Stability in the Urban Community in a Time of War: Police, Protestantism and Poor Relief in Nantes during the French Wars of Religion, 1562-89

Abstract

Traditionally, the French Wars of Religion of the later sixteenth century were associated with disorder, violence and rebellion in the greater cities of the realm. Recent historiography shows that this picture is not always the case in the middling and smaller-sized cities, where stability, cooperation with the crown and strong civic cultures caused them to be spared many of the excesses of war and violence. This study of Nantes shows that the period between the end of the first civil war of 1562-3 and the Catholic League rebellion of 1589 saw great efforts, by Crown and city élites acting in concert, to promote order and good governance in the urban community, through developments in the theoretical and practical concept known as police. Police had at its heart moral and material administration, for the good of the whole common weal. In Nantes, in accordance with this concept, great efforts were made to maintain the dominant religious culture of Catholicism and to safeguard the social economy, through provisioning and poor relief. It involved also the wide dissemination of responsibility for order, through many strata of the urban population. The result was relative peace and stability in Nantes during the reigns of Charles IX and Henri III.