French Wars Research Articles

Book Review: British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815: Admirals’ Lives

Book Review: British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815: Admirals’ Lives

Symphonies in black and grey, harmonies in iron and steel: Walter Pater painting the French Wars of Religion in Gaston de Latour

Walter Pater’s unfinished historical novel Gaston de Latour (1888–94), set during the French Wars of Religion in the late sixteenth century, operates on a complex monochromatic colour symbolism that ties the colours of sixteenth-century French art together with a late nineteenth-century synaesthesia. This article explores the ways in which Pater engaged with James Abbot McNeill Whistler, John Ruskin, Emilia Pattison, Alexandre Dumas, and Charles Baudelaire in his evocation of the aesthetics of Renaissance France. While also being profoundly involved with the historiography, biography, prose, and poetry of sixteenth-century France, Pater let the colours of the past rise to the surface of his text, transforming them for his own purpose. His highly idiosyncratic use of the colour schemes and materials of Renaissance art alerts us to the clashes between north and south, the Flemish and the Italianate influences on French Renaissance art, the complexities of portraiture, line versus colour, and a golden palette contrasted with a blue one. Pater’s carefully controlled colour symbolism, often moving within a Whistlerian monochromatic scale, gives highly aestheticized depictions of ugliness, in inter-human relationships on both a national and a personal level, thus exposing the subversive powers of beauty. As we dig beneath the beautiful surface, horror and ugliness abound, inviting us to think more broadly about decadence as a recurrent phenomenon.

Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion ed. by Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard

Reviewed by: Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion ed. by Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard Claire Konieczny (bio) Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard, editors. Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion. De Gruyter, 2019. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 68. 217 pages. ISBN: 978-1-5015-1803-4. The Wars of Religion were a turbulent time in France’s history; decades of conflict ravaged the country on numerous levels—economically, socially, and emotionally, among others. Much scholarly focus has been dedicated to the actual battles and historical events of this tumultuous epoch. Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion approaches this era in a different manner, however; the volume focuses on a variety of printed material produced during these conflicts that were, as identified by the editors in their introduction, part of a “textual war” that “could provoke armed conflict” (1; 3). The contributions of the work not only explore the manner in which “[t]hese writings shaped the ways in which the Wars were ultimately understood by those who experienced them” (8) but also how these texts engaged directly in the Wars of Religion themselves, either by creating or promoting a certain ideological group or by advocating specific actions. Taking a broader view on literature’s influence before, during, and after the Wars, the volume defines polemic as “fighting words”; that is, “expressions of violence that can give rise to actual physical conflict” (3). Christopher M. Flood’s article, the first in a volume structured more or less around the chronology of the Wars of Religion, focuses on the period just before the outbreak of the first war in 1562. Flood notes that in the pre-war era, “an unprecedented preponderance of satirical literature typified the intensifying conflict between Protestants and Catholics” (10). Interestingly, writes Flood, both the Catholic and Protestant sides employed biblical stories in their satires. Focusing on Théodore de Bèze’s Epistola Magistri Benedicti Passavantii (1553) and the anonymous Catholic response to Bèze’s work entitled Passevent parisien respondent à Pasquin (1556), Flood contends that the biblical models used by these satirical authors offers insights into the self-perceptions of each side of the religious conflict. After providing a short history of the satirical genre itself, Flood shows how Bèze’s clever usage of the David and Goliath story in his own work constructs a communal identity based on the biblical image of a small and unlikely hero (the Protestants) fighting against a monstrous enemy (the Catholics). The Catholic response in turn utilizes the biblical model of Judith in order to, according to Flood, specifically vilify [End Page 976] Protestant leadership as well as to legitimize violence of the majority (the Catholics) against the minority (the Protestants). The following chapter, written by Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier, analyzes a literary quarrel that took place during the first War of Religion between the Catholic Pierre de Ronsard and Antoine de la Roche-Chandieu, a Protestant. Focusing on Chandieu’s Palinodies (1563) and his Response aux calomnies (1563), Morand-Métivier contends that Chandieu’s imitation (indeed, near copying) of Ronsard’s writings indicates that Chandieu wished to attack the “‘official’ vision of the [French] kingdom,” as promoted by the politically active and powerful Ronsard (30). Ronsard, who believed that in order to be French one must be Catholic as well as support the royal family, “used [his] poetry as a weapon to defend France” —at least his idea of France and what it meant to be French (35). In mimicking Ronsard, Chandieu “ventriloquizes” him; Chandieu uses Ronsard to promote claims that are directly opposed to Ronsard’s own (30). Overall, Morand-Métivier contends that Ronsard and Chandieu’s written squabble points to the deepening divides that were developing between the Catholics and Protestants; both sides held specific models for the kingdom, but neither side was willing to make concessions—a fact that led to the continuation of the wars. Taking a step away from the chronological, Amy Graves Monroe’s chapter analyzes the physical aspect of polemical writings. Focusing specifically on the title pages of polemical writings, Monroe “proposes to consider the...

War novel: the history of development and typology of the genre

The general regularities and main tendencies of the development of a war novel have been researched in the article, an attempt of its typology and periodization is realized, the most common genre models is identified. The novel about the Second World War as a leading epic genre, which develops the theme of war in literature, creatively synthesized all the experience gained by the writers and front-line soldiers, became a noticeable artistic phenomenon and widespread genre formation in Western European, American and Slavic writing. It is concluded that the aesthetic and ideological-thematic level of artistic modeling of war reality is localized in different national literatures unevenly and stipulated first of all for the historical and geopolitical scope of the involvement of warring countries in hostilities. For example, in German military romance, is the so-called "Remarkable" novel, as well as a novel with a marked anti-militaristic nature. The main plot of the French war novel is the resistance movement, while the Italian one is fascist domination and occupation actions in the Balkans. Instead, in Britain, which has escaped occupation, military creativity takes a rather modest place. American writing focuses on war as a social phenomenon, armed conflicts in Vietnam. The polivector artistic search, the richness of types and varieties of war novel (panoramic novel, lyric war novel, anti-fascist novel, soldier novel, war novel-education, war novel with documentary basis, etc.) demonstrates military novel prose of Eastern Slavs. In particular, in the development of the Ukrainian war novel, literary critics distinguish such branches as the war novel, the post-war novel of the first decade, the war novel prose of the "second wave" (etc. pol. 50's - 60's), war novel 70’s-80’s, as well as modern war novels.

Mass Violence and the Self: From the French Wars of Religion to the Paris Commune

Mass Violence and the Self: From the French Wars of Religion to the Paris Commune

Germany and the French Wars of Religion, 1560–1572

Germany and the French Wars of Religion, 1560–1572

“The Animal Outside”

This essay historicizes Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the “animal outside” as ingenuity by exploring early modern French polemics stemming from the humanist reception of the Machiavellian simile stating that the prince should deploy both the lion’s strength and the fox’s ingenuity. Defined in the Aristotelian corpus and valorized in Plutarch’s Moralia, ingenuity-as-prudence was a set of cognitive responses prompted by appetites and shared by humans and beasts alike. Ingenuity anchors an alternative account of organized polis and sociability to rationalist readings of Aristotle’s Politics. Promoted by Machiavelli, this alternative was condemned by humanists such as Erasmus and Vives — Erasmus saw it as the beastly degradation of politics into the subhuman tyranny of the passions. This polemic was replayed in Montaigne’s response to the anti-Machiavellian lawyer Innocent Gentillet during the French wars of religion. Against Gentillet and with Plutarch, Montaigne fully acknowledges the importance of ingenuity as “the animal outside” in human sociability.

Mass Violence and the Self. From the French Wars of Religion to the Paris Commune. By Howard G. Brown

Mass Violence and the Self. From the French Wars of Religion to the Paris Commune. By Howard G. Brown

Red Journalism: The Allegheny Indians, Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, and the Ethnic Cleansing of Pennsylvania, 1747–1764

ABSTRACTBenjamin Franklin “retired” from printing in 1747 but retained ownership of his press and a close working relationship with his printer, and Pennsylvania Gazette Editor David Hall. From King George’s War in 1747 through the French and Indian War, Assemblyman Franklin used his press and the Gazette to forward his political objective of militarizing the Quaker Colony. During the French and Indian War, the Gazette pioneered standards of accurate reporting relying on eyewitness accounts, multiple sourcing, and networks of information that other presses imitated. This reporting provides vivid detail of the Allegheny Indians’ successful strategy of using terror to influence Pennsylvania to sue for peace on Indian terms in 1758. At the same time, Franklin, Hall, and the Gazette moved beyond the reporting of fact and sensationalized Indian violence—not to sell papers but to militarize the colony for self-defense with fortifications, an army, and scalp bounties. The Allegheny Indians and the Gazette’s tactics both achieved their intended goals, but also carried the unintended consequence of the ethnic cleansing of Pennsylvania.

Gabriel Naudé

The article suggests a perspective for considering the tension between (i) the authoritarian – perhaps even in a sense 'Machiavellian' – political ideas of Gabriel Naudé in Considerations politiques sur coups d'etat, on one hand, and (ii) his at least assumingly liberal ideas of the library in Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque. The study starts from the review of the frame constituted by Naudé's personality and political thought, which we, in turn, could best understand in the light of his own time and the history before him, including the history of political thought and particularly the aftermath of the French wars of religion (so-called Huguenot Wars) in the sixteenth century. The person of Naudé thus conceived of together with some developments after him until the end of the ancien régime and the Great Revolution of France – such as the Habermasian bourgeois public sphere – could be a frame for specifying the significance of Naudé's thought about the library.

Trauma Plots: Reading Contemporary Canadian First World War Fiction in a Comparative Perspective

The purpose of this article is to examine selected WWI Canadian novels published in the last forty years in relation to a transnational trauma paradigm. My contention is that, similarly to much contemporary British, French, Irish and Australian Great War fiction, the dominant theme of recent Canadian Great War novels is war trauma and its aftermath. Referring to the concepts of post-memory, wound culture, and trauma studies, I discuss various representations of suffering in Canadian WWI literature, such as the anxieties of shell shocked soldiers, survivor guilt, the distress of women, as well as the individual and collective wounds of colonized groups. Exploring the ethics and aesthetics of Canadian trauma plots, I also draw analogies with other national literatures. In conclusion, the article attempts to highlight the distinctive features of Canadian war literature by showing at the same time how it inscribes itself within certain transnational trends.

Restoring Credit in Post-Napoleonic France: Settling French War Claims

This article examines a forgotten episode in the Napoleonic Wars: the Restoration government’s liquidation of claims from the Allied invasions of 1814 and 1815. While paying requisitions and reparations to the Allied powers, the new regime reimbursed its own subjects for debts – in taxes, requisitions, and damages – incurred by the previous regime. This indemnification was central to the monarchy’s strategy to restore its political and economic credit. Tracing the goals and mechanisms of this indemnification, the article argues that, though it succeeded in re-establishing the state’s financial credit, it exacerbated divisions between royalists and revolutionaries, thereby undermining its political stability.

The Sound of Memory: Acoustic Conflict and the Legacy of the French Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-Century Montpellier

This article explores the commemorative meaning of sound in early modern Montpellier, focusing on the use of processional music and church bells to remember the French Wars of Religion. Scholarship has demonstrated that music in post-Reformation Europe often served to consolidate confessional identities, but this article argues that in religiously mixed communities like Montpellier, sound also served as a memory vector. In the wake of the French religious wars, Protestants and Catholics developed competing soundscapes that revived painful memories about the wars and sustained religious tension throughout the seventeenth century. Catholics relied on frequent processions to recall the destruction of their churches and monasteries at the hands of the Protestants, and chose specific songs to underline their triumph in re-establishing Catholic worship. The memory of losing their church bells also prompted them to fight Protestant attempts at installing their own bells after the wars. On the basis of untapped archival sources, this article also reconstructs the musical culture of Catholics in seventeenth-century Montpellier, paying particular attention to the cathedral chapel and the confraternity of White Penitents.

Constructing a Political Crime: Songs about the Assassination of the duc and the cardinal de Guise

Songs played a significant role in the French Wars of Religion by spreading political and religious ideas, and by involving Protestants and Catholics in the conflict. Performed in the streets, churches, workshops and houses, songs participated in the construction of urban soundscapes during the troubles. This article examines six songs composed after the execution of the duc and the cardinal de Guise on the order of Henri III (23 and 24 December, 1588) and printed in Paris by Nicolas Bonfons. This event sparked the armed revolt of the Catholic League against the king and his heir, the Protestant Henri de Navarre. The article analyses the rhetorical features of the songs and compares their arguments with those of contemporary visual images and printed libels. In particular, it shows how songs served as a link between print and oral culture. Songs allowed Leaguers — whatever their age, sex, or status — not only to assimilate the main points of the justification of the revolt and to incorporate representations of a just monarchy, but also to appropriate them intimately by singing.

Exercer l'autorité: l'abbé de Cîteaux et la direction de l'ordre cistercien en Europe (1584–1651) by Bertrand Marceau

Reviewed by: Exercer l'autorité: l'abbé de Cîteaux et la direction de l'ordre cistercien en Europe (1584–1651)by Bertrand Marceau Thomas Worcester SJ Exercer l'autorité: l'abbé de Cîteaux et la direction de l'ordre cistercien en Europe (1584–1651). By Bertrand Marceau. [ Bibliothèque d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Vol. 58.] (Paris: Honoré Champion. 2018. Pp. 745. €150 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8061-4497-9.) A revision of a doctoral dissertation defended at the Sorbonne in 2013, this book is a lengthy, thorough, and at times tedious study of what may be viewed as a rather narrow topic. Directed by Alain Tallon, Marceau's thesis focused on how abbots of the abbey of Cîteaux exercised their authority over two-thirds of a century. The period is in fact a particularly vibrant one in politics, church history, and related matters from the latter stages of the French Wars of Religion to the majority of the young King Louis XIV. In the context of the Cistercian order, 1584 corresponds to the beginning of the twenty years of Edme de la Croix as abbot of Cîteaux, while 1651 was marked by a general chapter of the order. Marceau's book demonstrates how complex and contested the exercise of abbatial authority could be. The abbot of Cîteaux was both abbot of one abbey only, albeit an exceptionally important one, and, ex officio, also superior general of the Cistercians, not only in France, but wherever houses of the order were. He had to deal with a broad range of overlapping and competing claims to authority. Monastic chapters, in his own monastery, or of the whole order, were a source of alternate authority. In France the monarch used the title Most Christian King and claimed rights over the Church that included appointment of abbots as well as of visitors sent to reform religious houses. Cardinal Richelieu was for a time not only first minister to Louis XIII but abbot of Cîteaux, though he was hardly a monk. State authorities intervening in monastic affairs also included the French parlements, courts that could support or oppose legal claims of the Cistercians. The abbot was a feudal lord and had plenty of secular legal matters to deal with in addition to everything else. Cistercian houses outside France had to contend with claims of their own 'secular' rulers, and these rulers often posed obstacles to any French or other foreign supervision in their territories, thus challenging the very notion of an international religious order. (Jesuits were hardly the only order to face this kind of difficulty.) Popes also claimed authority over the Cistercians, no matter their location or nationality, and local bishops chafed at assertions of exemption of religious from episcopal jurisdiction. Among Cistercians themselves, the seventeenth century was a time of growing tension between those favoring a stricter observance (one that would, for example, forbid consumption of meat) and those wishing to retain a more moderate observance. Abbots of Cîteaux had to manage this source of division, one difficult to heal. The tension would eventually result in a separate Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), though this development came later than in the years studied here. [End Page 376] This volume is well-worth the attention of historians. Maps, an index, and a bibliography enhance its accessibility and usefulness. For those who think that there was some kind of golden age of the Church in the past—when all accepted Church authority—this study offers a case study of just how problematic exercise of such authority could be, in an age often termed one of absolutism. Contestation of authorities, not simplistic submission to them, may have been characteristic of what in France is called le Grand Siècle. Thomas Worcester SJ Regis College, Toronto Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

Avant-Garde Orientalism: The Eastern "Other" in Twentieth-Century Travel Narrative and Poetry by David Lehardy Sweet

Reviewed by: Avant-Garde Orientalism: The Eastern "Other" in Twentieth-Century Travel Narrative and Poetry by David Lehardy Sweet Tom Conner Sweet, David Lehardy. Avant-Garde Orientalism: The Eastern "Other" in Twentieth-Century Travel Narrative and Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. ISBN 978-3-319-50373-8. Pp. 318. This well-argued, persuasive, and densely-written study explores the work of a dozen or so Western Avant-Garde writers, many of them French or Francophone—among them André Gide, André Breton, and Marguerite Duras—who from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries visited and then wrote about the "Orient," an elastic term that includes the Near East (North Africa and the Middle East) and East Asia (India, China, Japan, Indochina). Sweet's book is half theory and half application. It draws on Avant-Garde, postcolonial, and travel literature theories but also engages in close readings of travel writing to formulate a novel theory, Avant-Garde Orientalism, which—though exoticist and colonialist in origin—effectively demonstrates how a Westerner can fruitfully engage with the Orient but avoid the pitfalls of academic Orientalism by considering the aesthetics of diversity with an attitude of provocation and reciprocity. At first sight, nothing could appear more different than Orientalism and the Avant-Garde, the former romantic and escapist—"n'importe où hors du monde" (Baudelaire)—the latter invariably modernist and experimental. Orientalism draws on cultural stereotypes and prejudices linked to colonialism and imperialism, which Edward Said exposed in Orientalism (1978), laying the foundations of a critical, so-called postcolonial discourse. Sweet's book is neither a traditional reading of Orientalism nor an attack on postmodernism but rather an attempt to bring out the inherently contradictory character of Orientalism. There is a host of Avant-Garde Western writers "whose ideas about the Orient don't conform to the postcolonial picture of orientalism as the servant of colonialism or as the cultural judge of the East" (2). For example, Gide's North African oeuvre is a celebration of his own ambivalent and exploitative sexuality but in later works, such as Voyage au Congo, Gide denounces colonialism. The same critical ambivalence characterizes Duras. André Michaux's A Barbarian in China and Roland Barthes's Empire of the Signs also suggest the possible superiority of Asian culture and underscore how a text can be Avant-Garde, orientalist and post-colonial all at once. There is no shortage of progressive Avant-Garde authors. Breton denounces colonialism; Jean Genet denounces the French war in Algeria and supports the Palestinians and the Black Panthers. In the final analysis, Avant-Garde Orientalism actually is post-modern [End Page 221] insofar as it critiques colonialism as well as the hegemony of the West and the "global monoculture" modernism heralds, which modernism rather endorses or at least accepts as a necessary evil in order for the Orient to modernize and catch up with the West (3). To these Avant-Garde orientalists, the Orient held out the promise of being the last bastion of diversity, uniqueness, and non-conformism. Sweet avoids the pitfall of generalization and is careful to analyze what sets his many authors apart thanks to his method of "simultaneous cultural contrasts" (Robert Delaunay), which makes it possible to expose starkly different and oftentimes contradictory portraits of the Orient, including several transnational English-language authors of the new millennium. Tom Conner St. Norbert College (WI) Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Input of a Multi-Disciplinary Meeting in the Treatment of Osteoarticular Infections in French War Casualties.

Extremity war-wounds present an elevated risk of infection and compromise reconstructive procedures. In a French military hospital, a multi-disciplinary meeting (MDM) was created to standardize the care given to soldiers with osteoarticular infection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of MDM decisions. An observational case study was performed including the French wounded at war treated for an osteoarticular infection between 2004 and 2016. They were separated into two groups according to their time of management: before (group A) or after (group B) the MDM creation in September 2010. Various operative and bacteriological parameters were analyzed retrospectively. A questionnaire was created to evaluate healthcare professionals' satisfaction toward the usefulness of the MDM on their practice. During the study period, 38 patients were included: 19 in group A and 19 in group B. Initial tests found an infection with one pathogen in 15 patients, an infection with 2 pathogens in 11 patients, and an infection with 3 or more pathogens in 12 patients. Enterobacter cloacae was the most common pathogen. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli were also frequent. The mean number of samples taken to conduct the bacteriological tests per operating session was significantly higher for group B than for group A. Twelve of the 14 questioned healthcare professionals believed the MDM was very useful in their patient management. The MDM seems to have had a beneficial impact on orthopedic surgeon practices. A significant increase of the number of samples taken was the most obvious sign that the French recommended practices for osteoarticular infections were followed since the creation of MDM.

Continuing the Vietnam War Debate

Some day, hopefully, there will be bookshelves groaning under the weight of tomes written to justify—or criticize—the war decisions of America’s leaders after September 11, or to argue the war on terror was or was not lost, and why. We already have that for the Vietnam war—both the French war and the American one. And where some probably hoped that history would come to its judgment and settle, that has not been the case. Instead the Vietnam War debate continues and Gregory Daddis’s Withdrawal opens the next phase of the argument. In an interesting point of departure, Daddis opens with his time in Iraq as an Army lieutenant colonel and historian, and what he observed on colleagues’ reading tables. One of those books, the product of another former officer, was Lewis Sorley’s A Better War (Disclosure: I have been a friend of Sorley’s, and have had him speak to a class of mine; I have also had Daddis speak at a conference I helped organize). He became concerned that the “better war” thesis “manufactured a narrative that misinterpreted the complicated nature of American strategy” (xii). Gregory Daddis sets out to explore that terrain. It soon led to historical minefields.

Glorifier le royaume et le souverain en temps de crise : émotions et royauté chez Christine de Pizan, les chroniqueurs de Charles VI, et Pierre de Ronsard

This article proposes to explore crises from seemingly different backgrounds and periods (the madness of Charles VI of France and the French Wars of Religion) to demonstrate how these elements were used by authors in order to create emotional narratives in support of the failing monarchy. In the two situations, the French community was constructed as an entity which duty was to support the king. However, the authors use different methods to transmit their messages. While Christine de Pizan and the chroniclers advocate for the building of an integrating, all encompassing community around the love of and for the king, Ronsard’s France is tasked at differentiating the Catholics and the Protestants, in an effort to construct France also as a monarchy loving community, of which the protestants are presented as the enemies.

“… nadie nace rey (con la corona en la cabeza y el cetro en la mano) y nadie puede ser rey por sí mismo, ni reinar sin un pueblo” Deslegitimación de la monarquía hereditaria y sacra en la Vindiciae contra Tyrannos

El artículo analiza cómo aparece la cuestión de la legitimidad del poder real en la Vindiciae contra Tyrannos de 1576 a la luz de los acontecimientos de las guerras de religión en Francia. Específicamente muestra cómo la idea del ejercicio del poder del rey es central en el texto, así como su desacralización en varios sentidos, principalmente en relación a la sucesión hereditaria del poder del príncipe. En este sentido, se destaca como estos argumentos se desarrollan en los momentos previos al desarrollo de las teorías absolutistas de la monarquía.