French Monarch Research Articles

LA BELLE DANSE ON THE HABSBURG COURT STAGE AT THE END OF THE XVII — FIRST THIRD OF THE XVIII CENTURIES

Since its foundation in the first half of the 16th century, the Austrian Habsburg court has focused its cultural attention on Italy. This was due to many factors, among which in the XVI century one can name the undoubted cultural superiority of Italy among other European countries, in the first half of the XVII century — the marriages of the Habsburg emperors with the Mantuan princesses, in the second half of the same century — the competing policy of the Holy Roman Empire towards France; the latter factor also extended to the beginning of the XVIII century. As with other European courts, the dance culture of the Habsburgs began with court ballets, which gradually transformed into stage dance, and the dance turned into a professional one. At the same time, the center of dance culture moved from Italy to France, where already in the first half of the XVII century a set of choreographic techniques arose that raised dance art to a new level. Ballet was a significant interest of the French monarch Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715). This led to the establishment of the world’s first dance academy at the royal court, which played a crucial role in the development and spread of the French style of dance. Therefore, despite the anti-French policy of the Habsburgs, the style developed at Louis XIV’s Royal Academy of Dance and called la belle danse was practiced on the stage of the Vienna Court Theater. The article examines the background, appearance, place, role and significance of la belle danse in productions of the Habsburg court stage using specific examples of theatrical events.

Дипломатична місія чеського короля Вацлава ІІ до французького монарха Філіппа IV Красивого на початку XIV ст.

The purpose of the scientifi c study is to reveal the preconditions and to trace the progress of diplomatic mission organization of the Czech King Václav II to France in order to conclude an alliance agreement with the local monarch Philip IV the Handsome from the Capeting dynasty, directed against the pope Boniface VIII and the German ruler Albrecht I Habsburg. Th e methodological basis of the work is the principles of historicism, objectivity and scientifi c credibility. Historical-systemic and analytical methods have been used. Th e research was prepared on the basis of analysis of sources. It is about documents of the Czech diplomatic mission, as well as about the annals and chronicles that were kept in Prague and in certain re- gions of the Holy Roman Empire. It’s focused on works of leading Czech and German scientists on the outlined issues. Th e scientifi c novelty consists in the detailed clearing up of preconditions of the diplomatic mission organization of the Czech King Václav II to the French king Philip IV the Handsome, clarifying its purpose and probable reasons of fi asco of the action. Conclusions. Vaclav II hoped to fi nd a reliable ally in person of the French monarch who would be able to provide him with assistance in his confrontation with Pope Boniface VIII and German King Albrecht I Habsburg. However, all eff orts of Vaclav II to get closer to Philip IV the Handsome failed. Th e reason of the failure should be sought in the fact that Philip IV the Handsome man- aged to deal with the pope on his own, and the fi ght against Albrecht I Habsburg he did not consider his priority. Although the relationship between German and French kings became cool, however the fi nal line was not passed. Th e position of Philip IV the Handsome could be infl u- enced by family relations of the Capetings with the Neapolitan line of the Anjou family, whose representative claimed the Hungarian throne. One way or another, but the mission to Philip IV the Handsome remained unfi nished, the alliance between the Czech kingdom and France, which Vaclav II so longed for, was not concluded.

A Letter from John III of Sweden to King Charles IX of France: A New Source for the History of the Baltic Wars

The letter of King John III of Sweden to King Charles IX of France from October 13, 1568, covers several subjects of the history of Baltic wars in the second half of the sixteenth century. What is most noticeable among them is the reasons why John III’s brother King Eric XIV was overthrown in September 1568, the plot against John of Finland to hand over Catherine Jagiellon, his wife and sister of Sigismund II Augustus, the Polish king, and grand duke of Lithuania, to the Russian czar Ivan the Terrible, as well as the period when the Northern Seven Years’ War ended. After his accession to the throne, John III faced several problems, which he had to solve. Firstly, the second son of Gustav I of Sweden had to legitimise his ascension in the eyes of the European monarchs, then break the international isolation of the Swedish kingdom and protect himself from internal and external conspiracies. His main goal was to free the imprisoned Eric XIV. The solution to these problems depended directly on stabilising Sweden’s foreign policy position, achievable through reconciliation with a hostile coalition of Denmark, Lübeck, and Poland and building an alliance with the French royal court, which offered mediation to end the hostilities. In the text of the published letter, the Swedish king appeals to the feelings of the French monarch, trying to show the “baseness” and “wickedness” of his elder brother’s policy, but also assures him of sincere friendship, proving the long-standing allied nature of the Swedish-French relations. All this makes the letter of John III to Charles IX a valuable historical source, whose value is fully revealed in the context of Swedish-French, Russian-Swedish and Russian-French relations in the sixteenth century. Published for the first time, it comes from the collection of P. P. Dubrovsky (13, No. 9), Russian National Library (St Petersburg). The article publishes the text of the letter in Latin as well as a translation into Russian.

Neither Duchess of Burgundy nor Archduchess of Austria, but Princess of Asturias: Louis XV of France and the Marriage of his Granddaughter Marie-Louise of Parma

This article analyses the behaviour and interference of Louis XV of France in the face of a possible marriage between his granddaughter, Marie-Louise of Parma, and the Archduke Joseph of Austria, heir to the Empress Maria Theresa. The aim is to discern whether the moral arguments put forward by the French monarch were merely a political excuse to avoid this union or if the fears he expressed were genuine. Other cases of royal marriages prior to this one are examined in order to assess this question, as is the extent to which the sovereign used his role as head of the House of Bourbon to impose his will. The negotiation of the engagement of the princess of Parma reveals how dynastic interests still had a strong presence in eighteenth-century Europe, at a time when the ‘national interest’ prevailed as the dominant political element.

Shaping Language Policy in France. Official Sphere: 8-18th Centuries Legislative Documents (Capitulary, Ordinance, Letters Patent)

The paper looks into historic processes of developing and establishing the state policy of France in the sphere of language, education and culture, reflected in such genres of regulatory documents as capitulary, ordinance, and letters patent. The focus is made on three royal documents, namely the capitulary of Charlemagne “Letter on Promotion of Literary Culture” (“Epistola de litteris colendis”, 787), the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (“Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts”, 1539), issued by Francis I, king of France, and letters patent of Louis XIV, regulating the activities of publishing houses (“Lettres patentes et arrêt du conseil d’État du Roi portant règlement pour la librairie”, 1702). The study aims to reveal formal and content-related features of regulatory documents of the historic period under consideration. Another purpose is to identify the degree of their variability and similarity. The main methods employed in the research were textual and interpretative types of analysis. The fact that the documents compiled on behalf of French monarchs made the focus of our research defines its novelty. The findings showed that this documentation evidences the dawn and further shaping of the French national language, cultural and educational policy. The authors show that these institutional genres were designed to strengthen the royal power in France during the period between the 8th and 18th centuries. From linguistic perspective these documents are a formidable example of how the “discourse of power” emerged and got streamlined.

Performative Polemic: Anti-Absolutist Pamphlets and Their Readers in Late Seventeenth-Century France. By Kathrina Ann LaPorta

This book makes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning study of early modern pamphlet literature and seventeenth-century news and media culture. Combining book history and rhetorical analysis, Kathrina Ann LaPorta reconstructs ‘a literary history’ of the ‘French-language pamphlets that denounced Louis XIV’s absolute monarchy between 1667 and 1715’ (p. 6). Each of the five chapters performs a close reading of a single pamphlet. Together, they demonstrate not only the evolution of anti-absolutist polemic over this period but also the formal diversity of this mode of writing and its multiple approaches to imagining and addressing the audience for such critical discourse. Habsburg diplomat François-Paul de Lisola’s Bouclier d’état et de justice (1667) wields the language of law to refute the French monarch’s dubious legitimation of war, figuring its reader as arbiter and judge of affairs of state. Le Miroir des princes (1667) and Soupirs de la France esclave (1689–90) make use of ‘emotional modes of persuasion’ (p. 69) to portray the Sun King’s expansionist wars as a tragedy of historic proportions and his overreach as a threat to the institution of monarchy itself. Other pamphlets employ satire and burlesque to undermine the king and his government, as in the case of the dialogue of the dead between Innocent XI and Mazarin in L’Alcoran de Louis XIV (1695) and the comic fictional unveiling of the king’s marital life in Le Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696). Through these attentive close readings, LaPorta makes three central arguments about the pamphlets of this period. First and most successfully, she illustrates that, before ‘literature’ existed as an independent category, pamphlet-writing exhibited a high level of craft and creativity, often drawing on the resources of theatre and narrative as well as polemic. Second, LaPorta persuasively challenges the traditional characterization of pamphlets as ‘ephemera’ by showing how their writers positioned them in relation to longer histories of dissent. This could entail intertextual references to older pamphlets, such as the echoing of Fronde-era mazarinades found in L’Alcoran de Louis XIV. Other examples, such as Le Miroir des princes, invite their readers to look back on contemporary events from the vantage point of an imagined posterity. Observing that pamphlets offered up ‘citable’ criticisms which could (in modern parlance) ‘go viral’ or have a legacy in future times (p. 20), LaPorta finally suggests that we read pamphlets as ‘performative’ texts, rhetorically effective counterweights to the official representations of monarchical splendour that elsewhere performatively reinforced kingly power. This key insight about the historical perspective represented in pamphlet-writing could be explored further in a future project examining a chronologically broader corpus, attending more thoroughly to the significant links between mazarinades, these late-seventeenth-century works, and even eighteenth-century anti-monarchist polemic. In the meantime, LaPorta’s first book extends an enticing invitation to read early modern pamphlets with a keener eye.

A Letter from Sigismund II Augustus to King Charles IX of France: Trade Struggle in the Baltic under Ivan the Terrible

The message of the Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke Sigismund II Augustus to the French king Charles IX of France from July 28, 1568, highlights the problem of Polish-French trade controversies, which arose due to the policy of Jagiellon against Russian-French commerce in Narva in the 1560s. Believing that French traders were enriching themselves by supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia, the Polish monarch, in the crisis in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, took measures to cut off trade in Narva and blockade it completely. As a result, French merchant ships sailing to or from Narva were seized by the Polish privateers. It aroused the indignation of Charles IX who, with the help of Charles de Danzay, his ambassador in Denmark, defended the freedom of trade and navigation on the Baltic Sea. The text of the letter appeals to the feelings of the French monarch within the framework of Christian morality, while at the same time trying to show the power and the importance of the Polish king and his state to the Respublica Christiana, and the legitimacy of the tough stance he took on the “Narva navigation”. All this makes the letter from Sigismund II Augustus to Charles IX a valuable historical source whose importance is revealed in through diplomatic correspondence in the Baltic wars of the 1560s. Published for the first time, it comes from the collection of P. P. Dubrovsky (62, № 61), Russian National Library (St Petersburg). The article publishes the text of the letter in Latin as well as a translation into Russian.

Management of injuries on the 16th-century battlefield: Ambroise Paré's contributions to neurosurgery and functional recovery.

During the 1536 siege of Turin in northern Italy, a young French barber-surgeon abandoned the conventional treatment of battle-inflicted wounds, launching a revolution in military medicine and surgical techniques. Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) was born into a working-class Huguenot family in Laval, France, during an era when surgery was not considered a respectable profession. He rose from humble origins as a barber-surgeon, a low-ranked occupation in the French medical hierarchy, to become a royal surgeon (chirurgien ordinaire du Roi) serving 4 consecutive French monarchs. His innovative ideas and surgical practice were a response to the environment created by new military technology on 16th-century European battlefields. Gunpowder weapons caused unfamiliar, complicated injuries that challenged Paré to develop new techniques and surgical instruments. Although Paré's contributions to the treatment of wounds and functional prosthetics are documented, a deeper appreciation of his role in military neurosurgery is needed. This paper examines archives, primary texts, and written accounts by Paré that reveal specific patient cases highlighting his innovative contributions to neurotrauma and neurosurgery during demanding and harrowing circumstances, on and off the battlefield, in 16th-century France. Notably, trepanation indications increased because of battlefield head injuries, and Paré frequently described this technique and improved the design of the trepan tool. His contribution to neurologically related topics is extensive; there are more chapters devoted to the nervous system than to any other organ system in his compendium, Oeuvres. Regarding anatomical knowledge as fundamentally important and admiring the contemporary contributions of Andreas Vesalius, Paré reproduced many images from Vesalius' works at his own great expense. The manner in which Paré's participation in military expeditions enabled collaboration with multidisciplinary artisans on devices, including surgical tools and prosthetics, to restore neurologically associated functionality is also discussed. Deeply religious, in a life filled with adventure, and serving in often horrendous conditions during a time when Galenic dogma still dominated medical practice, Paré developed a reputation for logic, empiricism, technology, and careful treatment. "I have [had] the opportunity to praise God, for what he called me to do in medical operation, which is commonly called surgery, which could not be bought with gold or silver, but by only virtue and great experimentation."

November, 1494: Politics in Motion in the Streets of Florence

Abstract The spectacular entry of Charles VIII into Florence in 1494 initiated a series of political negotiations and maneuvers in which the French monarch, the local government, and the embattled Medici family vied for control over the city. With the threat of violence so present and reliable information so scarce, Florentines had to perform subtle interpretations of the movements of these actors in order to determine what was happening to their city. These eye-witness accounts reveal that the most elaborately staged ritual and the most improvised single gesture were part of a moving tableau whose meaning was contingent on understanding the relationship between the paths taken, the places visited, and the manner in which the protagonists moved through the city. As a result, we can learn how early modern cities were constituted by the ceaseless exchanges between the ephemeral movements of communities and the solidity of the built environment.

Saint Louis and the Jochids

Research objectives: To provide an analysis of the relations between the Jochids and the French monarch, Louis IX. Particular attention is dedicated to the channels used by the Tatars to obtain information about the political conditions in Western Europe. Research materials: Contemporary Western sources including the report of the Franciscan traveler, William of Rubruck, and German chronicles in which Berke’s embassy to the French king in 1260 has been recorded. Results and novelty of the study: The Tatar view of Medieval Europe is an insufficiently researched topic. In the decades that followed the Mongol invasion of Central Europe in 1241–1242, the accounts of Western travelers and chroniclers remain the sole material from which glimpses of the Jochid perspective of the Western world may be discerned. Nonetheless, fragmentary sources at our disposal reveal that the Jochids used Western travelers and envoys to learn more about the Christendom. In this way, the image of Louis IX as the leader of the Christian world was firmly entrenched among the Jochids by the early second half of the thirteenth century. It is attested by Berke’s mission sent to Paris in 1260, and also by testimony of William of Rubruck, recorded several years earlier. According to the Flemish Franciscan author, Batu’s son Sartak, who regarded Louis IX to be “the chief ruler among the Franks”, had heard about the French king from an earlier envoy from Constantinople, Baldwin of Hainaut. The report of Rubruck and other sources at our disposal indicate the importance of the rather neglected Jochid relations with the Latin empire of Constantinople as a channel through which the Tatars gathered valuable reports about the political conditions in the West.

The Court Culture in France, Italy and England in 16-17th Centuries: Interaction and Mutual Influence

<p>The article examines the traditions of French court ballet, which are rooted in early medieval Italian musical and theatrical performances, as well as the traditions of the medieval carnival. The functional features of the French court ballet are revealed. French ballet is viewed through the prism of a synthesized art form: dance, music, poetry and complex scenography. It is specified that French ballet as an independent genre was formed in the era of Queen Catherine de Medici.</p><p>It was revealed that thanks to the skill and professionalism of choreographers of both French and Italian descent, the French court ballet reached its peak in the first half of the seventeenth century.</p><p>It was determined that the court ballet was becoming a cultural and political instrument that raised the status of France in Europe, served to strengthen the authority of the French monarch, and was a means of uniting the French monarchy and the people. Despite significant financial costs, the political and cultural feasibility of staging court ballets exceeded the economic feasibility.</p><p>An analogy is drawn with the English court Мasque. It is substantiated that the English court Masque was based on the traditions of Italian intermedio and French court ballet. Thus, English stage designers adopted the experience of Italian stage designers. Dances of Italian origin were an integral part of Masque in England. Choreography in Masque was created by French and Italian choreographers.</p><p>It has been proven that English culture was influenced by continental culture, which contributed to the formation of a common cultural space.</p><p>It is substantiated that the genre of French ballet, Italian intermedio and English Masque were not a high art, but over time, having undergone a transformation, they evolved into new forms and genres.</p>

Unharmonious Images Conceived by Troubled Minds: Graphic and Literary Caricatures in Heinrich Heine’s French Affairs and French Painters

Although the German poet Heinrich Heine, who moved to Paris in 1831, repeatedly declared his commitment to a subjective and politically engaged way of artistic expression, he vehemently professed his dislike of the graphic satires which appeared in La Caricature and represented the “Citizen King” Louis Philippe in the shape of a pear. Nevertheless, Heine’s own accounts of the current French Affairs for the German press exhibit many clear analogies to the seemingly detested satiric drawings: Not only did he use them as an important vehicle of his own political criticism, but he also matched them with his own verbal caricatures of the French monarch and his cabinet. After showing that Heine and the caricaturists did indeed share the same butts and means of criticism, the article analyses both the graphic and verbal strategies and techniques they employed to avoid press censorship.

The Captivity of John II, 1356–60: The Royal Image in Later Medieval England and France, by Neil Murphy

When King John II, or John ‘the Good’, was captured at the battle of Poitiers (1356), hopes of ransom and political leverage are likely to have been high in the mind of his captor, Edward the Black Prince, as well as of the English and French monarchs. A less likely, and perhaps more unforeseen, consequence was the enhancement of the Valois royal image during John’s subsequent captivity in England. Neil Murphy’s book is an important and welcome contribution to the historiography of kingship, royal courts and presentation of the royal image and power in later medieval England and France. His study, based primarily on the royal household accounts, explores the innovations used by John to construct and promote the royal image during his captivity. It examines the strategies deployed by Edward III to assert superiority over his rival, the fiercely competitive display of power by the two monarchs, and assesses...

El IX conde de Santisteban (1645-1716). Poder y ascenso de una Casa noble a través del servicio a la Corona = The IX Count of Santisteban (1645-1716). Power and Promotion of a Noble House through Royal Service

El IX conde de Santisteban fue un personaje clave en la historia de su familia, pues consiguió situarla entre las principales de la nobleza española. En ello, junto a las alianzas que supo trazar con otras importantes familias, en las que tuvieron una enorme importancia las estrategias matrimoniales, fueron decisivos los servicios que prestó a Carlos II, sobre todo en su larga experiencia como virrey en Italia. Su gran obsesión fue acceder con su Casa a la categoría nobiliaria suprema de los grandes de España, que conseguiría al final de su experiencia italiana. El consejo de Estado y su nombramiento como mayordomo mayor de la reina Mariana de Neoburgo le sirvieron para consolidar su poder y el de su Casa. Ya en el Consejo, apostó claramente por la sucesión francesa y, tras la muerte del rey, renunció a su cargo al servicio de la reina para ponerse claramente al del nuevo monarca francés.The 9th count of Santisteban was a key figure in the history of his family, since he succeeded in placing it among the leading families of the Spanish nobility. In doing so, besides the connections which he succeeded in establishing with other important families, and in which marriage alliances played a key role, decisive were the services rendered to Carlos II, and above all his long experience as viceroy in Italy. His great obsession was to attain for himself and his house the supreme rank of Spanish grandees, which he finally achieved at the end of his period of service in Italy. Membership of the council of Italy and his appointment as mayordomo mayor of queen Mariana of Neuburg enabled him to consolidate both his own power and his house. Once in the council, he opted clearly for the French succession and, after the king’s death, he renounced his post in the queen’s service to enter that of the new French monarch.

Modelo, identidad y la Academia de Francia en Roma: Nicolas Vleughels y su relación con los artistas portugueses y españoles.

Nicolas Vleughels fue un pintor francés más conocido por su importante papel como director de la Académie de France en Roma (1725- 1737). Su estilo personal dirigiendo la institución y su forma de apoyar a los pensionados tuvo un enorme impacto en la producción de esos jóvenes artistas. Sin embargo, su influencia se suele estudiar dentro del marco del arte francés o romano, y no en una perspectiva más amplia, más en consonancia con el estatus internacional de la institución que representaba. A través del análisis de la correspondencia entre Vleughels y el sobreintendente de edificios públicas en París, este articulo aborda la relación de este carismático personaje con las dos coronas ibéricas. Por un lado, este trabajo estudia la efímera y casi desconocida vida de la academia de Portugal en Roma, cuya conexión con la academia gala es un asunto de rivalidad y posicionamiento más que una relación típicamente institucional. Por otro lado, este artículo también trata la turbulenta relación entre Vleughels y los pensionados españoles, que prácticamente condujo a una crisis diplomática; aún cuando supuestamente los españoles gozaban de un tratamiento especial, fruto de la alianza política entre las dos coronas.

A Theatre of Diplomacy. International Relations and the Performing Arts in Early Modern France

In this broad-ranging, clearly argued and deeply research monograph, Ellen R. Welch demonstrates that ‘taking metaphors seriously’ matters. When early modern diplomats described their actions and settings using the language of theatre, they were approximating their court experience using a frame of reference that would have been understandable to their addressees. At the same time, the fact that this rhetorical approach was widespread indicates that it was not a matter of capricious fancy on the diplomats’ part, but rather, that a continuity was perceived to exist between the two domains of performance and diplomacy. It is to Welch’s great credit that she parses different types of writing with distinctive approaches: this book demonstrates that for the deep impact of the ‘linguistic turn’ in the field of history, it is still a separate endeavour from literary criticism. The volume is articulated in a theoretical introduction and eight chapters covering the chronological span from 1565 to 1714; Welch is equally at ease with the sixteenth as with the early eighteenth century, demonstrating a rare range and abilities that set her scholarship apart. Chapter 1 dwells on the 1565 entertainment in Bayonne organized by Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX to the benefit of the Spanish queen. Chapter 2 utilizes a brouhaha that occurred in 1608 when the French envoy to the British court was excluded from court entertainment to explore the actions and reactions of individual diplomats. In Chapter 3, Welch studies ballets built around ethnic or proto-national figures in the 1620s and 1630s, while Chapter 4 explores the messages conveyed by the stagings at Richelieu’s Palais Cardinal in the years 1639–42. Chapter 5 pinpoints the functions and contents of performances that took place during the Congress of Westphalia, which marked the end of the Thirty Years War and is considered to be a watershed in diplomatic history. The scope of the entertainment and the self-presentation of the French monarch form the core of Chapter 6, which focuses on Louis XIV’s performance, emphasizing how audiences took it in, rather than its intended meaning for the French nobility at court. Likewise, Chapter 7 shows the potentials and hazards of attempting to utilize performances to engage non-European audiences while presenting them to French and Western European ones. Lastly, Chapter 8 concerns the shift of diplomacy away from the court and to public places such as the Paris Opéra, at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. For each of the events Welch examines, she offers necessary, succinct explanations of their historical and cultural frames, which additionally serves to bolster her argument, alongside her analysis and judicious citations from the so-called primary texts. Throughout, she shies away from any teleological reading: there is nothing unavoidable or inescapable about the transformation from courtly entertainment to Opéra performance, but continuities and modifications that Welch analyses in depth.

L’affirmation d’un pouvoir communal et des aspirations mémorielles d’une famille : le cartulaire municipal de Libourne

Crouzier-Roland (Nathalie), The Municipal Cartulary of Libourne : the Material Evidence for the Affirmation of Communal Power and of the Memorial Ambitions of a Family, Annales du Midi, vol. 129, Nr 298, April-June 2017, p 165. The municipal cartulary of Libourne (1392-1479) contains numerous prescriptive texts concerning the city, Bordeaux or Guyenne as well as a magnificent “ page juratoire”. The Libourne elite used it while developing textual strategies and iconographies, in order to assert themselves and to define and sanctify community identity and power. This urban discourse rose up to confront French monarchs and representatives of the Church and of Bordeaux by the means of acts which were included in it or, on the contrary, hidden from them. Finally, the paternity of the codex, a stake of power and family memory, was disputed between two families who attempted to link the cartulary to their name without, nonetheless, harming the discourse of the urban community. Urban and individual speech, municipal and familial cartulary, the Livre velu embodied together memorial strategies and expressed several forms of power.

The Ambassador, the Spy, and the Deli: Self-Representation and Anti-Diplomacy in Nicolas de Nicolay’s Navigations

The Ambassador, the Spy, and the Deli: Self-Representation and Anti-Diplomacy in Nicolas de Nicolay’s Navigations Antónia Szabari (bio) Voilà le fruit . . . des externes et lointains voyages de la terrestre et maritime pérégrination et revue du monde, à laquelle me semble être né et naturellement enclin tout bon et noble esprit de nature bien informé, par sa sublimité élevant son corps massif et le faisant mouvoir, et le transportant en divers lieux étranges et lointains par sa ravissante agilité, ainsi que le feu donne très soudain mouvement au pesant et immobile boulet d’artillerie. Nicolas de Nicolay Il [the war machine] serait plutôt comme la multiplicité pure et sans mesure, la meute, interruption de l’éphémère et puissance de la métamorphose. Il dénue le lien autant qu’il trahit le pacte. Il fait valoir une furor contre la mesure, une célérité contre la gravité, un secret contre le public, une puissance contre la souveraineté, une machine contre l’appareil. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari [End Page 1002] Introduction Nicolas de Nicolay’s Les Quatre premiers livres des Navigations et Pérégrinations (first printed in 1567) is a curious hybrid that presents itself as both a travel book and costume book, while also providing a description of the second diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire (1551–1553) of Gabriel de Luels d’Aramon (d. ca. 1553). Thus far, analyses of the book have been largely focused on its representations of the other, especially on Nicolay’s overly pejorative depictions of the Ottomans.1 Critics have sought to explain these representations as the products of actual circumstances, the vicissitudes of realpolitik and historical events. Thus, the present-day editors of Nicolay’s book Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud and Stéphane Yérasimos attribute them to the slowing of diplomatic relations and the coming to a halt of military cooperation between the French and the Ottomans after the 1559 peace treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis.2 Marcus Keller, who concentrates on the fifteen-year time lag between the mission and the publication of Nicolay’s book, attributes the vilification of the Ottomans to the effect of the French civil wars; he argues that for Nicolay the Ottoman Empire becomes an exotic screen onto which religious schism, moral decline, and the crisis of authority—all of which threatened France at the time of the book’s publication—can be projected, allowing Nicolay to promote the political model of a nation united by Catholic faith and common culture.3 While I appreciate these authors’ important historical contextualizations of the book, I argue that only by taking into account Nicolay’s own speaking position, as spy-turned-royal cartographer, can one explain some of the peculiarities of the text, namely the aggressive reduction of the Ottoman other to pejorative stereotypes and the seemingly contradictory tendency that aims to incorporate the non-French, non-Christian other. I show that the multiple narrative layers of the book are created by the author’s need to carve out a position from which to speak and, ultimately, to represent himself. The author’s self-representation within the narrative reveals itself best [End Page 1003] when compared to the authorial voice of the ambassador, Aramon, who is both a character in Nicolay’s narrative and the writer of diplomatic dispatches in his own right. I thus compare Nicolay’s narrative to Aramon’s letters addressed to the king. The role that Nicolay creates for himself in this narrative also explains some of the paradoxes of the book: If Nicolay praises the “familiarity” and “friendship” that the French cultivated with the Ottomans and does not spare his pen to relate some of the costly and lavish diplomatic ceremonies, then why does he describe these political “friends” of the French monarch in starkly hostile terms as infidels and barbarians? Also, given the pejorative view of the Ottomans, why do particular members of this group receive praise, especially the fierce frontier soldier (the deli) whom he encounters in Edirne? To answer these questions, we should regard Nicolay’s specific role in the diplomatic mission as well as the significance...

Diverting the Reader: Novel Strategies in the Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696)

The anonymous pamphlet Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696) subjects French monarch Louis XIV to scathing ridicule and denunciation. Interestingly, however, the pamphleteer frames his critique of absolutist politics within an entertaining narrative that deploys tropes from contemporary literary genres such as the historical novella and the historico-satirical novel. A poetics of diversion subtends the work, readable at the level of the plot as well as in the satirical mechanism employed in the text: not only does the Conseil privé de Louis le Grand incorporate scenes focusing on courtly diversions, but it also diverts readers in a more literal way by transforming the monarch into a source of amusement. Absolutism becomes grist to the mill of pamphleteering, and the king a product of authorial fantasy. The pamphleteer figures Louis the Great's privy council as a harem — a world of corruption, weakness, and ineptitude where the monarchy is painted in its imagined and unimaginable excesses. Studying this text through the lens of diversion offers a case study affirming the power of fiction as a weapon in the pamphleteer's arsenal.

Beyond Belief: Sovereignty and the Spectacle of Martyrdom in Early Modern France

Corneille’s theater exemplifies how violence founded the State of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu as an embodied, affective, and lived reality. Through the lens of vivid Catholic representations of martyrdom, such as those ‘spiritual exercises’ proposed by the Jesuit Louis Richeome in La Peinture spirituelle (1611), and in the highly prescriptive context of classical dramaturgy and theatrical aesthetics of seventeenth-century France, this article shows how Corneille’s Polyeucte (1641) produced performative effects that corporealised those subjects of the French monarch’s sovereign power, locating them in a historicized understanding of religious revelation and salvation.