Abstract
What enabled one man to become the audacious and redoubtable leader of a prolonged urban rebellion that transformed the government of a major seventeenth-century French provincial town? In the pages that follow, I will provide some preliminary answers to this question. The town was La Rochelle, a seaport of twenty thousand inhabitants and a heavily fortified Calvinist outpost dominating the wild, marine west country of France. The rebellion was an ensemble of increasingly violent conflicts from February to August 1614, which pitted a coalition of unenfranchised merchant entrepreneurs and artisans seeking electoral access to civic offices against the one-hundred-member town council, long dominated by men from the city's oldest and wealthiest Calvinist merchant families. The council, with the strong support of La Rochelle's Calvinist church consistory, refused to relinquish exclusive control over management of civic affairs, the selection of new council members, and the staffing of subordinate municipal posts. The rebels capitalized on deep popular support within La Rochelle's large laboring population and exercised strong influence over key civic militia units. They effectively com-
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