French Crown Research Articles

The Gondi: Family Strategy and Survival in Early Modern France

The Florentine Gondi family owed their spectacular rise at the French court of the sixteenth century to the patronage of Catherine de Medici. Their enemies were many and vocal. Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme, detested Albert de Gondi: he was, wrote the memoirist, ‘sly, cunning, deceitful, corrupt, a great liar and dissimulator’. Albert, count then duke of Retz, is best known for his alleged involvement in plotting the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and via the anti-Italian invective that followed. As Joanna Milstein’s meticulous study demonstrates, however, there is far more to the Gondi story than that event. Albert’s father, Antoine de Gondi, settled in Lyon in the early years of the sixteenth century, bought himself a title and married the daughter of better-established immigrants the Pierrevive (formerly Pietraviva). While Albert made his way up the secular ranks, his brother Pierre entered the Church, becoming bishop of Paris, confessor to Catherine de Medici and finally a cardinal. A second branch of the Gondi maintained business interests in textiles, spices and banking. In the second half of the sixteenth century they became financiers for the French crown.

Medieval Emergencies and the Contemporary Debate

The contemporary debate on emergencies and the state of exception often relies on historical examples. Yet, the most recent discussions on the state of exception (a legal construct that deals with emergencies) also assume its modern inception. This article shows that medieval France formulated its own state of exception, meant to deal with emergencies, based on the legal principle of necessity. This article has two purposes. First, it challenges the historical narrative inherent in the contemporary debate, which assumes the modern inception of the state of exception. Second, it reinforces the trepidation with which many scholars today view the uses and abuses of the state of exception. This article does so by showing that the French crown used and abused the medieval principle of necessity in ways similar to current uses of the state of exception; it served similar purposes. Just as some scholars fear today, the French medieval state of exception often served as a pretext meant to change the legal order, turning the exception into the ordinary. The French crown used the state of exception to enhance its power, and it was central in the long process of building the early-modern French state.

Restituting Church Buildings and Negotiating Church Factions: Missionary Mapmakers and the Making of Local Networks (1712−1716)

At the turn of the 18th century, the Kangxi emperor initiated a large project to map the vast territories of the Qing. The land surveys that ensued were executed by teams of Qing officials and European missionaries, most of them French Jesuits first sent to China in 1685 and actively supported by the French crown. Early 18th century Jesuit publications foster a much-heralded claim that these missionary-mapmakers drew on their status of imperial envoys during the surveys to locally advance the position of the Catholic church. This article strives to explore the formation of such local networks by these missionaries as they passed through the cities and towns of the Chinese provinces. On the basis of archival material, details emerge of contacts with local Qing administrators and Chinese Christians, and of attempts to purchase and recover local churches. This is then discussed against the background of the Rites Controversy, in an attempt to evaluate how such local networks relate to the rivalry between missionaries of different orders. The article emphasizes that there was (and perhaps is) no such thing as “pure science” by underscoring that important technical achievements such as the Qing mapping project are often shaped by complex networks and historical contingencies.

The ‘New Science of Commerce’ in the Holy Roman Empire: Véron de Forbonnais's Elémens du commerce and its German Readers

SummaryThis essay aims to study the impact made by Véron de Forbonnais's Elémens du commerce on the development of economic thought in the German Empire. Starting from the 1755 translation of the Elémens, construed here as an aspect of the gemeinnützig-oekonomische Aufklärung, it will examine the reception of the work in cultural and political terms. The analysis will thus focus first on the German universities, where a renewed teaching of Polizei transposed Forbonnais's theoretical ideas into a new ‘science of the state’ centred on economic and commercial mechanisms. Secondly, the political reading of the Elémens during the Seven Years’ War and in the years of Kaunitz's government in Vienna will be taken into consideration. The Journal de commerce published in Brussels will serve as a pathway towards understanding the complex cultural transfer between France and the Empire that Forbonnais's work facilitated: the Elémens were in fact variously used as the manifesto of a new political and economic alliance between the French Crown and the court of Vienna and as theoretical support of Habsburg politics which, in the second half of Maria Theresa's reign, were committed to the principles of free trade and anti-corporatism.

All’indomani del grande Scisma d’Occidente. Jean Le Fèvre canonista al servizio dei Valois e il trattato De planctu bonorum in risposta a Giovanni da Legnano by Alessandro Fabbri (review)

Reviewed by: All’indomani del grande Scisma d’Occidente. Jean Le Fèvre canonista al servizio dei Valois e il trattato De planctu bonorum in risposta a Giovanni da Legnano by Alessandro Fabbri Thomas M. Izbicki All’indomani del grande Scisma d’Occidente. Jean Le Fèvre canonista al servizio dei Valois e il trattato De planctu bonorum in risposta a Giovanni da Legnano. By Alessandro Fabbri. (Florence: Edifir Firenze Edizioni. 2013. Pp. 317. €22,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-7970-625-4.) The Great Western Schism (1378–1417) began with disputed papal elections but soon erupted into pamphlet warfare. Urban VI (1378-1389), the Roman claimant, secured support from the jurists Baldus de Ubaldis and Giovanni da Legnano. An early reply on behalf of Clement VII (1378–94), the Avignon claimant, was written by Jean Le Fèvre, a Benedictine with training in canon law at the University of Paris. Le Fèvre became abbot of St. Vaast and entered the service of the French crown during the reign of Charles V (1364–80). His De planctu bonorum, completed in 1379, was specifically directed against the De fletu ecclesiae of the Bolognese professor Giovanni da Legnano. In this book, Alessandro Fabbri provides an overview of the origins of the Schism, the French response to the disputed papal election of 1378, and Le Fèvre’s own career and his polemical work. An important part of this book is Fabbri’s edition of his subject’s tract. Fabbri sketches the controversial conclave of 1378, the role of the French crown in ecclesiastical politics, and Le Fèvre’s earlier life before settling into his study of the polemics about the papal election. An important part of this study is [End Page 599] an outline of the differing casus, or summaries, on which the polemics were based. Giovanni da Legnano used summaries open to an Urbanist interpretation, whereas Le Fèvre used one favorable to Clement. It included an accusation that Bartolomeo Prignano, who became Urban VI, was involved in whipping up the Roman mob to demand choice of a pope from Rome or at least from Italy. Le Fèvre used a dialogue format, with Bononiensis presenting Giovanni’s argument and Parisiensis replying point by point. Among the issues addressed were whether fear of the mob cancelled Prignano’s election as coerced, whether the temporary acceptance of Urban by the cardinals validated the election, and whether the cardinals’ actions should be interpreted from the viewpoint of moral courage or its lack. Giovanni downplayed the element of fear and underlined the temporary acceptance of Urban. Le Fèvre argued the opposite case, describing Prignano as a mover of mob violence and its beneficiary. He did have to find excuses for the cardinals, who had not risked martyrdom on behalf of the Church, preferring their own safety. Le Fèvre’s tract was not widely circulated. Fabbri’s edition, thoroughly documented, is based on a single manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Latin 1472). One apologist for Clement VII, Pierre de Barrière, made use of the work of the venerabilis abbas, although differing with him on some matters. Fabbri was rewarded for his service to the crown, including his work as an apologist, with promotion to the bishopric of Chartres in 1380. Charles V died in the same year; and Le Fèvre passed into the service of Charles’s brother, Louis of Anjou. The bishop undertook diplomatic missions for Louis and then for Yolande of Aragon, his widow. He remained faithful to the Angevins, who had a claim to the crown of Sicily as well as a role in French politics, to his own death of January 11, 1390. As a loyal servant of Anjou, he even occasionally opposed the interests of Jean, duke of Berri and another brother of Charles V, and even of Clement VII, the man he had argued was the true pope. Fabbri’s book gives us insight into the Clementist case in the Schism. Thomas M. Izbicki Rutgers University Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Possession and Dispossession in Corporate New France, 1600–1663: Debunking a “Juridical History” and RevisitingTerra Nullius

Following Jacques Cartier's voyages up and down the St. Lawrence River in 1534, 1535–36 and 1541–42, French interest in the region surged. This interest was confined to the region's potential deposits of minerals, and then diverted realistically to the trade of furs, before ultimately, during the seventeenth century, it diversified to take into account the prospect of agricultural smallholding. So confined, this interest did not account for customary tenure and systems of property relations among indigenous inhabitants; generally these were matters avoided by merchants, traders, missionaries, and early settlers until the expediencies of settlement on the ground required otherwise. These were matters for which, in New France, the companies in charge devised no coherent policy. These were matters for which, at home, the French Crown was no beacon of advice either, meting out meager and inconsistent policies of empire before 1663, preferring instead to endorse trade monopolies while preparing for disputes with neighboring nations with competing designs to the New World.

Anthony D. Wright. The Divisions of French Catholicism, 1629–1645: “The Parting of the Ways.”

According to the editor, the goal of Ashgate's “Catholic Christendom” series is to draw attention to how developments in the Catholic Church in the early modern period went on to shape modern Catholicism. Anthony D. Wright's book reflects this goal by beginning with the question of the “alleged dechristianization of France” (p. 3). This question became urgent when church attendance dropped after World War II, and French intellectuals began seeking historical, political, and sociological explanations for the decline. Among the historical explanations to surface was the problem of Jansenism, a Catholic reform movement that had distinguished absolutist France from other countries by dividing Catholics and spawning opposition to the French crown in the eighteenth century. Wright weighs in on this explanation by suggesting that the ultra-rigorism espoused by French Jansenists was a source of dechristianization in France: “Amid [Jansenism's] protean manifestations it had, arguably, a core of moral ultra-rigorism, not least in the confessional, and this could well have contributed to a cumulative alienation of many, though obviously not all, laity by the time of the French Revolution” (p. 4). After positing this hypothesis, Wright notes that the problem of Jansenism has always been a divisive one in French history. To get to the bottom of this schism, he sets out to examine its origins: “To understand [Jansenism's] genesis and original identity thus remains imperative, despite the vast literature which it has engendered, from its own earliest years to the present” (p. 5).

George Chastelain and the Language of Burgundian Historiography

The court chronicler George Chastelain developed a complex language to express the interests of his patron, the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good (and, later, Charles the Bold), in establishing increased independence from the French crown. Because the duke was legally beholden to the crown by vassalage, this involved crafting a lexical strategy in which the French king was diminished, even as the ideal of French kingship remained intact, and even glorified, and is suggestive of the two-bodies theory of medieval jurisprudence. Chastelain’s strategy can be discerned in specific words and phrases that he uses in conjunction with the French crown; it can also be seen in his reformulation of the traditional organological metaphor of state. In general, this effort was an attempt to address the question of power and legitimacy indirectly, through the tenets of the res publica, without tarnishing the image of French kingship itself.

Le Sueur in the Sioux country: rethinking France's Indian alliances in the Pays d'en Haut

This essay explores the career of Pierre Charles Le Sueur, an explorer, fur trader, soldier, and diplomat in the nominal service of the French Crown at the turn of the eighteenth century among the Indian peoples of the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi Valley, the Pays d'en Haut. It uses Le Sueur's story to suggest a new explanation for the instability of France's Indian alliances in the Pays d'en Haut that brings current ethnohistorical accounts – which have largely emphasized the diversity of, and conflicts of interest between, Indian villages in the region – into conversation with revisionist works on Louis XIV's France which have similarly deconstructed monolithic portrayals of the “absolutist” state with which these peoples engaged. Le Sueur's story – his transition from a contraband trader, or coureur de bois, in the Pays d'en Haut to a prominent agent of French empire – reveals the layers of bitter political infighting within New France and Louisiana over control of the lucrative fur trade; the gambles and deception that often shaped the dealings of colonial agents with officials at Versailles; and, most importantly, the destabilizing effects that their schemes could have upon the Pays d'en Haut as trade routes conveying powerful means of war into the continental interior consequently shifted, offsetting tenuous balances of power between the very Indian peoples the Crown hoped to galvanize as allies. Exploring Le Sueur's risk-laden and ultimately ill-fated attempts to integrate the powerful Sioux peoples of the Upper Mississippi into existing networks of trade and diplomacy that had long been centered upon their enemies in the Great Lakes region reveals these alliance systems as the often tumultuous entanglement of two equally complex systems: the village politics of the Pays d'en Haut and patron–client networks linking these spaces with the court of Versailles.

Drama & Demigods: Kingship and Charisma in Shakespeare’s England

Shakespearean charisma, with its medieval roots in both religion and politics, served as a precursor to Max Weber’s later understanding of the term. The on-stage portrayal of charismatic kingship in the twilight of the Tudor dynasty was not coincidental; facing the imminent death of a queen, the English nation was concerned about the future of the monarchy. Through the depiction of the production and deterioration of royal charisma, Shakespeare presents the anxiety of a population aware of the latent dangers of charismatic authority; while Elizabeth managed to perpetuate an unprecedented degree of long-term charismatic rule, there could be no certainty that her successor would be similarly capable. Shakespeare’s second tetralogy — known as the Henriad — examines this royal charisma as it appears both under crisis and in the process of what Weber would later characterize as routinization. While Henry IV (Bolingbroke) originally makes use of charisma to ensure his succession to Richard II’s throne, he loses his charismatic authority in the process. Henry V, by contrast, makes use of deliberate crisis — his claim to the French crown — in order to restore royal charisma. Henry V’s success, however, cannot last, and his son’s reign is a disastrous reminder that charisma is, as Weber will later argue, inherently unstable.

Fashion Beyond Versailles: Consumption and Design in Seventeenth-Century France by Donna J. Bohanan

précurseurs des notions contemporaines d’inter-pénétrabilité culturelle. Espérons que ce livre, érudit et facile à lire, essentiel pour enseigner cette littérature, fera rééditer des romans difficiles à trouver. Davidson College (NC) Catherine Slawy-Sutton Society and Culture edited by Frederick Toner BOHANAN, DONNA J. Fashion Beyond Versailles: Consumption and Design in SeventeenthCentury France. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8071-4521-0. Pp. 154. $40. This study looks at objects from the perspective of how they reflect the social evolution of the nobles and elites of Dauphiné, a province located on the outer edge of the seat of power at Versailles and the growing center of commerce in Paris. While researching the local politics, Bohanan came across inventories of household goods owned by wealthy Dauphinois, who were required to submit these legally-mandated lists upon the death of the head-of-household for the purpose of determining the amount of a tax, the taille, owed to the French crown. These inventories, prepared by official notaries between 1668 and 1719, are among the documents kept in Grenoble in the Archives départementales. Over time, the objects in the inventories suggest the desire for upper mobility and distinction, as the elites engaged in furnishing their households with items that went beyond the basic necessities. In chapter 1, “Le Pays, Nobles, Taste, Fashion, and Politics,” Bohanan describes the context in which consumerism was becoming a motivating force. She enriches her discussion by incorporating studies written by other scholars who have researched the indicators of social status in the latter part of the seventeenth century and the early decades of the eighteenth century. The second chapter, “Le Luxe, Splendor, and Luxury,” opens with the question, “How exactly did material culture define elite society at the frontier of France?” (30). The author gives examples of acquired luxury goods and their provenance, such as Turkish rugs and Persian carpets. Some of the notaries described furnishings in detail. Especially interesting are the fancy beds, lit en housse, lit à impériale, and lit à duchesse, all three illustrated with black-and-white sketches (43, 45). Tapestries, typical of earlier centuries, were replaced by paintings, often of a secular subject, such as a stilllife of flowers or the portrait of a distinguished ancestor. Chapter 3, “Régularité, Color Schemes, and Matched Sets,” presents interior design elements that are quite modern in the sense of an effort to create an overall effect. The inventory of the Franquières family lists “eighteen chair covers in crimson damask” and “a twenty-piece set of bed hangings in crimson with gold and silver trim” (68). Bohanan points out that coordinated color schemes and unity of style were evidence of wealth and taste. The fourth chapter, “Commodité, Comforts, Convenience, and Innovation in Furniture and Lighting,” focuses on the practical side of furnishings, especially comfortable chairs. One example is the fauteuil de commodité à crémaillère, which was constructed with a movable device that lowered the back to a reclining position. The sofa was a relative late-comer, not appearing on inventories before the late seventeenth century. “À Table, 1276 FRENCH REVIEW 86.6 Dining, and Sociability,” the fifth and final chapter, is an interesting description of the transition from medieval cooking to the sophisticated menu and dinnerware that are the foundation of modern French cuisine. Drawing on the research of other scholars, Bohanan describes some of the earliest cookbooks and the kitchen utensils in one of the inventories: “stockpots of several sizes, pie or tart dishes, molds for biscuits and pastry” (95) along with several more items for specific uses. The author concludes this chapter by observing that “what these stocks of kitchenware, silver, and linens reveal is that elite families participated in an international culture, based in France, of food snobbery and refined table rituals, all of which was served up in an exclusive and intimate setting” (113). This tradition continues to define France’s reputation for sophisticated, elegant dining. The thirteenpage bibliography offers many interesting studies dealing with French interior design, the concept of luxury, and fine cuisine. This work is a well-researched and fascinating read. Ohio University Lois Vines KEATON, TRICA DANIELLE, T. DENEAN...

Henry VIII's French crown: his royal entry into Tournai revisited

On 25 September 1513 Henry VIII made his formal entry into Tournai as king of France. An examination of this entry provides an insight into how seriously Henry took his claim to the throne of France. This article uses a range of sources and looks at the entry from the perspective of both Henry and the townspeople, and systematically analyses the different elements that formed a ceremonial entry during the period. It demonstrates that a royal entry was a moment of communication between ruler and ruled, and that Henry used the ceremony to develop good relations with Tournai's ruling elite.

Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria: A Mirror to the World by Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe (review)

Reviewed by: Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria: A Mirror to the World by Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe Julie Codell (bio) Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria: A Mirror to the World by Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe; pp. 552. London: British Museum, 2010. $87.89 cloth. The Recent interest in Victorian material culture will be greatly enhanced by this huge, beautifully illustrated (with over five hundred illustrations, four hundred of which are in colour), and scrupulously documented study of Victorian jewellery that reflects new directions in museum and fashion studies. A mark of social status, taste, and economics, jewellery plays a complicated role in culture. Victorian protocol for wearing jewellery carried rich associations with love, mourning, and social hierarchies. Traditional studies of Victorian jewellery are rooted in archival histories of styles, revivals, and wealthy wearers. This book goes far beyond previous studies to examine the social life of jewellery and its symbolic and metaphoric meanings in social life, literature, and art. While filled with technical information, the book does not categorize jewellery by materials or techniques but by social functions and uses. It embraces all jewellery displayed at international exhibitions, museums, and shops from Europe, North America, and Asia, with a special focus on jewellery’s role in cultural exchanges between France and Britain. The book’s gorgeous reproductions and detailed commentary profoundly reflect the omnipresence of jewellery in portraiture and literary painting. The authors scoured letters, diaries, fiction, newspapers (the Times and New York Times online), as well as records of international exhibitions, global jewellery production and consumption, the domestication of exotica, and even cheap and seemingly ephemeral jewellery to reveal the fluidity of taste across social classes, from high-end wearers to those wearing imitation jewellery. All classes of jewellery were collected by the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum), the Victorian measure of an object’s [End Page 218] cultural worth. The book’s themes include marketing (trade journals, distribution, new and secondhand markets); shopping, in a variety of shops; the globalization of jewellery production and consumption; and jewellery’s role in shaping national identity. The book contributes to the knowledge of jewellery in Victorian painting, a thread running throughout the volume, thus supplementing Marcia Pointon’s excellent Brilliant Effects (2010) in its detail about pre-Victorian jewellery and art. The first chapter focuses on Queen Victoria, whose love of jewellery embodies all the book’s themes. Her jewellery measured her life events, and she set the fashion through jewels worn on public occasions. She also affected fashion throughout Europe as her children married Continental monarchs and received her royal gifts of jewellery. The royal family permitted their jewels to be displayed in public. Royal ledgers listed every piece of jewellery, including those set with babies’ teeth as well as pebbles from near Balmoral. The Queen collected microphotographic miniaturized images set in jewellery, including enamelled miniatures. Purchases were meant to support native production and commerce, including Scottish, Irish, and colonial pieces—her Jenny Lind comb revived the dying tortoise-shell industry in Sheffield. Albert’s support of British design and manufacture similarly affected jewellery production. Chapter 2 focuses on the significance of jewellery as a sign of wealth and on rules for wearing jewellery, rules that cut across all social strata, a trickle-down effect thanks to the Victorian appearance of ready-made jewellery. In the 1850s, both Victoria and Empress Eugénie modernized state jewels, turning them into signs of power and nationhood. Gere and Rudoe inventory Eugenie’s private collection—objects she took with her when she fled France in 1870—as well as courtesans’ expensive jewels, which raised their social status in France and Britain. French crown jewels sold by Tiffany’s in Paris enriched the wives of American entrepreneurs. The authors describe revivals of eighteenth-century jewellery, the role of jewellery as an art form, and the level of ostentation in jewellery fashions: austere in the 1840s and ‘50s, then richly displayed later. Hair ornaments of the 1830s and ‘40s gave way to 1850s diadems and then to diamond pieces that could be dismantled and rearranged for different occasions. All these trends contributed to “a democratization...

Les rois, les poètes et les psaumes. Sur quelques contextes des premières mise en vers français du Psautier (c. 1540–c. 1550)

The translation of the Psalms into French verse during the Renaissance is often studied through the prism of Reformation spiritual dynamics. It is indeed in Geneva at the heart of the Reformed Church that the Psalms experienced an enduring success. However, one should not forget that Clément Marot offered his versed translation of the Psalms to Francis I, the Catholic king of France, and that, therefore, a similar work explicitly crafted for the spiritual revival of catholic believers could have also been presented to Henry II. The French monarchy did not seize this opportunity that presented itself between 1540 and 1560 to sponsor the creation of a French verse catholic psalm book. Various reasons can be linked to the failure of a timely use of the Psalms by the French Crown and a much too tardy understanding of the poetic genius of the Psalms.

Between crown and commerce: Marseille and the early modern Mediterranean

Between Crown and Commerce examines the relationship between French royal statecraft, mercantilism, and civic republicanism in the context of the globalizing economy of the early modern Mediterranean world. This is the story of how the French Crown and local institutions accommodated one another as they sought to forge acceptable political and commercial relationships with one another for the common goal of economic prosperity. Junko Therese Takeda tells this tale through the particular experience of Marseille, a port the monarchy saw as key to commercial expansion in the Mediterranean. At first, Marseille's commercial and political elites were strongly opposed to the Crown's encroaching influence. Rather than dismiss their concerns, the monarchy cleverly co-opted their civic traditions, practices, and institutions to convince the city's elite of their important role in Levantine commerce. Chief among such traditions were local ideas of citizenship and civic virtue. As the city's stature throughout the Mediterranean grew, however, so too did the dangers of commercial expansion as exemplified by the arrival of the bubonic plague. Marseille's citizens reevaluated citizenship and merchant virtue during the epidemic, while the French monarchy's use of the crisis as an opportunity to further extend its power reanimated republican vocabulary. Between Crown and Commerce deftly combines a political and intellectual history of state-building, mercantilism, and republicanism with a cultural history of medical crisis. In doing so, the book highlights the conjoined history of broad transnational processes and local political change.

Politics and Religion in Early Bourbon France, ed. Alison Forrestal and Eric Nelson

The editors of this collection argue that the period 1589 to 1629, sandwiched between the wars of religion and the later seventeenth century, has rarely been treated as worthy of study in its own right. These essays offer a valuable corrective, reconsidering the period's significance, and what it suggests about continuity or change over a longer time-span. Bringing together scholars from France, Ireland, England and North America, the collection offers much to those interested in early modern France. Alain Tallon's essay emphasises the significance of Henri IV's absolution for politics in Rome, France's international standing, and Henri's authority. The absolution, a victory for Clement VIII over the Congregation of the Holy Office, was informed by difficult Papal-Spanish relations. It gave the Gallican church greater freedom of manoeuvre and allowed France to recover influence within the papal court and other Italian states. Tallon demonstrates how Henry's absolution and his support of Catholic reform marked an important transition in Franco-Papal relations. While his successors staunchly defended the rights of the French Crown, they did so in the framework of a Tridentine Church.

A Sidelight on Grotius in Paris

AbstractThis article consists of an annotated edition and translation of a previously unpublished Latin letter to G. J. Vossius from Christianus Ravius, refuting the accusation made by Johann Seyffert in his pamphlet attacking Grotius, Classicum Belli Sacri adversus Hugonem Grotium Papistam ([Amsterdam], 1642), that Grotius, while representative of the Swedish government in Paris, had advised Ravius to convert to Catholicism. The historical introduction outlines the details of and probable reasons for Seyffert's published attacks on Grotius, Grotius's attitude towards those attacks (as expressed in his correspondence), and the implications for his relationship with the Swedish government and Baron von Degenfeld, commander of the German Protestant mercenary soldiers in the service of the French crown. It also recounts what is known of Ravius's stay in Paris during which he met Grotius, and raises the question why Ravius delayed making a response to Seyffert until well after Grotius was dead.

Environmental Change and Globalization in Seventeenth-Century France: Dutch Traders and the Draining of French Wetlands (Arles, Petit Poitou)

SummaryBetween 1599 and the end of the 1650s, the French Crown sustained a policy of land reclamation at a large scale. It was led by the French aristocracy who were helped by representatives of the merchant elites of Amsterdam, such as Hieronimus van Uffelen and Jean Hoeufft. The works in both Arles (Provence) and Petit Poitou (Poitou) show that land reclamation involved a radical change in society, reinforced the authority of the Crown in the areas concerned, and disrupted the former social balances built around the marshes. Thus, land reclamation aroused several conflicts which revealed its deep impact on the environment. So, this article demonstrates how the making of the modern state, backed by the development of European trade and banking, caused ecological and social changes by connecting the political and financial powers on a European scale.

No Home in Exile? Elizabethan Catholics in Paris

A sense of homelessness is generic to exile, yet the homeless state of Elizabethan Catholic exiles in Paris was distinct from that of their coreligionists and contemporaries elsewhere in Europe. Although several hundred English Catholics were in Paris in the 1580s, they lacked their own institutional centre in the city. This shaped the character of their experience overseas and their relationship with their Parisian hosts. Without a dedicated centre, they found a number of different ways to establish a niche for themselves in the French capital, in many ways interacting directly with their hosts. Some of this large group also chose to change their legal status abroad by seeking to be naturalised by the French Crown. Whilst always remaining oriented towards England and hoping or working for Catholic restoration at home, their homeless state in exile encouraged a number of different engagements with Catholic France.

Darryl Dee . Expansion and Crisis in Louis XIV's France: Franche‐Comté and Absolute Monarchy, 1674–1715 . (Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe, number 13.) Rochester, N.Y. : University of Rochester Press . 2009 . Pp. xi, 245. $80.00.

Since the 1980s the traditional picture of the reign of Louis XIV as the embodiment of early modern “absolutism” has been transformed. In place of centralized authority triumphing over localism and aristocratic privilege, we are offered the picture of a conservative regime upholding established provincial and corporate elites and buying acquiescence through compromise and collaboration. Yet two questions linger in what seems a wholesale renversement of historical assumptions about the Sun King's government: key studies that have contributed to this revisionism have been based on analysis of the pays d'états, those powerful, outlying provinces whose quasi-autonomy and privileges had usually been respected by the French crown; the arguments for collaboration work well in the first decades of the reign, but from the later 1680s Louis XIV's government, driven by warfare on an unprecedented scale, embarked on a series of fiscal policies that attacked elite privilege and autonomy. Darryl Dee's new book addresses both these questions. Franche-Comté, conquered by French arms in 1674, was far removed from the privileged status of a pays d'état such as Languedoc. The process of integrating Franche-Comté and its elites into the monarchy required much more deliberate policy initiatives from the center, and these were imposed from the 1670s through to the end of the reign. Dee demonstrates that in this context, for a territory under military occupation and with no presumptions that its privileges were non-negotiable, Louis's government had teeth and was not afraid to show them to local elites who misinterpreted concessions for weakness. The magistrates of Besançon, hitherto elected by popular suffrage, believed that they could bargain with their new ruler for the preservation of municipal autonomy. In 1676 that body was suppressed without formality, and a new civic government established on the pattern of other lesser cities in Franche-Comté, with limited powers and a narrowly oligarchic membership. The king's council, through the intendant, decided that a body whose members were accountable to the citizens would never prove an effective agent of royal government, while as an additional precaution the range of the activities of the remodeled magistracy was reduced and shared with a bailliage court. Yet at the same time, Besançon, stripped of its privileges, was elevated to the status of provincial capital, hitherto held by Dôle, a change marked by the transfer of the supreme law court, the parlement, to Besançon. These concessions, indicative of a stick and carrot approach by royal government that Dee delineates throughout very effectively, came at a price: Besançon was to pay 300,000 livres over three years in return for its parlement. This was the start of what was to be a progressive, though uneven, escalation in the fiscal demands placed on the territory.