Abstract
During the 1970s and 1980s the notion of the ‘demilitarization’ of the early modern nobility was put forward as one dimension of a wider noble ‘crisis’. It was most fully articulated by a North American scholar, the late Ellery Schalk, in his From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton, NJ, 1986), and ultimately inspired by the theories of Norbert Elias. Wider changes in military organization – above all the reduced importance of the (noble) cavalry in enlarged armies now dominated by infantry, in which noblemen usually disdained to serve – together with the increasing demands of warfare were believed to have undermined the traditional military role of the Second Estate. Instead the nobility found a new ideology in ideas of birth and lineage.
Schalk’s arguments have been influential – perhaps more influential than their intrinsic merits justified. Yet they rested more on pamphlet literature setting out what nobles should aspire to be, rather than on archival research exploring how they thought and acted. The importance of Brian Sandberg’s mature and deeply considered monograph is that it demonstrates beyond any doubt the extent to which the early modern French nobility was a ‘warrior elite’, and so undermines the notion of ‘demilitarization’. Inspired by the writings of the distinguished French historian Arlette Jouanna and particularly by her Le devoir de révolte: la noblesse française et la gestation de l’État moderne, 1559–1661 (Paris, 1989), Sandberg examines the nobilities of two southern regions, Guyenne and Languedoc, during the second half of the civil strife waged intermittently between 1562 and 1629. His detailed study is based upon extensive and prolonged research in central and local archives in France and upon a secure grasp of terrain and locality, which together give his conclusions especial authority.
Historians have long posited that the carrying of a sword was one mark of the military origins and presumed role of the early modern nobility. Sandberg by contrast points out that, by the closing decades of the sixteenth century, this was much more likely to be a duelling rapier than the traditional broadsword, and that the nobility’s military culture was a matter not merely of external appearance but of formation. To be en armes, as contemporaries phrased it, was to be immersed from childhood in a world in which past military triumphs were remembered and celebrated, martial activities valorized, and honour located in brave deeds on the battlefield, to which every male noble was expected to aspire. It was entirely in keeping with this culture that a nobleman’s library was quite likely to contain the latest military treatises, such as those by Blaise de Monluc and François de la Noue.
There was more to it, however, than upbringing and attitudes. The ‘profession of arms’, as Sandberg writes, ‘structured kinship and shaped the everyday lives of the family and staff of warrior households’ (p. 34). The middle chapters of his study contain a particularly interesting account of the manifold ways in which military activities shaped friendships and were crucial to the formation of clientèles. Individual aristocrats who had exercised command enjoyed enormous local prestige, while the elites which formed around them dominated public life in the southern provinces. This was understandable in a country in which the military system was so decentralized: until much later in the seventeenth century the provincial governors were crucial to the raising and operation of military forces through the compagnies d’ordonnance, and were even able to order noblemen to serve in the royal armies. It was to be many decades before the crown assumed a greater role in military recruitment and supply.
The final part of Sandberg’s model study demonstrates the enduring military potential of leading noblemen and of the nobility as a whole. Even in the early decades of the seventeenth century the extensive building activities of many nobles continued to take account of military demands: the Montmorency château at Le Parc, for example, was ‘enclosed by tall fortified walls’ (p. 207), while many noble residences acted as supply centres during the fighting of the earlier seventeenth century.
Many grands were able to raise and deploy private armies which were sufficiently large to carry out siege operations and even independent campaigns, while in Guyenne the duc de Bouillon actually controlled his own artillery, which by this period was usually a crown monopoly. One of the most interesting conclusions is the avidity with which noblemen of all ranks actively sought to participate in battle, which was seen as crucial to the validation of honour.
One implication of Sandberg’s study, though it is never fully developed, is that the period which he examines proved to be the twilight of independent noble military power, before escalating cost made this all but impossible, as demonstrated for the Condé family by Katia Béguin in her Les princes de Condé: rebelles, courtisans et mécènes dans la France du Grand Siècle (Paris, 1999). Sandberg’s final pages look forward to the weakening of this warrior culture after the beginning of Louis XIV’s personal rule (1661–1715). Though his book contains occasional reminders of its origins in a PhD thesis, Brian Sandberg has written one of the most important regional studies of France’s militarized nobility to have appeared, and all early modern historians will need to read and ponder his conclusions.