by sale of titles or by the creeping nobility of office.¹⁸⁹ Offering nobility for purchase was, said Nevers, the equivalent of simony in the church.¹⁹⁰ Those who had bought it should be degraded. In future, only those who had demonstrated by ‘actes signalles quil ait faict par armes par lespace au moings de 12 ou 15 ans continuelz’ should be considered for ennoblement and, even then, their armorial bearings should not be quartered (‘timbré’) in order to indicate that theirs was not a hereditary nobility. Illegitimate noble offspring could not automatically be denied their noble roots but Nevers proposed that their armorial crest carry a bar that could only be removed after they had demonstrated their prowess to the satisfaction of three or four marshals. The offspring of noble bastards should also be required to take their mother’s name as the more securely proven lineage until, once again, they had carried out acts of valour that enabled them to be permitted to carry their father’s name. Nevers’s conception of a nobility of virtue was one that drew explicitly on the celestial hierarchy, in which gradations of service to the monarchy led to a small number of highly favoured at the top.¹⁹¹ He envisaged a service nobility in which royal favour was an educative instrument. In the current financial circumstances, he did not think that the nobility’s fiscal exemptions should be extended. It was more important to reform the cavalry.¹⁹² A service nobility would be encouraged by the management of opportunities and rewards for service. Most important of all was that the king should recover his freedom to reward his nobility ‘de votre propre mouuement et non par Importunite’. The fifteen articles on judicial affairs attracted the longest surviving avis. The notables examined the issues of judicial reform we have already ¹⁸⁸ e.g. the advice of the sieur de Lansac in Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fo. 86. ¹⁸⁹ BN MS Fr 3961 fo. 51v . ¹⁹⁰ Ibid., fo. 54. Cf. the identical avis of the sieur d’Abain—ibid., fo. 88. ¹⁹¹ Ibid., fo. 52. ¹⁹² The duke of Nevers and the sieur de Lansac both regarded the optimum size of the royal cavalry as about 2,400 lances, or the size of the gendarmerie under Henri II. Places in the gendarmerie should be reserved to the nobility except for those whose signal service in the ranks for a long period merited particular recognition. The cavalry companies should be required to spend a minimum of three months in any one year called up for service in a garrison in peacetime, practising their manoeuvres. This would strengthen its role, said the sieur d’Abain, as ‘une escole de vertu ou [ . . . ] Il y aura moings de desordre [ . . . ] ’—ibid., fo. 88.

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encountered in the previous chapter. They accepted the case that the ideal complement of judicial officers was that which had existed under Louis XII. But they also recognized that venality could not be reversed overnight. Purchasers of judicial office would have to be reimbursed and the royal finances could not begin to fund such compensation. The alternative was the erosion of judicial officialdom through the death or resignation of present incumbents. Nevers thought (optimistically) that it would take ten years to shrink the judiciary down to the size it had been under Louis XII. The more serious dilemma was that judicial venality was an established fact throughout French public life—in seigneurial, ecclesiastical, and appanage judicial courts as well. How was the hand of reforming royal virtue to extend into these domains? It would not be easy to compel appanage princes to comply. For the remaining discussions, the notables divided into chambers and our knowledge diminishes accordingly. The twenty-seven articles on treason were drafted by Jean de La Guesle and Barnabé Brisson.¹⁹³ The medieval French law of treason—lèse-majesté —derived from Roman law its concept of the king as an embodiment of the res publica, against whom lese-majesty could be committed.¹⁹⁴ But there was no equivalent of the English Statute of Treasons (1352). The law existed as adaptations of the lex Julia maiestatis and the lex Quisquis, on which French jurists constructed their own interpretations. Since treason trials were, by definition, political trials this meant that there were inevitable questions about the appropriateness of the interpretation to suit the facts of a particular case. This fuelled the divisions of the Hundred Years War, just as it would at the time of Condé’s treason trial in 1560. Specific measures attempted to ‘widen’ the concept of treason in the sixteenth century.¹⁹⁵ But there had been no attempt to codify treason legislation. The draft articles examined by the notables constituted the first attempt to do just that. The measure sought to define who, besides the king, was protected by the law of treason. It defined two degrees of lèse-majesté, one (‘au premier chef’—four clauses) more serious than the other (‘au second chef’—seventeen clauses). Heading the first category was an embracing statement of what constituted revolt: ‘Tous subiectz & vassaulx du Roy de quelque estat, qualite & condition quilz soient entreprenans conspirans et attentans contre la personne Maieste & auctorite du Roy et son estat et esleuant en armes contre son commandement sont coulpable & crimineulx ¹⁹³ BN MS Dupuy 558 fos. 13–15 [‘Chefz de crime de leze maieste proposes en lassemblee de St Germain en decembre 1583’]. ¹⁹⁴ Cuttler, The Law of Treason, ch. 1. ¹⁹⁵ Ibid. 183.

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de leze maieste au premier chef.’ All those who assisted in such enterprises and failed to reveal what was going on to the king, who raised troops without express permission, or who entered into an association with a foreign power, directly or indirectly, were guilty of first-degree treason. Second-degree treason included false coining, attacks upon the king’s ministers, falsification of the royal seal, and those guilty ‘d’avoir escript compose & seme libels & placetz diffamatoires’ against the king. The document was presented to the notables for advice on how it might be enforced rather than debate about its substance. It encapsulated key themes in the Henrician polity: the significance of law as a means of determining memory and defining people’s actions, the importance of codification, and the significance of ‘majesty’. Given that treason trials often revolved around the corruption or subversion of the state, it was not at all tangential to the agenda of the notables. The following articles may also owe their origins to the legal officers. They defined some of the ‘regalian rights’ of the French monarchy—rights of pardon (¶7), to issue passports, letters of marque and naturalization (¶¶8; 9; 12), to issue charters for fairs, corporations, universities (and their reform), and knighthoods (¶¶10; 11; 13; 14), etc. The draft caught the eye of foreign ambassadors, perhaps because an absolute monarch rarely thought it appropriate to unpack the mystique of monarchy to the extent of defining its prerogative powers.¹⁹⁶ Yet Bodin had begun to define sovereignty and the French monarchy could not ignore the consequences. Equally importantly, Henri III had created a large number of appanages where there were questions of the degree to which the appanage-holder could exercise delegated royal authority. The purpose of this statement was to indicate the royal powers that could not be delegated to appanage-holders.¹⁹⁷ The notables kept their advice mostly to questions of detail though they could not help observing that the proposed list was far from complete. It avoided all the controversial areas of regalian right, particularly that of taxation.¹⁹⁸ The articles required the notables to consider questions of social fabric (the church, nobility, and justice) before those of royal authority (treason law; royal prerogative). The chapters which now followed tackled central aspects of royal power and concerned the reform of the cavalry and finance. Twenty-one articles on the reform of the gendarmerie asked them to consider the optimal ¹⁹⁶ These articles were chosen, for example, by Richard Cooke to copy out and include in his ‘Relation’ of the French court—Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.146 fos. 63–5. ¹⁹⁷ A&P, 34. ¹⁹⁸ Ibid., 40; the text is corrupted in this paragraph—cf. BN MS Fr 16257 fo. 84.

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size of a cavalry company and of the gendarmerie as a whole (¶1) and its composition in peacetime (¶¶2; 4). There were questions of the age, quality, and equipment of gendarmes (¶¶3; 5–8), how they should be summoned to garrison duty, for how long, where, their conduct on active duty (¶¶9–13; 21), their payment (¶¶14–18) and discipline (¶¶13; 20). The issue of the gendarmerie preoccupied the royal council in the later sixteenth century. With many notables having served in its ranks, their advice was practical. There needed to be a retrenchment in the number of companies, and thus of serving officers, allowing those that remained to be more effective and better paid. The most coherent and wide-ranging reform of the gendarmerie had hitherto been proposed in 1571, in the aftermath of the first phase of the civil wars. One of its essential features was the provision of a royal pension for retrenched officers. The notables returned to that idea, proposing that 400 écus per annum should be offered to forcibly retired captains, with an equivalent sum of 200 écus for their lieutenants.¹⁹⁹ The notables’ caution was evident when it came to changing the composition of the gendarmerie. They could see circumstances where well-trained mounted archers, equipped with a half lance and a sword, might be useful, but they did not recommend the formation of separate companies of light cavalry, preferring to retain a formation that mixed light and heavy cavalry. They wanted the gendarmerie to be overwhelmingly noble (whilst not excluding the possibility of non-noble recruitment on the basis of exceptional service).²⁰⁰ They emphasized the importance of military experience.²⁰¹ The rank of guidon was to be the career grade in which ‘ieunes Gentils-hommes quasi dés leur aduenement’ would have an opportunity to show their mettle. The notorious indiscipline of the gendarmerie had already been the subject of recent royal ordinances and the notables echoed good practice, sometimes adding suggestions of their own. In future, each company should be paid two quarters whilst they were in garrison. There should then be two further musters each year to determine their pay for the remaining quarters.²⁰² Members of the cavalry should travel wearing their company sashes (sayes) and tabards (casaques) so that they were recognizable.²⁰³ Some attention was paid to the problem of military communications—a particular concern in a country with garrisons scattered along its frontiers.²⁰⁴ ¹⁹⁹ A&P, 46. ²⁰⁰ They recommended that advancement from the ranks should normally be possible only after ten years’ service—ibid. 48. ²⁰¹ Ibid. 47. ²⁰² Ibid. 50–1. ²⁰³ Ibid. 49. ²⁰⁴ Ibid. 50; 54–5.

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The fifteen articles on finance evoked the longest response from the Vendôme chamber. They considered the management of the royal domain and forests (¶¶1–3), the farmed indirect taxes (¶¶4–6), the reform of the taille (¶7) and décimes (¶8), debt management, gifts and pensions (¶¶9; 11–12), the financial officialdom and the elimination of corruption in it (¶¶10: 13). They endorsed the proposals emerging from the royal intendants for the progressive repurchase and unmortgaging of the royal domain, making sensible proposals for the hearing of legal suits arising from crown repurchase before a special tribunal of the Parlement of Paris, and a controlled sale of unmanageable parts of the domain and forest.²⁰⁵ Little, however, could be done in the short term to improve the performance of the farmed taxes since those were dependent on contracts that had already been assigned, most of which included cash advances, thus effectively preventing the crown from offering the contract to a higher bidder during the life of the contract. They suggested that, in future, no such advances be included in the contracts, especially since they were the main reason for subsequent lawsuits.²⁰⁶ They included some proposals, too, to prevent contractors making excessive profits.²⁰⁷ On the tailles they recognized that inequalities of repartition would never be eliminated, although they had realistic (albeit hardly novel) proposals to reduce them.²⁰⁸ They approved of the king’s commitment not to increase taxes further as a means of reducing royal debts, whilst recognizing that this placed a considerable burden of expectation upon increased efficiency in administering royal finances and controlling royal expenditure. One of their central recommendations was therefore to establish a special judicial tribunal, composed of members of the Paris sovereign courts, to investigate financial corruption. Such tribunals (chambres de justice) would become a recurrent feature of ancien régime attempts at financial rectitude.²⁰⁹ In 1583, however, they were somewhat novel, born of a recognition among the notables that some means had to be found to prosecute fiscal fraud.²¹⁰ On the question of royal gifts, they prudently avoided making any specific recommendations, confining themselves to saying that established royal commitments should be satisfied in preference to royal gifts and that the dispositions on gifts, instituted by the king at Lyon in October 1574, should be adhered to.²¹¹ Since donatees regularly found themselves having ²⁰⁵ A&P, 61; and 68. ²⁰⁶ Ibid. 70–1. ²⁰⁷ Ibid. 72–6. ²⁰⁹ Bosher, ‘ ‘‘Chambres de Justice’’ ’. ²¹⁰ A&P, 83 (corrected with reference to BN MS Fr16257 fo. 95v ).

²⁰⁸ Ibid. 76–9. ²¹¹ Ibid. 82.

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to justify their patents of gift before the Chambre des Comptes, the notables suggested that the king edict ‘iusques à quelle somme selon la qualité des personnes elle veut que les dons soient verifiez en ladite chambre sans tant de jussions’.²¹² The remaining chapters and articles addressed fundamental issues relating to ‘police’ and concerned mainly the third estate. This was a large agenda and unsurprisingly the notables had difficulty in concluding their business before the end of February. The notables were invited to give their advice on a chapter headed ‘general aspects of police’. This embraced public health (¶¶1; 2), the control of begging and relief of poverty (¶3), price controls on foodstuffs and houses (¶¶5–6; 9–10), economic regulation and stimulus (¶¶3; 13–8), and questions of public nuisance and decorum (¶¶7–8; 15; 19–20). The notables recognized that there was a limit to what royal policy could realistically achieve.²¹³ They therefore recommended that the commonwealth would be best served by the establishment of elected, annual police authorities in each town to be known as ‘Iuges de la police’, six in a provincial capital centre with a Parlement, and four in others. These juges politiques would have powers to investigate and make recommendations on matters of public health and the disposal of waste. They would arbitrate on minor suits up to a value of six écus ‘& sans les formalitez & longueurs qui se practicquent en la Iustice ordinaire’. The purpose was to offer speedy justice to people ‘de basse & vile condition’, a proposal that originated with Michel de L’Hospital’s attempt to establish consular jurisdiction in Paris in 1563.²¹⁴ It met opposition in Paris, though it was soon copied by other cities.²¹⁵ The Ordinances of Blois (¶¶239–40) limited the creation of such courts to principal cities with substantial mercantile activity but the notables at Saint-Germain-en-Laye wanted to broaden their use and function. Two anonymous memoranda on economic regeneration that were presented before the notables have survived—there were doubtless others which have not.²¹⁶ Both were drafted probably by or on behalf of manufacturing interests in Lyon on the instruction of the royal council.²¹⁷ They examined the possibilities for aiding French manufacture through import and export ²¹² Ibid. 82–3. ²¹³ A&P, 90. ²¹⁴ See Kim, Michel de L’Hospital, 151–7. ²¹⁵ Denière, La Juridiction consulaire, 8–12; Maugis, Histoire, i. 336–8. ²¹⁶ The existence of ‘un grand mémoire’ on these subjects is referred to in Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fo. 67v . ²¹⁷ Bib Mazarine MS 2635 fos. 67v –68v .

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tariffs. But, however tempting it might appear to forbid the import of foreign manufactured silver and gold cloth and braid, or silk cloth, it was not prudent to do so, since domestic manufacturers were not capable of meeting demand and the king would stand to lose 110,000 écus annually on the farm of the customs on silk imports in Lyon. It was better to encourage local manufacture by high import tariffs, artisan apprenticeships, and permitting the use of silk to artisans and others so that the market for local production increased.²¹⁸ Equally, however attractive it might seem to forbid the import of English and Flemish manufactured cloth, these imports were mainly re-exported elsewhere, a trade from which French merchants profited. It was more coherent to prohibit the export of French raw wool, protect indigenous manufacture by high import tariffs, and seek to encourage foreign artisans to settle in France. The other aspects of policy to which the second of these two memoranda drew attention was ‘le trafficq et commerce de mer’ and ‘l’ouuerture des mines & minieres estans en ce Royaume’.²¹⁹ One of the inevitable consequences of the Spanish peninsula’s overseas commercial empires was to encourage greater emphasis on the importance of long-distance seaborne commerce and the exploitation of mineral wealth. As the memorandum implied, one of the consequences of France’s civil wars had been to weaken its merchant marine and paralyse royal investment in the exploitation of its mineral deposits. The case for strengthening native manufacture was placed in a moral context by the notables: ‘pour restablir la manufacture en France, qui se trouuera le moyen le plus singulier & certain, non pas seulement d’enrichir le Royaume, en quoy il est infaillible, mais aussi pour purger infinis vices & crimes, auquel la trop grand loisiueté & la pauureté pousse & induit iusques aux plus simples ’.²²⁰ They endorsed the prohibition of the export of raw materials and making imported cloth (within the limits allowed by bilateral treaties already entered into) more expensive. In addition, they recommended the abolition of the recently introduced compulsory lead seal on all French cloth (claiming that it was only worth 50,000 livres a year, a sum incommensurable with the political and economic damage that it had done). On silk trade and manufacture, they accepted the advice they had received. Its native manufacture was of huge economic potential, a means ²¹⁸ The memorandum praised Henri III’s recent edict on the ‘réformation des habits’ for having recognized the manufacturing interest in this particular respect and liberalizing the laws on the use of silk apparel. ²¹⁹ Ibid., fo. 68v . ²²⁰ A&P, 95.

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of giving work to ‘infinis peuples’ and retaining up to two million écus in the kingdom which was currently exported to pay for the imported product. In the meantime, it was a matter of encouraging the fledgling industry by giving rights of naturalization to skilled foreign artisans and (in due course) gradually increasing the import duties on the finished product from abroad. The same was true in mining, where the skills of German mining engineers would be critical to exploiting the likely rich deposits in parts of France which had not been properly surveyed. French mercantilism tends to be seen as an adjunct of French absolutism. The articles and advice of the Assembly of Notables of 1583–4 indicate that it should be considered in the light of a reformist agenda, informed by understandings of public virtue as well as national profit. The notables then examined other specific aspects of police. The chapter on the police of the court was drafted by the grand prévôt de l’hôtel du roi and grand prévôt de France, François Du Plessis, sieur de Richelieu. It included practical arrangements to manage the court’s food provision and services. The notables mostly forwarded his advice to the king with approval. The chapter on the provincial governors and lieutenants examined policing matters in a provincial context. Its eleven articles raised fundamental questions about the powers and duties of the maréchaux de France (¶1), of baillis, sénéchaux, vissénéchaux, and prévôts des maréchaux (¶¶9–11). Questions were asked about the nature of provincial governors’ authority and whether the title ‘governor’ was wrongly appropriated by captains of strongholds and castles (¶¶3–8). The maréchaux, like the provincial governors and king’s lieutenants, had delegated authority that was intermingled with the military offices of state and the high aristocracy of the kingdom. The notables understood that such powers had to be placed in a historical and political context since there had been little attempt to define them legally.²²¹ But there was little point in doing so since the authority of a marshal was coterminous with the military state of the kingdom, represented not by his letters of nomination but by his baton.²²² The same was true, a fortiori, of provincial governors and lieutenants. The notables were inclined to regard the provincial governors as occupying an ‘office’—i.e. a post that was not expected to expire after a particular task had been carried out).²²³ But they also realized that it was not an ‘office’ in the way that the jurist Charles Loyseau would shortly understand it and they were inclined to recommend that ‘vaccation aduenant desdits gouuerneurs, ²²¹ Ibid. 130.

²²² Ibid. 132.

²²³ Ibid. 134.

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il seroit bon à l’aduenir les [the governors] reduire à commission à temps . . . et les limiter à trois annees seulement’.²²⁴ They recognized, however, the essentially political nature of such posts and the sensitivity, therefore, of attempting to modify their powers, or those of their lieutenants.²²⁵ The Assembly of Notables considered almost as many articles as those contained in the Ordinances of Blois. It had taken them just over two months to accomplish what it had taken the royal council over two years to achieve. They had done the state some service; how much so would inevitably depend on what happened to their recommendations. We should highlight, by way of conclusion, the importance implicitly accorded by the notables to prudence in their advice to the prince. Classical rhetorical texts had often emphasized the virtues of prudence, since rhetoric presupposed that truth could be furthered by persuasion and the persuasive powers of the orator depended on his ability to accommodate his message to his audience without destroying its essential truth.²²⁶ Allegories of prudence in the Renaissance depicted her with three faces: that of memory (memoria), understanding (intelligentia), and foresight (praevidentia).²²⁷ She was shown surrounded by dogs, lions, and wolves, as in Titian’s famous tricephalous Allegory of Prudence, painted some time in the 1550s or 1560s. The dogs, lions, and wolves symbolized, in moralistic fashion, the passions of greed, lust, and pride.²²⁸ Prudence was confronted, in other words, with the passions of the past, present, and future, a goddess rooted in time, deploying the powers of memory, understanding, and foresight to master it. The notables who assembled at Saint-Germainen-Laye would have seen their prudence in a rather similar light, governed by history and overshadowed by the same penitential frame of mind that inspired Titian in this late work. In their private reading the notables were turning from the rhetorical works of the Latin Golden Age (Cicero) to those of the Silver Age (Tacitus). Cornelius Tacitus was the fons et origo of prudential politics, the master of irony and the terse epithet, whose contempt for flattery and servility ²²⁴ A&P, 134. ²²⁵ Ibid. 136. ²²⁶ Remer, ‘Rhetoric and the Erasmian Defence of Religious Toleration’. ²²⁷ e.g. the representation by Giotto in the Capella degli Scrovegni (the ‘Arena’ Chapel’) in Padua, in which Prudence is seated at a writing desk with a pen in her hand (memoria), her face turned towards a mirror (proevidentia) and her hair shaped to form the image of Socrates (intelligentia). Antoine Caron represented the Janus-face of Prudence in his enigmatic ‘Triomphe de l’Hiver’, carrying a key to close the door of the temple as a sign of truce, perhaps representing the truce of Longjumeau in March 1568—Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, 106 and fig.101. ²²⁸ Cohen, ‘Titian’s London Allegory’.

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was equalled by his distaste for corruption.²²⁹ Tacitus was a model for any cautious reforming notable, sceptical of principles and drawing on experience to provide the means for understanding the present and delineating the future. Jean Bodin had already extolled the virtues of Tacitus as a historical writer. Montaigne was rereading his Tacitus to compose the important chapter on the art of conferring in the third book of his Essais.²³⁰ The great Tacitean scholars of the day, Marc-Antoine Muret (in Rome) and Justus Lipsius (in the Low Countries), were lecturing, writing, and beginning to publish the works that would make Tacitus the watchword for prudence as political necessity, hedged and fenced by moral imperatives and reservations. In Paris, Charles Pascal (Carlo Pasquale) published his ‘Observations’ on the first four books of Tacitus’ ‘Annals of Augustus’ in 1581. Pasquale, a protégé of the distinguished councillor at Henri III’s court, Guy Du Faur de Pibrac, used the work to demonstrate how notables should respond to a world in adversity—with patient resilience, determined to work for the best, but accepting the limits of the possible. And, at Henri III’s court, Jacopo Corbinelli, reportedly one of the king’s closest confidants, was reading Tacitus and Polybius to him during his mealtimes. Corbinelli had been responsible for publishing a version of the Ricordi of Francesco Guicciardini in Paris in 1576.²³¹ Within a year, it had been translated and published into French, probably by the gentleman humanist and future servant of the duke of Montpensier, Antoine de Laval, sieur de Belair.²³² Originally collected together in Florence in the years from around 1512 to 1530, these nostrums reflected Guicciardini’s experience in the hothouse politics of republican Florence and after, as well as his reading of Tacitus and Machiavelli.²³³ The result, in Laval’s French edition, was 200 adages, full of ‘paradoxes’ (in the sixteenth-century sense), inspired by a sense that the emotions of ordinary people could be exploited by a tyrant, that people are never what they seem, and that the tide of human affairs is always uncertain. Antoine de Laval added ²²⁹ Salmon, ‘Cicero and Tacitus’. ²³⁰ Montaigne, iii. 8. ²³¹ Corbinelli (ed.), Più consigli et avvertimenti di M. Fr. Guiciardini, [ . . . ] in materia di republica e di privata (1576). ²³² [Antoine de Laval], Plvsieurs Advis et conseils (1576?). The work has an unsigned preface, dedicated to an avocat at the Parlement of Paris, M. de Chantecler, to whom the translator offered his hastily completed work. If it were published under anyone’s name, it should be that of Jacopo Corbinelli, from whom he had received the work. The ‘Ode’ that follows the preface carries, however, Antoine de Laval’s name and we may reasonably assume the translation was his. On Laval’s career and other writings, see Faure, Antoine de Laval; Longeon, Les Écrivains foréziens, 390–403. ²³³ McKenzie. ‘The Guicciardinian Prince’, esp. 1–64.

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an introductory ‘Ode’ to the translation that reflected the politics of the prudent Guicciardinian prince. He ended by saying that he had published them in order to:²³⁴ . . . faire une loy certaine (Loy qui ne gist qu’en conseil) Pour restablir la Police, Afin que l’estat fleurisse Desoubz ce bel appareil.

²³⁴ Laval, Plusieurs Advis et conseils, 7.

Conclusion This book has been about an extraordinary decade in the history of the French kingdom. Nowhere else in Europe did a unitary polity on this scale attempt religious pluralism in the way envisaged by the edict of Poitiers (‘peace of Bergerac’) of 1577. More importantly, nowhere else was there such an intense debate about fundamental reform affecting the institution of the state and the constitution of the polity. These two strands—pacification and reform—went hand in hand. Together, they led to serious and sustained attempts to change the way in which France’s government and society functioned. They were initiated by its governing elites and had the support of the king. The notables drew upon common assumptions, shared convictions about how to engineer that peace and initiate that reform. Their efforts were accompanied by a degree of public introspection and vocal debate on these issues that would be difficult to match elsewhere in Europe. The resulting reformist debates expressed, and were an essential part of, the profound sense of crisis that France’s governing elites experienced during the later sixteenth century. In retrospect, it is possible to see that the French kingdom might have emerged very differently in the early seventeenth century. That possibility for change is also difficult to compare with any period in France’s political history before the years of the regency of Louis XV, and perhaps before the French Revolution itself. These are the claims which underlie the writing of a large book on this subject. The pacifying and reformist agenda we have discussed expressed an intense political moralizing. It was part and parcel of the rhetoric of the elite. That rhetoric reinforced the self-identification of the elite and its sense of superiority. It appeared in a variety of guises—printed works, manuscript treatises, conversation, negotiations, diplomatic encounters, and formal speeches. Sixteenth-century notables were obsessed by the need to represent authority. The surviving seals, emblems, coins, works of art, public monuments, orations, eulogies, pageants, ceremonies, and rituals testify to

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that. These representations conveyed simple but powerful ideas, generally aiming to emulsify tensions in the state and conjure up a sense of political harmony, even where such harmony was in short supply. ‘Reformation’ was a discourse of eventual harmony, a restoration of a golden age. In the ‘theatre states’ of the Renaissance, the notables were important members of the cast. Their ‘performances’ were not intended to delude either themselves or others, but to persuade. The rhetoric in their orations was neither empty nor illusory. It was part and parcel of an understanding of how a mature human being, in charge of his faculties and emotions, should behave. Henri III’s image-makers understood and exploited the moral dimensions of persuasion well enough. Jean Rabel (the enigmatic court painter), Thomas de Leu, and Léonard Gaultier (the court engravers) began producing in around 1580 the image of the reformist king. Replacing earlier pictures of him as an elaborately and colourfully dressed Renaissance prince, Henri III was projected in a striking number of woodcuts, prints, and paintings clad austerely in black velvet with a simple upturned white collar and black ‘Polish’ toque, the only decoration being the ribbon and pendant of the royal Order of the Holy Spirit, a single diamond pinned to the front of the bonnet, and a pearl ear-ring (inscribed with the lambda of his wife, Queen Louise de Lorraine).¹ The accompanying legend emphasized that the picture revealed the soul-qualities of the king: ‘sur son chef Pallas, sur ses lèvres Mercure, Mars sur son visage, et l’ Amour dans ses yeux.’ In the context of this political moralizing, we can begin to appreciate both the centrality and the distinctiveness of Montaigne’s thoughts on the subject of reformation. Montaigne was the great moral philosopher of the period. He was also one of the French kingdom’s notables, a distinguished magistrate in the Parlement of Bordeaux and someone who, as mayor of Bordeaux, had a political role in the delicate peace process we have described. Montaigne’s distinctiveness lies in the extended commentary he affords throughout the Essays on the public moralizing of his contemporaries. He based his insights on a dialectic of self-knowledge rather than a discourse of public knowledge, an introspective voyage into his own mœurs.² The result was distinctiveness both in the form of their presentation and the directions they took. Ancient philosophy had made virtue an ultimate goal in personal and public life. Montaigne readily accorded that, for a Socrates (‘la premiere de toutes les humaines en reformation’) or for a Cato the Younger, it was possible, with ¹ Oger, ‘Le Rôle de Henri III dans l’invention et la diffusion de son portrait gravé’, in de Conihout et al., Henri III mécène, 68–80; also Zverera, ibid. 56–65. ² Hartle, Michel de Montaigne, ch. 8.

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considerable immersion in the precepts of Stoic philosophy, to achieve a state of virtue in his soul such that it came naturally—‘une si parfaicte habitude à la vertu qu’elle leur est passée en complexion’.³ But for ordinary humanity, such a reformation was highly unlikely. In his essay ‘Of Repentance’, he is pessimistic about our capacities to change our fundamental natures and earliest experiences.⁴ ‘Les inclinations naturelles s’aident et fortifient par institution; mais elles ne se changent guere et surmontent. Mille natures, de mon temps, ont eschappé vers la vertu ou vers le vice, au travers d’une discipline contraire [ . . . .] On n’extirpe pas ces qualitez originelles, on les couvre, on les cache.’⁵ Public reform, based on a moral agenda, was likely at best to be ineffective and at worst dangerous. ‘Ceux qui ont essaié de r’aviser les meurs du monde, de mon temps, par nouvelles opinions, reforment les vices de l’apparence; ceux de l’essence, ils les laissent là, s’ils ne les augmentent: et l’augmentation y est à craindre; on se sejourne volontiers de tout autre bien faire sur ces reformations externes arbitraires, de moindre coust et de plus grand merite; et satisfait-on par là à bon marché les autres vices naturels consubstantiels et intestins.’⁶ Montaigne’s voyage of discovery to his own mœurs found a good deal that accorded, albeit by chance, with the precepts of ancient philosophy. This led him to conclude that an ardently striven for and artificially conceived ‘virtue’ might, in certain circumstances, be self-destructive. Virtue was to be located within oneself, when one returns to one’s own roots and being, and understands what is best and worst in that context. Montaigne therefore favoured the private, individual world over that of the public: ‘Gaigner une bresche, conduire une ambassade, regir un people, ce sont actions esclatantes. Tancer, rire, vendre, payer, aymer, hayr et converser avec les siens et avec soymesme doucement et justement, ne relácher point, ne se desmentir poinct, c’est chose plus rare, plus difficile et moins remarquable.’⁷ By focusing on this more private morality, Montaigne offered a distinctive pathognomy, an entirely different terrain for their governance, and an important critique of the dominant ideology of public reformation. French political culture, despite the influence of a later ‘absolutist’ historiography, was more ‘discursive’ in the sixteenth century than we generally imagine. Valois court culture was important and innovating, open to the new performative possibilities of ballet de cour and the opportunities for a new ‘royal rhetoric’. It seriously entertained the possibility of a reform of French ³ Montaigne, 892: 425–6. ⁵ Ibid. 810. ⁶ Ibid. 811.

⁴ Ibid. 804 If. ⁷ Ibid. 809.

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language and its use, making it the cultural equal of the languages of antiquity. It held the door open to Neo-platonic influences in philosophy, politics, and the arts. But it was by no means predominant. There was a constant interplay between the royal court and the wider groups of notables in church and state without whom Valois rule would have been inconceivable. In this broader context, French political culture drew on a common literary culture that was imbued with classical antiquity and mythology as well as historical examples of all kinds. This culture sustained an agenda of reformation, and the image of eventual harmony which underlay it, because of shared assumptions about political processes and objectives. The processes were those of persuasion. The art and practice of rhetoric involved the appeal to both reason and emotion, the use of historical exempla in political argument, an appreciation of performative skills, and an understanding of empathy. This culture of ‘persuasion’ both empowered literary culture and ‘literarized’ political culture. In speaking, French notables ‘became’ their office. In the act of discourse, they (with their audience) embodied the polity. The objectives that they shared were the ethical dimensions of public life, the importance of virtue as its ideal. They had a common understanding of the various components of the soul and their function in governing human passions. These provided an explanatory framework which both justified the delicate exercise in pacifying France through religious accommodation and also reinforced the reforming initiatives of the court. Behind these shared processes and objectives lay the sense of a commonwealth that encapsulated the image of the golden age of peace and harmony that could be reinstituted. In this world of political moralizing, peace and reform were two sides of the same coin. For both, learning and eloquence were indispensable components to the imposition of virtue and the governing of passions. Just as the notables in Florence were drawn to a new political understanding through the founding of the Florentine academy after the peace of Lodi (1454), the notables of France were invited to participate in an ‘ideology’ of reform whose intellectual and ethical dimensions were revealed in the Palace Academy of Henri III. The French monarchy had a long tradition of conceiving its role as pacificator et reformator. Charlemagne and St Louis were the exemplars repeatedly offered, and set alongside the biblical examples of David and Solomon, to create a providential vocation of a priest-king, leading his people in justice and virtue.⁸ Henri III laid claim to that vocation and, in so doing, ⁸ Crouzet, La Genèse, 113–17.

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sought to recover the moral authority of the French monarchy which had been the most substantial political casualty of the civil wars.⁹ The poets at his court heralded his accession as a monarch who would establish peace, reform the state, and restore the arts. Baïf’s Première Salutation à Henri IIIe (1575) celebrated a king who, with God’s help, would not be seduced by the siren voices of flattery but:¹⁰ . . . vainqueur par saincte justice, Tu ne foules aux pieds le vice Par ta prouesse combattu, Tu n’assoupisses toute guerre, Tu ne faces florer sus terre La paix, les arts et la vertu!

The following year, Louis Le Roy published his grand survey of the fortunes (‘vissicitudes’) of political regimes, a cyclical picture of the rise and fall of empires. In the preface, he dedicated the work to Henri III, mentioning that the idea for it originated in 1573 when he had presented ‘le premier proiet et dessein’ to him via Anjou’s chancellor (Hurault de Cheverny) before the duke left for Poland.¹¹ It is tempting to see in it, therefore, a work that should be understood in the context of Anjou’s memorandum of August 1573. The work emphasized that political and literary culture went hand in hand in the creation of the ‘virtue’ that lay at the heart of the rise of an empire. Printing, vernacular languages, gunpowder, the compass were all symbols of the vitality, even superiority, of modern culture over that of the ancients. But unless these ‘arts’ were accompanied by virtue, the modern world would inevitably decline: ‘il est à craindre qu’estans parvenus à si grande excellence, la puissance, sapience, disciplines, livres, industrie, ouvrages, cognoissance du monde: ne deschoient autrefois comme ont fait par le passé & aneantissent: succedant à l’ordre & perfection du iourd’huy confusion, à la civilité: rudesse, ou sçavoir ignorance, à l’elegance barbarie.’¹² Le Roy’s treatise is but one of the reformist treatises that witnessed to the proximity of literary and political culture of this period. Reformation was only possible with the return of peace to the kingdom. Peace came about by the grace of God. That grace was mediated to the kingdom through the divine inspiration of its king. Pacification was a divine ⁹ Le Gall, Les Moines au temps des réformes, 122–8; Lecoq, François Ier imaginaire. ¹⁰ Cited Frémy, 86–7. ¹¹ Le Roy, De la vicissitvde, preface, p. xx. ¹² Ibid., fos. 112v –113.

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gift that could not be manufactured, conjured, or counterfeited. It was the outward and visible sign of a soul in harmony with itself. That much was common ground. But the reality was that this grace was only realizable on the basis of religious pluralism, and that was contentious. It was a sign of a deeper malaise in the polity, a punishment from God for its past failings and current moral deficiency. The reformation of the state began from a widely shared assumption, particularly prominent among its notables, that it was only by a fundamental change that peace would be enduring and God’s good grace earned. Reformation became, therefore, a necessary ‘ideology’ within the ‘theatre state’ of the French notables in the wars of religion. But it was one that provoked choice, thought, debate and differences of opinion. Far from closing the door to questions about the future of the French polity, it kept it wide open. Because there were different ways in which reformation could be formulated and conceived, it resulted in more earnest and thoughtful debate than practical realization. Whether successful or not, the ideology of reform remained a component of French political culture into the first century of the Bourbon monarchy. The Assembly of Notables in 1583–4 served as the precedent and background for that called to Rouen in 1596–7 at the end of the wars of the League. The documentation prepared by Henri III’s notables, copied into the manuscript collections of the servants of Louis XIII—Marillac, d’Effiat, Miron, Richelieu—informed their own conceptions of reformation, and many of its specific proposals too.¹³ When Robert Miron, bishop of Angers, son of Henri III’s physician, came to draft his proposed ‘Règlement pour toutes les affaires du Royaume’ for Richelieu’s consideration in the 1620s it included elements which were, consciously or otherwise, reflective of the reforming agenda of an earlier age.¹⁴ Some of the rhetoric was retained too, especially the emphasis on a harmonious and ordered polity that had been corrupted by malice and vice, and its reformation by means of the application of ‘remedies’ appropriate to a diseased patient. But alongside these continuities, there were significant differences too. For Henri III’s notables, the common view was that the application of strong medicines would kill the patient. By the 1620s, the belief was moving towards the view that a selective application of strong medicine was perhaps the best way of remedying the patient. As Richelieu argued before Louis XIII in April ¹³ Briggs, ‘Richelieu and Reform’.

¹⁴ Ibid. 72.

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1628, France’s ‘illness’ was one that physicians would classify as ‘complex’. In such circumstances, surgical amputation might be necessary—and he used the analogy to justify the siege of La Rochelle, whose successful conclusion would bring to an end the reformist discourse for a generation, at least for the notables around the Bourbon monarchy.¹⁵ Secondly, the moralizing elements of reformist ideology, so evident in the 1570s and 1580s, waned in the face of arguments that sought to create a public morality that was separate from private morality, a ‘reason of state’ in which obedience was a virtue over and above others. Thirdly, the discursive nature of French political culture also began to change towards the end of the sixteenth century. Its political and literary culture became (party) politicized, embodying local, independent, or anti-royal aspirations. Techniques of persuasion and the language of politics—including that of the reformation of the state—were deployed by preachers and local political activists, often at the expense of, or to the detriment of, the notables. Faced with the failure of their traditional discursive means of political behaviour, French notables retreated to the reading and interpretation of Stoic texts to explain what was happening to the public world around them. The end of the civil wars and the consolidation of Henri IV’s rule coincided with a conscious refutation of the discursive patterns of political culture under the later Valois. In a pamphlet of 1598, one that set out to rework the protestant reformist Miroir des François for the new age, the ‘Politique’ speaker makes the point explicit. ‘La monarchie ne souffre point ceste liberté [of political discourse], il faut simplement obeir, sans s’enquerir. Admirez seulement le gouuernement, que si vous auiez de la ceruelle pour bien comprendre toutes choses vous cognoistriez vne prudence presque incomprehensible en la conduite des affaires durant vn si fascheux temps.’¹⁶ The first Bourbon king repeatedly emphasized that he was not interested in words, only deeds: ‘Mes prédecesseurs vous ont donné des paroles avec beaucoup d’apparat; et moi, avec jacquette grise, je vous donnerai les effets,’ he told the assembly of clergy in 1598.¹⁷ Henri IV’s image-makers presented him as another Hercules, not with chains of eloquence coming from his mouth, but as a soldier whose sword cuts a swathe through pointless eloquence. A decade later, speaking before the estates of Burgundy in 1608, he reminded its delegates that discursive politics was anti-monarchical: ‘Je sais comme l’on se gouverne en ces Etats, car avant que cette couronne me fût ¹⁵ Ibid. 86. ¹⁶ Le Miroir francois, 15–16. ¹⁷ Descimon, ‘Un nouveau style de gouvernement’, 232.

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échue, le pays que je possédois se gouvernait par Etats. Je les tenais tous les ans. Là celui qui en contait, qui criait le mieux quelques temps, qui alléguait les institutions ou empereurs, lors tous les gens qui n’y entendaient rien disaient: ‘‘qu’il a bien dit’’ et l’on le fait syndic. Et puis voilà le premier pour faire une Ligue.’¹⁸ It was not their words that would protect their loyalties now, he went on to say, but their obedience which would earn them the good graces of their king. These were subtle changes, and they reflected a changing balance of authority between the monarchy and its governing elites. In due course, they fundamentally altered the relationship between France’s literary and political cultures in such a way that peace and reformation were no longer matters for debate and controversy in the same way as they had been in the later sixteenth century. How much, in reality, did this ‘ideology’ of reformation achieve? How should we assess the achievements of the reforming initiatives of this period? It is easy to underestimate what, in fact, was accomplished by Henri III and his ministers in the eight years following the first estates of Blois—not least because they were overshadowed by the crisis of the succession that dominated the last years of Henri III’s reign. We have emphasized some of these real and hard-won achievements. First, the edict of Poitiers provided a framework in which royal justice was the purveyor of peace. France’s judicial notables were persuaded not merely of its prudential necessity but that it was consonant with the dignity of royal authority and justice. Translating the edict into a secure environment on the ground, especially in the Midi, took an unconscionably long time. That time lag was significant in stoking up the debate about reformation. For the reality was, as we have seen, that the French monarchy was dependent on acting through provincial agents. These agents proved, for various reasons, barely able to deliver what the edict of pacification promised. Provincial governors, king’s lieutenants, sovereign courts of law and finance, constituted bodies of various kinds all had their own agendas. There were personal rivalries, institutional conflicts and divided loyalties, corporate and individual self-interests. None of this came as anything of a surprise to the French monarchy or its close servants. They expected to have to be patient, to negotiate and persuade, to work within the given parameters of the possible, and to accept less than what would have been ideal. ¹⁸ Descimon, ‘Un nouveau style de gouvernement’, 232–3.

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There were areas of reform where the judicial state of the French monarchy was able to achieve some success. None was more important than in confronting the major and little-understood problem of monetary inflation. The allegedly centralized monarchy had considerable difficulty in acquiring an accurate picture of what was going on in the kingdom, let alone in deciding what to do. This was an area, however, where the monarchy accepted that it required the advice of specialists. From the surviving evidence of their learned discussions, it is clear that their science of what caused inflation was informed by their sense of the moral values that underpinned the proper functioning of the social order. Although they were probably over-optimistic in imagining that their recommendations had been responsible for controlling inflationary pressures, they were not fundamentally mistaken in understanding that limiting inflation was an essential prerequisite to re-establishing the moral authority of the monarchy and its resources. This was an early success that indicated the kind of governing instruments that were likely to achieve results. It provided a precocious rehearsal of arguments that would be deployed in other contexts in due course to strengthen the moral authority of the French monarchy. But the emphasis in this book has been on the essential ambiguities in any attempt at moral reformation. The ideology of reform was not uncontested. The agenda of reformation implied a moral change in society at large and it was easier to moralize about the failings of others than to reform oneself. Although the ideology emphasized the goal of an ultimate political and social harmony, it also implied the more immediate discomforts of a debate about what to reform, where to start, and how to achieve it. Those debates tended to focus on objectives that were themselves incapable of full realization, rather than the practical or political means to achieve them. These ambiguities emerged clearly in the efforts to confront venality of office and to reform the church. But alongside these ambiguities, there were some legislative achievements which had a longer-term impact on French institutions and the way they worked. The Ordinances of Blois became a model for reforming and codifying judicial practice in the next century. There was hardly an institution in French society that was not in some way influenced by the reforming programme of Henri III. Even the reform of the calendar was undertaken—abruptly taking advantage of the death of the premier président Christofle de Thou, who had opposed it—on royal initiative in November 1582, a measure that became a presage in many people’s minds for the troubles to come.¹⁹ These reforming ¹⁹ Delatour, ‘Noël le 15 décembre’.

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instincts reached their height in the immediate aftermath of the assembly of notables at Saint-Germain. The royal council set about issuing fundamental reforming ordinances for the army and the navy. Already on 6 January 1584, Henri III halved the size of the cavalry companies to fifty men at arms in order to ensure that the reformed companies would be better paid and equipped. Then, on 9 February 1584, came the great reforming ordinance on the gendarmerie, probably master-minded by Villeroy.²⁰ ‘Chacun sçait que les dissensions & guerres civiles ont grandement perverty & corrompu toutes choses en cestuy nostre Royaume’, began the dispositif to its sixty-six clauses and thirty-two printed pages. ‘Et d’autant que nous desirons la remettre sus tant qu’il nous sera possible, pour nous en servir à l’imitation des Roys nos predecesseurs: tant pour garentir & defendre nostre dict Royaume . . . que pour maintenir nos subiects en paix, & fortifier nostre iustice contre les malfacteurs,’ the text continued, adopting the familiar reformist discourse of the Henrician regime. The substance of the reform was closer regulation and ‘police’ of the cavalry, detailed attention to their dress, discipline, and public behaviour, a more bureaucratic approach to their remuneration, and the strengthening of the internal mechanisms for discipline. The advice of the notables is evident in various clauses, including (for example) ¶40 which opened service in the cavalry to those of non-noble origin whose military ‘virtue’ had been already proven in the infantry. This was the fundamental cavalry ordinance—the one to which reference was repeatedly made by army intendants during French operations in the Thirty Years War. The following month it was the turn of the navy, with the publication of a wide-ranging legislative measure touching on every aspect of maritime justice and administration.²¹ Its purpose was to define the legal authority of the admiralty courts and delineate the structure of maritime government, including the admirals’ responsibilities for the appointment and behaviour of naval captains and their oversight of coastguard duties and naval recruitment in local coastal communities. It was this legislation to which Richelieu would repeatedly refer a generation later in his attempts to fashion the French navy as a fighting force in the 1630s. Yet, as Richelieu knew, the problem was not the quality of the legislation but its enforcement—a ‘political’ dimension to rule which Henri III’s notables appreciated only too well. Could peace and reformation solve the problem of the resource base of the French monarchy? How would its chronic and debilitating indebtedness be ²⁰ F46877–2.

²¹ F46877–6.

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resolved? These are issues that have not been investigated in detail here because to do so would have required a technical analysis of the fiscal foundations and operations of the French crown in a period when the essential records have only partially survived. Some of the surviving ‘pieces of the jigsaw’ have been examined elsewhere.²² Even though we may question (as contemporary delegates did) the precise scale of royal indebtedness declared before the estates general at Blois in December 1576, there is little doubt that the underlying problem threatened the crown’s freedom of political initiative. By the time the notables came to assemble at Saint-Germain in 1583, there is some evidence that the scale of the capital debt of the monarchy was beginning to reduce. The projected budgetary deficit for 1584 was still massive (a ‘faute de fonds’ of 1.8 million écus) but by the following year this had been reduced to a projected 363,732 écus.²³ The approach of the notables to royal indebtedness was dictated, however, by the application of the values of a moral economy to the monarchy’s finances. They began with the royal domain, since the ultimate objective was that the king should, like any aristocrat, live off his own resources. Letters patent were issued on 8 January 1578 to Christofle de Thou, Antoine de Nicolaï, Nicolas Camus de Saint-Bonnet, and Robert Marcel to establish a commission of investigation into the royal domain of the generality of Paris, working in collaboration with the treasurers. Their task was to catalogue the resources of the domain, discover illegal sales or alienated revenues, and prosecute those responsible for them, charging them a fine of half a year’s rent. The resulting funds were placed in a special strong box of which de Thou, Nicolaï, Bellièvre, and the chancellor Birague were the key-holders, the proceeds being devoted exclusively to repurchasing other parts of the domain. It was a prelude to other such commissions in the years from 1579 to 1582, often undertaken by the treasurers of the generalities, which were another facet of the reforming initiatives of the royal council in this period.²⁴ There is evidence, however, that their efforts were repeatedly frustrated by resistance from local officials and, in May 1579, the king asked the Parlement to set aside a special day for disputed cases involving the domain. And, as with office creation, domain repurchase was an arena where projectors had a field day at the crown’s expense. Enterprising individuals offered their services to take on the rights ²² Greengrass, ‘Pieces of the Jigsaw’. ²³ Karcher, ‘L’Assemblée des notables’, 161. ²⁴ e.g. BN MS Fr 16647 fos. 608–31 [Estat abregé contenant a vray le domeyne du Roy aliene en ce pais de Daulphine [ . . . ], 14 October 1579]; AD Cher C 745 [Estat des domains alienés du duché de Bourbonnais’, 1581]; AD Côte d’Or C 2398.

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and perquisites of the crown in a particular area for a specified number of years, pay something for the privilege, but, at the end of the term, hand back the unmortgaged domain to the king.²⁵ Renewed military hostilities always provided a good excuse for not being able to fulfil the contract and, in the meantime, the crown’s domain slipped into further chaos. In October 1581, the council was persuaded to create a ‘controller’ for the domain in each generality, whose task would be to manage a controlled resumption (‘réunion’) of domanial revenues, surveying resources, investigating cases of malversation, and gradually organizing its repurchase.²⁶ The controllers were well remunerated and provided with clerks, paid from the proceeds of the operation. On 14 November 1583, local magistrates and generality treasurers were enjoined to collaborate with these controllers to produce a report every six months on their activities to ‘resume’ domanial revenues. Following the Assembly of Notables at Saint-Germain, letters patent of 1 March 1584 authorized the preparation of a general survey of all the crown’s domain rights, and there are signs that it was begun over the following months, albeit that it was in due course submerged by the political crisis of the League. Other royal initiatives, stimulated by the notables at Saint-Germain, sought to bring elements of virtue into the management of royal finances. Convinced that the tax-farmers were making indecent profits at the expense of the crown, the council began detailed investigations of the tax-farm contracts in January 1584 with the aim of renegotiating the terms of the contracts. It began with some of the smaller tax-farm contracts—some of which were, in due course, authorized on new contracts that brought in returns that were over twice as much as their predecessors. On 9 April 1584, the council announced that it was ready to renegotiate the grosses fermes, the contracts affecting the principal import and export duties for the Lyonnais, Normandy, Picardy, Champagne, and Burgundy.²⁷ Five weeks later, and after tense negotiations with the outgoing contractors, a new deal was struck, consolidating all the duties in one farm and giving the crown 60,000 écus of additional revenue in an initial cash payment.²⁸ The contracts for the gabelle on salt were the most complex of all, and the most subject to corruption according to the reports of the commissioners of 1582–3. On 2 December 1583, the council issued instructions requiring all the commissaires in the salt warehouses (greniers à ²⁵ Various projects of this kind were considered by another commission of reform of the royal domain, established in 1580. ²⁶ F46869–11. ²⁷ BN MS Fr 16231 fos. 272–3. ²⁸ BN MS Clairambault 654, 1–7.

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sel) to submit valid letters of nomination to their offices.²⁹ At the same time, various regional investigations into the activities of the officials for the gabelle were instituted leading to a commission, headed by the chancellor, to examine a wider reform of the salt tax. The result was the edict of Paris of December 1584, by which fundamental reforms were introduced into the administration of the greniers, including their abolition and removal from regions where the tax had not existed prior to the current contract.³⁰ The commissioners of 1582–3 had also turned up evidence of widespread inequalities in the repartition of the taille and false claims to exemption. On 30 December 1583, the council dispatched new commissions du régalement et réformation des tailles through the regions of taille personnelle, whose brief was to verify titles of exemption and examine abuses in the repartition of the tax.³¹ By additional instructions of 14 April 1584, the council stipulated that the penalty for those with false titles was to be a fine of the equivalent of five years’ back payment of tax. Through the summer of 1584, the commissioners set to work, earning themselves the suspicion of the regional treasurers and élus. It was the combined pressure of the latter, acting in conjunction with the provincial estates of Normandy and perhaps elsewhere, that led, however, to the premature abandonment of their commission in November 1584. The efforts of the notables at Saint-Germain had not been entirely in vain, but the results were generally patchy and rather inconclusive. A rather similar reforming endeavour, again an explicit result of the recommendations of the notables at Saint-Germain, led to the creation of a chambre de justice to prosecute financial malversation among these financial officers.³² Announced on 29 May 1584, the tribunal was headed by leading presidents of the Parlement of Paris and Chambre des Comptes (including Achille de Harlay himself) and included nine magistrates of the Parlement, five members of the Chambre des Comptes, and two masters of requests. It was given plenary authority throughout the realm to investigate all financial officers and their agents and to subpoena all their contracts and paperwork, notwithstanding any legal immunities which had been negotiated in the past. Such tribunals would become something of a familiar ritual for the later ²⁹ BN MS Fr 16228 fo. 137. ³⁰ Fontanon, ii. 1075–6. ³¹ BN MS Fr 16228 fos. 154–5. ³² F46878–2—‘nous ayons en l’assemblee dernierement faicte & tenue à sainct Germain en Laye, entendu par le rapport des Commissaires par nous deputez pour la visitation des provinces de nostre Royaume, les plainctes & doleances particulieres qui leur ont esté faicts par nos subiects en divers endroicts d’iceluy, & entre autres des malversations qui se retrouvent en l’administration de noz finances, & des fautes qui ont esté faictes & se font par aucuns noz officiers d’icelles [ . . . ].’

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ancien régime monarchy, a leitmotif to attempts at reform, but in 1584 it was a novelty.³³ The chamber solemnly began its work with the chancellor in attendance on 9 June. It called for the procès verbaux of the commissioners of 1582–3 to act as the basis of its enquiries and issued monitoires to be read out from parish churches in July 1584 soliciting information leading to the arrest of suspects.³⁴ There followed a year of enquiries, investigations, and arrests before it was wound up on 8 July 1585. The tribunal epitomized the practical application of the ideology of reform through the mechanism of the judicial state. But it also demonstrated its limitations. The major players in the arcane world of later Valois state finance were not entirely ignored by the tribunal—Guichard Faure (the leading contractor of the salt farms), Scipion Sardini (a prominent banker), and Benoît Milon (an intendant des finances) all found themselves answering to the court. But they knew how to protect themselves. Guichard Faure, for example, was arrested on 25 September 1584 but he pleaded that he did not need to answer the charges against him because they related to a contract for which he was just a front name (prête-nom) for Oratio Rucellai, and the contract specifically gave them all immunity from prosecution before any court in the land save that of the royal council.³⁵ Other financial notables, such as Jehan Jaupitre, former treasurer of the generality of Picardy, defended themselves from the most serious charges laid against them. So the tribunal was left spending a disproportionate amount of time investigating rather minor figures for offences supposedly occurring several years previously (because of the delay in presenting accounts within the French financial system, this was bound to be the case). Although there were some confiscations and even some capital sentences handed down, it probably hardly covered its costs and, by July 1585, the monarchy’s immediate financial needs had become, once more, sufficiently pressing for it to listen to the arguments of those upon whom it depended for its short-term liquidity. The final letters patent of revocation of the tribunal referred to the ‘peu de Charges et accusations’ which it had received, the ‘long trait’ of its investigations, and the ‘deshonneur quelles pourroient apporter a plusieurs bonnes familles’.³⁶ As with the other practical embodiments of the ideology of reform, the reality did not match up to the ambitious promises that had accompanied it. ³³ Bosher, ‘ ‘‘Chambres de Justice’’ ’. ³⁴ BN MS Fr 4352 [Registre des Arrestz et expeditions faictes en la Chambre Royalle (1584)] fo. 9. ³⁶ Ibid., fo. 93. ³⁵ Ibid., fo. 25v .

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The most substantive reason why we cannot readily assess the practical impact of the reformist endeavours of this period is that they were abruptly truncated by the black hole that opened up in the Valois universe with the death of Henri III’s brother François, duc d’Anjou, on 10 June 1584. The crisis over the succession directly compromised the efforts at peace and reform over the previous decade. The issue was unresponsive to the ministrations of learning, eloquence, ethics, and virtue. The limited room for manoeuvre lay in trying to persuade the king of Navarre to abjure the protestant faith, and thereby prevent a coalescence of catholic forces mustering against the prospect of a Huguenot on the French throne. Despite various diplomatic and political encounters, that abjuration was never likely to take place. The catholic League began to coalesce in the autumn of 1584, leading to the treaty of Joinville signed on 31 December 1584 between an emerging catholic, aristocratic political leadership in France and envoys of Philip II of Spain. The treaty provided the foundation upon which the wars of the catholic League would be fought. The League’s early manifestations were a series of menacing pratiques, court-based aristocratic conspiracies, designed to bend the royal will towards the catholic League and away from Navarre. The first took place in the spring of 1585. When (as often happened) details of the complot leaked out before all the arrangements were in place, the leaders of the catholic League found themselves having to justify themselves with a manifesto. The result was the so-called ‘Declaration of Péronne’ of 31 March 1585, issued from the town that had been at the focus of the most publicized movement of catholic reaction back in 1576. On 9 June, the Guises petitioned for the abrogation of the peace of Bergerac and, after negotiations at Épernay, the king conceded their demands in early July. When he came to register the resulting edict of Nemours in the Parlement of Paris, witnesses reported tears in the king’s eyes.³⁷ Henri III, the master of eloquence as the inculcation of virtue, used body language to delineate the passions imprisoned within him, and likely to be unleashed in his kingdom. The Declaration began with a wholesale critique of the politics of the previous decade and beyond. Peace and reform had been a sham, ‘laissant les gens de bien scandalises en leur ame et interressés en leurs biens’.³⁸ The king’s favourites had perverted the peace and were in the process of diverting the resources of the state to their own benefit. They were the antithesis of the reformation that was promised. The Ordinances of Blois were ‘quelque ³⁷ Le Person, ‘ ‘‘Les Larmes du roi’’ ’.

³⁸ Nevers, i. 56.

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rayon d’espérance’ but ‘de cette chere & pénible entreprise ne resta sinon l’auortisement du mauvais Conseil d’aucuns, qui se feignans bons politiques, étoient en effet très mal affectionnés au seruice de Dieu & bien de l’Etat’.³⁹ The deformation of the state was now ‘comme un torrent en precipice d’une si violente chûte’, afflicting all the orders of society. The ‘argument de l’assemblée en armes’ that put its signatures to the Manifesto was therefore a reformation of the kingdom, an assurance of a catholic succession to the monarchy, and an ‘entiere reformation de leurs vies’ with the implied objective of reuniting the realm under one (catholic) faith. The political constituency for the League, in other words, lay in the frustrations and disappointments of the previous decade and, in particular, with its agenda of pacification and reformation. Henri III had succeeded in raising expectations, but he had not matched them with concrete results. Moreover, since every reforming initiative created its own critics and casualties, the more his notables endeavoured to put into practice what they preached, the more likely they were to foster the ranks of those who were unpersuaded of the realism and practicality of what was proposed. The abolition of judicial venality was a fine objective but, put into practice, it compromised the monarchy’s social and political capital with precisely that group whose support it most needed to cultivate. When, as in the wake of the Assembly of Notables of 1583–4, the abolition of judicial venality was extended, somewhat erratically, to the suppression of venality in the financial officialdom in 1583–4 (with the abolition of the offices and bureaux des finances proposed in December 1583, followed by numerous other suppressions through the following year to the removal of twenty of the financial élections a year later in December 1584) the disruption to the Valois judicial and fiscal state from the helter-skelter reforming initiatives of 1583–4 became politically destabilizing. With the easily exploitable issue of government by favourites and the political crisis of the succession, the roots for the final debacle of the Valois monarchy were set in place. One of the lessons of political change in early modern Europe is, as Machiavelli pointed out, that a stony road awaited those who sought to innovate in the state:⁴⁰ It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this ³⁹ Nevers, i. 59.

⁴⁰ Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 6.

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lukewarmness arising from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.

The lesson was learnt the hard way, by Pope Paul IV in Rome in the 1550s, or by Charles I in London in the 1630s. As for Henri III, he pronounced his own epitaph on his own reformist dream when, opening the second estates of Blois in December 1588, he defended himself against his critics:⁴¹ Et moi je prendrai à témoin le ciel et la terre, j’attesterai la foi de Dieu et des hommes, qu’il n’aura pas tenu à mon soin ni à ma diligence que les désordres de ce royaume n’ait été réformés; mais que vous avez abandonné votre prince légitime, en une si digne, si sainte et si louable action. Et finalement (je) vous ajournerai à comparaître au dernier jour devant le juge et le roi des rois, là ou les intentions et les passions se verront à découvert, là ou les masques des artifices et des dissimulations seront levés pour recevoir la punition que vous encourrez de votre désobéissance envers votre roi, et de votre peu de générosité et loyauté envers son Etat.

⁴¹ Bordonove, Les Rois qui ont fait, preface.

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2. Printed Edicts, Letters Patent, and Ordinances of the French Monarchy (by date) [from BNF Factum Series F] 46849–9. Lettres patentes du Roy povr faire lever la contribution des villes, à la solde de cinquante mil hommes de guerres à pied (1575). 46852–2. Edict du Roy portant permission à toutes personnes qui tiennent Estats & offices à gaiges ou sans gaiges, de les resigner à suruiuance, selon & aux conditions portees par iceluy Edict (1576). 46853–3. Edict du Roy, sur la creation en tiltre d’offices formez des Regratiers & Mesureurs de Sel en tous les Greniers & Chambres à Sel de ce Royaume (1577).

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46856–1. Declaration du Roy svr son edict dv mois de Iullet, & la Prolongation par luy faicte au mois de Decembre dernier: contenant autre Prolongation de quatre mois, auec permission à tous officiers de pouuoir resigner à survivance leurs estats & offices, durant ledict temps (1577). 46858–1. Édict de pacification faict par le Roy, pour mettre fin aux troubles de son royaume et faire désormais vivre tous ses subjects en bonne paix, union et concorde, soubs son obéissance (1577). 46859–1. Edict du Roy povr la creation en chef & tiltre d’offices formez, des Clercs des Greffes, tant en sa Court de Parlement de Paris, que autres Cours souueraines, Bailliages, Senechaulcees, Sieges presidiaux, Preuostez, & autres Iursidictions de ce Royaume (1578). 46859–2. Declaration dv Roy svr l’edict des offices des Clercs des Greffes de ce Royaume, nouuellement creez par Edict du mois de Decembre [1577] (1578). 46859–3. Declaration du Roy svr l’entretenement de l’Edict de Pacification faict au mois de Septembre dernier: Auec l’Estat des Compaignies de gens de pied que sa Majesté retient à son seruice, enioignant aux autres se retirer en leurs maisons (1578). 46861–4. Declaration & Reiglement faicts par le Roy, sur l’obseruation & entretenement de son Edict de Creation des Greffes des presentations, nouuellement establis ès Courts souueraines & Iurisdictions Royales de ce Royaume (1578). 46861–9. Edict du Roy contenant creation & erection en chef & tiltre d’offices formez en chacun bureau establis pour le faict des Traictes de bleds, vins, toiles & pastels, d’vn Contrerolleur particulier desdictes traictes, & d’vn Greffiers pour seruir au faict d’icelles: ensemble le Reglement pour l’exercice desdicts estats (1578). 46862–4. Edict du Roy svr le reglement & augmentation du pouuoir des Aduocats dudit Seigneur en chacun siege Presidial, & autres Iustices Royales de ce Royaume: & des gaiges assignez ausdicts Aduocats (1578). 46862–20. Declaration du Roy, contre vn memoire nagueres semé au preiudice de la verité, touchant l’Erection de plusieurs pretendus Edicts de nouuelles impositions (1578). 46863–1. Edict dv Roy Sur les Remonstrances faictes à sa Maiesté par les Gens des trois Estatz du Pays & Duché de Bourgongne (Dijon, 1580). 46863–3. Ordonnances du Roy Henry Troisieme de ce nom, Roy de France & de Pologne, sur les plainctes & doleances faictes par les deputez des Estats de son Royaume, conuoquez & assemblez en la ville de Bloys (1580). 46863–8. Reglement fait par le Roy, pour l’administration de la Iustice, entre les Cours de Parlement & les Chambres establies, suiuant l’Edict de Pacification, & articles accordez en la Conference tenue à Nerac (Bordeaux, 1579). 46863–11. Edict du Roy concernant les Declarations, Statuts & Ordonnances faictes par sa Maiesté sur les remonstrances, plainctes & doleances contenues au Cahier des gens des trois Estats du pais & Duché de Bretagne (Rennes, 1579). 46863–15. Lettres patentes dv Roy, povr l’institution & ouuerture des grands Iours en la ville de Poictiers, pour ceste presente annee: Et les senechaussees, Bailliages & gouvernement, y resortissans. Et de l’authorité & temps d’iceux (1579).

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46864–2. Declaration du roy nostre sire pour leuer le doubte de la suppression des offices(1580). 46865–7. Edict du Roy svr le restablissement. & erection des Offices, qui estoient supprimez par le Cahier des Estats tenus à Blois (1580). 46865–8. Edict du Roy de l’erection d’vne deuxiesme Chambre aux Requestes du Palais, & de deux Presidents & huict Conseillers, pour la composition d’icelle (1580). 46865–26. Edict du Roy sur lerection et establissement de la chambre des requestes au Parlement de Bourdeaux [August 1580] (Bordeaux, 1581). 46965–27. Edict du Roy de la création et establissement d’une chambre des requestes en la court de parlement à Rennes (1581). 46865–29. Edict du Roy sur la pacification des troubles (1581). 46866–2. Déclaration du Roy contenant que tous greffes, et mesmes ceux des tailles et des geolles, sont comprins en l’édict général de la suppression des greffes et réunion d’iceux au domaine du Roy (1581). 46866–8. Lettres patentes du Roy pour l’institution et ouverture des Grands Jours en la ville de Clermont en Auvergne, pour ceste présente année [ . . . ] publiée en Parlement le 3e jour de juillet 1581 (1581). 46869–11. Edict dv Roy contenant creation d’vn Contrerolleur general de son Domaine, en chacune charge & generalité de son Royaume (1582). 46871–3. Edict du Roy, par lequel sa maieste veut & ordonne que le droict d’vn sol pour liure soit leué par tout son Royaume, sur les draps & tous ouurages & manufactures de laine, aux charges contenu audict Edict (1583). 46871–16. Reiglement faict sur ledict dv droict de douze deniers tournois pour liure, qui se léue sur la draperie & toute autre manufacture de laine (1583). 46872–5. Edict du Roy, de la redvction des offices de Iudicature, & prouision gratuite de ceux qui ne seront suiets à suppression (1582). 46872–10. Lettres patentes du Roy contenans que sa Maiesté a ordonné estre leué certaine somme de deniers par forme de subuention, sur les villes closes de son Royaume, selon le departement qui en a esté fait en son Conseil (1582). 46872–15. Lettres Patentes dv Roy, pour tenir les Grands Iours en la ville de Clermont en Auuergne, en la presente annee 1582 (1582). 46874–2. Edict dv Roy pour la creation des offices de vendeurs de poisson de mer, frais, sec & sallé par toutes les villes, bourgs, bourgades, haures & ports de ce royaume (1583). 46876–5. Lettres patentes dv Roy, pour tenir les Grand Iours en la ville de Troyes capitale de Champagne, en la presente année (Troyes, [1583]). 46880–4. Edict dv Roy contenant revocation des edicts de la Suppression des Offices de Iudicature & des Finances (1585). 46877–2. Ordonnance du Roy svr le reglement, police & forme de payement de sa Gendarmerie (1584). 46877–6. Edict du Roy contenant les ordonnances et règlement de la jurisdiction de l’admirauté de France (1584).

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Index Abbeville, 73, 178 Abravanel, Judah. See H´ebreu, L´eon academy of Henri III, 12, 44–59, 71, 261 aegritudo, 42 Agen, 112, 126, 144, 146, 159, 199, 231, 241 League in, 240 Agis, king of Lacedemonia, 180 agriculture reform of, 253, 257 Aiguesmortes, 128, 137 place de sˆuret´e, 131, 137 Ailleboust, Charles d’, bishop of Autun (1572–85), 169 Aire, 202 Aix-en-Provence, 215, 216, 218, 336 Albigeois, les 203 Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, 156 ambitio, 56, 57 Amboise, 87 peace of (1563), 129 ambushes, 273 Amiens, 73, 74, 90 visit of commissioners to (1583), 329 amnesty, 120, 199 amor, 43, 58 Amyot, Jacques, 53, 61, 62, 63, 169, 267, 338 Anduze protestant assembly of (1579), 214 Angers bishop of, 81, 370 Angoulˆeme, 31, 71 Angoumois, 87, 196, 235 Apollo, 56, 185 appanages, 356 Appianus, Alexander, 185 Aquinas, St Thomas, 43 Aristotle, 43, 47, 51, 53, 150 Arles, 213, 336 Armagnac, 77, 207 armed robbery, 273 Artabanus, 322 Artemis, 187 assemblies of the clergy Melun (1579–80), 7, 292–306 Paris (1578), 291–2 Saint-Germain-des-Pr´es (1573), 291 assemblies of notables Compi`egne (1573), 29, 291 Fontainebleau (1560), 68

Moulins (1566), 101, 123 Rouen (1596–7), 370 Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1583–4), 7, 123, 272, 278, 341–65 Athena, 187 Auch, 189 audacia, 43, 55 ´ Auger, Emond (1530–91) 123, 305, 308 Augustine, St, 99 Augustus Caesar, 323 Autun, 87, 169 Auvergne, 178 Avignon, 219 penitents of, 307 Ayrault, Pierre (1536–1601), 75 Bacon, Roger, 249 Baïf, Jean-Antoine de (1532–89), 369 Baillet, Jacques, 318 bailliages, 129 and provincial military associations, 86 baillis, 23, 106 Balagny, see Monluc, Jean de Balbani, Arrigo, 316 Manfredi, 316 ban et arri`ere-ban,27 Barb´ezi`eres, M´ery de, sieur de La Roche-Ch´emerault (?-1609), 233 Barjot, Claude, 163 Philippe, 168 Barnaud, Nicolas, 247, 249 Barth´elemy, Denis, 318 Basel, 165–67 Bassigny, 178 Batarnay Anne de, vicomte, then duc de Joyeuse (1560–87), 343 Guillaume de, 143 Baud´ean, Jean de, comte de Parab`ere, 210, 211 Baudonnet, Paul, 211 Bauffremont, Claude de, sieur de Sennec´e (1542–96), 160 Nicolas de, sieur de Sennec´e (1520–82), 120 Baume, Franc¸ois de, count of Suze (?-1587), 141 Bauquemaure, Jacques de (1518–84), 164, 165, 180, 181, 183 Jess´e de, sieur de Verclives, 318 Bayonne, 191 Bazas, 242, 245, 294

410

Index

Bazas, (cont.) bishop of, 92 capture of, 105 B´earn, 115, 239, 245 Beaucaire, 77, 149, 213, 215, 218 s´en´echauss´ee of, 77 uprising in (1578–9), 210–12 Beaulieu, edict of (1576) (known as the ‘Peace of Monsieur’), 34, 55, 70, 71, 84, 85, 87, 88, 111, 135 Beaurains, M., 318 Beauvais, 73 insurrection against cloth duties in, 317 Bellesouffle, Captain, 241 Belli`evre, Jean de, sieur de Hautefort (1524-?), 334 Pomponne de (1529–1607), 28, 60, 109, 112, 164, 166, 165–67, 172, 173, 174, 265, 375 at the assembly of clergy in Melun, (1579), 298 role of in the negotiations at Fleix, 230–38 Belloy, Pierre (1540–1612), 282, 283 Bembo, Pietro (1470–1541), 62 benefices, 95 B´eraud, Michel, 201 Bergerac, 124, 132, 144 peace of. See Poitiers, edict of Berjon, Jean, 246 Bertaut, Jean, 47 Bertin, Philibert, 36 B´ethune, Maximilien de, (later) duke of Sully (1560–1641), 205 Beutterich, Pierre [Petrus] (1538–87), 236, 238 B`eze [Beza], Th´eodore de (1519–1605), 196, 229, 254 B´eziers, 115, 201, 209 ‘bien public’, le, 56, 82, 83, 89, 92, 89–97, 101, 102, 120, 150, 189, 256, 276 Bigot, Emery, 117 Binet, Claude, 46 Biothi`ere, Imbert de, sieur de Chassincourt, 238 Birague, Charles de , 143 Ren´e de (1506–83), 31, 109, 164, 266, 299, 346, 375 death of, 348 Biron. See Gontaut, Armand de Blanchefort, Pierre de, 83, 85, 86–7, 89, 90, 91, 96, 103, 104, 116 blasphemy, 4 Blois, 76, 78, 81, 85, 89, 105, 116, 233, 261, 331, See also estates general Bochart, Jean, sieur de Champigny, 201, 318, 343

Bodin, Jean (1530–96), 82, 84, 111, 113, 117, 118, 121, 151, 152, 257, 279, 356, 363 Bologna. See Concordat of Bologna Bon, Claude-Antoine, baron de M´eolhan, 330 Pierre, 331 Boni, Guillaume, 260 Bonne, Franc¸ois de, sieur de [later duke of] Lesdigui`eres (1543–1626), 224 Borde, Charlotte Arbaleste de la, madame de Mornay, 79 Bordeaux, 117, 188, 189, 191, 242, 243, 245 Catherine de M´edicis in (1578), 190 ecclesiastical province of, 292, 298 jurats of, 144 League in, 240 Borromeo, St Charles (1538–84), 303 Botero, Giovanni (1544–1617), 341 Boucher, Jacqueline, 13, 307 Boucherat, Nicolas, 64, 155, 156, 157, 178 Bourbon (-Vendˆome), Charles de, cardinal (1523–1590), 69, 85, 135, 166, 308, 341–2, 348 Franc¸ois de, duke of Montpensier (1542–92), 107, 141 Henri de, king of Navarre (1553–1610), 110, 111, 113, 114, 125, 188 and negotiations at Bergerac (1577), 126–34 and negotiations for peace at Fleix, 230–38 and protestant assembly at Montauban (1579), 203 and the estates general of Blois, 111–14 and king of France, 371 Henri de, prince of Cond´e (1552–88), 29, 31–2, 71, 73, 111–112, 116, 125, 126, 131, 133, 137, 147, 196, 236 and imposition of the peace of Fleix, 239 debts of, 238 Louis II de, duke of Montpensier (1513–82), 117, 118, 124, 162, 175, 188, 230 and negotiations at Bergerac, 126–34 Bourbon-Lancy, 310 Bourbonnais, le, 178 Bourdeille, Pierre de, sieur de Brantˆome (1540–1614), 16, 241 Bourdic, Marguerite de, 210 Bourg, Jean de, 221, 223 Bourges, 31, 71, 124 Bourgneuf, Ren´e de, 161 Brancas, Gaspard de, baron d’Oise, 215, 217 Marguerite de, 215 Brantˆome, 132 sieur de. See Bourdeille, Pierre de

Index Brianc¸on, 220–25 Brisson, Barnab´e (1531–91), 38, 272, 274, 343, 349, 355 Brittany, 76 and provincial dissension, 160, 175 estates of, 162, 176, 179, 294, 334 Anne, duchess of, 160 Brouage, 128, 131, 134, 135 Brulart, Jacques, 61 Pierre (1535–1608), 47, 61 Bueil, Louis du, sieur de Racan, 87 Bugnyon, Philibert, 266 Burgundy, 154, 275 dissension in, 171 estates of, 154, 155, 157, 179, 292, 316, 371 government of, 87 provincial delegation from, 337 Cabinet du roi de France, le, 247 Cabriane de la Guyonni`ere, Louise de, 47 Cadillac, 235 Caen, 168, 169, 170, 173, 176 Cahors, 204, 239 Callas, 217 Calvin, Jean (1509–64), 227, 228, 253 Cambrai, 234 Camus, Geoffroy, sieur de Pontcarr´e, 244 de Saint-Bonnet, Nicolas, 375 Giulio, 63 Cantelou, sieur de, 177 Carcassonne, 195, 207, 215 ‘Carcistes’, the, 217–19 Caron, Antoine, 185, 186, 187 Casaulx, Charles de, 330, 331 Casillac, Franc¸ois de, baron de Sessac, 351 Castelnaudary, 207 Casteras, 193 Castiglione, Baldassare, 62 Castres, 20 bishop of, 135 Castro, Scipio di, 340, 341 Catherine de M´edicis, queen of France (1519–89), 25, 30, 31, 58, 67, 98, 105, 110, 159, 178, 180, 187–8, 342 and provincial dissension, 160, diplomats trained by, 125 in Guyenne (1578–9), 188–205 in the Midi (1579–80), 205–26 maıˆtre d’hˆotel of, 93 negotiations at N´erac, 192–205 catholicity, 83–89, 130 Catilina, Lucius Sergius, 56 conspiracy, 37, 56 Cato, Macus Porcius, 37, 265, 366 Causse, Claude, sieur de Pontz, 352 cautio, 42

411

Cavriana, Filippo, 16, 47 censors, 75–6, 256, 257, 280 Chˆalons-sur-Saˆone bishop of, 46 Chambre des Comptes 33, 96, 102, 135, 279, 283, 318, 322, 339, 342, 377 and royal gifts, 359 chambres de l’´edit. See Parlements Chamond, Jean de, sieur de Saint-Romain, 138 Champagne, 76, 169 disaffection in, 178 penitential processions in, 310 Champigny, 30 Champion, Pierre, 29 Chancellerie, la, 283 Chantecler, M., 363 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, 139, 297, 368 Charles I, king of England, 381 Charles IX, king of France (1550–74), 18, 46, 67, 83, 94, 187, 289, 296 Charles V, king of Spain and holy roman emperor (1500–58), 26, 117 Charles VIII, king of France (1470–98), 160, 172 Charpentier, Rolland, 179 Charretier, Mathurin, 239 Chartier, Mathieu, 285 Chartres, 69, 136, 169 cahiers from, 325 cathedral of, 307 Chasteigner, Louis de, sieur d’Abain, 318, 351 Chˆateauvieux, Joachim de, 304 Chaumont, 328, 329 Chaumont-Guitry, Abdias de, sieur de Bertich`eres, 194 Cheffontaines, Christophe de, 310, 311 chevauch´ees, 314, 315, 324 Cheverny. See Hurault, Philippe Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 37, 39, 42, 49, 50, 62, 63, 185, 200, 362 Cîteaux, 155 Clausse, Claude, sieur de Ponts, 343 Pierre, sieur de Marchaumont, 343 clementia, 133 Cl´erel, Nicolas, 166, 165–67 clerical offices abbots, 326 bishops in commendam and custodi nos, 326, 332, 350, 353 elections to, 350 nominations to, 95 non-residence of, 326 Clermont d’Auvergne grands jours in, 273

412

Index

Clermont, Claude-Catherine de, countess of Retz (1545–1602), 47 Cl`eves, Henriette de, duchess of Nevers (1541–1601), 47 cloth production duties on, 316 stimulus for, 360 Clovis, 139 Cobham, Sir Henry (Brooke) (1538–1605), 317, 321, 329, 346 Coignet, Mathieu, sieur de La Thuilli`ere, 45 Colas, Jacques, 121, 212, 223 Coligny, Franc¸ois de, comte de Coligny (1557–1591), 137, 138, 196, 209 Coligny, Gaspard II de, comte de Coligny (1519–72), 234 Comminges, 207 commissioners of the edicts (of pacification), 146–52 Commynes, Philippe de, 30, 68 Comtat Venaissin, 140, 220 Concordat of Bologna (1516), 8, 98, 288–289, 297, 301 Cond´e. See Bourbon, Henri de Condom, 191, 192 confraternities in Bordeaux, 190, 191 in Condom, 191 Congr´egation des P´enitents, 308 Constant, Jean-Marie, 72 Cooke, Richard, 45, 346 Corbie, 73 Corbinelli, Jacopo (1535-c.1590), 363 coronation oath, 109, 127 Coss´e (-Brissac), comte de Secondigny, Artus de (1512–82), 17, 230 Coton, G´erard, sieur de Sugy, 281 council of the church, national, 115 Council of Trent, 97–101, 120, 286–303, 311 Cour des Aides, 279, 342 Cour des Monnaies, 281 Courcelles, M. de, 232 Courtigier, Martin, sieur de La Fontaine, 65 Coutances, 163 Crest, 212, 247 Crouzet, Denis, 186–7 crusade, 109, 110 currency reform, 5, 26, 13, 373 d’Albon, Antoine, 92 d’Eschelles, sieur, 76 Daffis, Jean, 125, 127 Pierre, 101 Daillon, Gui de, comte Du Lude (?-1585), 232 d’Albert, Honor´e, sieur de Luynes (?-1592), 211

d’Albin de Valsergues, Jean, 294 d’Albret, Jeanne III, queen of Navarre (1528–72), 162 Damais, Pierre, sieur de la Mothe Marcilly, 87 Dandino, Anselmo, 295, 296 d’Andron, Louise, 149 d’Angennes, Claude (1538–1601), 299, 305 Jean, sieur de Poigny, 143 Louis de, sieur de Maintenon (1536–1604/9), 142, 318 Nicolas, sieur de Rambouillet (1530–1611), 161 d’Armagnac, cardinal Georges (1501–85), 148, 150, 216 d’Aubign´e, Agrippa (1552–1630), 47, 203, 205, 248, 258, 306 Daubresse, Sylvie, 267 d’Aumont, Jean, 342 Dauphin´e, 105, 109, 125, 147, 148, 196, 203, 212, 220–25, 235, 236, 237, 248, 334, See estates of, 221 places de sˆuret´e in (1577), 131 popular movements in, 221 d’Avanc¸on, Guillaume, 99 d’Averane, Mariet, 151, 207 David, Jean, 79 David, king of Israel, 123, 139, 156, 368 Davy Du Perron, Jacques (1556–1618), 46, 47, 48, 60, 275 Dax, 265, 270 de Thou, Augustin, 267 Catherine, 35 Christofle, 32, 33, 36, 136, 267, 271, 295, 373, 375 Jacques-Auguste (1553–1617), 2, 82, 154, 265, 321 d´ecimes, 157, 170, 172, 232, 288, 289, 291, 292, 294, 299, 300, 302, 303, 327, 332, 338 reform of the, 358 Delaporte, Jean, 245 d’Elb`ene, Alphonse,(1538–1608) 215 Bartolomeo (1515–95), 47, 59 Delumeau, Jean, 6 d’Epinac, Pierre (1540–99), 93, 95, 100, 102, 119, 121, 297–8, 183, 313, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323, 349 Des Rois, Jean, sieur de L´edignan, 211, 214 d’Escars. See Peyrusse, Franc¸ois de desiderium, 43 D´esir´e, Artus, 186 d’Espagne, Jeanne-Germaine, Madame de Noailles, 270 desperantia, 55 d’Espinay, Franc¸ois de, sieur de Saint-Luc, 143

Index Desportes, Philippe, abb´e de Tiron (1546–1606), 46, 57, 63 d’Estourmel, Antoine, sieur de Pleinville, 72 d’Humi`eres, Jacques (?-1579), 72, 77 Dieppe, 270 insurrection against cloth duties in, 317 Dijon, 31, 154, 157 bailliage of, 82 Dio Chrysostom, 322 dioceses, 21 Diogenes of Sinope, ‘the Cynic’, 258 discipline, 5 d’O, Franc¸ois, marquis d’O (?-1594), 143, 177, 240 Dol, 162, 176, 179 dolor, 43 Don John (Juan) of Austria (1547–1578), 71 d’Ornano, Alphonse (1548–1610), 216, 219 Doron, Claude, sieur de Montmirault, 45–6 d’Osimo, Bernard, 306 Du Bartas, see Salluste Du Bartas, Guillaume du Bec, Philippe, 205, 318, 321 Du Bois, Jean, 246 Du Bourg, Anne (1521–59), 35 Du Faur [de Pibrac], Guy (1529–84), 38, 46, 53–4, 61, 188, 195, 199, 200, 260, 363 Jacques, 264 Louis, sieur de Grateins, 150, 194, 197 Pierre, 150 Du Moulin, Charles (1500–66), 98 du Peyrat, Maurice, 308 Du Pleix, Madeleine, 194 Du Plessis Mornay, Philippe (1549–1623), 70, 77, 80, 205, 234 Du Plessis, Armand-Jean, cardinal (duke) of Richelieu (1585–1642), 374, 370 Franc¸ois, sieur de Richelieu, 361 Du Pr´eau, Gabriel, 71, 72 Du Vair, Guillaume (1556–1621), 39, 41 Dubois, Jean, sieur de La Thieulloye, 329 Dudrac, Adrien, 272, 245 Dupuy, Bernard, 214 Dusault, Charles, 190, 191 ecclesiastical property, 95 ecclesiastical reform, 21, 33, 94–96, 97–101, 115, 120, 253, 286–303, 325, 326 and benefices, 332 and national council of the church, 87 and non-residence, 332 and shortage of priests, 332 clerical elections, 350 list of benefices for, 338 parish priests, 353 economic regeneration, 360 edicts preambles to, 263

413

eloquence. See rhetoric ´elus, 106, 163 Emanuele Philibert, duke of Savoy, 108 Embrun, 141, 220–25 Epernon. See Nogaret de La Valette, Jean-Louis episcopacy, 21 Erasmus, Desiderius (1466?-1536), 45, 261 Esperandieu, sieur, 238 estates general Blois (1576–7), 3, 7, 46, 59, 66–122, 127, 154, 155, 159, 164, 172, 221, 249, 250, 257, 275, 293, 327, 374 Blois (1588–9), 266, 381 Orl´eans (1560–1), 68, 80, 90, 96, 101, 190, 260 Pontoise (1561), 67, 90 Estienne, Henri (c.1528–91), 60 Etampes, 87 ´ethos, 42 Etigny, truce of (1575), 30 Eu, 270 Evreux bishop of, 100 exempla, 41 Eymar, Joseph, 91, 117 Ezekiel, 322 Falaise insurrection at (1578), 163 Fauchet, Claude (1530–1602), 344 Faucon de Ris, Claude, 343 Faug`eres, B´eatrice de, 208 Faure, Guichard, 378 Favorel, Franc¸ois, 179 Faye, Jacques, sieur d’Espeisses (1543–90), 37–8 Faye-la-Vineuse, 325 Fer´e, Camille, 111 feux de fouage 161 Ficino, Marsilio (1433–99), 202 Fiesque, Scipion, comte de, 343 Figeac, 231 financial officers reform of, 358 financial reform, 25, 102, 103, 104, 180, 373, 375 at the assembly of notables (1583–4), 314, 316, 376 contracts for farming taxes and, 358 corruption of financial officials and, 333 discussions of, 358 pays d’´etats and, 333 proposed by estates of Dauphin´e, 222 royal gifts and, 358 financiers, 104, 107, 109, 277, 316, 376 Fitte de Soucy, Pierre de, 318, 343

414

Index

Fizes, Simon, baron de Sauve (?-1579), 47 Flanders, 233, 317 Flavin, Melchior, 186 Flavius Claudius Julianus, 298 Fleix, pacification of (1580), 230–38; 306 Florence, 368 Fogasse, sieur, 116 Foix, 207 Foix, Gaston de, marquis de Trans, 230 Paul de (1528–82), 125, 132, 189, 199, 267 Foix-Candale, Franc¸ois de, 202, 210 Fons, Jean, 149 Fontainebleau, 65, 315 School of, 54 Fontanon, Antoine, 271, 272 foreigners attitudes to, 120 forests reform of, 358 Forez, 159, 178 Forget, Jean, 318, 343 Pierre, sieur de Fresnes (?-1610), 262 fortitudo, 49 Foug`eres, 162, 163 Foultray, sieur de, 120 Franciscans, the, 306, 307 and penitential rites, 309 monastery in Paris, 310 Francogallia, 68 Franc¸ois I, king of France (1494–1547), 24, 217, 288, 304 Fr´ejus, 215 Fumaroli, Marc, 62 gabelles, 158, 254, 376 in Dauphin´e, 222 Gaguin, Robert, 254 gallicanism, 98–101, 286–303 Gap, 131, 220–25, 238 capture of, 105 Garde des sceaux, 343 Garde, Gaspard de, 216 Hubert de, sieur de Vins, 216, 219, 331 Garonne, river, 151 Gascony, 109 Gassot, Jules (1555–1625), 69, 101, 264, 305 gaudium, 43, 50, 51, 52 Gaultier, L´eonard, 366 gendarmerie, 5, 9, 23, 26, 97, 128 conduct of, 357 G´en´ebrard, Gilbert (1535–97), 294 Geneva, 196, 227, 229, 246, 247 Genevois, Gabriel le, 99, 292 Gentillet, Innocent (1535–88), 58 Germany, 80, 86 Germigny, Jacques de, sieur de Germolles, 169

gifts. See patronage Girard, Bernard de, sieur du Haillan (c.1535–1610), 165, 262–3. 282 Gislain, Augier de, sieur de Busbeq, 321 Gondi, Albert de, count of Retz (1522–1602), 17, 20, 22, 47, 108, 140, 171, 175, 216, 267, 342, 344 Pierre de (1533–1616), 93, 140, 267, 318 Gontaut, Armand de, baron de Biron (1524–92), 17, 110, 112, 124, 128, 145, 152, 159, 191, 203, 231, 239, 240, 270, 342 Jean de, sieur de Saint-Geni`es, 126 Gonzague, Louis IV de, duke of Nevers (1539–95), 2, 16, 17, 20, 23, 84, 105, 108, 109, 110, 177, 248, 342, 350–1, 353 Gordes. See Raymbaud de Simiane, Bertrand Gould, Kevin, 190 Gourdon, 204 Gourges, Ogier de, 242 Goyon de Matignon, Jacques de (1525–97), 163, 169, 173, 294 as royal lieutenant in Guyenne, 240–46 Graisivaudan, le 220–25 Grand Conseil, 130 Grand Dauphin. See Bourbon, Franc¸ois de grand parti, 158, 172 grand pr´evˆot de France, 361–1 Grand Prior. See Valois, Henri de grands jours. See Parlements Grasse (de Pontev`es-Flassans), Marguerite-Louise de, 216 Gregory XIII [Ugo Boncompagni] (1502–85), Pope, 340 Grenoble, 141, 220, 221, 336 Grisons [Grey Leagues], les, 45 grosses fermes, 376 Groulart, Claude, 270, 281 Gu´e, Nicolas du, 342 Guicciardini, Francesco (1483–1540), 58, 363 Guillem, Catherine de, 211 Guyenne, 125, 136, 144, 145, 160, 188, 189, 195, 198, 206, 230, 231, 236 chambre de justice in, 235, 243 clergy in, 296 pacification in (1581–3), 238–46 petition from catholics in (1581), 240 places de sˆuret´e in (1577), 131 provincial delegation from, 337 Guyet, sieur, 125 Hadrian [Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus], 33 Haillan. See Girard, Bernard de Hannibal, 46, 322

Index Happlaincourt. See Moujan Harlay, Philippe de, sieur de C´esy, 35 Nicolas de, sieur de Sancy (1546–1629), 35 Achille de (1536–1616), 35, 37, 38 Haton, Claude, 76 H´ebreu, L´eon, 51 Hennequin, Pierre, 32 Henri III, king of France (1551–89). See also: academy and attempts to impose the peace of Bergerac (1577–8), 134–53 and chambre de justice in Guyenne, 245 and estates general of Blois (1588–9), 381 and peace of Fleix, 230–38 and peace of Poitiers (1577), 126–34 and penitential reform, 303–11 and provincial governors, 140–46 and reform of office-holding, 278–80 and rhetoric, 59–63 and social discipline, 280–83 and the assembly of notables (1583–4), 341–65 and the assembly of the clergy at Melun (1579–80), 292–306 and the founding of new chivalric orders, 64 court of, 9 device of, 306 duke of Anjou and, 15–34 image of, 366 processions of, 307 programme of reading of, 64 reform of patronage and, 358 Hercules, 36, 185 Gallic, 36, 186 Herodotus, 54 Hickey, Daniel, 221 Hotman, Franc¸ois (1524–90), 68, 70, 165–67, 254, 272 Hurault de Cheverny, Philippe (1528–99), 110, 164, 170, 264, 266, 295, 346, 369 Andr´e, sieur de Maisse (1539–1607), 172 Ile de France, l’, 84 Ile-Jourdain, 207 Innocent III [Lotario de’ Conti di Segni] (1161–1216), Pope, 286 intemperantia, 42 intendants de finance, 252, 346 ira, 44, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 Italy, 108 Jamyn, Amadis (1538–92), 47, 51, 53, 54, 56 Jaupitre, Jehan, 378 Jeremiah, 166

415

Jesuits, 336 ‘Jeux Floraux’, les, 260 Johann Casimir, count palatine of Pfalz-Simmern (1543–92), 32, 131, 147, 149 debts of, 238 Joinville treaty of (1584), 379 Jonah, 81 Jousserand, sieur de Landigny, 87 judicial astrologers, 302 judicial reform, 22, 95–97, 253, 268–74 codification of royal laws and, 271 criminal law and, 273 discussions concerning, 354–56 reform of customary laws, 271 juges de police proposals for, 359 juges ordinaires, 106 Jupiter, 56 Justinian, 272 justitia, 199 Karcher, Aline, 339 Kermadec, Franc¸ois de, sieur de Cuc´e, 176, 179 Knights of Malta, 140 La Bastide de Beauvoisin, 218 La Bastide de Clarence, 245 La Baume, Franc¸ois de, comte de Suze, 141, 216, 349, 351 La Charit´e, 124, 126 La Croix, Claude de, 77 La F`ere, 240 La Fin, Jacques de, 233 La Fontaine-Soliers, Artus de, baron d’Ognon, 88, 111 La Guesle, Jacques de La, 38, 284 Jean de, 93, 94, 96, 101, 157–9, 164, 166, 170, 171, 172, 338, 341, 343, 347–9 La Haye, Jean de, 82 La Jugie, Franc¸ois de, baron de Rieux, 207, 208 La Meausse, sieur de, 200 La Monnoye, Bernard de, 246 La Mothe-F´enelon. See Salignac La Noue, Franc¸ois de (1531–91), 123, 125, 206, 229 La Place, sieur de, 147 La Popelini`ere. See Voisin, Henri Lancelot La Primaudaye, Pierre de (1546–1620), 261, 262 La Ram´ee, Pierre de [Ramus] (1515–72), 41 La R´eole, 193, 196, 210

416

Index

La Roche Flavin, Bernard de (1552-c.1626), 39 La Roche-Guyon, sieur de, 177 La Rochelle, 38, 73, 77, 125, 128, 144, 239, 291 bailliage of, 77 siege of, 15–17, 108, 371 La Salle de Siron, sieur, 210 La Tour [d’Auvergne], Henri de, vicomte de Turenne (1555–1623), 194, 204, 230 La Tr´emoïlle, Georges de, marquis de Royan, 77 Louis de, 77 La Vall´ee, Jacques de, 35 laetitia, 42 Lafr´ery, Antoine, 186 La Guiche, Claude de, sieur de Saint-G´eran, 210 Lallemant, Captain, 325 Lallier, Jacques, sieur Du Pin, 195 Lange, Jean de, 190, 191 Langelier, Nicolas, 180, 294, 301, 303, 305 Langon, 210 Langres, 292 dean of the cathedral chapter of, 99 Languedoc, 110, 115, 116, 125, 128, 137, 138, 147, 148, 149, 179, 196, 198, 203, 205, 206, 213, 236, 237, 275, 331, 334, See chambre de justice in, 235 ecclesiastical dioceses of, 296 estates of, 149, 150, 151, 176, 207, 214, 230, 316 places de sˆuret´e in (1577), 131 provincial delegation from, 337 Languedoc, Jean de, sieur de Vussay, 87 Laon, 342 Lasseran de Massencome, Jean de, sieur de Monluc, 125, 139, 147, 150, 189, 200 Lassus, Roland de, 260 Laval, 141 Laval, Antoine de, sieur de Belair, 58, 363 Le Charron, Jean, 31 Le Comte, Charles, 318 Le Duchat, Jacob, 247 Le Febvre de La Boderie, Guy, 202 Le Mans, 76, 316 Le Monnier, Jean, 69 Le Roux, Nicolas, 9 Le Roy, Franc¸ois, sieur de Chavigny, 74, 75 Louis, 45, 165, 369 Le Veneur, Tanneguy, sieur de Carrouges, 164, 166, 180, 267 Le Voyer, Philibert de, sieur de Lignerolles, 47 League, the catholic, 12, 39, 379, 380 l´egionnaires, 24

Lenoncourt, Philippe de, 110, 267, 318, 321, 324, 347, 351 Lentreguer, 162 Leo X [Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici] (1475–1521), Pope, 288 Lesdigui`eres. See Bonne, Franc¸ois de l`ese-majest´e, 120 proposed legislation on, 355 L’Estoile, Pierre de, 74, 121, 136, 248, 266, 283, 285, 310, 321 lettres de jussion, 33 Leu, Thomas de, 366 lex Calpurnia, 252 Julia, 252 Quisquis, 355 Lezot, Gilles, 179 L’Hospital, Michel de (1505–73), 67–8, 261, 264, 265, 275, 280 L’Huillier, Nicolas, 121 libido, 42 lieutenants g´en´eraux des bailliages, 28 Limoges, 121, 160 Limousin, 160, 196 Lippomano, Girolamo, 69 Lipsius [Loost Lips], Justus (1547–1606), 363 Livron, 131, 148, 238, 239 siege of, 30 Lod`eve, 208 Lodi, peace of (1454), 368 lois fondamentales, 92 Loisel, Antoine, 44, 199, 243, 244 Lorraine, Charles de, cardinal of Lorraine (1524–74), 64, 81, 95, 155, 291, 300, 323 Charles de, duke of Aumale (1566–1631), 17, 342 Charles de, duke of Mayenne (1554–1611), 45, 107, 110, 135, 154, 179 Henri de, duke of Guise (1550–88), 17, 75, 107, 119, 144, 225, 270, 342, 348 Louis de, cardinal of Guise (1555–88), 17, 110, 247 Philippe-Emmanuel, duke of Mercœur (1558–1602), 342 Louis IX, king of France (1215–70), 33, 297 the ´etablissements of, 32–33 Louis VI, king of France (1081–1137), 298 Louis XI, king of France (1423–83), 67, 254, 327 Louis XII, king of France (1462–1515), 161, 165–67, 171, 174, 181, 355 Louis XIII, king of France (1601–43), 120 ‘Lovers’ War’, 204 loyalty reward for, 24 Loyseau, Charles, 272, 361

Index Luat, Paris de, 121 Lucca, 140 Lucian, 36 Lusignan, sieur de, 241 Lycurgus, 165, 180, 262 Lygdamis, 187 Lyon, 29, 79, 183, 266, 358, 360 cathedral chapter of, 92 commissioners’ visit to (1582), 331 ecclesiastical province of, 298 penitents of, 307 proposed Parlement in, 96 Lyonnais, 159, 203 Machiavelli, Niccol`o (1469–1527), 58, 380 Madrid, palace of, 18 magistrate, the perfect, 39 Magnien, Jean, 328, 329 Maguelonne, 209 Mailly, Jean de, 79 Maine, 103 maıˆtres des requˆetes, 10, 26, 45, 146, 177, 314, 315 Major, James Russell, 182 Malain, Charles de, sieur de Laury, 90 Malras, Pierre de, baron d’Yolet, 197 Malvyn, Geoffroy de, 281 Mandelot, Franc¸ois de (1529–88), 159, 267 Mangot, Jacques, 38 Mantua, 62 duke of, 108 manufacture 360 ‘Marabouts’, les, 215 Marc Antony [Marcus Antonius], 156, 284 marc d’or, 278–80 Marcel, Claude, 249, 251, 252, 254, 255 mar´echaux de France, 97, 361 Marillac, Michel de, 68 Marion, Miles, 143, 179, 197 Marmande, 112 Marseille, 24, 140, 141, 218, 219, 316, 336 penitents of, 307 visit of commissioners to (1583), 330 Martragny, 177 Marv´ejols, 150 Matignon. See Goyon de Matignon, Jacques de Maugiron, Laurent de, comte de Montl´ean (1528–89), 141, 179 Meaux, ‘Surprise’ of (1567), 25, 32 Meffroys, ‘Captain’ Jehan, 330 Melanchthon, Philipp, 228 Melun, 7, ‘constitutions’ of, 303 M´emoires de l’estat de France sous Charles I X, les, 255 memory

417

and honour, 56 and passions, 51 and prudence, 362 Mende, 138, 239 M´enerbes, 140 mercuriales. See Parlements Mercury, 36 Merle, Captain, 200 Mesmes, Henri de, 267 M´etanœologie, la, 305 metus, 42 M´ezi`eres, 31 mignons, 9, 11, 54 Milan, 303 military reform, 5, 26, 27, 97 discussions of, 357 Millau, 136, 209 Millet, Olivier, 228 Milon, Benoˆıt, 346, 351, 378 Mirepoix, 207, 208 Miroir des Franc¸ois,le, 246–59 Miron, Marc, sieur de l’Hermitage, 47 Robert, sieur de Chenailles, 344, 370 Modena, 63 Moerbeke, William of, 43 Moigneville, sieur de, 174 Mol´e, Nicolas, 210 Moncontour, battle of, 107 Monluc, Blaise de, 16, 144, 160 Jean de, sieur de Balagny (1560–1603), 148, 234 Mons, 158 Mons´egur, 245 Monsieur. See Valois, Franc¸ois de peace of. See Beaulieu Montagnac, 237 Montagut, 239 Montaigne, Michel de, 59, 112, 202, 262, 366 and moral reformation, 367 Montaigu, 204 Montand, Nicolas de, 246 Montauban, 31, 112, 115, 201, 332 protestant assembly in (1579), 203 protestant assembly in (1581), 236, 237 Montdidier, 74, 76, 77, 78 Mont´elimar, 121, 141, 212, 213, 221 Montgomery, count of, 18 Montluel, 224 Montmartre, 31 Montmorency, Anne de, duke of Montmorency, Constable, 15, 81 Franc¸ois de, duke of, 172, 143 Henri de [Montmorency-Damville], 30–1, 69, 110, 115, 116, 127, 137, 141, 142, 143, 148, 149, 150, 179, 197, 209, 211, 213, 214, 331

418

Index

Guillaume de [Montmorency-Thor´e], 125, 209 Montorin, sieur, 215 Montpellier, 77, 115, 125, 137, 138, 142, 200, 209, 231 place de sˆuret´e in (1577), 131 siege of, 127 moral philosophy, 42, 41–44, See moral virtues among lesser officeholders, 282 and the appetites, 45 diagrams of, 40 moral virtues, 260–65 and knowledge, 312 and penitence, 330 Morel, Fr´ed´eric, 272 Moro, Giovanni, 321, 345 Morosini, Giovanni, 46, 73 Morvillier, Jean de, 82 Ren´e de, 110 Moses, 94 Moujan, Jacques de, sieur de Morlevront, 72 Moulins, 96, 316 Muret, Jean-Antoine, 363 Musset, Louis, 1–4, 14, 123, 134 Nagarel, Jean, 164 Nancy, 246 Nantes, 168, 179, 205, 294, 324 pacification of (1598), 248 university of, 136 Narbonne, 207, 208 ecclesiastical province of, 298 Narbonne-Caylus, Claude de, baron de Faug`eres, 208 Nemours edict of (1585), 379 N´erac, 144, 169, 171, 188, 189 Netherlands, The, 233, 234 States General of, 230 Neufville, Nicolas de, sieur de Villeroy, 111, 156, 175, 230, 279 and negotiations at Bergerac (1577), 126 negotiations at Fleix, 230–38 Nice, 140 Nicolaï, Antoine, 102, 342, 344, 375 Nîmes, 138, 150, 213 Nivernais, 85, 89 Noailles, Franc¸ois de, 243, 265, 270 nobility and education, 40 and royal service, 354 and virtue, 354 armorial bearings of, 354 at estates general of Blois (1576–7), 85 at estates of Brittany, 162

false claims to, 353 false titles to, 377 in Champagne, 178 in the estates of Burgundy, 154 offices restricted to, 353 patronage networks of, 8, 12 purchase of, 353, 354 reform of, 332, 353 status of illegimate sons of, 353 noblesse seconde, 11 Nogaret de La Valette, Jean-Louis, sieur d’Epernon, 343 Bernard, sieur de La Valette, 343 Noizay, 326 Normandy, 76, 119, 176 Charter of (1314), 174 dissension in, 173 estates of, 163, 164, 165–67, 173, 174, 176, 181, 321, 334, 377 reform of customary law in, 270 tax rebellion in, 176 taxation in, 170 notables, 11 notarial registers, 277 Notre-Dame de La Coulture, abbey of, 69 Notre-Dame de Liesse, 308 Numa Pompilius, king of Rome, 263 Nyons, 238 Octavian Caesar, 156 odium, 43, 52 offices. See seigneurial offices and royal offices Olivier, Franc¸ois, 264 Ollainville, 59, 299 Orange, William of, 255 Order of the Holy Spirit, 64, 169, 305 of Malta, 268 of St Louis, 64 of St-Michel, 257 of the Passion, 64 ordinances Blois (1499), 263 Blois (1579), 176, 181, 182, 223, 224, 264, 265–74, 280, 283, 297, 373, 379 Montils-l`es-Tours (1454), 270 Moulins (1566), 96, 123, 264, 269 Orl´eans (1561), 20, 263, 267 Roussillon (1564), 263 Villers-Cotteretz (1539), 263 Orl´eanais, 105 government of, 87 Orl´eans, 82, 83, 188 Orpheus, 53 oubliance, 189, 199, 329 Our Lady of Loreto, 308

Index Ozam, king of Israel, 94 pacification. See Poitiers, edict of (1577) and Fleix, peace of (1581) and concord, 206, 208 and gardens, 202 and justice, 199 and prudence, 124 and universal peace, 123 attitudes to, 123–24 discourse concerning, 206–7 negotiations at N´erac (1579), 192–205 Padua, 264 Panse, Justinien, 308 Panygrolles, Emond de, 164, 166 Pardaillan. See S´egur, Jacques de Paris, 79 and pacification of 1570, 129 bishop of, 93, 140 delegation at the estates general of Blois (1576–7), 120–22 ´echevins, 31 Franciscans in, 310 league in, 74 l’hˆotel de ville, 75 Louvre, 44, 46 Notre-Dame de Paris, 24, 31 penitential processions in, 309 preparations to defend (1576), 31 pr´evˆot des marchands, 23, 28, 31, 75, 96, 121, 232, 273, 289 protestants in, 75 provincial delegates meeting in, 159 remonstrances from (1576), 32 Sorbonne, 95 University of, 41 Parlements, 10, 23, 96, 114, 234, See also judicial reform Aix-en-Provence, 218 and maıˆtres des requˆetes, 315 and pacification (1577), 130–131, 135 avocats du roi, 37–8 Bordeaux, 91, 135, 145, 178, 190, 191, 243, 280, 281, 283, 294 chambres de l’´edit, 125, 130, 133, 192, 197–9, 207, 231, 237 chambres de justice, 199, 218, 231, 235, 243, 358, 375, 377 conseillers, 279 Dijon, 82, 130, 154, 155, 157, 158, 171 ´evocations, 269 grands jours, 90, 96, 273, 274 Grenoble, 281 list de justice, 109 mercuriales, 35, 37–8, 280–3 need for reform in, 264

419

Paris, 32, 35, 37–9, 92–3, 95, 98, 109, 130, 229, 260, 266, 269, 271, 274, 283, 285, 347 procureurs g´en´eraux, 96 r´ecusations, 23, 130, 280 reform of, 347 Rennes, 130, 161, 179, 283 Rouen, 130, 164, 170, 174, 281 royal domain, 375 Toulouse, 39, 125, 127, 130, 131, 178, 200, 207, 281 Tours, 339 partisans, 277 Pascal, Charles, 363 Pasquier, Etienne, 36, 44, 45, 278, 348 passions, 48–59. See also moral philosophy and illness, 51 and language, 60 and memory, 51 and music, 52, 53 and physiognomy, 51, 53, 54, 57 and the protestants, 226–30 and rhetoric, 60 and the human psyche, 52 ignoble, 6 noble, 6, 58 patientia, 199 patronage in ancient world, 56 royal, 22, 24 Pau, 245 Paul IV [Giovanni Pietro Carafa] (1476–1559), Pope, 381 Paulet, Sir Amias (1532–88), 118, 133, 147, 152, 162 Paumier, ‘Captain’, 223 Payan, sieur, 125 Peccais, 128, 137, 214, 231 Peloquin, M., 163 P´erigord, 145, 241 P´erigueux, 160, 245 catholic invasion of, 240, 242 P´eronne, 71, 132 declaration of (1585), 379 League of, 72–79 perturbatio, 42 Peyrusse, Charles de, 160 Franc¸ois de, sieur d’Escars, 135, 160 P´ezenas, 142 Philip II, king of Spain (1527–98), 117, 312, 331, 379 Picardy, 71, 72, 74, 79, 100, 112, 132, 133 and pacification of (1570), 129 leagues in, 73 penitential processions in, 310 royal commissioners in, 324 Pinart, Claude, 34, 197, 341, 324, 344

420

Index

pirates, 336 Pithou, Nicolas, 79 Pierre, 245, 272 places de sˆuret´e, 131, 133, 137, 198, 210, 214 Plato, 45, 150, 180, 187, 308 Plessis-l`es-Tours, treaty of (1580), 230, 233 Pleurs, Jacques, 318 Ploermel, 162 Plutarch, 37, 42, 52, 53, 58, 62, 150, 156, 180, 262 Poincet, Maurice, 136 Poisle, Jean, 274, 285 Poissy Dominican convent at, 304 contract of, 175, 289, 291 Poitiers, 76, 77, 83, 128, 134, 135, 262 cahiers from, 325 grands jours in, 273 proposed Parlement in, 96 protestants in, 74 university of, 264 Poitiers, edict of (1577), 124, 231, 237 negotiations prior to, 126–34 Poitou, 77, 82, 131, 178, 190, 196, 232, 235 leagues in, 73 lieutenant in, 232 Poix, Jehan de, sieur de S´echelles, 78 Poland, 20, 29, 46, 80, 94, 108, 307 police, 120, 256, 305, 338 begging, 359 charitable relief, 359 discussions of reform, 359 economic regulation, 359 price controls on foodstuffs, 359 proposal for ‘juges de police’, 359 public nuisance, 359 Polybius, 363 Poncet, Maurice, 285, 310 Pons, Antoine de, comte de Marennes, 318, 351 Franc¸ois de, sieur de Mirambeau, 77, 87, 91 Pontac, Arnaud de, 92, 293, 296, 303 Jean de, sieur de Sales, 294 Raymond de, 294 Pont-B´eranger, sieur du, 177 Pontev`es, Durand de, sieur de Flassans, 215–6 Jean-Baptiste de, comte de Carces, 215–6, 218 Jean-Baptiste, sieur de Barg`eme, 217 Joseph de, 217 Pierre de, sieur de Brov`es, 215, 217 Pont-Saint-Esprit, 211 Pontville, Gratien de, sieur de Vuleismes, 90 popular insurrection. against cloth duties, 317 in Dauphin´e, 223, 224

in the Rhˆone valley, 212 the ‘Ligue des Vilains’ and, 213 the Vivarais and (1579–80), 212 Postel, Guillaume (1510–81), 304 Potier de Blancmesnil, Nicolas, 318 Poyano, Janyn, sieur de Villers, 143, 211 Poyet, Guillaume, 264 prævidentia, 362 Pragmatic Sanction, the, 267 pr´esidiaux, 28, 177, 232, 269, 279 Angers, 282 Chaumont, 328 Lyon, 282 Toulouse, 282 pr´evˆot des marchands. See Paris priories, 21 Prospero, 187 protestants and estates general of Blois, 75–77 and negotiations at Fleix, 230–38 and negotiations at N´erac, 192–205 and negotiations with the estates general of Blois, 112–18 and salt revenues, 128 and the French monarchy, 186 assembly in Anduze (1579), 214 at estates general of Pontoise (1561), 74 ‘Confession’ of, 229 ‘Discipline’ of, 229 in Lod`eve, 208 in Montpellier, 209 military preparations of (1578), 147 negotiators for at the peace of Bergerac, 125 reluctance to accept peace of Bergerac (1577), 134–53 renewed hostilities of, 110 salt revenues of, 214 the Psalter of, 227 Provence, 125, 136, 140, 141, 147, 205, 213, 218, 231, 235 and provincial dissension (1579–80), 215 estates of, 215, 219, 220, 321, 324, 336 places de sˆuret´e (1577), 131 provincial delegation from, 337 provincial governors, 138, 140–46, 164 reform discussions concerning, 361 Provins bailliage of, 76 cur´e of, 76 prudentia, 124, 362 Public Weal, War of the, 30, 67 Publius Titus, 185 Puymirol, 231, 241 Pythagoras, 53 Quatrains, les, 260–65 Quintilian, 37, 42, 49

Index Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, 45 Rabel, Jean, 366 Ragueneau, Fr´ed´eric, 219 Ramus. See La Ram´ee, Pierre de Raymbaud de Simiane, baron de Gordes, Bertrand (1513–78), 148 ‘Razats’ les, 179, 215–6, 218–9 Rebuffy, Pierre (1487–1567), 272 receveurs g´en´eraux, 25 du clerg´e, 302 Reffuge, Eustache de (1564–1617), 265 reformation. See also ordinances, financial reform, judicial reform, ecclesiastical reform, discipline, currency reform, military reform and education, 256 and horticulture, 257 and hospitals, 256 and ‘invention’, 101 and monasteries, 256 and political culture, 368 and satire, 246–59 and the provincial estates, 158 corruption and, 252–3, 285, 320 dangers of, 262 discussed at provincial estates, 180–81 discussed before the estates general of Blois (1576–7), 80–3 ideas of, 256 ideology of, 1, 373 medical analogies for, 28 Montaigne’s views on, 367 of the realm, 33 parodoxes of, 3 royal duties towards, 263 Rehoboam, son of Solomon, 156 Reilhac, M., 148 Reims, 316 reiters, 32, 156 relics, 253 Rennes, 162, 175, 179 seneschal of, 176 rentes sur l’hˆotel de ville de Paris, 289, 291, 294, 316 Retz. See Gondi, Albert de R´eveille-Matin des Franc¸ois, le, 15, 246 rhetoric. See also royal academy acquisition of, 40, 41 and pacification, 129, 149–52, 193, 199 and prudence, 362 and public life, 39–41 and self-fashioning, 365 at clerical assembly of Melun, 292–306 at provincial estates, 156–58, 165–67, 180–81 at the assembly of notables (1583–4), 347

421

before the chambre de justice of Guyenne, 244 Catherine de M´edicis’ use of, 189 exempla, 199 gallic eloquence, 36 importance of, 36–37 in mercuriales, 280–83 royal, 59–63 royal commissioners and, 321 Rivery, Jean de, sieur de Pothonville, 78 Roffignac, Christophe de, 190 Romans, 212, 221, 223 ‘Ligue’ in, 223 Rome, 21, 62, 100, 291, 296 under the Triumvirate, 186 Romulus, 262 Ronsard, Pierre de (1524–85), 46, 50, 51 Roquefueil, Mathias de, sieur de Convertis, 214 Roques, Guillaume, sieur de Clausonne, 125, 126 Rostaing, Jean de, 245 Rouen, 155, 163, 166, 165–67, 180 archbishop of, 348 deputy from, 117 ecclesiastical province of, 298 royal council, 10, 11, 17, 28, 32, 84, 321, 338, 374, 378 council of affairs, 143 council of finance, 102, 104, 315, 317, 338 royal debts, 25, 102, 103, 104, 172, 181, 323, 324, 333, 336 royal domain, 173, 181 alienation of, 96 reform of, 338, 358, 375, 376 royal household reform of, 9, 13 royal offices alternatifs, 278 and social mobility, 277 corruption in, 174 duties of office-holders, 67 ´epices, 280 gages of, 275, 276 gift of, 22 le tiers denier, 277 lesser officeholders, 28 reform of, 333 sale of, 10, 22, 96, 174, 181, 274–86, 333, 380 survivances, 276 tenure of, 276 Roye, 77 Royer, Guillaume, 82 Rucellai, Oratio, 378 Ruz´e, Guillaume, 81

422

Index

Sabl´e archdeacon of, 69 Sainctes, Claude de (1525–91), 99, 101, 186, 303 Sainctyon, Louis de, 32, 271 Saint-Brieuc, 162, 180, 294, 301, 305 Saint-Chamond, Jean de, sieur de Saint-Romain, 137 Saint-Denis, 135, 136 battle of (1567), 15 Saint-Di´e, 88 Sainte-Foy, 136, 144 Saint-Gelais, Louis, sieur de Lansac, 351 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 299, 313. See also assemblies of the clergy; assemblies of notables; peace of (1570), 129, 146 Saint-Jean d’Ang´ely, 73, 112, 133, 196 place de sˆuret´e (1577), 131 Saint-Lary, Roger de, sieur de Bellegarde, 108, 127, 137, 138, 142–3, 148, 213, 224, Saint-Maixent, 178 Saint-Malo, 179 Saint-Marcel, Guillaume de, 141 Saint-Maximin, 220 Saintonge, 77, 87, 196 Saint-Luc. See d’Espinay, Franc¸ois Saint-Quentin, 73, 177 battle of, 15, 240 Saint-Sulpice, Jean de, 125 Saint-Verain bailli of, 1 Salignac, Bertrand de, sieur de La Mothe-F´enelon, 125, 135, 318 Sallust, 206 Salluste Du Bartas, Guillaume (1544–90), 251 Saluzzo (Salucces), 143 Salvius, 185 Sardini, Scipion, 378 Savoie, Claude de, comte de Tende, 215 Honorat de, count of Tende, 142, 144 scandalous books, control of, 302 Scorbiac, Guichard de, 125, 196, 197 Sealy, R.J., 46 Secret des finances, le, 246, 247 S´eguier, Antoine, 177 Jean, 243 Louis, 99 Pierre, 267 Pierre II, 243, 244 S´egur, Jacques de, baron de Pardaillan, 193 seigneurial offices, 96 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 37, 46, 55, 322 Seneca, Marcus Annaeus, 37, 42 Senegas, sieur, 125 Senlis, 77

bailliage of, 77 Senneterre, Antoine de, 267 Sens bailliage of, 90 Serres, 238 Serve, Jean (Captain), 212 Servin, Louis, 339 Seurre, Michel de, 267, 318 Seyne, 336 Seyssel, Claude de, 185 S´ezanne bailliage of, 77 Shakespeare, William, 205 simony, 253 Socrates, 366 Solomon, 347 Solon, 262 Sommain, Claude de, sieur de Claiville, 236 Sparta, 37, 58 spes, 43, 55 Sponde, Jean de, 38 St Bartholomew, massacre of, 76, 108, 152, 187, 198, 201, 203, 258 Stafford, Sir Edward (1552–1604), 337, 346 Stoicism, 42 Strozzi, Pierre, 251 sumptuary laws, 4 surintendant des finances, 28, 107, 109, 165–67, 230, See also Belli`evre, Pomponne de Switzerland, 86 Tacitus, 155, 362, 363 tailles, 32, 104, 159, 165–67, 170, 173, 174, 177, 181, 222, 275, 331 and Marseille, 330 in Dauphin´e, 220–25, 222 receveurs, 277, 279 reform of, 102, 105, 358, 377 taille r´eelle, 105–7, 220–25, 257 Taix, Guillaume de, 7, 82, 83, 92, 94, 99, 100, 103, 292, 293 Talon, Omer, 41 Talpin, Jean, 186 Tarascon, 213, 219 Tarbes, 245 taverns, 4 taxation. See also tailles reduction of, 180 rumours about increased, 179 temperantia, 49, 52 The Netherlands, 117, 157 Duch revolt an example, 181 Theodosius, 278 Theopompus, 94 Theseus, 262 Thom´e, Franc¸ois, 179

Index Thouars, Pierre de, 103 Tiberias, Emperor, 155 Tiercelin, Adrien de, sieur de Brosses, 90 Tillet, Jean du (?-1570), 271 timor, 43, 50, 57, 58 Tiron abbot of, 46 tithes, 326, 327, 332 Toulouse, 39, 144, 189, 334 archbishop of, 125, 132 capitouls of, 207 cathedral St-Etienne, 260 commissioners’ visit (1582), 331 ecclesiastical province of, 298 juge mage, 260 provost of the cathedral of, 101 university, 294 Touraine, 75, 87 Tournemine, Ren´e de, baron de La Hunaudaye, 162 Tours, 83, 172, 230 cahiers from, 325 ecclesiastical province of, 298 traite foraine, 161, 171 traites domanialles, 181 tranquillitas, 42 Trans, 218 treason. See l`ese-majest´e tr´esoriers de l’Epargne, 279 tristitia, 51 Troyes, 83, 160, 292 dean of the cathedral at, 82, 99 grands jours, 274 grands jours in, 96, 273 handbills circulating in, 79 protest against cloth duties, 317 Turenne. See La Tour, Henri de Tyard, Pontus de, sieur de Bissy, 46 tyranny, 2, 255 usury, 4 Uz`es, 138, 149, 150 Valence, 212, 213, 221, 223 bishop of, 125 Valence, bishop of. See Lasseran, Jean de Valerius Maximus, 281

423

Vallongues, 173 Valois, Franc¸ois de, duke of Alenc¸on (then duke of Anjou) (1554–84), 30, 69, 110, 124, 158, 300, 342 and Flanders campaign, 233, 234, 235 and negotiations at Fleix, 230–38 Henri de, duke of Angoulˆeme (the Grand Prieur), 47, 140, 216, 219, 330, 331 Marguerite de, queen of Navarre, 47, 188, 189, 193, 247 and pacification in Guyenne, 203–5 Vannes, 324, 334 Venice, 75, 120 Vermandois bailliage of, 84 Versoris (Le Tornœur), Pierre, 119, 121, 122, 252, 254 V´etus, Jean, 154 Vienne, 207, 221, 334 archbishop of, 100, 132, 351 ecclesiastical province of, 298 Vienne, Claude-Antoine de, sieur de Clervant, 236, 342 Vignolles, Fulcrand de, 200 Villars, Pierre de, 100, 132, 207, 267, 318, 351 Villeneuve, Claude de, marquis de, 218 Villequier, Ren´e de, 104, 105 Villeroy. See Neufville, Nicolas de Vindiciae contra Tyrannos, le, 255 virtues, cardinal, 50 intellectual, 48 moral, 48, 49, 54, 59 theological, 50 Vitr´e, 229 Vivarais, 138, 203, 211 Voisin, Henri Lancelot, sieur de La Popelini`ere, 73, 113 voluntas, 42 vows, 86, 109, 115 Waad, William, 246 Walsingham, Sir Francis (c.1532–90), 246 Yates, Frances, 53