A Provincial Assembly During the League

Abstract

Burgundy as a province was devoted to the League, but not in the most fanatical sense. The reasons for its Leaguer sympathies were numerous: its catholicity—the number of Huguenots, though recently proved to have been larger than at one time supposed, was always small as compared with south-west France—the proximity of the Lorraine influence, the nearness of Spain, and above all the souvenir of the fame of the province in the days of the Sovereign Dukes. The provinces in which the royal power had been most recently imposed were usually against the central government—either leaguer or protestant. Paris, no doubt, seems to contradict this view, but all capitals were more fervently Leaguer than the rest of their provinces, and Paris, as the most populous and unquiet city of France, was simply the arch-leaguer. The members of the parlement and the royal officials who were averse to the league early withdrew from Dijon, and Flavigny in the Auxois became the obvious place for a Royalist gathering. In fact, every other place of any size was, at that stage, Leaguer, and Flavigny had facilities for defence. The formal schism of all the judicial, administrative, and financial machinery followed, as elsewhere, on Henry III's edict from Tours, March 1589, which suspended the parlements from their functions.