France in Crisis 1620–1675

279 Pages·1977·30.666 MB·English

by  P. J. Coveney (auth.)

FRANCE IN CRISIS, 1620-1675
FRANCE IN CRISIS
1620-1675
Selected, translated and introduced by
P. J. COVENEY
Lecturer in European History
University of Nottingham
Selection. introduction. editorial matter and translation
© P. J. Coveney 1977
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977 978-0-333-10071-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted. in any form or by any means.
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First published 1977 by
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ISBN 978-0-333-21218-9 ISBN 978-1-349-86207-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-86207-8
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Contents
~" ~
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction: France in Crisis, 1620-1675 1
P. J. Coveney
2 A Century of Conflict: the Economic and Social Disorders
of the 'Grand Siecle' 64-
H. Methivier
3 Popular Uprisings in France before the Fronde, 1623-1648 78
B. Porshnev
4 The Bourgeoisie and Feudal-Absolutism in Seventeenth-
Century France 103
B. Porshnev
5 Research into the Popular Uprisings in France before the
Fronde 136
R. Mousnier
6 Some Reasons for the Fronde: the Revolutionary Days in
Paris in 1648 169
R. Mousnier
7 The Financial Officiers during the Fronde 201
R. Mousnier
8 The French Nobility and Absolute Monarchy in the First
Half of the Seventeenth Century 231
P. Deyon
Glossary 247
Select Bibliography 255
Index 263
Preface
The aim has been to make available in English major contributions to the
historiography of seventeenth-century France, and to provide, in an in
troductory chapter, the general context of discussion within which they
may be studied. The decision to include this article and to exclude that
was not an easy one. From the outset, I decided that it was preferable to
present a limited number of articles intact, and fairly extensive extracts
from longer works, rather than a larger number of shorter fragments. The
basis of my selection was that, taken separately, the articles and extracts
should be important in themselves; that, taken together, they should
raise, as far as possible, most of the essential considerations involved
in the debate on the French seventeenth century which has been in
process for over a generation; and that, both separately and together,
they should contribute to the general theme of the whole work, which is
clearly indicated in its title.
I have taken the fifty or so years which fall almost equally on either
side of the Fronde as the chronological framework for this study. Every
thing suggests, and will I think increasingly suggest, the need to read
these years as a continuous period, not divided as they so often have been
at 1653 and 1661. The consolidation of the ancien regime in the later
seventeenth century stems from the crisis and resolutions of these crucial
decades. They are fundamental to the formation of French absolutism.
They are by far the most important decades in modern French develop
ment before the era of the Revolution and Napoleon.
It has given me very great pleasure to translate and prepare these
articles and extracts for publication in English. Their publication is of
course only made possible by the generous permission given to me to
undertake it. I am indeed grateful to Professor Roland Mousnier, Pro
fessor Pierre Deyon and M. Hubert MHhivier for their permission to trans
late and publish their work; and to Professor Fernand Braudel and Pro
fessor Robert Mandrou for their permission to translate and publish
extracts from the French edition of Professor Boris Porshnev's work on
popular uprisings in France before the Fronde. A major aim of this collec
tion has indeed been achieved by my being able to draw together in one
publication the work of Roland Mousnier and Boris Porshnev.
I wish also to record my thanks to Professor W. R. Fryer, who read an
early draft of my introductory chapter and made many valuable com-
viii Preface
ments upon it. I am grateful too for the awarenesses which have arisen
from my teaching and learning from successive classes of final year
students reading 'France under Louis XIV' in the History Department of
the University of Nottingham.
I am grateful to my publishers for their providing me with space to
include the authors' notes to their work virtually intact, as collected
notes at the end of the chapters. My own interpolated notes, wherever
they occur, are clearly indicated as editorial material.
I have appended a glossary of French terms which have been left un
translated, and whose meaning is not immediately clarified in their con
text. Technical terms are always I think best left untranslated, even when
they may seem to have approximate equivalents. I do not like rendering
bailliage, for example, as 'bailiwick', or officier as 'official'. A word given in
the glossary is indicated by the glossary mark (t) on the first occasion
when it occurs in any chapter.
The bibliography is intended to assist any further reading which this
work may encourage.
P. J. COVENEY
University of Nottingham,
July 1976
Acknowledgements
The editor and publishers wish to thank the following for their permis
sion to translate and publish extracts and articles included in this col
lection:
M. Hubert MHhivier and the Presses Universitaires de France for the
extract from M. MHhivier's L'Ancien Regime, 6e edition, Paris, 1974, pp.
63-78; Professor Fernand Braudel and Professor Robert Mandrou and the
Centre de Recherches Historiques de la VIe Section de l'Ecole Pratique
des Hautes Etudes for the extracts from Professor Boris Porshnev's Les
a
Soulevements populaires en France de 1623 1648, S.E.V.P.E.N., Paris,
1963, pp. 17-44, 539-61 and 574-82; Professor Roland Mousnier and the
Revue d'Histoire moderne et contemporaine for 'Recherches sur les
soulevements populaires en France avant la Fronde', Revue d'histoire
moderne et contemporaine, 1958, pp. 81-113; Professor Roland Mousnier
and the Societe d'Etude du XVIIe Siecle for 'Quelques raisons de la
Fronde: les causes des journees revolutionnaires parisiennes de 1648',
XVIIe Siecle, 1949, pp. 33-78, and for 'Recherches sur les syndicats
d'officiers pendant la Fronde: Tresoriers Generaux de France et Elus dans
Ia Revolution', XVIle Siecle, 1959, pp. 76-117; and Professor Pierre Deyon
and the Presses Universitaires de France for 'A propos des rapports entre
la noblesse franl;aise et la monarchie absolue pendant la premiere moitie
du XVIIe siecle', Revue Historique, CCXXXI, 1964, pp. 341-56.
Introduction:
I
France in Crisis, I620-1675
P. J. COVENEY
The French seventeenth century has been a major interest among Euro
pean historians since the Second World War. The reason for this, at
least in part, is that the seventeenth century saw the formation of the
French ancien regime and occupies therefore a determining position in
the transformation of the late-medieval constitution in France into the
political society we term absolutism. Much of the history, however,
remains controversial. even in its widest and deepest issues. Are we in
deed justified in speaking in terms of 'crisis' in relation to any part of
the century? Did the economic expansion of the 'long sixteenth century'
come to a close in France in the 1630s and 1640s, giving way to a period
of economic contraction? What was the relation of the monarchy to the
dominant elements within the French state, and what were the relation
ships between those elements themselves, especially between 'sword'
and 'robe'? What was the nature of the constant popular unrest which
disturbed France for so long? Was seventeenth-century France still a
'feudal' society, in which the political state was merely the instrument
of a 'feudal' elite in achieving the defeat of the popular masses? Or,
conversely, had the monarchy become associated with elements of the
bourgeoisie, either through venality or mercantilism, thereby trans
forming the late-feudal character of the monarchical state by ending the
political monopoly of a traditional feudal class? Was the French seven
teenth century a society about which it is possible to talk usefully in
terms of modern class-conflict, as Boris Porshnev has, or was it a society
still meaningfully contained within the framework of late-medieval
'orders', as Roland Mousnier sees it? These are some of the major issues
involved in the modern historiography of seventeenth-century France, and
which form the basis of much of the discussion of the various chapters
of this work.
I have used the word 'crisis' in my title very deliberately, since it still
seems to me the word which best approximates to a description of the
2 France in Crisis, 1620-1675
experience through which the French monarchical state passed in the
middle decades of the seventeenth century; and I have, equally deliber
ately, extended the period of crisis beyond the Fronde, to include the
first period of Louis XIV's personal reign itself, since important elements
of that crisis continued until well beyond Louis' assumption of personal
power in 1661. Royal policy in the crucial period of the early personal
reign was largely a response to the mid-century crisis as it had revealed
itself in the Fronde, a repetition of which the monarchy was intent at all
costs to avoid; not solely by the blunt response of a simplifying 're
duction to obedience', in Lavisse's celebrated phrase, but by something
altogether more acutely attuned to the nature of the crisis within the
monarchical state and to its solution. This, more than anything perhaps,
was the major legacy of the Fronde.
Students of the early modem period will be well aware of the whole
corpus of 'crisis' literature which has grown up since Roland Mousnier's
synthesising account of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in 19541
and E. J. Hobsbawm's essay on 'The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century'.
which appeared the same year,2 followed by H. ]. Trevor-Roper's 'The
General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century' some five years later.s Just
as they will be aware of the disagreements and caveats expressed by,
among others, J. H. EIliott,4 1. SchOffer,5 A. D. Lublinskaya6 and P.
Gouberrt regarding the whole concept of seventeenth-century crisis.
Some historians have perhaps tended to use the word crisis to suggest
explanations where in fact no explanation is, and the word has cer
tainly tended to subsume historical phenomena, especially economic,
into generalisations which are often highly controversial and conjectural.
The idea of 'crisis' has, equally, derived sometimes from a priori assump
tions, where the concept anticipates the reasons adduced to explain it,
which is a common enough enemy of all historical wisdom.
Even so, it would be an arid excursion into the meaning of words to
propose that the word crisis should be limited to a strictly medical
analogy and therefore to its short-term meaning only; thus denying the
historian access to the concept that political societies do indeed experi
ence crises, sometimes of fairly long duration. which reach their climax
and find resolution only very slowly. Such semantic nicety would much
reduce the historian's access to a word which, by figurative extension.
has had a long and largely meaningful usage. It does not strain semantic
proprieties to propose that the English state was in a condition of crisis
in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods until the Civil War and be
yond. Spanish history has been usefully written of in terms of 'crisis' at
the close of the sixteenth and during the early seventeenth centuries.8 It is
a common acceptance that Muscovy succumbed to a period of accumu
lating and prolonged crisis following the death of Ivan IV in 1584 until
the restoration of stable monarchy from the accession of Michael Romanov