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Liens personnels, réseaux, solidarités en France et dans les îles Britanniques (xie-xxe siècle)

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Partie I. Liens de parenté et solidarités familiales

Vengeance, Kinship Solidarity and Affinity in Late-Medieval and Early Modern France

Stuart Carroll

Résumé

L’historiographie traditionnelle, qui met en scène le triomphe inéluctable de l’État centralisateur sur une noblesse « incivile » et « incontrôlable », a largement négligé le phénomène omniprésent de la violence vindicatoire – la vendetta, la vengeance et la « faide » – dans la société française de l’époque moderne. En France, les rituels du duel ne canalisaient pas la violence. Au contraire, à partir de la fin du xvie siècle, il rendait les querelles traditionnelles plus sanglantes et plus difficiles a accommoder. Derrière le combat singulier entre deux individus, on trouve souvent la trace d’une longue et complexe histoire d’inimitié entre deux clans, ponctuée par des échanges violents et par de longues périodes de paix. Cet article dessine les méthodes et les moyens employés par un clan ou famille pour mobiliser ses membres soit pour se protéger soi-même ou ses biens soit pour tirer vengeance et réparer un honneur lésé. Le terme aƒƒinity désigne la totalité des relations qui liait une famille et ses partisans: on peut 1’imaginer comme une série de cercles concentriques. Au centre, il y avait le conseil et les commensaux, puis toutes sortes de clients et d’agents, et, aux marges, on trouvait des tenanciers et des vassaux. Le succès de la politique familiale dépend largement de la capacité de persuader ses adhérents à agir. D’une part, les liens entre un patron et ses clients sont particulièrement inconstants, d’autre part, il y avait une vaste réserve de soldats et de voyous, surtout pendant les guerres civiles, pour accomplir les basses besognes. La figure de l’arrogant laquais vêtu comme un dandy est devenue un stéréotype de l’époque moderne, mais, en fait, l’essor de ce phénomène montre que même au milieu du xviie siècle, il fallait mettre l’honneur des adversaires à l’épreuve continuellement en leur adressant des bravades et des injures.

Texte intégral

  • 1 www.tournemire.net
  • 2 AN, JJ 202 fol. 15, Dec. 1465; AN X2a 39, 6 Jul. 1471.
  • 3 G. Koziol, “Monks, Feuds and the Making of Peace in Eleventh-century Flanders”, in The Peace of God (...)
  • 4 See S. Carroll, “The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century France”, Past & Present(...)
  • 5 R. Grand, Anjony: une race, un château, Paris, 1951; Commandant de Tournemire, Les Tournemire et le (...)

1The noble feud is alive and well in twenty-first century France: proudly displayed on the website of the Tournemire family is the 500 year history of its vendetta with the Anjony.1 The origins of the dispute are to be found in the social ascension of the Anjony, a bourgeois family from Aurillac and vassals of the Tournemire, during the fourteenth century into the ranks of the Auvergnat nobility. In 1430 the construction of the château of Anjony, not far from the stronghold of the Tourmenire, threatened definitively the equilibrium between lord and vassal and set off two decades of violent confrontation between the two clans.2 Blood was last shed in 1623 when three members of the Tournemire met three members of the Anjony-an encounter which apparently none of the latter survived. Peace was finally made in 1920 when representatives from each of the two families became monks in the same abbey. As citizens of God’s city they took up the traditional monastic role of peace-making and brokered reconciliation.3 But the peace in the feud is often only a truce in hostilities.4 After the Second World War old wounds were reopened and enmities played out in the medium of print.5 The feud has now entered a new phase which, since it is being fought in cyberspace, we might label “Postmodern”.

  • 6 R. Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France modeme (xve-xviiie siècles), (...)
  • 7 R. Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite: the Provincial Governors of Early Modern France, New Haven, 1 (...)
  • 8 On the popularity of duelling in modern France, see R. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in (...)
  • 9 F. Billacois, Le duel: essai de psychosociologie sociale, Paris, 1986, p. 397.

2Professional historians have neglected the feud in late-medieval and early modern France. During this period we are told the noble honour code was undergoing a transformation due to the dissemination of Renaissance concepts of virtue and the more systematic inculcation of Christian principles, as well as the effective repression of violence by the monarchy. To historians such as Lawrence Stone and Robert Muchembled the rise of duelling in this period is a harbinger of individualism that canalised and ritualised violence.6 This notion has a long genealogy. Montaigne criticised duelling precisely because he thought it fostered a malicious individualism.7 Romantic novelists of the nineteenth century popularised this conception of heroic autonomy.8 However, the research of today’s antiquarians, genealogists and amateur historians, such as the representatives of the Tournemire and Anjony families, teaches the professional historian that kinship solidarity does not inevitably wither with the rise of modern bourgeois individualism. The bloody confrontation between the two clans in 1623 demonstrates that traditional explanations for the rise of duelling need to be reconsidered. I would agree with François Billacois that “le duel français... ne supprime pas la chaîne des vengeances et contre-vengeance”.9 Duelling reinvigorated the traditional feud in early modem France.

  • 10 W. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland, Chicago and London, (...)
  • 11 Y.-M. Bercé, « La noblesse rurale du Sud-Ouest de la France sous Louis XIII », Annales du Midi, 16  (...)
  • 12 BNF, mss. Italiens 1725, fol. 46, 23 Nov. 1563.
  • 13 Mémoires authentiques de Jacques Nompar de Caumont due de La Force, Le Marquis de La Grange éd., 4  (...)
  • 14 AN, JJ 261, fol. 324, Nov. 1551.
  • 15 AD Haute Garonne, B 6, fol. 245, 1 Jun. 1484.

3Kinship and affinity lie at the heart of feuding relationships in traditional societies, and it is this phenomenon that I shall explore here. William Miller has argued in his magisterial work on the feud in Saga Iceland that “unlike ad hoc revenge killing that can be an individual matter, feuding involves groups that can be recruited by any number of principles, among which kinship, vicinage, household and clientage are most usual.”10 Well into the seventeenth century an individual’s power could be measured precisely in the number of men he could mobilise in his support. Magnates could quickly mobilise entire armies if need be. When the duc de La Rochefoucauld raised 1500 men in four days for siege of La Rochelle on 1628, he presented them to the king with the words: “Sire, il n’y en a pas un qui ne soit mon parent.”11 Numbers were no less significant when they were raised for private ends. In November 1563 the Venetian ambassador estimated the Montmorency forces in around Paris at 8-10,000 men, as the family put on a show of strength against its Guise enemies.12 In 1613 the Grammont raised 1,200- 1,500 men from Bigorre and Armagnac in their feud with the La Force.13 These figures were exceptional but even at a lower level the gentry might be able to mobilise dozens of men. In 1551 the minor Norman gentry family, the des Rotours and their kin, mobilized forty men in its feud with the more powerful Vauquelin family.14 It was not only the sword that was capable of mustering forces. In 1484 the Parlement de Toulouse was compelled to take control of the bishopric of Pamiers to forestall a private war between rival claimants accused of “assemblées indeues, port d’armes, assaultz, aggressions, courses, pilleries, batemens, murdres, mutilations, homicides, et aultres grans maulx, violences, voies de fait, gamisons, malefices, excès et escalandres.”15 Of course, such large mobilisations did not always have killing as their principal objective; more usually they were demonstrations, part of the ritual of dispute, a deterrent as much as an offensive act.

  • 16 S. Carroll, Noble power during the French Wars of Religion: the Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cau (...)

4Before I discuss the mechanics of mobilisation, I should like to say something about terminology. I have argued elsewhere that the term “affinity” is the best way to describe the “sea of relationships” that constituted a noble following.16 Some historians have criticised this term as being too vague. But it seems to me that its very looseness and ambiguity is its strength, since the relationships of which it is comprised are dynamic, complex and fluctuating. The term “clientage” is much more commonly used by early modem historians than medievalists. I feel that it is too narrow a concept, strictly describing a vertical hierarchical relationship between a patron and a client. “Client” most accurately describes the holder of an office or bureaucratic position beholden to a patron. Such relationships constituted only a portion of a noble following. Affinity can be imagined as a series of concentric circles radiating out from the family council at the centre, which was surrounded by the household and friends and then the various clients, some at the core and others on the periphery of the following, at the outer limits of an affinity, we might include tenants and peasants. My paper will address each of these constituents parts in turn.

Kin and Council

  • 17 Carroll, “The Peace in the Feud”.
  • 18 Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 164-67.

5Evidence of councils brokering peace among a lord’s clients and friends is relatively abundant. Yet there is little regarding the strategies proposed for vengeance-taking.17 Since 1260 when Louis IX forbad customary laws permitting vengeance there was no legal basis for feuding. Vengeance was a risky matter and not one to be taken without the support of one’s kinsmen. Taking counsel gave the proponent of action a chance to get a broad base of support not only for killing but also to prepare the kin grouping for the judicial backlash, which would entail costly litigation and blood money compensation that could potentially impoverish the whole lineage.18 After a murder had been committed patrons and clients had to be called upon in a number of ways: to shelter the perpetrator, to slow the legal process, to intimidate and bribe witnesses, and to register letters of pardon. The man who acted individually was likely to find himself isolated. Froissart tells us the exemplary story of Jean de Carrouges, chevalier. In 1386 his wife told him that she had been seduced by Jacques Le Gris, écuier:

  • 19 Œuvres de Froissart, publiées avec les variantes des divers manuscrits, Kervyn de Lettenhove éd., 2 (...)

“Le chevallier ne povoit croire que il feust ainsi. Toutteffois tant luy dist la dame il s’accorda, et bien luy dist: ‘Certes, dame, mais que la chose soint ainsi que vous mes comptés, je le vous pardonne; mais l’escuier mourra pource fait par le conseil que j’en auray...’ il fist escripre et tout le jour beaucoup de lettres et les envoia devers les amis de sa femme aux plus espéciaulx, et à ceulx aussi de son costé, et tant fist que dedans ung brief jour ils furent venus ou chastel d’Argentiel. Il les recueilly sagement et les mist tous en une chambre, et puis il leur entama la matière de ce pour quoy il les avoit mandés, et… leur en demanda conseil. Conseillié fut que il se traïst devers on seigneur le conte d’Alenchon et luy comptast tout le fait.”19

6Although the comte sided with Le Gris, Carrouges was able to defy his lord and take the case to the Parlement de Paris because he had the backing of his whole kin network. Some time later Carrouges killed his enemy in a judicial duel.

  • 20 Papiers de Noailles de la Bibliothéque du Louvre, A. Paris éd., 2 vol., Paris, 1875, II, p. 189.

7The best documented council for the early modern period is that of the Noailles family. In 1583 Charles de Noailles wrote a long letter from Paris to his brother Henri in the Limousin giving him advice about how to conduct himself in a dispute with an unnamed enemy. Charles counselled his brother to try and work out what his enemy was thinking and even to talk to him to ascertain his intentions, but on no account was he to go out hunting “aussy remettray-je du tout a vous et a l’advis de ceux que je vous ay nommes, estant, a ce que jay oui dire, meilleur, pour eviter reproche, de faillir par le conseil de ceux qu’on estime beaucoup, que de faire bien de sa teste.”20

  • 21 This feud is reconstructed from the several hundred folios of interrogations, recollements and conf (...)
  • 22 BN, ms. fr 3583, fol. 89, 18 Nov. 1595; 3582, fol. 91, 1595.
  • 23 AN, X2b 1180, 29 May 1609.

8One of the best documented vengeance killings of the seventeenth century provides a good opportunity to explore the dynamics of family decision making and group solidarity.21 On the morning of 22 October 1611 Jean de Lévis, comte de Charlus, was out hunting near his château of Poligny in the Bourbonnais when he was attacked and killed by his neighbour Balthazar de Gadagne, seigneur de Champroux, and his men. Charlus’ fifteen year-old son and a twelve year-old page were also murdered. The feud between the two families went back a century but turned bloody because of more recent events. Charlus had enjoyed a fearsome reputation during the civil wars of the 1580s and 1590s as a commander for the Catholic League. The Gadagne were the leading royalist family in the Lyonnais. Soon after the pacification of the civil wars in 1595 Charlus was embroiled in a violent dispute with a number of his neighbours, including Champroux, which required the direct intervention of the king.22 Peace lasted for a number of years. But as so often in French feuds litigation reopened old wounds. An important player in the dispute was Champroux’s brother-in-law, Marc Grivel, whose château at Grossouvre was only four leagues from Poligny. Both men were in dispute with Charlus over the tithe, among other things. But a more important thing was at stake: honour. Gadagne said: “Que je meurs si je perds ce proces.” In the summer of 1611 the duc de Nevers arbitrated an accord and Gadagne and Charlus exchanged the kiss of peace. But it is clear that many members of the Gadagne clan were unhappy with this because Charlus did no reparation for having mocked their Italian and parvenu origins. These words had tarnished the whole clan. Renée de Clausse in particular, perhaps herself insecure in her robe origins, along with her two brothers-in-law, pushed their husband and brother to do something about their insufferable neighbour. Women could exercise a strong moral influence over their husbands and sons, forcing them to uphold family honour. In 1609, for example, the damoiselle de la Briendrie, on hearing of her elder son’s death in a duel, summoned the valet of her younger son and handed him a sword and dagger with the words “dy a ton maistre que sil trouve de noz ennemis voilà dequoy les attaquer.”23 In any event, Champroux’s resolve was hardened by two further affronts given to him by Charlus in the weeks following their accommodation. He confided in his brother-in-law that “il faut tuer le coq” and the conspiracy was underway. While his wife stayed at home and kept watch in the Bourbonnais, Champroux summoned his brothers and brothers-in-law to a family council in Paris to prevent suspicion being aroused. Along with their cousins and friends, fourteen men were rapidly brought into the conspiracy from as far away as Picardy. With their commensals and hired killers this gang left Paris on 14 October. The manner of Charlus’ killing enables us to distinguish this as a feud as opposed to an isolated vengeance killing. He was mortally wounded in the arm and stomach by shots fired by Champroux. But this was not enough for the Gadagne clan, each of them had to share in the bloodletting and they surrounded the corpse: Claude de Gadagne and the sieur de Saint-Aubin skewered the corpse with their swords.

Commensals, Friends and Hired Hands

  • 24 A. Floquet, Histoire du priviliège de Saint-Romain, 2 vol., Rouen, 1833, I, 441.

9At the core of an affinity in orbit around the family council we find the household. Until well into the seventeenth century its protective role was as important as its function as a projection of display and power. Commensals were expected to give their lives for their lords. In 1592 Christophe d’Alègre, a captain under Henri IV in Normandy, fell out with his fellow royalist, François de Montmorency-Hallot, over the governorship of Vernon. Alègre resolved to take revenge. To kill a man of such high status was no light undertaking and so he gathered his band of 13 servants and addressed them: “Je m’en vays en ung certain lieu ou il fauldra jouer de l’espée et se battre… venez avec moy… vous me debvez cette assistance.”24 The comte de Charlus was protected initially by his domestique, Isaac Laroze, who desperately threw himself between his master and killers, and was lucky to escape with his life.

  • 25 AN, U 749, fol. 311.
  • 26 AN, V3 187, fol. 91, 17 Dec. 1596.

10Lackeys in particular were often employed purely for their fearsome reputation, dandified looks and swaggering manner, and their behaviour was a constant headache for the royal authorities. Lackeys were employed to “braver”, to intimidate and project the power of their lord. The first recorded use of the word “braver” is in 1515, strongly suggesting that it was imported from Italy. The Italian term for lackeys, i bravi, memorably evoked in Manzoni’s I promessi sposi, indicates precisely their function. The seven valets of the notorious marquis de Canillac were called the “apôstres, parce quils estoient Ministres de sa cruauté.”25 Henri IV issued edicts every year to curb the disorders of pages and lackeys at court “lezquels tant de jour que de nuict vont par les rues avecq les espées, dagues et autres bastons.”26 Not all lackeys were prepared to lay down their lives for their masters. At least three teenage lackeys of the Gadagne clan, refusing to take part in the assault on the comte de Charlus, deserted their masters and went and hid in a nearby wood. They had good reason to be terrified. Men of high status were usually able to escape the full force of the law but their underlings were expendable. In some cases, this was done consciously. By sacrificing a servant to the full rigours of the law an aggrieved party might be appeased and the path to reconciliation opened.

  • 27 AN, X2b 1181, 5 Mar. 1612.

11As we move from the core of the affinity we encounter an assortment of friends and neighbours. The Gadagne affinity can be reconstructed and is schematically represented in figure 1. Its mobilization in 1611 acts as case study of the inducements offered and the pressures brought to bear by the family council on its satellites. Marc Chivet dit Cadet, écuier, deposed to the Parlement de Paris that he had been summoned to the château of Grossouvre on 9 October 1611, where he remained for two days.27 Here its lord, Marc Grivel, told him “Cadet, venuz me voir dans huict ou dix ours ny faillez pas”. Chivet was a minor player and he told his inquisitors that he was not party to the whispered counsels on his return. However, Grivel took him aside into the garden one day saying “mort dieu cadet si tu veux faire plaisir a tes amis tu le peux faire a ceste heure”. He went on to say “quil ne manquerait jamais de moyens... quil luy bailleroit dans son escurie tel cheval quil vouldroit, et de lor et de largent”. Chivet excused himself by saying that he wanted no quarrel because his lands were bordered by both men. He was then made to swear to secrecy on pain of death or banishment.

  • 28 My information is taken from the dozens of cases involving noble bastards recorded by the maréchaus (...)
  • 29 AN, JJ 210, fol. 154v, Mar. 1484; 229, Apr 1498 (remission for Pancipe Hurtebie); fol. 229, fol. 14 (...)
  • 30 AD Creuse, E 403, 12 Mar. 1668.

12Bastards are difficult to place with any certainty within the affinity. Some were more loved than legitimate offspring. Catholic and Protestant moralising had little affect on the attitudes of Henri IV and Louis XIV to their bastards. But there is some evidence, most notably from the Auvergne, to suggest that bastards were liminal figures in a clan, often used for the dangerous and dirty work of enforcing family policy against neighbouring enemies and problem tenants.28 There was also a ready supply of unemployed soldiers and professional killers for hire. Aware of Charlus reputation and status as warrior, the Gadagne scoured the taverns of the faubourg Saint-Germain, hiring two ruffians from the Parisian underworld: Le Roux dit “le géant” and La Buffetière dit “le grand coquin”. In exceptional circumstances a lineage might be forced to muster its tenantry. In the Midi at the turn of the fifteenth century peasants were routinely mustered in private wars.29 But even in the supposedly peaceful 1660s we find evidence in the Limousin of peasants being employed by nobles in vengeance killings.30

Clients

13Clients were tied to their patrons by material and emotional bonds but, since they had multiple patrons and their own family interests, their loyalty could not be guaranteed. Oaths were one means of binding men to a cause. The following documents have been partially published in French and have yet to be subjected to the systematic analysis they deserve.

  • 31 Archives du Musée Condé, Papiers de Condé, sér. L, XIX, fol. 59. The possibility exists that these (...)
  • 32 Exodus, 34, 2: oThe Lord... will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers (...)

“M [onsieurs] s du ludde et sanssac sur lassossiation pretendue p […] tres contre m lamyral en la petite chambre a louvre en Janvier 1563 [1564].31 1. Je sous sine promes et jure le dieu vivant de garder et maintenir lasosiascion faicte aveque les capitaines segneurs et chevalliers de lordre pour la vanganse de la mort de monsieur le duc de guyse Randant service et fidellité a tous messieurs ses freres, à madame sa fame et monsr son fie telle que je lavois promise audit feu duc de guise qui dieu apsolle pour le Recouvrence des drois par lui pretendus Sans nul euscetter ni Reserve. Je promis amploier ausi ma puisanse Jusques au derrnier soupir de ma vye pour chaser de se Reaume ou faisans mourir les auteurs qui ont fais la pais sans faire Justice du meutre, et ausi a faire punir de mort honteuze tous les partisipans de lomiside et fois sermant damploier tous mes forces a esterminer tous de la nouvelle Religion. Et pour ce que desus acomplir et mestre a fin promes estre prest avesques mes asosies et s [i] ens jai sous ma charge a marcher le vint et saitieme doctobre et me randre la p [ar] t la ou monsieur de monluc me mandera, auquel Je promes obeir fidellement en cette gaire et entreprise. Comme aselui qui Je Recognois lieutenant general et chef prinsipal en toutte la guieinne pour laconplisemant de lasosiasion. Et pour grant surete dentretenir Immolablement les choses promises. Jai siné la presante de ma main et sellé de mon seau les presantes le dixieme dault lan mil cinq sens soixante et troys. Signé Sansac et icelle dun placart. 2. Je sous sine promes et Jure par le dieu vivant de Randre toute telle obeisanse et loial servise à monsr le ducq de guise, à messieurs les cardinans ses oncles Et madame sa mère que Je lavois promise a feu monsieur de guize pour Recouvrement de se qui luy appartient, quausi pour vanger la mort dud feu monsr de guize Jusques à la quatre generasion32 de sceus qui ont faict faire ou pretté faveur au dict omiside, et qui mesmes soutenist ancores les delinquans. Et pour le faict promes oustre praist a marcher moi et mes asosies et ma compagnie le vint et saitième de saittembre prochainement venant, promettant obeir a ce qui sera comandé par mons [ieu] r de monluct. Comme ascelui que Je Reconnois lieutenant general et chef de lentreprinse en la Guienne. Et pour se que desus antretenir sans faire faulte ay siné ces presantes de main et faict seller de mes armes le seizme dault mil et sinq sans soixante et troys. Signé Guy de Daillon. Et scellé en placart.”

  • 33 Monluc’s uncharacteristic silence about his activities from 1563 to 1567 has been noted by a number (...)

14They survive as copies made in early 1564 from originals signed the previous August, a time when the Catholic Guise family was mobilizing its supporters to take revenge on the Protestant Admiral Coligny for the murder of François duc de Guise. This feud, however, cut across the religious divide: Coligny was supported by his Catholic Montmorency kinsmen; the Guise played for the support of their Calvinist kin, notably the Prince de Condé. The musters of their forces in September and October 1563 coincided with the Guise arrival at court and the presentation of a request for justice to Catherine de Medici. However, both documents refer not to an assembly of supporters at court but to an assembly of nobles in Guyenne where the local commander, Blaise de Monluc, was, on the one hand, under pressure from Catholics to resist the Religious Peace of Amboise and, on the other hand, threatened by the policies of Jeanne d’Albret, whose establishment of Protestantism in Béarn was fanning the flames of confessional unrest.33 Guise policy was thus to exploit Catholic resistance in the West to the Peace which had brought the first War of Religion to an end. Remarkable though these documents are, they are more ambiguous and more difficult to interpret than they seem at first glance. Two questions puzzle me. First, what are these highly sensitive and incriminating documents doing in the papers of Condé at Chantilly? Secondly, why do they differ substantially in their content? The answer to these questions lies in who these men are, and an exploration of the circumstances surrounding their oaths tells us much about the wider relationship between clientage and vengeance.

  • 34 Sansac was a member of the Constable’s retinue in August 1560, and the Constable was responsible fo (...)
  • 35 A. Lublinskaya, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des guerres civiles en France (1561- 1563), Mosco (...)
  • 36 For a Protestant view of events in the Maine: Adverstissement des crimes horribles commis par les s (...)
  • 37 “Madame… ilz n’observent aucunement l’edict de leur part. Il n’y a nul prestre qui soit en seurete (...)

15The participation of Louis Prévost seigneur de Sansac, governor of the Angoumois, in a Guise conspiracy is especially puzzling, for he was a long-time confidant of the Constable de Momtmorency.34 They had once shared the same ultra-catholic prejudices and Sansac’s zeal is redolent in his pledge to « exterminate » heretics, but now their relationship was under strain as the Constable placed his family’s traditional struggle against the Guise above religion; his interest dictated peace and the reintegration of his Protestant nephews into the royal council. Sansac’s loyalties were soon put to the test as a commissioner for the implementation of the Peace edict in the Angoumois. He arrived to find a chaotic situation and a province dominated by armed Protestants. In June he sent a long memoir to the Queen Mother, which paints a bleak picture of his impunity in the face of collapsing royal authority.35 Anarchy seems to have been widespread elsewhere in the Western provinces from the Maine to Bordeaux.36 Protestants remained in arms, harassing priests, stealing the tithe and plundering churches. In August 1563 the commissioners for the implementation the peace in Bas Poitou warned Catherine that Catholics in the region would not endure Protestant contraventions of the edict for much longer.37

  • 38 Le Père Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, des pairs, g (...)

16Nobles from both sides used religion as a pretext for brigandage and feuding. The commissioners urged that the governor of Poitou, Guy de Daillon, be given the resources to arrest the most dangerous culprits. We can surmise that Daillon’s signature of the Guise conspiracy on 16 August suggests that he was unhappy about implementing the Peace with few resources in one of the strongest areas of Protestant activity. The Daillon were traditionally associated with service to the Valois and were to remain reliable royalists throughout the Wars of Religion. Guy was not a Guise man; indeed his arms were quartered with those of the Montmorency and this blood tie is reflected in other kinship links. Unlike Sansac he made no pledge in his oath to kill Protestants, which is hardly surprising as he was on good terms with the House of Bourbon-Vendôme and his younger brother, François, was a senior figure in the retinue of the young Henri prince of Navarre.38

  • 39 John Bossy has taught us enough about sixteenth-century noble households and the moles, informers a (...)

17So, I think then that these oaths tell us less about the Guise conspiracy against Coligny than the desperate choices faced by Catholic royal officers in the West trying to implement a Peace, which they disliked. Presumably the Guise solicited many such oaths in the summer and autumn of 1563 and since the only surviving documents are found in the archives of the leader of the Protestant party, I shall infer that they were passed on by servants or associates of Sansac and Daillon who felt uncomfortable with a Guise alliance which undermined their traditional ties to the Montmorency, from which they and their masters had benefited.39

  • 40 Sansac and Daillon’s threat to resign their offices unless their resources were increased was undou (...)
  • 41 Decrue de Stoutz, Anne de Montmorency, p. 383-87. The reduction of Le Havre end of the war with Eng (...)

18The mundane grumblings of royal officers at their lack of recognition had serious undertones in the South and West in 1563. Sansac and Daillon and the other Catholic governors offered their resignation, feeling that royal policy ignored their concerns and went too far in accommodating the Huguenots. It is therefore no surprise that they looked elsewhere for allies, as both a demonstration of Catholic solidarity and a reminder to the crown and the Montmorency that their services could not be taken for granted.40 Importantly, each man tailored his oath to match his own needs, which had little to do with events in Paris. Do these oaths demonstrate the strength of the Guise or paradoxically their weakness? Undoubtedly we are seeing signs of their influence in a region where their following was traditionally negligible. Yet this influence was contingent on local factors out of their control. Daillon’s promise to support the Guise in their feud to the fourth generation, chilling though it is, echoes biblical convention. In fact, as a significant figure in his own right he had freedom to manœuvre. The collapse of royal authority made for an uncertain political climate. Every clan cast around for allies for mutual protection. Factional fluidity forced the Montmorency to take the concerns of their supporters seriously: the Constable now used his ascendant position at court to repair relations with former enemies and promote his allies and kinsmen in preparation for the inevitable showdown with the Guise.41

Conclusion

  • 42 K. Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France Ithaca, 1989.

19Chilling though our two documents are they once again highlight the contingent nature of bonds between nobles in early modem France, and in particular the complex and dynamic relationship between confessional and clientage loyalties in the sixteenth century.42 Taking vengeance was an obligation, but highly risky and hazardous for those involved. Clients had to make tough choices about whether the pursuit of their patron’s enemy was in their interest. The consequences of refusal or acquiescence had to be carefully weighed. Counsel, even for men at the bottom of the social hierarchy, would have been decisive. Religious schism further exacerbated the enmities and hubris produced by the honour code. In the chaos of the Wars of Religion no one was safe, not even kings. The collapse of royal authority shattered the equilibrium that the Renaissance monarchy had maintained between feuding parties in the provinces. Civil war turned these old feuds bloody. Good order and the obligations of Christian neighbourliness were swept away by a whirlwind cycle of vengeance of increasing savagery. The collapse of the old chivalric order is symbolised by the killing of the maréchal de Saint-André.

  • 43 For this and following, see H. Germa-Romann, Du Bel Mourir au Bien Mourir: le Sentiment de la Mort (...)

20At the battle of Dreux in 1562 Saint-André, one of the Catholic commanders, was captured by the sieur de Bobigny, one of his former servants. Some years earlier Bobigny had murdered a fellow servant. Rather than patching up the dispute Saint-André pursued Bobigny, had him executed in effigy and his goods sequestered. Bobigny, however, had other patrons and left for exile in Germany. In the battle Saint-André willingly gave himself up to his captor, saying this was “bonne guerre sans se souvenir du passé.”43 At this moment, Bobigny’s commander, the prince de Porcien, arrived on the scene and demanded that he hand over his prisoner. Bobigny we are told:

“les armes au poing, alleguant qu’il l’avoit combattu et vaincu… et que ce seroit faire tort aux anciennes ordonnances de guerre, que les grands doivent inviolablement observer pour la conservation des droicts des petits aultrement ils ne seroient jamais suivis, et pas ung n’y hazarderoit sa vie, si on leur ravissoit de telle violence l’honneur et l’esperance de se faire riches.”

21Chivalric convention obliged Porcien to abandon Saint-André to his captor. But Bobigny was not after ransom money. He raised his pistol and shot Saint-André through the head, leaving his body “tout nud en la plaine”.

  • 44 N. Rouland, Legal anthropology, London, 1994, p. 276.
  • 45 Canoll, “The Peace in the Feud”.

22In medieval and early modem France violence was regulated and moderated by Christian obligation, royal sanction and active lordship. In addition, we should not forget that the obligations of kinship and affinity were also important in preventing violence and ensuring peace and reconciliation; as one anthropologist has suggested the “intensity of vengeance is tempered by the proximity of the murderer’s kin.”44 But the civil wars of the sixteenth-century led to the collapse of order. Hierarchy itself was overturned as the systems that had regulated noble disputes and upheld the peace in the feud broke down.45 Rebuilding the traditional structures was to take decades. But that is another story.

Figure 1. The Gadagne Affinity and the Assassination of Jean de Lévis, Comte de Charlus,1611 ← Core/Periphery→

Figure 1. The Gadagne Affinity and the Assassination of Jean de Lévis, Comte de Charlus,1611 ← Core/Periphery→

Notes

1 www.tournemire.net

2 AN, JJ 202 fol. 15, Dec. 1465; AN X2a 39, 6 Jul. 1471.

3 G. Koziol, “Monks, Feuds and the Making of Peace in Eleventh-century Flanders”, in The Peace of God. Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000, T. Head and R. Landes eds., Ithaca, 1992, 248.

4 See S. Carroll, “The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century France”, Past & Present, forthcoming.

5 R. Grand, Anjony: une race, un château, Paris, 1951; Commandant de Tournemire, Les Tournemire et les Anjony à Tournemire: vérités et vraisemblances, Rabat, 1953.

6 R. Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France modeme (xve-xviiie siècles), Paris, 1978; L’Invention de l’homme modeme: culture et sensibilités en France du xve au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1994; L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641, Oxford, 1965, p. 242-50.

7 R. Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite: the Provincial Governors of Early Modern France, New Haven, 1979, p. 79.

8 On the popularity of duelling in modern France, see R. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1998.

9 F. Billacois, Le duel: essai de psychosociologie sociale, Paris, 1986, p. 397.

10 W. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland, Chicago and London, 1990, p. 180.

11 Y.-M. Bercé, « La noblesse rurale du Sud-Ouest de la France sous Louis XIII », Annales du Midi, 16 (1964), p. 49.

12 BNF, mss. Italiens 1725, fol. 46, 23 Nov. 1563.

13 Mémoires authentiques de Jacques Nompar de Caumont due de La Force, Le Marquis de La Grange éd., 4 vol., Paris, 1843, II, p. 60.

14 AN, JJ 261, fol. 324, Nov. 1551.

15 AD Haute Garonne, B 6, fol. 245, 1 Jun. 1484.

16 S. Carroll, Noble power during the French Wars of Religion: the Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy, Cambridge. 1998.

17 Carroll, “The Peace in the Feud”.

18 Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 164-67.

19 Œuvres de Froissart, publiées avec les variantes des divers manuscrits, Kervyn de Lettenhove éd., 29 vol., Bruxelles, 1867-77, XII, p. 32-39.

20 Papiers de Noailles de la Bibliothéque du Louvre, A. Paris éd., 2 vol., Paris, 1875, II, p. 189.

21 This feud is reconstructed from the several hundred folios of interrogations, recollements and confrontations in the pièces d’instructions of the Parlement de Paris: AN, X2b 1181, 8-31 Dec. 1611,4 14 Mar. 1611; supplemented with Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève ms. 827 93v, 1611 and 21 Jul. 1612. The narrative is treated admirably by L. Vignon, La Vendetta des Gadagne, Saint-Just-la-Pendue, 1975.

22 BN, ms. fr 3583, fol. 89, 18 Nov. 1595; 3582, fol. 91, 1595.

23 AN, X2b 1180, 29 May 1609.

24 A. Floquet, Histoire du priviliège de Saint-Romain, 2 vol., Rouen, 1833, I, 441.

25 AN, U 749, fol. 311.

26 AN, V3 187, fol. 91, 17 Dec. 1596.

27 AN, X2b 1181, 5 Mar. 1612.

28 My information is taken from the dozens of cases involving noble bastards recorded by the maréchaussée of the Haute Auvergne from the end of the sixteenth century to the mid seventeenth century: AD Cantal, Fonds de Comblat.

29 AN, JJ 210, fol. 154v, Mar. 1484; 229, Apr 1498 (remission for Pancipe Hurtebie); fol. 229, fol. 142v, Apr. 1498.

30 AD Creuse, E 403, 12 Mar. 1668.

31 Archives du Musée Condé, Papiers de Condé, sér. L, XIX, fol. 59. The possibility exists that these documents are forgeries. However, given the identity of the signatories, I find this unlikely. Even by the standards of the day the orthography is highly irregular orthography. I have maintained as much of its original flavour as possible, inserting punctuation and accents where appropriate.

32 Exodus, 34, 2: oThe Lord... will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation”.

33 Monluc’s uncharacteristic silence about his activities from 1563 to 1567 has been noted by a number of historians: P. Courteault, Blaise de Moncluc historien, Toulouse, 1908, p. 471-77.

34 Sansac was a member of the Constable’s retinue in August 1560, and the Constable was responsible for his entry into the privy council in April 1562: F. Decrue de Stoutz, Anne de Montmorency connétable et pair de France, sous les rois Henri II, François II et Charles IX, Paris, 1889, p. 275,280.

35 A. Lublinskaya, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des guerres civiles en France (1561- 1563), Moscow, 1962, p. 257-60.

36 For a Protestant view of events in the Maine: Adverstissement des crimes horribles commis par les sedtieux Catoliques Romains au Pays & Conte du Maine depuis le mois de Juillet 1564 jusques au mois d’Avril 1565, s.l., 1565.

37 “Madame… ilz n’observent aucunement l’edict de leur part. Il n’y a nul prestre qui soit en seurete de sa vye… il n’y a beneficier qui jouysse plainement son benefice... Les prestres et curez sont contraintz de aller desguises en paysants parmy les champs... auquel est besoin de deonner ordre avant que les licences soient plus grandes, de peur qu’il n’en vienne grand incinvenient, parce que le reste du peiple et aultres getilzhommes du party contraire murmuren fort disant qu’ilz n’en peuvent plus endurer”: Lublinskaya, Mémoires, p. 298.

38 Le Père Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, des pairs, grands officiers de la Couronne, de la Maison du roy et des anciens barons du royaume, 9 vol., Paris, 1726-33, VIII, p. 190-91.

39 John Bossy has taught us enough about sixteenth-century noble households and the moles, informers and spies who frequented them to give an indication of how this conspiracy was leaked: Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Aƒƒair, New Haven, 1991; Under the Molehill: an Elizabethan Spy Story, New Haven, 2001.

40 Sansac and Daillon’s threat to resign their offices unless their resources were increased was undoubtedly a reflection of the difficulties they faced. But it was also a means of bullying the crown and of augmenting their credit at court: Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite, p. 49. Other governors of the West, notably Jarnac and Biron, were up to the same game.

41 Decrue de Stoutz, Anne de Montmorency, p. 383-87. The reduction of Le Havre end of the war with England meant that the crown could now direct its full resources to implementing the Peace Montmorency’s second son Damville, perceived as a hardliner on matters of faith, arrived as governor of Languedoc in September 1563 providing local Catholics with a ducal focus for resistance and the hope that their concerns would be taken more seriously at court. He was careful to take Monluc with him when he toured the province and he made a point of meeting the other leaders of the Catholic League in the South West: Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, H. de La Ferrière et Comte Baguenault de Puchesse éd., 9 vol., Paris, 1880-99, II, p. 104, n° 1.

42 K. Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France Ithaca, 1989.

43 For this and following, see H. Germa-Romann, Du Bel Mourir au Bien Mourir: le Sentiment de la Mort chez les Gentilshommes Français, 1515-1643, Geneva, 2001, p. 222.

44 N. Rouland, Legal anthropology, London, 1994, p. 276.

45 Canoll, “The Peace in the Feud”.

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