Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern France: The Rohan Family, 1550–1715 9780271067513

Citation preview

STATUS, POWER, AND IDENTITY IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE

18673-Dewald_Status.indd i

2/16/15 2:26 PM

18673-Dewald_Status.indd ii

2/16/15 2:26 PM

STATUS, POWER , AND IDENTITY IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE

Q the rohan family, 1550–1715

Q jonat h a n de wa l d

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

18673-Dewald_Status.indd iii

2/16/15 2:26 PM

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dewald, Jonathan, author. Status, power, and identity in early modern France : the Rohan family, 1550–1715 / Jonathan Dewald. pages cm Summary: “Examines the aristocratic experience in early modern France through a close examination of the history of the Rohan, a noble family in the Parisian court who were involved in notable political and religious events from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries”— Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-06616-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Rohan family. 2. Rohan, Henri, duc de, 1579–1638. 3. Aristocracy (Social class)—France—History—16th century. 4. Aristocracy (Social class)—France—History— 17th century. 5. Aristocracy (Social class)—France— History—18th century. 6. France—History—16th century. 7. France—History—17th century. 8. France— History—18th century. I. Title. dc121.3.d49 2015 305.5'2094209031—dc23 2014041908 Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003

The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992. This book is printed on paper that contains 30 post-consumer waste.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd iv

2/16/15 2:26 PM

for emma

18673-Dewald_Status.indd v

2/16/15 2:26 PM

. . . les rapports sociaux n’existent pas seulement entre les individus, ils sont en même temps en eux. Ils sont en eux sous diverses formes, dans la mesure où leur contenu affecte l’individu de plusieurs manières, idéelle bien sûr, cognitive, mais aussi matérielle, émotionelle, politique. — mauri ce go d e l i e r

18673-Dewald_Status.indd vi

2/16/15 2:26 PM

co n t ents

List of Illustrations | ix Preface | xi Note on the Text | xiii Introduction | 1 1 Constructing Status: Family Narratives, Family Myths | 12 2 Constructing Identity: Henri de Rohan, 1579–1638 | 37 3 Women, Gender, and the Management of Dynastic Capital | 85 4 Material Contexts: Wealth, Income, Strategies | 120 5 Followers and Servants: Aristocracy as Collective Practice | 163 Conclusion | 195 Notes | 199 Bibliography | 227 Index | 241

18673-Dewald_Status.indd vii

2/16/15 2:26 PM

18673-Dewald_Status.indd viii

2/16/15 2:26 PM

i l l u s t r atio ns

figures 1 Henri de Rohan and the modern imagination | 2 2 Henri de Rohan in his times | 40 3 Benjamin de Rohan | 41 4 Marguerite de Béthune | 89 5 Anne de Rohan-Chabot | 99 6 Blain | 153 7 The Place Royale | 157 8 The Hôtel de Soubise | 159 9 Benjamin Priolo | 189 maps 1 Rohan’s Europe | 45 2 Rohan power in western France | 123 tables 1 Seigneurial revenues, Pontivy and Rohan, 1638 | 128 2 Rents of Pontivy, 1574–1759 | 134

18673-Dewald_Status.indd ix

2/16/15 2:26 PM

18673-Dewald_Status.indd x

2/16/15 2:26 PM

p r e face

This book is an installment in what has turned out to be a long-term intellectual project, an effort to understand the ruling classes of early modern France. Here my approach is particularistic, focused on a single family and on its experiences from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth, but the underlying issues are broad. They concern the nature and impact of power in a society that had not yet been transformed by industrialization or democratic revolution, a society like our own in some ways, very different in others. When I first began exploring these issues, in the mid-1970s, the French nobility was an understudied group, and it interested me and other scholars partly for that reason. There was a particular need to apply to it the methods of social history, both by examining the practical realities of nobles’ lives and by developing new interpretive frameworks that would make sense of those lives. The situation is dramatically different today. Over the last thirty years, a large and sophisticated historical literature on all the European nobilities has emerged, and its influence on my thinking will be obvious in what follows. Yet if our empirical knowledge has vastly expanded, we in the twentyfirst century also occupy a new position as we look back at those who dominated Europe before 1789, for our own dominant groups now enjoy powers and distinctions that were scarcely imagined thirty years ago. New degrees of economic inequality have been the most visible element in this societal transformation, but economic change has been accompanied by equally significant changes in values, experiences, and political expectations. As a result, in this respect we early modernists find ourselves unexpectedly close to the aristocratic societies we study, far closer than our predecessors. (In other ways, of course, we are much further away; mid-twentieth-century historians, for instance, knew far better than we the realities of war.) Our proximity creates its own blind spots, but it also encourages new insights and new questions, and it creates a new need for historical knowledge. Save for a brief theoretical orientation early on, these contemporary issues do not appear directly in what follows, but they have helped shape my approaches to the topic. This book is meant to illustrate a certain view of the uses of historical

18673-Dewald_Status.indd xi

2/16/15 2:26 PM

xii

|

preface

knowledge: a “usable past,” I believe, cannot provide us lessons that apply to the present, but it can enlarge our sympathies and understanding, and thereby help us better address the specific realities that surround us. Scholarship of this kind cannot be carried out without the support of institutions and friends, and I have been lucky in both. The College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo has provided a series of research leaves and other research support; visiting positions at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Université d’Angers, and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study provided both further research support and chances for ongoing discussions with colleagues. Early versions of the text were presented at Freiburg, the Université de Paris IV–Sorbonne, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, the Université de Paris X–Nanterre, Durham University, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. The comments I received on these occasions have been crucial to the project. For suggestions, practical help, probing questions, and much more, I owe special debts to Reynald Abad, Philip Benedict, Ariane Boltanski, Fanny Cosandey, Laurence Croq, Elie Haddad, Jörn Leonhardt, Michel Nassiet, Orest Ranum, Nicole Reinhardt, Jean-Frédéric Schaub, Koen van Loon, Christian Wieland, and Madeline Zilfi. Robert Descimon, Robert Schneider, and James Collins read the entire manuscript with care and generosity, and shared with me as well their extraordinary knowledge of French history. I have not always followed their suggestions, but I have always learned from them. Finally, there is my immense debt to Patricia Marino, as reader, interlocutor, intellectual model, companion, and partner.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd xii

2/16/15 2:26 PM

n o t e on t he text

French men and women of the seventeenth century recorded most of their business doings in terms of livres (hereafter l.), sols or sous (one-twentieth of a livre, hereafter s.), and deniers (one-twelfth of a sou, hereafter d.). These were fictional accounting units, whose relationships to the real coins in circulation were set by royal legislation and changed over time; hence the need for some purposes to convert these units into grams of silver, so as accurately to follow changes over time. For some purposes, contemporaries also referred to écus, a real coin that for much of the period was worth three livres. Except where otherwise noted, all translations are my own. In these, I have mainly followed modern conventions with regard to capitalization and spelling; in a few cases, though, conveying the original meanings has required preserving the original usage.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd xiii

2/16/15 2:26 PM

18673-Dewald_Status.indd xiv

2/16/15 2:26 PM

introduction

At the Reformation, the citizens of Geneva cleansed their cathedral of its graven images, and they kept it clean in the centuries that followed. Visitors today find no images there of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, or other leaders of the Swiss Reformation; even the site of Calvin’s grave, located somewhere in the city, is unknown. The cathedral contains only one statue, in a chapel near where the main altar once stood: a life-size monument to a seventeenthcentury French duke who resided only briefly in the city, Henri de Rohan. The monument expresses Genevans’ sense of Rohan’s iconic status within international Protestantism. For a dozen years, he had led French Protestants in rebellions against an increasingly hostile monarchy; soon after signing a final peace treaty and leaving France, he took on a new role, leading a Frenchsponsored Swiss army against the Catholic Habsburgs. A statue in Rohan’s honor was first erected in the cathedral soon after his burial there in 1638. In 1794, revolutionaries smashed it and exhumed the body, but a restored version was installed in the 1820s; the current statue dates from 1890. This book examines Henri de Rohan and the people around him, his family, friends, servants, and enemies. The story starts around 1550, with the generation of Rohan’s parents; it extends forward into the early eighteenth century, to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My intent is not to offer a biography or family history, although what follows includes elements of both. This is instead a cultural and social history, an exploration of values, sentiments, practices, and relationships. Rohan’s Europe-wide celebrity in itself justifies such an investigation, for it was not only Geneva that honored him and his family. Upon his exile from France, Venice appointed him to lead its armies, and after his death (in battle, in Germany), the city placed his armor on display in St. Mark’s Cathedral.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 1

2/16/15 2:26 PM

fig. 1 A Protestant icon: Henri de Rohan and the modern imagination. Two views of Geneva’s 1890 monument to Henri de Rohan. The first, a lifesize plaster model in the sculptor’s studio; the second, the finished sculpture installed in St. Pierre Cathedral. Photos: BGE, Centre d’iconographie genevoise.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 2

2/16/15 2:26 PM

introduction

|

3

His younger brother Benjamin, the first duc de Soubise, received the honor of a state funeral in Westminster Abbey; their mother and sisters corresponded with a selection of European eminences. Seventy years after the duke’s death he was still remembered in France as a great man, partly for his military exploits, partly for his writings on politics and war. Understanding seventeenthcentury Europe requires understanding figures like him and his family; they helped shape the histories of several European countries. But the main justification for studying the Rohan has less to do with their extraordinary achievements than with what they tell us about the ordinary functioning of European society in the seventeenth century. That society was dominated by aristocrats like the Rohan, small groups whose rule rested on the idea that social inequality was hereditary, natural, and valuable, a precondition both for societal order and for great achievements. Only a few could rule society, and those best suited to do so had inherited the role from distinguished ancestors, because personal qualities followed bloodlines; aptitude for rule (like other personal traits) derived ultimately from biology, from the characteristics that members of a particular family shared. Inequality did not mean tyranny; aristocratic rule was to be just, resembling that of a father over his household, at once loving and stern. But like paternal authority, aristocratic authority rested on natural differences, and therefore it was not open to questioning by social inferiors. As members of the high aristocracy, holding wealth, military commands, and the esteem of their contemporaries, the Rohan allow us to see how this aristocratic social order actually worked, as daily practice rather than social theory; their example brings to light some of the mechanisms of social domination, its complicated impact on both rulers and ruled, and some of the limitations that it encountered. Of course, the example is hardly a typical one. The Rohan were too wealthy and too well-connected to be remotely representative of even the ruling class of their times. In the 1620s, Henri de Rohan had an income of about 100,000 l.; a few years earlier, many French country gentlemen lived on less than 200 l. yearly, and an income of 10,000 l. placed a family among the leading provincial nobility, the handful of families who dominated the political life of their regions. Even other members of the high French nobility, those whose incomes matched Rohan’s, found the family’s pretensions excessive. Rohan and his family believed (falsely but sincerely) that their lineage could be traced back to the age of Constantine the Great, in the late Roman Empire; they claimed as well connections with ruling dynasties across Europe. In the early eighteenth century, the duc de Saint-Simon in his memoirs ridiculed

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 3

2/16/15 2:26 PM

4

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Rohan familial vanity; a few years later, a lawsuit by other peers sought to curtail their claims to being princes, rather than mere aristocrats. Yet if the Rohan were exceptional, they also exemplified for many of their contemporaries a certain norm of societal superiority. Catholics as well as Protestants admired the duke Henri himself. The maréchal François de Bassompierre (a Catholic, who had led troops against the Rohan brothers and had a lawsuit against the duke) spoke in his memoirs of Henri de Rohan as “a very great man”; around the same time a lawyer, arguing before the very Catholic Parlement of Paris, described the duke as someone “whom all Europe admired for his wisdom and honored for his virtue, . . . whom honor and glory accompanied everywhere.” Disliking the family and doubting its genealogical claims, Saint-Simon in the following century nonetheless felt obliged to devote an entire chapter of his memoirs to “stories concerning the house of Rohan”; and he, too, praised the duke himself as a “great man.” The Rohan offer normative rather than statistical typicality; for contemporaries, they exemplified how aristocratic society ought to work. In their case, the historian can follow these workings at the microscopic level, the level at which (as historians have increasingly come to realize) social power is so often created. Precisely the qualities that made them unusual— their wealth, prominence, ambitions, and vanities—ensured that they generated a wide range of documents, offering unusual access to their intimate thoughts and doings. Henri de Rohan, his sister Anne, and their mother, Catherine de Parthenay, were all writers who wanted their works to circulate widely; and because of their frequent travels and their role in the international Protestant movement, they also generated a large number of private letters. Their private archives were dispersed during the French Revolution, but some materials from them survive; so also do thousands of business contracts that the family arranged before the notaries of Paris. This multidimensional documentation permits a multidimensional inquiry, one that brings together politics, psychology, gender and sexual relations, intellectual life, economic life, and material culture. Here is the particular strength of the case-study approach: it permits access to human realities and causal sequences that more general approaches mask. Mid-nineteenth-century European intellectuals disagreed about many issues, but they shared a set of fundamental ideas about aristocrats like the Rohan. The radical Karl Marx, the humanitarian reformer Charles Dickens, the centrist liberal Alexis de Tocqueville, and the nostalgic conservative William

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 4

2/16/15 2:26 PM

introduction

|

5

Cobbett—all agreed that aristocrats were a backward-looking group, who defined themselves with reference to long-dead ancestors and centuries-old traditions. For Marx and the others, this self-understanding limited aristocrats’ ability to cope with social change, and European society changed fast after 1450, with the emergence of new trade networks, new knowledge and technologies, more centralized governments, and higher standards of education and of elegant behavior. These changes enriched new men and made old skills obsolete. Wealth now flowed to merchants, bankers, lawyers, and bureaucrats, rather than to estate owners or mounted warriors. Warfare continued, to be sure, but it followed new rules: the adoption of gunpowder on European battlefields meant that armies needed masses of obedient, welltrained foot soldiers, not an elite of independent mounted knights. New ideas and religious beliefs posed other challenges, undermining the idea of aristocracy itself and creating alternative models of social excellence, founded on personal merit and achievement rather than high birth. A ruling class fi xated on the past could not sustain itself in this era of rapid societal change. Contemporary historical scholarship has dismantled much of this nineteenth-century received wisdom. Like dominant groups in other times and places, scholars have shown, the aristocrats of Old Regime France were neither prisoners of tradition nor helpless victims of social change. On the contrary: they proved quite capable of reinventing themselves in response to external challenges, and as a result they profited from many of the transformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Aristocrats continued throughout these years to dominate France’s army, Church, and government; although few of them participated directly in commerce or banking, they happily invested in others’ commercial enterprises. Meanwhile, rising population, improved transportation, and new commercial techniques added to the value of those resources that the group had long controlled, so that the aristocracy’s estates and forests generated rising revenues. To the very end of the Old Regime, the aristocracy remained France’s wealthiest and most powerful group. They played an equally important role in French culture, less as producers of art and literature than by determining the frameworks in which such production would take place. This understanding of aristocratic continuity provides the interpretive framework for the analysis that follows. Already a notable family in the early sixteenth century, the Rohan steadily reinforced their position over the following two hundred years. By 1700, they counted among the dozen or so greatest French families; even today they remain prominent in French politics and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 5

2/16/15 2:26 PM

6

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

continue to own one of their ancestral Breton châteaux. The Rohan thus offer a case study in ongoing social domination, illuminating how a ruling group maintained its hold even as conditions around it changed. As such, I argue here, the family shows the particular inadequacy of “tradition” as an explanation of aristocratic belief and action. Like other aristocrats, of course, the Rohan spoke often and warmly of the past, and, as the honors that Geneva bestowed on them attest, they were famous as well for their Christian piety. But they were always ready to disregard the lessons of both past and piety, and in their writings they explicitly urged others to do so. Instead, both their theory and their practice emphasized rational calculation and worldly self-interest; Henri de Rohan was in fact the first European writer to develop a theory of self-interest as a dominant force in human affairs. In keeping with this attitude, the family showed a great capacity for change, and in some instances, for radical change. Hence the centrality in my analysis of the theme of self-reinvention, both collective (the central issue in chapter 1, which considers the family’s self-presentation) and individual (the focus of chapter 2, which traces the multiple identities of Henri de Rohan himself). Readiness to change was the precondition of the Rohan’s continued success, as it was for other members of the French aristocracy, and that readiness went deep. It affected how the Rohan understood themselves, as well as their strategies and tactics of social interaction. Yet if the Rohan illustrate the continuity of aristocratic domination and the flexible mind-set that made it possible, they also show the limits of aristocratic power, and understanding those is another concern of this study. Limits derived partly from basic realities in the Rohan’s society, over which they could have little control. Wars and the fallout from French foreign policy disrupted the income from their estates, both directly and indirectly. The monarchy compensated for some of these losses by naming members of the family to high military, ecclesiastical, and court offices and providing outright gifts, but these benefits came with high costs attached. Military commands and other offices had to be purchased, and other expenditures were necessary to maintain the family’s public profile. As a result, the Rohan were permanently in debt, despite the immense income that they enjoyed. (These and related economic issues are addressed in chapter 4.) Alongside these external pressures, contradictory forces within the family itself posed other limits to its success. Each individual within the family had distinct interests, and these never entirely overlapped with those of the others. Siblings competed for the limited stock of family resources; wives and moth-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 6

2/16/15 2:26 PM

introduction

|

7

ers had obligations to their parents’ families as well as to their Rohan husbands and children; cousins shared dynastic pride but otherwise usually had little to do with one another. Nor were there strong collective constraints limiting the effects of these divergences. Rohan fathers usually died long before their wives, and in any case they spent long stretches of time away from their families, at court or in the army, leaving their wives and mothers to manage the family. In these circumstances, patriarchal authority was rarely even an abstract ideal among the Rohan, let alone a practical reality, and both women and men enjoyed considerable freedom in pursuing their interests and wants. As a result, internal conflicts were frequent and dramatic. In the early 1620s, there was a shooting war between Henri de Rohan and his cousin-bymarriage the duc de Luynes; in the 1640s, a lawsuit between Henri’s widow and the couple’s only daughter; in the 1690s, lawsuits between Henri’s grandson and granddaughter, overlapping with a lawsuit between the duc de Rohan and his Rohan-Guémené cousin. Conflict within the family was the norm, not the exception. (These issues are the central concern of chapter 3.) Even their interests as individuals drew the Rohan in contradictory directions, so that family successes produced trade-offs and losses as well as gains. Thus the family prided itself on its Breton territorial base, which for centuries had provided the foundation for its economic and political eminence. But family members also sought eminence in national and international affairs, and inevitably that pursuit came at the expense of provincial influence. Henri de Rohan himself never visited Brittany during the last nineteen years of his life, and none of his intimate advisers came from there; he may have contemplated selling his ancestral estates in order to acquire for himself a Mediterranean principality. His daughter and grandchildren had even less to do with provincial affairs. By their times, the Rohan were a Parisian family, for whom Brittany was foreign territory, to be visited on only rare occasions and following extensive preparations. (These issues recur throughout the text, but are the central concern of chapter 5.) A final source of trouble lay deeper still, in the Rohan’s definitions of what constituted a good life. In his writings, Henri de Rohan presented a strikingly modern view of self-interest as a legitimate and fundamental motive in human affairs, one that properly overrode traditional obligations. Yet he defined his own interests in ways that had little to do with the social forms that would come to dominate nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. He gave little thought to managing and improving his properties, and viewed merely serving the state as only a second-best form of activity; although he

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 7

2/16/15 2:26 PM

8

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

dealt often with the middle classes of his time, he viewed their economic vision as fundamentally misguided. Rather than management, investment, or state service, his hopes centered on military and political grandeur, and the possibility of becoming an independent prince formed an important component of his political imagination. Modern in so many ways, Rohan remained in other respects committed to a world in the process of disappearing. These dimensions of the Rohan’s story help explain a central fact about their story: despite wealth, power, and prestige, the family could never count itself an autonomous force in French society. After about 1600, it did not even seek such autonomy. Its finances remained crisis-prone throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it depended on the crown for its material survival. There was cultural dependence as well, in that the Rohan’s self-image was bound up with their connections to monarchy. In one sense, their situation thus exemplified what William Beik has called the “social collaboration” that underlay France’s monarchical government, the process by which the state and the high aristocracy mutually supported each other. But the terminology of collaboration also overstates the power that the Rohan brought to this relationship, either to support or to contest the monarchy’s projects. Continually inventing and reinventing themselves, drawn toward multiple, often contradictory objectives, the seventeenth-century Rohan constituted less an independent power negotiating with the monarchy than an outpost of monarchy. Their experiences showed both the benefits and the travails that came with such a position. A further interpretive commitment runs through this study, mainly unstated but important to my purposes. Cases like that of the Rohan, I believe, have more than purely historical significance; they also raise questions about how power functions in all times and places, including our own. This is not to suggest that differences between societies are insignificant, or that lessons can be transposed from one to another. On the contrary, a principal concern of this book is to map a specific social and cultural world, and to measure differences between the seventeenth century and the industrial and postindustrial world we inhabit. But case studies like this one can suggest some of the mechanisms that govern social power, something of its inner life, its possible strengths and weaknesses. These are kinds of knowledge that prove difficult to get at for contemporary societies, because so many forces—both practical and ideological— obscure the inner lives of contemporary ruling groups. In theory, modern

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 8

2/16/15 2:26 PM

introduction

|

9

societies rest on impersonal institutions and standards, which allow only a small place for family connections, patronage, and class loyalties—and almost none for inherited privileges. These forms of social organization derive partly from our ethical beliefs—that power should be democratically distributed and that all should enjoy roughly equal life chances—and partly from the practical realities that surround us. The modern economic order requires that all individuals reason carefully about their aims, and it rewards only those who do so effectively. Modern technologies and organizational systems likewise require complex, specialized skills rather than personal connections. Together, these demands mean that modern societies tend toward social pluralism, generating multiple social hierarchies with different groups atop each, the products of specific processes of meritocratic, competitive selection. In these circumstances, exploring the inner mechanisms of social power may seem at best an irrelevancy, a gratuitous intrusion on the personal lives of social actors, an enterprise best left to journalists and novelists. But other realities continue to matter in defining how power functions in the modern world, and some social scientists have accorded central importance to them. Focusing on the American example, the sociologists C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff have sought to map the connections and overlaps among leading groups in different domains, and both conclude that such connections are important enough to justify speaking of a single “power elite” dominating American life. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has noted the importance of inherited “social capital” hidden within the supposedly individualistic, meritocratic systems of modern education and elite recruitment. Ruling groups, on this view, sustain their positions partly by means of the concrete resources they control, their economic capital, but also partly through their command of immaterial resources: forms of taste, knowledge, and behavior that their societies prize, connections and friendships, the esteem and acknowledgment of others. Unlike economic capital, social capital of these kinds cannot be quickly acquired through an open market. It needs to be built up through long training and the mobilization of familial and social ties, making it accessible only to those already atop society and to those few outsiders who can internalize their superiors’ manners and outlook. Their near-monopoly on social capital, Bourdieu argues, ensures that existing elites continue to dominate even the open institutions of modern societies. The American anthropologists Edward Hansen and Timothy Parrish take these ideas a step further, arguing that elite stability, interconnectedness, and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 9

2/16/15 2:26 PM

10

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

reliance on social capital are in fact especially characteristic of modernity, and not (as might be thought) relics of outmoded social forms. Contemporary capitalism is fast-changing and prone to crises, and it demands quick and effective action from its dominant groups. They cannot afford always to follow cumbersome administrative routines or respect the formal divisions among different kinds of power; they need to deploy every weapon available to them, every conduit of knowledge and influence. Hence (Hansen and Parrish argue) contemporary ruling groups are especially reliant on informal personal relationships, patronage networks, dynasties, and clans. However individualistic or meritocratic the rest of modern society may be, they conclude, its ruling groups remain “familistic entities defending accumulated capital over time through the mobilization of kin and connections.” The Rohan cannot provide the grounds for evaluating claims like these, but their example can supply something equally important: insight into how “familistic entities” function, how they defend their positions over time, what obstacles they encounter, and how their different forms of power interact, both reinforcing and interfering with one another. The Rohan example matters especially for what it shows of the complexity of these mechanisms, for— so runs a central argument of this book—even the simplest components of their power were unstable constructions, the products of choices, trade-offs, and relationships with outsiders. In the Rohan’s case, these complexities meant that sustaining power from one generation to the next was always an uncertain business, marked by crises, internal conflicts, and occasional outright failures. Certainly fragility of this order has not characterized all ruling groups. Yet the Rohan example is relevant to ruling-class success stories as well as to failures, for it draws attention to the problems ruling groups need to solve in preserving their position, and to the real possibility that they may not manage to do so. Exercising and sustaining social power, the Rohan example suggests, are not natural phenomena, the outcomes of iron laws of oligarchy or of Darwinian competition propelling the fittest to the top. Social stasis is no more natural than social change, and like change it requires explanation in terms of the specific political, social, and cultural circumstances that make it possible. Geneva’s monument to Henri de Rohan offers an interpretive statement about the man himself and his place in history. The statue presents him as a military sage, at once man of action and intellectual, a man of his own times who also participates in the larger sweep of history. Rohan wears the elabo-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 10

2/16/15 2:26 PM

introduction

|

11

rate armor of a seventeenth-century commander, and his ducal coronet is set before him. But he also holds in his left hand a book, presumably the Bible, and his costume imitates that of a Roman emperor, both in the style of his armor and in the cloak draped around it. Gaze and posture likewise recall the Romans. Rohan looks calmly toward the future, his brow slightly furrowed, his eyes focused on events invisible to the bystander, energetic yet calm and self-controlled. The architecture of the surrounding chapel completes these messages. It places Rohan within a context of classical order, simplicity, and symmetry. If he was a man of the seventeenth century, so the statue and chapel suggest, he was also something more, an exemplar of ideals shared by Romans and moderns alike, a man for all seasons. But Rohan cannot be so easily detached from his historical context. He was indeed both a man of action and an intellectual, but he was also many other things that the statue conceals. No less than his contemporaries, he was attached to his surroundings by intense bonds of self-interest, affection, and expectation. Contemporaries noted his ferocious ambition, his family vanity, and a certain cruelty in his political dealings. Some also noted his psychological complexities: a tendency to fall into lethargic illness at moments of crisis, an intense dependence on the advice of intimates, apparent indifference to physical relations with his wife. A few suggested that he actually feared battle, and some questioned his religious sincerity. At no point in his life was he an isolated individual. His doings always reflected his immediate connections with family members and followers, and his larger awareness of himself as representing a certain social order. These qualities and attachments do not make Rohan any less exemplary of his times, and they certainly do not make him less interesting for historical study. On the contrary, they enhance his significance. He and his family were a complicated group, who lived out contradictions—both social and personal—that ran through their world. Those complicated human realities form the subject matter of this book.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 11

2/16/15 2:26 PM

1 constructing status: family narratives, family myths

“A courtier whose name is not sufficiently fine should bury it beneath a better one; but if he has a name he dares acknowledge, then he should insinuate that it is of all names the most illustrious, just as his family is of all families the most ancient: he should claim connections with the princes of Lorraine, the Rohan, the Châtillon, the Montmorency, and if possible with the princes of the blood . . . at every opportunity he should refer to ‘my dynasty,’ ‘my lineage,’ ‘my name,’ ‘my coat of arms.’ . . . He should say that his family precedes all but the ruling family; and by repeating it, he will be believed.” Thus the essayist Jean de La Bruyère, describing Louis XIV’s court in about 1690. His comments point to a contradiction at the heart of seventeenth-century aristocratic life. The ideology of aristocracy rested on claims about continuity with long-dead ancestors; ancestral blood flowing in descendants’ veins ensured that a family’s qualities would continue through time, from one generation to the next, down to the present. But in fact, La Bruyère suggested, the realm of the high aristocracy was marked rather by instability than by continuity; it was a site of striving and self-reinvention, of perpetual becoming. Even those who could legitimately claim ancient family origins sought to improve their status, and narrative invention constituted an important part of their efforts. The contradiction was probably unavoidable. Ancestry—“a chain of illustrious men from the same stock, notable for their valor, or their high positions, or the great standing they have had because of their birth,” as a contemporary phrased it—constituted one form of a family’s social capital. It could be converted into political office, court pensions, and advantageous marriages, and it thus mattered as much as acquiring land and houses. Families had to create stories about themselves, versions of the past that would solidify their importance in the present, and they had to sustain these render-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 12

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

13

ings of the past in the face of others’ doubts and competing tales. La Bruyère included the Rohan among a handful of exceptions to this striving and selffashioning, for by the time he wrote they stood near the top of the French aristocracy. They were not only “dukes and peers,” but also counted as “princes étrangers,” a recently created status category designed for members of Europe’s sovereign families who happened to reside in France and who thus enjoyed precedence over all mere nobles, even the peerage. Only princes of the blood, those individuals directly related to the king himself, enjoyed higher standing. Any social climber would naturally seek to claim such a family as relatives. But that apparently clear status was in fact illusory, as La Bruyère himself surely knew, and the Rohan participated just like other noble families in the processes of self-invention he depicted. Indeed, contemporaries believed them to be unusually ambitious and unscrupulous in their efforts. Early in the eighteenth century, the duc de Saint-Simon described them as “people who, not satisfied with the rank they held, absolutely wanted to become princes,” and he lovingly recounted their “first time reaching high rank”: King Henri III offered them ducal status as a bribe, to resolve a case in which a Rohan daughter had been seduced at court. Saint-Simon believed that the family continued in the late seventeenth century to use sex as a tool of social advancement. “Their intrigues, . . . following the Rohan’s lucky star, were useful to the family,” though they brought it “little honor.” Just like other noble families, the Rohan had to make their own way, creating for themselves the high position they held, using both practical and ideological means. This chapter explores how the family managed these tasks. I start with a brief sketch of its rise to prominence during the Middle Ages, its seventeenthand early eighteenth-century apogee, and the difficulties it faced thereafter. I then turn to myths, examining the narratives the family recounted about itself and the messages these conveyed about its character and position. Family myth, I show, had a history. The Rohan recounted their past in different ways as time went on, partly in response to changing circumstances and values, partly because of the inherent difficulty of founding social identity on historical knowledge, vulnerable as it was to new discoveries and critical debate. Setting practical realities and familial myths alongside each other in this way allows us to see some of the otherwise-hidden mechanisms of social advancement in the Old Regime. Of course, in these efforts as in so much else, the Rohan were hardly typical of the French nobility as a whole. They were wealthier and better connected, their family narratives more grandiose.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 13

2/16/15 2:26 PM

14

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

But (I argue here) they differed from other families mainly in the success of their self-creation, not in deeper ways. Like all nobles, they needed to define their position within an unstable social hierarchy, in competition with others attempting to do the same thing. Just like others, they included dramatic fabrications in their stories about themselves, and like others they changed their stories to suit changing circumstances. For them as for others, family was an ideological construction, not a biological reality. Hence the central thread in this chapter is the instability of aristocratic status at even the highest levels. French aristocratic society was dynamic, characterized by hopes of advancement and the threat of decline. No family could neglect these competitive pressures, for failure to advance meant relative decline, as others successfully pushed forward; as La Bruyère asked about court life, “How can one stay motionless in a place where everything is in motion, and not run when everyone else runs?” Their lofty standing offered the Rohan scant protection against these pressures and processes, and thus makes them an especially instructive example for understanding the inner workings of French aristocratic status.

Dynastic Realities: The Rise of a Great Family The Rohan believed that they descended from fourth-century kings of Brittany, but in fact they first rose to prominence around the year 1000. Across western Europe at this time, hundreds of ambitious families were setting up castles and using them as bases of political power; with no more justification than armed force, they dominated the areas around their fortifications, at the expense of both distant kings (whose claims to local authority they contested) and local populations (who found themselves compelled to supply castleholders with money and services). For the Rohan, the first step in this process was construction of a castle at Josselin, in the Morbihan. Thereafter, their power and possessions grew quickly. In the early twelfth century, there was also a castle at Rohan, and a marriage in 1363 gave the family control over Léon, at the western end of the Breton peninsula. Conditions in medieval Brittany especially favored resourceful families like the Rohan. Brittany remained an independent principality, in practice until 1491, by law until 1532. But it adjoined the two greatest powers of latemedieval Europe, the Anglo-Norman and French monarchies, and inevitably each intervened in its politics. Succession crises in both the fourteenth and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 14

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

15

the fifteenth centuries intensified those pressures. In the absence of obvious claimants to the ducal title, France and England each proposed its own, and a series of violent encounters between their supporters allowed families like the Rohan ample room to maneuver. Both sides wanted their support, and loyalty brought rewards. In the fourteenth century, the Rohan established themselves as the richest of the seven baronial families that dominated Breton politics, among whom the presidency of the newly formed Estates of Brittany rotated. By that point, a historian has estimated, they held land and rights in over 15 percent of all Breton localities. This wealth allowed them to split into two principal branches, that of the vicomtes of Rohan and that of the RohanGuémené, each of which in turn produced subbranches. Cousinship did not guarantee closeness, and at some points the two branches came into direct conflict. But each also benefited from the other’s reflected glory, and on a few occasions marriage alliances reunited them. In the conflicts between English and French interests, the Rohan usually favored France, and their attachments to the French monarchy deepened as a result; increasingly their interests extended beyond Brittany. A Rohan served with Bertrand du Guesclin, named constable by the French king Charles V and one of the most effective military leaders of the mid-fourteenth century. The family allied itself still more closely with Du Guesclin’s successor as constable, Olivier de Clisson, a complicated figure whose loyalty shifted between England and France and among other power players of the era. Clisson himself married a Rohan, and gave one of his two daughters (his only heirs) in marriage to another; the properties that the Rohan inherited at Clisson’s death would remain their most prominent feudal holdings into the eighteenth century. In the late fifteenth century, another Rohan became maréchal de France and a trusted counselor of Louis XI—before running afoul of court factions and finding himself imprisoned during the reign of Louis XII. All of this encouraged lofty ambitions in the late fifteenth century, as the duchy of Brittany slid into another succession crisis and the French king threatened annexation. In 1479, Jean de Rohan advanced the claim that he himself was next in line to inherit the duchy, by virtue of his supposed descent from the first dukes of Brittany, in the fourth century. He also hoped to marry his two sons to the two daughters of the current duke. The duke’s opposition blocked these plans (instead, Anne de Bretagne would eventually marry the king of France, thereby ensuring that the duchy passed to French control), but their existence demonstrated the importance that the Rohan now enjoyed. Jean de Rohan almost certainly believed in the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 15

2/16/15 2:26 PM

16

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

legitimacy of his claims, which rested on his marriage to a daughter of the previous duke, as well as on his supposed ancestry. At that marriage, the bride had renounced her inheritance rights, but it nonetheless seemed to demonstrate that Rohan already enjoyed near-ducal standing. For decades they had held key offices at the Breton court, and no family in the region matched their wealth. In fact whatever last hopes remained for an independent Brittany centered on them, for by this point most of their onetime rivals had died out, leaving all seven of the great Breton baronies the property of either the Rohan or the La Trémoille, whose principal estates lay in Poitou. For the next 250 years, the two families would fight for regional preeminence, as symbolized by the right to preside over the Estates of Brittany. Their struggles took place mainly in the courts of law, but sometimes involved bloodshed when their followers encountered one another in the towns where the estates met. During the Fronde, the issue helped shape even high politics, with Henri de Chabot, as duc de Rohan, leading a breakaway version of the estates. These disputes showed that provincial power still mattered, and some members of the family continued to focus their attention on it. But the end of Breton independence meant that real high-level politics now centered on the French court, and both their wealth and their achievements over the previous century equipped the Rohan for success there. A son of the maréchal de Gié fought with François I and died at Pavia, in 1525. As a reward for this loyalty, the king’s sister herself, Marguerite de Navarre, took over the wardship of his children, providing material support, financial guidance, patronage in pursuit of court positions, and (most important) a marriage alliance with her own husband’s family, the Bourbon-Albret: in 1534, René de Rohan, vicomte de Rohan, married Isabeau d’Albret, daughter of the king of Navarre. Over the previous century, other marriages had connected the Rohan with the Albret and with the house of Navarre—but none had placed them in such close proximity to that country’s throne. Marguerite de Navarre took seriously her responsibilities as guardian, another sign of the Rohan’s rising importance, and in 1537 she wrote the king concerning “the need that has forced me to come here to Brittany . . . if I had been delayed by even a week,” the young couple “would have been ruined, not through their own fault, but because of those who have been in charge of their affairs.” A year later, she still worried at seeing “a lineage so close to us brought so low,” and she again intervened, visiting the family and taking her sister off to her own house until the financial situation could be resolved. The relationship between the two families became still closer in the next

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 16

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

17

generation. Marguerite’s daughter Jeanne d’Albret “had such affection for all the Rohan, her first cousins,” and above all René II de Rohan, “that she raised him particularly, according him the honor of taking care of him as if he had been her son.” In many ways the Albret marriage proved to be the decisive fact in the Rohan’s later history, for it connected them to important participants in sixteenth-century court life. It was thus natural that in the 1550s Françoise de Rohan—daughter of one vicomte de Rohan, sister of two others, and aunt of the first duke Henri de Rohan—became a full-time dame d’honneur of Catherine de Médicis, with her own rooms at court and a staff of servants; her romance with the glamorous duc de Nemours became a major court scandal of those years. Of course the connection became still more important in 1589, when Henri IV (son of Jeanne d’Albret and Antoine de Bourbon) came to the throne, making the Rohan close cousins of the king of France. French constitutional law prohibited them from succeeding Henri IV in that position, because their connection was through the female line, but the law did not apply to the kingdom of Navarre, which Henri IV ruled independently of his position in France. The king was forty-five in 1589, childless, and fond of dangerous activities; the Rohan had every reason to think of themselves as kings in waiting, and the possibility continued to shape their decisions even after its likelihood faded, with the birth of the future Louis XIII. The possibility disappeared altogether only in 1620, when Louis XIII formally incorporated the kingdom into France. Connection with Henri IV produced also tangible and immediate benefits. In 1592 the king accorded the family a sizeable pension, partly because of “their proximity of blood.” In 1603, Henri became the first duc de Rohan, and two years later the king placed him in charge of the Swiss infantry serving France, again with a substantial salary attached. Contemporaries knew that such benefits would likely continue to flow to a royal cousin, and they eagerly sought attachment with him. The duc de Sully, the king’s wealthy leading minister, agreed that Rohan would marry one of his daughters. Another suitor was much wealthier, Sully recalled in his memoirs; the Rohan estates had been devastated during the Wars of Religion, and the family’s political activity during those years left it deep in debt. But Rohan “had the honor” of being so closely related to the king that “if he died without children, . . . the duc de Rohan would have inherited the kingdom of Navarre, and the other properties of the houses of Albret, Foix, and Armagnac.” The king favored the marriage, and contributed a gift of

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 17

2/16/15 2:26 PM

18

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

60,000 l. Rohan’s relationship to the king was a concrete resource, which translated directly into cash and influence. The 1534 Albret marriage had another decisive effect on the Rohan’s trajectory: it tied them to Protestantism, and this commitment, too, would shape the family well into the late seventeenth century. Marguerite de Navarre herself wanted reform in the French Church and intermittently supported Protestants, but her main loyalty was to her adamantly Catholic brother the king; she ultimately refused to break with the Catholic traditions of the monarchy. But the Albret family with whom she had married the Rohan were a different story. They were early and enthusiastic Protestant converts, and the Rohan followed in their wake. In the 1550s, Isabeau d’Albret (now widowed from her Rohan husband) established a Protestant church at Blain, the Rohan’s Breton headquarters, and she raised her children in the faith. Blain would become a small capital of Protestant culture in France, a status further strengthened in 1575, when Henri’s brother and heir married another great Protestant heiress, Catherine de Parthenay. Protestant enthusiasm was widespread among the mid-sixteenth-century nobility, but even at its high point it touched only a minority of the order. The Rohan themselves were divided on the issue: while Protestantism flowered at Blain, the nearby Rohan-Guémené remained Catholic, creating enduring tensions within the clan. In his memoirs, Henri de Rohan gave voice to these as he recalled the civil wars of the 1620s. Louis XIII’s favorite, the duc de Luynes, had married a Rohan-Guémené, Rohan recalled, and occasionally invoked their common familial interests. But despite the relationship, he in fact had proved an enemy; and Rohan enumerated all “the betrayals and disloyalty of that base soul,” who had used such tricks to acquire power and held onto it the same way. Luynes in fact died while leading an army against Rohan, in 1621. The same attitude prevailed a decade later, when the duke politely refused to find a position for a follower of another cousin, the duc de Montbazon; as he explained to his mother, “I ought not to abandon my friends and those who have helped me for people I don’t know.” Occasional talk of a common family front could not cover over the reality of distance, even conflict. Already a small and embattled movement, aristocratic Protestantism shrank rapidly after 1572, when the monarchy endorsed the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres, dramatically reaffirming its commitment to the Catholic Church. Memories of that violence remained powerful in the seventeenth century, but increasingly the crown used inducements rather than threats in

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 18

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

19

dealing with Protestant nobles, offering positions and court favor to new converts. The result was a wave of high-profile returns to Catholicism, among them several Protestant military heroes. But the Rohan remained faithful, a choice that cost them some advantages at court, but that ironically also magnified their prominence. The growing reluctance of other great nobles to involve themselves in the movement made the Rohan far more visible than they otherwise would have been. In the 1620s, duc Henri de Rohan and his younger brother Benjamin, duc de Soubise, received international attention for their role. Even their marriages showed the effects. Suitable Protestant matches were increasingly difficult to find within France, and the Rohan had to pursue alliances elsewhere. One of Henri’s sisters married a German prince, and negotiations to marry another to the prince of Orange failed only because the French crown objected. Before Henri himself finally settled on Sully’s daughter, he had made a serious attempt to marry a Swedish princess, and there was talk of a British marriage as well. Their Protestantism encouraged the Rohan to think of themselves as European figures, who might plausibly dream of marriage alliances with ruling houses. Moved by these dual convictions—commitment to the Reformed religion, belief in their own significance on the European scene—the Rohan attained their greatest public visibility in the years after Henri IV’s death in 1610. Henri de Rohan participated in grandee rebellions against the regency government of Marie de Médicis, and in the 1620s he and Soubise became the acknowledged leaders of French Calvinists, leading three rebellions against Louis XIII’s government. In doing so, they established a reputation for military and political ability that long survived their deaths. The duc de SaintSimon (writing in the mid-eighteenth century) repeatedly expressed his dislike of the Rohan as a family, but wrote of the duke Henri de Rohan, “It was this great man who so distinguished himself” leading the Protestant cause, and who then, “having reconciled with the monarchy, distinguished himself even more in his negotiations in Switzerland and by his fine actions heading the king’s army in the Valteline, where he died of his wounds . . . enjoying a reputation as a great captain and a great thinker.” Like their relationship to the Bourbon kings, this legacy of military greatness constituted a reservoir of symbolic capital, which could be drawn on for concrete benefits in later years. At the same time, their cousinship with the royal family helped protect the Rohan from the consequences of rebellion, even as royal tolerance for aristocratic disobedience diminished. Despite its troublemaking, the family

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 19

2/16/15 2:26 PM

20

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

continued to receive large pensions from the crown, and after each of their rebellions they received financial compensation for their losses. There were new honors as well. In 1626, the king made Soubise a duke—just two years after having declared him guilty of treason, a condemnation that would be repeated in 1628. In their final treaty with the king, in 1629, Rohan and Soubise agreed to leave France, but they also received new payoffs from the crown, and other forms of royal support: Richelieu intervened to help Rohan secure the command of the armies of Venice in 1629, and in 1634 named him to lead a large French-sponsored army in Switzerland, with the mission of preserving control of the Alpine passes against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. As royal cousins, the Rohan could not be altogether crushed, however disruptive their behavior. The crown’s own grandeur required their prosperity and prominence. Of course that commitment did not guarantee a smooth path for all members of the family. Soubise never returned from exile, and died in London in 1642. Rohan himself managed only one brief visit to France between 1629 and his death in 1638; by that point he had been stripped of his military command and faced the likelihood of arrest, having provoked Cardinal Richelieu’s darkest suspicions. Yet their eclipse only served to strengthen the family’s position over the long term, for it dramatically concentrated its resources. Soubise and two of his sisters never married, and Rohan himself had only one surviving child, Marguerite de Rohan. As a result, Marguerite inherited four sizeable fortunes, as well as a share of Sully’s great wealth. In his memoirs, the magistrate and political operative Pierre Lenet described her as “beautiful and quick-witted, and she had an income of 50,000 écus. She was the wonder of the court and the object of all marriage hopes, of the kingdom’s greatest families and of several foreign princes.” The family’s apparent decay had been dramatically reversed. It helped that Marguerite also brought her family back to the Catholic Church, and thereby restored its place at a court that was increasingly determined to establish religious unity. She waited to marry until her legal majority, when she could make her own choice of partner. That proved to be the Catholic Henri de Chabot, a nobleman who was relatively poor but “very well connected at court,” as Lenet put it. The court was delighted to see the return to Catholicism of a leading noble family, and the king favored the match by legislating that the duchy of Rohan would pass to Marguerite’s descendants, despite the interruption of the family’s male line.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 20

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

21

Marguerite de Rohan’s children fully capitalized on these advantages. Her son was regarded as one of the most sophisticated nobles of France, although he never enjoyed much favor at court, and she guided her favorite daughter into marriage with a cousin, of the Rohan-Guémené line, further concentrating the family’s resources. Unlike her brother, “the beautiful and dazzling Mme de Soubise” (as Saint-Simon described her) was throughout her life a great favorite of Louis XIV, and for a time probably his mistress. Louis accorded her substantial pensions, raised the Soubise property to the status of a principality, and named her younger son (whom many contemporaries believed to be his own son as well) to a series of immensely valuable ecclesiastical positions. By the time of the king’s death, the young Rohan was probably the most notable ecclesiastic in France, a charming, cultivated man-abouttown, a cardinal, and the occupant of several prominent Church positions, notably the bishopric of Strasbourg, one of country’s most valuable sees; it offered its holder as well an indisputable claim to be a “prince étranger,” since it counted as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, thus cementing the Rohan’s century-old pursuit of that status. In all these ways, the Rohan thus occupied an essentially new position as the eighteenth century opened. Of course the family had participated in court life since the fifteenth century, and even as Protestants they had drawn some resources from Catholic institutions they controlled. But they were now one of the court’s dominant families, and they could draw fully on the immense wealth of the Church; new kinds and new levels of revenue were now available to them. At the start of the eighteenth century, the Rohan publicized this prominence on the Parisian scene with one of the Old Regime’s most dramatic private construction projects: the adjoining hôtels de Soubise and de Rohan, built on a large plot of land in the Marais. For the purpose, the princesse de Soubise and her husband bought the ancient Paris headquarters of the Guise family, a choice heavy with symbolism. Not only had the Guise played a great role in French history, but the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres had been launched from the house itself, targeting the Rohan’s fellow Protestants; taking over the site marked in a spectacular way both the family’s power and its reintegration within the Catholic nobility. The builders preserved some parts of the old edifice, but their efforts focused on two entirely new buildings, magnificent examples of contemporary neoclassical style. The first housed Madame de Soubise and her husband the prince, the second (begun as something of an

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 21

2/16/15 2:26 PM

22

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

afterthought, but equally splendid) their son the bishop. In three short years, between 1705 and 1708, the family spent 850,000 l. on the project, and they received excellent value for their money. Dazzled contemporaries described the Hôtel de Soubise as “the largest and the most magnificent in all Paris.” The adjoining Hôtel de Rohan nearly equaled it. For the rest of the eighteenth century, the family would follow the direction thus mapped out, as exemplars of the court nobility. Of the fifty families who played a major role at court between 1665 and 1789, only five placed more members in important court offices than the Rohan, and only seven accumulated more years in these positions. Court influence led in turn to other important positions. Three more Rohan followed the first Rohan bishop of Strasbourg, giving the family continuous hold on the see between 1704 and 1789; another became bishop of Bordeaux, and several daughters were given charge of prominent abbeys. Madame de Pompadour’s influence secured for Charles de Rohan, prince de Soubise (1715–87), command of a major French army in the Seven Years’ War, despite his limited abilities and humiliating defeats. The eighteenth-century Rohan occupied the center of court society.

Family Troubles, Family Conflicts Yet, despite these flamboyant successes, there were also signs of trouble. Some troubles derived from individual personal failings, as in the case of Louis de Rohan-Guémené. In 1674, overwhelmed by debts and angry at being excluded from court and military office, he led a harebrained conspiracy to establish an autonomous republic in Normandy, in which he would play a leading role; the king’s spies learned of the plot early on, and Rohan was beheaded in front of the Bastille. But contemporaries also noted deeper troubles within the family. In 1690, the diplomat Ezéchiel Spanheim sent his master, the elector of Brandenburg, sketches of the family’s notable members and their status at court. These included the prince de Guémené, “to whom no one pays any attention”; the duc de Montbazon, “little wit, debauched, foolish, despised, hated at court”; the duc de Rohan, “a gentleman [Honnête homme], generous, esteemed by everyone, not rich”; his son the prince de Rohan, “a gentleman, generous”; the prince de Soubise, “a gentleman, splendid, ambitious, loved and esteemed by the king.” Spanheim’s account spared few of the family’s members; for most there were personal failings, financial troubles, tensions at

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 22

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

23

court, or some combination of the three. The Rohan, it seems, were a family under pressure. Increasingly, those pressures were also becoming visible to the wider public. Upon his mother’s death in 1684, Louis de Rohan accepted her inheritance only sous bénéfice d’ inventaire, legal protection that would allow him to avoid paying her debts if they turned out to exceed the value of her estate. A few years later he was on the brink of litigation with one of his sisters over another sister’s unpaid dowry. Encouraged by several prominent members of the Parlement of Paris, brother and sister finally reached a settlement in 1690, just as Spanheim was setting down his observations, but the record of their agreement made it clear that more trouble awaited: the other creditors of the house of Rohan “had begun formal pursuits to secure their interests.” Soon thereafter, a still more dramatic lawsuit divided the family over questions of honor, lineage, and title. Saint-Simon explained the situation in loving detail: The prince de Rohan-Guémené, living “in miserly obscurity,” looked with furious envy at the wealth and esteem enjoyed by the duc de Rohan and his son; in turn Rohan himself mistrusted his sister and brotherin-law, the princesse and prince de Soubise, because his mother had favored the Soubise marriage, and in doing so had injured Rohan’s own interests as the principal heir. Madame de Soubise returned his dislike: “She and her brother perfectly hated each other,” reported Saint-Simon. In these fraught circumstances, Guémené launched a lawsuit, asking that the duc de Rohan and all his children be prohibited from ever using the Rohan name or coat of arms, “such as are used by those who are truly of the house of Rohan.” The lawsuit rested on the duke’s paternity: his father had been a Chabot, not a Rohan, and the duchy had come to him from his mother, Marguerite de Rohan, sole heir of the great Henri de Rohan. Royal letters had confirmed the transfer of the duchy itself in 1648, but (so the lawsuit claimed) royal sleightof-hand could not change the biological realities: the duc de Rohan was a Chabot, not a Rohan. As a further consequence of these facts, the Guémené should now be recognized as the family’s senior branch. Guémené could hardly have devised a more brutal assault on his cousin, for the lawsuit challenged the duc de Rohan’s very identity. In seeking to exclude him from the family—from those “who are truly of the house of Rohan”—it threw into doubt his connection to the great heroes of the family’s past and to the Bourbon monarchs themselves; far from being the cousin of kings, the duke was now a mere gentleman. This was bad enough, but the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 23

2/16/15 2:26 PM

24

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

prince and princesse de Soubise soon made the conflict much worse by joining the lawsuit on the Guémené side. Now the conflict between brother and sister was open, and the political stakes were higher; because of the king’s admiration for the princesse, some form of royal intervention had become almost inevitable, and many expected it to favor the Soubise. All this took place before an excited public, still further increasing the duke’s humiliation: like most eighteenth-century litigants, all the Rohan published their lawyers’ opinions, in hopes of influencing the judges. “The pamphlets flew on all sides,” commented Saint-Simon. “The public read them with avidity, even abroad. The house of Rohan suffered.” Saint-Simon also described the dramatic resolution of the struggle. At the request of Madame de Soubise, the king himself took over judgment of the case. He appointed a panel of distinguished jurists to investigate facts and arguments, and listened for six uninterrupted hours as they presented their findings. After speeches by the duc de Beauvilliers (head of the royal council) and the duc de Bourgogne (his own grandson), the king himself finally spoke, for a full fifteen minutes, showing again how seriously he took the matter. To everyone’s surprise he fully endorsed the duke’s right to keep his name: “Mme de Soubise, so fortunate and so favored in everything, lost out over the Rohan name.” The decision was enormously popular, producing applause for the duke at Versailles and among the public at large, and the duke did what he could to deepen his rivals’ distress. As duc de Rohan, he held the feudal overlordship of Guémené’s own properties, and he decided to enforce all the formalities associated with that relationship, demanding that Guémené travel to Brittany to perform the ceremony, bareheaded and without his sword; the duke backed off only when the king intervened, asking forbearance as a personal favor. But enough damage had already been done. The family’s disunity had been publicly displayed, and there had been unforgiveable assaults on all sides; his own sister had in effect sought to expel the duke from the family. A generation later, the public apparently still remembered these squabbles, and the family itself remained touchy about them: in 1726, one of the duke’s sons ordered his servants to beat up the already-famous Voltaire, because (in one version of the story) the poet had responded to a dinner-table insult by asking whether the young man’s real name was Rohan or Chabot. In the following decades, as both Voltaire himself and the Enlightenment movement more fully established themselves, the episode acquired exemplary status, further darkening the Rohan’s reputation. In it, Rohan played the archetypal aristo-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 24

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

25

cratic bully, too cowardly to fight, too obtuse to match wits with his antagonist, convinced that his high birth mattered more than Voltaire’s genius. He embodied all that the Enlightenment opposed. Other controversies surrounding the Rohan’s genealogy also remained lively in the eighteenth century. In 1707 a Benedictine historian of Brittany expressed doubts about the family’s own version of its early history, and in about 1770, there was debate about the family’s genealogy led by the peerage itself. Angry at Rohan pretentions to superiority, their fellow peers commissioned a historical investigation of their own, and its findings were strongly worded: “The house of Rohan is old and illustrious enough not to need fables giving it chimerical origins that place it above its equals.” In fact (so continued the anonymous investigator) their reliance on glamorous historical fictions was counterproductive. Their invention of a “purely imaginary” story made it seem that they doubted their “true grandeur,” and in any case they could not even keep their story straight: “It is commonly said that each great house has its myth, but it is unitary, coherent, constant, and invariable; whereas the writers for the house of Rohan continually change its origins, establishing a series of contradictory and irreconcilable accounts.” There was more mockery, of course, when the Cardinal de Rohan found himself embroiled in the Diamond Necklace Affair of 1783. Although public opinion about the Affair turned mainly against the king and queen, Rohan himself emerged from it looking gullible and obsequious, a cleric ready to sacrifice honor for court preferment. With all of this, the family also faced mounting financial problems, a deepening of those troubles that Spanheim had already noted in 1690. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Soubise roughly balanced income and expenditures, at about 250,000 l. yearly, but expenditures rose quickly thereafter. In 1781, one of the prince’s managers sought to convince him that he could sustain a reasonable mode of life by spending no more than 300,000 l. yearly: in any case, it was “no longer possible to sustain such spending” at the current level. A reform was “indispensable, because if the prince continues borrowing, he will soon be ruined without hope of recovery.” Worse still, the public knew of the prince’s circumstances, and lenders were now refusing to supply more funds. By this point the Guémené branch of the family faced more intractable problems. They enjoyed a higher income than their Soubise cousins, but they spent at much higher levels. As late as 1778, the prince de Guémené was buying large properties in Brittany, and around 1780 he established a bank that gave him access to additional resources. But by 1782, unable to

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 25

2/16/15 2:26 PM

26

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

meet even his immediate debts, he declared bankruptcy—owing the amazing sum of 33 million l., much of it to the gullible investors in his bank. Everything had to be sold, the family’s Paris residence as well as its estates.

Dynastic Fictions: The Ideological Underpinnings of Status Over the centuries, the Rohan thus underwent a series of dramatic transformations. In the Middle Ages they were minor feudal lords, and even in 1400 they were only one of several Breton warlord families. By the early seventeenth century, they had risen to ducal status and royal cousinship, and they enjoyed Europe-wide celebrity as effective opponents of absolutist and Catholic politics. They suffered real losses because of that commitment—both the first duc de Rohan and the first duc de Soubise died in exile—but two generations later, their successors had fully integrated themselves into Louis XIV’s political and religious order. Indeed, in many ways they now exemplified that order, shining at court and in Paris, a position advertised by their magnificent Paris houses. But change continued in the eighteenth century, as the family experienced a series of significant shocks. Its claims to high status were subject to harsh public commentary; its internal divisions were both serious and increasingly visible to the Parisian reading public; its income could not keep pace with its expenditures. Only the extent of these transformations made the Rohan unusual; many families within the French nobility—possibly the majority of the high nobility—had experienced comparable changes over the course of their histories. But (as Jean de La Bruyère noted) to acknowledge such changes violated deeply held values. Aristocratic status rested on continuity with the past, not on recent achievements. Transformation had to be masked, replaced with narratives of continuity. Hence narrative invention constituted an important element in the Rohan’s rise to social eminence. The family had to establish versions of its past that erased doubts about its status, and the need was especially great because the Rohan never counted among the very wealthiest of the French nobility. Their incomes exceeded those of most peers but not all, and the princely families with whom they sought to compare themselves were much richer—and these families had better claims to high status as well. If the Rohan were to count as princes themselves, they needed to be more than merely ancient nobility. Their history would have also to establish genealogical connections with kingship.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 26

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

27

By the early seventeenth century, the family had adopted a narrative that met this need. A version of it was laid out by the first duc de Rohan himself, in about 1629. Newly exiled from France and attempting to establish himself in Venice, Rohan addressed the republic’s Senate: he wanted to join its ranks, an honor that over the centuries (he explained) had been sought by “the greatest kings and princes of Christendom.” In support of his request, he described his family background, “including only what can be justified by authentic documents over 1,300 years.” The narrative began under Constantine the Great, in the early fourth century. At that time there reigned in Brittany Conan Mériadec, a prince of British royal family, “who gave his young son Rohan a tract of land in his kingdom” that became known as the vicomté of Rohan. The duke described at length the achievements of the generations that followed this ancestor’s establishment: later generations of the Rohan had played a leading role “in the wars against the Danes and the Saxons for the conquest of Great Britain”; they had married into the royal families of Ireland, Spain, and Brittany, and with a sister of King Arthur himself; they had participated in the Norman invasion of England in 1066, and in a string of equally important events down to his own times. Rohan intended that his story be taken seriously, and he probably believed it himself. He wrote at a turning point in his life, having abandoned the political hopes that had guided him since 1610 but not the dream of high office; his plan now was to secure a position leading Venice’s armies, and his letter was part of that effort. Later members of the Rohan family would likewise display publicly their allegiance to the Conan story: Rohan sons born in 1688, 1726, 1738, 1763, and 1766 all received some version of the name Mériadec, in honor of their imaginary fourth-century ancestor. The elements of Rohan’s story were very old. Conan had appeared in the account of the mid-thirteenth-century British historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, and in the next century he reappeared in a Latin poem composed in Brittany and dedicated to the bishop of Vannes—near the center of Rohan power during the late Middle Ages. Only in the fifteenth century, however, did the Rohan themselves enter the story. As Brittany moved toward its final succession crisis, the family claimed ties to Conan to support its right to the ducal title, and it commissioned a series of frescos in one of its chapels depicting the life of “Saint Mariadeuc, son of a duke of Brittany, descendant of Conan, and a close relative of the Rohan.” By the mid-sixteenth century, new documentation had been added to buttress this claim. In his History of Brittany, the scholarly Breton official Bertrand

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 27

2/16/15 2:26 PM

28

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

d’Argentré described a Latin letter dated 1087 and widely accepted, “in many respectable quarters, as an authentic document.” The letter purported to set out the order of precedence among Breton clerics and nobles, and it gave an especially prominent place to the Rohan: according to it, the “viscounts of Rohan, who descend from the line of Conan the king of Brittany,” marched third after the prelates. But d’Argentré himself was doubtful. Having listed several implausible details, he concluded that “these considerations make me doubt that this letter is authentic.” The Rohan were working hard to attach themselves to the central narrative of Breton history, but their efforts encountered serious resistance among the educated public. Nonetheless, official acceptance of the Rohan’s narratives spread over the following century. There was still no mention of the family’s supposed royal ancestry in 1603, when King Henri IV raised his cousin Henri de Rohan to the peerage. Instead, the king’s letters creating the duchy of Rohan focused on the family’s long history of noble status and royal service. They were (the letters explained) owners of “the oldest viscounty in France,” and the king wanted to recognize “the valor and fidelity that we have recognized as a family trait” in the new duke himself—a loyalty that typified the family’s services “since the earliest establishment of this kingdom,” to “the kings of France, Navarre, and Brittany itself.” Far from adopting the Rohan’s own belief in their royal antecedents, Henri IV explicitly separated them from royalty. The Rohan had performed exemplary services to their sovereigns, over many centuries, but they were not themselves of royal descent. But decisive change in the status of the family’s self-narration came over the next twenty years. In 1626 the duc de Rohan’s younger brother was also raised to ducal status, as duc de Soubise, the name of a lordship long held by his mother’s family. As Henri IV had done, in his official letters announcing the decision, Louis XIII explained his choice, and he, too, mentioned important properties and services, referring to Benjamin himself as “first baron of Saintonge,” and noting “the virtues and remarkable services of his predecessors.” But the 1626 letter diverged from its 1603 model by describing the Rohan as also descendants of royalty: “It being widely known . . . that the house of Rohan is descended from the first king of Brittany, born at the same time as the name of the province, and by great good fortune and blessing, continuing in the male line for the past 1,200 years.” Here, apparently for the first time, the crown endorsed the family’s own description of itself, incorporating into official documents the story that the duc de Rohan would present a few years later to the Venetians. As other peers would angrily note in the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 28

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

29

eighteenth century, this was an important social leap. Between 1603 and 1626, the Rohan had been transmuted from mere nobles of ancient lineage into near-royalty. That transformation was confirmed in the next generation, when the crown again intervened to define the Rohan’s status. Neither of the Rohan duchies survived the generation of their creation, for Soubise never married, and Rohan left a daughter as his only heir. In response, the crown stepped in, transferring the title of duc de Rohan to Marguerite de Rohan’s husband, Henri de Chabot, and to the couple’s heirs. The 1645 letters announcing this grant again emphasized the Rohan’s royal ancestry as a factor in the decision. Henri de Rohan (announced Louis XIV) “was the closest relative on the maternal side . . . of our late lord and ancestor Henri the Great, in that he was not only prince of the blood of the house of Navarre, but also was long viewed as the presumptive heir to the crown of that great monarch, as he was also a prince of Brittany and heir apparent to the crown of Scotland, if James the king of England and Scotland had died without children.” Between 1626 and 1645, Rohan status had thus undergone a further, dramatic advance. Neither Henri IV himself nor Louis XIII had mentioned Rohan claims to Navarre; in acknowledging the Rohan’s princely status, Louis XIII had referred only to the remote past and the early kingdom of Brittany. With the 1645 letters, the family’s near-royal status acquired a more up-to-date look, and it covered a wider range of territories: now it appeared that the Rohan had narrowly missed becoming kings of two nations, and this within living memory. By the end of the seventeenth century, this view had apparently secured general acceptance, and Rohan claims had widened still further. In 1690 Ezéchiel Spanheim reported to the king of Prussia that the Rohan enjoyed “the honors and prerogatives of princes, as descendants of the dukes of Brittany and the royal blood of Navarre, and because of the great alliances that they have had with the royal houses of Spain, England, and Scotland, and some sovereign houses in the Empire.” The growing warmth of the monarchy’s endorsements of Rohan claims reflected changing political contexts. In the short term, Louis XIII and Louis XIV sought to secure the loyalty of a wealthy, rebellious family at moments when their own power was unusually vulnerable. In 1626, when Soubise received his ducal status, the king was attempting to juggle multiple court influences, while at the same time moving toward a more muscular foreign policy; in the event, establishing Soubise as a duke failed to secure his loyalty, but there were excellent reasons for making the effort. In 1645, royal

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 29

2/16/15 2:26 PM

30

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

vulnerability was even greater. The regency government of Anne of Austria had been in place for less than two years, and the tensions that would lead to the Fronde were already visible. In the eighteenth century, other peers cited this political context as a reason to disparage the value of the grant itself; in its weakened state, the crown could hardly resist an important family’s demands for high status. But changing royal language also expressed a deeper change in French political culture, a growing reverence for everything that touched monarchy. The Albret marriage of 1534 meant that the Rohan indisputably counted as royal cousins; and growing respect for the biology of monarchy made it important that such cousins themselves have royal blood. Confirming the Rohan’s own claim to descend from princes strengthened the monarchy itself, by confirming the gap between sovereigns and ordinary subjects, even ordinary subjects of noble birth. If the Rohan, too, descended from sovereigns, their alliance with the royal house represented no diminution of the monarchy’s grandeur. Whatever official endorsement it received, however, the Rohan’s selfdepiction also raised questions, for like any narrative its meanings were complex and not easily controlled. The story’s core message was apparently straightforward: the Rohan descended from kings, in an unbroken line since the fourth century. But exactly what kind of kings did the narrative connect them to, and what qualities did these ancestors transmit from the distant past? The answers were troubling, for the Conan story was one of violence, ambition, and duplicity. Collaborating with the British king, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he had invaded Brittany and “killed all the males and spared only the women,” leaving “all the provinces completely desolate” and open to settlement by an influx of one hundred thousand ordinary Britons and thirty thousand knights. The fourteenth-century Latin poet who retold these deeds accentuated their darkest sides, then added his own direct condemnation: “Oh unhappy kingdom!” he concludes his account of the episode. “O regal power gained by the spilling of blood! Conan, surrender your illegal position! . . . you will carry within you an accuser which will always gnaw at you and your descendants. . . . Your descendants will fall to destruction with you, and will suffer eternal punishment while thus they unjustly hold the property of others; the sins of the fathers will rightly be visited on their children for as long as they unrestrainedly repeat their father’s sins.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 30

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

31

The poet’s silences are as striking as his judgments. He makes no mention of parallel cases in which colonizing violence served higher purposes: religious (as with the Israelites settling in the Promised Land and the crusaders of more recent times), or civilizing (as suggested by Aeneas’s establishment in Italy and that of the later Romans in Gaul). Instead, the poet’s Conan has merely seized power and property, at the cost of much bloodshed. The sin of these crimes has passed undiluted to his descendants, who eventually will pay for it, notably in the civil wars of the poet’s own times. The Rohan claim to descend directly from Conan thus included a legacy of guilt along with the aura of royalty. Indeed, the Conan narrative suggested direct linkages between royal grandeur, usurpation, and unjustified conquest. Hence some associated with the family sought to reframe its history so as to diminish the violence of its past. One possibility was to shift the emphasis of the Conan story itself, as in the fifteenth-century Rohan’s efforts to publicize St. Mériadec: the saint’s virtue in some measure counterbalanced Conan’s violence. A more radical strategy involved replacing the Conan story altogether, and thereby changing the values associated with the family’s traditions. Around 1570, Roch Le Baillif, a physician then in the Rohan’s service, offered just such a rewriting. He pushed the story back a thousand years, attaching the Rohan to the Trojan War. The move accorded with the humanist enthusiasm of the times; many sixteenth-century dynasties asserted Trojan origins, thereby sharing some of the glory of Rome’s own foundation myth. The new story gave the Rohan themselves some of that glory, and it gave the dynasty even greater antiquity than did the Conan story. But above all it avoided associating the family with Conan’s violence. On Le Baillif’s account, the Rohan descended from Armoreus, a son of Aeneas himself, who accorded him kingship of the Breton (Armorican) peninsula; one of his sons was “Ruhan,” who received from his father the territories the Rohan now held. Conquest and destruction—so central to the Conan narrative—were absent from the story, for when Armoreus colonized Brittany, he found there “nearly deserted lands,” which he “settled with his Dardanians or Trojans.” But Baillif’s narrative resembled the Conan narrative in presenting the family as an ancient presence in French history, and it, too, stressed the continuity of the family’s qualities through the generations. From the beginning, Le Baillif observed, the Rohan showed “something of that initial divinity, which is not susceptible to rapid change.” But Le Baillif offered a radically different understanding of what those qualities were. Whereas Conan was a

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 31

2/16/15 2:26 PM

32

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

conqueror attacking a flourishing native population, Armoreus was a contemplative, a “man of great knowledge, who preferred solitary places where he could give himself over to meditation and to astrological speculation.” His son Ruhan demonstrated the same contemplative qualities, and he “surpassed Armoreus his father in astrology and in all studies.” By the mid-sixteenth century, so this alternative narrative suggests, uncertainties surrounded the Rohan past even in the family’s immediate orbit. Though Le Baillif’s alternative version never caught on, it raised the possibility that the Conan story was inaccurate, and its emphasis on the peaceful learning of Armoreus and Ruhan and on the original emptiness of their territory expressed moral discomfort. The family could not be entirely proud of Conan’s genocidal usurpation of another’s kingdom; it was reasonable that their physician draw up a more pleasing history. Le Baillif’s rewriting also illustrated the more fundamental problem in the Rohan’s self-narration, its claim to represent historical truth. Standards of historical proof were rising in the sixteenth century, and Le Baillif expressed his awareness that his readers might demand documentation of his claims. Hence he stressed both the scholarship on which his account rested and the possibility for debate that attended any such history. He had discovered (he explained) a new document, “an old copper plate, . . . written on in antiquity, that an old priest gave me near the Abbey of Bon Repos, while I was researching the singularities of this province.” At the same time, he acknowledged, “I do not doubt that there are plenty of contrary opinions.” The Rohan themselves agreed on the need for historical proof. In his 1629 letter to the Venetians, Henri de Rohan spoke of the importance of correct documentation; and in emphasizing that his account included only what “can be justified by authentic documents,” he implicitly acknowledged that there were forgeries as well. His letter also addressed another uncomfortable documentary issue, the fact that his family’s coat of arms differed from that of the dukes of Brittany, his supposed ancestors. Not surprisingly, then, given their reliance on history and sensitivity to problems of historical knowledge, the Rohan themselves encouraged researches into their past. In 1608 the duke and his mother arranged to pay a Breton official for the “laudable efforts and labors” he had undertaken and for “part of his expenses in collecting, arranging, and writing up” the family’s history. Historical truth mattered in this effort to establish the family’s ancient grandeur in the public mind. But whatever controls the family sought to exercise over its history, it could not avoid the genre’s fundamental instability. With its promises of truthful-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 32

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

33

ness, the Rohan story would always be vulnerable to the revelations of new documents and to new forms of historical inference. Nor could the family maintain sole possession of the story: any researcher might examine its claims and make his findings available to the educated public. Both writers and readers were likely to be interested, given the Rohan’s emphasis on their ancestors’ importance in the early histories of Brittany, France, and even the British Isles, and debate was already lively in the later sixteenth century. Having raised questions about the Rohan’s documentation of their connection to Conan, the scholarly d’Argentré noted the more general problem: “there could not be found a more confused history” than that of fifth-century Brittany, so that researching the era was like finding one’s way “in thick clouds at the darkest time of night.” But even he was shocked at the doubts that some of his contemporaries now expressed: “There are even some so impudent as to claim in their histories that there never were kings in Brittany. . . . They boldly rush in and say that Conan and his history are pure trickery [janglerie].” By the later seventeenth century, this “impudence” had become much more widespread, and even some of the family’s supporters had apparently come to doubt its narratives. A striking demonstration came in 1692, when the peerage of Montbazon (first created in 1588) passed to a new generation of the Rohan-Guémené. The family solicited testimony from other peers endorsing the transfer, and all the responses were favorable—but none mentioned Conan or other royalty. The duc de Richelieu, for instance, wrote that the new peer came “from one of the most illustrious families in France; for several centuries it has held great positions; the said prince de Guémené has served the king in several military actions, where he has distinguished himself and given proofs of his courage.” The focus was on valor and service, not royal blood. A few years later, there emerged a more public critique of the whole Conan story. Over the previous generation, Benedictine historians associated with the monastery of St. Maur, near Paris, had explored the documents of early medieval French history, seeking to provide a solid basis for the early history of French Christianity. Their intent was pious, but inevitably they found themselves disentangling the known facts of early medieval history from the myths, and eventually their efforts, too, touched on the Conan story. In 1707 there appeared the first volume of a new History of Brittany, by Dom Guy Alexis Lobineau, a Breton disciple of the school of St. Maur, on a commission from the Estates of the province. The work created a scandal, for Lobineau had applied modern historical standards to the Conan narratives; in fact, in

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 33

2/16/15 2:26 PM

34

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

the first draft of the work, that king made no appearance. The Rohan protested, threatening litigation, and eventually Lobineau yielded with a cynical shrug: “It would be ridiculous to flatter oneself that he had discovered the absolute truth about such distant times; so having put all our efforts into discovering the truth as far as possible, we rely on those who believe they have good reasons for judging the disputed facts differently from ourselves, and for reestablishing Conan Mériadec and some other kings that are given as his descendants.” Like the family’s other eighteenth-century troubles, the quarrel with Lobineau attracted a wide audience, and by this time much of the reading public had absorbed the lessons of the St. Maur historians; it too looked with suspicion at romantic tales from the very distant past. The duc de Saint-Simon spoke for this public when he commented that the Rohan had “attempted to establish a chimerical line of descent from a certain Conan Mériadec who never existed, a supposed king of Brittany from mythical times.” They inflicted on Lobineau “a violent, public persecution, without which they could not have overcome him; but in the end, tired of their torments and threatened with still worse, he capitulated. He agreed to cut out everything that could displease” the Rohan or weaken their claims. But legal strong-arming clearly would not suffice to sustain the family’s status in the eighteenth-century cultural world, with its wide reading public and intensive discussions, and the family also took more positive measures to defend its vision of its history. It called in its own Benedictine historian, the abbé Morice, and he spent a decade working through the Rohan archives; in 1740, he completed a “genealogical history of the house of Porhoët and Rohan, documented by charters, titles, chronicles, ancient histories, and other historical monuments.” Not surprisingly, given the pension he received from the Rohan family, the abbé Morice confirmed the Conan story. But the title and even the very existence of his work demonstrated the more fundamental, more troubling point. The family’s past—and therefore its status—was to be defined by documents and the historians who deciphered them, not by the Rohan themselves. In the end, the reading public would decide. “Roi, je ne puis; duc, je ne daigne; Rohan je suis”: this was one version of a Rohan family motto, as quoted by the mid-seventeenth-century Parisian gossip writer Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux. The slogan expressed both fundamental realities about the family, and some of its longings. Most visibly, the slogan affirmed dynastic ambition, of the most radical kind. Kingship might

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 34

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing status

|

35

be beyond the family’s reach, but not beyond its thoughts or (so the motto delicately hinted) its hopes; mere ducal status was beneath its attention. The latter claim was not literally true (in fact, the family fought hard to acquire and preserve its status as dukes), but it made clear how the family defined its place and the vision it wished others to have of it. The Rohan (the motto suggested) occupied no fi xed category in the social hierarchy, but instead floated somewhere between the highest level of the aristocracy and royalty, simply themselves, their status not a given but an achievement. This chapter has sought to show the extent of that achievement. The Rohan began as small-time warriors like many others, and even in 1600 they had not reached the aristocracy’s highest level. But by Tallemant’s time, early in Louis XIV’s reign, they had secured official endorsement of their self-depiction as the descendants of royalty; by the end of the reign, they owned the two grandest mansions in Paris and dominated court life in Versailles. Well might they believe that social status was not a fixed object; and well might observers like Saint-Simon depict them as ambitious, unscrupulous strivers. Of course that dramatic ascension required much attention to practical matters of business. Like most nobles, the Rohan took seriously the acquisition of lands and offices, and they sought to marry advantageously; themselves often too busy to attend to business details, they employed a series of capable lawyers and agents. (These subjects will receive more attention in the following chapters.) Yet the family’s history also taught that symbolic capital mattered as much to its prosperity, and perhaps more. A significant part of its late seventeenth-century grandeur derived from its genealogy, both real (its connections to the Bourbon dynasty and to such widely admired individuals as the duc Henri de Rohan) and invented (its descent from the king Conan Mériadec and its alliances with other European royalty). It was on this basis that every one of the five Bourbon kings accorded the family important material benefits, and that it enjoyed the illustrious status of “princes étrangers,” with rights of precedence over the mere peerage. Hence the family’s sustained efforts from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries to defend and increase that symbolic capital. The Rohan encouraged researches into their past, in hopes of documenting their claims to royal antecedents, and they publicized the results—as Henri de Rohan did before the Senate of Venice, and as later generations did by incorporating references to Conan Mériadec into their sons’ names. In important ways these efforts succeeded. In the 1620s the crown officially adopted the Rohan’s version of their lineage, and by the 1690s outsiders like Ezéchiel Spanheim

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 35

2/16/15 2:26 PM

36

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

reported it as a widely accepted truth. But the Rohan’s self-depiction had always been vulnerable to historical criticism, and by the later seventeenth century its vulnerability had greatly increased. Historians had become more sophisticated in approaching claims about the remote past. More seriously for the family, the reading public had grown in size, and it, too, had learned new standards of historical criticism. To Lobineau in Brittany, Saint-Simon in Versailles, and the assembled peers, Rohan claims about their fourth-century history chiefly deserved mockery. Yet the family clung tightly to its story, in some ways more tightly than ever: only in the later seventeenth century, for instance, did it begin to use the name Mériadec, and thereafter it did so repeatedly. That stubbornness appears to reflect a more basic fact about the Rohan’s self-understanding. The claim to have descended from kings mattered, and that claim rested on the Conan narrative. Cousinship with Henri de Navarre could not give the family a similar aura: as the seventeenth century advanced, such linkages through the female line had steadily less value, and in any case cousinship was not the same as the actual sovereignty represented by Conan. The dream of sovereign greatness, it appears, offered the family a collective identity that mere nobility could not match. Saint-Simon pretended to find this insistence puzzling. In commenting on the lawsuit between the duc de Rohan and his sister, in 1704, he noted that the duke’s father, Henri de Chabot, himself descended from an ancient and distinguished family. There could be no shame for the duke in exchanging the Rohan name for that of Chabot, and his status as duc de Rohan would be unchanged, for the lawsuit concerned only family membership, not the titles deriving from its property. But this distinction was precisely the point of the duke’s efforts to defend his membership in the family. Neither vast property nor distinguished ancestry could offer the family so solid a foundation as a fictitious but officially endorsed claim to royal blood. Strikingly, the mass of nobles at Versailles appeared to agree, or at least to recognize how much was at stake. Reported Saint-Simon, “At the first news of the decision, the antechamber, then the rest of the rooms, echoed with cries of joy and applause. . . . Everyone cried out, ‘We won, they lost!’ and this was repeated indefinitely.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 36

2/16/15 2:26 PM

2 constructing identity: henri de rohan, 1579–1638

Henri de Rohan counted among the great men of seventeenth-century Europe. At his death in 1638, there were public honors in Geneva, Venice, and Paris; years later, he was still remembered. In the 1640s, when a retired royal official commissioned a “Gallery of the Illustrious” for his country home near Blois, he included Rohan among the 327 great Europeans whose portraits hung there, and in the next century the usually acid-tongued duc de Saint-Simon described him as a great man. To his contemporaries, Rohan was more than just a rich and colorful figure. He was an exemplary nobleman, “whom all Europe admired for his wisdom and honored for his virtue, . . . whom honor and glory accompanied everywhere,” in the words of a mid-seventeenthcentury Parisian lawyer. As such, Rohan offers an important example for understanding what mattered to seventeenth-century aristocrats, and it is in these terms that I examine his life here: this chapter explores his attitudes, ideas, and behavior, reconstructing his worldview rather than retelling his story. Rohan changed over the course of his life, as he encountered new experiences and new circumstances, and I follow his career in loosely chronological order. But there were also continuities in his outlook, topics and ideas to which he returned often, and understanding these will occasionally require disrupting the chapter’s chronological progression. Looking at Rohan in these terms suggests, first, the diversity of the values that mattered to him and his difficulty in assembling them into a coherent whole. He was one of seventeenth-century Europe’s most prominent Calvinists, yet he also read and learned from Machiavelli, and neither his daily habits nor his choice of intimates showed puritanical strictness; he preferred Catholic Venice to Geneva, and lived happily for a time in Padua, the early seventeenth

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 37

2/16/15 2:26 PM

38

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

century’s most notorious hotbed of impious thought. He was proud of his family’s traditions and spoke warmly of its long implantation in Brittany; but his closest associates were cosmopolitan intellectuals, most of them from middle-class backgrounds, none of them from Brittany, and after 1619 he never revisited the province. For over a decade he fought the increasingly absolutist trend of French political life, but he also dedicated one book to Cardinal Richelieu, another to Louis XIII; after 1629 he expressed in the strongest terms his eagerness to serve them, and eventually he did so. No single element in this mixture of competing values always won out over the others. Rohan had to choose among them, and his choices might lead him in diverse directions. But among his values, so runs a second argument of this chapter, Christianity, feudal lordship, and family pride proved surprisingly weak. Rohan took all of these seriously, and they influenced many of his decisions. But his actions often showed the stronger hold on him of personal ambition, political calculation, and contemporary written culture. In many ways these tendencies made Rohan a modern individual, fascinated by reasoning about the world around him, often indifferent to the claims of the past, proudly cosmopolitan as he moved about Europe. At the same time (this is the chapter’s third principal argument), these commitments also left Rohan largely indifferent to some possibilities that eventually, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, would come to define Europe’s ruling classes. He showed no interest in economic development or managing his properties, and he mocked those who subordinated political to economic considerations. His understanding of citizenship was equally limited, and he seems to have had minimal interest in the ideals of public service that were emerging around him. He viewed the commonwealth as a theater for individual greatness, rather than as an object to be advanced for its own sake; throughout his life, Julius Caesar—who dismantled existing political arrangements in order to establish himself as ruler—represented for him the exemplar of political achievement. This lofty standard of success helps explain Rohan’s dissatisfaction with the forms of eminence that were readily available to him, as the leader of an important family, a great provincial landowner, and a courtier. His ambitions were larger, and probably included dreams of imitating Caesar and establishing himself as an independent prince. The possibility of failure, even of tragedy, was correspondingly large, and the likelihood of conflict with the existing political order was overwhelming: like Caesar, Rohan could not satisfy his ambitions without in some measure disrupting the society around him.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 38

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

39

Exploring Rohan’s political culture can thus help us understand a phenomenon that dominated political life across seventeenth-century Europe, that of the aristocratic, propertied revolutionary.

Education and Ambition Like many in the French nobility, Henri de Rohan grew up under his mother’s supervision. His father had died of his battlefield wounds when Henri was eight, his brother Benjamin (eventually he would be known as Soubise, the name of his chief property) only three. Their mother, Catherine de Parthenay, was famous for her learning and her commitment to the Protestant cause, yet Henri and Soubise received educations that centered mainly on military skills, with only limited attention to letters and languages. Those educations took place mainly at their mother’s home, the château of Le Parc-Soubise, in Poitou, though Henri apparently spent some time at an academy for young nobles, an institution that was becoming increasingly popular with young men seeking to learn horsemanship and other military skills. Their father had briefly attended a collège, but nothing suggests that the two brothers had a similar experience, or that they served as pages in another family. Soubise would remain indifferent to learning for the rest of his life; his letters display an ignorance of spelling and an indifference to literary style unusual even for early seventeenth-century military men. But Rohan himself had a more complicated relationship to literature. He, too, received extensive training in the physical skills of warfare (“all the exercises appropriate to his birth,” as his admiring seventeenth-century biographer described it), and he had no interest in Latin, “often saying that he did not believe this was necessary for greatness.” His only other language was Italian, and even that he “could never learn well,” despite long periods of residence in Italy. He applied himself more seriously to mathematics and geography, both increasingly seen as practical necessities for a military commander. But above all there was history, “the study, he used to say, that suited a prince, also from his childhood on he devoted himself ardently to it; above all else except physical exercise, history restored his spirit . . . The first book in which he took pleasure was Plutarch’s Lives; seeing the virtue of those great Greeks and Romans so vividly depicted, he felt himself burning with the desire to resemble them. . . . Among the Greeks he loved Alcibiades, and among all the Romans he admired Caesar.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 39

2/16/15 2:26 PM

fig. 2 Henri de Rohan in his times: two seventeenth-century depictions of Henri de Rohan, the second published after his death and drawing attention to the disappointments of his later life. Photos: Bibliothèque de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 40

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

41

fig. 3 The younger brother: Balthazar Moncornet, Benjamin de Rohan, duc de Soubise. Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. © Château de Versailles. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais/ Art Resource, New York.

Rohan’s literary tastes broadened as he aged, and he came to take literature more seriously. Late in life, he traveled with a substantial collection of books, including works by Machiavelli, Dante, Guicciardini, Montaigne, Tasso, and Cervantes, and he kept up on new publications even while campaigning. He also recruited for his entourage a series of learned young men, who exercised considerable influence over him. But even then he remained far less educated than his mother, sister, and wife, all of whom had a real command of humanistic culture: all three knew Latin, his sister Anne knew some Hebrew, and his wife read widely in Italian and Spanish. Collectively, the Rohan took the high literary culture of their times very seriously, but they treated it as mainly a feminine pursuit; the men of the family had other concerns. And despite the greater sophistication of his adulthood, Rohan did not altogether relinquish the reading habits of his youth. A contemporary described him living quietly at Castres in the mid-1620s, riding and practicing other sports when the weather was good, and “applying himself unaffectedly to

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 41

2/16/15 2:26 PM

42

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

reading Plutarch and Caesar’s Commentaries, despite having no great knowledge of literature.” A few years later, in exile in Venice, he again devoted himself to rereading Caesar, this time producing his own adaptation of the Commentaries to meet the needs of a modern captain. Rohan owned a Bible and some other religious literature, but throughout his life he spent his moments of leisure and reflection with the notable men of the ancient world. In important ways, Rohan’s literary education was thus a training in individualism. It offered examples of great individuals’ great deeds, and among these individuals Rohan favored the most disruptive, the least obedient to constituted authority. Alcibiades represented an especially striking choice of hero for a young Calvinist, in that Plutarch’s biography dwells at length on its subject’s amorality, manipulative political tactics, and multiple betrayals. Alcibiades first deserts his native land to serve its enemies, then deserts them in turn; he participates in violations of religious ritual and has multiple sexual relations, with men and women alike. Above all, Plutarch writes, “among several great passions to which he was subject by nature, the ambition to prevail in everything and be always the first was the strongest and most insistent”; and Plutarch explicitly links this intense ambition with Alcibiades’s multiple treacheries as well as with his great achievements. Plutarch’s Caesar, of course, is dominated by similar impulses: he weeps at the thought that “king Alexander at my age had already conquered peoples and countries, and I have not yet done anything worthy of memory”; passing through an isolated Alpine village, he informs his startled companions that “I’d rather be first here than second at Rome.” Another component of Rohan’s home schooling reinforced this praise of ambition: immersion in chivalric history and myth. Th at included of course heroes from the family’s own past, and Rohan’s mother arranged that histories be written of both her own ancestors and her husband’s; many years later, Rohan still viewed these ancestors as models for his own actions, asking his mother to send him “the memoirs concerning my grandfather that you promised me . . . of all our ancestors, . . . there is none that I want more to resemble.” But fictional tales of knights, quests, and heroism in the face of supernatural dangers also still exerted a powerful hold on late sixteenthcentury nobles, and they would become a mainstay of seventeenth-century court ballet. Hence in 1593, when Henri IV and his sister visited the Rohan family in Poitou, enacting such imagery seemed an appropriate form

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 42

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

43

of celebration. Catherine de Parthenay herself composed three ballets for the occasion, presenting chivalric allegories of the contemporary political situation; her children (Henri was then fourteen) performed the principal roles. Catherine’s readiness to employ this genre testifies to its popularity, and also (like Rohan’s own admiration for Alcibiades) to the easygoing attitudes of French aristocratic Protestantism. She composed her ballets near the end of a long religious war, whose outcome remained undecided, and she had suffered directly from it. Yet despite her leading position within the Reformed movement, Catherine’s ballets describe France’s travails without mentioning Christianity, Catholic or Reformed. Instead, her stories present an overlay of sexual and national imagery to describe the contemporary situation, with a helpless and feminized France under the spell of an alien power, needing rescue by a warrior hero. One ballet, for instance, presents four nymphs (two played by the Rohan girls), two “French knights” (played by their brothers), and a “sybil” (played by Anne de Rohan, the youngest daughter). The witch Medea has subjected France to Spanish domination, and the nymphs call for heroes who will step forth to liberate the country, as the great knights of the past had done in previous national crises. At this point, the music changes to a livelier tune; the French knights step forward, and Henri de Rohan speaks: “I find myself gripped by a new ardor, . . . I can think only of combat and battle. It seems that Mars has arranged for us the joy of today showing our valor, and that before nightfall we’re to conclude some fine adventure.” To this Benjamin replies, “As for me, I’m always in the mood for fighting.” Like Plutarch’s biographies, chivalric myth thus presented warfare as the theater of individual excellence. There the individual might serve the national community, but without reference to religion or indeed to national interests. As Henri’s character explains to the nymphs, “Ladies, our generous hearts lead us to seek with ardent courage some worthy object on which to use our weapons. . . . If some proud giant disturbs your peace, if some satyr has violated your laws, let us know; we have the courage and the strength to avenge your woe.” If the Rohan girls symbolized outraged France, the ballets made clear, France herself was to be understood in the individualized, sexualized terms of romance. The ideological struggles of the sixteenth century had not dislodged older images of what an aristocrat ought to be.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 43

2/16/15 2:26 PM

44

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Visualizing Europe Rohan emerged from this world of training and reading at about age twenty, late by contemporary standards. He first saw battle at eighteen, accompanying his cousin the king to the Siege of Amiens, following its capture by the Spanish. But peace soon followed, and it held through the following decade. As a result, although in 1605 Rohan was placed in charge of the Swiss troops serving France, over a decade would pass before he acquired real experience of battle. But external circumstances only partially accounted for this lack of experience, for wars still raged elsewhere in Europe, and ambitious French noblemen traveled to find them. The possibility was especially attractive for Protestants, since the Dutch war with Spain continued near at hand; by joining the Dutch, young noblemen could both defend their faith and learn military techniques from Europe’s most admired commander, Maurice of Nassau. This was the choice made by the son of Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, another leading Protestant aristocrat. The young man’s anxious mother finally reconciled herself to his departure for the battlefields “because we see that idleness is making him miserable; he is dying inside seeing the opportunity to show his virtue slip away, no matter how good the reasons keeping him here.” Rohan expressed similar distress at the lack of opportunities available to his generation, but he responded differently: he went traveling in search of political rather than military knowledge. In 1599, “everything being peaceful in France and unable to remain idle,” he and his brother set out across Europe on a grand tour that would last twenty months. The party traveled first to Germany, then through Italy, down the Danube to Vienna and on to Hungary, the frontier in the ongoing struggle between Christian Europe and the Muslim Turks, and a prominent site for military tourists; they came back through Prague, the Low Countries, England, and Scotland. A fellow member of the high Protestant nobility, the duc de La Force, suggested in a letter to his wife that perhaps their own son ought to join the venture: “certainly it’s a fine opportunity,” he wrote, and it “would have been very fitting for our son to have undertaken it. . . . In truth it would benefit him enormously, and he would feel the effects his whole life; four or five young lords are undertaking this trip.” Improving the brothers’ knowledge of European culture constituted one goal of the enterprise, and two cultural advisers accompanied them. The Swiss Protestant Théodore Turquet de Mayerne was the party’s official physi-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 44

2/16/15 2:26 PM

map 1

Rohan’s Europe, the principal sites.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 45

2/16/15 2:26 PM

46

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

cian; he was the son of a prominent political theorist and eventually would establish himself in London, acquiring Europe-wide celebrity as a physician and scientific thinker. Turquet de Mayerne remained in touch with the Rohan throughout his life, but he proved less significant to them than the second adviser who accompanied the group, Daniel Durant, sieur de HauteFontaine, who served as tutor. Haute-Fontaine was the son and brother of Protestant ministers, and he himself had begun his career as a university professor at Leiden. Dissatisfied with his career prospects and eager for a more aristocratic mode of life, though, he first accompanied the duc de Sully’s brother on an embassy to Rome, then served the Rohan for the rest of his life, developing an immense influence on them. On his return, Rohan composed a book on what he had seen, for circulation among his friends and family, his first effort at public expression; and in keeping with the journey’s educational program, in it he offered earnest accounts of the monuments he had seen. Of Italy, he noted the academies that were springing up as fora to discuss learned matters; in Florence, he visited the grand duke’s art gallery; in Rome, he visited the Sistine Chapel and enthused over paintings by Raphael; in Ferrara, there was the tomb of Ariosto, which he visited “in memory of this great Poet” and which he described as the greatest thing about the town; in southern Italy, there were “the ruins of those superb buildings of the ancient Romans.” Twenty years after Rohan’s death, Tallemant des Réaux noted with malicious amusement the duke’s pompous eagerness to visit and describe such sites without actually knowing much about them. “Some idiot Italian told him that,” Tallemant commented of one elementary mistake, “and he bought it. That’s what happens when you don’t show your work to an honneste homme.” The mediocrity of Rohan’s literary education stood out for his contemporaries, yet so also did the seriousness with which he sought cultural self-improvement. But the trip’s more important purpose was political: it was meant to acquaint Rohan with leaders and societies across Europe, and to encourage him to think seriously about political matters. This aspect of the tour implied a vision of his future: even at this early point, he viewed himself as a future statesman, rather than a mere captain. Hence his book includes extensive observations on the different states of Europe, and on some of its leading personalities as well. He met German and Italian princes, visited the emperor in Prague, and spent time at the courts of both England and Scotland. He expressed admiration for James VI, as “suited to govern his kingdom, and much more besides.” The Emperor Rudolph II shared James’s learning, and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 46

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

47

Bohemia in some ways resembled Scotland, but Rudolph had retired to a life of idleness and isolation, leaving others to lead his armies. As with the literary enthusiasms of his youth, religion had little importance in these personal assessments, or in Rohan’s larger understanding of the societies he encountered. He visited Luther’s tomb in Wittenberg but not Geneva, and in comparing societies he did not find Protestantism a source of strength or Catholicism a source of troubles. On the contrary, he found Venice dazzling (and spent two months in the region), and Italy as a whole seemed to him “more civilized, more elegant, more attractive . . . than any nation I’ve seen.” As for Munich, “it is impossible to imagine the pleasure one has there. What has made the dukes there so especially beloved is their effort to beautify it.” The current duke’s projects included “a very beautiful palace that he built for himself, and a very beautiful monastery where he installed the Jesuits, with the most lovely church imaginable”—especially strong praise at a moment when the Jesuits’ status within France was a subject of angry debate. Conversely, he was tremendously impressed by the booming conditions of the Netherlands, but made no mention of the Reformed religion as a possible explanation for the country’s success. This doctrinal indifference was part of the broader Machiavellianism that ran through Rohan’s travel account, and that would color all his later writings. He viewed religion as a problem for political leadership, an obstacle to unity, rather than as a set of important and true doctrines—or even as a force that shaped collective behavior in specific ways. Thus he noted that James VI had the opportunity to unite Britain “under one God, one faith, one law, one king.” In contrast, Bohemia had “at least a dozen” religions, and it was “impossible that so great a quantity not bring discord and disunion.” In place of religion, Rohan offered societal particularism as the basic reality of political analysis; history, climate, and temperament gave each European society its distinctive character. “As often as you change countries,” he wrote, “so often you find different humors, and consequently different kinds of government . . . there is a very great difference among all the kingdoms and republics of Christendom; . . . and one who would pass as learned in handling the government of Spain would seem a donkey on coming to France.” In the same Machiavellian spirit, Rohan concluded his book with a series of political comparisons, setting apparently similar regions against each other: Italy and Germany, as two regions of city-states and small principalities; France and England, as two great monarchies; Scotland and Bohemia, as two small monarchies; Venice and the Netherlands, as two republics. Politics,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 47

2/16/15 2:26 PM

48

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

so runs the implied premise, could be subjected to rational analysis, and such analysis was essential to get at the fundamental differences lurking beneath surface similarities. In keeping with this emphasis on the rational observer, Rohan mentions neither of the tutors who accompanied him and guided his observations, on any possible literary influences. This was self-presentation, not social snobbery (the account also omits Soubise and the other young gentlemen in the party), an effort to show himself an observer, analyst, and potential political actor, someone who could make sense of the numerous societies that he encountered. Another Machiavellian theme runs through the book, that of the tension between ruling classes and ordinary people, and the closely related problem of liberty within a constitutional order. Thus the Dutch obeyed their princes only “as a people sure of its strength.” As for Germany, “I find it the freest country in Europe. For in addition to all the cities and republics, which in fact owe only what they wish to the Empire, the princes . . . only give respect and obedience to the emperor as they please”; and when they try to assert power within their own territories, “we see how the people remove or cut back their authority.” Italian princes faced even greater danger. They sought to protect themselves against popular uprisings by accumulating wealth and building fortresses, but they were “neither strong nor secure, hated by their subjects and tyrannizing over them.” In these matters, Rohan’s sympathies were ambiguous. He admired much that he saw in the republican societies of the Netherlands and Germany, and he made clear his dislike of princely oppression, but his fundamental sympathies were aristocratic. Strasbourg appalled him, for instance. He included a description of its “bizarre form of republic,” he explained, only to note its “strangeness . . . , and not because I approve of this popular state,” in which the nobility had only a minority role in governing the city. Although “nothing in the world is more beautiful” than the 370 pieces of artillery he found in the city, he added, the Strasbourgeois had no field cannon: “Their reasoning is that of the commoner: for according to them, they have no wish to attack anyone, but only to defend themselves.” His comparison between England and France turned still more directly on questions of nobility, and displayed the same sympathies. He was shocked that English nobles “pay taxes like the people,” and faced the same judicial procedures. In miserable contrast to his French rival, the English king was “surrounded by a nobility of low quality, whose younger sons have no hesitation about entering business, or even taking up manual trades.” This king was so weak that “he dare not tax

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 48

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

49

his people a penny beyond the ordinary, without first having assembled the Estates, who follow their own wishes in granting or refusing” his requests. Rohan would reiterate these assessments throughout his career. Bourgeois preferences for commerce, stability, and peace over aristocratic military glory perplexed and angered him. However Machiavellian, his political analyses preserved some of the chivalric values he had enacted in his mother’s ballets.

A Generational Burden Rohan and his party returned to France in 1601, and at this point his adult life began, under the protective shadow of his cousin the king. Important benefits flowed from the relationship. In 1603, the king raised Rohan to the peerage, making him the first duke of that name and combining several of the family’s Breton estates into the duchy of Rohan. Rohan had already begun seeking a marriage alliance, with an eye to solidifying his own and his family’s place in the world, and here, too, he could enlist royal support. With the king’s blessing, in 1602 a councilor from the Parlement of Paris and one of the family’s own retainers were sent off to Sweden, to arrange Rohan’s marriage with a sister of the Swedish king. Henri IV sent along a letter stressing how seriously he took the project, and the family sent a list of its own lofty conditions for the match, including an enormous dowry (three times what he would eventually settle for), and provisions that would give the duke a reasonable share of this treasure if the bride died without heirs; the representatives were also to present a rosy picture of the duke’s own finances. The plans came to nothing, but they nonetheless demonstrated the ambitious terms in which Rohan defined his family’s position; he saw himself as an actor on a European rather than merely French stage, and a princely marriage was therefore appropriate. The same ambitions guided the family in marrying its daughters. In 1603 one of Rohan’s sisters married the duke of Zweibrücken, a minor but sovereign prince of the Holy Roman Empire, who would play a significant role in the affairs of the Palatinate; and in 1611 the family began negotiations to marry another sister to a prince of the Nassau family. The duc de La Force had already expressed interest in marrying his oldest son to the girl, but he was given to understand that the Rohan aimed higher than a mere duke. Their marriage strategies thus were yet another expression of the Rohan’s view of themselves as standing above the ordinary nobility. The same values prevailed in the next generation: in about 1640, Rohan’s widow

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 49

2/16/15 2:26 PM

50

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

sought (again unsuccessfully) to marry their daughter to a brother of the deposed elector of the Palatinate. The Rohan did not readily give up the hope of princely alliance. In 1604, Rohan himself began a new set of marriage negotiations, with only slightly lowered expectations: he sought marriage with a daughter of Maximilien de Béthune, baron de Rosny, the king’s principal adviser and thus the most powerful Protestant in France. Yet again, the king’s support was critical to the plan. La Force described the negotiations to his wife: “M. de Rohan honors me with his love and confidence, and having explained his hopes of pursuing the daughter of M. de Rosny, begged me to speak of the matter to the king, so as to follow His Majesty’s will”—and in hopes that the king himself might open the negotiations. The king was enthusiastic, and matters advanced quickly. Barely two weeks later, La Force reported to his wife that an agreement was nearly certain: “Above all the king wants [the marriage] to happen. It is a great step forward for my lord Rohan, and he has already experienced the effects, both in pensions and in positions, for M. de Rosny has secured for him the position of colonel des Suisses.” The bride herself was about ten years old and of course had no say in the decision, and even Sully himself viewed the negotiations with some coolness. Other candidates to marry his daughter had greater resources, he recalled in his memoirs, but Rohan offered the advantage of a close relationship to the king. Through his twenties, Rohan was thus an important figure at court, enjoying the benefits a royal cousin might expect. But his behavior during those years also betrayed traces of frustration, partly reflecting his limited opportunities for the military glory that he had trained for, partly reflecting a more diff use discomfort. His generation had not fought the great battles of the sixteenth century or contributed to Henri IV’s amazing rise to power, but many veterans of those battles still lived and dominated public life. These included the king himself and Rohan’s new father-in-law, of course, but also a series of other Protestant heroes: the ducs de Lesdiguières, Bouillon, and La Force, Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, and others would continue to play important roles into the 1620s. Nor did opportunities for great deeds seem likely. France remained at peace, and the king had established firm control of its internal affairs. Prosperous idleness seemed likely over the long term. In 1606 Rohan responded to these narrowed opportunities with a youthful escapade: “eager to distinguish himself by some great deed,” he left court without permission and traveled to the Netherlands, to fight with Maurice of Nassau. When the Spanish protested this violation of French neutrality, the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 50

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

51

king called him back, briefly exiled him from court, then soon forgave him. The episode expressed the ambiguity of Rohan’s circumstances: he was twenty-seven, an age at which many French nobles had already commanded troops in battle, but he remained the youthful beneficiary of others’ great deeds, with none of his own and no stage on which to stand out. His cousin the king both protected and overshadowed him; actions like his flight to the Netherlands generated more amusement than admiration. Hence the king’s assassination, in 1610, transformed Rohan’s life. Of course the event brought material losses and reduced his influence at court. As regent, Marie de Médicis pursued a more firmly Catholic policy than Henri IV, diminishing the likelihood that Rohan could have a serious influence on her decisions; and in any case, she promptly removed his father-in-law, Sully, from power, dramatically reducing Rohan’s access to material benefits from the crown. But the king’s disappearance also brought opportunities, by opening for Rohan the possibility of independent political action. In the early 1630s, as he composed his memoirs during his Venetian exile, Rohan began his account in 1610 itself, implicitly making the point that here was the real beginning of his public life, the years worthy of readers’ interest. Nor was this a merely retrospective understanding; Rohan expressed the same view in 1611, in the first of what would become an ongoing series of “discourses” analyzing the contemporary scene. In them he specifically addressed French Protestants, advising them on handling the circumstances of the moment, but he also had larger audiences and more general issues in mind, and the texts circulated widely. They constituted his first public interventions in politics, and proclaimed his intention of playing a new role. His discourse of 1611 opened by explaining what the king’s death meant for the Protestant nobility—and, implicitly, for Rohan himself. Henri had protected and sustained the Protestant movement, Rohan explained, but “at this point it has to be our own virtue” that does so; “God has taken him away in order that we no longer rely on him.” The situation posed obvious dangers, but it was also an opportunity. For “what more ambitious glory can we seek than to serve, according to our stations, to support, strengthen, and enlarge his penitent, feeble, and diminished Church?” With the king’s disappearance, new possibilities for virtue, glory, and ambition beckoned, and Rohan’s discourse the following year underlined how very great those might be. Henri IV himself, Rohan told his fellow Reformed leaders, had begun from an equally unpromising situation; he, too, had suffered through all the troubles

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 51

2/16/15 2:26 PM

52

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

“that come with the position of party leader in a state where the kingdom’s resources were directed toward its ruin.” Despite that apparently hopeless starting point, Henri had succeeded beyond what “any prince could ever have dared hope or even wish, in short, he was now the arbiter of Christendom.” The discourse thus fitted Henri IV into the model that had long fascinated Rohan, that of Julius Caesar; like Caesar, Henri IV had managed to upend the political world, transforming himself from private citizen to leader of a great state. So miraculous an ascent might well have suggested explanation in terms of divine intervention or religious purpose—but Rohan offered no such interpretation. On the contrary, his Henri IV remained the leader of a “party,” rather than an agent of God’s will, and Rohan applied this essentially secular understanding to most of his other political analyses during these years. His discourse of 1611 concluded its call for glorious achievements in the present with pious invocations of the eternal life to come, and urged that his fellow Protestants sacrifice present ease for the sake of that future. But he quickly followed that statement with hard-nosed analyses of contemporary political configurations, and in his ensuing discourses, over the following decade, religious language disappeared altogether. Such language occasionally appeared in his other writings, but mainly as a decorative flourish. That reluctance to interpret the social world in religious terms accorded with Rohan’s practices throughout his life. He was known and admired for his sober personal habits, but he was no puritan in the English or Genevan sense, and he showed no eagerness to remodel social practices according to biblical precepts, as Protestants in many parts of Europe sought to do. He and his wife participated enthusiastically in court festivals and balls; while traveling he gambled and spent small sums on “comedians,” and he pursued these amusements without regard for Sabbatarian restrictions. His description of his grand tour had noted his delight in Catholic Venice and Munich, and in 1629 he would in fact select Venice as his place of exile, over such Protestant alternatives as England (where his brother settled) and the Low Countries. The Rohan family as a whole shared these attitudes: his mother not only composed the secular ballets described above, but also expressed pleasure in the dancing and “comedians” she watched in Brittany, during a meeting of the province’s estates. Rohan’s secular approach to political issues reflected long-term commitments, both his own and his family’s.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 52

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

53

Generational Politics If the events of 1610 presented Rohan with new possibilities, they also created new lines of conflict: first with the great Protestant nobles of the king’s generation over leadership of the French movement, then with the queen mother, over the place of the Reformed Church within France. In fact the two conflicts were closely linked, for Rohan sought to establish his position within the Protestant movement by insisting on activist policies to defend his coreligionists’ established rights. Bouillon, Lesdiguières, Mornay, and La Force all endorsed accommodation with the court, and Rohan asserted his own right to lead the movement by attacking their moderation as betrayal. Struggle began immediately, at an assembly of Protestant leaders called in 1611, to consider how to deal with the new situation that Henri IV’s death had produced; factions formed to advance more moderate and more radical strategies, and (as a Rohan follower later recalled) “those disagreements so embittered Bouillon and Rohan against each other that they were never again in harmony the rest of their lives.” From that point on, Rohan used increasingly harsh language about these older rivals, and this too formed part of his effort to separate himself from them. In his “Free Discourse Concerning the Present Times” of 1617, he considered directly the situation of the great nobles. “I do not intend to speak against all the grandees,” he assured his readers; in doing so, “I would be speaking against myself.” But he did indeed intend to speak against those who abused their position, unnamed but apparently numerous: “against those who want to force” the monarchy “to provide them benefits, and who use what they already have gained by bad means to puff themselves up still further. The more you give such people, the more you increase their ability to harm you.” Hence the importance of distinguishing “the good from the bad, so as to give courage to the ones, and terror to the others.” Th is was harsh language, but five years later, in a discourse concerning the conclusion to his first war, he offered still sharper criticisms: Bouillon had “betrayed” the Protestant movement after encouraging its members to fight the king; “the self-interest of M. de La Force, and the desires of M. de Châtillon” had produced further betrayals, as each settled with the court in exchange for personal gain. Such commentary, presented in such public formats, ensured that there would be no eventual reconciliation with the other grandees.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 53

2/16/15 2:26 PM

54

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Rohan’s memoirs, written about twenty-five years later, provided greater detail to support these charges. There the great Protestant nobles are shown to be guilty of a long series of treacheries and other self-interested behavior. Bouillon works from the very outset of the regency government to “ruin” Sully, whom he “had always envied” and whose properties he had long hoped to confiscate; La Force eventually sells out his coreligionists “in exchange for a position as maréchal de France and 200,000 écus,” and fails even to warn his former comrades of his reversal; as for Lesdiguières, he has “by his disgusting domestic debaucheries abandoned God,” partly for the sake of becoming constable of France. Again and again, Rohan emphasizes, the great nobles display their indifference to communal obligations, religious and national alike. In his discourse, Rohan offers a conceptual language to account for this behavior, the language of “interest” and discontent. His discourse of 1617 speaks of the “self-interest [interest particulier], which is a highly persuasive counselor,” which led the great nobles to give misleading advice to the crown; of individuals who “hold their private interests in highest esteem”; of the “diverse interests” that led the aristocracy to disrupt the state. The same principle applies to the state as a whole: “a kingdom’s strength,” he wrote in 1617, “consists in a king and his alliances, not of blood of but of interest.” A more fundamental reality underlay this play of interests: as Rohan explained in the same discourse, “man’s spirit is always insatiable, presumptuous, and envious, often quicker to anger at his companion’s goods and honors than at what he himself lacks.” Such analyses suggest the breadth of Rohan’s aims—both intellectual and political—at the very outset of his political career. Addressed to the Protestant community and its strategic concerns, his discourses nonetheless developed a more general vision of politics, designed to interest readers of all kinds. That vision was mainly secular, and it centered on the theme that Rohan would pursue twenty years later in De l’ interest des princes, his most important work: that all political actors are moved by selfish interests and that understanding these interests provides the foundation for effective political knowledge. Indeed, similar language had already appeared in his youthful travel account, emphasizing as it did the sharply divergent interests of the different European powers. The death of Henri IV, it seems, gave Rohan more than a chance to compete for leadership of the Protestant movement—it also allowed him to present himself as a politician to the public at large.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 54

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

55

Yet the paradoxical logic of his situation made political success elusive, even as it highlighted his abilities. For he could establish himself only through isolation, separating himself from other nobles and thereby diminishing his chances of political success. In the decade after 1610 he quarreled with all the other Protestant grandees and publicly insulted several of them. His relations with Catholic nobles were necessarily tense, given his public endorsements of Reformed activism, and the greatest of these, the prince de Condé, viewed him as a particular enemy; this was another line of conflict that would continue for the remainder of Rohan’s life. Hence Rohan’s writings from these years develop another theme that would be prominent in his later works, that of political failure. His discourse summarizing his first civil war, of 1621–22, begins with that issue: he wrote it, he explained, because of “the just pain that I feel seeing every day my good intentions criticized and my finest actions slandered.” Worse, those criticizing “have been those who stood idly by during the war,” leaving the Rohan brothers alone to fight “at the risk of our lives.” He made the same point in his memoirs: “Rohan and Soubise had arrayed against them all the other great Protestant nobles, all of them either envious or indifferent; all the royal officials, because of their greed; and most of the leading townsmen, who had been bought off by the court.” In creating a space for autonomous action and great deeds, Rohan had weakened the movement he led and diminished his own chances of success. Only as he reflected on this isolation did Rohan turn to religious language, and even then his thoughts fitted with the heroic imagery of his youth. In concluding his 1622 discourse, he presented himself as a willing martyr, prepared to face the world’s misunderstanding in order to accomplish God’s work: “Neither persecution by our enemies nor slander by our friends will ever dislodge the firm resolution that God has given me to employ myself entirely for the good of his service. . . . I will always wholeheartedly embrace God’s cause, and believe it glorious to suffer in His name.” Faith here provided a framework for great deeds rather than a restriction on them, another chance for the meritorious individual to distinguish himself.

The Practice of Violence The political circumstances of the 1610s—the indecisiveness of the central government, the assertiveness of the great aristocracy, the still-limited size of

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 55

2/16/15 2:26 PM

56

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

the king’s own army—encouraged armed violence, and from 1610 onward Rohan’s experience of warfare widened. In 1612, conflict with the queen mother over his governorship of Saint-Jean-d’Angély brought him to the brink of shooting war, but he backed off at the last minute. In 1614–15, 1617, and 1619, he joined a series of aristocratic factions, mobilizing first against the queen mother, then with her following her exclusion from the government. In 1617 he also traveled to northern Italy seeking battlefield opportunities. But the battles of these years were small and infrequent, and none brought any particular glory. Only in 1621 would his military career really begin, with the first of three wars leading French Protestants against the crown. That war and the next, fought in 1625–26, were essentially successful. Outnumbered and underfinanced, Rohan nonetheless managed to hold off the royal armies; most dramatically, he led Montauban in successful resistance against the besieging royal army. At the conclusion of these wars, he, his brother, and their principal supporters all received immense payoffs, and the Protestant cities managed to keep most of their privileges. In contrast, Rohan’s third war (1627–29) ended in defeat and the dismantling of French Protestants’ political autonomy. He and his brother went into exile; Soubise would never return, and Rohan would return for only one brief visit. The financial results differed as well; the crown paid him only enough “to compensate for damage to his houses.” But even this unsuccessful effort impressed contemporaries, for it too came against a much stronger enemy. Rohan had reached his forties with only limited military experience, an almost unheard-of delay for a seventeenth-century military nobleman; he went into exile a decade later known throughout Europe as a great commander. His late start as a military leader accorded with contemporaries’ impression that he lacked the instincts of a natural warrior. “They say that he was not especially brave,” reported Tallemant des Réaux, who knew the family well, “although he spent his whole life at war and died in battle”; as evidence, Tallemant offered an implausible but revelatory rumor that Rohan had once been so frightened that he had mistaken an ox for his horse. Richelieu expressed similar doubts in describing Rohan taking to his bed with illness at a crucial moment in the Valteline campaign: “Whatever excuse he might give for his failure . . . , the most favorable term that even his best friends might offer is lack of heart.” In the Political Testament Richelieu went much further, accusing Rohan of “terrified panic” and “cowardice” in this episode. There had been comparable moments throughout Rohan’s career. In

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 56

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

57

1622 he was “incapacitated by his migraine” in the midst of important negotiations. In 1634 he was immobilized for six weeks by “an indisposition that came upon him” when Richelieu recalled him to France. Following a victory in 1635 “he was overtaken by a serious illness that left him not only incapable of dealing with public matters, but even of the most intimate private thoughts; he was reduced to a profound lethargy, having no feeling for anything.” And Rohan himself acknowledged familiarity with battlefield panic. In his book on military practice, he commented that “great courage by itself does not make a good captain, though it certainly helps . . . ; it takes long experience, and having seen defeat and collapse as well as victory. For whoever has not found himself there cannot imagine what it’s like, the bravest soldiers sometimes committing the most cowardly acts.” The issue of cowardice reappeared in the very last lines of the text as well, again with the suggestion that even honorable commanders might experience it. Richelieu and Tallemant may have overstated Rohan’s anxieties, but their comments captured an important component of his makeup. Unlike other famous captains of the seventeenth century, Rohan did not love battle or take to it naturally, and no anecdotes describe him dueling or committing other acts of private violence. He had fashioned himself a military man, successfully, but at the cost of real psychological strains. That he nonetheless committed himself to a military identity resulted from some of his deepest ethical commitments. Like most other French nobles of his era, Rohan viewed war as a lofty activity, the greatest that an individual might undertake and a source of benefits to society as a whole. He expressed this idea both early and late in his political career. In his discourse of 1611, he wrote that Henri IV’s early, warrior years, “though hard, were the happiest of his life . . . the true happiness of a great prince does not consist in the tranquil possession of a great empire, which serves only to plunge him into pleasures, but in making a small empire great, and in satisfying his courage, not his body.” Twenty years later, he argued that “a great-hearted prince, who is proud of his renown and wishes to imitate those great men who live on 2,000 years after their deaths and whose venerable names honor their descendants, will choose war as his principal pursuit.” The alternative to war was a life of idleness, luxury, and pleasure. The same dichotomy applied to society as a whole. In collective as in individual life, he emphasized, war cured luxury, flattery, and idleness, the characteristic vices of court society. In a discourse of 1618, he spoke of “the sweetness

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 57

2/16/15 2:26 PM

58

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

of peace, which usually lulls good men to sleep.” Fifteen years later, addressing princes, he wrote that war “chases out idleness, gives everyone something to do, and especially satisfies ambitious and discontented spirits; it banishes luxury, toughens your people, and gives you such a reputation among your neighbors as to make you the arbiter of all their conflicts.” Elsewhere in the same text, he spoke of “the flatterers and pimps and all the others that plague princes, whom peace maintains in their idleness, allowing them every sort of luxury . . . the typical route to the loss of kingdoms and empires.” Rohan chose to devote himself to war partly because he believed in its inherent value, whatever the ends it served. But if war for Rohan was an ethical endeavor, a source of virtues and cure for vices, the specific wars that he fought in the 1620s also posed ethical problems, for they were wars against his own king. Rohan justified himself against the charge of treason by describing his actions as defensive, almost involuntary. The crown had assaulted the Protestant communities of France by its disrespect of their rights, notably by restoring Catholic properties in Béarn, and the Protestant churches mobilized in response; their representatives had called for resistance and asked Rohan to lead it. In his memoirs, Rohan emphasized his reluctance to accept that request. He and his brother “had opposed holding a General Assembly of the Protestant churches and had sought to disband it.” But the other great Protestant nobles had deserted the cause, and “seeing such a collapse,” the Rohan “resolved not to abandon the party.” In any case, the struggle itself was unavoidable. As he explained in 1621, it was “necessary for our preservation to oppose the enemies of the state and of the churches, who exploit the king’s affections and conscience”; “their violence and oppression” had to be resisted “in order to preserve, insofar as we can, the authority of His Majesty and of his laws, the liberty of our consciences and the safety of our lives.” Here was the classic language of early modern religious rebellion: self-interested extremists had taken control of the king’s councils, and preservation of basic liberties required resistance. But this narrative of reluctant struggle was misleading, for in fact Rohan had not passively awaited the Protestant community’s request for his military services. He had actively pushed the community into resistance and had lobbied hard for his own leadership role. A close follower during these years, the young patrician of Castres Jean Bouffard de Madiane, explained: while the other grandees urged caution and made their peace with the court, Rohan and his brother secretly encouraged the assembled pastors to take a hard line, and promised their military support in case of a rupture with the crown.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 58

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

59

Once the Protestant assembly had adopted this position, Rohan moved immediately to action, setting up his headquarters in his government of Saint-Jeand’Angély and recruiting soldiers. Rohan himself described the similar machinations he undertook in preparing for his third war, in 1627–29. “The duc de Rohan,” he wrote of himself, “who at a distance knew about the tricks of the court, and knew its agents in all the Protestant cities,” called together representatives from each of them, without explaining his purpose. “This device worked well,” and the assembly duly took place under his leadership. Rohan then gave a stirring speech calling for the military defense of La Rochelle and received the endorsement he sought: “It was decided that the duc de Rohan would be asked to take up again his office as general of the Reformed armies, to raise troops, and to undertake anything else he might judge proper”; he was also “to put together as soon as possible a General Assembly” that would handle “all matters” for the duration of the conflict. In the deepest sense, then, Rohan’s military career was a political choice and an act of self-creation. He himself secretly urged his coreligionists to resist the king, helping to organize and deepen the crisis of French Protestantism; he may even (so Bouffard believed) have encouraged other Protestant grandees to take a conciliatory stance toward the crown so as to ensure for himself a more prominent leadership role. Religious crisis provided the opportunity for leadership he had sought since the reign of Henri IV. As his then ally and eventual enemy La Force explained, urging him to gallop away from a skirmish in which they found themselves, “By killing or capturing you, they end the war today. You have to escape.” Rohan had made himself the incarnation of the Reformed war effort.

Politics, Social Class, and War: Aristocrat and Bourgeois Carrying out that effort required particular kinds of fighting. Rohan’s first objective was to avoid capture; his second, to keep his army together and adequately supplied. These objectives meant that he usually sought to avoid battle, since rebellion could last only so long as his army stayed intact, and even a successful battle might cost more losses than he could afford. His wars were marked instead by rapid movements, which allowed him to control large stretches of territory while at the same time evading the royal armies. Rohan impressed contemporaries with his handling of these circumstances. He was

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 59

2/16/15 2:26 PM

60

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

decisive, moved his troops quickly across long distances, and provided them with solid training; a Catholic bishop referred to the “incomparable” troops who had been “nourished on the milk of M. de Rohan.” His wars also required intense engagement with local populations, especially those of the cities. Still heavily fortified, cities constituted the key points over which most early modern fighting took place, and controlling them meant controlling the surrounding countryside. That control could best be achieved through mobilizing the urban poor, and the greatest commanders of the age—the duc de Guise in the sixteenth century, the prince de Condé in the seventeenth—were masters at securing popular support. The need was still more acute for Protestants like Rohan, since the large majority of French Protestants resided in the towns of Poitou, Languedoc, and other southern regions. They supplied most of the resources that any military campaign would need, and starting a war required their consent; this was the audience that Rohan, Bouillon, and the other Protestant grandees sought to attract and persuade. Long before his military career began, Rohan’s mother was already making the same point. In a first version of her testament, composed in 1604, she urged her children “to love and help the inhabitants of La Rochelle in every way possible,” partly because of the city’s importance in the Protestant movement, partly because of “the extraordinary affection and goodwill that they have always shown to all our house.” As Catherine de Parthenay understood, aristocratic power rested partly on such urban allegiances. Hence it was appropriate that Rohan’s first act of outright rebellion concerned his influence over another Protestant city, Saint-Jean-d’Angély, and that his rebellion there mixed politicking with force. He held the city’s governorship, but the crown—understanding the significance of controlling such towns—treated the position as essentially honorific, and reserved for itself the nomination of the city’s mayor and councilors, with whom real control rested. Early in 1612 Marie de Médicis worried about Rohan’s efforts “to manipulate and win over the populace, so as to have their votes in electing the mayor”; soon after, he surreptitiously fled the court and appeared in Saint-Jean to name his own candidates. On this occasion he yielded, but the issue remained alive in 1621, when all-out civil war erupted, and Saint-Jean-d’Angély became one of the Protestants’ major strongholds, with Soubise in charge of its defense. In fighting his wars, Rohan thus needed to be as much a politician as a tactician. He needed to follow local affairs and manage urban loyalties,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 60

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

61

among both the respectable elites accustomed to running the cities and the urban poor. Rohan’s practice of war was as much political as it was military. He brought complex social attitudes to these encounters. Already in his youthful travel account he had noted his dislike of the middle-class values he encountered in places like Strasbourg, Amsterdam, and England, and in particular their indifference to military glory. He repeated these views throughout his later years. Urban notables would always prefer peace to war, stability to innovation, and they were likely to sacrifice honor and religion in pursuit of that end; as he wrote in a discourse of 1615, they preferred to “enjoy present circumstances, rather than throw everything aside in hopes of a reformation.” After his exile, he offered still more general thoughts on the gap separating warriors like himself from royal officials; “almost everywhere, men of letters have taken over the government,” he complained, “and because they hate soldiers, they always treat them badly.” The mass of the urban population posed a different but equally difficult problem. The urban poor were excitable and unreliable, easily manipulated but also quick to change their opinions. In his memoirs, he described the citizens of La Rochelle as “thoughtless, . . . and like the people everywhere, as insolent in success as downcast by adversity.” Two years later, “the mayor and those who governed [La Rochelle] were in the pay of the court, and the ordinary people had neither strength nor courage.” . . . “Ordinary people . . . [he added at a later point] readily think ill of the good and well of evil-doers, easily following those who criticize everything and do nothing, and who hide their hypocrisy beneath an excessive zeal, while they in fact rebel against both religion and liberty.” He expressed the same view in private. “All the peoples that I’ve ever known,” he wrote his mother in 1630, “trust and are moved more easily by false and implausible news than by what is true and straightforward.” At once unreliable and crucial to his political projects, deeply divided but in all respects distant from the military aristocracy, the third estate as Rohan understood it required careful handling. Lacking understanding and constancy, the urban poor had to be manipulated, stirred up or calmed by eloquent words as the situation required. In many circumstances, the urban elite could also be attached to Rohan’s causes through more personal efforts of courtship and seduction. But many urban notables would prove resistant, given their enduring dislike of civic disruption and their preference for material prosperity over martial glory. In such cases, harsher measures would be

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 61

2/16/15 2:26 PM

62

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

necessary. Over the course of his civil wars, Rohan showed himself ready to use them. At Castres, the young Jean Bouffard de Madiane observed the full range of these techniques during the 1620s, when Rohan made the town his center of operations. The city was strongly Protestant, and the campaigns of his first war against the crown had centered in the region; when it ended, Rohan set up his household there, and thereafter it remained both a strategic prize in wartime and a comfortable peacetime residence. Bouffard himself belonged to the town’s patriciate, but he sought a more aristocratic mode of life, and serving the duke filled that need. Recognizing the young man’s abilities and loyalty, Rohan named him to important local positions, secured for him a small crown pension, and flattered him by seeking his advice. Patronage of this sort helped create an inner circle of local supporters, but Rohan also worked to secure the goodwill of a broader range of the town’s leading population. Bouffard described the open house that Rohan maintained for the locals and his graciousness toward them: he was, as Bouffard put it, “affable, charming, and accessible,” moderate in his habits, self-controlled and goodnatured in dealing with others. “By all these good and fine qualities, he had won everyone’s heart in Castres itself and in the region, even the hearts of his enemies.” The duchess contributed her own charm to that effort. When she joined the duke, she “took up the same way of living as her husband and won for herself the adoration of her own sex and of all those who saw or knew her even slightly.” But Rohan was also quite ready to use harsher methods in ensuring that urban elites conformed to his plans. Bouffard described the complex maneuvering that emerged in the course of Rohan’s first civil war, in 1621–22, as the leading citizens of Castres wavered in their loyalty. Rohan led his army toward Montauban, spreading word that he intended to support that city against the besieging royal army. But he quickly turned back to Castres, “which he took over claiming that there was a conspiracy to destroy him” by handing the city over to the royal army; “he did this on the pretext of a note” that had been intercepted from a local judge, “who continued to write his brothers about his well-justified fears that they would be ruined, and their home town [la commune patrie] as well, when all might be saved by a reasonable peace treaty.” The moment exemplified Rohan’s dealings with the local elites. Even those who supported him wanted to preserve their city—“la commune patrie”—by making peace with the king as soon as possible, and they remained in touch

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 62

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

63

with relatives and friends who opposed the war altogether. Rohan used accusations of treachery to mobilize the urban crowd against them, and arrests soon followed, of a judge, the town’s first and second consuls, and its treasurer; “he sought also some way of seizing” another local notable, “whom he had decided to hang as an example,” but the man escaped the city. These were Bouffard’s own friends and relatives, but when he attempted to intervene on behalf of one of them, he found the man under guard and “followed by a hundred thugs who endlessly insulted him as they led him off to prison.” Inside the house, the duke himself was “surrounded by another crowd bellowing for pillage.” Rohan had charmed the urban notables with his gracious manners, but he was altogether ready to turn an angry mob against them if that proved necessary. Bouffard witnessed comparable scenes in Rohan’s later wars. In 1626, Rohan again confronted the reluctance of the Castrais notability to enter fully into his plans, and again he responded with a combination of trickery and mob violence. When discussion with the city leaders failed to produced the result he wanted, Rohan sent them home; they “left flattered with fine talk and courtesies,” and with promises that “important secrets would be explained to them” at a later point. With the notables home in bed, Rohan then convened his principal followers, and “it was decided that the whole night would be spent plotting with the people, mobilizing the factions within the city for an uprising in the morning.” The uprising would begin with Rohan himself addressing the crowd, asking for its “protection . . . against the traitors who wanted to kill him and hand the city over to the king”; with the crowd whipped up, “his followers were to spread out and seize the peace party and lock them up in the bishopric.” Events went exactly as planned, and the city fathers spent the next several months in prison. The same techniques reappeared two years later, in Rohan’s third civil war, along with more finely calibrated political coups. Seeking both to frighten the local population and at the same time to create for himself a reputation of generosity, as Bouffard described it, Rohan arrested the captain of the Castres militia and “had the man led to the gibbet without even the pretense of a trial; and then believing that [the captain] had been strangled, ordered someone to bring him a reprieve.” In this case the scheme failed, for the victim’s relatives had delayed the execution by their protests, and the duke’s pardon arrived in time, “which left him upset.” In his own memoirs Rohan presented much the same picture: exploiting urban sociology was a necessary tactic for achieving his aims, and he expressed pride in his mastery of these techniques. Thus in 1627, on the eve of his third

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 63

2/16/15 2:26 PM

64

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

war, he faced the crown’s efforts to detach peace-loving urban leaders from his movement; “and as all those plots were being secretly mounted against him, on his side he worked to stir up the discontents of the Reformed,” preventing city councils from reaching agreement with the crown. Once the war began, more direct action became necessary. When the leading citizens of Milhaud sought to keep him out of the city, Rohan nonetheless moved his army toward it, “hoping that when he was in sight, the populace would riot”; and in fact, by conspicuously circling the city, “he so stirred up the people that at night they assembled in arms and forced the city government to open the gates.” The same scenario played out at Mazères: the city fathers closed the gates on his troops, but “nonetheless the people in the end took heart, and despite the consuls and the leading citizens of the city,” allowed Rohan’s troops to enter.” In the end, the succession of manipulations proved too much for Bouffard de Madiane, and he refused to serve Rohan in 1627–29. The occasion of their break was Bouffard’s discovery of Rohan’s international negotiations: despite his forceful Protestant rhetoric, the duke had negotiated with Catholic Savoy and Spain for financial support, receiving from them not just troop subsidies but large pensions. In his memoirs, Rohan himself expressed selfconsciousness about these arrangements, which he justified in terms of the Protestant cause’s “great need of money.” Bouffard himself was outraged, both by the arrangements themselves and by the duke’s readiness to lie to him: as he remembered later, he “had never known any of this, and had never believed the rumors about it.” Once he learned the truth, he experienced “a hundred different emotions, anger, confusion, and indignation, . . . Monsieur de Rohan having always denied this and treated it as outrageous slander.” Bouffard had thought himself the duke’s trusted friend, but in the end he felt as excluded as the other Castres notables. By this point, Bouffard also found himself overwhelmed by the larger brutality of Rohan’s treatment of his urban supporters. He now described the duke as almost completely indifferent to the fate of the urban populations he manipulated. By inciting Pamiers to resist the royal troops, according to Bouffard, Rohan had caused the city’s destruction and the execution of his own supporters; later expeditions “produced nothing but the loss and desolation of the Foix,” which he had already “gnawed down to the bone”; in Bouffard’s own city, Rohan’s army extorted more than 100,000 écus in a mere forty days, and it seemed “as though he resented Castres’s very existence.” About his military brutalities as about his political manipulations, Rohan’s own language differed little from Bouffard’s, and he, too, emphasized the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 64

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

65

social conflicts that his war making revealed: local patricians wanted peace and prosperity rather than war and glory, and they had to be forced to yield to the grander projects of their aristocratic superiors. He recalled in his memoirs that when the inhabitants of Milhaud begged him to stay away from the city, he answered that “he was determined to enter with all his troops, or else he would ravage the entire countryside.” In his more general reflections on battlefield practice, composed a few years after these events, Rohan emphasized the general applicability of his tactics. If attacked by a superior force, he urged, “you have to give up the countryside and burn all the supplies that you cannot bring into your forts, and even burn all the cities and villages that you cannot hold. For it is better to maintain yourself in a ruined territory than keep it intact for the enemy’s benefit.” Rohan’s military practice during the 1620s thus mixed politics, social differentiation, and outright violence. He had to manage the sensibilities of the patricians who ran the Protestant-dominated cities of southern France, and he worked hard to do so, recruiting individuals like Bouffard and graciously courting the patricians as a group. But his interests and theirs diverged in fundamental ways, for however strong their commitment to the Protestant cause, they also sought to preserve their cities’ and their own prosperity. Rohan’s military adventures visibly threatened both, hence his readiness to turn to a second group within the cities, the urban crowd, as a counterweight to patrician power. Rohan was altogether prepared to incite the crowd to violence when that proved necessary, and he believed himself to be skilled in doing so: he was (as he described himself a few years later, explaining his appointment to lead French forces in Switzerland) “someone skilled in handling the populace [manier les peuples].” But of course his own objectives were no closer to those of the populace than to the patricians’, and the demands of war might well require that its needs also be sacrificed. Rohan expressed no doubts about these sacrifices, because war remained for him the highest form of public activity. Against it, the private interests of cities, peoples, and patricians had to yield.

Exile and Continuity Rohan’s wars with the monarchy ended in 1629. In the first two of these, ending in 1622 and 1626, his evasive tactics had worn down the royal armies and produced advantageous peace agreements; together, he and his brother received about 1 million l. by the treaty of 1626. The third war was different.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 65

2/16/15 2:26 PM

66

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

With the siege of La Rochelle, the king demonstrated a new determination to end Protestant resistance, and other Protestant cities rushed to capitulate; a few months after La Rochelle’s capture, one of Richelieu’s correspondents reported that “all the rebel cities are asking for peace, under any conditions . . . Monsieur de Rohan only holds onto them by promising to make peace. He treats them in such a way, demanding very excessive sums of money from them, that I believe this is the last round.” His mother and sister had been inside La Rochelle during the siege; now prisoners, they too urged him to make peace. Rohan continued fighting for almost another year, hoping that Spanish financial support would sustain his troops, but his allies were falling away, and contemporaries now doubted even his own commitment. In late September 1629, he agreed to a final peace. The Edict of Grace of Alès restored to the Rohan their properties (confiscated two years earlier) and accorded them financial compensation for their wartime losses (100,000 écus for Rohan himself, about one-third of what he had received in his previous agreement with the crown). But it also dismantled the political structures that had made their rebellions possible. Protestant towns lost their fortifications, and the Protestant community lost the right to assemble; manipulating those assemblies had been the foundation of Rohan politics over the previous decades. Finally, by the terms of the edict, the Rohan brothers themselves agreed to leave France—Rohan for Venice, Soubise for London. Soubise never returned, and his life in England fell into the conventional patterns of political exile. He complained of financial troubles and inactivity, and never married. Financial trouble allied with a broader sense of alienation from his surroundings. “They’re very miserly here,” he wrote to his brother, “and in addition there’s a rascally treasurer who has neither honor nor conscience.” “He’s a true Englishman in his arrogance,” he wrote of another of his tormentors, “like most of those who’ve risen from nothing, as he has.” To the end of his life, he remained committed to the Protestant cause, founding a church in London for the exile community, and perhaps seeking to restart the cycle of Protestant rebellion in France. Such activities meant that he remained an important figure in England, and upon his death in 1642, an impressive funeral was held for him in Westminster Abbey, attended by a collection of French and British aristocrats and “and an infinite number of people of all ages, conditions, and sexes.” But none of this effort had much impact on France; there (so ran Saint-Simon’s judgment, in the following century) “he was never heard of again . . . after the capture of La Rochelle, and he died in England without notice.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 66

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

67

Like Soubise, Rohan spent most of his remaining years outside France, and he presented himself as having decisively broken with his old life. “I’ve said goodbye forever to France, and nothing could make me return there,” he wrote his mother. His determination (he explained) resulted from the heartbreaking failure of his efforts in the 1620s: “It seems to me that since the capture of La Rochelle and the decadence of those of the [Reformed] religion, none of the other wars touches me in the slightest, and the changes at the court of France leave me indifferent.” He explained that he would now devote himself to study, and for that purpose Venice offered a perfect location. He was happy to be “in a free country where one fears nothing in doing good. True, I’m now alone, but I like myself better thus than in bad company, and when I converse with my books, I take no pleasure when some pest takes me away from their company.” He offered the same idea in a political pamphlet: he had finally found “my rest amid the waves,” having been “accepted by a republic where a good man can find contentment, and can declare his thoughts freely.” Rohan thus described his exile as a withdrawal from active political life, a disillusioned turn to study and reflection, the retirement of a Christian stoic. As so often over the course of his life, however, Rohan here presented only a partial depiction of his circumstances, for he had not in fact relinquished his political ambitions or his links with France. His wife remained at court, and kept him informed of events there. More important, Rohan himself remained in direct contact with Richelieu. A mere two weeks after signing the Peace of Alès, Rohan wrote the cardinal thanking him for his intervention with the king and assuring him that he was now “someone totally devoted to your service.” A second letter the same day emphasized that “since I glory in calling myself your servant, you should have full use of all my friends.” In late September, now settled in Venice, Rohan wrote again, emphasizing that “I wish to depend entirely on your wishes.” Letters expressing the same readiness to serve followed over the next years. After a decade of rebellion, Rohan had reinvented himself as a loyal servant of the monarchy. That new role helps explain his choice of Venice as his residence. The decision was a peculiar one for a Calvinist military nobleman, who might have been welcomed (as his brother had been) in one of Europe’s many Protestant capitals. To be sure, Rohan had greatly admired Venice during his youthful visit, as one of the wonders of the world, worth a century’s residence “to see it as it deserves,” rather than the mere months he had been able to spend there. But it remained a Catholic state, and as Rohan arrived the Church was visibly

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 67

2/16/15 2:26 PM

68

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

clamping down on dissidents. The city’s republican form of government offered other discomforts. Already in his 1603 travel book Rohan had explained that great deeds were unlikely in such settings, and he repeated some of these ideas soon after arriving in 1629: republics were “slow to make up their minds” on great actions, and Venice itself restricted “the authority of her captains and . . . constantly contradicts their actions.” But Venice was also a key point in the international politics of the 1620s. Spain’s power in northern Europe depended on its ability to move troops and resources from Italy across the Alpine passes, and it thus sought to control northern Italy as fully as possible. For the same reason France also sought influence there, as it moved closer to direct involvement in the Thirty Years’ War; and Venice—whose own mainland territories abutted the key passes of the Valteline and which for decades had actively intervened there— offered an obvious focus for French ambitions. Recent events further magnified the republic’s importance, for Rohan left France just after the Mantuan campaign increased the likelihood of all-out Franco-Spanish war. Hence, from the outset Rohan’s exile was as much shaped by the needs of French foreign policy as by his personal preferences. His international prominence as a Protestant leader made him all the more attractive for a role in the region, since inevitably he would be dealing with Swiss as well as Italian authorities. Both his faith and his rebellious past evoked enduring suspicion among some groups at court, but from the start Richelieu strongly supported him for the mission. Rohan’s letters indicate the importance that Richelieu attached to the project, and they show his own eagerness for its success. On August 20, 1629, Rohan wrote Richelieu concerning “the position that the king and you want to procure for me.” Two weeks later, he explained the situation at greater length. The republic was hesitating to make the appointment, Rohan reported, and the Spanish ambassador was doing everything in his power to block it. Conversely, the French ambassador was pushing the appointment, and he now needed more support from the king in these efforts: “for when this republic sees that His Majesty truly supports” the appointment, it would happily comply. “They need men, and they are in fear of serious attack, in view of the preparations of the Imperialists and the Spanish. In short, my lord, this plan is your work, and I humbly beg you to complete it.” These efforts succeeded, and in 1630 Rohan became the republic’s chief general, with a substantial pension.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 68

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

69

In keeping with these ambitions, Rohan made himself conspicuous in his new surroundings, and he spent freely in doing so. He traveled to Venice in slow stages, so that crowds could turn out along the way to see him, and once there he set up an impressive household. “My followers are at Stra,” in the suburbs, he explained in a letter to his mother, who had worried about the danger of plague in the city itself, “at a palace that I’ve rented there”; he himself was in the city, “with only fifteen or sixteen persons,” and in excellent health, having closed off his residence “except for the door opening onto the Grand Canal.” He occupied two additional residences in the nearby university town of Padua: one a palace “so cut off from the others by its large gardens and by the river that it’s like being in the countryside,” and the other a small villa outside the city. It was at this point that he drafted his request for admission to the Venetian nobility, another sign of his hopes of playing a prominent role in his new surroundings. Exile thus did not constitute a fundamental break in Rohan’s life, though he occasionally described it as such. He had not retreated from public life or even from French politics, and his way of living remained fundamentally unchanged: during the previous decade, he had moved often about France, visiting Paris only intermittently and never visiting his country estates. Nor did his new religious circumstances represent a complete break with his past. His religious practices had never been narrowly sectarian, and during his last war reports circulated that his personal faith was wavering also; according to one of Richelieu’s informants, Rohan had told a follower that if “it pleased the king to make me constable, . . . I would become Catholic the next day.” Whatever the truth of that claim, Rohan had little difficulty adapting to his new religious circumstances. Indeed, the cosmopolitan atmosphere that he encountered in Venice encouraged a broader orientation of his religious activity. He began corresponding with the patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Loukaris, well known in Europe for his interest in synthesizing Orthodox and Protestant Christianity. In 1633, Rohan wrote from Zurich to a Swiss friend that he had arranged for an Italian translation of one of Cyril’s works, “hoping to send it to Venice, where it may bear fruit, principally because there is a Greek church there.” Rohan’s exile had made him a prominent figure at a crossroads of Europe, a point of geopolitical and confessional encounters, a setting that enhanced his potential influence.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 69

2/16/15 2:26 PM

70

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Exile, Writing, and Political Reasoning, 1: Contexts Of course, Venice was a focal point of Europe’s intellectual life as of its diplomacy, and Rohan found that aspect of his new environment highly stimulating as well. Between 1629 and 1634, while continuing his longtime practice of writing brief commentaries on the contemporary scene, he wrote his three most important works: a first set of memoirs, on the wars of the 1620s; De l’ interest des princes, a pioneering exploration of the forces governing political life; and Le parfaict capitaine, combining remarks on Julius Caesar’s Commentaries with more general reflections on military practice. Only the last of these appeared in print during Rohan’s lifetime, in 1634, but he intended the others for publication; De l’ interest des princes appeared immediately after his death, in 1639, and his memoirs five years later. This burst of creativity derived partly from idleness. Venice remained at peace in 1630, and his position leading its armies remained mainly honorific. His duties expanded in late 1631, when Louis XIII asked him to serve as ambassador to the Swiss Grisons and “lieutenant general” in that region. The mission was important, since the Grisons controlled the Alpine passes that were so critical to seventeenth-century warfare, and Rohan undertook it with enthusiasm. He soon established himself among the Grisons, spending freely as he had in Venice and again making himself a conspicuous presence. But that remained the extent of his mission, for France, like Venice, sought to avoid outright war with the Habsburgs. Rohan did his best to overcome that reluctance, writing long memoranda calling for action, and on one occasion even ignoring the king’s orders that he return to Venice. But the king and Richelieu were unmoved, and only in 1634 did French policy shift to a more activist mode. The five years after his 1629 defeat thus constituted a long interlude of practical inactivity, which Rohan filled up mainly with reading and writing. Even the lively intellectual possibilities in Venice itself apparently failed to satisfy him fully, for he also spent much of this time at his villas in Padua, the university town under Venetian overlordship, and one of Europe’s centers of advanced thinking. Vesalius, Harvey, Pomponazzi, and Galileo had all taught there, and it continued to attract the intellectually adventurous from throughout Europe. The town’s impact on Rohan was immediate and profound, for he fell in there with a characteristic example of the Paduan outlook, Benjamin Priolo, a wandering French intellectual who had come to study medicine. Contemporaries described Priolo as an intellectual adventurer, learned,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 70

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

71

brilliant, persuasive, and unscrupulous. Priolo soon became Rohan’s physician, then his principal secretary and adviser, and their intimate association continued to the end of Rohan’s life. The duke’s enthusiasm resulted partly from the technical expertise that Priolo could offer. As Priolo’s hostile biographer observed, “in the position he occupied,” the duke “needed a universal man . . . someone with a great knowledge of languages and of the most important affairs of Europe. Priolo could serve him in every way,” whereas the duke’s other advisers at this time “scarcely knew how to speak French.” Eventually Priolo would become the duke’s principal negotiator in dealing with Italian, German, and Swiss authorities, and with the French monarchy itself; he also handled some of the financing of the duke’s army. But Priolo’s culture also appealed to Rohan for less utilitarian reasons, as a source of intellectual stimulation and direction. Even his enemies acknowledged Priolo’s literary knowledge and eloquence. According to the same critical biographer, he commanded “so perfect a knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Italian” and had “read so widely in all the leading ancient and modern authors” that he readily attracted eminences like Rohan. Rohan himself described Priolo’s appeal in similar terms: soon after their encounter, the duke wrote his mother about “a translation that my physician [Priolo] has made of Lucan, the Latin poet of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the most beautiful thing possible.” By coming to Venice, then to Padua, Rohan had thus placed himself in an environment that maximized contact with intellectuals and with new ideas. Not surprisingly, given these influences, he read widely during these years. Even during his missions to the Grisons, he corresponded with notable intellectuals about recent publications, and he kept his books with him, in four cases carried by mules. The cases contained a total of 104 titles, not the full extent of Rohan’s book ownership, presumably, but a good indication of the books that mattered most to him and that he wanted close at hand. Th irteen titles concerned religion and eleven military science, but literature constituted the vast majority of the collection: eleven works of ancient literature, eighteen modern works, and thirty memoirs and histories. History, and the examples it provided, remained for Rohan a central intellectual preoccupation, as it had been in his youth. But now he was also in close touch with the writing of his own time, both French and foreign. He owned nearly all the works of Machiavelli, along with books by Dante, Guicciardini, Montaigne, Tasso, and Cervantes. There was no suggestion of puritanism in his choices, or indeed of Protestantism. On the contrary, Rohan owned some

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 71

2/16/15 2:26 PM

72

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

of the works that contemporary Protestants found most troubling. Like his contacts, his reading in these years helped push his thinking in radical directions. His burst of writing testified to the strength of these influences. But writing in these years was a complicated undertaking, and it confronted nobles with significant ideological contradictions. On the one hand, writing was widely understood to be a social and political tool. Literary skill demonstrated high status and refinement; individual texts could help mobilize followers, as Rohan himself had done over the past decades with his discourses, and attract the support of superiors. Rohan dedicated Le parfaict capitaine to the king and De l’ interest to Richelieu, and his dedicatory epistle to the latter signaled yet again his eagerness to serve the cardinal. In the book, Rohan explained, Richelieu would see himself “in a few lines fully depicted: this whole treatise speaks only of you, though it never mentions your name.” Even his intellectual life, the letter indicated, now showed Rohan to be the cardinal’s “creature.” At the same time, writing carried risks. Readers might be offended by heterodox ideas, and they might be critical of literary incompetence. Such criticism might come from anywhere, for even unpublished works circulated widely; publication of course completely eliminated the nobleman’s control over his audience, subjecting his reputation to anonymous critics, many of them commoners, many of them eager to mock. With these dangers in mind, nobles often claimed to write purely for themselves, as a distraction or amusement, with no interest in publication, and Rohan himself used that language. After his death, a friend introduced an edition of Le parfaict capitaine by claiming that “this book was not written for the public. The author’s intention was only to amuse himself by writing it, or more accurately, to fill up the leisure that he then enjoyed somewhat more honorably than do those who gamble or hunt.” The text reached the publisher (so the friend claimed) only because of a series of accidents. That claim was probably false, however, and Rohan almost certainly hoped that his exile writings would reach a large reading public. Certainly he had no hesitation about the publication process in general, and he knew that stories of involuntary publication were often fictional. In 1632, from his headquarters at Coire, he wrote his Genevan friend about his concerns in publishing his recent thoughts on the state of European international politics. He had already supplied a copy to the king of Sweden, and now he discussed with Tronchin ways to avoid offending the Estates of the Low Countries: “In the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 72

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

73

preface, we could say that since inaccurate copies of this discourse were in circulation, it has now been printed in accordance with the original text.” In this instance at least, the narrative of accidental publication was an outright lie, a self-conscious literary tactic. Three years later, amid military maneuvering in the Valteline, he wrote again to Tronchin about getting his sister’s verses into print, following her wishes; Rohan asked for a few copies for himself and his sister, but “as for the rest, the publisher can do as he wants.” The casual phrase concealed an important message: by encouraging the sale of the remaining copies, Rohan tacitly directed these works toward the anonymous readership whose reactions he could not control. Rohan’s determination to publish his own and his sister’s work suggests the seriousness of his literary commitment. For all his doubts about the process, he wanted to reach a wide audience, without regard to its social contours. Of course some of that eagerness reflected his peculiar circumstances after 1629: his relative idleness, his encounters with Priolo and other intellectuals, his hopes of impressing Louis XIII, Richelieu, and Gustavus Adolphus. Yet his literary efforts in these years did not differ in kind from those he had produced since his young adulthood, and he had himself chosen to settle in Venice and Padua, knowing (as any European of his standing did) the intellectual currents he would encounter there. Nor had the topics that interested him changed significantly. Building as it did on The Gallic Wars and The Civil War, Le parfaict capitaine continued Rohan’s lifelong fascination with Caesar; his travel narrative of 1601 had already demonstrated the interest in comparing different societies that he would pursue in De l’ interest des princes.

Exile, Writing, and Political Reasoning, 2: Works and Ideas This continuity emerges more clearly still in the ideas that Rohan set out during his exile years. The major texts he composed after 1629 simply developed at greater length and with greater clarity themes that were already prominent in his earlier writings. His Italian encounters, his reading, and his disillusionment with the religious politics of the previous decade—all of these may have sharpened his thinking, but they did not change its substance, or even significantly change its tone. In all three of his major exile writings, Rohan presents a radically secular vision of political life as centering on self-interest and rational calculation rather than piety, tradition, or morality. De l’ interest des princes offers the most

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 73

2/16/15 2:26 PM

74

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

dramatic version of this political rationalism, set out in its opening lines: “Princes rule peoples, and interest rules princes. The understanding of that interest stands as high above the actions of princes as they themselves stand above the people. The prince may err; his council may be corrupted; interest alone can never fail. According as it is well or badly understood, states live or die because of it.” There was a double radicalism in this formulation. In it, Rohan both denied that higher motives—religion, patriotism, morality— governed human affairs, and undercut monarchical grandeur; like everyone else, princes themselves were ultimately powerless against the force of selfinterest. Much of his text then applies this fundamental idea to contemporary international politics across Europe, offering a series of “maxims” that elucidate each state’s political situation. But these principles govern individuals’ behavior as well, Rohan makes clear. They, too, need to act in terms of their interests, and failure to do so leads to fatal errors. In contrast to most sixteenth-century theorists, Rohan accepts the dark implications of this vision of collective life. In such a world, competition is inevitable, for self-interest “always has as its objective the enlargement or at least the preservation” of states’ and individuals’ circumstances, and competition is likely to involve violence, for “neither persuasion nor justice . . . will dictate to one who is armed.” For the same reasons, change is constant in human affairs, and tradition useless as a guide to them. “There can be no fi xed rule in the government of states”; the same forces that cause “revolution in the world’s affairs also cause change in the fundamental principles of ruling well. That is why those who guide themselves in these matters by the example of the past, rather than according to present reasons, necessarily commit significant errors.” Like the idea of self-interest itself, this emphasis on change implicitly undermines any effort to establish a Christian politics, resting on eternal principles, and Rohan comes close to saying so outright when he turns to considering the conflict between France and Spain. Their struggles provide one of the book’s most important case studies, and Rohan emphasizes that purely secular interests are at stake. Spain’s insistence on its religious aims merely “covers with the cloak of piety all its scheming, and holds its people in extraordinary awe.” But a far more troubling example comes at the end of the text, as Rohan considers the case of Henri de Guise, the late sixteenth-century aristocrat and Catholic hero whom King Henri III had executed in 1588. Rohan takes for granted that Guise in fact sought to usurp Henri’s crown, but offers no condemnation of that intention. On the contrary, he writes that Guise had

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 74

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

75

conceived “the loftiest plan than any man born under a prince could undertake, namely, to usurp the place of his king.” Rohan treats violent usurpation as an expression of aristocratic courage, and also as a realistic project; for Guise built on both his own great abilities and on the esteem that his father and uncle (both Catholic heroes themselves) had earned—“it being very difficult,” adds Rohan, “that one man’s lifetime can suffice for such a transformation” from private citizen to king. But at the last moment, Guise failed to employ the violence his plan required; he “had taken his plan up to the final step, when at the point of execution he severely failed his interest and himself.” He placed himself in the king’s power after having humiliated him in Paris, “his business not being one of those in which one is permitted to fail twice.” Rohan’s analysis of the Guise episode offered something to shock every seventeenth-century reader. It treated plans of regicide and usurpation as expressions of lofty ambition and greatness of spirit; it praised a likely organizer of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres of France’s Protestant nobles, an event that had touched Rohan’s own family and still frightened Protestants throughout Europe; and it presented a Catholic hero as moved by personal ambition rather than sincere faith. The account criticizes Guise only for hesitancy in executing his plan. Guise failed in his duty to himself, not in his duties to God, king, or state. For Rohan, so the Guise example demonstrates, self-interest, ambition, competition, and potential violence permeate relations among individuals as well as among states. That idea is equally prominent in his other major works from these years. In his first set of memoirs, first published six years after his death, Rohan focuses on examples, noting the role of ambition and self-interest in one political episode after another. After Henri IV’s assassination, among the nobility “everyone thought of his own affairs,” and “the cleverest used others’ passions to ruin the authority of those who diminished their own.” After the 1617 assassination of the favorite Concino Concini, there was a race as to “who would be the fastest and most shameless in renouncing that which, twenty-four hours earlier, had been an object of adoration; only a few wellborn and generous souls have it in them to follow in adversity those whom they have honored in prosperity.” The civil wars of the 1620s bring a new series of self-interested betrayals, involving especially the Protestant nobility; the Reformed faith in no way changes the realities of the human condition. Rohan’s third great work from these years, Le parfaict capitaine, presents itself as a more practical, less philosophical text. It offers brief summaries of

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 75

2/16/15 2:26 PM

76

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Julius Caesar’s wars, intercut with Rohan’s own suggestions as to what the modern soldier can learn from them. Many of the lessons are straightforward, even banal: like Caesar, the modern captain should properly fortify his camps, adequately supply his soldiers and properly motivate them, employ spies to learn of the enemy’s movements, and so on. Yet from the opening pages, alongside its practical suggestions, it too develops Rohan’s larger vision of human society, as centered on self-interest, ambition, and competition. He presents these as universal characteristics, as visible among primitive tribes as among Caesar’s Romans and the modern French. Of a Swiss tribe, thus, he comments that “the decision of this apparently barbarous people . . . nonetheless follows the same principles as [those] of all conquerors, namely, the desire to command and to grow.” His account of the Gaulois hero Vercingetorix notes other characteristics that barbarians, Romans, and French share. Vercingetorix is ready to deal harshly with his own subjects, for “fear is the most powerful means of controlling men”; and in other ways too Vercingetorix uses the same tactical reasoning as his enemies. Technologies and political organization may differ, but human nature is universal. The universality of competition thus implies a universal need for hard political reasoning, and such reasoning cannot be bound by the morals of everyday life. On the contrary, Rohan suggests that individuals’ claims to political virtue are usually as evasive as those offered by states, efforts merely to “cover up our vices with the nearest virtue.” For, as he explains, “it is a maxim that no public good can be achieved without some harm to individuals,” and therefore real wrongs will have to be committed if great deeds are to be achieved. In that sense, for Rohan, society lacks any coherent moral order. There is no way to combine its complex pieces to satisfy everyone’s legitimate claims. As the central figure of Le parfaict capitaine, Caesar himself supplies the clearest illustration of these principles. Rohan is characteristically straightforward about Caesar’s motives. In his civil wars, “on the pretext of preserving the liberty of the people, he sought to subject both the people and the Senate”; yet again, fine talk of political virtue serves only to conceal ambition. But with Caesar as with Guise, Rohan does not view the amorality of an ambition as grounds for criticism. On the contrary, Rohan describes Caesar’s establishing himself as emperor as “the loftiest and most glorious plan that a man ever undertook,” terms echoing his praise of Guise’s planned usurpation. In contrast to Guise, however, Caesar carries his ambition through to a successful conclusion. He succeeds (Rohan emphasizes) because unlike Guise he never

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 76

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

77

loses sight of his objective and never allows any consideration save rational calculation to determine his actions. Rational calculation includes using deception, and Rohan accepts this implication of his worldview as well. He praises Caesar for putting aside “all passions in order to carry through his plan” and for convincing his enemies of his clemency, liberality, “and all other kinds of virtues,” thereby disarming their opposition to his plans. With self-interest so universal a motive, the political actor cannot afford honesty. Self-interest for Rohan is universal in another sense as well: it moves ordinary men as much as Caesar and his aristocratic opponents, and Rohan is just as tolerant of self-interest among the ordinary as among the great. The issue arises when Rohan considers the advantages of establishing colonies in a newly conquered territory. Machiavelli of course had urged his prince to use colonies as an instrument of conquest, and Rohan agrees. But he diverges from Machiavelli in giving as much attention to the colonist as to the prince, and in asking whether colonists would accept moving to a new home. Rohan looks within himself for the answer: “As for me, I confess freely that I would prefer being chased from my homeland and into another where there remained hope for me and my family to rise to something greater than I am [pouvoir parvenir à quelque chose de plus que ie ne suis], than to remain in my home deprived of that hope, believing nothing so harsh as to deprive a man of hope, which, . . . for the sake of the good things of the world, makes him undertake all things.” All men thus share the desire to improve their standing, and indeed ambition helps define the human realm itself, for it has a spiritual component as well: “Nothing but hope distinguishes man from beast, or the reborn man from the sensual; which leads me to conclude that one must never deprive a man of the hope of obtaining a better condition than he holds, so as not to throw him into despair.” Rohan here takes an important step. The desire for advancement, he indicates, is not merely an ethically neutral human reality, to be accepted as a fact of life. It is itself a source of virtues, in practical and spiritual affairs alike. Rohan’s exile writings thus offer a coherent social philosophy, with radical implications. Neither religion nor the past offers guidance in the world he depicts. Rather, the social actor has to apply reason to all situations, and rational action may well include violence, even regicide. For all their radicalism, however, none of these ideas was new to Rohan in 1629. On the contrary, he had developed all of them in his earliest literary efforts. Ambition had fascinated him since his boyhood reading, with its concentration on Alcibiades and Caesar, and in his discourses after 1610 he repeatedly spoke of “interest”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 77

2/16/15 2:26 PM

78

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

as a fundamental human motivation; in 1617, he was already arguing publicly that “man’s temperament leads him to want what he does not have, and to dislike what he has . . . man’s spirit is insatiable, presumptuous, and envious.” Still earlier, describing his grand tour of Europe, he presented a version of the comparative politics that he offered in De l’ interest, with comparisons of France to Spain, Bohemia to Scotland, and Venice to Holland. That work (as seen above) presents an entirely secular, often Machiavellian interpretation of the societies it describes, and it never offers religious difference as an explanation of political choices. That work, too, describes political principles as specific to times and places, rather than as eternal truths, and it implicitly undercuts any vision of confessional politics. Rohan’s experiences in Venice and Padua led him to formulate these long-standing concerns in more exact language, but they brought no transformation in his political philosophy.

The Meanings of Failure Rohan concluded his 1634 Le parfaict capitaine by addressing the subject of military failure. The successful captain, he explained, will enjoy further successes: his soldiers will trust his decisions and fight hard for him, his enemies will flee. Conversely, a reputation “for being unlucky is itself a great misfortune,” which guarantees further troubles; his soldiers will lack confidence in him and fight halfheartedly. Consequently, the unsuccessful general should decide “rather to die gloriously in some great action, than to prolong a shameful life after having committed an act of cowardice.” Of all trades, war “brings a man the greatest honor when he acquits himself well; and the greatest infamy, if he acquits himself badly.” These are the final lines of the book, and they contrast sharply with its earlier examination of Caesar’s triumphant calculations and the guidelines that modern commanders can draw from them. The topic of failure is surprising in another sense as well. As he completed the book, Rohan was about to receive the greatest command of his career, leading a large French army in the Valteline. That he nonetheless gave such prominence to failure, dishonor, and suicide suggests the importance these themes had for him. In fact, his own death four years later would replicate in important ways the scenario sketched out in his book. That death followed the collapse of Rohan’s mission to the Grisons Leagues and to the strategic Valteline passes that the Leagues controlled. Between 1631

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 78

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

79

and 1634, still formally a bystander in the Thirty Years’ War, France hesitated to intervene decisively there. Louis XIII sent Rohan with important official titles, as ambassador and commander of French troops in the region, but insisted (against Rohan’s intense urging) that he not engage the Spanish and Imperial forces marching through it. But in 1634 the king and Richelieu called him to Paris, the duke’s only visit to France after 1629, and after months of discussion and delay they provided funding for a large army and orders to fight. When France formally entered the war, in 1635, Rohan acted decisively. He marched his forces through Swiss territories, then entered the Valteline itself. Moving quickly through mountainous territory, he defeated the Spanish in four pitched battles, effectively establishing French mastery in the region and moving to within striking distance of Milan, the center of Spanish power in northern Italy. His memoirs proudly distinguish among “the most dangerous” of these battles, “the most useful,” the best planned, and “the most glorious.” This was warfare at a far higher level than his ventures during the 1620s. But in the end these victories settled nothing, and the mission ended in disaster. In his memoirs on the period, Rohan explained it all in the Machiavellian terms he used in so many of his other writings. Self-interest alone moved the Grisons, not honor or gratitude. Their polity was “purely popular,” he explained, echoing his critiques of republican institutions in earlier works. Its principal officials “take money from various princes, and each supports the party that pays him,” and because of the region’s strategic importance, there were always outsiders ready with bribes: “That explains the country’s divisions and factions. Envy rules there more than anywhere else in the world; . . . you won’t meet two people in the entire country of whom you could say that they are true friends.” The French government behaved almost as badly. It had promised the Grisons large payouts in exchange for their support, but repeatedly failed to provide them or to keep Rohan’s own soldiers supplied. Finally, in late 1636, there was a rebellion, led by a local “man of low condition, without family or other resources, save what he had acquired by his own enterprises,” as the embittered Rohan later described him. This was Jörg Jenatsch, who had been one of the duke’s most trusted subordinates in the Valteline campaigns, and whose role in expelling the French and preserving the region’s independence would make him a Swiss national hero. Rohan (barely recovered from an illness that kept him bedridden for some weeks) found himself and his troops trapped inside a poorly supplied fortress, and his speeches

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 79

2/16/15 2:26 PM

80

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

and negotiations secured only safe passage out of the region. Once on the march, many believed, his army could have turned on its besiegers, prolonged the fighting, and perhaps seized the region for France. But Rohan refused to deploy extreme measures. He kept his word that he would leave peacefully, and in the spring of 1637 the passes returned to Habsburg control. Rohan at this point (as he described it) “saw no means of extricating himself from the labyrinth into which he was plunged.” Richelieu had previously expressed doubts about him, as a “man of deals, little heart, and no fidelity,” and now thought that there had been insufficient effort in the Valteline, and perhaps even conspiracy in the uprising there and within France itself. The king ordered him back to France, but (correctly fearing arrest) he sought refuge first in Geneva, then in Zurich, and possibly in Venice; the French crown made clear its displeasure at each of these possibilities, and the authorities in each refused to accept him. Finally, he encountered Bernard de Saxe-Weimar, whose army was operating in the area. Rohan refused Bernard’s offers of a command, and insisted instead on fighting as a common soldier; soon after, he was fatally wounded in battle. A contemporary biographer (probably Priolo) reported that “some believed that finding himself heartbroken” by his disappointments, “life had become burdensome to him, and that, tired of the world, he wished to leave it.” The biographer did not altogether endorse that view, but his own was not much different: “On his last stage, overwhelmed by enemies both open and covert, every opportunity denied him to show his worth, finding the retirement imposed on him unworthy of the lofty thoughts that filled him and the urge to glory that did not permit him to remain still, he went willingly seeking the chance to die as a soldier, since he had been denied the honor of living as a captain.” On this reading, Rohan had exactly followed the advice he offered four years earlier in Le parfait capitaine, and in other ways, too, his response to failure fitted the larger patterns of his thought, as he had expressed them over the whole of his career. Interpreted in this way, Rohan’s death expressed yet again his detachment from Christian ideals, if not a complete indifference to them; deliberately to seek death was to deny God’s providence and mercy, especially grievous sins in Calvinist theology. Conversely, such a death demonstrated the absorption in this-worldly achievement that Rohan had shown since childhood. The failure to achieve glory left him no alternative sources of comfort.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 80

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

81

What Did a Nobleman Want? These commentaries on the duke’s ultimate failure raise the further question of what he understood by success. Clearly he had no interest in merely dominating Breton affairs, as his great landholdings in the province entitled him to do. Nor was monetary accumulation his main objective, despite the immense sums that some of his political ventures brought him. Battlefield victories and high offices did count as successes, because they took place within the public sphere, but the duke also had larger hopes. These had been formed by his youthful reading in Plutarch, and they found expression in his statements that Caesar and Guise in their efforts to become the rulers of states exemplified the highest form of ambition. Rohan apparently had no specific plans to imitate them, but throughout his life, persistent rumors suggested that he shared some version of their ambition. He hoped in one way or another to become a prince. In fact, well into his twenties Rohan could view that hope as altogether reasonable. His own sister had married a minor German prince, and in 1602 he had serious hopes of marrying a Swedish princess. Until the birth of the future Louis XIII, in 1601, he was also the presumptive heir to the kingdom of Navarre; the Salic Law excluded him from the crown of France, since his relationship to Henri IV passed through the female line, but that law did not apply to Navarre. The possibility of becoming its king ended definitively only in 1620, when Louis XIII formally—and without warning—incorporated the region into France. It was perhaps not coincidental that Rohan moved to outright civil war only a year after that decision, and the question of his princely ambitions continued to interest commentators as they watched his maneuvering during the 1620s. The Spanish authorities took the question seriously enough to address it explicitly in negotiating their financial support for his war efforts. Uncertain about the ethics of funding a Protestant uprising, they included in the final bargain provisions for the eventuality that Rohan and his party “might make themselves so strong as to set themselves off and form a separate state”; in such a case, the parties agreed, Catholics in the territory would be guaranteed the free exercise of their religion. In 1628, the issue came up again, in a pamphlet exchange with the prince de Condé. Rohan felt obliged there to rebut rumors that he sought a princely title, though Condé had not in fact made that accusation: “I know myself well enough,” he wrote, “not to

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 81

2/16/15 2:26 PM

82

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

claim to pursue being a sovereign, also I have never had my horoscope drawn to see if I would become one.” Rohan’s defense against nonexistent accusations suggests their presence in contemporary discussions of his actions, and perhaps in his own mind as well. The Valteline mission provoked more such suspicions. In the course of his activities there, Rohan negotiated directly with the king of Sweden and received overtures from both the Spanish and the English, the latter directly suggesting that he place himself at the head of the Grison forces; should he pursue such a course, England promised to replace any subsidies that the French withdrew. In 1637 the matter surfaced yet again, following Rohan’s retreat from the Valteline. French opinion about his surrender there, wrote his biographer, was divided. Some approved his actions as the best that could have been done in a difficult situation; others criticized them as the result of haste or cowardice; “but still others, more penetrating, believed that the duke, with his great intelligence and profound understanding of worldly affairs, had not at all been caught by surprise, and that the uprising had been arranged between him and the leaders of that territory, who . . . had chosen him not only to be their permanent leader, but also to have full power over the Valteline during his lifetime.” Again, such comments rested only on speculation and rumor—but they expressed the suspicion among wellinformed contemporaries that the duke intended to establish an Alpine principality for himself. Richelieu himself seems to have had this possibility in mind when in his memoirs he presented cowardice as the least damning explanation for Rohan’s behavior. The most spectacular version of this idea received public attention only after the duke’s death, in a legal memorandum written by his widow Marguerite de Béthune. During his years of exile, she claimed, the duke considered the idea of establishing himself as prince of the island of Cyprus, which he would purchase from the Ottoman Empire, and which would become under his leadership a haven for French and German Protestants. To raise the 200,000 écus that the purchase would require, he had instructed her to sell his Breton properties. Marguerite acknowledged the tale’s implausibility, but at least one contemporary accepted it completely. Tallemant des Réaux prided himself on his critical acuity, yet he too believed Marguerite’s story: Rohan, he writes, “once had the plan of buying from the Turks the island of Cyprus and of setting up a colony there.” The plan never approached realization, but Cyprus held a significant place in Henri de Rohan’s political imagination, and some idea of establishing

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 82

2/16/15 2:26 PM

constructing identity

|

83

himself there could easily have occurred to him. Le parfaict capitaine showed that colonization itself was on his mind, and the patriarch of Constantinople at the time, Cyril Loukaris, was both eager for close relations with Protestants and in contact with Rohan himself. Rohan claimed as well a dynastic connection with the crusader kings of Cyprus, via the Lusignan family. In a genealogical work composed for Rohan’s mother, her friend François Viète explained the grandeur of the Lusignan as due “principally” to the fact that “five or six were kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus,” only secondarily to their great marriage alliances and other positions. In dedicating another work to Rohan’s mother, Viète addressed her as “august daughter of Mélusine,” the Lusignan’s mythical ancestor. Cyprus thus lurked in the family’s dynastic memory, and they continued to advertise the connection in the seventeenth century by naming one of their Paris houses the “Hôtel de Mélusine.” Rohan’s residence in Venice itself encouraged such associations, as he explained to the Senate soon after his arrival: “I have always had . . . a singular devotion to the Serenissima Repubblica, not only because of personal inclination, but also because of the blood from which I was born, that of the house of Lusignan.” Venice had controlled Cyprus until just before Rohan’s own birth; there was no reason to think it irretrievably lost to Christendom, or to Rohan’s own family. Such anecdotes do not demonstrate that Rohan ever developed serious plans for establishing himself as an independent prince. But thoughtful contemporaries (including some of the toughest cynics of the era) repeatedly attributed some form of that ambition to him. The Rohan believed that they descended from medieval kings, and they had watched their own cousin Henri IV ascend to the throne of France; Henri de Rohan himself had stressed how unexpected that outcome was, and he could reasonably believe that the future might hold other unexpected developments. In any case, the Rohan lived in a world of small principalities, and there was no reason to think that these would disappear from the political scene, or that new ones could not be created. In the Empire, Wallenstein and Saxe-Weimar both sought to establish principalities for themselves; the duc de Guise had similar hopes for Naples in 1648; within France itself, the duc de Bouillon fought hard to preserve the sovereignty of his tiny territory, and others like the Grand Condé made all too clear their dissatisfaction with mere great-noble status. In the two generations after Rohan’s death, the plausibility of such dreams would recede. Large states would increasingly dominate European politics; the list of Europe’s ruling princes would stabilize, and the gap between princes and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 83

2/16/15 2:26 PM

84

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

nobles would widen. But in Rohan’s time such ambitions were not absurdities. They were central to his political imagination. Henri de Rohan had no doubt about the grandeur of his family or of the aristocratic order to which he belonged; he might graciously court middleclass supporters, but he continued to view them as inferiors, to be brutalized when it suited his needs. Yet this consciousness of superiority did not suffice as he defined his own place in society. On the contrary, throughout his life he experienced his identity as a construct rather than a given, the product of calculation, effort, and accomplishment rather than of birth and inheritance. Moreover, accomplishment required the acknowledgment of a wide audience. Despite his scorn for the middle classes, through much of his life he actively sought their approval, placing his writings before them and drawing them into his political movements. Rohan could not envision himself as acting within the confines of the aristocracy only; the world beyond mattered too much for that. In part, that attentiveness resulted from the weak guidance that he derived from the traditions of his order. His position as great regional landowner and feudal dignitary mattered little to him, and he made no effort to build his power on those foundations. Christianity mattered more. From his ancestors he had inherited a leading position in the French Protestant church, and he devoted many years to defending the movement’s political situation. But even in those efforts, Christian principles quickly receded in favor of Machiavellian calculations. He described Christian warfare as a way to win glory, without outside help, and he self-consciously refused to apply Christian principles to its practice. His detachment from long-standing values and practices made Rohan an especially thoughtful political analyst, and his contemporaries admired his clearheaded writings on the subject. But the same quality also made him a disruptive force, for the goals that he pursued did not fit easily into a tranquil, prosperous society; indeed, his goals could not be easily defined, save in terms of some form of grandeur and superiority. Throughout his life, his models remained the great rebels of his childhood reading, Caesar and Alcibiades. Few great nobles in seventeenth-century France reflected so carefully as Rohan did on these issues, but many seem to have shared his difficulty in finding a social role appropriate to their ambition. Only late in the seventeenth century would a new set of social ideals emerge, allowing the great nobleman to view himself as citizen, servant of the state, and engaged, economically alert landlord.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 84

2/16/15 2:26 PM

3 women, gender, and the management of dynastic capital

For Henri de Rohan (so runs the argument of chapter 2), political and military achievement constituted the essential measure of a good life, and he pursued achievement far from his family’s traditional centers of power. He spent most of the 1620s in southern France, the main home of French Protestantism; for most of the 1630s he was outside France altogether, in Italy and Switzerland. His brother the duc de Soubise lived in England from 1629 until his death in 1642. Such careers were possible only within a larger context, of familial arrangements that assigned to others the tasks that Rohan and Soubise neglected. The family still needed to superintend its resources, make choices about its future, and sustain its influence in Paris and Brittany, and those tasks were too important to be left to outsiders. Instead, the role fell to women of the family, to Rohan’s mother, wife, sisters, and daughter. Here I explore how they performed these tasks and what doing so meant for their own lives and for the family as a whole. Addressing these questions starts with understanding just how much power women exercised. Early modern ideologies firmly subordinated women to men, in theory and in many daily practices, because contemporaries believed that their physical makeup made them at once weak and disruptive. Within the family, they were therefore expected to obey their husbands, their biological superiors; women’s contributions to the household would lie in implementing their husbands’ strategies, with particular attention to such matters as children’s educations and the management of female servants. In the public realm, women were excluded from the universities, warfare, civil administration, and the learned professions, all of which were thought to require the masculine qualities of strength and self-control. Although they could enter some forms of business, legal changes during the period limited

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 85

2/16/15 2:26 PM

86

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

their freedom in those spheres as well. The organization of a family like the Rohan directly violated most of these ideas, by requiring that women manage the immense resources that the family controlled. In itself, this role within the family did not set aristocratic women apart from other groups in French society. In all social classes, wives, mothers, and daughters had to manage important family business, and they normally enjoyed great autonomy in doing so, despite the theoretical restrictions that the law placed on them. But the specific configuration of French aristocratic life gave particular qualities to the ways women performed their functions in this milieu—and to the effects of their efforts, on both them and their families. That specificity derived partly from the size of the resources that aristocratic families controlled, and partly from the importance of dynastic memories in aristocratic self-understanding: aristocratic women had to manage not only their families’ wealth, but also their connections at court and their stock of traditions, memories, and social esteem. In his 1690 dictionary, Antoine Furetière drew attention to this multiplicity of resources in his definition of the term maison, one of his contemporaries’ favored words for the aristocratic family. The term (he explained) might refer to biological and economic realities, “the persons who make up a family . . . and the income they live on.” But maison referred “also to a noble lineage [race], a series of illustrious individuals descended from the same stock, distinguished by their valor, their functions, or the high positions they have held because of their birth.” Together, this array of material and symbolic resources may be termed the family’s dynastic capital, because to a great extent it determined what the family’s individual members could have and do, and because its different forms could be converted from one to another. Status could be transformed into wealth, through marriage alliances and court offices; memories of an ancestor’s deeds added to status, and hence to the chances that new generations would gain high positions and the income that went with them. With men of the family so often absent, women had to make decisions about all these forms of capital, and they had to do so on their own, without awaiting male guidance. Such responsibilities in turn required that women be educated and assertive, unintimidated by the lawyers, business managers, and officials with whom they had to deal. They needed to move freely through society, making contacts and assembling information, exerting influence, buying and selling. That freedom directly benefited the family, but the family could never entirely delimit it or guarantee that it would only serve collective

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 86

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

87

interests. Inevitably, women used their freedom also to pursue personal desires, and occasionally family disruptions ensued. Of course, in their experience of gender roles as in so much else within the French aristocracy, the Rohan stood out. In the mid-seventeenth century, Tallemant des Réaux devoted a whole chapter of his Historiettes to “mesdames de Rohan,” so striking were they to his contemporaries. Tallemant noted the absent-minded eccentricities and learning of the duke’s mother, Catherine de Parthenay, the learning of his sister Anne, his sister Henriette’s passionate love for a female friend. As for the duke’s wife, Marguerite de Béthune, and daughter, Marguerite de Rohan, Tallemant focused mainly on romantic entanglements; their complicated love lives produced one of the great scandals of mid-seventeenth-century Paris. “Mesdames de Rohan” were thus striking figures in high society, but none was unique, or even very unusual. Learned women abounded in seventeenthcentury Paris (hence the playwright Molière’s mockery of them in Les précieuses ridicules and Les femmes savantes), and female adultery was commonplace as well. The Rohan were unusual in the extent to which they deviated from patriarchal ideals, rather than in the fact of deviation itself. Their experiences display with particular clarity the gender logics at work among the seventeenth-century nobility at large. Limitations on patriarchal ideals (the Rohan example shows) had less to do with personalities than with the organization of French upper-class families; precisely because the family so prized masculine achievements in matters of war and statesmanship, it had to accord women power and independence in other domains of life.

Structuring Women’s Roles: Some Fundamental Patterns Those gender logics resulted in part from basic patterns of aristocratic demography. In the seventeenth century, ordinary Frenchmen married brides of about their own age, but among the aristocracy there were significant age gaps: noblemen were about seven years older than their brides in the early seventeenth century, almost ten years older between 1680 and 1709. Aristocratic mortality was peculiar as well, because of the warrior habits that the society so prized. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, about 10 percent of all French noblemen died young, of violent deaths. These risks were much higher for grandee families like the Rohan, who viewed military service as a normal expectation, and they increased for all nobles during the seventeenth

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 87

2/16/15 2:26 PM

88

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

century, as military service became more common and war more violent. Fewer than 20 percent of French noblemen served in the army before 1600, but after 1670 about half did so. Women faced special mortality risks of their own, of course, notably those associated with childbirth; but once they had survived the childbearing years, their life expectancy was substantially higher than men’s. Given these demographic patterns, aristocratic widows were often left to manage familial affairs for long periods of time. For the Rohan, this pattern prevailed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: there were extended widowhoods in five consecutive generations, starting in 1525, when Pierre de Rohan died at the battle of Pavia, leaving behind a widow who survived him by fourteen years. Pierre’s oldest son (the family’s first vicomte de Rohan) likewise died in battle, in 1552, and his widow survived for another eight years, profiting from her independence to establish a Protestant church at the Rohan’s principal estate. In the following generation, René de Rohan died of his war wounds in 1586, when the future duke Henri was seven and his brother Benjamin two; René’s widow, Catherine de Parthenay, lived on until 1631. Like his father, Henri de Rohan in turn died of his wounds, in 1638, and his wife lived another twenty-two years; his daughter (and only surviving child) Marguerite de Rohan outlived her husband by twenty-seven years. Only in the early eighteenth century was there some variation in this pattern. Marguerite de Rohan’s favorite daughter died three years before her husband—but Marguerite’s only son died sixteen years before his wife. Between 1525 and 1684, men had even nominal control of the Rohan fortune for about eighty years. There were many fewer years in which that nominal control had much meaning. Because of their travels, Catherine de Parthenay continued to play a large role in managing her sons’ affairs long after they reached adulthood. After his marriage, Henri’s wife took over the role. Unlike her husband, she remained in Paris during most of their married life, and he repeatedly stressed his reliance on her business decisions. “She has my full authority in this matter,” he wrote in 1632 of an inheritance dispute. In the same year he authorized her to “borrow whatever sum seems to her appropriate and to sell any of his goods to meet their urgent needs.” This confidence in her abilities and commitment persisted even after she had wisely uncoupled her finances from those of the heavily indebted duke, in a formal legal act fourteen years before his death.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 88

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

89

fig. 4 Loyalty and influence: Daniel Dumonstier, Marguerite de Béthune, duchesse de Rohan. Chantilly, Musée Condé. © RMN–Grand Palais (domaine de Chantilly). Photo © RMN–Grand Palais/ Art Resource, New York (René-Gabriel Ojéda).

Marguerite de Rohan, the couple’s daughter and only heir, held still more power over her family’s affairs. In 1645, twenty-eight years old and thus an adult under French law, Marguerite married the impoverished and Catholic son of a distinguished family. Contemporaries believed that she had married for love, and she certainly married in the face of her mother’s opposition. But infatuation did not extend to business: in arranging the marriage, Marguerite established for herself an impregnable command of her finances. As one notarial contract put it, she was “authorized in all her business affairs by her marriage contract”; another contract described her as having control over “the full disposition and right to alienate her possessions now and in the future.” Within a decade, she further strengthened her position by formally ending her community of property with her husband. As a great heiress and an adult, Marguerite could refuse to accept the submission that French law imposed on most wives, who could make no such decisions without their husbands’ formal permission. Marguerite established her power at the time of her marriage, and she continued to exercise it well after her son reached adulthood.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 89

2/16/15 2:26 PM

90

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Unmarried women enjoyed the same degree of independence, and they were numerous among the seventeenth-century nobility. Faced with having to supply high dowries, families often distributed resources unequally among their children, leaving some unable to attract suitors of the appropriate rank. Catholic families might place their unmarried daughters in convents, but for Protestants like the Rohan, the only choice was the independence of single life. That choice was all the more likely because of the Rohan’s lofty ideas about what constituted a suitable match. In 1604 the duc de La Force hoped that Anne de Rohan might marry his son, but discovered that the family hoped for something grander still; when the queen mother herself blocked a projected marriage with the Nassau family, Anne remained unmarried, like her handicapped sister Henriette and their aunt Françoise de Rohan. As a result, all three enjoyed full control of their financial affairs. Indeed, though it never spelled out its intentions, the family created on their behalf a de facto female line of descent for one of its properties, the fortified estate of La Garnache: her brothers conveyed it to Françoise de Rohan in 1563, and it then passed to Henriette in 1607, to Anne in 1624, and finally to Marguerite de Rohan upon Anne’s death in 1646. The family treated its Paris Hôtel de Mélusine, located near Richelieu’s own palace, in the same way: Henriette held it until her death, when it passed to Anne. Françoise, Henriette, and Anne did not live as their brothers’ dependents. They had full control of significant properties.

The Rhetoric of Management Of course paid managers might have performed the tasks that absent noblemen could not, but early modern economic theorists harped on the inadequacy of such replacements. “Whoever finds his pleasure or his calling elsewhere” than on his estate, counseled Charles Estienne, in the sixteenth century, will necessarily find himself “at the mercy of a tenant who will deceive him at will,” ruining lands and buildings and occasioning endless lawsuits. Paid agents were almost as bad, for they would collude with tenants in deceiving their employers. “Only the lord’s vigilance and presence,” “his vigilance and desire to preserve his property,” could protect against mismanagement and fraud. With men of the family so often absent, the Rohan applied these principles by placing women in direct charge of estate management. Of course, Cathe-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 90

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

91

rine de Parthenay, Marguerite de Rohan, and the others had male agents and advisers, and relationships with these men might be very close. Jean Bidé, sieur de Heinleix, served Catherine de Parthenay for more than thirty years; in her testament she spoke of him as having saved the family’s finances during the tumult of the Wars of Religion, and urged her sons to continue employing him. Marguerite de Rohan first employed Philippe Thévenin (variously described as “bourgeois of Paris,” “in charge of the business of the said lady,” and “her treasurer”) in 1659; by 1675 he enjoyed noble status, but he remained her business manager and lived in her Paris mansion. Their titles indicate that these were substantial figures, but they remained social inferiors who functioned as mere agents and advisers. Nor does it seem that the Rohan women turned to cousins or other social equals for advice in their business dealings. On the contrary, they spoke without false modesty of controlling their business affairs, indeed without acknowledging any limits that their sex might place on their business capacity. Catherine de Parthenay’s letters to her friend the duchesse de La Trémoille, another great Protestant noblewoman, with estates near her own, convey something of this activist attitude. “Madame, I believe you are aware of the judgments that have been handed down between those of your house and mine,” she began, in a letter of 1590 concerning an inheritance division that concerned the two of them. The decisions had not yet been enforced, but now, seeing her income “more and more diminished by the failure to execute the said decisions,” she had “decided to pursue and request” the full share that the courts had accorded her. She concluded by asking that her friend explain her own intentions “via the gentleman who brings you this letter, and to trust in what he tells you about this matter.” Catherine used her male agent—a “gentleman”—as a mere messenger; decisions lay with her alone, and she made no mention of receiving either financial or legal advice. Even the messengers disappeared from her accounts of other matters. “Our affairs are so entangled (at least mine are) as to bring me again to Paris,” she later wrote her friend. Only her presence could ensure that the family’s business was properly carried out. Conversely, men of the family viewed women’s management role as altogether appropriate, a manifestation of the proper allocation of gender roles. A memoir concerning Jean de Parthenay-Larchevesque, Catherine de Parthenay’s father and Henri de Rohan’s maternal grandfather, emphasizes the admiration he enjoyed among his contemporaries. He was hardworking, ambitious, and quick to seize opportunities: “It was very difficult to catch him by surprise, for he was vigilant, sleeping little, spending much of the night

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 91

2/16/15 2:26 PM

92

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

dealing with business, . . . sending out messages and handling other necessary tasks . . . , and never tiring of it all.” There was only one exception to this attentiveness, the business of his own household: “for he never wanted to hear of that, and left it entirely to the dame de Soubize, his wife, being able to concern himself only with external matters, those that concerned the community as a whole.” Parthenay-Larchevesque took business seriously and had the skills to handle it effectively, but he limited his efforts to the public sphere. As a private matter, the family’s own economic concerns fell to his wife. Two generations later, Henri de Rohan had still greater faith in his wife’s judgment. He explained to a correspondent that she could be trusted to act effectively because she was “more Rohanist than those who bear the name,” and a contemporary confirmed his belief: she had “a marvelous dexterity in handling all kinds of affairs . . . and above all she had an extraordinary passion for her husband’s grandeur and for his interests.”

Education, Culture, Action These women could be so assertive partly because their educations had prepared them for the role. Despite their exclusion from institutions of higher learning, “learned women” were widely celebrated in late sixteenth-century society, and Catherine de Parthenay counted among the exemplars of this social type. During her youth, her family had employed as secretary and adviser François Viète, a local lawyer destined for a great future as a magistrate and as the preeminent French mathematician of the age, all the while remaining in close touch with his former employers. Viète’s duties in the household included educating Catherine, and in later years he emphasized her receptiveness to his teaching. In dedicating a 1591 work of mathematics to her, he explained that “it is to you above all . . . that my mathematical studies are due”; for “both your love of the subject and the very great knowledge you have of it, as of all sciences,” had pushed him forward in his own researches. The dedication was not pure flattery, for Viète had in fact composed for her a series of brief summaries of basic mathematics and astronomy, on which his later work had built, and Catherine retained these intellectual commitments as an adult. She composed plays and a widely read political pamphlet mocking Henri IV, and she had substantial collections of books and paintings in her country house. In revising her testament in 1624, she asked that her heirs preserve as a single collection “the pictures in the gallery and the books in the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 92

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

93

library, which seem like parts of the house,” showing how much these objects mattered to her. Françoise de Rohan, Catherine’s unmarried sister-inlaw, was likewise known as a literary patron. She maintained a small court of writers at her Poitevin estate, and she too supported Viète. The next generation was also highly educated. Like her mother, Catherine de Parthenay, Anne de Rohan (the duke’s youngest sister) was famous for her learning, especially for her command of Hebrew and her poetry writing. Marguerite de Béthune (Catherine’s daughter-in-law and wife of the first duke) had likewise grown up in a highly cultivated environment, as the daughter of the duc de Sully, Henri IV’s principal finance minister. As a young adult, Marguerite participated in the famous salon held at the Hôtel de Rambouillet; at her death thirty years later, she had a collection of twenty paintings and a library of 127 titles (her husband had owned just over one hundred books), including thirty-five that the notary—clearly out of his depth—summarized as “other books in Latin, Spanish, and Italian”; unlike her late husband, Marguerite was apparently comfortable with several European languages. But she shared his belief in the importance of books: just as the duke had traveled through Switzerland with his library, she had brought her library to the suburban house in which she spent her final years. About a quarter of her books concerned religion. There were three copies of the Bible, and such other Christian classics as St. Theresa, St. Bernard, selected letters of Augustine and Jerome, and Thomas à Kempis, in the recent translation of Pierre Corneille; the titles suggest seriousness of devotion, and also openness to Catholic religious currents. She owned also a solid selection of ancient literature, including Tacitus, Caesar, Pliny, Horace, Suetonius, and Lucian. But the most important components of her library were works of history and contemporary literature. There were twenty-two works of history, in addition to the ancient historians whose works she owned, covering an array of topics that ranged from ancient history to histories of Africa, the New World, and Europe, and they included some important examples of recent erudition. Her selection of literature suggests a similar involvement with contemporary discussions: she owned works by Voiture, Descartes, Guez de Balzac, and Vaugelas, as well as such classics from the sixteenth century as Montaigne and Ronsard. Enthusiasm for culture seems to have diminished among the Rohan in the later seventeenth century. Marguerite de Rohan (the duke’s daughter and the heir both to his fortune and to Marguerite de Béthune’s) read less widely, and seems to have had much less interest in contemporary issues. She owned

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 93

2/16/15 2:26 PM

94

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

paintings, but the inventory of her possessions mentions only portraits of family members. But even she had a library of at least fifty-five titles at the time of her death; at her husband’s death thirty years earlier, the only books in the house were found in her study. Of course, the Rohan women also occasionally deployed the rhetoric of women’s intellectual weakness. In presenting a memoir of her doings, Marguerite de Béthune began by emphasizing the modesty of her intentions. “Since it is not appropriate either to my sex or to my ability to write history,” she explained, she would describe only matters in which she had been personally involved, and she begged the reader “to please excuse my incompetence.” With somewhat less modesty, Anne also presented her poems on her mother’s death with an apology: “I know well that the most refined nowadays will criticize them, since they do not conform to the polish of this era.” But this was tactical modesty, designed to emphasize the honesty of their works’ content, and the Rohan were equally alert to contemporary celebrations of women’s capacities and achievements, celebrations that reached a high point in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1631, the duke Henri wrote his mother, Catherine de Parthenay, from his Italian exile that, “in my idleness . . . , I’ve set myself to reading a book in Italian about the illustrious women the world has known.” Anne’s poetry also developed this idea. Her poem on their mother’s death presents a series of eminent women offering spiritual advice and assurance, in historical order, moving from biblical and early Christian figures through the sixteenth-century princesse de Condé of France and queen Elizabeth of England, and finally to Catherine de Parthenay herself. Implicitly, the poem offered a feminist version of history, as a succession of eminent, powerful, and wise women. Some wealthy contemporaries expressed the same idea by assembling picture galleries of famous women, and Marguerite de Béthune’s picture collection followed in that tradition. It included portraits of her father, her husband, and one other male ancestor, and one religious painting, but all the other pictures were of women; there were eight portraits of female members of the Rohan family, but among the family’s men, only her husband appeared. Like her sister-in-law’s poem, Marguerite’s picture gallery offered a history of female heroism. Commanding both cultural skills and belief in feminine worth, women of the Rohan family approached estate management with some confidence. Catherine de Parthenay was an especially careful manager. She carried with her at all times the key to her cash box, and at her death she had recently done an exact accounting of its impressive contents; she had also recently invento-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 94

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

95

ried both her collection of jewels and her silver dishes; and she had carefully organized her business archives. Her unmarried daughter Anne de Rohan continued these traditions; at her death, her account books were extensive, carefully organized, and up-to-date. Marguerite de Béthune moved about more often and may have been less meticulous, but her daughter Marguerite de Rohan continued the family’s management traditions. Before her marriage, she insisted on inventories of her own and her new husband’s possessions, so as to prevent any confusion between them. In 1649 she had an inventory of all her business papers drawn up, to protect her rights in case “any of these may be lost or misplaced” amid the disruptions of the Fronde. The family’s papers from more settled times likewise show her verifying accounts, presiding over land sales and purchases, and in one case complaining about a business agent’s delays.

The Ambiguities of Dynastic Loyalty But family management entailed more than effective day-to-day bookkeeping. It also required attention to the family’s long-term development: preserving and increasing its revenues, properties, and standing, arranging appropriate marriage alliances, sustaining its internal unity and the memories that founded its identity. In the Rohan family, women made decisions about all these issues. Indeed, they believed these strategic responsibilities to be particularly their concern. In her 1624 codicil to her testament, Catherine de Parthenay both acknowledged that special responsibility and expressed pride in how well she fulfilled it. She spoke of “the prudence and maternal foresight that it has pleased God to give me, for the good of my children and for the preservation of their friendship, unity, and harmony, and thereby for the preservation of the standing of their house [maison]. That is what all my actions and affections have chiefly aimed at.” As she wrote, her two sons were both over forty, yet her strategic guidance remained indispensible in preserving “their house.” Parts of that task were straightforward and cheap, especially where preserving the family’s traditions was concerned. It was easy for Catherine to arrange (in 1608) with her son to pay a man of letters for his work on a “genealogical history of the very noble, very ancient, very illustrious house of Rohan, of which the lord duke is presently head and lord.” Nor were problems likely to arise concerning physical relics of the Rohan past: Catherine’s testament asked that some tapestries that “had been among the ancient furnishings of

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 95

2/16/15 2:26 PM

96

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

the house of Rohan” go to the duke, as a material expression of dynastic continuity. Portraiture offered another form of symbolic dynasticism, as in the picture gallery that Marguerite de Béthune preserved at her death in 1660, with its nine portraits of the Rohan, including her husband, her mother-inlaw, one of her sisters-in-law, two distant ancestors, and four notable cousins. But Marguerite’s picture gallery also illustrated one of the underlying tensions in women’s management of dynastic capital: their dual loyalty, to both their families of origin and to those into which they had married. For alongside her pictures of Rohan eminences, there were also pictures of her SullyBéthune ancestors; likewise, her books included a folio “genealogical history of the house of Béthune.” Catherine de Parthenay, too, combined her attention to the Rohan’s history with attention to her own ancestors, commissioning histories of the Parthenay-Larchevesque from her friend Viète and ensuring that these ancestors remained a presence for her own children as well. Her feeling, expressed in her testament, that her paintings and books “seem to be a part of the house,” conveyed the same sentiment, a determination to preserve the integrity of her ancestral home, rather than allow its objects to be sold or absorbed into the Rohan’s own collections. Divided loyalties scarcely mattered when it came to picture galleries and libraries, which could be expanded at will, but some acts of memorial preservation required hard choices among divergent interests; they brought real losses for some family members, gains for others. In the case of Catherine de Parthenay, these more difficult choices derived primarily from her position as an heiress, her parents’ only child. As such she was intensely concerned to preserve their familial identity—if need be, at the expense of her two husbands’ families. Her first marriage, contracted in 1568 with a man well beneath her in status and wealth, allowed these concerns full expression. In the contract, the groom promised “for himself and his successors, . . . from the date of the said marriage ceremony to bear the name and full arms of the Parthenay family, and continue thus, both himself and his son and principal heir born to the said marriage, and to continue thus forever and perpetually.” Failure at any point in the future to do so would bring the immediate transfer of the properties “to the younger sons who are willing to take and bear the name and arms.” The couple and their relatives had explicitly consented to this arrangement, the contract emphasized, and without it the marriage “would not have been made, negotiated, or carried out.” The contract’s threats and redundancies suggest how much was at stake, for both sides. For the groom to renounce his own family name constituted a

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 96

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

97

real sacrifice, so the contract implied, and his descendants could not be counted on to accept it without the threat of economic harm. At the same time, the bride’s family described itself as fulfilling a long-standing goal of the bride’s father, that of preserving the Parthenay-Soubise names. The contract demanded another commitment by the groom: within the next eight years, he was to invest at least 20,000 l. in the construction of a “château and fortress” on the site of Soubise, where currently there were only medieval ruins. Catherine’s marriage was to restore the house of Soubise as both material and symbolic reality, at the cost of obscuring her husband’s house and the memories associated with it. These plans failed. The marriage was troubled from the start by the young man’s apparent impotence, and efforts to have it annulled were under way when he was killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres. When Catherine remarried, in 1575, there could be no question of imposing such conditions on the much wealthier, more distinguished René de Rohan. But the goal of reestablishing a Soubise dynasty did not disappear, and the birth of her second son allowed Catherine a second chance to implement it. That the project was much on her mind can be seen from the successive versions of her testament, first composed in 1604, with codicils added in 1612, 1617, 1624, 1625, and 1631. From the first version onward, she made it clear that her younger son was to have her lordship of Soubise, “free of debt as was always the intention of monsieur my husband and my mother, and this over and beyond whatever my older son wishes to give him from his inheritance.” Catherine acknowledged the burden that she was placing on her older son, whose inheritance she was diminishing; indeed, her plan probably violated the customary laws governing nobles’ property transmissions in western France. So, she added, if “the strictness of the laws” stood in the way of her arrangements, her children were to find other paths to the same outcome. She continued in the following years to enlarge her younger son’s share of her wealth, and in 1624 she accorded him all her cash and other movables, so as to “cover his needs and aid in sustaining him in his rank.” This was a significant donation; at her death Catherine had over 10,000 l. in cash, a valuable collection of jewels, and a well-stocked farm. Like her first attempt, this second of Catherine’s efforts to reestablish a house of Soubise enjoyed only brief success. Her older son grudgingly accepted the plan, and the monarchy did its part to advance it: despite Benjamin de Rohan’s rebellions, which two years later would prompt his condemnation for lèse-majesté, in 1626 he received the title duc de Soubise. But the château of Soubise remained unbuilt; in 1664, experts visiting the site found only “an old

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 97

2/16/15 2:26 PM

98

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

house built in the barnyard, where it is said there was once a château.” More important, Soubise himself showed no interest in consolidating the position that his mother had worked so hard to establish. He never married, and after 1629 he apparently never revisited France. His properties passed to his niece, his older brother’s sole heir, and thus the potential blow to the principal Rohan lineage was forestalled. But a third attempt, a generation later, succeeded. That success followed a difficult moment for the Rohan lineage, when even its continued existence was in doubt, for duke Henri de Rohan’s only surviving child was his daughter Marguerite de Rohan. Normally the duchy of Rohan would have disappeared in these circumstances, but the crown intervened in 1645, on the eve of Marguerite’s marriage. It conveyed the duchy to her new husband, “in consideration of this misfortune touching in this way so illustrious a house.” Marguerite’s husband thus became “Henri de Chabot duc de Rohan,” and their descendants became the Rohan-Chabot. Even then the family remained vulnerable, however, both to demographic accident and to contemporary opinion. The marriage produced only one son, the youngest of four children; and in a society that increasingly valued male lineage, the artificiality of the 1645 arrangement provoked criticism. In the eighteenth century, a memorandum from other peers bluntly asserted that the ducal Rohan line had “ended in the person of Marguerite de Rohan.” Royal letters attempting to mask this extinction, so ran the argument, could not trump biological reality. Amid this public debate, in 1663 Marguerite de Rohan superintended yet another revival of the Soubise maison, as part of a larger effort to reaffirm the Rohan’s standing. The revival started with the marriage between her daughter Anne (Marguerite’s favorite, named for her beloved aunt) and a widowed cousin of the Rohan-Guémené branch of the family, François de Rohan. The Rohan rarely married their cousins (none in the ducal line had done so since 1515), but in the circumstances of the later seventeenth century the alliance forcefully reasserted Rohan standing, by associating the Rohan-Chabot with the clearly authentic Rohan-Guémené; and Marguerite went to extraordinary lengths to bring it about. The bride received a dowry of 600,000 l., twice those given her sisters, and it was paid immediately; her sisters were to receive much of theirs only after their mother’s death. One-third of this total went to purchase a military office for the groom; the remainder came in the transfer to the couple of the lordship of Soubise, with its long train of familial associations. This generosity was all the more notable in that the groom brought nothing comparable to the marriage; one contemporary claimed that his own

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 98

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

99

yearly revenues amounted to only 6,000 l., a pathetic sum when compared to the duchy of Rohan. That Marguerite de Rohan nonetheless pursued the marriage with such determination shows her own commitment to the logic of dynasticism, and the degree to which symbolic capital—in this case, the Rohan family name—could be transmuted into hard cash. Soon after, the crown added its support to the project. Louis XIV greatly admired the bride (who had probably been his mistress for a time), and did his best to advance her interests: three years after the marriage, royal letters patent made the lordship of Soubise a principality, and François de RohanGuémené became the first prince de Soubise. Some years later, the couple further asserted its prominence by constructing its grand Paris residences. A century after Catherine de Parthenay had first tried to do so, Marguerite de Rohan had succeeded in recreating a Soubise dynasty, and it would endure for the rest of the Old Regime. But like Catherine’s efforts, Marguerite’s also came at a high cost to her husband’s lineage. Just as Catherine’s plans had taken resources from one son to establish another, so Marguerite harmed her own son in establishing her daughter as princesse de Soubise, both by diminishing his inheritance and by

fig. 5 The court beauty: Workshop of Charles Beaubrun, Anne de RohanChabot, princesse de Soubise. Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York (Daniel Arnaudet/ Gérard Blot).

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 99

2/16/15 2:26 PM

100

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

advancing his sister’s status over his. These choices rankled, and less than a decade after Marguerite’s death, litigation set the duc de Rohan against his sister and brother-in-law. The conflict involved multiple issues, but Marguerite’s decisions lay behind all of them. “All France knows,” her son publicly complained in the course of this litigation, that Marguerite “divided up her goods in such a way as to give the princesse de Soubise everything that the laws allowed her to give, and that she gave the petitioner only what the laws forbade her from taking from him.” During her lifetime, her children had remained at peace out of respect for her authority, but (as Saint-Simon summarized relations between them) the princesse de Soubise and her brother “hated each other perfectly,” and their hatred became public after their mother’s death. In establishing her daughter and son-in-law, Marguerite de Rohan both harmed her son and his descendants and undermined family unity. Why then take so risky a step? Marguerite may have had in mind the comparable efforts undertaken by her grandmother Catherine de Parthenay, but the letters establishing the principality of Soubise do not refer to this precedent. Marguerite’s principal motivation lay rather in the logic of dynasticism itself. She sought to preserve the grandeur of the Rohan name and family, just as Catherine de Parthenay sought to preserve her own father’s name and lineage. Saint-Simon himself explained the “great preference” that she showed her daughter by love and “perhaps also for having married M. de Soubise, a Rohan like” Marguerite. Another of her decisions from these years, a donation to another Rohan cousin, confirms Saint-Simon’s assessment. She wanted (so she explained in an act of 1663) to give this young cousin “proofs of the particular esteem she has for his merit, in consideration of the nearness of their blood and of their both bearing the same Rohan name,” and to allow him “further means to maintain with luster the rank that his birth gives him, being only the cadet of his house.” With these objectives in mind, she transferred to him life interests in one of her estates and in a royal pension. Marguerite herself would not suffer the consequences of her generosity. The gift was to take effect only upon her death, and was to come out of her son’s inheritance; yet again, Marguerite had sacrificed the interests of her husband’s descendants to those of the Rohan lineage. As events unfolded, this proved an especially clear statement of loyalty to origins over descent, for the young man’s “merit” accompanied some dramatic personal failings. The chevalier de Rohan was among the most prominent libertines of the later seventeenth century, deeply in debt and the subject of scandalized disapproval at court. A decade after Marguerite’s dona-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 100

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

101

tion, he involved himself in a conspiracy with the Dutch, complete with plans to establish a republican government in Normandy; he was betrayed, arrested, and beheaded. That the object of Marguerite’s benevolence was so visibly unworthy—a politically dangerous spendthrift—suggests the intensity of her concern for her family. In some measure she apparently shared her rival peers’ assessment of her dynastic situation: Rohan cousins had claims on her wealth because they more truly represented the family than did her own children, the Rohan-Chabot. Marguerite made a comparable choice at the end of her life, as she drew up her testament. In it, she affirmed “before God that I wish to die in the religion in which I was born, baptized, and instructed,” that is, as a Protestant; she also urged her heirs to continue her practice of donating money to Protestant churches, both in her estates in Brittany and elsewhere. Her declaration came only a few years before the king banned Protestantism altogether, and long after he had made clear his hopes of doing so. As strikingly, the decision made a powerful statement about familial attachment. Marguerite had married a Catholic, in the process breaking with her mother and persuading contemporaries (such as Tallemant des Réaux) that she herself had converted; and indeed, while her husband lived she regularly attended Catholic mass. To declare herself a Protestant at the end of her life was to reattach herself to her origins, and that choice was to receive public demonstration: Marguerite asked to be buried not with her husband, for whom she had commissioned an elaborate funeral monument in a Parisian monastery, but rather at the Reformed cemetery of Charenton, “near my late aunt mademoiselle Anne de Rohan.” That wish could not be honored, since by the time of her death, in 1684, the crown had seized all Protestant cemeteries. But the family (whatever its private reservations) acted in accord with her desire to stay close to her ancestors: Marguerite was buried near her Protestant grandmother Catherine de Parthenay, at the Rohan’s Breton headquarters at Blain. At the end, her loyalty was to the traditions of her father’s family, rather than to her husband or children, from whom her burial would permanently separate her.

Controls and Freedoms Managing dynastic capital thus confronted families like the Rohan with contradictory expectations and obligations, starting with the instabilities inherent in the definition of gender roles themselves: in a society that celebrated

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 101

2/16/15 2:26 PM

102

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

masculinity, women nonetheless held decisive powers over the family, distributing its resources, supervising its daily functioning, shaping its development over time. There were contradictory demands as well concerning how these powers were to be exercised. Women had to balance the competing demands of the two families to which they were tied; the interests of their families of origin did not disappear with their marriages, and there were also demands from younger children and other relatives. The material goods available to meet these demands were finite, and so too were some of the symbolic goods. When Catherine de Parthenay’s first husband exchanged his family name for hers, contemporaries viewed the act as a real sacrifice, which might need contractual enforcement in the future. When Marguerite de Rohan favored her Rohan son-in-law over her Rohan-Chabot son, the ensuing bitterness derived only partly from the material interests at stake. Women’s performance of their management tasks created another set of contradictions within the aristocratic family, centering on the freedoms their role demanded. The ideology of early modern dynasticism implied tight controls on women’s behavior, since their sexual purity mattered so much to the family’s collective health. A noble family was (in Furetière’s words) a “lineage [race], a series of illustrious individuals descended from the same stock,” and each individual within it was expected to manifest its collective qualities. In an age of limited contraceptive techniques, women’s sexual freedom placed at risk the family’s links with its past, and thus its very identity; illegitimate births corrupted the family, in ways that might be impossible to undo. Such preoccupations implied careful restrictions on where women went and whom they saw, for their sexual honor was a precondition of the dynasty’s collective health. The logic of restriction was especially compelling because contemporaries believed women’s sexual feelings to be powerful and their self-control weak. At the end of the sixteenth century, Brantôme opened his second Recueil des dames with the remark that “all the paper of the Chambre des Comptes of Paris” would not suffice to recount all the stories he knew of wives who had cuckolded their husbands, and he explained the danger partly in terms of their pleasure in marital sex itself. So caught up in “those carnal pleasures,” they “burned with such heat” for their husbands that they forgot their love for God. Worse, as their husbands taught them the multiple forms of sexual pleasure, “for every one ember burning in their bodies, they engender one hundred, and thus turn libertine; so having been trained in this way, they cannot help themselves from deserting their husbands and finding other companions [chevalliers].”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 102

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

103

The accuracy of Brantôme’s account matters less than contemporaries’ readiness to believe him. Certainly physicians and ministers attached to the Rohan family shared his views, and they expressed them forcefully. The issue arose in 1568, when the young Catherine de Parthenay had to deal with her first husband’s impotence. In a long memorandum, her physician emphasized the hopelessness of the young man’s situation, because it resulted from physical deformity; if she failed to annul the marriage, “thence undoubtedly there will follow all the damnable abominations that I have previously described for you . . . , rendering both your ancestors and your posterity forever dishonored.” Saddled with a husband who could not satisfy her, so the message went, Catherine would turn to one form or another of sin—forever disgracing herself and her race. In 1644, Catherine’s granddaughter Marguerite de Rohan received almost the same advice from her physician and astrologer, as she contemplated her own marriage. Like her grandmother, Marguerite faced a complicated decision, in this case because her own mother opposed the match. Her adviser—long in the family’s employ, and apparently loyal mainly to the mother—strongly agreed, and he offered Marguerite dreadful warnings about the role of physical passion in her makeup. The stars at her birth had determined that she was good at business matters, but also “eager for physical love, strong and devious and on this subject capable of evading and overcoming every perilous difficulty, at the cost of esteem, reputation, wealth, favor, and friendships.” Such a personality could not live celibate, but neither could she make sensible choices on her own. Therefore it was especially important that she be guided by “your nearest and best relatives and friends, without letting yourself be carried away by your concupiscent and angry passions, and by the admirers and flatterers who frequent the court and others of the same ilk encouraging you either for their own interests or in order to debase your name and reputation.” Comments like these expressed real anxieties about women’s behavior. Only careful channeling could minimize the dangers of female passion, and the dangers touched the family as a whole, into the indefinite future. Yet there could be no full defense, for women’s roles in managing the family required that they engage fully in the social world, usually without familial supervision. Acquiring information, making marriage alliances, borrowing money, securing the payment of crown pensions—all required face-to-face interchanges, often in the highly sexualized setting of the court. A “memorandum of business at court for my older daughter,” which Catherine de Parthenay compiled in about 1603, shows the range of these tasks. Henriette de

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 103

2/16/15 2:26 PM

104

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Rohan was to “seek an answer from the king about Sweden,” since the king’s support would be needed for Henri de Rohan’s hoped-for marriage with a Swedish princess; she was also to arrange some of the details of the embassy that would negotiate the marriage arrangements, and select the gifts that the ambassadors would take along. There was also the question of securing a peerage for her brother, another project that involved the king and his leading advisers. But alongside these lofty matters, which might determine the family’s status for generations to come, there were also prosaic matters of business: Henriette was to see if money could be borrowed “at 4 or 5 percent”; a buyer was to be sought for one of the Rohan’s properties, and she was to pursue the purchase of another for a Breton dependent. Finally, she was to inquire about the benefits that her mother might derive from certain mineral waters. During her stay at court, then, Henriette was expected to address the full range of her family’s needs, personal, political, and financial, immediate and long-term. Much the same happened when she traveled in the provinces. In 1618, her mother reported to a friend that Henriette had stopped by “on her return from La Garnache, where she had gone on business matters” (at that point La Garnache belonged to Henriette). Henriette then traveled to Nantes, where she joined her brothers to attend the opening of the Estates of Brittany. Henriette herself wrote another friend about the visit’s pleasures, the dancing that she watched and “some fine actors [comédiens]. . . . They are very respectable, saying nothing tasteless, not only in our presence but also in the city, according to what I was told.” As a married woman, Marguerite de Béthune performed still more complex tasks for her husband, Henri de Rohan—at least according to her own claims, in the memoir she wrote a decade after his death. In 1615, Rohan sent her to Guyenne to negotiate with the province’s Protestant leadership, “where I was fortunate enough to carry out his plan”; in 1618, six months pregnant, she traveled from Paris to Angers for negotiations with the queen mother, again successfully; in 1622, she secured from the court his release from prison, following his first rebellion; in 1625, Richelieu himself “ordered M. de Rohan . . . that he send me to Paris to negotiate a peace settlement, because the deputies that he had sent did not agree”; with the renewal of war in 1627, already contemplating settling in Venice, he sent her there, “very pleased that I might make acquaintances there and learn how he might be employed there”; most dramatically of all, in about 1630 he sent her back to France to sell his properties “to collect a notable sum” to be used in purchasing the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 104

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

105

island of Cyprus from the Ottoman empire. Several of these missions involved either leaving her infant children behind, with nurses, or subjecting them to the hardships of early modern travel. Her account implicitly subordinated motherhood to her husband’s business. Marguerite probably exaggerated some aspects of her role, and may have invented others; she wrote her memoir in the course of a family lawsuit, intending that it demonstrate to the public how close she and the duke had been and how loyally she had served his interests. But whatever her exaggerations, she and her advisers viewed these details as plausible background to legal selfdefense, examples of how a dutiful aristocratic wife might be expected to behave. Her travels and negotiations demonstrated her loyalty, so the memoir implied, and she presented them on the assumption that the Parisian reading public would approve. At least to that extent, she judged accurately: contemporaries were indeed impressed with the duke’s reliance on her judgment and her eagerness to serve his causes. A woman in her situation had to live in the world, rather than cutting herself off from it.

Love and Family Disruption But of course living in this way gave considerable scope to women’s personal desires. If families were to enjoy the benefits of women’s freedom, they would need to live with their anxieties about female desire, and tolerate some of its awkward consequences. Like most families of the high aristocracy, the Rohan resolved this dilemma one-sidedly, in favor of freedom. Both the extent of women’s freedom and its potentially explosive results were to be seen in the case of Françoise de Rohan, duke Henri de Rohan’s aunt. Still a teenager (she was born in 1535 or 1536), Françoise became a lady of honor of Catherine de Médicis in 1553, and spent most of the next several years following the court from one palace to another. Servants, a gentleman, and at least one of her own ladies in waiting accompanied her, but her mother, father, and brothers remained in Brittany; Françoise was essentially on her own, far from the oversight of family members. No sixteenth-century family could be unaware of the temptations that might arise in such circumstances. Since the Middle Ages, writers had described the ethical challenges of life at court, but for the Rohan, the benefits of the connections that Françoise might establish there outweighed the dangers.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 105

2/16/15 2:26 PM

106

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Trouble duly ensued. Françoise counted among the beauties of the court, and she attracted the attention of the duc de Nemours, the court’s most soughtafter young man, and (as a younger son of the reigning house of Savoy) one who held a significantly higher rank than she. Court life allowed the couple to see each other often, with few restrictions on their intimacy; they danced together at court balls, and Nemours visited her in her room, “where he stayed until midnight . . . seated next to the said lady’s bed.” Eventually, believing that she and Nemours had exchanged private marriage vows, “she yielded and granted the said lord what he wanted.” Thereafter, the couple took few steps to hide the relationship—and they encountered minimal restrictions in pursuing it. As Françoise explained in her eventual legal deposition, “This intimacy and intercourse [copulation] . . . would easily have been noticed by several gentlemen, ladies, and others, who would have certainly known, recognized, and heard the said parties . . . often together kissing and fondling each other, and sometimes emerging redder and more heated than usual, and showing all the other signs and indications of having had carnal intercourse . . . , and even sometimes then having heard the voice of the said lady undergoing the said intercourse and efforts of the said lord.” Servants, too, testified to overhearing the couple having sex, with only the bed curtains protecting their privacy. Françoise was clearly swept up in sexual pleasure—but at the same time she described herself “undergoing” her lover’s “efforts,” and a significant element of discomfort accompanied her experience of them. Although the queen mother had tried half-heartedly to limit the couple’s intimacy, their situation really changed only when Françoise became pregnant. She concealed her condition into her eighth month (in itself an indication of how much freedom she had enjoyed), but at that point Catherine paid a surprise visit to her rooms and insisted on the truth. Only then did controls on her behavior begin to tighten. The queen forbade further exchanges between the couple, in hopes that Françoise might find another husband. Nemours himself envisioned a more glamorous marriage and was only too happy to break things off. He denied any sexual relations with Françoise, let alone exchanging vows of marriage, claiming that between them there existed only the “friendship and honest familiarity that God provides individuals of loving one another.” Only at this point did the Rohan family intervene; Françoise’s brothers showed up at court with a large band of followers, in hopes of pressuring Nemours into formalizing the marriage.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 106

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

107

Her efforts to conceal her pregnancy constituted the strongest argument against Françoise’s claim of a secret marriage. She explained the concealment by “a lady’s shame and natural modesty,” but her reticence quickly disappeared once her condition became known, and she proved altogether willing thereafter to place her situation before the public. Over the following two decades she brought a series of legal actions to secure her status as Nemours’s wife, and throughout these years she signed her correspondence and official documents as “duchesse de Nemours.” Françoise used every legal maneuver available, sending the case through the multiple courts that could claim jurisdiction over it, and for a decade the outcome remained in doubt; only in 1566 could Nemours marry his intended, Anna d’Este, the daughter of an Italian prince and the widow of François de Guise. Even then, Françoise sent a representative who attempted (unsuccessfully) to stop the wedding mid-ceremony. The matter was finally settled in 1579, through the intervention of King Henri III. Françoise relinquished her marital claims in exchange for a large monetary settlement, paid by the king, and for the nonhereditary title of duchesse de Loudun. She settled near that city, at her estate of La Garnache, and it remained her principal residence during the years after Nemours’s marriage. The estate was heavily fortified, affording Françoise a significant political role during the battles of the Wars of Religion. At the same time, in keeping with the family’s tradition of cultural activism, she attracted to it a circle of poets and writers, including François Viète. She died in 1591, and her properties passed first to her nephew Henri de Rohan, then to his sisters. Multiple forces converged to produce Françoise de Rohan’s troubles, some of them highly personal, some of them cultural and political—starting with definitions of marriage itself, which were changing significantly in the midsixteenth century. Her legal arguments rested on the medieval tradition that privately exchanging vows sufficed to solemnize the bond (hence Nemours’s determination to prove that no such words had been spoken), and she may have genuinely misunderstood her situation as a marriage rather than a seduction. Once the relationship became public, the interplay of court factions added other complexities to the situation. From the outset, Françoise’s Bourbon-Navarre cousins favored her version of events and encouraged her in asserting her claims; she eventually gave birth to her son in Navarre, under Jeanne d’Albret’s protection. Meanwhile the Guise faction at court favored Nemours, to whom the Este marriage would connect them closely. To some

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 107

2/16/15 2:26 PM

108

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

extent, Françoise was the pawn of older, more powerful figures at court, and she might have acted differently without their influence on her. But her story would also have been impossible without the freedom she enjoyed throughout her life. The Rohan left the young Françoise to cope as best she could at court, and they even left to her the choice of a marriage partner. Until her pregnancy, neither her immediate family nor her cousins at court directed her behavior, or even examined it very closely. Thereafter, the family apparently did nothing to restrict her decades-long, public legal pursuit of Nemours, despite the questions it raised about her behavior and their honor. Whatever the Rohan’s own beliefs about the case, others were skeptical, and in the eighteenth century, Saint-Simon still recalled the case with bitter mockery: Françoise’s immorality, he explained, had been the occasion for the Rohan’s first arrival at ducal status, and her profiting from loose behavior typified the family. These were exactly the collective costs that contemporary moralists worried about: 150 years later, the episode still tarnished the Rohan’s reputation. That the family was willing to incur those costs suggests the countervailing benefits they expected from women’s freedom. The Rohan made similar choices in the following generation, accepting apparently without complaint the occasional disruptions that women’s freedom produced in exchange for the advantages it afforded. The three Rohan young women of this generation (Françoise de Rohan’s nieces and Catherine de Parthenay’s daughters) were generally known for their virtue and did not trouble the family. Henriette had physical problems that (it was assumed) protected her from amorous pursuit; the beautiful Catherine married a German prince and died young, having never returned to France; Anne remained unmarried, and spent much of her time with her mother. Hence there were no reports of trouble as Henriette, Catherine, and Anne moved about society, yet even they experienced the dangers that surrounded young women. The king himself had propositioned Catherine de Rohan; she rejected the offer with a witty and widely quoted remark, but the episode was a reminder of the temptations facing young women in her circumstances. Meanwhile, Henriette was widely known for “the most extreme passion ever seen” for her friend Mme de Nevers, in the words of Tallemant des Réaux. Her friend’s death left Henriette incapacitated for some time, and “five weeks after the death of my dear Madame de Nevers,” she drew up her own testament; it included a request that at her death a painting of her friend “which I always carry with me” be placed in her coffin with her. No such tales were told of Anne de Rohan, but even she spoke of the “touch of folly” that char-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 108

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

109

acterized poets like herself, and she showed her familiarity with the gallantries of contemporary court culture. Though most of her poems dealt with uplifting subjects, one offers “consolation for a lover abandoned by his lady”; and she playfully wrote a friend that the mineral baths she was visiting might trouble “the brain of those who have love in their heart; but I cannot believe that they will harm those with such fine and worthy loves as I have.” Romantic folly remained always a possibility, even if the sisters did not act on it. But their sister-in-law Marguerite de Béthune did act on her romantic impulses, and again scandal eventually resulted. More than Henriette and Anne, Marguerite was a prominent fixture at court events, especially during the extended periods in which she lived apart from her husband. She danced frequently at court balls, and in 1636 the Gazette reported that she herself organized a ball and a comedy for the queen. Marguerite was also involved in a series of intense extramarital relationships, and did little to conceal them. “They say,” reported Tallemant, “as she herself boasts, that she has only given herself to gentlemen [honnestes gens], that she never has more than one at a time,” and that she was always ready to drop love affairs and courtly pleasures when her husband’s business required it. (Tallemant reported also that she enjoyed being beaten by her lovers, another indication of how dramatic were the rumors that circulated about her.) Her husband gave no sign of knowing about these attachments, but his blindness may have been voluntary, and it was certainly extreme. For several years he remained on intimate terms with the duc de Candale, Marguerite’s most prominent lover, and Candale traveled with the couple to Venice in 1629. Trouble arose not during her husband’s lifetime but in the aftermath of his death. The immediate occasion was the 1645 marriage of Marguerite de Rohan, the couple’s only surviving child and heir, to Henri de Chabot, a courtier of a respectable but impoverished family, and a Catholic as well. The court (eager to convert an important Protestant family) strongly encouraged the match, providing for the duchy of Rohan’s continuation through the female line. Marguerite also had the support of her beloved aunt Anne, her father’s sister, and in any case she was a full adult, legally authorized to make her own decision in the matter. But the marriage drove her still-Protestant mother “to such despair” (in Tallemant’s words) that she produced a substitute heir, a teenager named Tancrède, whom she declared to be the duc de Rohan’s long-lost son. She claimed that this son had been raised in secrecy, in the Low Countries, because she had feared that the duke’s many enemies

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 109

2/16/15 2:26 PM

110

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

might harm him, and until recently she had thought the boy dead. Now that Tancrède had found his way back to her, she installed him in her Paris home and began efforts to disinherit her daughter, so as to restore the young man to his rightful place in the family. The lawsuits that followed constituted “the most extraordinary case to come before the bar in several centuries, with more the appearance of a novel than of the truth,” in the words of an acute contemporary. The litigation showed just how destructive family conflicts might become. Marguerite de Béthune publicly accused her daughter of trying to deprive the boy “of his inheritance, his honor, and perhaps his life” in a kidnapping scheme. She presented herself as equally a victim of her daughter’s malign intentions; her daughter, she wrote, “as a first act on leaving the innocence of childhood . . . violated all the laws of nature, wishing to destroy her brother, and then rendered an unequalled disobedience to her mother, and lost all the respect she owed her relatives.” This was “the highest ingratitude and scorn that a daughter has ever shown a mother.” Marguerite made these accusations as widely known as possible, by publishing a full account of them “so as to attempt to instruct those who do not know the particulars of many of the things that concern me.” The Parisian reading public was thus to learn of her daughter’s wild passion for her future husband, which blinded the younger woman to her duties to the Rohan family and led her into “such an unreasonable marriage, so inappropriate to her rank, leaving me and all her relatives in deep pain.” Conversely, Marguerite de Béthune’s story emphasized her own efforts to act as a responsible steward of the familial inheritance. God had rewarded those efforts by preserving the lineage itself, restoring her long-lost son to her, and conveniently providing the young man with a physical mark that allowed his mother to recognize him, despite their years apart. After the young man’s death, Marguerite de Béthune sustained this dynastic vision of her efforts. She had Tancrède’s remains sent to Geneva and placed in the duc de Rohan’s tomb there, with a Latin inscription describing him as Henri’s son, “the true heir of his father’s virtue and name,” and herself as his “inconsolable mother.” Marguerite de Béthune herself acknowledged the story’s novelistic echoes, which included threats from Richelieu and others and even the young man’s name; she had selected it, she explained, “to give him the desire some day to become as fine a man as Tasso’s Tancrède.” Her opponents, confronted with so many implausible plot twists and romantic details, argued that she had simply crossed the line between reality

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 110

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

111

and fiction. They, too, spoke in terms of the interplay among passion, freedom, and dynastic responsibility, but for them it was the daughter who sought to defend the family’s inherited dignity, the mother whose infatuation threatened it. Like Marguerite de Béthune, they noted the grandeur of the duc de Rohan’s achievements and the ancient familial dignity he represented, but for them it was Marguerite’s own passion that threatened this inheritance. Tancrède (they suggested) was in fact her son by the duc de Candale, her lover during the 1620s and early 1630s, and her eagerness for the boy’s establishment showed the force of her passions, both maternal and amatory. The daughter’s lawyer, inhibited by a need to demonstrate his client’s filial respect, spoke only of Marguerite’s anger: indignation at her daughter’s marriage “drove from her heart all other passions, so as to reign there alone.” But a second lawyer on the anti-Tancrède side (arguing for Henri de Chabot) did refer in veiled terms to Marguerite de Béthune’s adulteries. Society women had supported Marguerite, he argued, because her version of events shows “the power of their sex, and that a wife may present her husband with children he knows nothing about, as a gift of the Gods and of Fortune.” Marguerite should not be allowed to present an illegitimate child as the duke’s own—should not be allowed to falsify the family’s inheritance, and thereby still further extend women’s dangerous social power. On both sides, then, the Tancrède episode touched on the issue of dynastic capital, and as a widely followed case it placed those issues at the center of Parisian discussion. Each of the main litigants presented herself as sustaining the Rohan inheritance, material and symbolic; each argued that the other’s uncontrolled passions threatened the family. Anger constituted one such disruptive passion, but the greater danger was love: Marguerite de Rohan’s love for an unworthy husband, according to her mother; Marguerite de Béthune’s affection for an illegitimate child and a long-ago lover, according to the daughter’s lawyers. In the background lurked the still larger question, that of “the power of their sex,” men’s fear that aristocratic women would abuse an already large social role. Before the courts could decide between these claims, military accident settled the matter. Apparently hoping to secure the Parlement’s support for his case, Tancrède joined the frondeur army and was mortally wounded in a minor skirmish. For some, that death in combat confirmed the young man’s Rohan identity, by showing that he had inherited the family’s military courage. Most contemporaries remained skeptical, however, and in any event the scandal had already caused impressive damage. A mother had publicly

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 111

2/16/15 2:26 PM

112

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

accused her daughter of kidnapping, attempted murder, and an unheard-of degree of disobedience; she had dismissed her son-in-law as an unworthy adventurer, a claim that implicitly dismissed the couple’s descendants as well. In turn, the daughter had accused the mother of folly, and the son-in-law had added references to adulterous love. The Tancrède episode demonstrated the explosive potential the aristocratic family carried. But the episode also demonstrated the family’s recuperative powers. After the death of her Catholic husband, Marguerite de Rohan returned to her family’s Reformed faith, and there took place some degree of reconciliation between her and her mother. To be sure, on her deathbed, Marguerite de Béthune still felt it necessary to forgive her daughter “freely [de bon coeur] for all the ills she has done me,” but she also noted their common religious commitment and asked God “to take pity on my daughter, above all concerning her children,” by allowing them to stay within the Reformed church. And the family suffered no lasting repercussions from their spectacular squabbling. On the contrary, under Marguerite de Rohan’s leadership, the Rohan continued their march toward greater prominence and prosperity. But the potential for disruption also remained, for the Rohan continued to allow their daughters great freedom, and to tolerate the romantic entanglements that ensued. No scandals attached to Marguerite de Rohan after her marriage, but two of her three daughters did attract notoriety. The oldest (married to a Breton nobleman significantly below her in rank) had high-profile relationships with the vicomte de Turenne, then with the bisexual chevalier de Lorraine, notorious as the duc d’Orléans’s lover. Fifteen years later (Madame de Sévigné reported), she found herself excluded from Marly for having “shown too much warmth for M. de Schomberg”; the phrasing suggested how much initiative she had in the relationship. Meanwhile her younger sister Anne, the princesse de Soubise and Marguerite’s favorite daughter, was known as the mistress of Louis XIV, apparently with her husband’s knowledge and approval. Saint-Simon claimed that the couple’s rise to princely status constituted one reward for this complaisance. The Rohan still needed the advantages that women’s independence brought, as a way of carrying out tasks no one else could perform, but they continued also to pay the price for that independence.

Anxiety, Faith, and Lineage All these experiences generated significant psychological strains, for the Rohan women felt the contradictions between their lived experiences and contempo-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 112

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

113

rary ideas about gender roles—partly because to some extent they themselves shared those ideas. For all her self-assertiveness, Marguerite de Béthune might also employ the language of female submissiveness, emphasizing her lack of “ability to write history” and asking her readers to excuse her “incapacity” as a woman writer; and though she occasionally laughed about her adulteries, at other times she sought to present an image of conventional marital fidelity. Anyone familiar with the Rohan household, she wrote in her memoir, could attest that “from the day I first lived with him up to the day of his death, we never had separate rooms, whatever illness either one of us had.” Her testament, composed about a dozen years after the Tancrède case, expressed more directly her moral worries. Presumably with her adulteries in mind, she confessed to meriting God’s punishment; in fact, she wrote, “I ought to receive a thousand times worse punishment, having again and again and in so many ways attracted my God’s wrath, from whom I have received so many gifts, and of whom I have made myself so unworthy.” Even so strong a figure as Marguerite could not effortlessly disregard contemporary moralizing. Given these ethical tensions, it is not surprising that women of the family displayed occasional signs of psychological strain. For Catherine de Parthenay, strain expressed itself in lassitude, which she complained of throughout her long and active life: in 1617 (still fourteen years before her death) her daughter described Catherine’s “extreme weakness” and “lassitude,” and a year later, Catherine herself spoke of “my customary lassitude.” At least where others were concerned, Catherine understood such physical symptoms to have psychological causes. To a friend, she explained confidently that “part of your indisposition came from the demands on you” in arranging her son’s marriage. Presumably she understood her own ailments in similar terms. For Marguerite de Béthune a generation later, strain took the form of anxiety and restlessness. Late in life, according to Tallemant, she was “very anxious . . . she always believes that the air is better in the place where she is not than in the place where she is.” Her daughter Marguerite de Rohan seems to have experienced similar emotions. In 1667 she sought astrological advice before traveling from Paris to Brittany for business, in order “to know whether it will be fortunate or not.” The astrologer’s response focused on the issue of anxiety: “This whole year your mind will be very anxious, agitated, troubled, melancholic, fearful.” Whatever emotions either Marguerite may actually have felt, contemporaries like the astrologer believed anxiety was a likely condition.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 113

2/16/15 2:26 PM

114

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Religion offered one answer, and their testaments show the seriousness with which these women had thought about their beliefs. Catherine de Parthenay, Marguerite de Béthune, and Marguerite de Rohan each opened her testament with a lengthy expression of faith. They all spoke in personal, reflective ways, but they also demonstrated their allegiance to the fundamental ideas of Reformed belief, describing themselves as deeply aware of their sins and weaknesses, while also trusting in God’s grace and love. Catherine de Parthenay asked God “to pardon my faults and cleanse them away in the blood of his son our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom alone I have my perfect confidence”; she asked that she be allowed “by his pity to commune with his elect”; she acknowledged Christ as “our only savior” and asked “that in this assurance I be able at my last breath to say to him, with a full heart and full of faith, ‘I come to give my soul to you, for you have redeemed me, O God of truth.’” Marguerite de Béthune offered a similarly clear statement of Reformed principles in her own testament, written some fifty years after her mother-in-law’s. She, too, spoke of her confidence in God’s mercy and her belief “that the blood of his son washes away all our sins . . . and he promises that, trusting in him, we will be in no uncertainty about those promises”; and she asked that at the hour of her death, her “faults not terrify” her or weaken her faith in God’s promises. Catherine and Marguerite had both thought seriously about the content of their faith, and both expressed a clear sense of its specific contours. Men of the family offered no comparable expressions of belief—quite the contrary. Throughout his life, Henri de Rohan spoke with detachment of his religious beliefs, and he may have contemplated conversion to Catholicism; his death more resembled that of a Roman hero than a Calvinist saint. His younger brother Benjamin avoided questions of belief altogether in his testament, composed on his deathbed in 1642. He mentioned neither sin nor divine mercy, speaking only in conventional terms of the brevity of life, and briefly thanking God for his continued soundness of mind. He composed the document for essentially practical reasons, he explained, “desiring to ensure that death not surprise me before I have, according to my duty, disposed of myself and my concerns.” The complex, often contradictory expectations that the family placed on women, it seems, made them especially receptive to the reassurances the Reformed faith offered them, and especially reflective in their understanding of it. These women expressed a further concern in their testaments: they linked their expressions of religious belief to the problem of familial continuity across

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 114

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

115

the generations, and they made other efforts to solidify the family’s ongoing unity. Of course that included invocations of the family’s past; Anne de Rohan in 1646 and Marguerite de Rohan in 1683 each affirmed her wish to “die in the religion in which [she] was born, baptized, and instructed.” But above all they spoke about the future, urging their children to remain faithful to the family’s traditions. Catherine de Parthenay expressed this concern already in 1604, in language that made clear how important the matter was to her: “I exhort my children, commanding them with all the authority that a mother can have and begging them for all the love they bear me and the obedience they wish to render me, to persist to the last breath of their lives in the Reformed religion in which they have been by the grace of God nourished and raised.” In 1660, Marguerite de Béthune expressed the much greater worries that her generation faced, asking God “to please have compassion on my daughter above all in the matter of her children; I beg Him also to be willing to bless them and give them the grace of placing them in His church where His commandments are purely taught and which my daughter and I profess and were born in and where God gave us sacred knowledge of him.” Their testaments offered these women a last chance to superintend the family’s spiritual evolution, and (so their language suggested) they undertook this task with both a lofty sense of duty and anxiety about the future. By the time of Marguerite de Rohan’s death, in 1684, there could be no question of her children remaining faithful to the family’s religious past; the Reformed religion would soon be officially outlawed, and already most of its practices had been radically curtailed. Marguerite nonetheless expressed concern for her descendants’ spiritual lives in terms that echoed those used by her mother and grandmother. She asked her children “with all the strength of my soul to embrace with living faith the reform of religion and to keep in mind that it is founded on God’s word, whom I pray, again with all my heart, to be willing to inspire them in what they must do for His glory and their salvation.” For Marguerite de Rohan, a loosely defined commitment to “la réforme de la Religion” offered a plausible adaptation of the family’s traditions, now that the Rohan could no longer practice the Reformed religion itself.

Toward a New Familial Order? In the following generation, even that language of pious tradition disappeared; the religious mentality that had united the Rohan women all through

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 115

2/16/15 2:26 PM

116

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

the seventeenth century had apparently been displaced. In her 1709 testament, Marguerite’s favored daughter Anne made no mention of her family’s religious past, and showed no concern to direct its future beliefs. Even for herself, she made few spiritual requests, asking only that she be buried with a minimum of pomp, that her son the bishop of Strasbourg serve as her executor, and that her two daughters at the convent of Jouarre pray on her behalf; and she thanked God that her husband and son had survived the military actions in which they had recently fought. Like her mother, Anne de Rohan-Soubise on her deathbed thought also about the practical elements of her family’s future, but in that domain as well, the differences were dramatic—so dramatic as to suggest a fundamentally new understanding of the family itself. Alongside her own testament, Anne and her husband drew up a joint testament defining what was to happen to their properties in future generations. For that purpose, they established a “substitution,” a device derived from Roman law that had become popular among the French aristocracy. To the extent possible, they required that their goods pass entirely to their oldest son and grandson, and thereafter “from eldest to eldest and from male to male,” to the complete exclusion of any who had entered the Church and the “perpetual exclusion of daughters in the direct line” in favor of males from collateral lines. Only if there was no male descendant in the male line from their son could a woman inherit—and then only on condition that she “marry a descendant of Charles de Rohan prince de Guémené” (an early fifteenth-century ancestor), as Anne herself had done. With their joint testament, the Soubise thus established a degree of primogeniture that the family had never previously practiced. In earlier generations, the Rohan divided their resources so as to establish autonomous cadet branches, whatever advantages eldest sons enjoyed; and their marriage contracts insisted that the Coutume de Paris—notable for its egalitarian provisions concerning siblings and its full inclusion of female heirs—serve as the basis for family decisions. The prince and princesse de Soubise were now reversing that orientation, requiring that as much as possible of the family’s property pass to a single heir and reducing other children to the smallest shares possible. Multiple forces lay behind this effort. It accorded with the increasingly masculinist orientation of royal jurisprudence during these years, which increasingly insisted that properties pass through male lines, and it reflected the family’s new religious situation. Now solidly Catholic, the Rohan-Soubise

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 116

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

117

could draw from the Church both wealth and eminent positions for their younger children, allowing the ruthless concentration of their own resources on oldest sons. Four successive generations of Rohan-Soubise younger sons would become bishops of Strasbourg, enjoying immense revenues and princely status within the Holy Roman Empire, and a series of daughters would lead wealthy convents. (Other branches of the family would have similar success, notably occupying the bishoprics of Bordeaux and Cambrai.) The new policy also responded to the economic dangers facing the eighteenthcentury aristocracies. It offered a defensive strategy, focused on preserving inherited capital rather than expanding the family. Whatever the causes involved, the Rohan-Soubise testaments indicated a fundamental change in the family, and above all a new logic governing gender relations within it. All members of the family would now subordinate their interests to the needs of dynastic preservation, defined in terms of a single male line. In that sense, the eighteenth century began a new era in how the Rohan organized themselves. Over the three previous generations, the Rohan had shown equal concern with sustaining their family’s collective health, but they had understood that task in fundamentally different ways. They shaped their management of dynastic capital according to a basic belief: men were to seek greatness in the public realm, in war and politics, leaving family management to women, as an inferior domain of only private interest, an impediment to great doings. In one sense this division of familial labor expressed early modern sexism in its crudest form, by putting into practice beliefs about women’s inability to fill society’s most important roles. But dividing duties in this way also gave the Rohan women immense power. Charged with directing all aspects of the family’s development, personal, intellectual, and economic, women’s decisions affected farmers, businessmen and suppliers, lawyers and local officials, lesser nobles and others who sought its patronage. This understanding of women’s role produced other blurrings of gender differences. If they were to manage the family effectively, they had to be well educated, confident about their abilities, and mobile, and they had to participate independently in the social life around them, because so much important business took place in social settings, at court and in conversations with officials and others. Some degree of sexual freedom was the almost inevitable result: Henri de Rohan’s aunt, wife, and granddaughters all had extramarital sexual encounters, and his daughter married for love. Such freedom typified seventeenth-century Parisian society, and plausible stories of female adultery

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 117

2/16/15 2:26 PM

118

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

circulated about many of the aristocracy’s other great families. Marie de Rohan, from the family’s Guémené branch, was the wife first of the king’s principal adviser, then of a duke, but neither position limited her sexual adventures. There were similar stories about the Condé family, heirs to the throne before 1601, and about Henri IV’s own ex-wife. Women brought distinctive commitments to their decisions about family management. At least some saw themselves within a succession of women, which they had an obligation to sustain. Catherine de Parthenay’s family had given public expression to this idea: women of the lineage had traditionally taken the Parthenay surname, whereas men had taken that of Larchevesque. In the same spirit, upon her death in 1624, the unmarried Henriette de Rohan left all her possessions to other women of the family. Her real estate holdings (a Paris mansion and the estate of La Garnache) went to her sister, along with a large cash gift, and she bestowed cash and jewelry on a niece. There was nothing for her brothers; indeed, her testament did not mention them. For Henriette, the interests of women in the family superseded those of the men who carried its name and represented it in the public sphere. More fundamental to their families’ collective lives, women brought to their management role a determination to sustain their own ancestral lineages, in both symbolic and material form. There were multiple ways of doing so, many of them likely to benefit all family members. Celebrations of the family’s past boosted everyone’s standing, and so did many individual achievements. But family resources were ultimately finite, and their distribution inevitably favored some and harmed others, creating the constant possibility of disrupting the family’s collective life. The possibility was realized in extreme form when Marguerite de Rohan succeeded in establishing an independent Soubise dynasty, significantly weakening her son’s positions and permanently dividing him from his sister and brother-in-law. To note these forms of women’s power and independence is not to deny the importance of sexual oppression in early modern society. A society so committed to the masculine ethos of military glory could scarcely have avoided a harsh gendering of roles, and some restrictions on women became more severe as the period advanced. Yet for the Rohan women, exclusions and opportunities evolved together. Beliefs about women’s subordination excluded them from public life, but enlarged their power over family management and enhanced their personal freedoms; celebration of aristocratic dynasticism created contradictions between the multiple dynastic traditions represented within a single

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 118

2/16/15 2:26 PM

women, gender, and capital

|

119

family, and thus opened other possibilities for individual choice and action. As one of Europe’s greatest families, the Rohan epitomized the early modern social order, and they enthusiastically believed in its dogmas. But they also displayed the complex interplay of group traditions and individual desires within that order, and the unpredictable results their interaction could produce.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 119

2/16/15 2:26 PM

4 material contexts: wealth, income, strategies

Like other grandee families, the Rohan stood atop a vast economic enterprise. In the mid-seventeenth century, their estates extended into about one-seventh of the villages in Brittany, then the wealthiest region in France, and they owned smaller outposts in nearby provinces. These properties directly connected them to thousands of lesser folk. Hundreds of minor nobles fell under their influence through the bonds of feudal tenure; lordship had weakened since the Middle Ages, but estate owners still owed ceremonial fealty and cash rents to feudal superiors like the Rohan and were expected to display a more informal loyalty as well. Directly or indirectly, the Rohan estates also employed hundreds of ordinary Bretons, and many more had to use Rohan courts of law, markets, and mills. Resources of this magnitude gave grandee families an outsized importance in the economic life of seventeenth-century France. Each one’s economic weight equaled that of several thousand ordinary people, several hundred country gentlemen. Understanding the Old Regime requires understanding how these enterprises functioned. That is the perspective from which I here examine the material contexts of the Rohan’s lives. The questions that I address are specific, and some involve technical details: How much money did the family have, where did it come from, and how did its flow vary over time? How much did the family spend, and on what objects, persons, and projects? How were its houses arranged and furnished? How much did it borrow, from whom, and under what conditions? How alert were family members to their economic circumstances, and what conceptual tools did they bring to economic matters? For all their specificity, these questions are the necessary starting point for something more

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 120

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

121

basic: understanding how the control, use, and exchange of material goods helped define the Rohan’s place in the society around them. Some of these questions can be answered only approximately. Most of the Rohan’s estate papers were destroyed during the French Revolution, when local administrators ransacked the family’s record room in the castle of Blain, and the remainder were dispersed; family accounts must once have been numerous, but none now remain. But a variety of more fragmentary sources survive, including notarial contracts, estate leases, and some feudal overviews. From these mixed materials, it is possible to reconstruct the main elements of Rohan economic life. The first of those elements consisted of a string of feudal estates, located mainly in Brittany, the family’s ancestral home, and generating a very large income. But landownership was not the defining fact in the family’s economic life. Even their estates derived most of their value from sources other than agricultural activity, and especially from taxes on local commerce. More important, the family’s income from the crown roughly matched what it received from its landholdings; it was altogether reasonable that the family focus its attention on state service, and hence on Paris and the court, rather than on its provincial home. That reality leads to a third theme in the Rohan’s economic history, the constant presence of economic insecurity. The Rohan enjoyed immense resources, yet throughout the seventeenth century they were also deep in debt, and indebtedness continued to rise thereafter. In 1781 the prince de Soubise was advised that if he failed to reorganize his finances, he would “soon be hopelessly ruined”; a year later there was the RohanGuémené bankruptcy, involving the amazing sum of 33 million l. Of course, specific circumstances and personalities contributed to these troubles. In the early seventeenth century, Henri de Rohan’s political adventures were immensely expensive; later generations had to cover the costs of governorships, military offices, and palaces, and they were given to other forms of wild spending as well. Yet individual misadventures and foolishness could have such effects only within larger contexts that made them possible. Controlling so very much territory, the family simply could not insulate itself from individual excesses, and even periods of careful management did little to change its situation. Nor could it insulate itself from reliance on others: lenders, state officials, its own employees. The Rohan exemplified the economic power of the great French aristocracy, but they also showed the limits of that power.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 121

2/16/15 2:26 PM

122

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

A Feudal Complex The contours of Rohan estate ownership become visible in the early seventeenth century, thanks to a political event. For a decade, the crown had responded to the family’s rebellions with relative tolerance, but in 1627, with a new rebellion under way and the siege of La Rochelle beginning, it shifted to harsher measures. At the king’s urging, the Parlement of Toulouse declared the Rohan brothers guilty of treason, and the king ordered the confiscation of their properties; these were to go to the prince de Condé, as a reward for leading the royal armies. Condé had once been a Rohan ally, but since his own arrest in 1618, he had become a loyal servant of the king and of Richelieu and a determined enemy of the Rohan, whom he blamed for his incarceration. Condé was also known as the canniest businessman among the high aristocracy of the early seventeenth century. After his time in prison, so La Rochefoucauld believed, Condé “limited all his ambitions to enriching himself,” and it was in that spirit that he approached the Rohan confiscation. Watching these events unfold, the duc de La Force reported to his wife on Condé’s efforts, and concluded that “he shows himself very determined about these confiscations.” Under this energetic guidance, a mixed commission (a royal magistrate and two Condé representatives) arrived in Brittany on 30 October 1628. Over the following weeks, they traveled from one Rohan estate to another, taking formal possession of each, consulting with tenant farmers and officials about revenues and staffing, and arranging for the destruction of fortifications. The point was both juridical and managerial: at each stop, the commissioners formally established Condé’s ownership and assembled the data that he would need to manage the properties in the future. They started at Blain, near Nantes, at the eastern edge of the province, then moved west, to Rohan properties at Josselin, La Chèze, Rohan, Pontivy, Loudéac, and Landerneau, at the far western tip of the province. They returned via Morlaix, another Rohan center, and made it back to Blain in late November, after nearly four weeks on the road. What they found was an impressively organized feudal complex, which made the Rohan a significant presence across most of the province. Estates belonging to collateral branches, notably to the Rohan-Guémené, magnified their influence, and it extended into nearby Poitou as well: there the estates of La Garnache and Beauvoir-sur-Mer belonged to Henri de Rohan’s sister, Le Parc-Soubise to his mother. Governorships completed the picture. Rohan’s

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 122

2/16/15 2:26 PM

map 2

Rohan power in western France: properties and positions.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 123

2/16/15 2:26 PM

124

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

father-in-law, the duc de Sully, had been governor of Poitou, and for a time Rohan succeeded him in the office; Rohan was also governor of the mainly Protestant city of Saint-Jean-d’Angély, in Saintonge. In the following generation, Henri de Chabot (Rohan’s son-in-law and successor as duc de Rohan) held the governorship of nearby Angers. Over the generations, the Rohan had thus established a chain of properties and positions that extended across western France, connecting the family’s traditional Breton base with the Protestant strongholds to the southwest. The ten or so Breton lordships that the commissioners inspected in 1628 had been grouped into four main units. Blain was the easternmost of these and the smallest, but it was nonetheless the real capital of this territorial empire— the family’s principal Breton residence, the site of its tombs and archives, and the center from which its other properties were administered. Simple logic determined these functions. Blain was only thirty kilometers from Nantes, once capital of the autonomous duchy of Brittany and after 1532 the most important site of royal administration in the province, and it offered the Rohan easier access to Paris than did their other estates. In 1628 Blain still had no honorific title; only in 1660, at Marguerite de Rohan’s request, would Louis XIV raise it to the status of marquisate, noting that its “great revenue” made it suitable to “sustain a fine title.” Its small size was only relative: the property extended into fourteen parishes. The family’s other estates had longer-established titles. The comté de Porhoët centered on the château of Josselin, which had been elegantly rebuilt around 1500; this was an important region for textile manufacturing, and a description of the estate in 1471 already listed a dozen mills within its boundaries. Porhoët abutted the third of the family’s estates, financially the most important, the duchy of Rohan itself. It lay in the middle of the province, its capital the fortress of Pontivy; contemporaries estimated that it covered roughly 1,600 square kilometers. Rohan had already in the Middle Ages been more than a mere lordship, and in his 1603 letters elevating this territory to the status of a duchy, Henri IV lovingly described its remarkable qualities. It was “the most ancient vicounty in France . . . which for more than 1,200 years has held this title and which extends into forty parishes”; the half-dozen lordships composing it likewise “are among the finest and most ancient estates of our kingdom,” bringing their owners honorific rights, high revenues, “control of numerous cities, large towns, châteaux, and forests,” and “the finest fairs of our province of Brittany.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 124

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

125

Finally, there was the principality of Léon, at the western end of the Breton peninsula, centering on the town of Landerneau and covering about 1,200 square kilometers. This too was an ancient honor, and their ownership of it provided the basis for the Rohan’s claim to be the first lords of the province, and therefore hereditary presidents of the provincial estates—a claim that would be disputed up to 1789 with the La Trémoille family. In emphasizing the cities and towns that the Rohan estates included, the king’s letters captured an important fact about the them: urban centers were important sources of Rohan income, and its lordships gave the family control over a significant share of the province’s urban life. Blain itself had almost 500 households in 1633, and a population that fluctuated between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals; Pontivy had 2,900 inhabitants in 1667, Josselin 2,500, Landerneau 5,000. In the seventeenth century such numbers sufficed to make these real cities. They remained important business centers, controlling significant trade routes, and they had cultural and architectural amenities that sharply distinguished them from the surrounding countryside. In mid-seventeenth-century Blain, a small group of poets (drawn primarily from local administrative families) met regularly, in imitation of Parisian salon life. A 1638 description of Pontivy noted its solid stone construction and its enjoyment of the “rights and privileges of a city.” The historian Alain Croix has identified forty cities as constituting seventeenth-century Brittany’s urban network, the main points through which the province’s economic activity moved. Six were Rohan seigneurial centers, and in them the family exercised multiple levels of authority. Much of these cities’ business flowed through Rohan seigneurial markets or was subject to other forms of seigneurial taxation, and their litigation took place in Rohan law courts. But there were also ceremonial occasions designed to demonstrate the family’s power. Every year at Pontivy, for instance, a complicated procedure brought together the town’s newlyweds in a performance for their lords’ benefit. On these occasions, under the eye of the local judge, each man who had wed during the previous year was required to break three staves on a pillar in the marketplace, in a form of horseless jousting. Rohan seigneurial rule touched city dwellers as much as peasants, and it touched their personal as well as their business lives. The Rohan cities also remained centers of effective military power. Five of the estates that the commissioners visited in 1628 included fortifications, and each was staffed by a small garrison: a captain and a dozen soldiers at Josselin,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 125

2/16/15 2:26 PM

126

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

with roughly similar numbers elsewhere. Feudal authority underlay these arrangements. The Rohan claimed the “right to install and maintain captains, lieutenants, guards, and porters . . . , along with the right to require guard service of his men who are tenants on his own fief and domains, and on his vassals’ men and tenants.” During times of war, they claimed, they also had the right to mobilize the nobility of their estates and lead them into battle. At court, far from the scene, there remained in 1628 some doubt as to the real military potential that these sites represented. In discussing the matter with Richelieu, the chancellor Michel de Marillac reported that “some in the region tell us” that the Rohan houses “were not strong,” and therefore could be left intact. But onsite inspection had confirmed the real danger that Blain represented, and (he added) “Josselin is no less strong and important.” Hence, at Marillac’s urging the king added to Condé’s grant the requirement that he demolish these fortifications. In fact, Marillac’s anxiety was well founded, for the Rohan castles had recently shown their effectiveness, during the last phase of the Wars of Religion. An armed band—nominally royalist, but in fact mainly interested in looting—took over Blain in 1588 and managed to hold out there for the next five years, destroying several buildings so as to improve the site’s defensive capacity. Blain was well enough fortified that a mere forty-five brigands sufficed to hold it against ligueur forces numbering more than six hundred men. Alert to this still-recent history, the crown had already sought before 1628 to weaken Rohan feudal power, and it would continue to do so in succeeding decades. But this generations-long offensive against Rohan feudal power proved far less effective than its rhetoric suggested. Work in fact began on dismantling their fortresses, but it stopped the next year, when the properties were returned to them. Traveling through the region in 1638, DubuissonAubenay described Pontivy as “built of stone, with four towers, one of them ruined; the three others remain, round, with pointed tops. From the outside, it’s fairly impressive, and within it’s not much”; Blain likewise kept its towers and its military potential long after its supposed dismantling. It was only in 1696 that the crown commissioners revoked the Rohan’s right to demand military service of their tenants, and even then, their announcement emphasized the Rohan’s right to appeal to the king. The military significance of the Rohan estates declined over the seventeenth century, but the process was slow and incomplete.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 126

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

127

The Elements of Lordship and the Mercantile Economy So closely connected to urban social and political life, the Rohan estates were also closely connected to Brittany’s urban economy; trade, manufacturing, and administration provided the bulk of estate revenues, agriculture only a small share. That distribution was especially visible in the principality of Léon, the westernmost of the Rohan’s properties. At the end of the seventeenth century, the intendant Béchameil de Nointel noted that western Brittany had to import even the most basic foodstuffs, so poor was its arable land. But (he added) the region’s numerous ports had always permitted a wide array of mercantile and manufacturing activities: cloth and paper were manufactured for export to England, the Low Countries, and Spain; wine and iron were imported through the region’s ports, for distribution to the rest of the province; there was fishing and a lively trade in horses and leather. Drawn by all this activity, as many as six hundred English merchants resided in the Rohan town of Morlaix. Trade on this scale meant that market dues supplied a crucial component of what the principality brought in each year. At the port towns of Landernau and nearby Daoulas, the Rohan taxed wine, iron, herring, butter, salt, charcoal, and leather, and the family was intent on expanding such possibilities. When Marguerite de Rohan gained the status of a marquisate for her estate at Blain, she also secured from the king the right to hold there a yearly trade fair and to build a market that would attract merchants to it. The Rohan properties even included one large-scale manufacturing operation, the iron forges of Les Salles. Set within the forest of Quénécan, near Pontivy, this was a genuine industrial complex, which included two forges and two furnaces, a series of secondary buildings, a mill and the hydraulic system needed for its operation, and the tools needed in the production process. The Rohan rented the site, buildings, tools, and access to the forest to a series of substantial businessmen, drawn from outside the province, and these arrangements generated large revenues: in 1641, the rent was set at 3,400 l. yearly, in itself more than half the rent for the estate of Blain. Only the estates of Pontivy and Rohan, the principal components of the duchy of Rohan itself, allow more precise evaluation of just how important mercantile activities were to Rohan finances. Table 1 sets out the revenues that these two properties generated at Henri de Rohan’s death, in 1638. The table has important gaps. It leaves out altogether sales of offices, provisions of

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 127

2/16/15 2:26 PM

128

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

clerical benefices, and forest revenues, all of which might be very high in some years, insignificant in others (these revenues will be discussed below). The table also omits the yearly ground rents and more occasional transfer taxes that villagers paid; in most years these probably constituted about 11 percent to the estates’ total revenue. For all its limitations, table 1 nonetheless provides useful insights into how these estates were structured. Table 1 establishes a central fact about the Rohan’s estate ownership. Direct control of land constituted a small portion of revenues—in the duchy of Rohan itself, less than 5 percent of the total. That percentage is especially low given the legal leverage that the Rohan held over all land within the duchy. As their declaration of ownership of 1638 proudly explained, property within the duchy was governed by a “special usage and custom” known as the domaine congéable. That law meant that all lands within the duchy “belong to the lord, who can at any time and whenever it pleases him dismiss his tenants,” by reimbursing them for the cost of the buildings on the land. Such powers were inconceivable in most other parts of France. There, villagers enjoyed almost full property rights over their holdings, and seigneurial lords seeking to expand their direct control of the land had to buy it, at market prices. In contrast, the Rohan could expel peasant proprietors at any moment, at low cost. Had they been interested in enlarging their agricultural operations, the law gave them ample means of doing so.

TABLE

1

Seigneurial revenues, Pontivy and Rohan, 1638 Income for  (in livres tournois)

Revenue source Judicial and legal fees Market fees and sales taxes Mills Labor services Wine press and oven monopolyc Ground rents, land transfer fees, and tithesd Short-term rentals Total

Pontivy

Rohan

, , , b 

 a 

,e  ,

Total

Percentage of total



, , , b 

. . . . .

  ,

,e  ,

. . .

Source: ad l-a b 1985, “Aveu et declaration . . . du duché de Rohan,” 1638. a Market fees only. b Incomplete. c Wine press figures for Pontivy only; oven monopoly figures for Rohan only. d Ground rents and land transfer fees for Pontivy only; tithes for Rohan only. e Rough estimate.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 128

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

129

They lacked that interest. To be sure, the Rohan prized the legal position the law accorded them, but they mainly prized its symbolic benefits: their “special usage and custom” accorded them absolute superiority over their tenants, and (as their stress on the particularity of the arrangement indicated) it distinguished them from seigneurial lords elsewhere. In the later sixteenth century, a writer in the family’s service offered additional reasons for family pride in this usage, by attaching it to the Rohan’s long history. In fact, his studies had revealed, the Rohan right to expropriate their tenants derived from the family’s Trojan ancestry; the first Rohan settled in Brittany soon after the fall of Troy, and at that time they preserved “the form of inheritance they had held in the time of Priam at Troy, who held his people as slaves, much like the usages of the Vicounty of Rohan (which we call the domaine congéable).” The domaine congéable thus provided public confirmation of two sides of the Rohan’s self-image. It reflected their millennia of distinguished history, their descent from great kings, and it displayed the immense power they held over local society, a variant (so the author suggested) of ancient slavery. But pride in the domaine congéable did not encourage its use as a mechanism for expropriating peasants and establishing new forms of agricultural production. On the contrary, the Rohan’s interest lay in retaining an abundant population in their territories, rather than in moving to the direct management of agricultural acreage, for their income came primarily from monopolies on services that the population required. Rohan mills (which all residents of the duchy were obliged to use) brought almost one-fourth of the estates’ total income, judicial services (in the form both of seigneurial courts and of registry offices) 16 percent. Above all, there was the role of commerce. All trade within the duchy had to be carried out in the Rohan’s markets, with ducal fees on every transaction, and these market fees constituted 40 percent of estate revenue. In these ways, the duchy remained a feudal enterprise, for its economic functioning rested on political power, the power to compel local residents to use the duchy’s courts, mills, and markets. Yet feudal profits were heavily dependent on the health of the region’s mercantile economy, and on the health of its middle classes. Above all, income depended on population: the more tenants on the Rohan estates, the higher their revenues. The same calculations—preference for high population, indifference to direct control of the land, attentiveness to urban economic functions— shaped the Rohan’s approach to another component of their estates, seigneurial offices. In this domain, the French monarchy had long set the example. Aware of elites’ growing enthusiasm for civil offices, the crown had begun

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 129

2/16/15 2:26 PM

130

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

systematically selling judicial and bureaucratic positions in the 1520s, establishing a specific treasury to handle the proceeds and an increasingly complex jurisprudence to govern ownership rights. By 1600 this market in offices had assumed enormous proportions, extending to public functions of all kinds, from the loftiest judgeships to minor clerical functions. Some time elapsed before estate owners began imitating these practices, but it was inevitable that they would eventually do so, for through the seventeenth century the distinction between royal and seigneurial office remained hazy. Just like the crown, estate owners such as the Rohan employed numerous judges, clerks, and other officials, and these officials performed the same functions as their counterparts in the royal administration, under roughly the same conditions. Rohan judges heard the same kinds of cases and made similar decisions as the king’s; they had the same educational background, received similar fees, and followed the same procedures. In fact, administering such large jurisdictions as the Rohan controlled brought greater rewards than many second-tier royal jurisdictions, in terms of both money and prestige. Hence by the 1620s, estate owners throughout France had begun selling positions as judges, tax collectors, forest inspectors, military officers, sergeants, and notaries. Like the king himself, they lost by this commerce much of their control over their own officials—but the revenues they gained made the trade-off seem worthwhile. The rewards might be enormous. In the aftermath of the 1628 confiscation, it was widely believed that in some years they made as much as 10,000 l. from office sales, about 20 percent of their estates’ total value. Of course such income fluctuated wildly from year to year, but even a single transaction might generate returns of that order. Early in the seventeenth century, the sale of the sénéchaussée de Pontivy brought in 25,000 l.; the same office at Rohan itself brought, 2,000; that at La Trinité, 2,500; that at Josselin, 15,000. Far lower down the official hierarchy, a forest guard at Loudéac in 1664 paid 2,000 l. for his position. The size of these transactions illustrates yet again the fundamental paradox that characterized Rohan estate ownership. On the one hand, these estates derived the bulk of their revenues from feudal powers, inherited from the Middle Ages. On the other hand, feudal revenues rose and fell with the dynamism of the region’s middle classes, its merchants, officials, and litigants. Medieval inheritance and modernizing development were inextricably linked. Forests formed the final component in the Rohan estates, and the family owned immense wooded tracts: the largest, the forest of Loudéac, near Pon-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 130

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

131

tivy, covered about fifty square kilometers. Like office sales, their value fluctuated wildly from one year to the next, and over the decades. In 1628, in the midst of the confiscation process, one of Condé’s advisers reported of the Rohan forests that “most are in ruins, since recently a large number of oaks were cut, and the best of those that remained were taken to construct ships for the king.” A notarial agreement a decade later confirmed this assessment: “The whole of the said forest . . . has been greatly diminished by the large and continual cuttings that have been undertaken over the last forty years.” Even in these circumstances, however, forest revenues were substantial, for seventeenth-century conditions ensured high demand for wood. In 1627, wood sales from the duchy amounted to 6,085 l., about 15 percent of the duchy’s total value; a year later, the total was 5,465 l.

Revenue over Time As they proceeded with the 1628 confiscation, Condé’s advisers sought to provide their master with an overall estimate of what his new properties were worth. “The common belief here,” wrote one, “is that M. de Rohan’s Breton revenues amount to 40,000 l. yearly, and sometimes to 50,000 l. when office sales and extraordinary wood sales are included.” The estimate was on the pessimistic side, but it roughly corresponded with other indications from the 1620s and 1630s. When tenants presented their leases to the commissioners, the total came to 46,650 l., without including sales of wood and offices. Ten years later, upon Henri de Rohan’s death, his widow agreed to a jointure of 18,492 l. 6 s. 8 d., calculated as what she and her daughter “have estimated to be one-third of the normal [certain] revenue of the lands and estates” that he held at his death, indicating a total landed revenue of just over 55,000 l. These revenues far surpassed those held by the duke’s siblings, suggesting how firmly the Rohan had concentrated their resources in the hands of their older son. The duchy of Soubise, which in 1632 would go to the duke’s only brother, had revenues of about 12,000 l. La Garnache, which passed from the duke’s aunt to his sisters, was worth about the same. Soubise and La Garnache were both substantial properties, which allowed their owners to play prominent roles in French society—but they came nowhere near matching the family’s Breton properties. But there were also signs that these assets had been poorly managed over the previous decades—not surprisingly, given the family’s long absences from

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 131

2/16/15 2:26 PM

132

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

the province and its political concerns. Condé’s adviser suggested as much, in noting the dilapidation of the Rohan forests, and (alert to his master’s seriousness about financial matters) he promised to send within a week “a detailed memorandum of the condition of the whole property,” as the basis for improving its exploitation. The need for attentive management was inextricably bound up with the estates’ character. With income deriving from an immense array of specific revenue sources, spread over a large territory and resting on historical powers and claims, there was a constant danger that assets might be lost sight of or contested. An extreme example arose in 1609, concerning appointments to seigneurial offices. Before the seventeenth century, such positions had scarcely counted as an economic resource. Now they represented an important source of value—and a prominent Breton nobleman, the marquis de Rosmadec, claimed to control all of them within the duchy of Rohan itself, on the grounds that a Rohan ancestor had established his family as the duchy’s “enfeoffed hereditary senechal.” In fact the claim was plausible, since during the sixteenth century many families sold such seemingly insignificant feudal rights, but now it threatened the estate’s value, and the Rohan fought back. Thirty years of litigation followed, a sign of the high financial stakes involved, and the final settlement was appropriately generous. In 1641 Marguerite de Rohan paid her antagonist 36,000 l. to drop his claim, almost a year’s income from the duchy. This was precisely the sort of mishap that a Condé could envision himself correcting. Litigation supplies one indicator of the Rohan’s lackadaisical oversight through the early seventeenth century, for (as their struggle with the Rosmadec demonstrated) maintaining feudal rights demanded frequent recourse to the law. A full picture of Rohan litigation is impossible, but a summary survives of their efforts to defend their barony of Soubise. The list of their cases includes twenty-seven from the first half of the sixteenth century, roughly one case every other year; then nine cases between 1551 and 1600, a rate of fewer than one every five years; and then a mere ten during the first half of the seventeenth century—none of them between 1629 and 1650. Litigation revived only after 1650, under the energetic supervision of Marguerite de Rohan, who fought seven cases between 1651 and 1659. For the full century before she took command of the property, the Rohan had shown minimal energy in defending their rights. Personal engagement thus mattered for the family’s economic trajectory, but so did larger forces, of which war was the most visible. Brittany had been an important theater in the struggles of the Catholic League, from the late

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 132

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

133

1580s to the late 1590s. As elsewhere in France, farming and commerce suffered from the violence, and as a result the Rohan, like other landlords, had to accept diminished rents. In 1604, Catherine de Parthenay recalled the miseries of those years, when “I can say that I found the affairs of our house in such a piteous state” that family ruin seemed a real possibility. War also disrupted the Rohan’s property management in more fundamental ways. In this regard, the crucial event was Blain’s takeover by the troop of brigands who occupied the site until 1593. Up to that point Blain had been the Rohan’s principal residence and the center of their Breton administration; they had constructed there an elegant set of buildings, with long galleries in the Italianate style, two tennis courts, and gardens. But five years of military occupation and two protracted sieges destroyed much of the complex, and thereafter the family’s life centered on Le Parc, Catherine de Parthenay’s family home in Poitou, which had the further advantage of proximity to La Rochelle and other Protestant centers of the southwest; there was no effort to rebuild Blain. Political events had made the Rohan absentee landlords, in circumstances where close attention to management details was especially necessary. The combined effects of changing management styles and economic circumstances can be seen in table 2, which follows the revenue of Pontivy—the largest single component of the Rohan’s Breton properties and the core of the duchy of Rohan—from the late sixteenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries. The table presents the property’s rental value in two forms, as denominated in livres tournois, France’s official money of account, and in grams of silver, which contemporaries used to measure the true value of money. Both measures show that estate revenues stagnated over the first years for which data survive; at the time of the Condé takeover, Pontivy brought its owners only slightly more than it had forty years earlier. This long period of stagnation ended in the late 1620s, just as the Rohan recovered their properties, and over the next half century, Pontivy’s revenues surged. Already in 1635 real revenue was 50 percent greater than it had been in 1623; by 1665 it had doubled, and it remained at that level through at least 1680. Better administration produced only some of this improvement. After assuming the management of her properties at mid-century, Marguerite de Rohan proved herself an astute and tenacious manager, but the takeoff had in fact begun a decade earlier, at a moment when the Rohan were especially distracted from the tasks of estate management, with Henri de Rohan in exile in Venice, Benjamin in London, their mother nearing the end of her life, and disputes looming over her inheritance. Individuals’ management styles, it seems,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 133

2/16/15 2:26 PM

134 TABLE

2

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Rents of Pontivy, 1574–1759 Livres tournois

–  – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Grams of silver (index, 1585 = 100)

, livres , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

                

Source: ad m 1 mi 338/4; silver equivalents from de Wailly, Mémoire.

mattered less than economic contexts, and through the mid-seventeenth century these favored estate owners; with population at very high levels, tenant farmers competed for leases, and agricultural commodities sold at high prices. In Brittany these good times continued longer than elsewhere, for its geography placed the province at the center of the booming Atlantic economy. Its numerous ports and western situation made it easily accessible to England and Holland, the economic powerhouses of the era, and it offered a natural transfer point for some trade within France, given its ready access to the Loire Valley. After 1650, other regions entered a time of difficulties, marked by harvest failures and mass immiseration. But its place in the era’s international commerce meant that Brittany continued to prosper—and the Rohan estates were organized to profit from its commercial dynamism. This prosperity vanished during the last decades of the seventeenth century, for reasons that were primarily political. Louis XIV’s foreign policy increasingly set France against Brittany’s natural trading partners, Britain and the Netherlands, and it made increasing use of trade as an arm of international policy. Dutch and English merchants were denied access to Brittany, and the region’s shipping was disrupted; the royal navy conscripted sailors; foreign merchants established new commercial circuits, so that even the return of peace did not restore prewar prosperity. Brittany had been one of

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 134

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

135

the country’s most prosperous provinces in the mid-seventeenth century; by the eighteenth century it had become an economic backwater. The Rohan estates faithfully mirrored these changes. By the early eighteenth century, real revenue at Pontivy had fallen back to levels last seen in the 1620s; by 1750 there had been some improvement, but these only restored real revenue to what it had been in the 1650s. Contemporaries understood the processes at work, well before their full effects became visible. Already in the 1660s, the tenant holding the lease on the duchy of Rohan complained of his losses due to “the cessation of commerce caused by the war between France and England,” which had emptied the markets of Pontivy; “the merchants of Saint-Malo and Morlaix, who usually set out their goods there,” were an especially notable absence. Local officials confirmed this analysis, and in response the duchess granted a significant rent reduction. Thirty years later, circumstances had worsened, and hopes of an eventual recovery had dimmed. In 1698 the intendant Béchameil de Nointel described the catastrophic situation in the Rohan-dominated region of Léon: a “very considerable” trade in canvas had flourished “before the war, and still more before the embargo on cloth from England, Holland, and Spain, for since that prohibition, the merchants of the region note that trade has diminished by two-thirds, and since the war it has altogether collapsed.” In other regions of France, seventeenth-century landlords suffered from the limitations of the French agricultural system. The Rohan’s losses came instead from the interplay between international commerce and the monarchy’s hegemonic ambitions. Against these declining rents, the Rohan could balance one important improvement in their economic circumstances: the rapidly growing value of their forests. Wood played a central role in early modern economic life. It was a necessary component of all building projects, and construction was a booming industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Paris grew and other cities acquired more up-to-date looks. Navies also were expanding fast, adding to the demand, and in France wood remained the only fuel for heating, cooking, and industrial uses. In the seventeenth century, these imperious demands balanced against a new awareness that supply was limited, and possibly insufficient. Excessive cutting, the grazing of livestock, and other destructive practices had left French forests in a degraded condition, magnifying the value of what remained. Forest owners’ revenues rose, chiefly benefiting the great aristocracy, who held the large majority of such properties.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 135

2/16/15 2:26 PM

136

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

The Rohan typified these patterns. In 1628, Condé’s agent had estimated the family’s forest revenues at well under 10,000 l. annually. Fifty years later, the forest of Loudéac alone generated about 20,000 yearly, and revenue continued to rise thereafter; between 1715 and 1722, total forest revenues had risen to just over 67,000 l. annually, probably ten times the revenues of the 1620s. This constituted a qualitative change. In the early seventeenth century, forest revenues counted for about 15 percent of the Rohan’s landed income; a century later, they made up about 40 percent of the total, and probably more. Their forest revenues sustained the Rohan in the early eighteenth century; indeed, thanks to these properties overall income had actually increased. But reliance on the forests also posed special dangers, precisely because they could so readily be converted into immediate cash. In 1648, Marguerite de Rohan sold outright the forest of Héric, associated with Blain, for 122,000 l. The more typical expedient was overcutting, producing an immediate boost in revenues but compromising the estate’s value in future years. Partly to conserve forest resources against these temptations and partly to meet the needs of the royal navy, the state increasingly intervened in forest matters; forest owners might find their revenues diminished or blocked for several years, as royal inspectors reviewed practices and property titles. The Rohan’s reliance on forest revenues created new vulnerabilities even as it created new wealth.

Politics and Money Compared to their estates, other forms of property had minimal significance in Rohan budgets and financial strategizing. To be sure, they owned impressive Paris houses, and these might be rented out for brief periods, as the vagaries of inheritance left individuals with more houses than they could use. But they continued to view these as potential residences, not revenue-generating investments, and surplus housing was quickly sold. The family also occasionally held bonds issued by governments or individuals, but these too were essentially accidental investments, incidental to transactions whose main purposes lay elsewhere. When Marguerite de Rohan sold her aunt’s estate of La Garnache, in 1644, the purchaser made over to her bonds worth 15,803 l. yearly; a decade after her father’s death, she continued to count money that the republic of Venice owed him among her assets. But most such assets were quickly converted to other uses.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 136

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

137

In the seventeenth century, only one other set of revenues rivaled landownership in the family’s budget: those associated with the state. But these constituted a resource of immense importance, much more than a mere supplement to landownership. Salaries, pensions, and gifts from the crown were in fact crucial to Rohan finances, and at some points they dwarfed income from all other sources. Just how large the state loomed in the family’s economic calculations is suggested by Henri de Rohan’s peace negotiations with the crown during the 1620s, following his successive rebellions. In 1623, for instance, he drew up a memorandum laying out what he expected in a peace treaty, and his demands totaled well over 1 million l.: 200,000 l. as a straight cash payment, 600,000 l. as compensation for the governorships that the crown had taken from him, the restoration of his own pension (set at 45,000 l. annually) and those of his mother, sisters, and brother, and small pensions for nine of his followers. The crown refused one of these demands, for the governorship of the strategically important city of Montpellier, but it agreed to all the rest, providing Rohan with a huge financial windfall. Contemporaries estimated Rohan’s landed income in the 1620s to be about 50,000 l. His pension from the crown brought him almost as much each year, and his additional demands brought the total far higher. Rohan might reasonably view the state as his primary economic resource, his lands as a supplement. For his brother Soubise, the disproportion between crown subsidies and landed income was even greater. In his 1623 list of demands, Rohan listed his brother’s pension as 10,000 écus yearly, then worth 30,000 l.; at this time, the duchy of Soubise itself generated an income of only about 10,000 l. yearly. Such disparities remained in the following generations. Louis XIV raised Soubise to the status of principality, and the family made much of this glamorous title. But Soubise itself in the later seventeenth century continued to produce only modest revenues: in 1676 it was rented out for 16,000 l. and its capital value was counted as 415,000 l. At the same moment, just one of the princesse de Soubise’s pensions from the king amounted to 20,000 l. yearly, and the prince himself held a military position valued at 360,000 l., the governorship of Berry, and the royal post service between Paris and Orléans. Although in some ways distinct from the state, Church revenues offered another revenue stream that was essentially bound up with politics; whatever additional formalities might be required, high Church offices in France were ultimately the king’s to give out. Even as Protestants the Rohan had collected some revenue from the Church, for their estates drew fees from benefices that

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 137

2/16/15 2:26 PM

138

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

the family had originally endowed, grouped in the family accounts with revenue from office sales. But the return to Catholicism allowed the family to pursue bishoprics and other high Church offices, and in the eighteenth century they gained an impressive array of the richest positions in France. Together, state and Church revenues allowed a scale of expenditure that the Soubise lands could never have supported. But these benefits were only one element in a complex system, and gaining them required a series of calculations, investments, and risks. As a start, obtaining money from the king usually required proximity to him. Hence, early in the seventeenth century Henri de Rohan bought a house at Fontainebleau, at that time the king’s favored palace; in 1673, the prince and princesse de Soubise bought half of a large house at Versailles, and then three years later a share in a house at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, still an important site of court life despite the emergence of Versailles. None of these was an overwhelming expense, but neither were the costs negligible; the Saint-Germain house could not be paid for with ready cash. Military offices required much greater investments. By the early seventeenth century, governorships of cities and provinces and military commands had come to be bought and sold, following the model already established for the staffing of judicial offices. But the straightforward regulations that governed civil offices did not apply to military positions, partly because the political stakes were so much higher. On the one hand, the king was more likely to confer gifts and other advantages on great nobles who acquired such positions, as a way of helping his favored candidates control key territories. But for the same reasons, there was no guarantee that governorships or military commands could be freely inherited or sold, or that the crown would subsidize even transactions that it favored. For the great military nobility, the venality of offices had some of the qualities of a lottery. The large sums involved magnified these risks, and so also did the realities of military service, whose dangers meant that families might lose their investments at any moment. Early in the seventeenth century, Henri de Rohan mainly benefited from this chaotic situation. In 1605, the king apparently gave him outright the position of colonel des Suisses, charged with leading the crown’s Swiss mercenaries; nine years later, Rohan would sell the position to the maréchal de Bassompierre for 105,000 l., the equivalent of a middling landed estate. Nor apparently did Rohan have to pay for the still more valuable governorship of Poitou, which his father-in-law, Sully, had held; the crown permitted Sully to convey it without charge, and Rohan took over its functions in

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 138

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

139

1620. A mere three years later, Rohan received from the crown a promise of 600,000 l. as compensation for this governorship and that of the city of SaintJean-d’Angély, which had been confiscated in response to his rebellions. But in the next generation, the financing of such offices became significantly more difficult. Marguerite de Rohan (Henri’s daughter and heir) financed for her husband the acquisition of another provincial government in western France, that of Anjou; the price was 300,000 l., but when Chabot died, in 1655, most of this money was lost; on taking back the position, the king reimbursed only 100,000 l. of what the family had spent, and years later the debt remained a burden. Military positions required comparable outlays. In 1667, for instance, Marguerite de Rohan superintended for her son-inlaw the prince de Soubise the purchase of a position in the king’s guards, for the stunning sum of 360,000 l., 87 percent of the value of the duchy of Soubise itself. A generation later, the Rohan-Soubise had 1 million l. tied up in two such positions, as governor of Champagne and lieutenant general in the king’s armies. In this case the king guaranteed their reimbursement by whoever succeeded them in the positions, but immobilizing so much capital in itself represented a significant burden on family finances. In return for immense investments, these positions offered the possibility of immense returns. Through mid-century, governors still had direct access to the resources of the regions they controlled; and they could profit from using their position as a platform for rebellion, as Henri de Rohan did in the 1620s and as his son-in-law did during the Fronde. Military positions offered both opportunities for low-level profiteering and the hope that spectacular battlefield success would attract public notice and royal favor. Though in fact the later Rohan had few battlefield successes, on balance they probably gained more than they lost from these positions; certainly the prince and princesse de Soubise gained more from the king than they paid in acquiring offices and homes. But such returns were never certain or immediate, for neither proximity to the king nor battlefield triumph guaranteed monetary rewards. The cycle of investment and expectation guaranteed only intimate entanglement with the monarchy and its politics.

Marriage and Money Like politics, aristocratic marriage arrangements required complex decisionmaking, in which evaluations of the participants’ status, political connections,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 139

2/16/15 2:26 PM

140

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

and personal qualities all mattered. But so did money, for at every aristocratic marriage, large sums changed hands, and other financial commitments were made that might determine a family’s destiny for generations. All these assessments entailed imperfectly informed guesses about the long-term future, but once marriage decisions had been made there was no going back on them: formal contracts set out the detailed obligations of all concerned. Dowries constituted the most conspicuous element in aristocratic marriages, and brought with them the largest financial gambles. In appearance, these were straightforward transactions, by which the bride’s family transferred a set sum of money to her new husband’s control, usually based on her inheritance prospects; in the Rohan’s milieu, dowries had already reached high levels in the early seventeenth century, often involving 100,000 l. or more, and they rose significantly thereafter. But multiple dangers attended this apparently simple transfer of assets. If the marriage terminated without issue, the husband’s family was required to restore the dowry to the bride or her heirs, and whatever the circumstances, he was responsible for preserving it intact; any losses had to be made good eventually, and any alienated properties had to be replaced. French judges listened sympathetically to complaints on these matters, and wives had no great difficulty in securing legal “separation of properties” from their husbands in cases of suspected mismanagement. In such cases, the couple remained married, and might well continue living happily together, but the wife resumed control of her dowry and other properties. She acquired other important rights at her husband’s death: management of whatever properties she had brought to the marriage, lifetime rights to a share of his income (in most regions set by customary law at onethird of the total), lifetime use of one of his homes, her jewels and other personal items, and a share in any property that had been acquired during the course of the marriage. Marriage brought aristocratic husbands immediate access to large resources, but it also established long-term obligations that might devastate their family’s finances. As they drew up their marriage contracts, families did their best to limit this potential devastation, but prudence was only one consideration on these occasions. Display also mattered, for the signing of a marriage contract was a public event, witnessed by the grandest figures that families could recruit. Henri IV signed that of Henri de Rohan and Marguerite de Béthune; Louis XIV signed those of the couple’s daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Hence families tended to make large promises, which they might later find difficult to keep. Of course, over the long run, families could expect

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 140

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

141

the costs and benefits of marriage to balance out, with dowries paid out to daughters roughly equaling those received by sons. The Rohan might expect to do even better, because their lofty social status could be traded for financial advantages in marital bargaining with less prestigious families. But there could be no certainty about any of these expectations, for the marriage contract made promises about a distant future, which events might drastically reshape. In any case, given the small numbers involved, no individual family could assume that its own costs and benefits would even out. Marriage was a speculative financial game, and like politics it produced winners and losers. In the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Rohan counted among the winners. René de Rohan’s 1575 marriage with Catherine de Parthenay brought a significant and permanent addition to the family’s resources, for she inherited a large fortune, and the couple had five surviving children, eliminating any danger that properties would have to be returned to her family. René’s only sister Françoise remained unmarried after her unsuccessful pursuit of the duc de Nemours, and eventually her properties came to René’s two sons (Henri and Benjamin) and three daughters. Only one of those daughters married, further concentrating the family’s resources. Henri’s marriage with Sully’s daughter Marguerite de Béthune brought another immediate infusion of cash, at an especially troubled moment, and numerous other benefits. In 1638, just after Henri’s death, an agreement between Marguerite de Béthune and her daughter explained that Marguerite’s “dowry money both as spelled out in her marriage contract and from other arrangements” amounted to 300,000 l. In fact, even this was an understatement. Rohan had received 320,000 l. at the marriage itself, followed over the years by other gifts that helped underwrite his political career. Yet this favorable situation already concealed problems in the family’s marital accounting, and those problems would become more serious over the following decades. Henri’s brother Benjamin never married, denying the family the dowry that a bride would have brought him. Worse, as of 1660 (more than fifty years after the bride’s death) the Rohan had still not paid 60,000 l. of what had been promised Catherine de Rohan, the only one of Henri’s three sisters to marry; the interest payments amounted to 3,000 l. yearly, and there were additional yearly payments of 2,200 l. to cover inheritance rights that had arisen after the wedding. Meanwhile Marguerite de Béthune’s long widowhood (she survived her husband by twenty-two years) created its own problems. For a time she and her daughter Marguerite de Rohan (the couple’s only child) lived happily together, minimizing expenses and concentrating

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 141

2/16/15 2:26 PM

142

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

resources. But in 1645, Marguerite de Rohan married the glamorous, impoverished, and Catholic Henri de Chabot, immediately disrupting relations with her mother and transforming an advantageous situation into a heavy liability. Infuriated by her daughter’s choice, the elder Marguerite reclaimed her dowry and asserted her widowhood rights to Rohan income; for the next fifteen years, she received 48,000 l. yearly from her daughter. The situation was all the more difficult in that the politically ambitious Chabot committed the family to major expenditures without bringing any new resources to the family. Despite the cost of providing for her mother, Marguerite de Rohan illustrated just how much marital demography had favored Rohan finances. Over the full century before 1662, her family had paid out only a single dowry, and she had come to hold most of what had belonged to her unmarried greataunt, her two unmarried aunts, her unmarried uncle, and her father. But in the next generation the situation changed dramatically. Marguerite had only one son but three daughters, and she arranged marriages for all of them, at stunning cost. Two of her daughters received dowries of 300,000 l. each, the amount that, sixty years earlier, had made Marguerite de Béthune one of the most eligible brides of her generation; the third daughter married a Rohan cousin and received a still more generous settlement, a total grant of 600,000 l., two-thirds in the form of the principality of Soubise. These commitments inevitably generated financial trouble, for there was no compensatory inflow of dowry money. When Marguerite’s only son married, a decade after his sisters, he received a cash dowry of only 150,000 l.; his bride was an heiress, with connections to both the high robe and the court nobility, but her wealth would reach the family only in the future. In addition, with her son’s marriage Marguerite now occupied the position that her own widowed mother had held; until her death five years later, she received one-third of his income as her jointure. Under these pressures, in 1690 (twenty years after her marriage) the family still owed one of Marguerite’s daughters 100,000 l. of her dowry, and lawsuits had been launched on all sides. After a century of gains, the Rohan now experienced the darker sides of marital economics.

Spending Spending patterns during these years compounded the problem. Heavy spending of course had always characterized the European aristocracies, for

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 142

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

143

conspicuous consumption demonstrated standing, taste, and the capacity for leadership. But the seventeenth century gave extra weight to these old habits. Competitive pressures to spend heated up, as new groups like financiers now also sought status through spending and as the aristocrats themselves encountered one another more often in Paris; at the same time, a much larger array of goods was now available. Just how burdensome such expectations had become can be glimpsed from the arrangements surrounding the marriage of Louis de Rohan, in 1678. Up to that point, his mother, Marguerite de Rohan, had rigorously controlled Louis’s inheritance; now they settled accounts, setting what she had spent over the previous years on his behalf against the income that his properties had generated. Louis’s upkeep (she claimed) amounted to 10,000 l. yearly during his childhood (from 1653, when he was three years old, to 1664). Thereafter, the trajectory of expense was upward: to 15,000 l. yearly during his adolescence, followed by the enormous expenditure of 60,000 l. for his expenses during a single year spent traveling through Italy and Germany; like his grandfather the duke Henri, Louis de Rohan was expected to familiarize himself with Europe as a whole, enacting the family’s claim to be European princes rather than mere French aristocrats, but he was also expected to spend freely and have with him a large and conspicuous party. Returned from his travels and now an adult, Louis’s expenses now came at the rate of 30,000 l. yearly. This enormous sum—three times the gross income of many leading provincial nobles, over thirty times the income of a statistically typical nobleman—supported only one individual, and sufficed only to cover his basic living expenses. Rohan’s three surviving sisters and his mother were accounted for separately, as were capital expenditures, interest payments on loans, and the like. The Rohan had no difficulty in spending the whole of their income. Where did the money go? Food constituted a first significant outlay, because of the amounts the family itself consumed and the hospitality it was expected to extend to others. His contemporaries believed duc Henri de Rohan to be unusually restrained in such matters, in keeping with his leadership of the Reformed cause, yet even he purchased vast amounts of food and drink. On November 29, 1619, while he traveled through Poitou with a party of about twenty horsemen and a few others, his agents purchased “thirteen dozen loaves of bread,” half a sheep, two partridges, a capon, two “river birds,” two rabbits, eighteen carp, “some oysters,” thirteen pounds of butter, eight dozen eggs, “some milk,” and four pâtés. Only a few vegetables (some “vegetables for soup and salad”) counterbalanced this abundance of protein and bread.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 143

2/16/15 2:26 PM

144

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

These purchases sufficed for just one day, and the next day’s shopping list was much the same, though the party remained in the same town: more bread, “a sheep and a quarter of beef and fresh pork,” six partridges, six capons, five more “river birds,” four dozen eggs, six pounds of butter, four pâtés, more salad, some spices, “capers and onions.” There was also “some fruit” and three pounds of sugar. Of course there was wine as well, about seventy-five pints daily, divided between cheaper wine for the party’s servants and something better for its gentlemen. Food purchases like these served the practical needs of a military group like Rohan’s, whose intense exertions generated high nutritional needs, but they also made a strong public statement. Few in seventeenthcentury France could view meat as other than a luxury, to be consumed in small quantities and on special occasions; the vast majority relied on bread as their main source of nutrition. In such an environment, Rohan’s purchases of meat demonstrated wealth, openhanded hospitality, and social superiority, his own and that of the military class to which he belonged. At the most elemental level, his household was a conspicuous island of abundance in a scarcity-prone society. Rohan dining became more refined after 1650, following a Europe-wide trend. Cooking used more sophisticated techniques and higher-quality ingredients, many of them requiring transport over long distances, and cooks themselves came to enjoy higher status and higher wages from the families that employed them; by 1684, the Rohan themselves employed a “chef de cuisine,” rather than treating their cook as a mere servant. At the same time, the open hospitality of the sixteenth century yielded to more intimate dining, better suited to the new ideals of sociability that increasingly prevailed in other areas of life. But the intimacy of such occasions was only relative, for even a small dinner might include two dozen guests, and these guests expected to be served elaborate dishes and fine wines, so that the total costs of feeding these smaller numbers actually rose. In 1687, a Sunday dinner at Fontainebleau put on by the now-adult duc de Rohan included seventeen diners—for whom twenty-one pounds of meat were ordered, along with two chickens and the variety of condiments needed for their preparation. In all, the meal cost 22 l. 13 s., without including wine and without any signs of gastronomical excess; expenditures would continue to rise thereafter, as still more refined fashions in dining caught on. Servants were another substantial expense, especially early in the period. In 1540, Louis V de Rohan-Guémené, cousin of the first duc de Rohan, maintained a household of about 130 paid dependents. The group ranged in status

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 144

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

145

from “Margot la folle,” who received only her meals and no salary, to the dozen ladies who attended his wife and daughter; fifteen valets de chambre attended to Louis himself. Thirty-three servants had charge of the household’s food, drink, and table settings, and a series of eminent professionals watched over the family’s administration and health: four maîtres d’ hôtel (at salaries of 100 l. each), a physician, an apothecary, and so on. In all, Guémené spent nearly 5,000 l. on household wages. Since nearly all these figures ate at Rohan’s table, and some were provided with horses as well, the total cost was closer to 10,000 l. Rohan households shrank after 1600, following a Europe-wide trend toward more intimate modes of living. In 1633, Henri de Rohan described himself in exile accompanied by a suite of “only” fifteen, but seven years later, as his widow and daughter set up housekeeping together, the mother promised to maintain “eight persons” to accompany her daughter, the vagueness of the term suggesting the mix of servants and companions that the household included. At her death forty years later, Marguerite de Rohan’s household remained about the same size: now she had thirteen servants at her Paris house, their wages amounting to about 3,500 l. yearly, along with the additional expense of supplying them with food, drink, and clothing. There were also a handful of more exalted figures in Marguerite’s household, whose support pushed costs considerably higher. The Rohan children were educated at home, as was typical for grandee families, creating an intermittent need for tutors and other caregivers; there was the duchess’s business agent and confidential secretary, who normally lived with her but had been promised a 2,000 l. lifetime annuity if he left the household; there were two or three companions, whose loyalty she rewarded in her testament. Providing for these figures cost at least as much as the wages of the family’s servants, and probably pushed the total bill toward 10,000 l. yearly. In real terms, this sum represented much less than what the Rohan-Guémené spent to maintain their household in 1540, but it was still a significant financial burden, and some of these expenses might drag on for decades. In 1660, Marguerite de Rohan was still paying the 600 l. lifetime annuity that her uncle Benjamin had bestowed on a follower, in 1642. Like servants, impressive dress demonstrated status and refinement, and it too required significant expenditures, with few possibilities for economizing. The need for display affected men and women equally. At his death in 1647, Marguerite de Rohan’s brother-in-law owed 1,302 l. to a silk merchant, 567 l. to a “gold and silver lace merchant,” 185 l. to a supplier of feathers, 1,093 l. to

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 145

2/16/15 2:26 PM

146

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

a linen merchant, and 547 l. to his tailor—this despite the fact that he died during military campaigning in Catalonia. In the next generation, Marguerite’s son-in-law François de Rohan, prince de Soubise, ran up a debt to his tailor of nearly 6,000 l., and could not pay it off from current income; Rohan had to make over a rente that was owed him. Marguerite de Rohan herself shared the taste for magnificent fabrics, despite her Calvinist faith and widowhood. In 1660, she arranged with a Lyonnais manufacturer for about four hundred feet of “gold and silver brocade, in the design to which the said lady has affi xed her seal,” at a cost of 1,890 l. Spending on household items and furniture varied far more, according to the personal whims and social aspirations of individual family members. In the late sixteenth century, Catherine de Parthenay—intensely engaged in the intellectual currents of her time—patronized at least one fashionable painter, arranging for a family portrait by the prized Flemish artist Franz Pourbus, and her château included a “gallery of paintings and pictures” to display her collection. But her sons and granddaughter bought few pictures, and (although art collecting was already becoming a passion in some aristocratic circles) they showed no interest whatsoever in the notable artists of the era: the notaries drawing up inventories of their goods found no paintings by artists worth naming, and none evaluated at more than a few livres. That would change in the following generation, as art collecting became an indispensable marker of good taste, and (as an English visitor noted in 1698) “every one that has any thing to spare, covets to have some good Picture or Sculpture of the best Artist.” Under that pressure, the prince and princesse de Soubise included a picture gallery in their newly designed Paris home, emphasizing illustrious figures from the history of France and from the Rohan family itself. Until that point, the family’s investments in furnishings followed more conservative paths: they bought items that combined functionality with symbolic content, and that (like their clothing) conspicuously displayed wealth and grandeur. Beds offered one such form of display. At his death in 1655, Henri de Chabot (Marguerite de Rohan’s husband) left behind one bed evaluated at the immense sum of 6,000 l., and another worth 3,000 l.; by comparison, the nine horses in his stables together were worth only 2,370 l. Chabot also spent heavily on tapestries, another home furnishing that demonstrated magnificence as well as taste. His home included about a dozen tapestry ensembles, some of them very valuable: one “representing the triumph of the gods” stretched for some forty feet and was evaluated at 1,800 l.;

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 146

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

147

another, depicting “personages,” was worth 800 l. Thirty years later, his widow Marguerite de Rohan maintained these traditions. Her tapestries were less luxurious and probably older; at least one of them seems to have belonged to her husband, and none of the sets that she owned was worth more than 500 l. But the notaries counted at least forty-four individual pieces, grouped into sets that were designed to cover whole rooms. This mixture of functionality and symbolism also marked a last major focus of Rohan expenditure, but in a radically different way. Despite all the personal differences that divided them, despite their widely varying circumstances, every member of the family died holding a large stock of silverware and gems, and most held significant cash as well. Catherine de Parthenay and her daughter Anne de Rohan were famous for their Protestant commitments and literary interests, but both hoarded money and jewels: Catherine had over 10,000 l. in cash with her at her death; Anne had silver worth 3,243 l., 1,404 l. 8 s. in cash, and major items of jewelry worth 8,826 l., along with numerous others of lesser value. Duke Henri de Rohan himself left a stilllarger collection of such items: his death came at a moment of severe financial difficulty, but he nonetheless owned jewelry worth well over 20,000 l., and “the silver and gilded dinner service that madame has taken and kept for herself,” worth 10,580 l. Twenty years later, Rohan’s Catholic son-in-law Henri de Chabot displayed the same interest in objects of this kind; at his death in 1655, he owned silverware worth 12,538 l. and an astounding collection of jewelry, the major pieces alone adding up to 38,600 l. In 1660, Marguerite de Béthune died with just over 10,000 l. worth of silverware (neither jewelry nor cash was included in the inventory); twenty years later, her daughter Marguerite de Rohan owned silver worth 8,887 l. and cash worth 2,865 l. The appeal of such investments was obvious. Like beds, tapestries, and elaborate clothing, jewelry and silverware allowed the Rohan to display wealth and social grandeur; indeed, silverware was typically engraved with the family’s arms. But unlike those other consumer items, jewelry and silver could be quickly exchanged for cash or credit. The need to do so might come from many directions. The Rohan’s own history of political activism demonstrated the importance of keeping on hand easily negotiable, easily transported assets. But even without such emergencies, these assets had practical value, for they regularly provided collateral for short-term loans. Indeed, at Catherine de Parthenay’s death she left behind an “inventory of the rings, jewels, and silver that I currently have and that I have specifically pledged and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 147

2/16/15 2:26 PM

148

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

mortgaged for the payment of the money I owe to madamoyselle de la Moussaye.” Here as in many other corners of the Rohan’s economic lives, the economics of display overlapped with the hardheaded calculations of normal economic life.

Debt As in Catherine’s case, such calculations often focused on access to credit, for borrowing was a recurring necessity even in the absence of foolish expenditures. The most frugal families needed to borrow the immense sums required for dowries and military offices, and no family could count on ordinary revenues arriving exactly on schedule. Tenant farmers were often slow in paying rents, and the crown typically delayed paying pensions and other commitments. Political choices created other needs for large sums of money. From his headquarters at Coire in 1632, Henri de Rohan described his difficulties making ends meet while living in exile: “I don’t think that I can count on having a clear 4,000 écus [12,000 l.] from my properties to live on, once the interest on my debts has been paid,” and his salary from the Venetians might be interrupted at any moment. During the Fronde, Henri’s son-inlaw Chabot found himself having to pay 30,000 l. to a grain merchant while defending Angers against the besieging royal army; almost thirty years later, the sum was counted against his son’s inheritance. In part, Rohan debt expressed the family’s grand political ambitions. But debt remained high in calmer times as well. The magnitude of the problem can be glimpsed in the mid-1650s, when the crown significantly reduced official interest rates; over the next ten weeks, Henri de Chabot and Marguerite de Rohan sensibly responded by refinancing their long-term debt. The total refinanced amounted to 650,000 l. in principal, requiring annual interest payments of about 32,000 l. Almost half of that sum reflected the cost of Henri de Chabot’s governorship of Anjou, for which the couple paid 15,000 l. in yearly interest. A generation later, the situation had changed little: in arranging her son’s 1678 marriage, Marguerite took note of the 600,000 l. in long-term debt that was secured specifically by the duchy of Rohan itself, presumably not the whole of the family’s obligations. Roughly one-third of the family’s income, it seems, went to debt servicing. This level of indebtedness required an almost constant search for funds, and that search inevitably focused on Paris, the center of French financial life

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 148

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

149

as of so much else; restricting themselves to the regions where they held land was simply not an option. Occasionally, the Rohan received credit from their social equals in the Parisian high aristocracy as a by-product of real estate or office transactions, but the bulk of their creditors came from the Parisian robe nobility and from the city’s banking families. The family’s flurry of debt refinancing in late 1653 and early 1654 showed the extent of this reliance. Fifteen lenders sufficed to cover 344,140 l. of the capital that the Rohan needed at this moment, averaging 22,943 l. each; a sixteenth lender managed by himself to cover the 300,000 l. required to finance Henri de Chabot’s governorship of Anjou. Of the sixteen rentes thus constituted, four went to Parisian lawyers, and one to an institution, the convent of Val-de-Grâce. The remainder involved families from the borderland between high finance and Parisian officialdom. Six loans came from members of the Paris sovereign courts or their families, including the Chabot loan; but these included a large loan from Nicolas Lambert, president in the Chambre des Comptes and one of the city’s wealthiest financiers. There were two loans from sécrétaires du roi and one from a trésorier général de France, both positions often held by professional financiers, and two from Parisian bourgeois without professional specification. The Rohan took pains to cultivate attachments with these groups. In 1623, their longtime Breton business manager in fact married into it. “Isaac Gouret escuier sieur de la Mothe et donglepied” himself came from the Breton gentry, and to the end of his life he resided in the Rohan château of Blain. But his bride was the daughter of a Parisian sécrétaire du roi, and the roster of her friends (gathered to sign the marriage contract) showed the extent of her connections to the world of high finance: among them were a “noble homme . . . banker bourgeois of Paris” from the Rambouillet family, an “honorable homme . . . merchant” from the Gobelin family, and the writer Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, whose family also had an important place in this milieu. The marriage contract was signed in the Rohan’s Paris home, in the family’s presence; both Marguerite de Béthune and Marguerite de Rohan signed it. This was of course a gracious gesture toward Onglepied himself, as the family’s longtime agent and adviser, but it also showed attentiveness to the others present, whose own relations with the Rohan would continue over the following decades: Tallemant was a Rohan creditor in the 1630s, the Gobelin in the 1640s and 1650s. Onglepied loaned his master smaller sums: in 1635, for instance, he finally received 4,612 l. that the duc de Rohan had owed him for over twenty years; by that time unpaid interest brought the debt to 11,000 l.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 149

2/16/15 2:26 PM

150

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

This intertwining of personal service, sociability, and banking continued over the rest of the seventeenth century. Marguerite de Béthune employed “Jean Rondeau sieur de Montville her secretary” for more than a decade— but at her death in 1660 she also owed him the considerable sum of 60,625 l., “both for unpaid accounts and for money that he has provided her several times to meet her urgent business and needs.” Rondeau had certainly not raised these sums by saving up his salary. Like Onglepied, he had connections to Parisian banking milieux, and after his mistress’s death he took to calling himself “Master Jean Rondeau banker bourgeois of Paris.” Rondeau thus came close to fitting the profile of the “financier lackeys” who so disturbed contemporary moralists, men from the bottom of society who had somehow become rich by lending money. Marguerite probably did not profit directly from his activities, as some great nobles did, by using dependents as front men for their own secret investments, but their interests converged in a broader sense. Her secretary allowed Marguerite access to the world of high finance. But however close they were to their lenders, the Rohan were also difficult debtors, inevitably so, given the extent of their needs and the uncertainties in their cash flow—and perhaps also given their attitudes to debt itself, for indifference to debt figured among the qualities that contemporaries attached to the stock nobleman. Thus the Rohan might delay payments for years, even for relatively small debts, while piling up silver and other valuables. In 1653, Marguerite de Rohan and Henri de Chabot paid five years’ worth of arrears on a debt of 500 l. yearly, and then only after their creditor had begun legal proceedings to seize assets from their tenant farmers and others. The family’s suppliers might find themselves in the same position. In 1654, a braid-maker finally received from the Rohan 1,000 l. that they owed him for his services, but the payment only came two years after he had secured a favorable decision in the matter from the Requêtes du Palais of Paris, and four years after he had first formally requested the payment. Twenty years later, the story was much the same: in 1675, François de Rohan had run up almost 6,000 l. in debts to his tailor, who finally took legal action to secure payment. Did such delays in payment indicate real financial trouble, or did they merely display the great nobleman’s traditional indifference to financial obligations? In one sense, the distinction between real trouble and the structures of family finance barely existed for families like the Rohan, for they came close to financial disaster several times over the sixteenth and seventeenth

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 150

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

151

centuries. In 1534 René de Rohan and his new bride Isabeau d’Albret were “in danger of becoming the poorest nobles in the kingdom, not through their own fault, but because of very bad servants,” according to the bride’s aunt Marguerite de Navarre; Marguerite left her own family affairs behind in order to set things right for the young couple. Seventy years later, Catherine de Parthenay described for her son Henri de Rohan the dilapidation in which the family’s affairs had again fallen in the late sixteenth century; Henri’s “affairs would have been entirely ruined had they not fallen into the hands of such a personage” as the family’s loyal financial manager. In 1624 there was another troubled moment: Marguerite de Béthune formally renounced community of property with her husband Henri de Rohan, thereby letting creditors know that she would not be responsible for his debts, taking control of her dowry, and gaining access to a 10,000 l. pension promised at her marriage. Such family crises apparently disappeared after 1652. Nothing approached the disruption that the League had brought to Rohan interests, and there were no more costly political ventures like those of Henri de Rohan and his son-in-law Henri de Chabot, both of whom spent lavishly in the hope (intermittently realized) of achieving great gains. Marguerite de Rohan herself proved an excellent manager, and she benefited from circumstances as well: rising real revenues from her Breton estates, falling interest rates on the family’s debts, her status as an only child and lone heir to several fortunes, and the favor that the king showered on her daughter. Yet it is significant that these favorable circumstances brought no reduction in the family’s debts, which seem actually to have increased slightly between 1654 and 1678; if momentary crises no longer disrupted the family’s accounts, its basic expenses remained high and inelastic. As a result, by the end of the seventeenth century observers like Ezéchiel Spanheim had begun to speak in blunt terms about the Rohan’s circumstances, and in the eighteenth century they would face difficulties in raising new loans. Before 1700, lenders were still happy to deal with them, but signs of creditor anxiety were visible in the terms on which new loans were arranged after 1650. Increasingly, establishing new loans required specifying the precise properties on which their payment was set, easing the process by which unhappy creditors might seize revenues and thus guarantee repayment. Fewer short-term crises threatened the family, but the structural difficulties in its situation had become more visible.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 151

2/16/15 2:26 PM

152

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Houses, Family, and Economic Values In all these aspects of their economic lives, Rohan financial calculations overlapped with more fluid, more personal concerns. Lenders required solid collateral and charged prevailing interest rates—but the Rohan also carefully sustained personal relationships with them, even inviting them into their home. When the family bought jewels and silverware, they did so partly because such assets constituted a reliable store of value, which could be immediately mobilized; but their purchases also expressed individual tastes and familial grandeur. Political choices expressed the family’s intergenerational traditions, notably its powerful religious commitments, but these choices also always had financial dimensions, generating as they did both large expenses and large profits. Property rights like the domaine congéable were believed to express the family’s ancient and distinctive history, while at the same time defining the financial obligations of thousands of villagers. The family’s houses provided the fullest expression of this intermingling of the personal, the familial, and the financial. Indeed, in this domain contemporary language blurred the distinctions altogether, using the word maison to signify both the physical house and the aristocratic family, itself understood sometimes as a collection of living individuals, sometimes as an abstract entity that spanned the generations and displayed enduring, distinctive characteristics. This language of the maison remained stable across the seventeenth century, and even by 1789 it had changed little. But the Rohan’s management of the physical houses they lived in—and the attitudes behind that management—changed significantly. As with many French nobles, the balance of their attention shifted from their onetime provincial power bases to Paris; more fundamentally, their understanding of what functions a house should perform changed as well. For the Rohan, the sixteenth century was an era of major building projects, centering on their Breton properties. Early in the century, the family rebuilt the château of Josselin in a harmonious Renaissance style, enhancing both its military effectiveness and its elegance. But the family’s greatest efforts were devoted to Blain, which from the early sixteenth century onward served as its principal Breton residence. As such, Blain underwent repeated enlargements, becoming by 1590 an assemblage of four interconnected wings. A contemporary (probably the Huguenot grandee Philippe du Plessis-Mornay) described the result. It included three courtyards, one with a “grand gallery, two hundred paces long, very well paneled, and proportionate in height,” with

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 152

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

153

fig. 6 The landed estate as residence: Blain. Th is was one of four wings that the Rohan château at Blain included in the sixteenth century. Photo by KaTeznik. Reproduced by permission.

tennis courts (jeux de paume) at each end. Each of the four separate corps de logis had distinctive and impressive features: one of them was notable for its “hall and upper rooms,” another for its “thirty-six rooms, . . . with galleries running along them,” and yet another for “the great hall,” apparently the largest room in the entire complex. A family center of this kind reflected its owners’ mode of life, most obviously in the accommodation that its rambling structure and numerous rooms provided for servants, agents, and dependents. Several rooms at Blain were explicitly devoted to such functions. In 1535 there was “the doctor’s room,” “the apothecary’s room,” “the servants’ room,” and “the tailors’ room”; and in fact families like the Rohan typically employed full-time physicians, apothecaries, and tailors. Of course such a house had room as well for multiple branches of the family; in the mid-sixteenth century, two adult Rohan brothers resided there at the same time. Other rooms served Blain’s function as the family’s administrative center. There was “the accounting room” (chambre des comptes) (which served also as a storeroom for a small collection of firearms), “the overseer’s room,” and “the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 153

2/16/15 2:26 PM

154

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

treasury,” in which the family’s valuables were kept. These labels expressed a specific understanding of how the family’s affairs were to be managed: with a stable apparatus of accounting oversight, provided by a sizeable collection of officials. In 1540, Louis de Rohan-Guémené’s affairs were under the supervision of a “council” of eight local estate owners, one of them a councilor in the Parlement of Brittany, three others military men who held captainships of fortresses belonging to the family; all of them received significant amounts for their service. Daily administration was handled by a “general treasurer,” and above him there was “Pierre Forget lord of la Dorée, one of the auditors of our accounts, in charge of our affairs.” In effect, Blain’s architecture was a concrete manifestation of an administrative ideal, the ideal of a substantial bureaucracy, firmly rooted in the province and divided into segments that each had clear purposes and responsibilities. Many of these values and practices survived through the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as Catherine de Parthenay managed Rohan affairs—not surprisingly, since Catherine was herself a woman of the sixteenth century, born in 1554, widowed a first time in 1572, controlling Rohan finances from the 1584 death of her second husband until about 1603, and fully in charge of her own large estate until her death in 1631. At that point, the notaries found a collection of the documents concerning “the procedures undertaken at the opening of the accounting review [ouvertures de la chambre des Comptes] of the house of Rohan since 1600,” one indication that sixteenthcentury styles of financial management remained alive. Likewise, her house at Le Parc-Soubise continued (like her in-laws’ house at Blain a century earlier) to function as a center of administration, sociability, and even economic self-sufficiency. In 1631 it included a “secretaries’ room,” a “room of the ladies,” “the wool room,” the “tailors’ room,” and a “servants’ room,” along with about a dozen other bedrooms. Her kitchens and barns held the supplies necessary to feed such a numerous household, drawn mainly from her own properties. There were fourteen pieces of salted beef, thirty-eight large barrels of wine (“harvested this year from Madame’s vines”), and a large stock of flour, both wheat for the household and rye for charitable donations, and her barns housed a full array of livestock, a dozen bovines, fifteen sheep, a fattening pig, and 120 fowl. Catherine de Parthenay was certainly no country bumpkin. She paid close attention to contemporary trends in literature, art, and politics. She traveled widely and thought about her comforts; in a letter of 1619, Anne de Rohan explained to a friend her mother’s recent movements, and added that on this

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 154

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

155

occasion they would not be traveling with their cats, for her mother “had stocked all her houses with them.” But she had organized Le Parc as the real focus of her life, in ways that would have been familiar to her medieval ancestors, maximizing its self-sufficiency and its readiness to receive visitors. This household organization reinforced her larger commitment to the symbolic functions that the house performed. Over the last twenty-seven years of her life, in a series of additions to her testament, she repeatedly expressed the sense that it embodied her family’s continuity over time, and her hopes that her descendants would keep it intact. Well before Catherine’s death, however, these ways of viewing the house had become more difficult to sustain, and her sons and daughter-in-law had already adopted a fundamentally different mind-set. Events and accidental circumstances played a part in this process of disengagement. Catherine’s love for her own family’s home at Le Parc helped detach her sons from Blain and their other Breton properties, by providing the family with an alternative center of operations; and Le Parc had the added advantage of proximity to the Protestant centers of the southwest, the real focus of Rohan political interests. In any event, even before Catherine’s death her sons had left France for exile; her daughter-in-law and granddaughter remained in France, but Marguerite de Béthune was known for her restlessness, and she had no interest in settling into an isolated provincial home. In these circumstances, there was little reason for restoring Blain to its sixteenth-century splendor after the damage it had suffered during the League. But more fundamental changes also reshaped the Rohan’s views of their houses. New financial needs and new techniques for meeting them encouraged the family to fi x its attention on the bankers of Paris, and rendered obsolete the conciliar management style of the sixteenth century. After the accession of Henri IV, their politics like their finances centered on Paris and the court. To be sure, Henri de Rohan occasionally expressed nostalgia for Brittany, “a province that I can never forget, nor the friends that I have there,” as he wrote a friend in 1633. But he never revisited Brittany after 1619, and in 1622 he sent his wife to Blain to collect any valuables that remained there and have them shipped to Paris. She herself remained in the city through most of the period, securing information and using her influence on his behalf. Changing tastes also encouraged a new organization of household space. A suite of servants no longer seemed as attractive as it had in the sixteenth century; as the Rohan, like other noble families, reduced the size of their retinues, a house like Blain, with its multiple wings and dozens of rooms, was now

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 155

2/16/15 2:26 PM

156

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

more a burden than an asset. At the same time, new consumer patterns rendered irrelevant the household’s functions as a center of production, as nobles became more eager for the high-quality goods that only specialists could supply. Catherine de Parthenay’s well-stocked storerooms and barns made little sense in a society that prized elegant dining and tailoring, increasingly seen as tasks for big-city specialists. Together, these considerations increased Brittany’s social distance from Paris, and in some ways they increased its real distance as well; new standards of comfort and elegance made travel slower and more burdensome. When Marguerite de Rohan traveled to the province, in the spring of 1667, she needed the services of professional movers. Two boatmen came to Paris and arranged to load and ship by wagon as far as Orléans “all the clothing, utensils, and baggage belonging to the said lady duchesse de Rohan.” From Orléans, the travelers were to continue by barge down the Loire, and the boatmen promised them a high level of comfort: their barge was to include two cabins, “one for the said lady and her followers, with windows, and four men to row, and the other which will be for the kitchen and kitchen ware of my said lady, which will only be enclosed and in which trunks and dishware can be placed.” Marguerite apparently did not expect to rely on the materials available at Blain. Visiting her country home had taken on the coloring of foreign travel. Conversely, Paris drew steadily more of the family’s attention and resources. The sixteenth-century Rohan apparently had no permanent residence in the city. In the 1550s, Françoise de Rohan had a set of rooms at court, but her brothers remained in Brittany and visited her only when her troubles became public knowledge. But as cousins of the newly installed Bourbon dynasty, acutely alert to the advantages of contact with the king, the seventeenthcentury Rohan had much more reason to establish a Paris profile. They focused their efforts on the Place Royale, in the Marais, the section of the city that Henri IV and Sully had targeted for development at the very start of the seventeenth century. Though they left the financing and construction to private individuals, king and minister carefully superintended the Place Royale project, and they meant it to convey a message. Its large scale, harmonious design elements, and symmetrical geometry all proclaimed a king who was bringing peace and order to a previously undisciplined society; the equestrian statue of Louis XIII installed in 1639 in the center of the square confirmed the message. After his departure from office, Sully himself would construct his own immense hôtel nearby, in the rue Saint-Antoine.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 156

2/16/15 2:26 PM

fig. 7 The Rohan in Paris: the Place Royale. Two views of the Place Royale, site of the Rohan’s Paris homes through most of the seventeenth century. The first shows the Place in 1612, when it provided the setting for an elaborate royal ceremony; the second shows the Place today, now renamed the Place des Vosges. Both show the order and symmetry of its design. Top: Claude Chatillon, View of the Grand Carousel in the Place Royale, from 5 to 7 April 1612, on the Occasion of the Marriage of Louis XIII. Paris, Musée Carnavalet. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York (Agence Bulloz). Bottom: Photo by Jonathan Dewald.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 157

2/16/15 2:26 PM

158

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Not surprisingly, given their connections to both the king and Sully, the Rohan themselves acquired residences in the Place Royale early in the project’s development, although they apparently were not among its original investors. By 1610, both the duke Henri de Rohan and his Guémené cousins had houses there. Despite the discreet, neoclassical idiom in which they were constructed, these residences were big, expensive, and stylish, fully meriting their contemporary designation as aristocratic hôtels. At his death in 1638, the duc de Rohan’s hotel included multiroom apartments for his wife and daughter, “the lower hall,” “the ordinary hall,” ten other bedrooms, kitchens, and stables. The furniture that remained in the house at this point was old-fashioned but impressive, and the duke’s store of jewelry and silver was located there as well, rather than in Brittany: one bed was evaluated at 7,000 l., one tapestry at 15,000 l. An urban presence of this kind was expensive, and it demonstrated a new relationship to the city, a commitment to a high-profile presence there. The effort was all the more impressive in that the duke himself scarcely visited Paris between 1622 and his death in 1638. Paris mattered as part of a larger strategy to situate the family at the center of national life, not only for its comforts and pleasures. The Rohan kept that profile for the remainder of the Old Regime, and for almost a century they remained a fi xture in the Place Royale itself. Marguerite de Rohan, the duke’s daughter and only heir, moved away briefly, but she returned after her husband’s death, and in 1684 died in her hôtel there. In the early 1690s her only son and all three of her daughters still resided there, each in a separate residence, manifesting a common neighborhood loyalty that overrode their intense dislike of one another. Their Guémené cousins (who had their own quarrels with the duc de Rohan) remained as well, giving the family five distinct households in this one corner of the city. The Place Royale had become a significant component of the family’s identity, equaling and perhaps overshadowing the rural estate as a dynastic advertisement. This concentration ended soon after 1700, under the pressure of new fashions and new ideas about aristocratic identity. Paris remained the absolute center of the family’s life, more so than ever, but the family inhabited it in new ways—and thereby expressed new messages about themselves and their position in society. The Rohan-Soubise of course led the way, with the two adjoining palaces they constructed between 1704 and 1708, the Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan. In contrast to the family’s houses in the Place Royale, there was nothing discreet about their style. On the contrary,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 158

2/16/15 2:26 PM

fig. 8 A new model of urban residence: the Hôtel de Soubise. Two views of the RohanSoubise palace, constructed between 1705 and 1708. Designed in a restrained neoclassical style, the building nonetheless dramatically affirmed the family’s wealth and importance. Top: Jacques Rigaud, View of the Hotel de Soubise, 1750. Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York (Franck Raux). Bottom: Photo by Jonathan Dewald.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 159

2/16/15 2:26 PM

160

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

both design and setting accentuated the individual grandeur of their owners, setting them apart from all other nobles, including those of the Rohan clan itself. Only in one respect did these projects show some fidelity to the family’s seventeenth-century practices: the Rohan-Soubise at least stayed in the same district of the city, the Marais. Over the eighteenth century, the family’s other branches deserted the Marais altogether for the newly stylish areas that were being developed in the western districts of the city. Their dispersal across the city offered a visible expression of the disunity that so conspicuously beset the family from the 1680s onward. Two basic, contradictory realities structured the Rohan’s economic lives: immense wealth and financial fragility. Their incomes far exceeded those of the vast majority of French nobles—yet from the early sixteenth century to the end of the Old Regime, they experienced recurring financial crises, moments in which debts outstripped resources and basic obligations could not be met. Events and personalities contributed to each of these crisis moments. In the 1530s and again in the eighteenth century, there was naive financial mismanagement. Civil war in the later sixteenth century damaged family properties and interrupted the flow of estate income; political ambitions between 1620 and 1652 brought immense expenditures and again interrupted revenues. Yet financial crisis remained a possibility even during times of relative peace and sound familial administration. During her long years leading the family, Marguerite de Rohan displayed energy and intelligence, yet she left her only son with debts of about 500,000 l., probably more debt than she herself had inherited in 1638. Individuals’ financial skills, it seems, mattered less than the enduring problems the family faced. These were problems, moreover, to which nearly all grandee families were vulnerable. The Rohan were not the richest peers, but they were richer than most, and they enjoyed unusual access to state resources, affording them an unusual degree of protection against financial troubles. Not surprisingly, most of their less-favored fellow peers also carried enormous debts. The instability that characterized the Rohan fortune was typical of the high nobility as a whole. The Rohan’s troubles derived partly from the fact that spending was impossible to curtail even in the face of financial pressure, because spending was not an expression merely of tastes and desires—it was also an investment in status, with implications that extended to all domains of the family’s life.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 160

2/16/15 2:26 PM

material contexts

|

161

Hence the fantastic sums spent to send first Henri de Rohan, then his grandson Louis, on grand tours of Europe; these were demonstrations of the family’s European connections and significance, and thus of its aptitude for the highest state offices. In the same spirit, Henri’s rented palaces during his Venetian exile (a time when he regularly complained of lacking funds) demonstrated his importance in a new setting, and thus his suitability for a leadership role there. On a lesser scale, daily expenditures followed the same logic; expense was the precondition of prominence, from which offices and material benefits were expected to follow. Familial organization likewise required expenditures that seemed impossible to reduce. Like all noble families, the Rohan had to provide lifetime support for widows, usually set at one-third of their husband’s landed revenues. The family’s married daughters needed dowries, and these involved such large sums that payment usually had to be deferred, in some instances for decades. Additional pressure came from the diverse goals that individual family members pursued. Recreating a Soubise dynasty mattered deeply to Catherine de Parthenay in the early seventeenth century and to Marguerite de Rohan in the 1660s, but the project directly weakened their sons’ finances. Balanced against these pressures to spend were high but unstable revenues. The still-feudal character of Rohan estates made them especially vulnerable to changing circumstances, and especially to changes in Brittany’s commercial climate; and the family’s heavy reliance on income from the state posed still more serious dangers. Aristocratic families had to invest in the state before enjoying its benefits, by buying governorships and military offices, and they had to maintain a high profi le at court. These were always speculative transactions, requiring heavy investments without any guarantee of comparable returns. In these circumstances, periodic crises were inevitable. All elements of the Rohan’s economic lives thus visibly overlapped with their lives as social and political actors. Their landed estates consisted primarily of political rights, to levy market taxes, monopolize basic services, and provide justice; their governmental positions and other political engagements fundamentally shaped their finances. Across the English Channel at this time, intellectuals had already begun elaborating a different vision of the economic realm, as one sharply distinct from public life and its interactions. For John Locke and his contemporaries, property rights rested on fundamental realities of the human condition, independent of the specific social relations that

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 161

2/16/15 2:26 PM

162

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

surrounded them. They were the crystallization of human labor, and as such they required distinctive ethical rules and practical guidelines. Eventually these ideas would prevail in France, becoming the foundation for the new economic regime that followed 1789. The Rohan example suggests how much French society would need to change before those ideas could take hold.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 162

2/16/15 2:26 PM

5 followers and servants: aristocracy as collective practice

In 1613 the elderly Protestant aristocrat Philippe du Plessis-Mornay visited duc Henri de Rohan at Le Parc, the Poitevin home of the duke’s mother. Strategic differences had arisen among these leaders of French Protestantism, and Mornay hoped to effect a reconciliation. “On the way,” Mornay reported after the event, “M. de La Boulaye came to meet me, accompanied by seven or eight gentlemen, sent by madame de Rohan [the duke’s mother], with many gracious words.” They accompanied his carriage up to the house, and Mornay understood fully the warmth that the gesture implied. He understood just as well what Rohan himself (still angry about their disagreements) intended a few hours later, when the two of them dined in almost complete solitude. “I was not seen by any of his people,” Mornay reported, “not even the least among them.” Without saying a single offensive word, Rohan had staged an elaborate insult. Scenes like these played out daily across early modern Europe, teaching contemporaries vivid lessons about the realities of an aristocratic society. Meeting an important nobleman rarely involved meeting a lone individual. Much more often, one faced an imposing group, richly dressed, armed, enacting scenarios (such as those that Mornay endured at Le Parc) that their masters had scripted. Of course these followers tended to their masters’ practical needs. They offered advice, service, companionship, and protection from violence; occasionally they threatened violence against others. But an entourage performed functions that were as much symbolic as practical. Great men and women deployed their followers to assert social prominence, political influence, and wealth; as Rohan and Mornay understood, there were also more subtle messages, about respect, friendship, and the values that their masters endorsed. Conveying these messages required followers who enjoyed some

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 163

2/16/15 2:26 PM

164

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

standing of their own, like the “gentlemen” who came out to greet Mornay. Their personal eminence added to their practical effectiveness, since they could mobilize their own social contacts, and amplified the symbolic messages they conveyed, by demonstrating that their masters’ authority extended beyond mere paid menials. But for the same reasons, such followers felt entitled to voice their own ideas and desires, and they expected their leaders to listen. An aristocratic entourage expressed more than its leader’s will; followers’ interests mattered as well, and might lead the group in unexpected directions. As a result, the practices of European aristocratic life were in an important sense collective, the product of diverse interests and unpredictable interactions, involving commoners as well as nobles. No individual aristocrat fully controlled the process. Understanding that collective reality requires reconstructing the details: determining who served, how they came to occupy their positions, and how they influenced their masters. Hence this chapter explores the intricacies of the Rohan’s entourage, setting out the multiple backgrounds from which followers came and their complex relations with the family, ranging from the straightforward exchange of services and rewards to intimate attachments that engaged strong emotions on both sides. “Patronage,” “fidelity,” “créatures”—the terminology that historians typically use to describe such relationships—fail to convey the complexity of these situations, or the range of emotions they generated. Yet for all this variety, the Rohan example also reveals a fundamental transformation in the relations between the great and those who followed and served them. In the sixteenth century, landowning provided the most important matrix for the Rohan’s relations with their followers. These came primarily from the notability that resided near Rohan estates, and they were numerous; many of their families had served the Rohan in previous generations, and they expected employment and hospitality from the Rohan as their due. After about 1600, the size of the family’s entourage shrank, and the nature of the relationships within it changed. Fewer key servants were drawn from Brittany, and all now had a more complicated relationship with their masters, the result of new economic, political, and cultural forces. Effective service required new skills, and for many it required contacts with Paris, where the financial resources that the Rohan needed now had to be sought. Even families that had traditionally served the Rohan felt this change and reinvented themselves accordingly, by attaching themselves to Parisian financial and cultural milieux. Their relations with the Rohan still kept the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 164

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

165

surface appearance of feudal dependency, but the underlying realities were shifting. By the 1620s, even the aura of feudalism had mostly disappeared. Duke Henri de Rohan continued to employ a Breton finance manager, drawn from a family of longtime dependents, but none of his more intimate companions came from Brittany or from families that had served his own in the past. He chose his intimates instead from among the cosmopolitan young men he happened to encounter, most of them from middle-class, urban backgrounds, all highly educated in the humanist culture of the universities and familiar with the wider world. Henri’s daughter had even less connection with Brittany and the families who had served her ancestors; her dependents were mainly Parisians. The entourage remained an important social reality in the midseventeenth century, but it functioned in new ways.

Sixteenth-Century Patterns The sixteenth century was an age of large aristocratic retinues, and as leading Protestants, conspicuous members of an embattled minority in a violent age, the Rohan had especially good reasons to surround themselves with numerous followers. They needed protection, and they wanted to display the numerical strength of their cause. In 1561, angry because the duc de Nemours had seduced his sister, Henri de Rohan (the duke’s grandfather) showed up at court with 170 armed followers, a demonstration of force that frightened Nemours and his friends in the Guise family, as it was meant to do. Five years later, when the duke’s maternal grandfather, Jean de ParthenayLarchevesque, died at Le Parc, “so many nobles appeared to accompany his body to its grave that it was unbelievable so many could assemble in so little time. And that same week, more than five hundred gentlemen came to offer to serve the dame de Soubise, his wife, in honor of him.” For the Rohan and the Parthenay, the entourage overlapped with the local community of gentlemen; loyalty was a by-product of geography. That overlap showed itself in daily routines as well as in dramatic moments like Rohan’s visit to court and Parthenay-Larchevesque’s funeral, for fidelity and hospitality were built into the textures of Rohan lives. They themselves lived mainly in the country, in regular contact with their local dependents, making only rare visits to Paris and the court. For all his anger at what had befallen his sister, Henri de Rohan’s 1561 appearance at court was only a brief

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 165

2/16/15 2:26 PM

166

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

visit; she resided there full-time, but her brothers spent most of their time at Blain, surrounded by their local dependents. Blain itself—with its endless rooms for dependents, servants, and visitors—demonstrated their commitment to local leadership; the long list of those serving the mid-sixteenthcentury Rohan-Guémené, most of whom dined at their masters’ table, showed the same localist commitment. Feudal relations structured the Rohan-Guémené’s financial management as well their domestic service; their finances were superintended by a council drawn from the local gentry, some of them military nobles, some drawn from the robe, all of them significant figures on the local scene. Looking back from the eighteenth century, Adam Smith identified one of the economic mechanisms underlying these relationships. In societies with limited consumer options, he wrote, “a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands, . . . consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home. . . . He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependents.” At the same time, lesser nobles who lived near their estates had strong incentives to remain loyal, for the Rohan properties gave the family real powers over locals of all ranks. They levied heavy dues when land changed hands, which they could mitigate to reward cooperation, and their proprietary courts of law made the crucial decisions about all local property relations. Each side had excellent reasons to cooperate with the other. Yet even in the mid-sixteenth century, these apparently simple and traditional mechanisms concealed complexities, for neither the Rohan nor their followers lived entirely within the local sphere. The career of François Viète— one of Catherine de Parthenay’s closest followers—exemplified those complexities. At his death, in 1603, Viète lived in Paris, served the king, and enjoyed a European reputation for his mathematical investigations, but throughout his life he also served the Parthenay and Rohan families. It was a role for which he was more or less destined at birth, for he was born into a middleclass family that resided in one of the Parthenay lordships: his grandfather was a merchant near Soubise, his father an attorney and notary at Fontenayle-Comte and the owner of a small estate nearby; his two brothers would become lawyers and royal officials there. François himself also studied law, at nearby Poitiers, and he too established a practice at Fontenay. Inevitably, that situation led to providing legal services to the Parthenay, and his role quickly expanded to include much more than legal advice. Viète became the Parthenay-Larchevesque’s secretary and propa-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 166

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

167

gandist, composing a history of the family and a public defense of its actions during the first War of Religion, and he tutored the young Catherine. He served the Rohan as well, for Françoise de Rohan’s estate at La Garnache was near Fontenay. He supplied her with legal memoranda supporting her claims against Nemours and acted as her representative in Paris, and he resided for long stretches in her household. When Catherine de Parthenay married René de Rohan, the alliance further reinforced an existing system of service and support, one firmly implanted in local relationships and multigenerational expectations. But from early on, Viète participated in other networks, which extended far beyond Poitou and the Parthenay-Rohan influence. One such network was scientific, for—amid the multiple tasks he performed for the Parthenay and Rohan—he devoted his spare time to mathematical reflections. In 1570 he traveled to Paris to oversee a first published version of these, and the resulting book brought him instant celebrity, which a series of later publications would enhance. Fame did not diminish his loyalty to the ParthenayLarchevesque or end his service to them, however. On the contrary, he dedicated his first work to Catherine, in terms that stressed his debts to the family and ongoing devotion to it. But in publishing his book he redefined his relations with his employers; his achievements now brought glory to them. A second network was personal: Viète was a cousin of Barnabé Brisson, another product of Fontenay’s small administrative class, and Brisson was already launched on a brilliant judicial career. By the mid-1570s he was one of the lead prosecutors in the Parlement of Paris, and in 1580 he became one of its presiding judges; in 1589 he would take over leadership of the court’s League faction, as its premier président. Even the tragic end to his career— in 1591 he was executed on suspicion of disloyalty to the League cause— perversely demonstrated his importance. For critics and supporters alike, he had come to symbolize the Parisian judicial establishment; that was why League radicals targeted him, and why his death shocked the movement’s aristocratic leadership into reasserting its control. With Brisson’s support, Viète too joined the upper reaches of royal service, becoming first a councilor in the Parlement of Rennes, in 1574, then (from 1579 on) a master of requests serving the king directly, and getting rich in the process. His place in Parisian intellectual circles probably also owed something to Brisson, who was admired as an intellectual as well as a jurist. As with his scientific achievements, Viète’s career in the royal government was entirely compatible with ongoing service to the Parthenay-Rohan, and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 167

2/16/15 2:26 PM

168

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

they, too, vigorously supported his advancement. In 1582, Henri de Navarre wrote the king urging that Viète be restored to his position as master of requests, from which he had been suspended because of suspicions about his religious orthodoxy. The original nomination (Navarre emphasized) had come “in consideration for and at the very humble request of my uncle Rohan and my aunt the duchesse de Loudunnois, his sister,” and Navarre would share in their gratitude if Viète returned to exercising his office. Practical logic as well as personal warmth underlay their support, for the Rohan clan had much to gain from Viète holding high office. There was the honor of successfully placing a follower, and the public demonstration that this placement offered of their influence on the monarchy. There was also the chance for concrete benefits, as in Viète’s 1579 commission to supervise the management of royal forests in Brittany, a mission with immediate relevance to the Rohan’s own properties. Viète’s career thus exemplified the multiplicity of tasks that families like the Parthenay and the Rohan needed their followers to perform. Amid the religious violence of the 1570s and 1580s, there was of course still a need for followers with military skills and local connections. But cultural expertise of the kinds that Viète commanded counted as much as valor, in many circumstances for more. He offered legal skills that the Parthenay-Larchevesque and Rohan needed, and his widely admired scientific achievements enhanced their own standing; his work as a royal commissioner gave them added leverage over provincial affairs, and his situation as a high royal official and occasional courtier improved their access to the central state. To the end of his life, he remained loyal to his great patrons, and he returned often to Poitou, both to his own estate there and to Françoise de Rohan’s establishment at La Garnache. But he had also ceased to be entirely a dependent; he was now also a semiautonomous intermediary between them and the wider world. Of course Viète was unusual, and his intermediary role in part reflected his spectacular abilities. But it also reflected the Rohan’s own needs, as they found themselves dealing with an expansive royal administration and an increasingly sophisticated, Paris-centered culture. For that reason, elements of Viète’s story were found in the careers of others who served the Rohan. Starting in the 1590s, for instance, Catherine de Parthenay came to rely primarily on Jean Bidé, sieur de Heinleix, a property near the Rohan capital at Blain. Just like Viète, Heinleix was born into the Rohan entourage, to a family of officials settled in Blain, with a long history of loyal service. In 1563, “Etienne Bidé, sieur de la Babinnais et Cour-de-Boué,” was a principal judge

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 168

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

169

at Blain, and Simon Bidé was the lordship’s prosecuting attorney. Their Rohan loyalty extended to confessional choice; both were early members of the Protestant church the Rohan founded at Blain. In her testament of 1604—composed during an illness, but long before her actual death—Catherine de Parthenay wrote at length about Heinleix’s loyalty to her family: “I command my eldest son to remember and never forget the great and extraordinary services” that Bidé had performed “for him and his house.” The family’s finances would have been “altogether ruined if they had not fallen into the hands of such a personage,” and all her children had “enjoyed the fruits of his services.” Heinleix’s loyal service would continue until Catherine’s death almost thirty years later. In 1618 he served as executor of her daughter Henriette de Rohan’s testament, and received from her a bequest of 1,000 l. After Catherine’s death, in 1631, he accompanied the notaries as they listed her effects, and the final codicil to her testament asked that he manage her estate as it passed through the probate process, just as he had her daughter’s. Yet just like Viète, Heinleix was no mere local, and he enjoyed other sources of influence than his connections to the Rohan, though he lacked Viète’s access to the advanced culture of the age. As a result, he too enjoyed significant autonomy in dealing with his masters. In her 1604 testament, Catherine noted that “I made him give up a position as councilor in the Chambre des Comptes of Brittany,” in order to serve the family. But a few years later, presumably with the Rohan’s help, he received another high office, that of councilor of the crown of Navarre. Heinleix, like Viète, was thus a man of significant stature in his own right, who could be entrusted with difficult financial negotiations, and with still more complex tasks: for instance, he played an important role in negotiating the marriage of Catherine de Rohan with the German prince of Zweibrücken, a transaction that concerned French foreign policy as well as Rohan dynastic interests. Skills of this order required more than local familiarity, and they could only be had from followers who enjoyed some independence. During Heinleix’s lifetime, those realities remained hidden beneath the practices of loyalty and local attachment, but they emerged dramatically in the next generation, as Heinleix’s son cut the family’s provincial ties altogether and moved to Paris. “Noble homme Ollivier Bidé seigneur dudit lieu dagaury” became a prominent banker and Paris socialite, and he married the daughter of a wealthy goldsmith, a member of the city’s Protestant elite who held office as valet de chambre of Henri IV; two of his brothers-in-law were

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 169

2/16/15 2:26 PM

170

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

sécrétaires du roi, and he shared with them a large house in Paris. As in Viète’s case, big-city successes did not end the family’s connection with the Rohan, and Olivier still spoke of “the honor that the late sieur de Heinleix his father had of long serving” the family. But talk of honor did not lead Olivier to follow his father’s career, nor did it prevent tough dealings when interests diverged. When Marguerite de Rohan sought to end some forest rights that his father had enjoyed, Olivier threatened a lawsuit; the matter was only settled with financial compensation, in the amount of 2,300 l. His son’s immediate success in the capital demonstrated the essential independence that Jean Bidé had enjoyed all along. He had chosen to serve the Rohan, but he had never been a mere dependent.

The Decay of Local Influence Already before 1600, thus, the apparently simple workings of Rohan patronage networks concealed complexities. The Rohan needed sophisticated skills from their entourage as well as loyalty and military muscle, and they enjoyed the reflected glory of culture stars like Viète. In the decades after 1600, those needs came to dominate the family’s recruitment of its followers, at the expense of other considerations. Viète and Heinleix were unusually talented individuals drawn from the reservoir of predestined Rohan followers, those families who owned properties near the Rohan’s own and whose members had served the family for generations. Steadily fewer of their successors came from that kind of background. Instead, they were recruited primarily on the basis of ability and personal charm, with little regard for regional or ancestral attachments. Of course, changing circumstances and political accidents partially explain this shift. More fundamentally, however, it reflected changes in the Rohan’s own outlook and values. They had less interest in sustaining relationships with provincial society, and much greater concern for the other services that their followers could perform. The result was a transformation of patronage relations—and thus an important change in the Rohan’s own place within French society. New patterns of residence (discussed in previous chapters) were the most obvious source of these changes. After 1600, the Rohan simply spent less time in Brittany and Poitou, more time in Paris or (in the case of Henri and Benjamin, in the 1630s) abroad. As fashions became more sophisticated and business more complex, they also had greater need than their ancestors for the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 170

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

171

cultural and managerial sophistication that Viète and Heinleix had displayed. Of course their need for provincial connections and knowledge of the local scene had not altogether disappeared, but it had diminished significantly. Seventeenth-century religious changes had similar effects. Brittany had never been a Protestant stronghold, and after 1610 Protestant numbers declined further, as crown religious policies continued to harden. That reality confronted the Rohan with a problem unknown to most French grandees, a disjuncture between their feudal authority and their political ambition; the region of their greatest seigneurial power supplied only a limited pool of suitable followers. Characteristically, during the peace that followed his second war with the crown, Henri de Rohan set up his household in the Protestant city of Castres, in Languedoc, rather than return to his family’s homes in Brittany and Poitou. But Breton religious politics were complex, and there were possibilities on which the Rohan might have built, had they chosen to do so. At the Rohandominated towns of Pontivy and Blain, there had been intense Protestant activity throughout the later sixteenth century, under the family’s own patronage, and a century later Protestants remained numerous in the area. Despite her own Catholic marriage, Marguerite de Rohan provided them both protection and financial support, sufficiently so that Catholic authorities continued to worry to the eve of the Revocation itself. In 1643 the king’s attorney in the Parlement of Rennes complained about “Protestant services held under mademoiselle de Rohan’s authority, the one at Pontivy, the other in the market at Blain, where she has set up a temple”; in 1671 the authorities complained again about the number of Protestants at Blain, and that they were publicly displaying their indifference to Catholic ceremonies. In 1684 the complaints were even louder. Cabarets at Blain were staying open during the mass and on Sundays, “to the discredit of religion in a region full of Huguenots.” To the very end, there remained numerous Breton Protestants, only too eager to serve Rohan interests.

A View from the Province: The Le Noir Clan, Rohan Service, and Unrequited Loyalty But the Rohan wanted little to do with them, or indeed with Catholic Bretons either. The local community’s unrequited loyalty can be glimpsed from the writings of Pierre Le Noir, Blain’s Reformed pastor from 1650 until his

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 171

2/16/15 2:26 PM

172

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

exile in 1682, on the eve of the Revocation. Soon before leaving France, Pierre drew up a lengthy genealogical memoir, designed to preserve for his children knowledge of what the family’s life in France had been. Le Noir was not seeking to analyze the mechanisms of aristocratic patronage—but for that very reason his account offers an especially poignant image of the increasing isolation of families like his, as the Rohan drifted farther from the province. Like Viète and Heinleix, the Le Noir came from the local notability, and their story too included a mix of devotion to the grandees, local attachments, and cosmopolitan culture. André Le Noir began his career as a dependent of the Laval-Coligny family, whom his father had also served; he was educated at the Laval stronghold of Vitré, then at La Rochelle, and finally at the University of Leiden. His father, “who also enjoyed great influence [crédit] in the house of Laval and Vitré,” secured for him a position in the region as pastor, but after a few years the position was handed over to a brother, and André took up a more adventurous life: “He attached himself to the Rohan family and was minister of Monsieur le Duc [Henri] . . . as a domestic, following him everywhere. . . . Then, having spent several years in this way, he settled down at the Church of Blain . . . in 1625.” There he remained, accumulating wealth and honors. His bride came from the local nobility, “a person of both fine birth and merit, who was Demoiselle d’Honneur in the Rohan house,” and she brought him both properties and connections to other substantial local figures. This wealth allowed André to combine the role of pastor with that of gentleman. He and his wife “lived graciously in the house at Hinlée, which did not prevent them from leaving behind 10,000 écus of property at their deaths”; André also played an active role in the religious politics of the early seventeenth century—so much so that at one point the crown threatened to seize and demolish his house. André Le Noir thus illustrated the rich possibilities that local service still offered in the early seventeenth century. Having enjoyed the excitement and pleasures of traveling with the duke, he could finish his career as a respected local gentleman, marrying into a substantial local family and establishing a solid income of his own. But the next generation was not so fortunate, and its members found it impossible to combine as he had cosmopolitanism with local respectability. André’s only son followed the more adventurous of his father’s career paths. He was indifferent to his studies, “being debauched and a libertine, but also a man of spirit and honor.” Hoping to keep him under some degree of control, the family sent him off to serve Soubise in London, then arranged for his marriage with a comparable family, in nearby Vitré. But

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 172

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

173

“unable to subject himself to a well-regulated household life, he embraced the trade of war,” serving as a cavalryman with the duc de La Trémoille, then with the maréchal de La Meilleraye, and finally dying in battle. André Le Noir’s sister also married a military nobleman, and her sons, too, followed military careers. The alternative path was purely local, and that was the life followed by Pierre Le Noir, André’s nephew and successor as pastor at Blain. Pierre’s father had taken over the family’s ministry near Vitré when André Le Noir left it to travel with Rohan, but he died young, and Pierre himself was brought up in Rennes, at the home of his maternal grandparents. Eventually he was sent to the Academy of Saumur, the principal center of Protestant learning in seventeenth-century France, but he was never able to undertake the sophisticated foreign studies his father and uncle had experienced, nor even the foreign travel of his libertine cousin; until the persecutions of Louis XIV forced his emigration, Pierre’s life passed entirely within the confines of western France—to his own severe disappointment. Despite years of prosperous tranquility at Blain, in late adulthood he still thought enviously of his uncle’s and cousin’s wandering careers: “My natural inclination pushed me rather to the arts or to some position serving the great, or at least to reading French literature, rather than to the dead languages, for which I lacked the memory, or to the lofty enterprise of theology.” But theology it had to be, and eventually his family pushed him through his studies and pushed his uncle into retirement, freeing the position for Pierre. Comfortably installed in the Blain ministry, Pierre turned his thoughts to marriage—and above all to its practical advantages. He gave little thought to familial grandeur. Instead, he married, “realizing that at Blain there was no accommodation that I would have found comfortable, and unable to commit myself to a bachelor life with a valet or servant girl, and fearful of distracting myself from my studies because of the cares of domestic life, for which I felt myself no more suited than a child.” Hence he sought a bride “suited to my profession and temperament, one with virtue, good manners, and good conduct,” rather than one who was “rich, vain, and ambitious, who might have thrown me into luxurious spending, and into the danger of financial reverses.” His choice was the daughter of Blain’s military captain, Pierre Henriet: “She had a dowry of 5,000 l., but it was solid and she was capable of increasing it through honorable savings.” In contrast to his uncle’s adventures and wide culture, Pierre thus settled immediately into a life of modest provincial notability. Much of his time was

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 173

2/16/15 2:26 PM

174

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

devoted to literature. He produced a series of works derived from scripture and the Latin classics, and he participated enthusiastically in the local literary society that was active in mid-seventeenth-century Blain; there, he and other local bourgeois regularly discussed one another’s works, including some lightly erotic poetry, doing their best to follow along after Parisian fashions. Yet these efforts did not suffice to attract the notice of the great, and (in contrast to his uncle’s experiences) Pierre Le Noir seems to have had almost no contact with the Rohan family itself. Marguerite de Rohan had played a role in naming him to his ministry, but thereafter she disappears from his memoirs. As a young man, he had hoped to move among the great, but after 1650 young provincials like him could not count on such a career. They certainly could not base their hopes on the multigenerational loyalty that his family had shown the Rohan. The family into which Le Noir married experienced similar changes. Le Noir’s father-in-law Pierre Henriet was a minor nobleman who governed the castle of Blain during the first third of the seventeenth century, and like previous generations of the Le Noir he had traveled widely. Born in Switzerland, he served in the military there, then migrated to Paris and found a position in the king’s Swiss Guards. From that employment he passed to Rohan’s service; in the words of his admiring son-in-law, “the king, knowing that he was a Protestant and firm in his belief, gave him to Monsieur de Rohan, who brought him to Brittany around 1612 and confided to him the management of Blain castle.” Henriet was poor, but he had noble birth and personal charm, and together with the duke’s support these allowed him to settle firmly into local society. Indeed, one of the perquisites of his position was residence in the château itself, which he shared with the Rohan’s financial manager Isaac Gouret, sieur d’Onglepied. The two lived together on excellent terms (again according to Le Noir), and together they constituted the local face of seigneurial power—far more visible than the duke himself. Visibility was of course enhanced by the coercive powers that the castle warden held over his neighbors; residents of Blain and its environs owed guard service, and the warden could also call on them for some work transporting materials as well. Armed with ability, charm, and power, Henriet quickly and effectively established himself within the region’s notability, despite his initial outsider status. He completed the process by marrying a girl “who was from one of the fine families of the region and noble. He lacked the property for reaching that point, but his position, his fine physique and handsome face, above all the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 174

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

175

qualities that make for a gentleman [qui font le charactère d’ honneste homme] led him to that alliance.” His wife’s property and his own industry allowed him access to other business opportunities, including at one point renting with a partner the estate of Blain itself, and that in turn led to the purchase of some small estates in the area. The couple had a numerous family, “sending some of the boys to the schools and the others to the army.” His son-in-law had nothing but admiration for this success story: “he was admired by everyone and lived honorably,” was Pierre’s summary. Yet those successes did not yield the career patterns that earlier generations would have expected, nor did they produce undeviating feudal loyalty to Rohan interests—for even as he served the Rohan, Pierre Henriet also took the precaution of acquiring letters naming him royal captain at Blain. That move allowed him to detach himself from Rohan interests in 1628, when the crown confiscated the family’s properties. Other Rohan castle wardens were summarily dismissed, but Henriet—having presented his documents to the surprised royal commissioners—managed to retain his position and his residence in the château. Henriet understood that his interests were not altogether aligned with those of the Rohan, and that defending his own might require neglecting theirs. Nor did any of his four sons follow him in the Rohan service. Three had military careers, but none served under Rohan command or returned to Brittany. Only the fourth son remained in the region, perpetuating the family’s local eminence and connections to the Rohan family, yet even his example showed how much those connections were changing in the mid-seventeenth century. Henri Henriet was born in 1618, and the duchess Marguerite de Béthune herself served as his godmother, naming him after her husband the duke. According to Le Noir, “she had so much affection for her godson, seeing him such a pretty and flourishing child,” and the young man continued to charm later in life: “With his education and his great ability, he was a fine wit and suited to the courts of the great, among whom he had the gift of making himself loved, indeed among everyone, for he was pleasing, well-mannered, gracious, and obliging, and never spoke ill of anyone.” These qualities endeared him even to Henri de Chabot, who shared the duchy’s management with his wife, Marguerite de Rohan. Though himself piously Catholic, Chabot “took a liking to him and used his influence to get for him an appointment” in the royal forest service near Blain, an office worth the significant sum of 4,000 l. But this was a royal office, not a seigneurial one, and in fact Henri Henriet “had no position with the house of Rohan.” It was a sign of the times

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 175

2/16/15 2:26 PM

176

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

that Le Noir offered this observation as evidence of his brother-in-law’s high status: had he served the Rohan directly, Le Noir explained, “he would not have dined at the table of Monsieur and Madame, as he did a few times.” As a royal official, the younger Henriet was welcome to dine as a friend with the duke, though only occasionally. Had he been in the family’s employ, he would have been kept at a greater distance; service and sociability were now separate domains. Henri Henriet died in 1657, and his family’s connection with the Rohan soon disintegrated. The Henriet continued as captains of Blain, but they increasingly treated the office as a mere sinecure. It passed first to Henri Henriet’s son-in-law, who doubled as the lordship’s prosecuting attorney, suggesting the limited military competence he brought to the position, and then to his widow; she left the position’s duties to her own servants. When the Rohan finally insisted that it be treated more seriously, the Henriet simply left their service altogether and found another seigneurial position, with an aristocratic family in Poitou. The Henriet’s family history thus differed significantly from that of their Le Noir in-laws, but the result was much the same. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Henriet did not count on their connections to the Rohan as they planned for the future, and they carefully established alternative relationships, to which they turned immediately when trouble arose. The new realities of provincial life made these sensible strategies.

Financial Geographies: The Turn to Paris During these years, only one of the Rohan’s Breton followers came close to fulfilling the ideals of fidelity that had prevailed in the sixteenth century: this was “Isaac Gouret escuier lord of la Mothe and Onglepied, administrator [intendant] of the affairs of the house of Monsieur le duc de Rohan, residing ordinarily at the château of Blain,” as his 1623 marriage contract described him. Like so many sixteenth-century Rohan followers, Onglepied was a man of substance predestined to serve the family. His ancestors had originally come from Navarre with Isabeau d’Albret, at her 1534 marriage with René de Rohan. By 1570 they owned land in the neighborhood of Blain, and they had become Rohan seigneurial officials: François Gouret was castle warden of Blain, his son a seigneurial judge there. Like other such loyal family agents, they joined Blain’s Reformed community early in its development, and one branch of the family established itself in Geneva. At his marriage, Isaac

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 176

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

177

himself had a fortune of 60,000 l., most of it in the form of a lordship he had purchased; in addition, his position brought him 2,400 l. yearly, and he continued to buy land in Brittany in the following years. The Rohan themselves publicly affirmed his importance to them, much as Catherine de Parthenay had emphasized her debt to Heinleix. When Onglepied married, the contract was signed in the Rohan’s Paris hôtel, with members of the family present as witnesses; a decade later, squabbling with his brother Soubise over their mother’s inheritance, the duc de Rohan proposed “that at least we take some gentlemen and our mutual friends, together with you and Sieur d’Onglepied, who will look into each side’s views and arrive at a judgment, for I prefer losing through arbitration than winning through a lawsuit.” The duke’s phrasing did not place Onglepied quite among “our mutual friends,” but it did indicate his suitability for performing a crucial role in a delicate family situation. Above all, the Rohan’s attachment to Onglepied showed itself in the long years he spent working for them, from about 1600 until the duke’s death in 1638, a record of service closely resembling Heinleix’s to Catherine de Parthenay. His “good, assiduous, and faithful services” and his “fidelity and affection . . . for the business interests of the said household” (in the words of the duke’s heiress) gave him immense authority. Pierre Le Noir described him as the “all-powerful administrator of that time,” and his masters’ long absences from France made that claim a reality. When Henri de Rohan reviewed accounts with him in 1634, during a brief visit to Paris, it was apparently the first such audit in seven years. After it, he confirmed Onglepied in “the full management, government, and administration of all his properties, both personal and real property, lands, lordships, domains, houses, woods and forests, offices and officials, in any region or province where they may be situated”; Onglepied even had the authority to sell land for the Rohan, who were content to confirm his decisions well after the event. Onglepied fully embodied the definition that Antoine Furetière would later provide for the term intendant: “in the household of a prince or great lord, the chief officer, who has the care and conduct of the house, its revenues, and its business.” In all these ways, Onglepied exemplified the survival into the 1630s of sixteenth-century norms governing relations between the great and their followers, relations marked by long-term fidelity and mutual trust, local recruitment, and solid regional implantation. But in the end his situation, too, showed the weaknesses that now beset even the strongest relationships between the Rohan and the provincials who served them. Throughout the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 177

2/16/15 2:26 PM

178

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

seventeenth century, Onglepied’s family remained a presence among the region’s gentry; in 1665 the intendant of Brittany noted the properties they had acquired, and four years later Colbert’s commissioners certified the authenticity of their noble status. But their connections to the Rohan apparently ceased with Henri de Rohan’s death in 1638, well before Onglepied’s own death. As soon as she took control of her father’s properties, Marguerite de Rohan selected her own financial managers, and these did not include Onglepied’s family. After a full century of continuous service, involving at least four generations, the Gouret ceased to appear among the Rohan’s agents. Marguerite de Rohan turned instead to a series of Parisians, marking a key step in the family’s withdrawal from Brittany. The choice was sensible, given her own residence in the city and her need for large loans. Indeed, even Onglepied himself had felt the gravitational pull that Paris exercised on all seventeenth-century financial dealings. Though he himself never moved there, his marriage attached him to the city, and more specifically to the milieu of Protestant financiers there. His bride was the daughter of a Parisian notaire et sécrétaire du roi, the niece of a former crown attorney in the Grand Conseil. The list of her “friends and family” who signed the marriage contract (a banker, a merchant, and two sécrétaires du roi) displayed her multiple connections among the Parisian bourgeoisie, and some of them would lend the Rohan money in later years; her contribution to the marriage (in all, 54,000 l.) likewise testified to the prosperous milieu from which she came. To be sure, this was a maximum estimate, since some of the bride’s wealth came in the form of debts that she would have to collect. But her resources meant that the couple started married life with a combined capital of at least 100,000 l., an impressive sum even by Parisian standards. In contrast to the sizeable list of friends who accompanied the bride, only one “friend” accompanied the groom, aside from members of the Rohan family itself: “Gabriel Morel escuier sieur de la Barre,” described a few years later as “business agent of the said lord [de Rohan] in the city of Paris,” owner of a house there, and responsible for ensuring that correspondence and news reached the duke during his exile. Onglepied’s relative isolation at his own wedding suggested the strategic considerations that accompanied it. At least in part, the marriage was a way of connecting himself to a milieu whose partnership he needed but of which he was not otherwise a member. Morel apparently served as his original link to Paris, and continued thereafter to handle the Parisian aspects of the Rohan’s affairs. However solid Onglepied’s Breton connections and Rohan loyalties, it was simply no longer

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 178

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

179

possible to manage the family’s business needs within a mainly provincial framework. Familiar with Paris and long associated with Onglepied’s administration, Morel was the obvious candidate to take on the Rohan intendancy, and by 1640 he had done so. But from the start his position was less secure than Onglepied’s had been. In 1641 and again in 1653, Marguerite de Rohan arranged leases herself, something her father and mother had never done, and she reviewed her agent’s work with a critical eye. “He certainly takes his time,” she noted in the margin of Morel’s accounts concerning the inheritance of her aunt Anne de Rohan. So critical, indeed, that through the 1640s and 1650s she tried out a succession of replacements. In 1644 and 1645, there was “Me Abel Martin, administrator of the affairs of the said demoiselle,” described as both a “bourgeois de Paris” and a lawyer. In 1653, there was “noble nomme master Pierre de Carmagnac,” another Paris lawyer; a few years later “messire Jean Charles de Gaillart seigneur de Sainct Jean, . . . knight of the king’s order and ordinary gentleman of the queen mother,” had the title “administrator general” of Marguerite’s “house and business affairs”; he resided at Blain. In the late 1650s Morel was again in charge, described in one contract as “administrator of the house of Rohan,” in another as “intendant of their house and business affairs.” Now he too resided at the château of Blain, and he participated actively in the town’s literary life. But soon after Marguerite settled on a yet another choice, and from that point on Rohan management was firmly fi xed in Paris. “Master Philippe Thévenin bourgeois de Paris” began managing Marguerite’s affairs in 1657, and would keep that role until her death in 1684. In important ways, his trajectory resembled those of previous Rohan managers. Like them, Thévenin had family connections with a town where the Rohan held property, in this case properties owned by Marguerite’s husband, Henri de Chabot, and he too came from the group of landowners, gentlemen, and officials who dominated such towns. Like Heinleix and Onglepied, he received public marks of the Rohan’s respect: he too formalized the arrangements for his marriage in the Rohan hôtel in the Place Royale, with the Rohan among the witnesses, and for a time he even resided there. But there were also important differences, starting with the detached view that Marguerite took of the relationship. At her death, she urged her children to retain Thévenin in his duties, but her language was distant, with none of the enthusiasm that marked Catherine de Parthenay’s comments about Heinleix in 1604; Marguerite wrote that she had always found Thévenin and another

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 179

2/16/15 2:26 PM

180

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

family agent to be “very able, devoted, and faithful,” but there was nothing more in the way of specific recognition or gratitude, and no bequest to either. At the same time, Thévenin himself was a man of greater social stature than his predecessors, who had less need of his mistress’s support and affection. The Thévenin clan played a prominent role in Parisian high finance during the reign of Louis XIV. Apparently Philippe was not especially close to others in the family (none appeared at his 1672 wedding), but he nonetheless moved in the same business world: by the time of the marriage, he had become “Philippes Thévenin escuier sieur du Petit Bois, king’s counselor and controller general of the fortifications of France,” hence a significant player in the royal finances. Thirty-five years earlier, Onglepied had allied himself to this world; Thévenin belonged to it. At least by this point, he also disposed of much greater resources than Onglepied, allowing him even more freedom in dealing with the Rohan as a businessman, rather than a dependent. In addition to his office, Thévenin at his marriage held Paris bonds worth 4,000 l. yearly, 42,000 l. in cash and other personal property, 20,000 l. in the form of a debt owed him, and a commitment from Marguerite de Rohan herself of a lifetime annuity of 2,000 l. if he ceased to reside with her. His bride—from a Parisian merchant family with international interests—brought at least equal wealth to the marriage: a half share in a large Paris house, a quarter share in a house just outside Paris, a quarter of her father’s mercantile firm, a quarter of the firm’s other “movables both in France and in Sweden,” and three quarters of an outstanding debt owed by the father’s business partner, set at 177,000 l. Doubtless not all of these claims and expectations could be redeemed at face value, but they testified to a large and complex business enterprise, with international ramifications. In 1700, almost thirty years after his marriage, Thévenin still lived in the Paris house that his bride had inherited, on a lavish scale that suggested the importance of his position. At his death, the notaries found fifty-six paintings, most of them portraits, but two of them representing “fans from China,” a sign of the family’s attentiveness to current fashion. There was an expensive clock, evaluated at 200 l., a large stock of Champagne wine (another high-fashion item), a harpsichord (yet another sign that the family was keeping up with recent trends in culture and sociability), numerous mirrors, and silver evaluated at 6,520 l. 10 s.; in 1684 Marguerite de Rohan herself had owned less than 9,000 l. worth of silver. By the late seventeenth century, Philippe Thévenin’s example showed, bonds between the Rohan and those who served them had acquired a new character.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 180

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

181

Fidelity had not disappeared as a component of those bonds, nor had they altogether lost their feudal overtones; Thévenin apparently entered Rohan service because of his connections to the family’s seigneurial power, and he continued serving for more than three decades. Yet despite these long years of service, in the end he was less a dependent than a business partner, who could access resources and social networks unavailable to his mistress. Observers of seventeenth-century society occasionally spoke darkly of laquais financiers, businessmen who had leapt from the lowest ranks of society to wealth and prominence as state bankers. The stories were mainly mythical, a way for contemporaries to make sense of the new wealth that banking now generated, and a way to disguise social elites’ occasional involvement in that enterprise. Yet Thévenin was in some ways just that, a dependent who was at the same time an autonomous actor within the Paris business community. Through about 1650, Onglepied and even Morel had directed Rohan affairs primarily from Blain, but thereafter the advantages of Parisian administration were overwhelming. The Rohan themselves now lived primarily in the city, their political interests were there and at court, and they needed Parisian financial services. Their relations with their followers changed accordingly.

Intimacy and Advice: Inner Circles For all their differences, in one respect Le Noir, Onglepied, Thévenin, and the rest shared a fundamentally similar relationship with the Rohan: their duties were clearly defined and limited, and their personal interactions with their masters mattered less than their professional skills. In contrast, another group of followers lived in daily contact with the Rohan, on terms of intense intimacy. Some of these intimates were menial servants, whose opinions and designs counted for little, and who were not expected to stay long in the household. But others had a more important place there, and their attachment involved more powerful emotions. They were not merely followers, but companions. Their advice was heeded; the Rohan’s identity was to some extent their creation. Informal and changing, based ultimately on personal qualities rather than official functions, these relationships often remain obscure in the historical record. They emerge with some clarity at only one point in the Rohan’s history, during the life of Henri de Rohan himself. The duke’s long wanderings and grandiose ambitions generated a range of documents that convey some

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 181

2/16/15 2:26 PM

182

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

sense of who accompanied him and what his relationships with them were like. For the same reasons, the duke’s followers were in some ways an atypical group, selected among those who were ready to follow him through the radical discontinuities that marked his life and assist in the lofty political roles to which he aspired. Yet Rohan was hardly unique in his wide travels, occasional exile, and difficult political choices; among the seventeenth-century high nobility, these were in fact commonplace experiences, shared by two generations of the Condé, the Guise, the Retz, and numerous others. In these unstable circumstances, many nobles needed intimate advisers, and these men had to bring special qualities to their positions, both acumen in giving advice and a willingness to accept the tumult of exile. In this regard as in others, Henri de Rohan offered an extreme example of widespread phenomena. Contemporaries who observed the duke interacting with his immediate entourage were especially struck by the intensity of the relationship. Proud as he was of his family’s ancient eminence, capable as he was of haughty brutality, the duke nonetheless deferred to these intimates, many of them of dramatically lower status; he allowed them great freedom of speech and took their opinions seriously. In 1613, when Rohan was already thirty-four years old, the Protestant senior statesman Philippe du Plessis-Mornay received a report that Rohan’s “soul is so glued to that of M. de Haultefontaine,” at the time the duke’s principal adviser, “that he takes as done to him everything that is done to the said Haultefontaine, whether good or bad.” Catherine de Parthenay likewise worried over such influences on her son: “As a mother, she excuses her son as best she can, and blames those who control him [le possedent],” reported Mornay’s correspondent. Comparable descriptions would recur throughout the duke’s life. Again referring to Haute-Fontaine, the marquis de Castelnau reported that Rohan and Soubise “swear only by him.” Jean Bouffard de Madiane, a young patrician of Castres who followed the duke for a time in the 1620s, remarked that in their youth Rohan and Soubise had been “governed . . . by Haute-Fontaine.” A few years later, Bouffard reported, there was another “worthy gentleman, experienced in war, who held the place that Haute-Fontaine had occupied” in the duke’s affections; later still, he spoke of “those wretches who governed the duke” and of “the power” that others “had over him.” Rohan, on Bouffard’s view, had a tendency to serial dependency, and eventually, concern about these influences would lead Bouffard to go his own way. He continued to

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 182

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

183

admire the duke and to appreciate the warmth the duke had shown him, but he had also come to think that the duke’s will was not his own—and that other advisers had led the duke into bad decisions. He withdrew from the duke’s inner circle, promising “to remain his whole life his very humble servant,” and in fact stayed on good terms with the family over the following decades. While he remained in the duke’s service, Bouffard himself experienced the freedom the duke accorded his closest followers. He recalled expressing himself “with the liberty that [Rohan] always gave him while he was with him,” and he described others enjoying the same verbal freedom. One of the duke’s gentlemen, upset by the duchess’s refusal to endorse an aggressive political strategy, called her a “Cleopatra” and urged the duke to separate from her. Another, a Reformed minister, “had accompanied the duchesse de Rohan on her trip to Italy. At Rome, he . . . had the vanity and the temerity to persuade her to allow him to preach in her bedroom with the door closed.” When Bouffard himself returned to Castres with important political news, in 1625, he “went straight to the duke; and, having climbed the stairs, found him alone with his wife, who was in her bath with a lone servant, . . . who was drying her as she left the bath.” His contemporaries thus saw in Rohan’s dealings with his closest followers emotions—warmth, intense loyalty, a readiness to subordinate his own will to theirs—that he rarely displayed in other domains of life. Did his contemporaries also intend to suggest homoerotic elements in the duke’s emotions? His intense relationships with these followers may well have expressed underlying sexual orientations. But whatever Rohan’s deepest feelings, his contemporaries did not take the further step of attributing to him homoerotic desires or acts. Certainly they would not have hesitated to do so. The topic was not offlimits among seventeenth-century Parisians, and rumors of same-sex encounters circulated about some of the aristocracy’s grandest names, including Louis XIII himself, his younger son Philippe d’Orléans, and his cousin the Grand Condé; in Louis XIV’s personal reign, it was believed that same-sex encounters had become a dangerous fashion among young male courtiers. That no such rumors attached to Rohan perhaps testifies to his widely admired self-control, but it also suggests that his relations with his intimates did not violate contemporary expectations about such relationships. With their closest followers, great men were expected to have relations of this intensity.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 183

2/16/15 2:26 PM

184

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Patterns of Recruitment Who were these intimates, and how had they encountered the duke? With some variation, their stories followed the same basic pattern, and they themselves conformed to a distinctive social, educational, and temperamental profile. None belonged to military or feudal families. They came instead from the educated Protestant urban patriciate, and they had begun their careers in that milieu, as scholars or magistrates like their fathers and brothers. But they soon found themselves unhappy in this staid career path, and shifted to lives of adventure and wandering, in most cases involving military activity as well. They thus commanded forms of culture that the duke admired but himself lacked, yet most of them also reveled in war, hence their willingness to sign on for the uncertainties that life with the duke promised. Geographical accident brought some of them into his entourage, as happened with Bouffard himself: the duke had established himself at Castres in 1623, and he sought out able young locals both for the services they could provide and for their influence over others in the town. A few years later, the pattern repeated itself at Padua, where the duke spent much of his time in 1630–31: he there encountered Benjamin Priolo, who became first his physician, then his literary adviser, and finally his political agent, the most important influence on him during the last decade of his life. Alongside these chance encounters, the duke also received a stream of recommendations from family and friends, and these ensured that his entourage included young men from across Protestant Europe. That process brought him Haute-Fontaine, who would so dominate the duke’s thinking during the first decades of the seventeenth century. A former teacher from a cosmopolitan family, Haute-Fontaine had served Philippe de Béthune, the duc de Sully’s brother, on an embassy to Rome; Sully then recommended that the Rohan brothers employ him as tutor on their grand tour, and he quickly made himself indispensable. The king himself might make such recommendations, as when he asked that Rohan take on the young Swiss soldier Pierre Henriet, and so might the duke’s own family. In the early 1620s, Soubise encountered Théophile Brachet, a failed lawyer and Protestant theorist from Paris, and sent him on to Rohan for employment; until his arrest in 1627, Brachet would be another of the duke’s most influential advisers. These recommendations formed part of an exchange of favors among leading Protestant families across Europe. Taking on any young man was a genuine service to his family, since it entailed an obligation to feed and educate

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 184

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

185

him, and provide career advancement as well; and many of the young men who reached Rohan showed an unusual degree of restlessness, which (their families hoped) his adventurous life might satisfy. An especially desperate appeal reached Rohan in 1632, from the London physician Théodore Turquet de Mayerne. Now famous across Europe, the Swiss-born Turquet had known the Rohan for decades, and had accompanied the brothers on part of their grand tour. His son had already failed in other professional pursuits, but Turquet hoped that serving Rohan as a soldier would “settle the froth of a licentious and unbridled youth.” The duke willingly agreed, and outlined plans to have the young man taught the skills needed for a military career, German (especially appropriate in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War), mathematics, horsemanship, and the science of fortifications. But the young man was no more willing to accept Rohan’s guidance than his father’s, and left after two months. Soubise expressed greater irritation at the burdens such requests posed, but even he went along with them. He complained to his mother about “Josef the Swiss . . . ,” whom she had sent him; he would keep Josef, “since he’s an old servant,” but the man was useless, and Soubise begged that she not send him anyone else, “for I have more of them than I can feed.” Another young man formerly in his household had complained about conditions there, but (wrote Soubise) “I did the best I could for him, but he’s a little citified show-off, who wanted to be served rather than serving, and who was good for nothing; while he was with me, he was unhappy that there were no pretty girls for him to pass the time with.” At least one of the young men who reached the Rohan in these ways came from a Breton family, but he was the exception; the family’s patronage net covered all of Protestant Europe. Amid this ever-changing collection of respectably born, widely traveled misfits, only a few stayed long and acquired particular influence. The success stories tended to be highly educated, but otherwise little distinguished them from their fellows. Haute-Fontaine remained the prototype for those who came afterward. He was the son of a leading Protestant financier, born in Paris but raised after his father’s death in Geneva. One brother became an eminent minister at Charenton, the Reformed church near Paris attended by the city’s Protestant elite; another was councilor of the duke of Zweibrücken, Rohan’s brother-in-law; a third was a military officer first in Venice, then in Denmark. Haute-Fontaine himself received a humanistic education and sought to become a university professor, but from the outset his temperament pushed him toward a more strenuous life. Early in his career, having been

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 185

2/16/15 2:26 PM

186

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

denied a chair in philosophy at the University of Leiden, he became so angry that he physically assaulted his successful rival. Thereafter he moved among the Protestant aristocracy, first with Philippe de Béthune, then with the Rohan brothers. To the end of his life Haute-Fontaine remained a disruptive force, ready for violence at slight provocation. In 1612 he chased a royal agent from the duke’s house at Saint-Jean-d’Angély, wounding him with his sword. A year later, Mornay’s correspondent reported that Haute-Fontaine had been brought before the town’s Protestant elders for beating a prominent coreligionist; having publicly apologized, he was allowed to retain his standing in the church, but (the correspondent added darkly) “during the same time he outrageously and publicly beat a soldier from the garrison. There are numerous people in Saint-Jean-d’Angély who are unhappy about such behavior.” Rohan’s unshakeable support in the face of public scandals like these proclaimed the depth of his own loyalty. He could ill afford to alienate the bourgeois of towns like Saint-Jean-d’Angély for their support was necessary for the success of his projects. Yet to the end he defended Haute-Fontaine against even Catherine de Parthenay’s criticisms, heeded his advice, and assigned him critical tasks. The end came in 1621, when Haute-Fontaine was killed leading the defense of Saint-Jean-d’Angély, during the first of the duke’s three wars. Rohan himself was absent, and though his brother Soubise held nominal command of the town, it was generally acknowledged that Haute-Fontaine made the actual military decisions. Bouffard de Madiane entered the duke’s service shortly before HauteFontaine’s death, and fitted much the same profile; he too was a well-educated son of the Protestant patriciate, who found in Rohan’s entourage chances for adventure that his family could not provide. His father had studied in Paris and then fought on the Protestant side during the Wars of Religion, but had returned to his native Castres to live quietly as a man of letters. Bouffard himself followed much the same path: he studied in Paris, became a lawyer, and returned to Castres, marrying the daughter of a local magistrate and serving in city offices. When Rohan established his headquarters there, he recognized the young man’s ability and enthusiasm, and confided to him a series of important missions; in effect, Bouffard led the town’s engagement in the first two of the duke’s three wars, before breaking with the duke in 1626. Other such figures followed over the next two decades, men who shared Haute-Fontaine and Bouffard’s literary educations, taste for adventure, and tolerance of violence, and who acquired something like their influence over

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 186

2/16/15 2:26 PM

followers and servants

|

187

the duke. Théophile Brachet (in the words of Bouffard, who saw him at work in Rohan’s inner circle) was “a Parisian, from a respectable family, who did not lack family connections, but did lack fortune.” His father had served Henri de Navarre in an important legal position, and he himself studied law in Heidelberg and married into the Parisian robe; like Haute-Fontaine, he thus appealed to Rohan’s interest in those with cosmopolitan backgrounds as well as solid educations. Unsuccessful as a lawyer and needing to support a large family, Brachet then turned to religious politics, and “putting on an extraordinary zeal for his religion, he undertook public disputations about it.” In 1622, he published a tract arguing that the Reformed “may and should . . . resist militarily the open persecution launched by enemies of their religion and of the state.” Soubise took notice and recommended him to Rohan, whom he served in negotiations with the Spanish and other secret missions, and whom he pushed in radical directions. Brachet’s career as a radical ended in 1627, when Richelieu’s agents arrested him in Paris. He escaped execution but not prison, and his four years there produced something of a conversion. He spent the rest of a long career writing serious works in support of reconciliation between Reformed and Catholic churches, enjoying some prominence as an intellectual but always shadowed by rumors that he had sold out the Reformed cause in exchange for Richelieu’s money; and in 1645 he converted to Catholicism. The combination of intellectual seriousness, violent adventurism, and shifting confessional commitments appears to have characterized many of those whom the duke most favored. Even Rohan’s most famous military lieutenants conformed to this profile. Jean de Gassion fought with Rohan in the last of his civil wars, then went on to acquire fame as a commander during the Thirty Years’ War; his grandfather, father, and one of his brothers were prominent magistrates in the Parlement of Pau, one of the few high courts open to Protestants, and Gassion himself had been educated for a similar career. But his real interest lay in war, and “having abandoned his school and on the loose” (in Bouffard’s words) he set off at age fifteen to find it—with only an old horse and 30 sous. Ever ready to retail scandalous stories, Tallemant des Réaux could find nothing to criticize in Gassion’s career; he was courageous, honest about money, and selfcontrolled in dealing with the numerous women his celebrity attracted. But like so many others who surrounded the duke, he was quick to anger and ready for violence; despite his indifference to money, Tallemant reported, he assured a Parisian merchant who attempted to defraud him “that he could

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 187

2/16/15 2:26 PM

188

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

not possibly leave alive in this world a man who took his property. He was paid.” The Grisons leader Jörg Jenatsch, whose maneuverings in 1636–37 led to the collapse of Rohan’s Valteline mission, fit into the same pattern. Until the final turn of events, Jenatsch had been one of the highest-ranking officers in Rohan’s Swiss army, and one of those whom Rohan heeded most closely. But just like Haute-Fontaine, Gassion, and the others, Jenatsch in fact came from an educated civilian family, a dynasty of Grisons pastors, and for a time he like the others tried to conform to familial expectations, attending Latin school in Zurich and university in Basel; he even served briefly as pastor himself, first among the Grisons, then in the Valteline. Like the others, though, from the start of his career he displayed a violent streak, and soon his activities shifted to raiding, warfare, and political scheming. He also shared the others’ social ambition and uncertain confessional loyalty; just before his death (he was assassinated in 1639, two years after forcing Rohan from the region), he managed to secure ennoblement from the Habsburg authorities, and he had converted to Catholicism a few years earlier, a move that accorded with both his social ambitions and, it seems, his deeper convictions.

The Last Intimate: Benjamin Priolo For all the influence that Brachet, Bouffard, and the others enjoyed, only one later figure came to hold the place that Haute-Fontaine had held during the duke’s young adulthood. This was Benjamin Priolo, who served as the duke’s physician and private secretary between 1629 and 1638. Rohan came to depend heavily on Priolo, and for that reason their relationship offers an especially instructive example of the psychosocial forces at work in the duke’s patronage network. Like his predecessors in Rohan’s inner circle, Priolo was a product of the Protestant urban patriciate, and like them he had received the extensive education characteristic of this milieu. He was born at Saint-Jean-d’Angély, in 1602, the son of a Protestant minister, who apparently named him in honor of Benjamin de Rohan. He spent several years wandering Europe, first with his father’s support, then as the tutor of four wealthy young men: there were preliminary studies in Béarn, travels to the great Reformed university at Leiden (where according to a hostile contemporary he “spent more than three years in reading all the best Latin and Greek authors”), then to Basel and

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 188

2/16/15 2:27 PM

followers and servants

|

189

fig. 9 The learned adviser: Claude Lefebvre (after Nicolas Pitau, the elder), Benjamin Priolo. The inscription refers to Priolo’s claim to be a descendant of Venetian aristocrats (“Eques Venetus”). Both inscription and portrait underline his learning and historical interests, but the portrait also conveys his reputation as an unreliable trickster. Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. © Châteaux de Versailles. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

Geneva, where he studied law, and finally Padua, where he studied philosophy and medicine and (according to the same contemporary) “became a complete atheist.” There were also publications designed to cement his reputation as a man of learning: a short book on sacred history (plagiarized, according to his critic), then a book of Latin poetry, “in order to pass himself off as a universal man and as skilled in Latin poetry as in prose.” Priolo was thus a genuine intellectual, albeit an unusually unscrupulous one. But he also shared the social restlessness and aristocratic dreams of some of the other figures around Rohan. Jean Bouffard had added “de Madiane” to his name to give himself a more aristocratic aura; Priolo went further, and claimed descent from a family of Venetian aristocrats, a move so transparently fraudulent that Jean Chapelain—poet, critic, and founding member of the French Academy—would later denounce its “ridiculous and audacious vanity.” With the same aristocratic ideal in mind, Priolo pursued a broad, practical knowledge of European affairs; alongside his pursuit of famous professors and new branches of learning, there were visits to Rome, Naples, Venice,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 189

2/16/15 2:27 PM

190

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

Savoy, and a handful of German courts, all bankrolled by his pupils’ gullible father. It was precisely this combination of qualities—serious scholarly attainments mixed with worldliness—that attracted the duke, much as it had attracted him to Haute-Fontaine and Bouffard. Even Priolo’s trickster sides apparently pleased the duke; years later, Mazarin himself described Priolo as an effective schemer, “having for six years served M. de Rohan, who was wellup on these matters.” They met in Padua, where Priolo first impressed the duke with his literary abilities; soon he became the duke’s full-time physician, and thereafter his duties steadily expanded. “He captivated Monsieur de Rohan” (so Priolo’s hostile biographer explained) because there was no one else in the duke’s entourage with comparable linguistic skills and political knowledge. By 1638, Priolo had involved himself in every aspect of the duke’s activities. He borrowed and transferred money, negotiated with French politicians and Swiss soldiers, and offered both political and literary advice; it was widely believed that he ghostwrote some of the duke’s memoirs. The financial operations were large and complex, because of the size of the duke’s army and the difficulties of moving funds from Paris to the Valteline, and after the duke’s death it took four years of negotiations and threats to sort them out. Finally in 1642 an arrangement was reached: Priolo received 6,000 l. from the duke’s estate, as the final installment on two debts that the duke owed him, one of 14,220 l., the other of about 720 l.; and he received the right to pursue any monies that might be owed the duke in Venice, following his service there. In return, he promised to acquit the duke’s estate “of all litigation, pursuits, demands, and claims, . . . whether for loans and advances . . . or for any other cause, pretext, or transaction, whether direct or indirect, for the whole of the past.” The language made it clear that Priolo’s activities touched every aspect of the duke’s life, and that centrality received symbolic affirmation at the duke’s funeral: there Priolo played a starring role, “dressed in a large cloak and his head covered, carrying in his arms the ducal crown and ermine cloak,” marching just ahead of the duke’s body. Priolo’s career after Rohan’s death confirmed the trickster sides of his character, and suggested to some (such as Mazarin) Rohan’s implicit endorsement of them, given their long and intimate collaboration. For a time Priolo settled into a life of Genevan respectability. He married the daughter of a local notable, fathered a family, and lived as a country gentleman in the Swiss country-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 190

2/16/15 2:27 PM

followers and servants

|

191

side; in his agreement with Marguerite de Rohan he styled himself “Benjamin Prioleau écuyer, lord of la Vienerie, residing in this city” of Geneva. But after a few years his life resumed its adventurous course. In short order he converted to Catholicism, attached himself to the duc de Longueville, and served as his assistant in negotiating the treaty of Westphalia—all the while sending secret reports about the duke to Mazarin, spying that continued during the Fronde, when Longueville and his brothers-in-law became the cardinal’s most determined opponents. Even Mazarin eventually tired of him, though, and by the time of the cardinal’s death he had become a familiar figure on the Parisian literary scene, known both for his poverty and for his shameless stratagems. The secretary of state Louis-Henri de Loménie, comte de Brienne, described him as “without dispute the poorest author of his times, but, in compensation, the craftiest and best able to achieve his ends.” The high point in this career of impudence came after Mazarin’s death, when Priolo announced plans to write a satirical history of the minister. Colbert, watching anxiously over Mazarin’s legacy, responded with a bribe. Priolo was to receive a royal pension, and in return he abandoned his satire, composing instead a respectful Latin history of the regency. Here then was the social type that was most prominent in Rohan’s entourage, and that elicited his deepest confidence. His chosen intimates were cultivated men, who had devoted years to mastering the humanistic culture that he himself lacked. They displayed also a deep social restlessness, which had led them to reject their families’ career expectations and mode of life; while their families pursued the tranquil stability of the long-established urban patriciate, these young men actively sought aristocratic status, and they were ready— even eager—for the violence and dislocations that such a life might bring. Even their confessional commitments might waver. Everything in this mix of character traits, education, and experiences seems to have engaged the duke. He was drawn to literary culture, and it gave these men real power over him despite their social inferiority—partly because their cultural skills served the duke’s practical needs, partly because he genuinely admired intellectual achievement. But their other traits appealed to him as well; he relished their company despite their difficult, combative personalities, which often alienated others whose support he needed. Unusually selfcontrolled in his own habits, it seems, Rohan took particular pleasure in disruptive, willful personalities like Haute-Fontaine and Priolo; and perhaps

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 191

2/16/15 2:27 PM

192

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

he responded as well to the forthright violence that several of these men advocated, as a counterweight to his uncertainties about his own physical courage. At a still deeper level, he seems to have felt some kinship with their efforts to construct for themselves new identities. The duke had no need to make himself a nobleman, as these followers had sought to do, but in other ways he had indeed laboriously remade himself, as a military commander and political leader, and even as an intellectual. Of course such explanations all involve large elements of speculation. But whatever the duke saw in these men, contemporaries agreed, their appeal went beyond the mere practicalities of service and influence. He discarded some of them, but most held immense influence over him and enjoyed great freedom. In many circumstances, the duke’s own voice merged with theirs. The peculiarities in Rohan’s life magnified these characteristics in his entourage, just as they made him atypical in other respects. His wars and wanderings attracted men who enjoyed risk and adventure. His lifelong striving for eminence led him to seek out those who had practical political skills and commanded the idioms of seventeenth-century political debate; his increasing involvement with international politics meant that he needed men with sophisticated knowledge of Italian and German cultures. But Priolo’s career after 1638 demonstrates that none of this was unique to Rohan. On the contrary, despite his well-earned reputation for sly behavior, after Rohan’s death Priolo had no difficulty attaching himself to Longueville, and apparently to others as well: his biographer expressed indignation that Priolo had managed to exercise “his tricks . . . in the courts of princes, with the greatest figures who, for nearly fifty years, have dealt with the world’s loftiest affairs.” He could do so because every politically ambitious nobleman to some extent shared Rohan’s need for advice and expertise, in the political realm and beyond. All great families needed contacts with high-level financiers, and rising standards of aristocratic cultivation encouraged them to seek out intellectuals and writers. Whoever offered these skills found a receptive audience. Few of these needs could be met within provincial contexts, despite the multigenerational loyalties that Rohan might have mobilized there. Instead, he recruited his intimate companions from across Protestant Europe; in the following generations, the family drew its followers mainly from Paris. This new social geography both reflected and further encouraged new kinds of relationships between the great and their followers. In the sixteenth century,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 192

2/16/15 2:27 PM

followers and servants

|

193

when followers and officials came primarily from the stable community of provincial gentlemen, tradition could govern interactions. Fitting as they did into their own local networks, followers were by no means powerless in this situation, and the Rohan treated them respectfully. Yet ultimately the family had the upper hand, controlling as it did so much regional power, including some direct powers over local landowners. Th at imbalance diminished in the seventeenth century, as the Rohan selected their followers from larger areas, with attention to more rarefied skills. In these circumstances, followers had new leverage, as suggested by Henri de Rohan’s deference to his subordinates’ opinions and their liberties in speaking with him. In many circumstances Rohan could be self-assertive in the extreme; he fought the king, the prince de Condé, and his cousin by marriage Luynes, and even as a young man he feuded with most of the other grandees in his own Reformed movement. But he deferred to the inner circle of his subordinates, partly because of the cultural resources they brought to the encounter. Having selected their followers in new ways, the seventeenth-century Rohan also relied on them in ways that their ancestors had not. Even then there remained Rohan followers in Brittany, the family’s traditional power base. Their numerous estates still needed castle wardens, overseers, judges, pastors, and others. Nor could provincials neglect Rohan influence. To the end of the Old Regime, powerful courtiers continued to mediate between the monarchy and provincial society, and that function became more important as the central government became larger and more intrusive. But here also, relationships were different from what they had been in the sixteenth century. Venality of seigneurial office detached whole groups of officials from any real connection to the family; for the rest, the Rohan’s move to Paris made intimacy impossible, even for trusted agents like Onglepied. Blain’s Reformed pastor Pierre Le Noir expressed a poignant sense of this new reality in his 1677 memoirs. Now in his mid-fifties, he could look back with satisfaction at a life of prosperous tranquility among Blain’s gentry elite, most of whom served the Rohan in one way or another. It was a life that included lively cultural exchanges as well as material ease. Yet Le Noir also conveyed an awareness of how limited this life had been. His own “natural inclination,” he understood, was for “some position serving the great,” rather than for the ministry, just as his quick-witted and agreeable brother-in-law Henri Henriet was better “suited for the courts of the great” than for petty

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 193

2/16/15 2:27 PM

194

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

officialdom in an isolated province. A century before, provincials like Le Noir and Henriet could have had such a life at Blain itself, for the estate still remained the focus of Rohan activity, with a small-scale court in residence. That possibility no longer existed in the mid-seventeenth century. The Rohan themselves had changed, and so had the world around them.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 194

2/16/15 2:27 PM

conclusion

There were few nobles in early modern France, and very few of those counted among the high aristocracy: a few hundred individuals within a nobility of two hundred thousand and a total population of twenty million. Yet understanding early modern society requires understanding the grandees, for they controlled most of its mechanisms of social domination. They were the country’s largest property owners, and they provided its leading politicians and soldiers. Not especially prominent as producers of culture, they nonetheless helped shape contemporary thinking, because writers and artists needed their patronage and approval. So too did many others, ranging from prominent magistrates to farm workers, for the influence of a great aristocrat could advance or block careers of all kinds. Even new forms of personal interaction and self-understanding tended to originate in aristocratic milieux, then spread outward to other groups. Of course there were also forces at work in early modern society that undercut grandee preeminence, by creating new wealth and new modes of interaction. Yet in 1789 great aristocrats still remained the most powerful group in French society. Only revolutionary violence finally dislodged them. With their vast estates, city palaces, high offices, and grand ambitions, the Rohan abundantly illustrate the extent of seventeenth-century aristocratic power, the multiple forms it took, and its resiliency; in many ways, the family’s position was stronger in 1700 than it had been a century earlier. But the example also suggests the limits on seventeenth-century aristocratic power, the ways in which it was more fragile and less effective than might have been expected. Occupying a position very near the top of a firmly hierarchical society, enjoying wealth, power, and esteem, the Rohan nonetheless had difficulty living out the social ideals they set for themselves. Even defining their

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 195

2/16/15 2:27 PM

196

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

social standing required effort, and a critical public questioned many of their claims; their wealth and political power were never entirely stable, and over the seventeenth century became less so. This duality—between vast resources and powers, on the one hand, and weakness and instability, on the other— provides the central thread in their story. Both power and fragility had many sources, some of them accidental—the interplay of individuals’ strengths and weaknesses, unforeseeable events—or exogenous, involving forces that had little to do with the Rohan themselves. But the coexistence of power and fragility also resulted from deeper realities of aristocratic life as the Rohan experienced it. Four of these realities seem especially worth emphasizing here. First, the past provided the Rohan with little guidance as they negotiated the complexities of seventeenth-century life. Like other nobles, the Rohan often used the language of tradition, celebrating their ancestry, long-standing Christian commitments, and feudal attachments, yet their most important actions followed other logics. Indeed, Henri de Rohan’s writings can be described as a lifelong effort to explore and validate these alternative logics. In all circumstances, he argued, reason and self-interest trump religion and tradition; and he applied this assessment equally to ordinary individuals, great men like Caesar and Guise, and nations. As contemporaries recognized, Rohan’s practices conformed to his social theories. He was ruthless in pursuit of his goals, and showed only a tepid interest in his family’s centuries-old role as Breton feudal overlords. The dynamics of Rohan family life worked in the same direction, encouraging individualism and undermining old beliefs about gender roles and familial discipline. Family members continued occasionally to express these ideas, but in fact women made the principal decisions about family management, and both men and women enjoyed great freedom in pursuing their desires and interests, often at the expense of siblings, occasionally at the expense of children or parents. The Rohan functioned less as a unified “familistic entity” than as a collection of loosely allied individuals; familial connections offered no more guidance than other traditions in directing individuals’ choices. A second basic reality in the Rohan’s situation was the importance within it of political power, their own and others’. Coercive authority, ultimately backed up by the threat of physical force, affected all domains of their lives. That presence was most clearly visible in the family’s economic circumstances. Much of its income came directly from the state, in the form of pensions, offices, military commands, and positions in the Church, and its private prop-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 196

2/16/15 2:27 PM

conclusion

|

197

erties were almost equally political in character: the Rohan estates derived most of their value from the public powers they conferred, of taxation, justice, and appointment to offices, and from monopolies on much-needed services. There was thus only a hazy divide between the family’s economic life and its politics, and this was one reason for its financial instability. Its landed incomes fluctuated widely in response to changing royal policies, and its political power required heavy, high-risk investments. High positions had to be bought, and military operations had to be funded; political influence could be preserved only by spending, on houses, clothing, furnishings, food, travel, and much else. Rohan financial instability was structural, not accidental. Politics inflected the Rohan’s personal lives as well, shaping imaginations, ethical beliefs, and even gender relations. Images of political greatness determined Henri de Rohan’s ideas of personal success, and the failure of his political hopes seems to have left him no alternative save honorable suicide. Other men of the family had less lofty ambitions, but they too treated genealogical connections to royalty as an essential component of Rohan collective identity, and they viewed some form of political activity as basic to their lives. In turn, that commitment helped determine women’s places within the family, as the primary managers of its business interests, with all the freedom that such a role entailed. A third point is closely related. With political power so central to their lives, the Rohan could never be indifferent to other social groups. They needed others’ good opinion, and they worked hard to secure it. They actively courted the business people and royal officials who could supply loans, state subsidies, and financial expertise, and they befriended middle-class intellectuals, who could supply both practical expertise and ideological support. Henri de Rohan’s rebellions and wars required mobilizing both civilian populations and the lesser nobles who staffed his armies; he and his descendants were equally concerned with securing public acceptance of their family narratives, for familial status in some measure required the endorsement of middle-class onlookers. The family’s motto—“I cannot be king; I do not deign to be a duke; I am Rohan”— sought to obscure this interconnectedness, proclaiming that the Rohan stood above their society, possessing an identity that defied others’ judgments and categories. In previous centuries, there had perhaps been some justification for this claim to autonomy, but by 1600 it was fundamentally inaccurate. What the Rohan were now depended on others’ beliefs about them. Finally, the Rohan example draws attention to the contradictions among the objectives that aristocratic families pursued, and among the forms of power

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 197

2/16/15 2:27 PM

198

|

status, power, and identity in early modern france

available to them. Henri de Rohan’s respect for political achievement came at the expense of his religious commitments and his provincial influence, both destabilizing his finances and weakening his relations with provincial followers. The family’s engagement with contemporary cultural trends likewise diminished their interest in the provincial community and led them to select middle-class cosmopolitans as their intimate advisers. Dynastic choices might strengthen the family in some ways but weaken it in others. Establishing a Soubise branch of the family, as both Catherine de Parthenay and Marguerite de Rohan did, enhanced the Rohan’s prominence in French society, but also created dramatic internal conflicts and weakened the duchy of Rohan itself. In many ways, then, Rohan powers and weaknesses were intimately connected. Male achievement in the realms of warfare and politicking required personal freedom for mothers, wives, and daughters, who were left behind to manage properties and influence; but individual freedom of this kind limited family unity and led to occasional public scandals. The family’s great wealth derived in large part from its political situation, but so did its financial vulnerabilities. Its position high above most of French society required constant attention to the opinions of ordinary people, who had to be persuaded to accept the family’s claims about itself. In practical matters as well, the Rohan combined great powers over lesser figures with reliance on their financial and cultural assistance. Amid these contradictory expectations, it is hardly surprising that the past supplied the Rohan with such feeble ethical guidance. They had inherited some elements of the social position they occupied, but others they had to fashion from the jumble of materials before them. At the beginning of this study, I suggested that the Rohan can help us understand how ruling groups function in other times and places, and for that purpose, these complex processes underlying their eminence are the most important fact about them. There were few givens in the Rohan’s situation, little that could not be reconfigured by specific decisions and that was not subject to rapid change. To be sure, change could take place only within the limits set by the era’s technologies, laws, knowledge, and values. But such background conditions provided only the framework for the family’s evolution, without determining its specific course. The specifics of the Rohan’s position resulted from choices, some of them made by family members themselves, many others made by outsiders. The Rohan thus show us the extent to which social domination is made and remade, an artificial product of collective life and passing circumstances.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 198

2/16/15 2:27 PM

no t es

abbreviations ad l-a ad m an bm bnf bpu bshpf mc ms Fr.

Archives Départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes Archives Départementales du Morbihan, Vannes Archives Nationales de France, Paris Bibliothèque Municipale, Nantes Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Genève Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris Minutier Central des Notaires de Paris (citations are identified by étude, in roman numerals; volume number, in arabic numerals; and date) Manuscrits Français

introduction 1. Godoy, “Le mausolée du duc Henri de Rohan”; on the burial ceremony itself, bpu ms Tronchin 22, fols. 60–62; on Rohan’s place within the historical traditions of the Swiss Confederation, Schmid, Das Bild Herzog Heinrich Rohans. 2. Nassiet, “La noblesse en France,” 107–9; Dewald, Pont-St-Pierre, 90–212. 3. Chantérac, Journal . . . maréchal de Bassompierre, 4:255. 4. bnf ms Clairambault 1180, fols. 110r–135r, 120r. 5. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 1:516. 6. For reflections on this tendency, Revel, Jeux d’ échelles, 15–36. 7. I summarize these issues in The European Nobility, 3–14, and in Lost Worlds, 154–82; for a more recent survey, Asch, Europäischer Adel, 1–13. 8. For orientations to recent studies of the French nobility, Descimon, “Chercher de nouvelles voies”; Haddad, “Noble Clienteles in France”; and Descimon and Haddad, Epreuves de noblesse, 13–26, 277–302. 9. Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV”; Bergin, Crown, Church, and Episcopate, 58–80; Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, 346–49. 10. The presence of aristocratic persons and values in early modern culture has become an especially important theme in recent research, suggesting just how central knowledge of the aristocracy has become to a range of fields beyond social history; see, for example, Lilti, Le monde des salons, 11, passim, and Sittig and Wieland, “Die ‘Kunst des Adels’ in der Frühen Neuzeit.” 11. Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV.” 12. For a brief overview of these processes, Clark, The Rise of the State, 12–18, 362–73; for a somewhat different view that also stresses limits on elite power in modern societies, Whitmeyer, “Mann’s Theory of Power.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 199

2/16/15 2:27 PM

200

|

notes to pages 9–16

13. See Marcus, Elites, especially Marcus, “Elite as a Concept, Theory, and Research Tradition,” and Hansen and Parrish, “Elites versus the State.” See also Pierre Bourdieu’s comments about the angry responses that greeted his findings concerning modern French society, in Bourdieu and Chartier, Le sociologue et l’ historien, 23. 14. Mills, The Power Elite; Domhoff, Who Rules America? 49–71, 199–216. 15. Among many other works, see Bourdieu and Passeron, Les héritiers, and Bourdieu, La noblesse d’Etat. For overviews of Bourdieu’s ideas of capital, Chevallier and Chauviré, Dictionnaire Bourdieu, 18–21; for more detailed summary and nuanced critique, Joas and Knöbl, “Between Structuralism and Theory of Practice.” 16. Hansen and Parrish, “Elites versus the State,” 260–61, quotation 275. 17. The messages offered by the monument reappear in even recent biographies of Rohan and his family; these are careful and scholarly studies, but they suffer from a tendency to treat their subjects as Protestant heroes and to minimize elements in their stories that did not fit this profi le. These include Clarke, Huguenot Warrior; Deyon and Deyon, Henri de Rohan; and Vray, Catherine de Parthenay. In his analysis of Rohan’s changing image, Schmid argues that his Protestant loyalty has been central to both positive historical accounts (above all among Swiss historians) and negative (among French historians): Schmid, Das Bild Herzog Heinrich Rohans. For criticism of “Huguenot history,” see Hanlon, Confession and Community, 2–12; the literary critic C. E. M. Sainte-Beuve already noted this phenomenon in the nineteenth century (Causeries du lundi, 12:298).

chapter 1 1. La Bruyère, Oeuvres complètes, 220–21 (“De la cour,” para. 20). 2. Jouanna, Ordre social, 15–85, presents the classic exposition of this ideology; for recent exploration of it, Nassiet, La violence, 210–22, and Steinberg, “Au défaut des mâles”; on the instability of such rankings in court practice, Cosandey, Dire et vivre l’ordre social, 169–89. 3. Furetière, Dictionaire, s.v. “maison.” For discussion of the term, Lévi-Strauss, “Histoire et éthnologie”; the concept of social capital is discussed above, in the introduction. 4. Fanny Cosandey is currently completing a major work that will address this subject; see also Antonetti, “Les princes étrangers.” 5. As will be seen below, public debate over the Rohan’s status flared soon after La Bruyère wrote, and he may have intended some mockery in speaking of them in these terms. 6. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 1:514, 519. 7. La Bruyère, Oeuvres complètes, 221 (“De la cour,” para. 22). 8. Bisson, Crisis of the Twelfth Century, 24–83. Even genealogists who respected Rohan claims to older antecedents could pick up specific lines of descent only from this point on. 9. This account rests heavily on Cornette, Histoire de la Bretagne, 1:228ff.; Le Page and Nassiet, L’union de la Bretagne à la France, esp. 181–83; and Antonetti, “Les princes étrangers,” 49–51. 10. Kerhervé, L’Etat breton aux 14e et 15e siècles, 1:34. 11. Rohan genealogy is carefully presented in Aubert de La Chenaye-Desbois, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, vol. 17, s.v. “Rohan.” Unless otherwise noted, demographic details on the family are drawn from this source. 12. Le Page and Nassiet, L’union de la Bretagne à la France, 57–70; Nassiet, “Fidélités et perspectives dynastiques.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 200

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 16–21

|

201

13. For an example from 1651, Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 2:864. Conflict over the presidency had already begun in 1615; see La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 2:408–9 (21 June 1615). On the Fronde, Salomon, “La Fronde en Bretagne.” 14. Génin, Nouvelles lettres, 164–65. 15. Ibid., 173, 174. 16. Such at least was the view presented in bpu ms Tronchin 22, 3v–4r. 17. She was accompanied by a tailor, a valet de chambre, a gouvernante, a page, and a femme de chambre: an u*//829. 18. bnf Pièces Originales 2529, no. 97, 3 iv 1592. 19. bnf Pièces Originales 2531; for the letters establishing Rohan as a duchy, an K 623, no. 42. On the significance of the status more generally, Labatut, Les ducs et pairs, esp. 57–88; by this point the Rohan clan already included the ducs de Guéméné and de Montbazon, and Françoise de Rohan had received the life title of duchesse de Loudun. 20. Béthune, duc de Sully, Oeconomies royales, 4:65–66. 21. bnf Pièces Originales 2531 (14 March 1605). 22. Joxe, Les protestants du comté de Nantes, 88–89; Cornette, Histoire de la Bretagne, 1:458– 63. On Catherine de Parthenay, see especially chapter 3, below. 23. Serr, Henri de Rohan, 477–79, 596–99. 24. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 78, 85. 25. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 386 (5 December 1630). 26. For an overview of French Protestantism, Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 127–51. 27. These episodes are discussed below. On the encouragement that Protestantism offered French nobles for thinking of themselves as Europeans rather than merely French, see the insightful analysis offered by Kmec, “A Stranger Born.” 28. Dubost, Marie de Médicis, 451, offers an acute analysis of Rohan’s actions as seen from the crown’s perspective. 29. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 1:516. 30. bnf ms Fr. 22344, fols. 75–78; an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 993. As discussed below, this version of the duchy of Soubise disappeared with Benjamin de Rohan’s death, since he had no children; the principality of Soubise was created two generations later. 31. Lenet, Mémoires, 2:437. 32. Ibid. Support from the Condé and their supporters was especially crucial to Chabot’s success, and he repaid them with active support during the Fronde: see Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 410. 33. In 1633, Henri de Rohan had already asked the king for such an arrangement (bnf ms Fr. 4106 [microfi lm 15746], 22–24). 34. This marriage is discussed at length below, in chapter 3. 35. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 1:524–25; the Prussian ambassador Ezéchiel Spanheim reported that she had resisted the king’s proposition: Spanheim, Relation de la cour de France en 1690, 11. For diverse modern opinions, Le Roy Ladurie, Saint-Simon, 157–58; Bluche, Louis XIV, 390; Béchu and Taillard, Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg, 44–46. 36. an k 617, no. 25 (March 1667); at the end of his reign, the king also raised nearby Fontenay to the status of “Duché-Pairie, sous le nom de Rohan-Rohan” (an k 617, no. 5 [October 1714]). 37. On the appeal of Strasbourg to families of the high aristocracy, Bergin, Crown, Church, and Episcopate, 26; on the wealth that Strasbourg generated and the spending that it permitted, Muller, Le siècle des Rohan, 59–65, and Béchu and de Reyniès, Le cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan, 71–88.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 201

2/16/15 2:27 PM

202

|

notes to pages 21–28

38. In the Holy Roman Empire, access to the Church had become a crucial determinant of aristocratic families’ success, leaving Protestant nobles at a significant and growing disadvantage; see Godsey, Nobles and Nation in Central Europe, 33–45, and Duhamelle, L’ héritage collectif. 39. Béchu and Taillard, Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg, 307. 40. Quoted in ibid., preface. 41. Horowski, “‘Such a Great Advantage for My Son.’ ” 42. Béchu and Taillard, Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg, 87–93. 43. Malettke, Opposition und Konspiration unter Ludwig XIV, 142–94; Malettke, “Opposition nobiliaire sous Louis XIV,” 220. 44. Spanheim, Relation de la cour de France en 1690, 423–24. 45. an mc xcix, 27 February 1690. See below, chapter 4, for analysis of these troubles. 46. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 2:696, 699. 47. bnf f Fm 14497, 1. 48. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 2:701. 49. Ibid., 2:702–7, quotation 709–10. 50. Ibid., 2:709. 51. “Altercation Voltaire-Rohan,” Wikipédia, accessed 28 February 2014, http://fr.wikipedia .org/wiki/Altercation_Voltaire-Rohan. Other versions circulated, but the exact truth about the exchange matters less than the fact that contemporaries included this one among the plausible possibilities. 52. an kk 619, 2, 134. 53. Béchu and Taillard, Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg, 108, 135. 54. Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 2:872–73. Contemporary historians generally emphasize the financial health of the eighteenth-century aristocracy, following the now-classic arguments of Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, The French Nobility, 84–116; for a dissenting view, Dewald, “Régime nobiliaire en région avancée.” 55. Rohan incomes are discussed below, in chapter 4. For a summary of other aristocratic fortunes, Labatut, Les ducs et pairs, 261–70; for an especially well-documented case, Boltanski, Les ducs de Nevers, 153–54. Ministers like Richelieu and Mazarin and princes of the blood like the Condé were richer still. 56. bpu ms Tronchin 21, fol. 56. The document is a draft or copy, and it is not certain it was ever formally presented to the Senate; it includes no signature, date, or formal address. 57. See below, chapter 2. 58. Aubert de la Chenaye-Desbois, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, vol. 17, cols. 511–16. 59. Reeve, Geoff rey of Monmouth, 98–114; Wright and Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoff rey of Monmouth, vol. 5. 60. Le Page and Nassiet, L’union de la Bretagne à la France, 58–59. 61. D’Argentré, L’ histoire de Bretagne, 68–69. 62. an k 623, no. 42. 63. In the mid-nineteenth century, a genealogist sympathetic to the Rohan claimed that the 1588 royal letters naming Charles de Rohan-Guémené duc de Montbazon included reference to the family’s royal antecedents (Aubert de La Chenaye-Desbois, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, vol. 17, col. 470). But the relevant documents had apparently already disappeared in the mid-eighteenth century, and a renewal of the duchy in 1692 made no mention of royalty (an k 623, nos. 42–43). 64. bnf ms Fr. 22344, fols. 75–78; an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 993.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 202

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 29–36

|

203

65. an k 623, no. 42. 66. Spanheim, Relation de la cour de France en 1690, 129. The Rohan themselves, of course, had long proclaimed this view of themselves. In 1644 a biographer attached to the family proclaimed that on every side Henri de Rohan “has some family connection with all the greatest princes of Christendom” (bn ms Fr. 4107, 2r). 67. an kk 619, 243–56 (arguing against any royal connections save the Albret marriage), 514–22 (attributing royal complaisance to the political pressures of the regency). 68. Antonetti, “Les princes étrangers”; see also Cosandey, La reine de France, 55–82, 259– 74, for a broader account of this transformation in political culture. 69. Reeve, Geoff rey of Monmouth, 104–6; Cornette, Histoire de la Bretagne, 1:112; Baudry, Roch Le Baillif, 42–43 (ed. intro.). 70. Wright and Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoff rey of Monmouth, 5:113, passim; see Merlin-Kajman, La langue, 69–93, and Melzer, Colonizer or Colonized, 1–25, for the importance of colonial imagery in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French thinking. 71. Baudry, Roch Le Baillif, 76–80. 72. Dubois, Celtes et Gaulois au XVIe siècle, 23–39, 126–29, suggests the functions of this myth and traces its decline after 1550; for the very widespread acceptance of the Trojan story in medieval Europe, Bossuat, “Les origines troyennes.” 73. Baudry, Roch Le Baillif, 76ff., quotation 78. 74. Ibid., 77. 75. The work of Donald R. Kelley remains fundamental to understanding this process, starting with Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship; on the crown’s own efforts to use historical knowledge as a tool of propaganda, Ranum, Artisans of Glory. 76. Baudry, Roch Le Baillif, 80. 77. bpu ms Tronchin 21, fol. 56. 78. bnf ms Fr. 22343, 156 (22 November 1608). 79. D’Argentré, L’ histoire de Bretagne, 76. 80. Ibid., 22. Even d’Argentré provided a slightly different date for Conan from that offered by Henri de Rohan, placing him in the late fourth century rather than in the reign of Constantine the Great. 81. an k 623, nos. 42–43. 82. Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne, 1:6–7; Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 1:87, 2:1075, summarizes the affair. 83. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 2:711, 712. 84. an mm 759. The work circulated only in manuscript; today there are copies in Nantes and at the Archives Nationales; “Pierre-Hyacinthe Morice de Beaubois,” Wikipédia, accessed 10 March 2012, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Hyacinthe_Morice_de_Beaubois. 85. “I cannot be king; I do not deign to be a duke; I am Rohan,” Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:620. Tallemant is an especially useful witness, for he had personal knowledge of the Rohan family. In the previous century, Roch Le Baillif quoted a slightly different version of the motto (“Duc ne daigne, Roy ne puis, Rohan suis”), along with a Rohan’s claim that “Antequam Abraham fuisset, ego sum” (“Before Abraham, I was here”). Baudry, Roch Le Baillif, 78. 86. In 1633 Henri de Rohan himself wrote both the king and Richelieu explaining that “puis que Dieu ne m’a donné qu’une fi lle, je desire avec passion de conserver en sa personne l’honneur de ma Duché et Pairie” (bnf ms Fr. 4106 [microfi lm 15746], 23–24). 87. Hanley, “Social Sites of Political Practice in France.” 88. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 2:697–98, 708.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 203

2/16/15 2:27 PM

204

|

notes to pages 37–49

chapter 2 1. Du Pavillon and Labie, Le château de Beauregard, 7–9, 22–26; on Rohan’s image, above, in the introduction. 2. Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat, 18–67, stresses the continued importance of aristocratic home schooling into the mid-seventeenth century. Catherine and her role will receive more attention in chapter 3, below. 3. bn ms Fr. 4107, “La vie de Henri duc de Rohan,” 3r, speaks of Rohan surpassing all the others “at the same school” in these exercises. 4. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, provides a large selection of both brothers’ letters; for those of Soubise, 411–23. 5. bn ms Fr. 4107, fol. 3. 6. See below, pp. 184–91. 7. an mc xcix, 206, 26 October 1660 (inventory after death of Marguerite de Béthune); on his sister Anne, La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 1:386; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:634. 8. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 75. 9. Plutarch, Les vies des hommes illustres, 1:418–70, quotation 420; this of course was the translation available to Rohan. 10. Ibid., 2:425. 11. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 388 (1 January 1631). 12. Kettering, Power and Reputation, 39–52, explores the political implications of dance in the early seventeenth century; on the intensity of French interest in dance, McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance; on nobles’ enthusiasm for chivalric tales, Méniel, Renaissance de l’ épopée. 13. Parthenay, Ballets, 31, 33, 35–36. 14. Ibid., 37. 15. bnf Pièces Originales 2531. 16. De Witt, Mémoires de madame de Mornay, 2:58–61, quotation 61. 17. bn ms Fr. 4107, 4v. Of course there were also greater restrictions on a nobleman of Rohan’s prominence than on such lesser figures as Mornay; France was at peace with Spain, and for a cousin of the king to fight for the Dutch risked creating diplomatic tensions. 18. La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 1:307. 19. Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician, 44–59. 20. Discussed at length below, in chapter 5. 21. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:200–382. On the era’s expectations concerning the grand tour, Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 48–58; Rohan’s tour followed roughly the same itinerary as Mornay’s own thirty years earlier. 22. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:225, 239, 242–62, 268, 287–88. 23. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:621. 24. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:348, 374–75. 25. Ibid., 2:222–24, 365. 26. Ibid., 2:215, 315–16. 27. Ibid., 2:348, 371, 373, 342–43, 201. 28. Ibid., 2:307–8, 363, 364–65. 29. Ibid., 2:206–7, 369. 30. For the royal letters making the grant, an k 623, no. 42; their language is discussed above, in chapter 1. Other branches of the family had already enjoyed this honor; the duc de Montbazon was raised to the peerage in 1588, then confirmed in 1595.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 204

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 49–54

|

205

31. an mm 759, 978–80; bn ms Fr. 22343, fols. 64–65. 32. The marriage took place in 1603 (bn ms Fr. 22343); in the Rohan’s own papers, the family are invariably referred to as the princes “des Deux Ponts.” 33. Imbert, Lettres, 11, describing Marie de Médicis’s decision to block the marriage; La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 2:386 (23 December 1604); 1:387–89. Anne de Rohan would remain unmarried. 34. Richelieu, Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 301. 35. Two years later, Rosny would be named duc de Sully, the title by which he is usually known. 36. La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 1:386. 37. Ibid., 1:388. 38. Barbiche and Dainville-Barbiche, Sully, 169–71, and above, in chapter 1; on the couple’s married life, see below, in chapter 3. 39. La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 1:191–92. 40. For contemporary awareness of this change, Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 6. Dubost, Marie de Médicis, 592, argues that the real hardening of royal policy came only after Marie’s exclusion from power, in 1617. However, for Rohan exclusion from the center of court life constituted the essential change. 41. I discuss the specifics of Rohan’s memoir writing in more detail in “Writing Failure.” 42. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:103. 43. Ibid., 2:110–11. 44. For instance, his memoirs mock the citizens of La Rochelle for believing that collective prayer will aid them in resisting the king (ibid., 1:206–7). 45. The intensity of such efforts differed widely across Europe; see Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 460–89. 46. Chantérac, Journal . . . maréchal de Bassompierre, 4:174; McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance, 177. 47. bm ms 2049. See also Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 77, describing Henri as “adroit aux exercices du corps jusqu’à la danse, bien que négligée par ceux de la religion.” On the complex issue of Sabbath restrictions in the Reformed tradition, Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 325–26; on Geneva’s prohibition of dancing and gambling, p. 98. French Protestants were more open to such entertainments than those elsewhere, and the Rohan’s participation was not at all unusual (McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance, 173–82). 48. Imbert, Lettres, 66. 49. The interpretation offered here thus diverges from a commonplace image of Rohan as exceptionally pious; see, for instance, Hildesheimer, Richelieu, 134. It also differs from recent scholarly emphasis on the broader importance of religion in the Wars of Religion, as argued in different ways by Holt, “Putting Religion Back,” and Rosa and Van Kley, “Religion and the Historical Discipline.” For a contrary view, stressing the contingent and flexible nature of seventeenth-century religious convictions, Hanlon, Confession and Community, 2–12, passim. 50. Dubost, Marie de Médicis, 430–532, provides an excellent overview of this maneuvering. 51. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 7. 52. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:140–41. 53. Ibid., 2:153. 54. Ibid., 1:2. 55. Ibid., 1:116. 56. Ibid., 1:178. 57. Ibid., 2:141, 133, 144, 142, 143.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 205

2/16/15 2:27 PM

206

|

notes to pages 54–60

58. Lazzeri, De l’ interest des princes, provides a remarkable explication of the text’s place in European political thought and fully explains the history of its publication; on the other hand, it is relatively laconic in tracing the development of Rohan’s own thought, and it conveys a misleading impression of his reading by suggesting that he personally commanded the range of sources it cites. 59. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:152–53. 60. Ibid., 1:179–80. 61. bn ms Fr. 4101, 282. 62. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:66–67. 63. In 1629, responding to complaints that the Rohan were escaping too lightly from the war, Richelieu wrote to the Parlement of Toulouse that the Rohan “in the last uprising” had received 1 million l.: Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 4:440. 64. Ibid. 65. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:621. 66. Richelieu, Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 139–40, 141. 67. Quoted in Hildesheimer, Richelieu, 413. 68. Serr, Henri de Rohan, 617; Rohan, Mémoires du duc de Rohan sur la guerre de la Valteline, 67; bnf ms Fr. 4107, 51r. 69. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 105. 70. Ibid., 390. 71. Important recent studies on early modern violence include Carroll, Blood and Violence; Nassiet, La violence; and Sandberg, Warrior Pursuits. But this literature has given little attention to the psychological complexities and costs of violence; for emphasis on these, see Grossman, On Killing. 72. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:97. Military valor had certainly not lost its appeal for the French nobility after 1550, contrary to the argument of Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree; in fact, a higher percentage of French nobles entered military service under Louis XIV than under François I; compare, for instance, Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army, 154, with Wood, The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 90. 73. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 385. 74. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:149. 75. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 365, 381, 382. 76. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:85. See also Serr, Henri de Rohan, 442, who finds Rohan’s agreeing to lead the Huguenot radicals inexplicable, and can offer only “his impulsive character” as an explanation. 77. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 228 (30 August 1621); this was the introduction to a commission permitting Bouffard to levy troops—a statement sent out widely. 78. On early modern resistance theories, see Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2:185–238. 79. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 18–19. 80. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:208, 209–11. 81. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 18–19. 82. Ibid., 21. 83. Sauzet, Au Grand Siècle des âmes, 196, quoting the bishop of Nîmes. 84. For exemplary studies of elites’ mobilization of the urban poor, see Descimon, “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de ville,” esp. 324n13, and Beik, Urban Protest, 199–218. 85. bm ms 1702. 86. La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 2:348.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 206

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 61–66

|

207

87. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:125–26. 88. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 222. 89. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:163, 201, 338. 90. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 386 (5 December 1630). 91. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, i–xix; Dez, “Lettres et mémoires,” 372. 92. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 76–77. Rohan undertook similar efforts to charm local elites in his mission to the Grisons, in 1635–36; Schmid, Das Bild Herzog Heinrich Rohans, 16, 18, 20–21. 93. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 77. 94. Ibid., 35. 95. On these groups, Sauzet, Contre-Réforme et Réforme Catholique en Bas-Languedoc, 1:196–98. 96. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 35. Serr, Henri de Rohan, 602–5, has published the interrogations in this case. For other contemporary expressions of this outlook, see Jouanna, Le pouvoir absolu, 296. 97. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 36. 98. Ibid., 126–27, 194. A comparable episode occurred in 1635, when Rohan betrayed to Richelieu plans for a conspiracy that a former companion in arms had joined, as a means of demonstrating his own loyalty and solidifying his position. Wendland, Der Nutzen der Pässe, 166. 99. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:200–201. 100. Ibid., 1:219. 101. Ibid., 1:226–27. At Nîmes, Rohan deployed the same technique of mobilizing the lower classes against a city leadership that was eager for peace: Sauzet, Contre-Réforme et Réforme Catholique en Bas-Languedoc, 1:234. 102. On the treaty’s contents, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal ms 4083, 9, fols. 48–55, and Bibliothèque Mazarine ms 2150, fols. 1–3. For a summary of this transaction from the Spanish perspective, Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares, 227, 366, 379. Rohan’s agent was Michel du Clausel, the son of a president in the Chambre des Comptes of Montpellier—as will be discussed below, in chapter 5, a background characteristic of Rohan’s confidants; some years later, Rohan himself ordered Clausel’s execution (Vignal, Les papiers de Richelieu, 35). Richelieu knew of these agreements both from intercepted documents (Bibliothèque Mazarine ms 2150) and from a double agent he had placed with Rohan (Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 3:174, 175; 4:216–17). 103. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:279. 104. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 117. 105. Ibid., 195; for similar comments, see also Laboissière, Les commentaires du soldat du Vivarais. 106. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:278, 218. 107. Rohan, Le parfait capitaine, 361. 108. Zur-Lauben, Mémoires et lettres de Henri duc de Rohan, 1:29. 109. Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 3:585, d’Arpajon to Richelieu (24 December 1628). 110. Ibid., 3:566, M. de Neuillan to Richelieu (13 November 1628). 111. Ibid., 3:585, d’Arpajon to Richelieu (24 December 1628). 112. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 411–24, provides a selection of Soubise’s letters to his family. A number of great nobles awaited Richelieu’s death, in 1641, before returning to France; at that time Soubise himself was already in ill health, and he died the following year. 113. Ibid., 411 (8 December 1630). At the time of his death, Soubise’s French properties supplied the relatively modest income of about 10,000 l. yearly (an 273 ap 144, fol. 56v).

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 207

2/16/15 2:27 PM

208

|

notes to pages 66–71

114. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 414 (6 March 1631). 115. La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 3:234. 116. an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 103–7; in the midst of the civil war, the king himself could not attend, but he supplied the warrant that allowed Soubise to be buried in the immediate vicinity of Queen Elizabeth herself. 117. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 1:516. 118. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 387 (12 December 1630). 119. Ibid., 395 (26 March 1631). 120. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal ms 4114, 307. 121. Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 4:464, 465. 122. Ibid., 4:480–81, 530, 579–80, 611; bnf ms Fr. 4106 (microfi lm 15746), 23 (2 June 1633). 123. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 2:224. 124. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 367–68. 125. For explication of the region’s religious and political importance, Wendland, Der Nutzen der Pässe, 9–10, 19; on the relevance of Rohan’s Protestantism for his mission there, 145, 152–53. See also Head, Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons, 178–98, and Head, Jenatsch’s Axe, 20–26, for explication of the region’s geopolitics. 126. Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 4:558. 127. Ibid., 4:579. 128. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 409 (27 April 1632); bnf ms Fr. 4107, 37v; an mc vi, 457, 3 July 1638. 129. bnf ms Fr. 4107, 37r. 130. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 401 (30 May 1631). 131. Ibid., 425, Marguerite de Béthune to Catherine de Parthenay (7 January 1631). 132. bpu ms Tronchin 21, 56r. 133. Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 3:585, Arpajon to Richelieu (24 December 1628). 134. bpu ms Tronchin 21, 20r, to Tronchin (23 May 1633). 135. For Rohan’s complaints about his military inactivity at this time, Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 387 (12 December 1630), 390 (22 January 1631), and 392 (12 February 1631). 136. Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 4:1, 564ff, and 5:9–274, provides an extraordinarily well-documented, detailed account of Rohan’s actions from 1631 onward, from an emphatically pro-Rohan viewpoint; bnf ms Fr. 4106 (microfi lm 15746) assembles Rohan’s correspondence concerning his mission; see especially 9, concerning his spending and need to make an impression on the Swiss. 137. Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 4:1, 581ff ; 658–59, analyses the multiple sources of French hesitation; bnf ms Fr. 4106 (microfi lm 15746), concerning unauthorized travel; and 144, 147–48 (Rohan’s arguments for more dramatic military action). 138. bn ms Fr. 4107, 37v–44r; Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 4:2, 163–67. 139. Of thirty-two letters that Rohan sent his mother between November 1630 and September 1631, twenty came from Padua, ten from Venice, one from Stra, and one from Vicenza; he remained in Padua from 27 November 1630 until 16 April 1631 (calculated from the letters included in Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 385–408). Pintard, Le libertinage érudit, 106–9, is emphatic on the university’s radical atmosphere; Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, 31–40, 477–79, stresses the university’s brilliant international reputation but downplays its heterodox aura. 140. Reveillaud, Véritables faits et gestes, 28; on the extent of Priolo’s influence on Rohan, ibid., 54–55; for a brief summary of Priolo’s later career, Pintard, Le libertinage érudit, 286–87; for a more detailed account, see below, chapter 5.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 208

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 71–79

|

209

141. Reveillaud, Véritables faits et gestes, 54–55. 142. an mc vi, 464, 13 March 1642; for an earlier arrangement, an mc vi, 456, 7 May 1638. These issues are discussed in detail below, in chapter 5. 143. Reveillaud, Véritables faits et gestes, 31. 144. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 400–401. 145. Budé, “La Réforme en Italie,” 18–25, 23–24; bpu ms Tronchin 21, fols. 47–48. 146. For analysis of the interplay among writing, political tactics, and social status, see Jouhaud, Mazarinades, and Schapira, Un professionnel des lettres, 9–11. For an overview of these issues, Schneider, “Political Power and the Emergence of Literature”; see also below, chapter 5. 147. Rohan, De l’ interest des princes, 5. The term comes from Ranum’s pioneering study, The Creatures of Richelieu. 148. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 7. I discuss these issues in Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture, 182–84. 149. bpu ms Tronchin 21, 2 (28 September 1632); see also fol. 8r (23 November 1632), for his continued supervision of the publication process. 150. Ibid., 36r (19 October 1635). 151. Rohan, De l’ interest des princes, 104, 141–43, describing the death of Henri de Guise, in 1588. 152. Ibid., 104, 117. 153. Ibid., 3–4. 154. Ibid., 113. 155. Even at the time, there was debate on this issue, and most historians today doubt that Guise had any such plan. 156. Rohan, De l’ interest des princes, 141–43. 157. Rohan, Memoires du duc de Rohan . . . , 1:1–2. 158. Ibid., 1:65. 159. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 6–7. 160. Ibid., 69. 161. Ibid., 362. 162. Ibid., 113, 114–15. 163. Ibid., 372–73. 164. bn ms Fr. 4101, 190. 165. Rohan, Le parfaict capitaine, 389, 390. See also p. 71, where he writes of Vercingetorix that “because the histories are written only by the victorious, we ordinarily see admiration only for the darlings of fortune.” 166. Rohan, Mémoires du duc de Rohan sur la guerre de la Valteline, 71; his army included 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry. Detailed descriptions of these campaigns are offered in Deyon and Deyon, Henri de Rohan, 156–71, and Wendland, Der Nutzen der Pässe, 160–99. 167. Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 5:34–35, on the possibility of attacking Milan. 168. Rohan, Mémoires du duc de Rohan sur la guerre de la Valteline, 121–22. 169. Ibid., 127. 170. In fact, questions of religion also mattered in the failure of the mission; for reasons both of genuine piety and of concern for Italian opinion, the French government refused to guarantee Protestant practice or properties in the region, as Rohan had proposed. See Wendland, Der Nutzen der Pässe, 175, 198–99; Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 5:20–21.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 209

2/16/15 2:27 PM

210

|

notes to pages 79–84

As they point out, neither Rohan himself nor other French officials recognized the religious component in these events. 171. Rohan, Mémoires du duc de Rohan sur la guerre de la Valteline, 149–50, 151–52. See Wendland, Der Nutzen der Pässe, 190–94, on his career up to this point, and especially Head, Jenatsch’s Axe, 29–32, passim. 172. Rohan, Mémoires du duc de Rohan sur la guerre de la Valteline, 199. 173. Hanotaux and La Force, Histoire du Cardinal de Richelieu, 4:446, 447n1. 174. Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 5:266–74. Rott and Wendland convincingly argue that the duke was only a scapegoat in the matter; Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 5:206, 274; Der Nutzen der Pässe, 213. 175. bnf ms Fr. 4107, 61v, 63v. 176. The duke’s feudal holdings, financial circumstances, and economic calculations will be discussed below, in chapter 4. 177. Serr, Henri de Rohan, stresses the surprise that Louis’s proclamation of Navarre’s new status occasioned. 178. Bibliothèque Mazarine, ms 2150, 1v. In the nineteenth century, the historian François Guizot made this agreement a central element in his critique of Rohan’s politics; see Schmid, Das Bild Herzog Heinrich Rohans, 152. 179. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ms 4114, 289. Condé had only blamed Rohan for inviting the English into France, usurping royal powers of taxation and coinage, and misusing religion to justify civil war. 180. Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 4:1, 661–62. 181. bn ms Fr. 4107, 55r–55v. 182. Richelieu, Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 139–41; in his criticisms of Rohan’s behavior, Richelieu repeated almost verbatim the views of Léonor d’Estampes, whom he sent to the region after Rohan’s retreat, in an effort to restore French influence (Schmid, Das Bild Herzog Heinrich Rohans, 129–33). Such suspicions were especially reasonable in that the internal politics of the region centered precisely on regional autonomy; see Head, Early Democracy in the Grisons, 168–98. Rott in contrast stresses Rohan’s loyalty and consistency in pursuing French interests (Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 5:274, passim). 183. She put forward this claim in the course of litigation with her daughter, over the duke’s supposed heir Tancrède; see below, chapter 3. 184. bnf ms Fr. 15873, 112r–125r; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:622. In a private note, Professor Madeleine Zilfi has explained to me that some form of feudal tenure from the Ottoman Empire would have been a real possibility. 185. bshpf ms 417, item 3, 1r. 186. Ritter, François Viète, 19. 187. an mc vi, 457, 11 December 1638; after Anne de Rohan’s death, the house passed to Richelieu’s collaborator François le Métel de Boisrobert (Magne, Bourgeois et fi nanciers, 222). 188. Quoted in Rott, Histoire de la représentation diplomatique, 4:1, 565n5. 189. On Wallenstein’s establishing himself as ruler of Mecklenburg, Mann, Wallenstein, 573–600; on Saxe-Weimar’s ambitions, Hanotaux and La Force, Histoire du Cardinal de Richelieu, 4:470. 190. Hugon, Naples insurgée, 32–42. 191. For persuasive emphasis on the importance of such political units in the early seventeenth century, Lipp, Noble Strategies in an Early Modern Small State, 2–3, 142–43.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 210

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 85–92

|

211

chapter 3 1. Brunner, Neue Wege, 104–5. 2. Of course legal restrictions did not fully shape practices. For the example of warfare, Steinberg, La confusion des sexes, 74–90, 213–40, and Sandberg, “‘Generous Amazons Came to the Breach.’” For the complexities of women’s legal status during the period, Portemer, “Réflexions sur le pouvoir de la femme.” 3. For exploration of this role, Collins, “The Economic Role of Women in SeventeenthCentury France.” 4. Furetière, Dictionaire, s.v. “maison.” 5. For important insights on these roles, see Kettering, French Society, 20–34; Diefendorf, “Gender and the Family,” and From Penitence to Charity, 18–19; and Neuschel, “Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France.” On concepts of social capital, see the discussion above, in the introduction. 6. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:620–48. 7. Houdaille, “La noblesse française, 1600–1900,” 507–8. For the highest-ranking nobles, the age difference was slightly smaller, about five years in the later seventeenth century; see also Lévy and Henri, “Les ducs et pairs sous l’Ancien Régime,” 813. 8. Houdaille, “La noblesse française avant 1600,” 1074. Nassiet, “Nom et blason,” and Parenté, noblesse et Etats dynastiques, 183–93, suggests still higher rates of mortality; Carroll, Blood and Violence, 258–61, likewise argues for still higher mortality from violence. 9. Houdaille, “La noblesse française, 1600–1900,” 506. 10. This model of course applied equally to the monarchy itself, with its chain of regencies from the mid-sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries. For the cultural implications of this pattern, Cosandey, La reine de France, 295–360; Crawford, Perilous Performances. 11. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 407, 408 (24 February 1632). 12. Ibid., 408 (20 April 1632). 13. Quoted in Deyon and Deyon, Henri de Rohan, 130. 14. The separation occurred in 1624, and accorded Marguerite both the properties she had brought to the marriage and a yearly revenue drawn from Rohan’s estates: see an k 565 (4 May 1629). 15. an mc xcix, 186, 20 April 1653. For the contract itself, bnf ms Fr. 22344, fols. 191–198; an mc vi, 492, 29 May 1646. 16. an mc xcix, 192, 9 December 1655. 17. La Grange, Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 1:386–89. 18. This history can be reconstructed from an 1 ap 1171, 1 ap 1172. 19. Estienne and Liebault, L’agriculture, et maison rustique, 11r. See Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society, 41–44, for discussion of these suspicions. 20. bm ms 1702; an mc xcix, 263, 5 February 1675. These figures are discussed below, in chapter 5. 21. an 1 ap 604, 20 (22 May 1590). 22. Ibid., 31 (9 December 1609). 23. Bonnet, Mémoires de la vie de Jean de Parthenay-Larchevêque, 100–101. 24. Laugel, Henry de Rohan, 408 (20 April 1632); bnf ms Fr. 4107, 5v. 25. Lambin, Femmes de paix, 22–23; Beaudry, “L’accès au livre.” On the women’s reading and book ownership in Italy at this time, von Tippelskirch, Sotto controllo, 45–55. 26. Ritter, François Viète, 8, 19–20; an 106 ap assembles both documents and secondary studies on Viète. His career is discussed in more detail below, in chapter 5.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 211

2/16/15 2:27 PM

212

|

notes to pages 93–98

27. bm ms 1702; the document gives no indication of the contents of the gallery or library. 28. De Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan, 143–45. 29. An inventory after death survives, but it includes no books or pictures. 30. Barbiche and Dainville-Barbiche, Sully, 408–11; Lambin, Femmes de paix, 422; an mc xcix, 202, 18 July 1659; an mc xcix, 206, 26 October 1660. On the duke’s library and his education, see above, chapter 2. For statistical surveys of seventeenth-century aristocratic libraries, Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle, 1:492, 2:927. 31. Notably works by Paolo Sarpi, François Eudes de Mézeray, and Octavio de Strada. 32. In fact, the listing probably understates the importance of contemporary literature among Marguerite’s books, since many recent works would have been among those not listed by title. 33. an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684; an mc xcix, 192, 22 November 1655. 34. bn ms Fr. 15873, fols. 112v–113r, 123r; for the strength of this tradition throughout the Old Regime, Timmermans, L’accès des femmes à la culture, 48–49. 35. bpu ms Tronchin 22, 66r. 36. Stuurman, “Feminism,” 369; Grell, “France et Angleterre,” 17. In his early twentiethcentury textbook, Jean-H. Mariéjol already spoke of “revendications féministes” in the 1620s (Henri IV et Louis XIII, 249). 37. Laugel, Henry de Rohan, 397 (9 April 1631). 38. bpu ms Tronchin 22, fols. 73–78. 39. an mc xcix, 206, 26 October 1660; Babelon, Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, 220. 40. bm ms 1702. 41. an mc vi, 492, 24 September 1646. 42. an mc xcix, 177, 7 January 1649; bm ms 1727. 43. bm ms 1702 (13 March 1624). 44. bnf ms Fr. 22343, fol. 156 (22 November 1608). 45. bm ms 1702. 46. an mc xcix, 206, 26 October 1660. 47. Ibid. 48. These efforts included a history of her father (“La vie de Jean de Parthenay l’Archevesque, par Fr. Viète”) and a short “genealogie de la maison de Lusignan.” bshpf ms 417, items 3, 12. As noted above, in chapter 2, both of these influenced Henri de Rohan. 49. bm ms 1702. 50. bshpf ms 417, item 6, presents the family’s legal consultations concerning the marriage. 51. bm ms 1702. Such testamentary rewritings were unusual, and they indicate the seriousness with which Catherine viewed her task. 52. an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 993–99. 53. an 273 ap 144. 54. Like Saint-Simon, Marguerite de Béthune also publicly expressed indifference upon learning of Soubise’s death; see Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:625. As late as 1632, Henri de Rohan took seriously the possibility that his brother might finally marry; see Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 408 (20 April 1632). 55. an k 623, no. 42 (microfi lm, eighteenth-century copy). In the seventeenth century there were five other cases in which the crown established comparable arrangements, allowing ducal titles to pass to the heiress’s husband; see Labatut, Les ducs et pairs, 138. 56. an kk 619, discussed above, in chapter 1.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 212

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 98–107

|

213

57. See Nassiet, Parenté, noblesse et Etats dynastiques, 158–61, 322–23, for the implications of such marriages in reinforcing families’ power. The marriage contract itself is unavailable, but it is summarized in an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678. 58. The marquise de Caylus, as quoted in Béchu and Reyniès, Le cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan, 16. 59. an k 617, no. 25. 60. Discussed above, chapter 1. 61. bnf f Fm 14522, 1. The lawsuit did not directly concern the siblings’ properties, but it did show the extent of the bitterness the settlement had created. 62. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 2:698. 63. Ibid., 2:695. 64. an mc xcix, 214, 19 May 1663. 65. Malettke, Opposition und Konspiration unter Ludwig XIV, 142–94; Malettke, “Opposition nobiliaire sous Louis XIV.” 66. an mc xcix, 297, 8 April 1684. 67. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:640. 68. an mc xcix, 204, 9 February 1660; Mazel, La mort et l’ éclat, 285–86, plates xiva, xivb. 69. an mm 758, “Histoire genealogique,” 643. 70. Arlette Jouanna offers the classic explication of these ideas in Ordre social, 73–85. 71. Brantôme, Recueil des dames, 237, 261; for other images of the sexually voracious woman, Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 124–27; for a darker view of the realities of the period, Steinberg, “Quand le silence se fait.” 72. bshpf ms 417, item 7. On the issues surrounding impotence in the period and the procedures to diagnose it, Darmon, Le tribunal de l’ impuissance, and Corbin, Courtine, and Vigarello, Histoire de la virilité, 185–89, 238–49. Michael Breen is currently completing a study of impotence trials in seventeenth-century Paris. 73. bnf ms Fr. 22344, fols. 188–189, “Lettre ecrite selon les apparences a Marguerite de Rohan avant son mariage avec Henri Chabot, . . . le 25 novembre 1644 sur l’original Latin.” 74. Discussed above, chapter 2. 75. bshpf ms 417, no. 14. 76. Imbert, Lettres, 66 (10 November 1618, “November” 1618). 77. bnf ms Fr. 15873, 112v, 114r, 115r, 116r, 116v, 123r–v, printed as Béthune, Manifeste pour madame la duchesse douairiere de Rohan. 78. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 77; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:626. 79. De Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan; documents concerning the case are available in bnf ms Fr. 3169 (microfi lm); and an u*//829. For the episode from the perspectives of Nemours and his wife, Anne d’Este, see Coester, Schön wie Venus, mutig wie Mars, 220–22, 225, and Vester, Jacques de Savoie-Nemours, 67–109. 80. an u*//829, 4r, 39r, 3r, 5v. On the issue of marriage by promise and the concern of the French state to redefine marriage, LeBrun, “Le prêtre, le prince et la famille,” and Hanley, “Engendering the State.” 81. an u*//829, 6r, 6v, 54v. 82. As suggested by Steinberg, “Quand le silence se fait.” 83. an u*//829, 99v, 100r. 84. De Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan, 89; an u*//829, 107v. 85. Henri II had shown himself especially concerned with concealment of pregnancy; in cases where an infant died following such concealment, an edict of 1557 prescribed the

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 213

2/16/15 2:27 PM

214

|

notes to pages 107–113

death penalty, and in fact the penalty was ferociously enforced; see Soman, “La justice criminelle,” 303. 86. For instance, an 1 ap 1172 (11 March 1573). 87. De Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan, 143–46; on the fortifications at La Garnache and Beauvoir-sur-Mer, d’Aubigné, Histoire universelle, 7:376–7, 8:323; Berger de Xivrey, Recueil des lettres missives de Henri, 2:396, 397 (24 October 1588), on the siege of Beauvoir. 88. See above, note 80. 89. De Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan, highlights the role of these factions. 90. Brantôme speaks of Françoise as an “honneste Demoiselle,” but also describes her confessing “everything under the cover of marriage” (Recueil des dames, 633–34); see also SaintSimon, Mémoires, 1:515. 91. The court poet Louis de Chabans (“sr du Maine, Gentilhomme ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi”) celebrated Catherine and Anne’s beauty; see Recueil des vers, 16, 18. 92. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:634. 93. Imbert, Lettres, 62 (20 August 1618). 94. bnf ms Fr. 22344, fol. 46 (2 April 1618). 95. bpu ms Tronchin 22, fol. 80v; Imbert, Lettres, 39, 40 (22 August 1617). 96. Champollion-Figeac, Mémoires de Mathieu Molé . . . , 2:345n1. 97. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:626. Tallemant knew the family well and had encountered the duchess personally; see below, chapter 5. 98. Ibid., 1:625; Tallemant also describes her father, Sully, touching her vagina when she was a girl, after having “spanked her as he usually did, with people present” (1:622). 99. Cf. Massera, La spedizione del duc di Rohan in valtellina, 40, for a romanticized version of the marriage. 100. Lenet, Mémoires, 437; more generally, Deyon, “Les non-dits d’un étrange procès”; as Deyon notes, Rohan’s own correspondence shows no knowledge of a surviving son (bnf ms Fr. 4106, 22–24). 101. bnf ms Fr. 15873, 112r–125r, quotations 122v, 123r, 125r. 102. Ibid., 122r. 103. Ibid., 123r; an mm 758, “Histoire genealogique,” 643. The French crown eventually insisted that the city remove the body and the inscription. 104. bnf ms Fr. 15873, 123r, 119r. The popularity of court ballets featuring Tancrède and other characters drawn from Tasso suggests the resonance of her choice of name; see Kettering, Power and Reputation, 39–44. 105. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:641. 106. bnf, ms Clairambault 1180, fols. 110r–135r, 117v. 107. Ibid., 125v. 108. Jouanna, Le devoir de révolte, 23, argues that Tancrède’s claims were widely accepted after his death in battle, supposedly demonstrating that he had inherited the duke’s military qualities; in fact, much of Parisian society remained skeptical. 109. an mc xcix, 206, 30 November 1660. 110. Sévigné, Correspondance, 1:1145n2 (16 August 1671), 2:150 (22 July 1676). 111. Ibid., 3:898 (25 June 1690). 112. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 1:520. 113. bnf ms Fr. 15873, 117v. 114. an mc xcix, 206, 30 November 1660. 115. an 1 ap 604, no. 61.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 214

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 113–121

|

215

116. Ibid., no. 33. 117. Ibid., no. 35. 118. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:648. 119. The document carries no date, but Marguerite’s visit to Brittany took place that year; see below, chapter 4. As discussed above, Marguerite had earlier received astrological advice concerning her marriage. 120. bnf ms Fr. 22344, fols. 188–189. 121. William Bouwsma is one of the few historians to have examined directly such phenomena; see “Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture.” 122. bm ms 1702. 123. an mc xcix, 206, 30 November 1660. 124. However, I have not located Henri de Rohan’s testament; Henri de Chabot’s does not offer a relevant parallel, since he was Catholic. 125. bnf ms Fr. 22344. 126. See the pioneering explorations of upper-class women’s religious engagements by Roelker, “The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen,” and Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity. 127. an mc vi, 492, 24 September 1646. 128. bm ms 1702. 129. an mc xcix, 206, 30 November 1660. 130. Ibid., 297, 8 April 1684. 131. an mc mi/rs/1347, 9 August 1708. 132. Augustin, Famille et société, 49–81; Delille, Famille et propriété dans le royaume de Naples, 70–74. 133. an mc mi/rs/1347, 9 August 1708. 134. Steinberg, “Au défaut des mâles,” 694–702. 135. Their testament insisted that even the bishop of Strasbourg’s magnificent Hôtel de Rohan (constructed with his own funds, next to their Hôtel de Soubise) was in fact “within our said hôtel,” and its buildings “are part of it”; they were not the bishop’s own property. 136. On the severe consequences of these policies for the nobility’s numbers, Delille, “Réflexions,” 56n7. Delille also shows the increasing frequency of marriages between cousins; the Rohan appear to have followed this pattern as well, but the numbers are far too small to be treated as clearly significant. 137. As argued for instance by Hanley, “Engendering the State”; cf. Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres?,” and Bennett, “Confronting Continuity,” for emphasis on continuities over this period.

chapter 4 1. The standard overview of seventeenth-century grandee incomes remains Labatut, Les ducs et pairs, 258–70. More recent studies have tended to focus on particular examples, including Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 26–42, 278–99, and Boltanski, Les ducs de Nevers, 136–41. For the lesser nobility, see, for instance, Dewald, Pont-St-Pierre, 90–126, and Nassiet, Noblesse et pauvreté, 201–36. 2. Du Halgouet, “Le Chartrier de Blain.” 3. Quoted in Béchu and Taillard, Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg, 135. 4. The episode is discussed above, in chapter 1; see Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 2:872.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 215

2/16/15 2:27 PM

216

|

notes to pages 122–127

5. There had been one such condemnation in the previous decade, but it had been quickly repealed. Documents concerning the 1628 seizure are assembled in an k 565; unless otherwise noted, the discussion that follows is based on this collection. Because the collection includes disparate documents and is available only on microfi lm, many page references are inconsistent or obscure. 6. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, mémoires, oeuvres diverses, 907. On Condé’s extraordinary success in moving from relative poverty to affluence and his interest in other confiscated properties, Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 27–35. 7. La Grange, ed., Mémoires . . . duc de La Force, 3:301. 8. They reached Blain on 23 November (an k 565, liv, lv). 9. an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 989 (28 June 1616). 10. This count is approximate because by the seventeenth century, once-autonomous estates had been grouped into larger units. 11. ad l-a b 1758. 12. Ibid., e 302. 13. Babelon, Châteaux de France, 30–33. 14. ad l-a b 1982. 15. Ibid., b 1998. 16. Ibid., b 1985. 17. an k 623, no. 42. See also du Halgouet, Contribution, 7–11, for greater precision. 18. ad l-a b 1758, 3v, 4r. 19. Croix, La Bretagne, 1:135, 138, 143. 20. Discussed below, in chapter 5. 21. ad l-a b 1985, 2v. 22. Croix, La Bretagne, 1:149. 23. ad l-a b 1998, 16v–17r. 24. Ibid., b 1985, 2r. 25. Ibid., b 1758, 201v. 26. Grillon, Les papiers de Richelieu, 3:575; also p. 576, for Marillac’s assessment of Blain, emphasizing “the importance of the place.” More generally on the military importance of such houses, Constant, La noblesse, 227–37. 27. an k 565 (31 December 1627). 28. Vaurigaud, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne, 279–80, quotation 303. 29. Episode discussed in bnf ms Fr. 15873, 114r. 30. Croix, La Bretagne, 1:271, 2:774n1; ad l-a b 1758, 201v. 31. On the economics of French lordship, the best summary remains Neveux, Jacquart, and Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire de la France rurale, 133–40, 145–47, 431. The peculiarities of Breton lordship have long been recognized; it weighed more heavily on underlings than lordship elsewhere in France, and supplied a higher percentage of nobles’ revenues (Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 2:651–57). 32. Bérenger and Meyer, La Bretagne de la fin du XVIIe, 138–41. Dominique Le Page and Michel Nassiet point out that medieval Brittany shared many qualities with Portugal, and that under different circumstances it, too, might have become a focal point of Europe’s world trade: L’union de la Bretagne à la France, 18–21. 33. Th is was the estimate of another intendant, in 1665: Kerhervé, Roudaut, and Tanguy, La Bretagne en 1665, 160. 34. ad l-a b 1694, fol. 3. 35. Ibid., e 302.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 216

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 127–132

|

217

36. an mc vi 468, 18 May 1644; an mc xcix, 190, 17 September 1654. In general the tenants had to pay for the wood they used; on the other hand, their leases accorded them residence in a large house attached to the forest. 37. ad l-a b 1985. 38. Ibid., b 1985, 5r. 39. On the issues surrounding landowners’ control of their property, see Hoff man, Growth in a Traditional Society, 143–70. For overviews of the domaine congéable, Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 2:720–55; and Le Goff, Vannes and Its Region, 158–63. 40. Baudry, Roch Le Baillif, 78; see above, chapter 1, for contemporary discussion of the family’s origins. See also an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678, which refers to “the domaines congéables customary in the province of Brittany and particularly under the law and government of the duchy of Rohan.” 41. In this I loosely follow the argument developed by James Collins in Classes, Estates, and Order that nobles had a strong interest in protecting locals from the demands of royal taxation, and that they effectively influenced the state so as to protect their interests; however, the Rohan example suggests much less solidity in the nobility’s position than Collins argues for. 42. Mousnier, La vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII offers the classic account of these processes; Descimon and Haddad, Epreuves de noblesse, 39–59, offer important new analyses. 43. On the functioning and efficiency of seigneurial justices, Mousnier, Les institutions de la France, 1:401–9, noting that Rohan courts in Brittany were directly subordinate to the Parlement. 44. Boltanski finds that the Nevers first sold seigneurial offices in 1604; see Les ducs de Nevers et l’Etat royal, 209. 45. an k 565, 170v, unsigned, unpaginated sheet. 46. Rohan’s yearly value was then roughly 13 percent of that of Pontivy, roughly comparable to the differential in office prices in the two lordships. 47. Du Halgouet, Contribution, 21. 48. an mc xcix, 217, 13 February 1664. 49. ad l-a b 1998, fol. 548, p. 551. 50. Cf. du Halgouet, Contribution, 261, who finds wood sales of 64,200 l. in 1627; an k 565, unsigned insert. 51. an mc vi, 458, 11 May 1639. 52. an k 565. 53. Ibid., 170v. 54. an mc vi, 457, 3 July 1638. 55. These are estimates, based on an 273 ap, 163, 144; an mc xcix, 217, 18 February 1664; and an mc xcix, 268, 1 April 1676. 56. an 1 ap 1172 (5 August 1644); bn ms Fr. 22343, fol. 71. 57. an k 565, 170v. 58. On the Rosmadec’s standing, Kerhervé, Roudaut, and Tanguy, La Bretagne en 1665, 201, showing the family’s income in 1665 to have been 16,000 l., far above that of the average noble. 59. an mc vi 462, 8 May 1641. 60. an 273 ap 144, 3r–43r. 61. Gallet emphasizes the weakness of much Breton estate administration: La seigneurie bretonne, 389–98, but he includes no Rohan properties in his analysis, despite the family’s importance in the region he studies.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 217

2/16/15 2:27 PM

218

|

notes to pages 133–137

62. bm ms 1702. 63. Vaurigaud, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne, 278–80, 302–3. On questions of later residence, see below, chapter 5. 64. Only fragmentary year-to-year comparisons are possible for other Rohan estates. 65. The classic analysis of these mechanisms is offered by Le Roy Ladurie, Les paysans de Languedoc, 1:466–74; for a specific example of their effect on the nobility, Constant, La noblesse, 123–55. For broader summaries of this line of research, Neveux, Jacquart, and Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire de la France rurale, 185–275, 359–441. 66. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order, 33 (on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century wealth), 58–60 (on Brittany’s collapse after 1650, under the pressure of royal taxation and trade restrictions); Kerhervé, Roudaut, and Tanguy, La Bretagne en 1665, 13–17. Fragmentary indications from the principality of Léon confirm this basic chronology: in 1628, its revenue amounted to 13,800 l., rising to 24,300 l. in 1678 (an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678). 67. Bérenger and Meyer, La Bretagne de la fin du XVIIe, 54–57. 68. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order, 58–60; Nantes and Saint-Malo remained prosperous by turning to colonial trade. 69. ad m 1 mi 338/4. For a different view, emphasizing the difficulties faced by Breton lords all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Gallet, La seigneurie bretonne, 387–89. 70. Bérenger and Meyer, La Bretagne de la fin du XVIIe, 138. 71. On these pressures, Boissière, “Marché au bois en ville en France à l’époque moderne,” who estimates that Paris wood consumption increased fivefold between the later sixteenth century and 1789. 72. For other examples of the importance of forest revenues in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century seigneurial revenues, Dewald, Pont-St-Pierre, 217–28; Le Marchand, La fin du féodalisme, 19–21; Duma, Les Bourbon-Penthièvre, 147–48. This trajectory supports the argument of Kenneth Pomeranz, that European society was saved from serious resource bottlenecks in the eighteenth century by its colonial possessions and the development of coal technologies; for a convenient statement of his argument, Pomeranz, “Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization.” 73. This is an estimate calculated from an mc xcix, 264, 8 April 1675. 74. ad m 1 mi 338/4 (20J15, “Compte du duché, 1713, 1723 et 1746”); cf. du Halgouet, Contribution, 260, for much higher estimates for the 1620s. 75. an mc xcix, 277, 21 July 1678. 76. For examples, Dewald, Pont-St-Pierre, 228, and Bamford, “French Forest Legislation and Administration.” 77. an mc vi, 448, 19 June 1634; an mc vi, 457, 2 August 1638; an mc xcix, 12 December 1688. 78. an mc vi, 469, 5 August 1644; an 1 ap 1172 (5 August 1644). 79. an mc xcix, 177, 7 January 1649. 80. In contrast, the duc de Sully did a brisk business in lending money; see Barbiche and Dainville-Barbiche, Sully, 364–66. 81. The Rohan example thus fits closely William Beik’s argument for the aristocracy’s financial reliance on the state, as developed in Absolutism in Languedoc and summarized in “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration”; for examples of the difficulties that families faced in living without such state support, Chatelain, Chronique d’une ascension sociale, 100, 365; Haddad, Fondation et ruine d’une “maison,” 194, 364. 82. Dez, “Lettres et mémoires.” 83. an 273 ap 144, 56v: 1566, 10,100 l. yearly; 1644, 11,000 l. yearly; 1650, 10,000 l. yearly.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 218

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 137–142

|

219

84. Leases an mc xcix, 268, 1 April 1676; an estimate of its total value is given in the marriage of Louis de Rohan-Chabot, an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678. 85. bnf Pièces Originales 2530, no. 257 (23 December 1679). 86. an mc xcix, 321, 13 September 1688, referring to Chabot’s having acquired “the three offices of royal messengers from Paris to Orléans and from Orléans to Paris.” 87. As discussed above, in chapter 1. 88. For Henri de Rohan’s purchase, an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684, providing no date but the purchase price of 8,653 l.; an mc xcix, 268, 30 June 1676 (“at Saint-Germain en Laye in the grande place facing the courtyard of the kitchens of the château,” for 10,200 l.); an mc xcix, 271, 23 March 1677 (at Versailles, “facing the avenue . . . across from the new city,” the price not indicated). 89. On the venality of military offices, Drévillon, L’ impôt du sang, 179–211. 90. an mc vi 461, 21 March 1640, on the sale to the maréchal de Bassompierre, who at the time was still a prisoner in the Bastille; an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 986–87. 91. Barbiche and Dainville-Barbiche, Sully, 369; in fact, Rohan already seems to have acted as governor of Poitou in 1619 (bm ms 2049). There is some possibility that money changed hands in this transfer; in his 1641 testament, Sully forgave a still-unpaid debt of 250,000 l. owed by the duc de Rohan (Barbiche and Dainville-Barbiche, Sully, 402). 92. Dez, “Lettres et mémoires,” 365n1. 93. an mc xcix, 277, 21 July 1678. 94. Ibid., 230, 19 May 1667; two acts on that day concern the sale and lay out the complex expedients required to raise this sum of money. 95. an mc mi/rs/1347, 9 August 1708. 96. Recent scholarship on French military careers has demonstrated the long odds against family’s recouping the investments that these required, especially after 1660; see Drévillion, L’ impôt du sang, 215–16, 252–71, and Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army, 156. On the Rohan’s successes at court, Horowski, “‘Such a Great Advantage for My Son,’” discussed above, in chapter 1. 97. My understanding of aristocratic marriage owes much to recent studies by Chatelain, Chronique d’une ascension sociale, 181–214; Haddad, Fondation et ruine d’une “maison,” 74–103; and Bennini, Les conseillers à la Cour des Aides, 321–36. 98. On the procedures of the “separation of properties” and the frequency with which families used them, Hardwick, Family Business, 26–56; Hardwick notes that requests for separation “were almost always granted” (28). 99. bnf Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises 25240, fols. 180–187 (Henri de Rohan and Marguerite de Béthune); bnf ms Fr. 22344, fols. 191–198 (Marguerite de Rohan); an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678 (Louis de Rohan); an mc xcix, 336, 10 May 1694 (Emilie Sophronie de Rohan). 100. Discussed above, in chapter 3. 101. an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 985, mentions the contract, without providing financial details. 102. an mc vi 461, 13 September 1640; the situation is summarized in an mc vi, 457, 3 July 1638; for the contract, see an mc xlix, 258, 7 February 1605; for a copy of the marriage contract, bnf Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises 25240, fols. 180–187. 103. an mc xcix, 205, 5 May 1660; an mc xcix, 206, 23 November 1660. 104. Ibid., 196, 13 July 1657; ibid., 188, 10 October 1653; see also above, chapter 3. 105. These arrangements are summarized in an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678. 106. The bride’s father was the marquis de Vardes, her mother a Nicolai, from a prominent Parisian robe dynasty. Ibid., 325, 27 February 1690, shows her dealing with her husband’s

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 219

2/16/15 2:27 PM

220

|

notes to pages 142–146

debts, “in addition to the debts that she has discharged up to the present for the house of Rohan.” 107. Ibid., 325, 27 February 1690. 108. The emergence of new consumer choices during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has become a central theme in recent writing on several European societies and on all social classes within them; for especially important recent statements of this view, Roche, A History of Everyday Things, 166–249; de Vries, The Industrious Revolution, 122–85; and (with specific attention to the social functions of aristocratic spending) Coquery, L’ hôtel aristocratique, 119ff. For a perceptive summary of older studies on the topic, Fairchilds, “Consumption in Early Modern Europe.” For emphasis on the influence of aristocratic spending habits on other social groups, Roche, Le peuple de Paris, 155–201. Lawrence Stone’s pioneering analysis of aristocratic spending remains an important example; see The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 547–86. 109. Many documents have disappeared that would have illuminated these patterns; at her death in 1684, for instance, Marguerite de Rohan left “nine separate notebooks containing the expenses for the house of my late lady princesse de Rohan,” one per year (an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684). 110. Ibid., 277, 21 July 1678. Obviously these numbers were estimates, and probably high ones. Marguerite de Rohan was seeking to minimize the money she might owe her son, and thus had an interest in exaggerating her expenditures on his behalf during her administration of his wealth; her son’s interests led in the opposite direction, of course, but he was restricted in defending them by contemporary expectations that he display fi lial respect. 111. Catherine de Parthenay also kept separate accounts of what she spent raising her daughters: bm ms 1725, 15v, “a sack of all the expenses of my daughters.” 112. bm ms 2049. 113. an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684; on cooks’ status, Pinkard, A Revolution in Taste, 131–32. 114. Overviews in Bohanan, Fashion beyond Versailles, 91–113; Pinkard, A Revolution in Taste, 60–94. 115. an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684; on the continuing pressure during the eighteenth century for extravagant entertaining and its high costs for aristocratic households, Lilti, Le monde des salons, 90–95. 116. an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 912–21. In fact, the establishment was probably larger still, since the list does not include the family’s stables. On servants’ recruitment and their relations with their masters, Gutton, Domestiques et serviteurs, 17–99; Maza, Servants and Masters; Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies; Coquery, L’ hôtel aristocratique, 70–74. 117. an mc vi, 461, 13 September 1640. Th is was a widespread pattern among aristocratic households, as noted by Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 161–63; even the Condé, who still maintained an enormous household in the mid-seventeenth century, had many fewer servants as the century progressed. 118. an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684; see also an mc xcix, 297, 8 April 1684, Marguerite de Rohan’s testament, for her gifts to these servants and friends. 119. Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat, 18–67; an mc xcix, 251, 16 June 1672; an mc xcix, 297, 8 April 1684. 120. an mc xcix, 204, 3 January 1660; see also an mc xcix, 204, 20 April 1660. 121. For examples of the importance of clothing as a political and social statement, Steinberg, La confusion des sexes, 159–74, passim; Jones, Sexing La Mode, 7–70; Paresys and Coquery, eds., Se vêtir à la cour en Europe. 122. an mc xcix, 192, 16 September 1655. 123. Ibid., 263, 21 March 1675.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 220

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 146–153

|

221

124. Ibid., 205, 1 June 1660. 125. Merland, Catherine de Parthenay, 73–74n1. 126. bm ms 1702. 127. Schnapper, Curieux du Grand Siècle, esp. 155–88; for a brief summary of these processes, Bohanan, Fashion beyond Versailles, 33–34. Similar enthusiasm of course was to be found throughout Europe. 128. Martin Lister, quoted in Bohanan, Fashion beyond Versailles, 48. 129. Béchu and Taillard, Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg, 323. 130. an mc xcix, 192, 22 November 1655. 131. Ibid. For the popularity of tapestries in the mid-seventeenth century, see Babelon, Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, 206, which also explores the rise of luxury furnishings during the period. 132. an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684. 133. bm ms 1702 (Catherine also had a collection of jewels whose value is not specified); an mc vi, 492, 24 September 1646. Items worth less than 100 l. were not included in this calculation. 134. an mc vi, 457, 21 August 1638. 135. an mc xcix, 192, 22 November 1655. 136. Ibid., 206, 26 October 1660. 137. Ibid., 297, 11 April 1684. 138. bm ms 1702. 139. For an overview of aristocratic debt and reflections on its inevitability, Coquery, L’ hôtel aristocratique, 154–78. 140. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 409 (27 April 1632). 141. an mc xcix, 277, 21 July 1678. 142. Ibid., 188, 24 October; 1, 3, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 27 December 1653; 189, 18 February; 11 March 1654. 143. an mc xcix, 277, 27 July 1678. 144. an mc vi, 428, 5 September 1623. These relationships are discussed in detail below, in chapter 5. 145. an mc vi, 492, 9 August 1646; an mc xcix, 188, 16 September, 11 December 1653. 146. an mc vi, 450, 25 June 1635. 147. an mc xcix, 206, 26 October 1660. 148. These issues are discussed in more detail below, in chapter 5. 149. an mc xcix, 188, 16 September 1653; the creditor was “messire Pierre Gobelin,” one of the most important financiers in seventeenth-century Paris and the Rohan’s neighbor in the Place Royale. 150. Ibid., 189, 13 March 1654. 151. Ibid., 263, 21 March 1675. 152. Marguerite duchesse d’Angoulême, quoted in de Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan, 7; Génin, Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême, 1:365, 2:167–72. 153. bm ms 1702. 154. an mc vi, 457, 3 July 1638. 155. Discussed above, in chapter 1. 156. For instance, an mc xcix, 238, 24 June 1669: in borrowing 50,000 l., Marguerite de Rohan had to list as collateral her properties in Brittany and Saintonge, specifying the name and location of each, and a rente that she held on the Hôtel de Ville of Paris. 157. This text is included in Vaurigaud, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne, 302. A 1537 document refers to “the new wing [corps de logis] at the château of Blain” (bnf ms Fr. 22342 [micro-

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 221

2/16/15 2:27 PM

222

|

notes to pages 152–160

fi lm 5848], fol. 145r); for a brief summary of the efforts devoted to it, Babelon, Châteaux de France, 739. 158. For more discussion of servants and followers, see below, chapter 5. 159. bm ms 2043 (1 May 1535). 160. an mm 759, “Histoire genealogique,” 912–21. 161. bm ms 1725. 162. Imbert, Lettres 78 (8 June 1619). 163. bm ms 1702. 164. See above, chapter 3. 165. Vaurigaud, Essai, 2:192. 166. an k 565, 13r. 167. an mc xcix, 230, 2 June 1667. 168. As discussed below, in chapter 5, from the 1620s onward the house served mainly as the residence for the Rohan’s local managers. 169. For her story, see above, in chapter 3. 170. Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire de la France urbaine, 130–32; Babelon, Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, 16–17, 287. On Sully’s house, Barbiche and Dainville-Barbiche, Sully, 371–72. 171. Babelon notes that the word itself was reserved for aristocratic residences; see Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, 117. 172. an mc vi, 457, 21 July 1638. 173. The inventory noted that some items had been transferred to Marguerite de Béthune, to cover debts that the estate owed; these may have been more stylish, but their total worth was only 13,494 l. 174. For example, Marguerite de Rohan herself for a time rented a house in the rue Vieille du Temple, for 3,000 l. yearly (an mc xcix, 191, 28 April 1655). 175. an mc xcix, 297, 11 April 1684. 176. For Louis de Rohan-Chabot, an mc xcix, 336, 5 May 1694; on the Soubise, an mc xcix, 336, 28 February 1694; on Coetquen, an mc xcix, 336, 16 June 1694; on the princesse d’Espinoy, an mc xcix, 336, 27 February 1690. Whereas merchant families tended to show strong loyalty to the neighborhoods in which their families had long resided, aristocrats were more vulnerable to changing residential fashions, making the Rohan’s commitment to the Place Royale all the more striking; see Marraud, De la ville à l’Etat, 163–71. 177. These mansions are briefly discussed above, in chapter 1. 178. In 1748, thus, the duc de Rohan resided on the quai des Théatins (now the quai Voltaire), in the western parish of Saint-Sulpice (ad m 1 mi 338). On the general movement of Parisian nobles to the western districts of the city and away from the Marais, see Marraud, La noblesse de Paris au XVIII siècle, 110–18, and Lilti, Le monde des salons, 136–43. 179. Given the intricacies of aristocratic accounting, limited documentation, and the dramatic changes that families’ incomes underwent in the seventeenth century, a reliable overview of peerage incomes is impossible, and only an impressionistic understanding is possible as to the Rohan’s place in a hierarchy of peerage wealth. Labatut, Les ducs et pairs, 258–70, offers a collection of relevant examples spanning the century, while also warning of the problems that beset their interpretation. These suffice only to show that some families had much higher incomes than the Rohan: all of the princes of the blood, several of the “princes étrangers,” and some others, such as the duc de Retz (in 1603, his landed income in Brittany alone amounted to three times what Henri de Rohan drew from the province). On the other hand,

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 222

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 161–168

|

223

Labatut suggests that in the late seventeenth century many peers had fortunes that were about half as large as the Rohan’s. 180. See above, chapter 3. 181. For the breadth of this development, Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England.

chapter 5 1. Du Plessis-Mornay, Mémoires et correspondance, 12:369, 371. On the divisions within the movement, Patry, Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, 488–504; Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 605. 2. On these interactions, see especially Carroll, Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion, 53–88; other exemplary works on aristocratic patronage include Barbiche and DainvilleBarbiche, Sully, 431–86; Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 149–262; Boltanski, Les ducs de Nevers, 173–325; Duma, Les Bourbon-Penthièvre, 277–466; and Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients, esp. 3–39. The late Roland Mousnier pioneered the study of early modern French clientage, and all studies of the subject owe something to his and his students’ insights, presented for instance in Durand, Hommage à Roland Mousnier. 3. For the erotic component of patronage, see Ferguson, Queer (Re)readings, 189–90, which offers an important corrective to emphasis on its essentially political functions, as emphasized by Le Roux, La faveur du roi, 207–62, 717–21, and Sandberg, Warrior Pursuits, 79–113. 4. The Rohan example thus diverges from Béguin’s emphasis on the ongoing importance of property relations as a foundation of later seventeenth-century patronage; see Les princes de Condé, 208–19. 5. De Ruble, Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan, 89. 6. Bonnet, Mémoires de la vie de Jean de Parthenay-Larchevêque, 98–99. 7. Discussed above, in chapter 4. 8. Here and throughout, I use the term “feudal” loosely, to denote the complex of relationships between great nobles like the Rohan and gentry who owned land near them. 9. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 508. 10. Meyer, La noblesse bretonne, 2:777–85. 11. Ritter, François Viète; an 106 ap (see specifically 106 ap 13 for Viète’s very strong arguments supporting Françoise); an mc vi 104, 30 March 1571, for another instance of his involvement in these procedures. 12. See above, chapter 2. 13. For the reciprocal relationship between intellectual activity and high social status, Schapira, Un professionnel des lettres, 14–17, 59, 71. 14. Barnavi and Descimon, La Sainte Ligue, le juge et la potence, 72–127, passim, for Brisson’s career and the significance of his death; they also note Fontenay’s extraordinary cultural vitality during the sixteenth century (pp. 72–76). 15. Ibid., 134. 16. an 106 ap 12. 17. Ibid., quoting F. Saulnier, Le parlement de Bretagne; for the importance of forest revenues to the Rohan, see above, chapter 4. 18. Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients, 40–67, underlines the importance of such intermediate figures, designating them as “brokers.”

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 223

2/16/15 2:27 PM

224

|

notes to pages 169–178

19. Vaurigaud, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne, 124; Joxe, Les protestants du comté de Nantes, 92. Le Noir was the Protestant minister at Blain, and based his account on membership rolls of the church there. 20. bm ms 1702; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 2:1264, 1542–43. 21. bnf ms Fr. 22344, fol. 46. 22. an mc vi, 449, 31 October 1634; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:786n4, 2:1542– 43nn1–3. 23. bn ms Fr. 22343, fol. 71. 24. an mc vi, 458, 11 May 1639; Magne, La joyeuse jeunesse de Tallemant des Réaux, 122; Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle, 539, describes Bidé as “a very active state financier [partisan], one of the most important of his times,” and his family as closely connected to the “the best Protestant banking families.” Tallemant himself also mentions Olivier as a prominent figure in Parisian society (Historiettes, 1:95; 2:786). 25. an mc vi, 458, 20 May 1639. 26. Du Halgouet, Pontivy, Rohan et leurs environs, 154–55, 174. 27. Tigier, La Bretagne de bon aloi, 278 (items 2672, 2673, 2675). 28. Vaurigaud, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne; Le Noir, “Histoire généalogique de Philippe Le Noir.” Phillip Benedict drew my attention to this remarkable document; see his analysis of its implications for French Protestantism, “The Owl of Minerva at Dusk.” 29. Le Noir, “Histoire généologique de Philippe Le Noir,” 1321. 30. Ibid., 1322. 31. Ibid., 1322, 1333. 32. Ibid., 1377–79. 33. Ibid., 1379–80. 34. Ibid., 1424. 35. Ibid., 1425. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 1433–34. Two were killed in battle, a third took a position in the military garrison of Bordeaux. 38. Ibid., 1431. 39. Ibid., 1432. 40. an mc vi, 428, 5 September 1623. 41. Vaurigaud, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne, 171. 42. Potier de Courcy, Nobiliaire et armorial de Bretagne, s.v. “Gouret.” 43. an mc vi, 451, 15 September 1635. 44. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 409 (27 April 1632). 45. Le Noir, “Histoire généologique de Philippe Le Noir,” 1425. 46. an mc vi, 448, 23 June; 13 June 1634. 47. Ibid., 448, 12 June 1634. 48. Furetière, Dictionaire, s.v. “intendant.” 49. Kerhervé, Roudaut, and Tanguy, La Bretagne en 1665, 95; Potier de Courcy, Nobiliaire et armorial de Bretagne, s.v. “Gouret.” 50. As discussed above, in chapter 4. The presence of Tallemant des Réaux at the signing indicates the high level of the Paris bourgeoisie from which the bride came. 51. Cf. Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 242–53. 52. an mc vi, 449, 31 October 1634. 53. Ibid., 492, 24 September 1646. 54. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 388 (24 December 1630).

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 224

2/16/15 2:27 PM

notes to pages 179–186

|

225

55. ad m 1 mi 338/4, leases 1641, 1653, 1661. 56. bm ms 1727 (17 June 1653). 57. an mc vi, 469, 27 August 1644. In this case banking was even more prominent, as Martin was negotiating a letter of exchange with a Paris banker; see an mc vi, 468, 8 June 1644. 58. an mc xcix, 186, 25 May 1653. 59. ad m 1 mi 338/4, no. 1025. 60. Ibid., nos. 1072, 1096; bm ms 1727; on Blain’s literary life, Bondois, “Notes sur un poète protestant breton”; Vaurigaud, Essai sur l’ histoire des Eglises Réformées de Bretagne, 2:242–58. 61. At least that much is suggested by a lease Thévenin himself arranged on Marguerite’s behalf in 1660 with “Me pierre Thevenin coner du Roy esleu particulier daubeterre habittant de la ville de sainct aullay,” an mc xcix, 195, 30 March 1657; 28 April 1660. The relationship may have gone further back: Mornay’s correspondent mentions a Jehan Thevenin in Poitou in 1613, as an ardent Rohan supporter (du Plessis-Mornay, Mémoires et correspondance, 12:183). Philippe’s father was “samuel Thevenin escuier sieur de la mesdardyere” (an mc xcix, 251, 16 June 1672). 62. an mc xcix, 251, 16 June 1672. 63. Ibid., 297, 8 April 1684. 64. Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, 97–98, 695; Dessert describes Philippe’s cousin Jean Thévenin as “one of the biggest financiers” of the later reign of Louis XIV (p. 695); the family originated in the bourgeoisie of La Rochelle, and was already noble in 1664. 65. The house was rented for 2,000 l. yearly, roughly the amount that some of the Rohan’s own houses rented for. The bride Anne de Briseval apparently had no connection with the world of finance. 66. an mc xcix, 251, 16 June 1672. 67. Ibid., 355, 6 October 1700. On Paris merchants’ readiness to stay in the same house over very long periods, Marraud, De la ville à l’Etat, 163–71. 68. Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, 97–109. Both Dessert and Béguin, Les princes de Condé, 242, demonstrate the complex interactions between nobles and financiers; if the financier lackey was a myth, they show, great nobles certainly used their dependents as fronts for their own investments in the tax farms. 69. Du Plessis-Mornay, Mémoires et correspondance, 12:301. 70. Ibid., 12:329 (6 August 1613). 71. Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:618–20; quotation from marquis de Castelnau, Mémoires, quoted 1:1224. 72. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 8, 77, 79, 132–33. 73. Ibid., 116–17, 81. 74. Ibid., 80, 78–79, 207, 93–94. On the ambiguous implications of scenes like this, see Maza, Servants and Masters, 187. 75. I discuss these issues in Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture, 117–20. 76. Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician, 319–23. 77. Laugel, Henri de Rohan, 419 (13 May 1631). 78. Ibid., 393 (26 February 1631). 79. Haag and Haag, La France protestante, 4:494–97; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 1:618–20. 80. Saudau, Saint-Jean d’Angély, 245–46. 81. Du Plessis-Mornay, Mémoires et correspondance, 12:291. 82. Description and details in Saudau, Saint-Jean d’Angély, 271.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 225

2/16/15 2:27 PM

226

|

notes to pages 186–195

83. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, i–xix. In his agreement with the crown ending the first of these wars, Rohan secured for Bouffard a small pension: Dez, “Lettres et mémoires,” 372. Rohan’s efforts to win over the notables of Castres are discussed above, in chapter 2. 84. Pradel, Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane, 76. For Brachet’s life, van de Schoor, The Irenical Theology of Théophile Brachet, 9–31. 85. Van de Schoor, The Irenical Theology of Théophile Brachet, 18–19. 86. Van de Schoor argues for the sincerity of Brachet’s transformation, but also notes the scorn that it drew from contemporaries, and he takes seriously the possibility that Brachet tailored his opinions to suit the cardinal (ibid., 226–27, passim). On Rohan’s own possible conversion, see above, chapter 2. 87. Haag and Haag, La France protestante, 5:225–28; Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, 2:78–87, quotations 85, 986n6; Budé, “La Réforme en Italie,” 25. For modern research on Gassion’s family, Harai, Grands serviteurs de petits Etats, 69–70. 88. Head, Jenatsch’s Axe, 16–32, 89–93. 89. Chéneau, Un agent secret de Mazarin, 12–13. 90. Reveillaud, Véritables faits et gestes, 37, 44, 37. 91. Quoted in Chéneau, Un agent secret de Mazarin, 11. 92. Quoted in ibid., 31 93. Reveillaud, Véritables faits et gestes, 54–55. 94. Chéneau, Un agent secret de Mazarin, 16–19. Sainte-Beuve had no doubt at all that Rohan’s memoirs on his Valteline campaigns were Priolo’s work; see Causeries du lundi, 12:344–45 (23 July 1856). 95. an mc vi, 464, 13 March 1642; for an earlier arrangement, an mc vi, 456, 7 May 1638; bpu ms Tronchin 22, fols. 60–61. 96. an mc vi, 464, 13 March 1642. 97. Tamizey de Larroque, Lettres de Benjamin Priolo, 1; Haag and Haag, La France protestante, 8:333. 98. Chéneau, Un agent secret de Mazarin, 47–53, quotation 49. For a different account, see Soll, The Information Master, 129; on Colbert’s eagerness to protect Mazarin’s posthumous reputation, see Dessert, Fouquet, 225–29. 99. Reveillaud, Véritables faits et gestes, 28.

conclusion 1. Nassiet, “La noblesse en France,” 112–15, on the nobility as a whole. The number of “ducs et pairs” rose from forty in 1588 to seventy-six in 1723, so that the group’s total numbers (with families included) were probably well below four hundred; see Labatut, Les ducs et pairs, 69.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 226

2/16/15 2:27 PM

b i b l i ography

manuscript sources Archives Départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes b 1694, Chambre des Comptes, Nantes, aveu. b 1758, Papier terrier de la barre royale de Lesnevan, principauté de Léon, 1638. b 1913, Papier terrier de la barre royale de Nantes. b 1982, Chambre des Comptes, Nantes, aveu, Porhoët and vicomté de Rohan. b 1985, Chambre des Comptes, Nantes, aveu 1638, Porhoët and vicomté de Rohan. b 1998, Réformation des domaines/Juridiction de Ploermel. b 2047, Réformation des domaines, papier terrier de la barre royale de Quimper. e 302, Marquisat de Blain. Archives Départementales du Morbihan, Vannes 1 mi 338/4, Domaine de Kerguéhennec. Archives Nationales de France, Paris Minutier Central des Notaires de Paris, Etude vi, Etude xcix, mi/rs/1347. 1 ap 604, 1172, Chartrier de Thouars. 106 ap, François Viète. 273 ap, Archives Rohan-Bouillon. k 565, Monuments historiques, Condé. k 617, 623, Monuments historiques, Duchés-pairies. kk 619, “Mémoire contre les prétentions de la maison de Rohan au titre de prince . . .” mm 758, mm 759, “Histoire genealogique des maisons de Porhoët et de Rohan . . . Par Dom P. hyacinte Morice.” u*//829, “Procedures du pretendu Mariage d’Entre Monsieur le duc de Nemours et Madame de Rohan depuis 1558 jusques en 1580,” eighteenth-century copy. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris ms 4083, Recueil de Traités. ms 4114, Recueil Conrart, ix. Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris ms 417, the Parthenay-Soubise family.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 227

2/16/15 2:27 PM

228

|

bibliography

Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris ms 2150, untitled. Bibliothèque Municipale, Nantes ms 1702, “Testament et codicilles de Catherine de Parthenay-Soubize dame de Rohan. . . .” ms 1722, 1723, 1724, “Ferme de la seigneurie de Blain,” 1618. ms 1725, “Inventaire de tous les sacs du compte . . . escript de la mein de feue madame.” ms 1726, “Declaration et desnombrement . . . de Blaing et Heric.” ms 1727, “Receptes et despences desdits revenus et deniers desdictes terres du Parc Mouchamps. . . .” ms 2043, “Inventaire des biens meubles appartenans a monsr le viconte de Rohan . . . trouvez en son chasteau de blegn,” 1535. ms 2044, “Resultat des propositions faictes par treshault trespuissant et trezillustre prince Jean Conte Pallatin du Rhin duc des deux ponts.” ms 2049, “Moys de novembre 1619 Loyseau” (accounts). Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris ms Clairambault 1180 (microfi lm 11374), the Tancrède case. ms Français 4101, “Memoires du duc de Rohan. . . .” ms Français 4106 (microfi lm 15746), Rohan correspondence. ms Français 4107, “La vie de Henri duc de Rohan.” ms Français 15873, “Mémoire de la duchesse de Rohan.” ms Français 22342 (microfi lm 5848), Pièces diverses, Rohan. ms Français 22343, “Recueil de pièces, copies et extraits, formé par Dom Morice pour L’histoire généalogique de la maison de Rohan et les Mémoires pour servir de preuves à ecclésiastique de Bretagne. . . .” ms Français 22344, “Pièces diverses sur la Bretagne et sur la maison de Rohan.” ms Fonds Dupuy 651, the Tancrède case. Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises 25240, Archives du château de Sully. Pièces Originales 2529, 2530, 2531 (Rohan). Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Genève ms Tronchin 21, Correspondence, Henri de Rohan. ms Tronchin 22, “Discours de la vie faictz et gestes de Monsieur de Rohan dernier mort.”

published sources Baudry, Hervé, ed. Roch Le Baillif: Petit traité de l’antiquité et singularités de Bretagne armorique. Paris, 2010. Béranger, Jean, and Jean Meyer, eds. La Bretagne de la fin du XVIIe siècle d’après le mémoire de Béchameil de Nointel. Paris, 1976. Berger de Xivrey, Jules, ed. Recueil des lettres missives de Henri IV. 7 vols. Paris, 1843. Béthune, Marguerite de. Manifeste pour madame la duchesse douairiere de Rohan. Paris, 1646.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 228

2/16/15 2:27 PM

bibliography

|

229

Béthune, Maximilien de, duc de Sully. Oeconomies royales. Edited by Claude-Bernard Petitot. 9 vols. Paris, 1820–21. bnf f Fm 14497, 14522, Factums, Rohan. N.p., n.d. Bonnet, Jules, ed. Mémoires de la vie de Jean de Parthenay-Larchevêque sieur de Soubise. . . . Paris, 1879. Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de. Recueil des dames, poésies et tombeaux. Edited by Etienne Vaucheret. Paris, 1991. Budé, Eugène de, ed. “La Réforme en Italie, Lettres d’Odet de La Noue, de Rohan et de Gassion.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 16 (1867): 18–25. Champollion-Figeac, Aimé, ed. Mémoires de Mathieu Molé. . . . 4 vols. Paris, 1855–57. Chantérac, Audouin de, ed. Journal de ma vie: Mémoires du maréchal de Bassompierre. 4 vols. Paris, 1870–71. Croix, Alain, ed. La Bretagne d’après l’Itinéraire de monsieur Dubuisson-Aubenay. 2 vols. Rennes, 2006. d’Argentré, Bertrand. L’ histoire de Bretagne, des roys, ducs, comtes, et princes d’ icelle. Rev. ed. Rennes, 1668. d’Aubigné, Agrippa. Histoire universelle. Edited by baron Alphonse de Ruble. 10 vols. Paris, 1886–99. de Witt, Madame. Mémoires de madame de Mornay. 2 vols. Paris, 1868–69. Dez, Pierre, ed. “Lettres et mémoires du Duc de Rohan (1622–1623).” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 11 (1862): 360–81. du Plessis-Mornay, Philippe. Mémoires et correspondance. 12 vols. Paris, 1824–25. Repr., Geneva, 1969. Estienne, Charles, and Jean Liebault. L’agriculture, et maison rustique; plus un Bref recueil des chasses . . . et de la fauconnerie. Lyon, 1583. Furetière, Antoine. Dictionaire universel, contenant generalement tous les mots françois. 3 vols. The Hague–Rotterdam, 1701. Génin, F., ed. Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême. . . . 2 vols. Paris, 1841. ———, ed. Nouvelles lettres de la reine de Navarre addressées au roi François Ier, son frère. . . . Paris, 1842. Grillon, Pierre, ed. Les papiers de Richelieu: Section politique intérieure, correspondance et papiers d’Etat. 6 vols. Paris, 1975–80. Imbert, Hugues, ed. Lettres de Catherine de Parthenay dame de Rohan-Soubise et de ses deux filles Henriette et Anne à Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau duchesse de La Trémoille. Niort, 1874. Kerhervé, Jean, François Roudaut, and Jean Tanguy, eds. La Bretagne en 1665 d’après le rapport de Colbert de Croissy. Brest, 1978. Laboissière, J. L., ed. Les commentaires du soldat du Vivarais . . . suivis du voyage du duc de Rohan en Vivarais, l’an 1628. . . . Privas, 1811. La Bruyère, Jean de. Oeuvres complètes. Edited by Julien Benda. Paris, 1951. La Grange, Edouard Le Lièvre, marquis de, ed. Mémoires authentiques de Jacques Nompar de Caumont duc de La Force. . . . 4 vols. Paris, 1843. La Rochefoucauld, François de. Maximes, mémoires, oeuvres diverses. Paris, 2001. Lazzeri, Christian, ed. De l’ interest des princes et des Etats de la chrétienté. Paris, 1995. Lenet, Pierre. Mémoires. 2 vols. Paris, 1838. Le Noir, Philippe. “Histoire généalogique de Philippe Le Noir pasteur de l’église réformée de Blain.” Cahiers du Centre de Généalogie Protestante 26–28 (1989): 1308–28, 1364–82, 1422–40.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 229

2/16/15 2:27 PM

230

|

bibliography

Lobineau, Dom Gui Alexis. Histoire de Bretagne Composée sur les titres et les auteurs originaux. 2 vols. Paris, 1707. Repr., Paris, 1973. Parthenay, Catherine de. Ballets allégoriques en vers, 1592–1593. Edited by Raymond Ritter. Paris, 1927. Plutarch. Les vies des hommes illustres. Translated by Jacques Amyot. Edited by Gérard Walter. 2 vols. Paris, 1937–51. Pradel, Charles, ed. Mémoires de J. de Bouff ard-Madiane sur les guerres civiles du duc de Rohan. Paris–Toulouse–Albi, 1877. Recueil des vers lugubres et spirituels. Paris, 1611. Reeve, Michael, ed. Geoff rey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain. Translated by Neil Wright. Woodbridge, 2007. Reveillaud, M. E., ed. Véritables faits et gestes du seigneur Benjamin Prioleau. . . . La Rochelle, 1909. Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de. Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu. Paris, 1839. Rohan, Henri de. De l’interest des princes et estats de la chrestienté. “Dernier Edition.” Paris, 1639. ———. Mémoires du duc de Rohan . . . augmentez d’un quatriéme Livre, et de divers Discours Politiques du mesme Autheur, cy-devant non imprimez: Ensemble le Voyage du mesme Autheur, faict en Italie, Allemagne, Pays-Bas-Uny, Angleterre, et Escosse: Fait en l’an 1600. Paris, 1665. ———. Memoires du duc de Rohan sur la Guerre de la Valteline. Paris, 1822. ———. Le parfaict capitaine: Autrement, l’abregé des guerres de Gaules de Commentaire de César. . . . Paris, 1636. Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de. Mémoires. Edited by Gonzague Truc. 7 vols. Paris, 1947–61. Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Madame de. Correspondance. Edited by Roger Duchêne. 3 vols. Paris, 1972–78. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations, Books I – III. Edited by Andrew Skinner. Harmondsworth, 1974. Spanheim, Ezéchiel. Relation de la cour de France en 1690. Edited by Charles Schefer. Paris, 1882. Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon. Historiettes. Edited by Antoine Adam. 2 vols. Paris, 1960–61. Tamizey de Larroque, Philippe, ed. Lettres de Benjamin Priolo. Tours, 1877. Tigier, Hervé, ed. La Bretagne de bon aloi: Répertoire des arrêts sur remonstrance du Parlement de Bretagne—1554–1789 (conservés aux Archives d’Ile et Vilaine). N.p., 1987. Vaurigaud, B., ed. Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne depuis la Réformation jusqu’ à l’Edit de Nantes par Philippe Le Noir, sieur de Crevain, pasteur de l’Eglise réformée de Blain. . . . Paris-Nantes, 1851. Vignal, Catherine, ed. Les papiers de Richelieu, index des tomes IV, v et vi (1629–1631). Paris, 1997. Wright, Neil, and Julia C. Crick, eds. The Historia regum Britannie of Geoff rey of Monmouth. 5 vols. Cambridge, 1985. Zur-Lauben, le baron de. Mémoires et lettres de Henri duc de Rohan, sur la Guerre de la Valteline. 3 vols. Paris-Geneva, 1758.

secondary studies Antonetti, Guy. “Les princes étrangers.” In Etat et société en France aux XVIIe et XVIII siècles: Mélanges off erts à Yves Durand, edited by Jean-Pierre Bardet et al., 33–62. Paris, 2000.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 230

2/16/15 2:27 PM

bibliography

|

231

Appleby, Joyce. Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England. Princeton, 1978. Asch, Ronald. Europäischer Adel in der Frühen Neuzeit. Cologne, 2008. Aubert de La Chenaye-Desbois, François. Dictionnaire de la noblesse. 3rd ed. 19 vols. Paris, 1863–76. Repr., Paris, 1980. Augustin, Jean-Marie. Famille et société: Les subsitutions fidéicommissaires à Toulouse et en Haute-Languedoc au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 1980. Babelon, Jean-Pierre. Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance. Paris, 1989. ———. Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII. Paris, 1965. Bamford, Paul Walden. “French Forest Legislation and Administration, 1660–1789.” Agricultural History 29, no. 3 (1955): 97–107. Barbiche, Bernard, and Ségolène de Dainville-Barbiche. Sully: L’ homme et ses fidèles. Paris, 1997. Barnavi, Elie, and Robert Descimon. La Sainte Ligue, le juge et la potence. Paris, 1985. Beaudry, Catherine. “L’accès au livre: Jeanne Guyon.” In Lectrices d’Ancien Régime, edited by Isabelle Brouard-Arends, 59–68. Rennes, 2003. Béchu, Philippe, and Nicolas de Reyniès, eds. Le cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan (1674– 1749): Un amateur d’art du Grand Siècle aux Lumières. Paris, 2013. Béchu, Philippe, and Christian Taillard. Les hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg: Marchés de construction et de décor. Paris, 2005. Béguin, Katia. Les princes de Condé: Rebelles, courtisans et mécènes dans la France du Grand Siècle. Seyssel, 1999. Beik, William. Absolutism in Languedoc: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc. Cambridge, 1985. ———. “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration.” Past and Present 188 (2005): 195–224. ———. Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution. Cambridge, 1997. Benedict, Philip. Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism. New Haven, 2004. ———. “The Owl of Minerva at Dusk: Philippe Le Noir de Crevain, a Pastor–Historian under Louis XIV.” In The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600–1685. Aldershot, 2001. Bennett, Judith. “Confronting Continuity.” Journal of Women’s History 9, no. 3 (1997): 73–94. Bennini, Martine. Les conseillers à la Cour des Aides (1604–1697): Etude sociale. Paris, 2010. Bergin, Joseph. Crown, Church, and Episcopate under Louis XIV. New Haven, 2004. Bisson, Thomas. The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government. Princeton, 2010. Bluche, François. Louis XIV. Paris, 1986. Bohanan, Donna. Fashion beyond Versailles: Consumption and Design in Seventeenth-Century France. Baton Rouge, 2012. Boissière, Jean. “Marché au bois en ville en France à l’époque moderne: Quelques remarques.” In Le bois et la ville: Du Moyen âge au XX e siècle, edited by J.-L. Biget, J. Boissière, and J.-C. Hervé, 31–49. Fontenay-aux-Roses, 1991. Boltanski, Ariane. Les ducs de Nevers et l’Etat royal: Genèse d’un compromis (ca. 1550–ca. 1600). Geneva, 2006. Bondois, Paul. “Notes sur un poète protestant breton: René Gentilhomme, sieur de Lespine et de Kervande.” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France 41 (1934): 399–404.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 231

2/16/15 2:27 PM

232

|

bibliography

Bossuat, R. “Les origines troyennes: Leur rôle dans la littérature historique au xve siècle.” Annales de Normandie 8, no. 2 (1958): 187–97. Bourdieu, Pierre. La noblesse d’Etat: Grandes écoles et esprit de corps. Paris, 1989. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Roger Chartier. Le sociologue et l’ historien. Paris, 2010. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Les héritiers: Les étudiants et la culture. Paris, 1985. Bouwsma, William. “Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture.” In After the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J. H. Hexter, edited by Barbara Malament, 215–46. Philadelphia, 1980. Brunner, Otto. Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte. Göttingen, 1968. Carroll, Stuart. Blood and Violence in Early Modern France. Oxford, 2006. ———. Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy. Cambridge, 1998. Chatelain, Claire. Chronique d’une ascension sociale: Exercice de la parenté chez de grands officiers. Paris, 2008. Chaussinand-Nogaret, Guy. The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment. Translated by William Doyle. Cambridge, 1985. Chéneau, Gustave. Un agent secret de Mazarin: Benjamin Priolo (1602–1667). La Rochelle, 1908. Chevallier, Stéphane, and Christiane Chauviré. Dictionnaire Bourdieu. Paris, 2010. Clark, Samuel. The Rise of the State and Aristocratic Power in Western Europe. Montreal, 1995. Clarke, Jack Alden. Huguenot Warrior: The Life and Times of Henri de Rohan, 1579–1638. The Hague, 1966. Coester, Christiane. Schön wie Venus, mutig wie Mars: Anna d’Este, Herzogin von Guise und von Nemours (1531–1607). Munich, 2007. Collins, James. Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany. Cambridge, 1994. ———. “The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France.” French Historical Studies 16, no. 2 (1989): 436–70. Constant, Jean-Marie. La noblesse en liberté. Rennes, 2004. Coquery, Natacha. L’ hôtel aristocratique: Le marché du luxe à Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 1998. Corbin, Alain, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, eds. Histoire de la virilité. 3 vols. Paris, 2011. Cornette, Joel. Histoire de la Bretagne et des Bretons. 2 vols. Paris, 2005. Cosandey, Fanny, ed. Dire et vivre l’ordre social en France sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris, 2005. ———. La reine de France: Symbole et pouvoir, XVe– XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 2000. Crawford, Katherine. Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France. Cambridge, Mass., 2004. Croix, Alain. La Bretagne aux 16e et 17e siècles: La vie, la mort, la foi. 2 vols. Paris, 1981. Darmon, Pierre. Le tribunal de l’ impuissance: Virilité et défaillances conjugales dans l’ancienne France. Paris, 1979. Daussy, Hugues. Les Huguenots et le roi: Le combat politique de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1572–1600). Geneva, 2002. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford, 1975. Delille, Gérard. Famille et propriété dans le Royaume de Naples (XVe– XIX e siècles). Paris, 1985. ———. “Réflexions sur le ‘système’ européen de la parenté et de l’alliance (note critique).” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 56, no. 2 (2001): 369–80. de Ruble, Alphonse. Le duc de Nemours et Mademoiselle de Rohan (1551–1592). Paris, 1883. Descimon, Robert. “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville (4 juillet 1652): Paris et la ‘Fronde des Princes.’” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 54, no. 2 (1999): 319–51.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 232

2/16/15 2:27 PM

bibliography

|

233

———. “Chercher de nouvelles voies pour interpréter les phénomènes nobiliaires dans la France moderne: La noblesse, ‘essence’ ou rapport social?” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 46, no. 1 (1999): 5–21. Descimon, Robert, and Elie Haddad. Epreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la robe parisienne (XVIe– XVIIIe siècle). Paris, 2010. Dessert, Daniel. Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle. Paris, 1984. ———. Fouquet. Paris, 1989. de Vries, Jan. The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750. Cambridge, 1975. ———. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge, 2008. de Wailly, Natalis. Mémoire sur les variations de la livre tournois depuis le règne de Saint Louis jusqu’ à l’ établisement de la monnaie décimale. Paris, 1857. Dewald, Jonathan. Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570–1715. Berkeley, 1993. ———. The European Nobility, 1400–1800. Cambridge, 1996. ———. Lost Worlds: The Emergence of French Social History, 1815–1970. University Park, 2006. ———. Pont-St-Pierre, 1398–1789: Lordship, Community, and Capitalism in Early Modern France. Berkeley, 1987. ———. “Régime nobiliaire en région avancée: Essai d’un bilan.” In Les noblesses normandes (XVIe– XIX e siècle), edited by Ariane Boltanski and Alain Hugon, 289–99. Rennes, 2011. ———. “Writing Failure: Aristocratic Self-Depiction in Seventeenth-Century France.” In Die Kunst des Adels in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Christian Wieland and Claudius Sittig. Wolfenbüttel, forthcoming. Deyon, Pierre, and Solange Deyon. Henri de Rohan: Huguenot de plume et d’ épée, 1579–1638. Paris, 2000. Deyon, Solange. “Les non-dits d’un étrange procès: Tancrède de Rohan et ses juges (1645– 1646).” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 136 (April–June 1990): 191–207. Diefendorf, Barbara. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. Oxford, 2004. ———. “Gender and the Family.” In Renaissance and Reformation France, 1500–1648, edited by Mack P. Holt, 99–118. Oxford, 2002. Domhoff, G. William. Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. 5th ed. New York, 2006. Drévillon, Hervé. L’ impôt du sang: Le métier des armes sous Louis XIV. Paris, 2005. Dubois, Claude-Gilbert. Celtes et Gaulois au XVIe siècle: Le développement littéraire d’un mythe nationaliste. Paris, 1972. Dubost, Jean-François. Marie de Médicis: La reine dévoilée. Paris, 2009. du Halgouet, H. “Le Chartrier de Blain.” Annales de Bretagne 35, no. 1 (1921): 81–88. ———. Contribution à l’ étude du régime seigneurial dans l’ancienne France, II: Le duché de Rohan et ses seigneurs. Saint-Brieuc, 1925. ———. Pontivy, Rohan et leurs environs. Paris, 1992. Duhamelle, Christophe. L’ héritage collectif: La noblesse d’Eglise rhénane, 17e–18e siècles. Paris, 1998. Duma, Jean. Les Bourbon-Penthièvre (1678–1793). Paris, 1995. du Pavillon, Alain, and Claude Labie. Le château de Beauregard. Rennes, 2001.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 233

2/16/15 2:27 PM

234

|

bibliography

Durand, Yves, ed. Hommage à Roland Mousnier: Clientèles et fidélités en Europe à l’ époque moderne. Paris, 1981. Elliott, J. H. The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline. New Haven, 1986. Fairchilds, Cissie. “Consumption in Early Modern Europe: A Review Article.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 4 (1993): 850–58. ———. Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France. Baltimore, 1984. Ferguson, Gary. Queer (Re)readings in the French Renaissance. Burlington, Vt., 2008. Gallet, Jean. La seigneurie bretonne, 1450–1680: L’exemple du Vannetais. Paris, 1983. Godoy, José-A. “Le mausolée du duc Henri de Rohan (1579–1638): Son effigie et son armure posthumes.” Genava: Bulletin du Musée d’Art et d’Histoire 53 (2005): 123–53. Godsey, William. Nobles and Nation in Central Europe: Free Imperial Knights in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1850. Cambridge, 2004. Grell, Chantal. “France et Angleterre: L’héritage du Grand Siècle.” In L’ éducation des jeunes filles nobles en Europe, XVIIe– XVIIIe siècles, edited by Chantal Grell and Arnaud Ramière de Fortanier, 9–29. Paris, 2004. Grendler, Paul. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, 2002. Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Rev. ed. Boston, 2009. Gutton, Jean-Pierre. Domestiques et serviteurs dans la France de l’Ancien Régime. Paris, 1981. Haag, Eugène, and Emile Haag. La France protestante; ou, Vies des protestants français qui se sont fait un nom dans l’ histoire. 10 vols. Paris, 1846–58. Haddad, Elie. Fondation et ruine d’une “maison”: Histoire sociale des comtes de Belin (1582– 1706). Limoges, 2009. ———. “Noble Clienteles in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Historiographical Approach.” French History 20, no. 1 (2006): 75–109. Hanley, Sarah. “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France.” French Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1989): 4–27. ———. “Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500–1800.” American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (1997): 27–52. Hanlon, Gregory. Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France: Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine. Philadelphia, 1993. Hanotaux, Gabriel, and le duc de La Force. Histoire du Cardinal de Richelieu. 5 vols. Paris, n.d. Hansen, Edward C., and Timothy Parrish. “Elites versus the State: Toward an Anthropological Contribution to the Study of Hegemonic Power in Capitalist Society.” In Elites: Ethnographic Issues, edited by George Marcus, 255–77. Albuquerque, 1983. Harai, Dénes. Grands serviteurs de petits Etats: Les conseillers de Navarre et de Transylvanie (XVIe– XVIIe siècles). Rennes, 2012. Hardwick, Julie. Family Business: Litigation and the Political Economies of Daily Life in Early Modern France. Oxford, 2009. Head, Randolph. Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons: Social Order and Political Language in a Swiss Mountain Canton, 1470–1620. Cambridge, 1995. ———. Jenatsch’s Axe: Social Boundaries, Identity, and Myth in the Era of the Thirty Years’ War. Rochester, 2008. Hildesheimer, Françoise. Richelieu. Paris, 2004. Hoff man, Philip. Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450–1815. Princeton, 1996.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 234

2/16/15 2:27 PM

bibliography

|

235

Holt, Mack P. “Putting Religion Back into the Wars of Religion.” French Historical Studies 18, no. 2 (1993): 524–51. Horowski, Leonhard. “ ‘Such a Great Advantage for My Son’: Office-Holding and Career Mechanisms at the Court of France, 1661 to 1789.” Court Historian 8 (2003): 125–75. Houdaille, Jacques. “La noblesse française, 1600–1900.” Population 44, no. 3 (1989): 501–13. ———. “La noblesse française avant 1600.” Population 45, no. 6 (1990): 1070–75. Hugon, Alain. Naples insurgée, 1647–1648: De l’ événement à la mémoire. Rennes, 2011. Joas, Hans, and Wolfgang Knöbl. “Between Structuralism and Theory of Practice: The Cultural Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.” In The Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu: Critical Essays, edited by Simon Susen and Bryan S. Turner, 1–32. London, 2011. Jones, Jennifer. Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion, and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France. Oxford, 2004. Jouanna, Arlette. Le devoir de révolte: La noblesse française et la gestation de l’Etat moderne, 1559–1661. Paris, 1989. ———. Ordre social: Mythes et hiérarchie dans la France du XVIe siècle. Paris, 1977. ———. Le pouvoir absolu: Naissance de l’ imaginaire politique de la royauté. Paris, 2013. Jouhaud, Christian. Mazarinades, la Fronde des mots. Paris, 1985. Joxe, Roger. Les protestants du comté de Nantes au seizième siècle et au début du dix-septième siècle. Marseille, 1982. Kelley, Donald R. Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance. New York, 1970. Kerhervé, Jean. L’Etat breton aux 14e et 15e siècles: Les ducs, l’argent et les hommes. 2 vols. Paris, 1987. ———. Noblesses de Bretagne du Moyen Age à nos jours. Rennes, 1999. Kettering, Sharon. French Society, 1589–1715. Harlow, 2001. ———. Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France. Oxford, 1986. ———. Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles d’Albert, Duc de Luynes, 1578–1621. Manchester, 2008. Kmec, Sonja. “‘A Stranger Born’: Female Usage of International Networks in Times of War.” In “The Contending Kingdoms”: France and England, 1420–1700, edited by Glenn Richardson, 147–60. Aldershot, 2008. Labatut, Jean-Pierre. Les ducs et pairs de France au XVII siècle: Etude sociale. Paris, 1972. Lambin, Rosine. Femmes de paix: La coexistence religieuse et les dames de la noblesse en France, 1520–1630. Paris, 2003. Laugel, Auguste. Henri de Rohan: Son rôle politique et militaire sous Louis XIII (1579–1638). Paris, 1889. LeBrun, François. “Le prêtre, le prince et la famille.” In Histoire de la famille, vol. 3: Le choc des modernités, edited by André Burguière et al., 123–41. Paris, 1986. Le Goff, T. J. A. Vannes and Its Region: A Study of Town and Country in Eighteenth-Century France. Oxford, 1981. Le Marchand, Guy. La fin du féodalisme dans le pays de Caux. Paris, 1989. Le Page, Dominique, and Michel Nassiet. L’union de la Bretagne à la France. Morlaix, 2003. Le Roux, Nicolas. La faveur du roi: Mignons et courtisans au temps des derniers Valois. Seyssel, 2001. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, ed. Histoire de la France urbaine. Vol. 3, La ville classique, de la Renaissance aux Révolutions. Paris, 1981. ———. Les paysans de Languedoc. 2 vols. Paris, 1966. ———. Saint-Simon; ou, Le système de la cour. Paris, 1997.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 235

2/16/15 2:27 PM

236

|

bibliography

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “Histoire et éthnologie.” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 38, no. 6 (1983): 1217–31. Lévy, Claude, and Louis Henri. “Les ducs et pairs sous l’Ancien Régime: Caractéristiques démographiques d’une caste.” Population 15, no. 5 (1960): 807–30. Lilti, Antoine. Le monde des salons: Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 2005. Lipp, Charles. Noble Strategies in an Early Modern Small State: The Mahuet of Lorraine. Rochester, 2011. Magne, Emile. Bourgeois et financiers du XVIIe siècle: La fin troublée de Tallemant des Réaux. Paris, 1921. ———. La joyeuse jeunesse de Tallemant des Réaux. Paris, 1921. Malettke, Klaus. “Opposition nobiliaire sous Louis XIV: Le cas du chevalier de Rohan.” In Le second ordre: L’ idéal nobiliaire: Hommage à Ellery Schalk, edited by Chantal Grell and Arnaud Ramière de Fortanier, 217–26. Paris, 1999. ———. Opposition und Konspiration unter Ludwig XIV: Studien zu Kritik und Widerstand gegen System und Politik des französischen Königs während der ersten Hälfte seiner persönlichen Regierung. Göttingen, 1976. Mann, Golo. Wallenstein: Sein Leben erzählt. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main, 1971. Marcus, George, ed. Elites: Ethnographic Issues. Albuquerque, 1983. Mariéjol, Jean-H. Henri IV et Louis XIII (1598–1643). Paris, 1905. Marraud, Mathieu. De la ville à l’Etat: La bourgeoisie parisienne XVII –XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 2009. ———. La noblesse de Paris au XVIII siècle. Paris, 2000. Martin, Henri-Jean. Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle, 1598–1701. 2 vols. Geneva, 1969. Massera, Sandro, ed. La spedizione del duc di Rohan in valtellina: Storia e memoria nell’età della guerra dei trent’anni. Milan, 1999. Maza, Sarah C. Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France: The Uses of Loyalty. Princeton, 1983. Mazel, Claire. La mort et l’ éclat: Monuments funéraires parisiens du Grand Siècle. Rennes, 2009. McGowan, Margaret. Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession. New Haven, 2008. Melzer, Sara E. Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture. Philadelphia, 2012. Méniel, Bruno. Renaissance de l’ épopée: La poésie épique en France de 1572 à 1623. Geneva, 2004. Merland, C. Catherine de Parthenay. Nantes, 1875. Merlin-Kajman, Hélène. La langue est-elle fasciste? Langue, pouvoir, enseignement. Paris, 2003. Meyer, Jean. La noblesse bretonne au XVIIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris, 1966. Repr., Paris, 1985. Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. New York, 1956. Motley, Mark. Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715. Princeton, 1990. Mousnier, Roland. Les institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue, 1598–1789. 2 vols. Paris, 1974. ———. La vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII. 2nd ed. Paris, 1971. Muller, Claude. Le siècle des Rohan: Une dynastie de cardinaux en Alsace au XVIIIe siècle. Strasbourg, 2006. Nassiet, Michel. “Fidélités et perspectives dynastiques dans la noblesse bretonne lors de la crise de succession (1470–1491).” In Noblesses de Bretagne du Moyen Age à nos jours, edited by Jean Kerhervé, 103–25. Rennes, 1999.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 236

2/16/15 2:27 PM

bibliography

|

237

———. “La noblesse en France au xvie siècle d’après l’arrière-ban.” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 46, no. 1 (1999): 86–116. ———. Noblesse et pauvreté: La petite noblesse en Bretagne, XVe– XVIIIe siècle. Rennes, 1993. ———. “Nom et blason: Un discours de la fi liation et de l’alliance (xive–xviiie siècle).” L’Homme 34, no. 129 (1994): 5–30. ———. Parenté, noblesse et Etats dynastiques, 15e–16e siècles. Paris, 2000. ———. La violence, une histoire sociale: France, XVIe– XVIIIe siècles. Seyssel, 2011. Neuschel, Kristen. “Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France.” In Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe, 124–44. Durham, 1997. Neveux, Hugues, Jean Jacquart, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Histoire de la France rurale. Vol. 2, L’ âge classique des paysans. Paris, 1975. Paresys, Isabelle, and Natacha Coquery, eds. Se vêtir à la cour en Europe, 1400–1815. Lille, 2011. Patry, Raoul. Philippe du Plessis-Mornay: Un huguenot homme d’Etat. Paris, 1983. Pinkard, Susan. A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine. Cambridge, 2009. Pintard, René. Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. New ed. Geneva, 1983. Pomeranz, Kenneth. “Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjuncture.” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (2002): 425–46. Portemer, Jean. “Réflexions sur le pouvoir de la femme selon le droit français au xviie siècle.” XVIIe Siècle 144 (July–September 1984): 189–202. Potier de Courcy, Pol. Nobiliaire et armorial de Bretagne. 6th ed. Mayenne, 1986. Ranum, Orest. Artisans of Glory: Writing and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century France. Chapel Hill, 1980. ———. The Creatures of Richelieu: A Study of the Secretaries of State and Superintendents of Finance in the Ministry of Richelieu, 1635–1642. Oxford, 1964. Revel, Jacques, ed. Jeux d’ échelles: La micro-analyse à l’expérience. Paris, 1998. Ritter, Frédéric. François Viète: Inventeur de l’algèbre moderne, 1540–1603: Notice sur sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1895. Roche, Daniel. A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800. Translated by Brian Pearce. Cambridge, 2000. ———. Le peuple de Paris au dix-huitième siècle. Paris, 1981. Roelker, Nancy L. “The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen in the Sixteenth Century.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2, no. 4 (1972): 391–418. Rosa, Susan, and Dale Van Kley. “Religion and the Historical Discipline: A Reply to Mack Holt and Henry Heller.” French Historical Studies 21, no. 4 (1998): 611–29. Rott, Edouard. Histoire de la représentation diplomatique de la France auprès des cantons suisses, de leurs alliés et de leurs conféderés. 10 vols. Berne, 1900–1935. Rowlands, Guy. The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661–1701. Cambridge, 2002. Sainte-Beuve, C. E. M. Causeries du lundi. 3rd ed. 15 vols. Paris, n.d. Salomon, Henry. “La Fronde en Bretagne.” Revue Historique 40, no. 1 (1889): 1–40. Sandberg, Brian. “‘Generous Amazons Came to the Breach’: Besieged Women, Agency, and Subjectivity during the French Wars of Religion.” Gender and History 16, no. 3 (2004): 654–88. ———. Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France. Baltimore, 2010.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 237

2/16/15 2:27 PM

238

|

bibliography

Saudau, Louis-Claude. Saint-Jean d’Angély d’après les archives de l’ échevinage et les sources directes de son histoire. Saint-Jean d’Angély, 1886. Repr., Marseille, 1978. Sauzet, Robert. Au Grand Siècle des âmes: Guerre sainte et paix chrétienne en France au XVIIe siècle. Paris, 2007. ———. Contre-Réforme et Réforme Catholique en Bas-Languedoc au XVIIe siècle: Le diocèse de Nîmes de 1598 à 1694 (étude de sociologie religieuse). 2 vols. Lille, 1978. Schalk, Ellery. From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Princeton, 1986. Schapira, Nicolas. Un professionnel des lettres au XVIIe siècle: Valentin Conrart, une histoire sociale. Seyssel, 2003. Schmid, Hansmartin. Das Bild Herzog Heinrich Rohans in der bündnerischen und französischen Geschichtschreibung. Chur, 1966. Schnapper, Antoine. Curieux du Grand Siècle: Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVII siècle. Vol. 2, Oeuvres d’art. Paris, 2005. Schneider, Robert. “Political Power and the Emergence of Literature: Christian Jouhaud’s Age of Richelieu.” French Historical Studies 25, no. 2 (2002): 357–80. Serr, Georges. Henri de Rohan: Son rôle dans le parti protestant, de 1617 à 1622. Paris, 1975. Sittig, Claudius, and Christian Wieland. “Die ‘Kunst des Adels’ in der Frühen Neuzeit.” In Die Kunst des Adels in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Christian Wieland and Claudius Sittig. Wolfenbüttel, forthcoming. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1978. Soll, Jacob. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System. Ann Arbor, 2012. Soman, Alfred. “La justice criminelle, vitrine de la monarchie française.” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 153 (1995): 291–304. Steinberg, Sylvie. “‘Au défaut des mâles’: Genre, succession féodale et idéologie nobiliaire (France, xvie–xviie siècles).” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 67, no. 3 (2012): 679– 713. ———. La confusion des sexes: Le travestissement de la Renaissance à la Révolution. Paris, 2001. ———. “Quand le silence se fait: Bribes de paroles de femmes sur la sexualité au xvii siècle.” Clio: Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés 31 (2010): 79–109. Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1642. Oxford, 1965. Stuurman, Siep. “Feminism.” In Europe, 1450–1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Dewald, 366–70. New York, 2004. Timmermans, Linda. L’accès des femmes à la culture sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris, 2005. Trevor-Roper, Hugh. Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne. Edited by Blair Worden. New Haven, 2006. van de Schoor, R. J. M. The Irenical Theology of Théophile Brachet de La Milletière (1588–1665). Leiden, 1995. Vaurigaud, B. Essai sur l’ histoire des Eglises Réformées de Bretagne. 2 vols. Paris, 1870–71. Vester, Matthew. Jacques de Savoie-Nemours: L’apanage du Genevois au coeur de la puissance dynastique savoyarde au XVIe siècle. Geneva, 2008. Vickery, Amanda. “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History.” Historical Journal 36, no. 2 (1993): 383–414. von Tippelskirch, Xenia. Sotto controllo: Letture femminili in Italia nella prima età moderna. Rome, 2011. Vray, Nicole. Catherine de Parthenay, duchesse de Rohan: Protestante insoumise, 1554–1631. Paris, 1998.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 238

2/16/15 2:27 PM

bibliography

|

239

Wendland, Andreas. Der Nutzen der Pässe und die Gefährdung der Seelen: Spanien, Mailand und der Kampf ums Veltlin (1620–1641). Zurich, 1995. Whitmeyer, J. M. “Mann’s Theory of Power: A (Sympathetic) Critique.” British Journal of Sociology 48, no. 2 (1997): 210–25. Wood, James. The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463–1666: Continuity through Change. Princeton, 1980.

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 239

2/16/15 2:27 PM

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 240

2/16/15 2:27 PM

i n dex

accounting, 95, 121, 153–54, 177, 179 Albret family, 16–18, 30. See also BourbonAlbret family Albret, Isabeau d’, 16, 151, 176 Albret, Jeanne d’, 17, 107 Alcibiades, 39, 42–43, 77–78, 84 Alès, Peace of, 20, 66, 67 ambition, theme of, 39, 42, 78. See also selfinterest, concept of Amiens, siege of, 44 Amsterdam, 61 Angers, 104, 124, 148 Anjou, governorship of, 139, 148–49 Anne de Bretagne, 15 Anne of Austria, 30, 191 Anxiety, 11, 56–57, 112–15 Ariosto, Ludovico, 46 Armoreus, king of Brittany, 31–32 astrology, 32, 82, 103, 113 ballet, 42–43, 49, 52 balls, 52, 109 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de, 93 Basel, university of, 188 Bassompierre, Francois, maréchal de, 4, 138 Béarn, 58, 188 Beauvoir-sur-Mer, 122 Béchameil de Nointel, Louis de, 127, 135 beds, 146 Beik, William, 8 Berry, governorship of, 137 Béthune, Marguerite de, duchesse de Rohan, 62, 67, 82, 89, 155 education and culture, 41, 93–94 family commitments, 49–50 finances and management, 85, 95, 131, 141–42 followers and servants, 145, 149–50, 175, 183 marriage, 11, 50, 87, 88, 104–5, 113, 117, 140–41, 151 religious values, 113–15 and the Tancrède affair, 109–12 Béthune, Philippe de, 46, 184 Beza, Theodore, 1

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 241

Bible, 11, 93 Bidé, Etienne, 168–69 Bidé, Jean, sieur de Heinleix, 91, 168–70, 172, 177, 179 Bidé, Olivier, 169–70 Bidé, Simon, 169 Blain, 101, 136, 149, 168, 179, 181, 194 lordship of, 122–26 Protestant community at, 18, 169, 171–76 as Rohan residence, 133, 152–56 Bohemia, 47, 78 book ownership, 41, 71–72, 92–94, 96 Bordeaux, bishopric of, 22, 117 borrowing. See debt Bouffard de Madiane, Jean, 58–59, 62–64, 182– 84, 186, 189, 190 Bouillon, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, duc de, 50, 53–54, 60, 83 Bourbon-Albret family, 16, 107. See also Albret family Bourbon, Antoine de, 17 Bourbon, Catherine de, 42 Bourdieu, Pierre, 9 bourgeoisie, views of, 8, 48–49, 59–65 Brachet, Théophile, 184, 187 Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de, 102–3 Brisson, Barnabé, 167 Brittany, 14–16, 52. See also Estates of Brittany dukes of, 15–16 Protestants in, 171–76 Rohan dependents in, 168–78, 181, 185, 193–94 in Rohan family mythology, 27–36 Rohan properties in, 6, 16, 25, 101, 120, 122–36, 151, 161 Rohan relations with, 7, 38, 81, 85, 104, 113, 155–56 burial, 1, 3, 66, 101, 110, 190 Caesar, Julius, 38, 39, 42, 52, 73, 76–78, 81, 84, 196 Calvin, John, 1

2/16/15 2:27 PM

242

|

Cambrai, bishopric of, 117 Candale, Henri de Nogaret, duc de, 109, 111 Carmagnac, Pierre de, 179 cash, 94, 97, 147–48 Castelnau, Jacques de Castelneau, marquis de, 182 Castres, 41, 58, 62–64, 171, 182–84, 186 Catholic Church, 5, 20–22, 128, 137–38, 187, 196 Catholic League, 126, 132–33, 155, 167 Cervantes, Miguel, 41, 71 Chabot, Henri de, duc de Rohan, 36, 146–47, 151, 158, 175–76, 179 debts of, 148–50 as duc de Rohan 29, 98 funeral monument of, 101 marriage of, 20, 89, 101, 142 political role of, 16, 124, 139, 148 and the Tancrède Affair, 109–11 Chabot, Guy Aldonce de, 145–46 Chambre des Comptes of Brittany, 169 Champagne, governorship of, 139 Chapelain, Jean, 189 Charenton, temple of, 101, 185 Charles V, king of France, 15 Châteaux. See houses Châtillon family, 12 Châtillon, Gaspard de Coligny, comte de, 53 civil wars (1621–29), 18, 55–56, 59–66, 75, 186–87 Clisson, Olivier de, 15 clothing, 145–46, 150, 156, 197 Cobbett, William, 4–5 Coire, 72, 148 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 178, 191 colonies, 77, 82–83 Conan Mériadec, king of Brittany, 27–28, 30–34 Concini, Concino, 75 Condé family, 118, 182 Condé, Charlotte de La Trémoille, princesse de, 94 Condé, Henri, prince de, 55, 81–82, 122, 126, 131–32, 136, 193 Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, prince de, 60, 83, 183 Corneille, Pierre, 93 court, 17, 20, 26, 52, 59, 67–68, 103–9, 126, 161, 165–66 Croix, Alain, 125 customary laws, 97, 100, 116 Cyprus, 82–83, 104–5 d’Argentré, Bertrand de, 27–28, 33 dance. See ballet; balls

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 242

index Dante Alighieri, 41, 71 Daoulas, 127 debt, 25–26, 104–5, 121, 148–52, 160–61, 178, 190 Denmark, 185 Descartes, René, 93 Diamond Necklace Affair, 25 Dickens, Charles, 4–5 domaine congéable, 128–29, 152 Domhoff, G. William, 9 dowries, 90, 98, 140–42, 148, 151, 161 du Guesclin, Bertrand, 15 Dubuisson-Aubenay, François-Nicolas, sieur de, 126 Durant, Daniel, sieur de Haute Fontaine, 46, 182, 184–86, 188, 190, 191 Dutch Republic, 44, 47, 48, 50–52, 72, 101, 109, 127, 134–35 dynastic capital, 86, 95–101, 110–11, 117–19. See also social capital; symbolic capital education, 39, 41–44, 92–93, 145, 167, 184–92 Elizabeth I, queen of England, 94 England, 29, 44, 46–49, 52, 61, 82, 127, 134–35 estate organization, 120–36, 152–56, 161–62 Estates of Brittany, 16, 52, 104, 125 Este, Anna d’, duchesse de Guise, duchesse de Nemours, 107 Estienne, Charles, 90 exile, 66–78, 133, 155, 161, 182. See also London; Venice failure, concept of, 38, 55, 78–80 fear. See anxiety Ferrara, 46 feudal dues, 166 Foix, 64 Fontainebleau, 138, 144 Fontenay-Le-Comte, 166–67 food, 143–45, 154–55, 197 forests, 130–32, 135–36, 168 Forget, Pierre, 154 François I, king of France, 16 French Revolution, 4, 121 Fronde, 16, 30, 95, 111, 148, 191 Furetière, Antoine, 12, 86, 102, 177 furniture, 146 Gaillart, Jean Charles, 179 Galileo Galilei, 70 Gassion, Jean de, 187–88 Gazette, 109 General Assembly of Protestant Churches, 53, 58–59, 66

2/16/15 2:27 PM

index Geneva, 1–2, 6, 10–11, 37, 52, 80, 110, 176, 185, 189–91 Geoff rey of Monmouth, 27, 30 Germany, 44–48, 71, 190 Gié, Pierre de Rohan, maréchal de, 15 Gobelin family, 149 Gouret family, 176, 178 Gouret, Isaac. See Onglepied governorships, 121, 137–39, 161 Grand Tour, 44–49, 52, 78, 143, 161 Greek Orthodox Church, 69 Grisons Leagues, 70, 71, 78–80, 188 ground rents, 128 guard service, 126, 174 Guicciardini, Francesco, 41, 71 Guise family, 21, 107, 165, 182 Guise, François, duc de, 75, 107 Guise, Henri I, duc de, 74–76, 81, 196 Guise, Henri II, duc de, 83 Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, 72–73 Guyenne, 104 Habsburgs, 1, 70, 80, 188 Hansen, Edward, 9–10 Harvey, William, 70 Heidelberg, University of, 187 Henri de Navarre. See Henri IV Henri III, king of France, 13, 74, 107 Henri IV, king of France, 28, 53–54, 59, 75, 93, 108, 118, 169, 187 and the Place Royale, 156–58 in Rohan thinking, 51–52, 57, 92 relations with the Rohan, 17–18, 36, 42, 49–51, 81, 124, 140, 168, 174 Henriet family, 173–76 Henriet, Henri, 175–76, 193–94 Henriet, Pierre, 173–75, 184 Héric, forest of, 136 Hinlée, 172 history, ideas of, 25–34, 42, 95–96 Holy Roman Empire, 20, 21, 29, 48, 49, 68, 79–80, 117 homosexuality, 183 Hôtel de Mélusine, 83, 90 Hôtels de Soubise and Rohan, 21–22, 99, 146, 158–60 houses, 26, 92–93, 124, 133, 138, 197 in Brittany and Poitou, 6, 152–56 in Paris, 136, 156-60 in Venice and Padua, 69 See also maison, concept of Hungary, 44

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 243

|

243

impotence, 97, 103 intendant, 176–79 Italian language, 39, 41, 71, 93 Italy, 44–48, 71 James VI and I, king of Scotland and England, 29, 46 Jenatsch, Jörg, 79, 188 Jesuits, 47 jewelry, 95, 97, 147–48, 152 Josselin, 14, 122–25, 152 Jouarre, convent of, 116 La Boulaye, M. de, 163 La Bruyère, Jean de, 12–14, 26 La Chèze, 122 La Force, Jacques Nompar de Caumont, duc de, 44, 49–50, 53–54, 59, 90, 122 La Garnache, lordship of, 104, 122, 136, 167, 168 as cultural center, 93, 107 ownership of, 90, 118, 136 revenues of, 131 La Meilleraye, Charles de La Porte, maréchal de, 173 La Moussaye, Mlle. de, 148 La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de, 122 La Rochelle, 59–61, 133, 172 siege of, 66, 67, 122 La Trémoille family, 16, 125 La Trémoille, Henri III, duc de, 173 La Trémoille, Jeanne de Montmorency, duchesse de, 91 La Trinité, 130 labor services, 128 Lambert, Nicolas, 149 Landerneau, 122, 125, 127 Languedoc, 60, 171 Latin language, 39, 41, 93, 173–74 Laval family, 172 Le Noir family, 171–76 Le Noir, André, 172 Le Noir, Pierre, 171–77, 181, 193–94 Le Parc, estate of, 39, 122, 133, 154–56, 163, 165 learned women, images of, 87, 92 Le Baillif, Roch, 31–32, 129 Leiden, University of, 46, 172, 186, 188 Lenet, Pierre, 20, 110 Léon, principality of, 14, 125, 127, 135 Les Salles, forges of, 127 Lesdiguières, François de Bonne, duc de, 50, 53–54 litigation, 91, 132 Lobineau, dom Guy Alexis, 25, 33–34, 36

2/16/15 2:27 PM

244 Locke, John, 161–62 Loire River, 134, 156 Loménie, Louis-Henri de, 191 London, 20, 46, 66, 133, 172, 185 Longueville, Henri II d’Orléans, duc de, 191–92 lordship, 38, 122–31 Lorraine family, 12. See also Guise family Lorraine, Philippe, chevalier de, 112 Loudéac, 122, 130 Loudéac, forest of, 130–31 Loudun, duchy of, 107 Louis XI, king of France, 15 Louis XII, king of France, 15 Louis XIII, king of France, 72, 156, 183 and the kingdom of Navarre, 17, 81 and Rohan honors, 20, 28 and Rohan rebellions, 18, 19, 66 and the Valteline, 70, 79–80 Louis XIV, king of France, 35, 140, 180, 183 and Anne de Rohan, 21, 24, 99, 112, 137, 151 foreign policies of, 134–35 religious policies of, 101, 173 Loukaris, Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople, 69, 83 Low Countries. See Dutch Republic Lusignan family, 83 Luther, Martin, 47 Luynes, Charles d’Albret, duc de, 7, 18, 193 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 37, 41, 47–49, 71, 77, 84 maison, concept of, 86, 95, 98, 152 Mantua campaign, 68 Marais, 21, 156, 160 Marillac, Michel de, 126 markets, 127–29, 161 marriage, 49–50, 106–10, 169, 173 age at, 87–89 economics of, 139–42 Martin, Abel, 179 Marx, Karl, 4–5 Mazarin, Jules, cardinal, 190–91 Mazères, 64 Médicis, Catherine de, 17, 105–6 Médicis, Marie de, 19, 51, 56, 60, 104 Mélusine, 83, 90 Mériadec, saint, 27, 31 Milan, 79 Milhaud, 64–65 military offices, 121, 138–39, 148, 161 mills, 128–29 Mills, C. Wright, 9 Molière, 87 monopolies, 128–29

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 244

|

index Montaigne, Michel de, 41, 71, 93 Montauban, 56, 62 Montmorency family, 12 Montpellier, 137 Morel, Gabriel, 178–79, 181 Morice, abbé Hyacinthe, 34 Morlaix, 122, 127, 135 Mornay, Philippe Du Plessis de, 44, 50, 53, 152, 163, 182 Munich, 47, 52 Nantes, 104, 122–24 Naples, 83, 189 Nassau family, 49, 90 Nassau, Maurice of, 44, 50 Navarre, kingdom of, 17, 28, 81, 107, 169 Navarre, Marguerite de, 16–18, 151 Nemours, Jacques de Savoie, duc de, 17, 106–7, 141, 165 Nevers, Catherine de Lorraine, duchesse de, 108 Norman invasion of England, 27 offices, 175–76. See also military offices sales of, 127, 129–32, 193 Onglepied, Isaac Gouret, sieur d’, 149–50, 174, 176–81, 193 Orléans, 156 Orléans, Philippe d’, 112, 183 Ottoman Empire, 82–83, 105 Padua, 37–38, 69, 70, 73, 78, 184, 189 paintings, 92–94, 96, 108, 146, 180 Palatinate, 49–50 Pamiers, 64 Paris, 37, 69, 75, 85, 104, 113, 135, 143, 183, 186 culture in, 110, 164–68 financial importance of, 148–50, 176–81 Rohan followers in, 169–70, 184, 185, 191–93 Rohan residence in 7, 26, 91, 152, 155–60 Parlement of Paris, 4, 49, 111, 167 Parlement of Pau, 187 Parlement of Rennes, 154, 167, 171 Parlement of Toulouse, 122 Parrish, Timothy, 9–10 Parthenay, Catherine de, 60, 66, 103–4, 122, 133, 182, 185, 186 education and culture, 4, 39, 41, 43, 92, 146 family commitments, 32, 95–100, 114–15, 118, 161 finances and economic practices, 85, 88, 94–95, 147–48, 151, 154–56 marriages, 18, 96, 102–3, 141 psychology, 113–15

2/16/15 2:27 PM

index servants and followers, 90–91, 163–70, 177, 179 Parthenay-Larchevesque family, 96–97, 166 Parthenay-Larchevesque, Jean de, 91–92, 165 pastors, 46, 58, 103, 171–74, 183, 185, 188 patronage, 104, 164–93. See also servants Pavia, battle of, 16, 88 pensions, 20, 21, 137, 196 physicians, 44–46, 71, 103, 145, 153, 185, 188–89 Place Royale, 156–58, 179 Plutarch, 39, 42, 43, 81 poetry, 73, 94, 108–9 Poitiers, 166 Poitou, 42, 60, 122–24, 133, 143–44, 163, 167, 170, 176 governorship of, 138–39 Pompadour, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, marquise de, 22 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 70 Pontivy, 122–28, 130, 133–35, 171 Porhoët, lordship of, 34, 124 Pourbus, Franz, 146 Prague, 44, 46 princes étrangers, 13, 21, 35 Priolo, Benjamin, 70–71, 73, 80, 184, 188–92 publishing, 72–73, 110, 167 puritanism, 37, 52, 71–72 Quellenec, Charles de, 96–97, 102–3 Quénécan, forest of, 127 Rambouillet, Hôtel de, 93 regency of Anne of Austria, 30, 191 regency of Marie de Médicis, 19, 51, 55–56 rents, 133–35 Requêtes du Palais, Paris, 150 Retz, Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de, 182 Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de, 20, 38, 66–67, 72, 90, 110, 122 and civil wars, 104, 126, 187 foreign policy of, 68–70, 79 views of the Rohan, 56–57, 80, 82 Richelieu, Armand-Jean de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de, 33 Rohan, duchy of, 49, 98–99, 109, 124, 127–28, 133–35, 148 Rohan, estate of, 14, 122, 127–30 Rohan, Anne de, 43, 66, 85, 101, 142, 154–55, 179 education and culture, 41, 93 finances and properties, 90, 95, 107, 118, 122, 147

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 245

|

245

marriage negotiations concerning, 49, 90, 108 writings, 3–4, 73, 94, 108–9 Rohan, Armand, cardinal de, 21–22 Rohan, Benjamin, duc de Soubise, 28–29, 41, 114, 122, 142, 188 civil wars, 19, 55, 56, 58, 60 education and culture, 39, 43, 44, 48 exile, 20, 66, 85, 133, 170 family relations, 97–98, 141, 177 finances, 137 funeral, 3, 66 servants and followers, 145, 172, 182, 184–87 Rohan, Catherine de, duchess of Zweibrücken, 49, 108, 141, 169 Rohan, Charles de, prince de Soubise, 22 Rohan, Françoise de, duchesse de Loudun, 17, 90, 105–8, 117, 156, 165, 167–68 Rohan, Henri I de, vicomte de Rohan, 18, 88, 165–66 Rohan, Henri II de, duc de Rohan, 28–29, 85, 88, 90–92, 94, 97–98, 114, 143–44, 161, 170, 196–97 and Brittany, 7, 81, 155 civil wars, 55–65 education, 39–43 exile, 26–27, 66–73, 77–78 and family history, 27, 32 family relations, 7, 18, 177–79, 181–94 finances, 121–27, 131–33, 137, 148, 151, 176–77 followers and servants, 163–73, 181–93 Grand Tour, 44–49, 54, 68, 78 houses, 138, 156–58 image and reputation, 1–4, 10–11, 17–19, 23, 37, 40 intellectual activity, 6–7, 44–49, 51–58, 63–65, 68, 70–80, 83 life story, 37–84 marriage, 17–18, 49–50, 104–5, 109, 113, 140– 41, 151 religious values, 19, 37–38, 69, 114 Valteline mission, 78–80 Rohan, Henriette de, 43, 87, 118, 142, 169 business activities of, 90, 103–4, 107 and friendship, 87, 108 Rohan, Jean de, 15–16 Rohan, Louis, cardinal de Rohan, 25 Rohan, Marguerite de, 29, 87, 113, 156, 158 debts, 148–49, 160 education and culture, 93–94 family commitments, 98–101, 118, 161, 198 finances and management 20–21, 23, 85, 89–91, 95, 124, 127, 131–33, 136, 139, 141–43, 145–47

2/16/15 2:27 PM

246 Rohan, Marguerite de (continued) marriage and sexuality, 88, 98, 103, 140 religious values 114–15, 171 servants and followers, 170, 174, 176, 179–81, 191 and the Tancrède affair, 109–12 Rohan, Pierre de, 88 Rohan, René I de, vicomte de Rohan, 16, 88, 151, 176 Rohan, René II de, vicomte de Rohan, 88, 97, 106, 141 Rohan, Tancrède de, 109–13 Rohan-Chabot family, 101 Rohan-Chabot, Anne de, princesse de Soubise, 88, 137–38, 143 and the Hôtel de Soubise, 21–22, 158–60 and Louis XIV 21, 112 family relations, 23–24 marriage, 98–100, 142 testament, 116–17 Rohan-Chabot, Guy-Auguste, chevalier de Rohan, 24–5, 100–101 Rohan-Chabot, Louis de, duc de Rohan, 21–24, 88, 99–100, 142–44, 158, 161 Rohan-Chabot, Louis II de, prince de Rohan, 22 Rohan-Chabot, Marguerite de, marquise de Coëtquen, 112, 117, 142, 143, 158 Rohan-Chabot, Pélagie de, princesse d’Epinoy, 142, 143, 158 Rohan-Guémené bankruptcy, 25–26 Rohan-Guémené family, 15, 122, 158 Rohan-Guémené, Charles II de, duc de Montbazon, 22, 33 Rohan-Guémené, Charles III de Rohan, prince de Guémené, 22–24, 33 Rohan-Guémené, François de, prince de Soubise, 23–4, 98–100, 116–17, 121, 137–38, 150 Rohan-Guémené, Hercule de, duc de Montbazon, 18 Rohan-Guémené, Louis de, 22 Rohan-Guémené, Louis V de, 144–45, 154 Rohan-Guémené, Marie de, duchesse de Chevreuse, 18, 118 Rohan-Soubise family, 25 Rome, 31, 46, 189 Rondeau, Jean, 150 Ronsard, Pierre, 93 Rosmadec, Sébastien, marquis de, 132 Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 46–47 Ruhan, 31–32

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 246

|

index sabbath restrictions, 52 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 138 Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 56, 60, 124, 186, 188 Saint-Malo, 135 Saint Maur, historical school of, 33–34 Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de, 3–4, 13, 19, 34, 66, 100 and Rohan scandals, 23–24, 36, 108, 112 views of Henri de Rohan, 4, 37 Saintonge, 28, 124 Salic Law, 17, 81 salons, 93, 125, 174 Saumur, Academy of, 173 Savoy, 64, 190 Saxe-Weimar, Bernard de, 80, 83 Schomberg, Charles, maréchal de, 112 Scotland, 29, 44, 46–47, 78 seigneurial law courts, 120, 125, 128–30, 166 self-interest, concept of, 6–7, 54, 73–79, 196. See also ambition, theme of separation of properties, 88-89, 140, 151 servants, 85, 105–6, 144–45, 153–55, 163–94. See also patronage Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de, 112 sexuality, 11, 102–13, 117–18, 183. See also homosexuality silver, 147–48, 152, 180 Smith, Adam, 166 social capital, concept of, 9–10, 12. See also dynastic capital; symbolic capital Soubise, Antoinette d’Aubeterre, dame de, 92, 165 Soubise, lordship of, 97–100, 131–32 Soubise, principality of, 21, 99, 142 Spain, 29, 44, 50, 68, 135 Rohan negotiations with, 64, 66, 81-82, 187 and the Th irty Years’ War, 20, 79 Rohan views of, 47, 74, 78 Spanheim, Ezéchiel, 22, 25, 29, 35–36, 151 Spanish language, 41, 93 spending, 142–48, 156, 160–62 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 18, 21, 75, 97 state service, 121, 137–39, 161, 196–97 Strasbourg, 48, 61 bishopric of, 21, 116–17 subsitutions, 116–17 Sully-Béthune family, 96 Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de, 46, 93, 124, 138, 184 and the Place Royale, 156–58 and the Rohan marriage, 17–20, 50–51, 141

2/16/15 2:27 PM

index Sweden, 49, 82, 104, 180 Switzerland, 1, 19, 20, 71, 93, 174, 188, 190 symbolic capital, 19, 35, 99. See also dynastic capital; social capital Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon, 34–35 relations with the Rohan, 149, 187–88 views of the Rohan, 46, 56–57, 82, 87, 101, 108–9 Tasso, Torquato, 41, 71, 110 tennis courts, 153 testaments, 92–93, 96–97, 108, 113–17, 155, 169 theater, 52, 104 Thévenin family, 180 Thévenin, Philippe, 91, 179–81 Th irty Years’ War, 68, 79–80, 185, 187 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 4–5 trade fairs, 124, 127 travel, 41, 69, 104–5, 154–56, 188–90, 197. See also Grand Tour Trojans, 31, 129 Tronchin, Théodore, 69, 72–73 Turenne, Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de, 112 Turquet de Mayerne, Théodore, 44–46, 185 urban crowd, 48–9, 61–65

18673-Dewald_Status.indd 247

|

247

Valteline, 19–20, 56, 68, 73, 78–80, 82, 188, 190 Vannes, 27 Vaugelas, Claude Favre de, 93 Venice, 47, 78, 83, 136, 148, 185, 189–90 Rohan exile in, 1, 20, 27, 28, 32, 35, 37, 51, 66–70, 73, 104, 133 Vercingetorix, 76 Versailles, 35, 138 Vesalius, Andreas, 70 Vienna, 44 Viète, François, 83, 92–93, 96, 107, 166–68, 170, 172 Vitré, 172–73 Voiture, Vincent, 93 Voltaire, 24–25 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 83 Wars of Religion, 17, 91, 126, 160, 186. See also Catholic League; civil wars (1621–29) Westphalia, Treaty of, 191 widowhood, 88–89, 141–42, 161 wine, 144, 180 Zurich, 69, 80, 188 Zweibrücken, duke of, 49, 169, 185

2/16/15 2:27 PM