Warrior Pursuits. Noble culture and civil conflict in Early Modern France

Abstract

Brian Sandberg’s book about noble culture and civil war during the first half of the seventeenth century is a remarkable work, in a way close to Ellery Schalk’s From Valor to Pedigree (Princeton, 1986) and David Parrot’s Richelieu’s Army (Cambridge, 2001). In this work of military, political and social history, focused on the provinces of Languedoc and Guyenne, Sandberg asks how violent noble practices influenced noble culture, royal administration and the evolution of civil wars, which were frequent during this period. This book underlines how much we have to be wary of the concept, expounded by Max Weber, known as the monopoly on legitimate violence. The permanent royal army was not the proof of a complete royal monopoly. Officially, the King used to choose agents, which were part of the confusion des pouvoirs, defined by Bernard Barbiche as governors, lieutenants généraux de province, or marshals of France. These choices were not always those of the King. Brian Sandberg puts in evidence the major role of clientage from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and insists on the interaction of godfathering, friendship and kinship (Was the reference to French contemporary sociologist Pierre Bourdieu useful in a French Modern History study, while Sandberg’s conclusions would have been the same without that?). These numerous interactions were potential threats for royal authority. Henri II de Montmorency was frequently a godfather in catholic christenings, which helped him to strengthen and enlarge an already strong clientele, inherited from his father and his grandfather, who were both constables of France. This local power explains why his execution after a rebellion in 1632 was seen as essential for royal authority to Louis XIII’s and Richelieu’s minds. This example enlightens us the fate of the second marshal of Biron (confused with his father, dead in 1592), who was also sentenced to death in 1602 after having tried to build a conspiracy against Henry IV.