Le « jeune fils » et les « mauvais garçons »

Abstract

Philippe de Vigneulles (1471-c 1527) has left two extensive and fascinating documents recording his capture by “bad boys” in Vigneulles, close to Metz, on the night of the 3rd-4th November 1490, his long and painful captivity in the castle of Chauvency and his release in Marville on the 21st December 1941. These documents are contained in his Mémoires and in his Chroniques. As a whole, they are quite similar. A different approach to his account can, however, be based on three archival documents of a judicial nature (covering, respectively, the 18th December 1490, the 22nd January 1491 and the 15th September of the same year). It can be assumed that Philippe had these documents at his disposal when he started his account many years later. The document cannot be understood without consideration of its spatiotemporal background: on the one hand, the armed oppositions between Metz and Lorraine and, on the other, the background of endemic violence made up of private wars and blatant acts of robbery. The matter highlights a central character: Petit Jean de Harcourt, a kind of Raubritter of his time, to whom René II, the Duke of Lorraine, granted the domain of Chauvency, partly on account of his services during the wars of Burgondy.