Pattern for Nobility: The Comte de Brienne

Abstract

AbstractThe Comte de Brienne (1595-1666), soldier, bureaucrat, secrétaire d'Etat under Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII, Anne d'Autriche, and Louis XIV, wrote, ca. 1661, memoirs in which it appears (1) that he took seriously the principles of feudal polity, (2) that he sought to incarnate the ideal feudal vassal and expected his noble contemporaries to do so, and (3) that while such contemporary fictions as the heroes of d'Urfé and of Corneille were exemplified in fact, the fact was already an anachronism in morality and in politics.