The Myth of Absolutism

Change & Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy

Nicholas Henshall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317899532
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Conventionally, ``absolutism'' in early-modern Europe has suggested unfettered autocracy and despotism -- the erosion of rights, the centralisation of decision-making, the loss of liberty. Everything, in a word, that was un-British but characteristic of ancien-regime France. Recently historians have questioned such comfortably simplistic views. This lively investigation of ``absolutism'' in action -- continent-wide but centred on a detailed comparison of France and England -- dissolves the traditional picture to reveal a much more complex reality; and in so doing illuminates the varied ways in which early-modern Europe was governed.

CHAPTER ONE

Valois and Early Bourbons

MEDIEVAL INHERITANCES

Early modern France began with an operation known in modern estate agency as exchanging contracts. Until the late fifteenth century great provinces like Brittany and Burgundy were feudal fiefs, more or less independent of the French crown. Their dukes and counts had sovereign legislative and judicial powers over their provinces, which were defined by a common set of customs consisting of rights and liberties vis-à-vis their ruler. The monarch was merely the greatest feudal noble — one whose ancestor happened to have been elected king in the tenth century. He focused his efforts on the royal domain, a wisp of territory around Paris which was smaller than several of the fiefs. Patiently he absorbed the others, but a roll-call of dates emphasises how late it was before anything resembling the geography of present France emerged. Languedoc was annexed in 1271, Dauphiné in 1348, Normandy in 1358, Guyenne in 1451, Burgundy in 1477, Anjou, Maine and Provence in 1481, Orleans in 1499, Angoulème in 1515, Auvergne and Bourbon in 1527 and Brittany in 1532.

From the king’s viewpoint the operation was messy. Abolition of provincial rights was seen only as a penalty, legitimately imposed after military defeat or rebellion. As a fief of the Holy Roman Empire Dauphine could not be integrated into the king’s lands, lest he find himself a vassal of the Emperor. Instead it was given to his heir (hence the dauphin). When annexing a province, the king solemnly swore to observe its rights and privileges, and signed a charter or contract to prove it. His new subjects then swore allegiance to him. The deal was based on mutual obligation, the king promising to respect the good old customs and the province pledging its loyalty as long as he did. The implication was that it could renounce it if he did not.

The vital difference between early modern France and its modern counterpart is still frequently overlooked. Until the Revolution ‘France’ remained a geographical expression.¹ Like most European monarchs, the French king did not rule a nation-state, nor was national feeling a significant force in it. A ‘nation’ in the political, racial or linguistic sense was too nebulous to command loyalty — a key determinant in this period. Men were loyal to their family, their lord, their town, their province, their class, their religion or their king. Rarely were they loyal to their country. Kings naturally attempted to ally themselves with some conception of the national interest, especially when facing foreign attack or internal rebellion, but their subjects interpreted even this parochially. Militias could be relied on to arm themselves against approaching danger. They could rarely be persuaded to demonstrate practical concern outside their own region.

Without the bonding agent of significant national feeling, administrative and legal unity was absent. In each province representative institutions focused local loyalties and defended local rights. By the sixteenth century there were more than twenty provincial assemblies of Estates, so-called from the estates or orders of society which they represented — usually clergy, nobles and town-dwellers. When provinces were integrated into the royal domain, the sovereign powers of their counts and dukes were terminated. This was a crucial development. Henceforth French monarchs insisted on a monopoly of sovereignty and ultimate rights of justice, legislation and taxation were vested in the crown. But that in no way invalidated the contract: provincial rights and customs were robustly waved in the face of central authority by Estates eager to guard their inheritance. They ensured that French law was a patchwork quilt, especially in the north where custom was unaccompanied by the Roman law prominent in the south. Only in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were legal customs written down, and even then there was no attempt at uniformity. In the eighteenth century Voltaire remarked that a traveller changed laws as often as horses.

DECENTRALISED CORPORATIONS

It is often assumed that the demise of local feudal autonomy was followed by the erection of centralised monarchical authority. There was no such development. Francis I was the first monarch to benefit from the annexation of all the great fiefs. He bound the provinces to the centre, but not by substituting for the guardians of local pride and self-government agents dependent on himself. Instead he bought their support. Representing the full majesty of the monarch in each province was a governor, usually the greatest noble landowner in the area. He was entitled to parade under a royal canopy like the king, that the elements might not impair the dignity of himself or, by association, his master. His function was that of a mediator who represented the interests of king to province and of province to king. The duke of Montmorency, governor of Languedoc, collected lavish gifts from the notoriously tight-fisted Estates for ensuring that their affairs received favourable attention from the royal council. His presence at court enabled him to massage provincial egos as patronage-broker. Royal favours to which he had access were distributed in Languedoc: titles, offices, jobs and perks were employed to assemble a gang of local followers (clients) who would guarantee an enthusiastic response to royal requests. By this amiable device the local elite was nudged into dependence on the crown.² That at least was the ideal. He could use his personal following within the province to undermine the crown’s authority, or he might be so obnoxious to his charges that no application of lubricant could secure co-operation. Everything depended on the tact and loyalty of the governor, and on his rapport with corporate power groups.

Definition of these is vital to an understanding of the ancien régime. Corporate power groups were the characteristic social and political organisation before 1789. They reflected the society of orders or estates into which France was divided.³ By this device individuals sharing the same interest were constituted as a collective legal personality, with corresponding rights in law – hence their title of ‘corporate’ or ‘constituted’ bodies. They were endowed with organs for expressing their collective will, discharging their functions and defending their powers and privileges. Specimens are parlements, provincial Estates, town councils, village assemblies, noble assemblies and assemblies of the clergy. As the institutional embodiment of the interest groups into which France was divided, they did not exist primarily for the convenience of the government. Nor did they owe their power to it. The crown nevertheless used them as administrative and consultative agencies; so they must be sharply distinguished from other royal mechanisms like the council of state and the intendants, created by the crown and deriving their authority solely from it. Some historians argue that early modern monarchs in France tolerated corporate bodies out of fear and inertia. They compromised with the rusty mechanisms of the past while constructing their own up-to-date machinery, which should one day have replaced them but never did. Their attitude was negative: corporate bodies were an inconvenient relic of medievalism which at worst had to be pandered to and at best ignored. The real centre of gravity was elsewhere.

An alternative view is that the crown’s relationship with the corporate bodies was fundamental as means and end. The word ‘centralisation’ is too simple for the subtle process involved. So is ‘decentralisation’ but it is more accurate than the opposite. The king hijacked the influence of corporate power groups for royal purposes, in return for kingly favours. Appreciation of their nature is crucial to an understanding of how French monarchs operated. They strengthened their authority by delegating it to sources of independent power in the localities. The paradox is not hard. When the human and material resources of central government were slender, it was sound policy to recruit local power groups where royal agents were inadequate or non-existent. Local government was still not seen as part of the state. It consisted of a number of sources of independent power, with which it was possible for the state to form relationships.

One of the requirements of ‘absolutism’ is that the ruler should cut himself off from roots in the community and rely on his own agencies, imposed on it from outside. The institutions which have sprung organically from the community are suspect: its natural rulers and elites wield power for which they are not beholden to the monarch and can afford to be less deferential. All are contaminated with wills and purposes of their own. Thus his instruments are sterilised against social and political pressures and lie inert in the royal hand: there is no chance of their developing sturdy wills of their own and no need for the king to listen to the opinions of any but his chosen councillors. This is precisely what the Valois kings did not do. Though the rapid growth of the printing press and the annexation of the fiefs enlarged the scope of central government and brought it into direct contact with more of its subjects than ever before, the mechanisms stayed the same. A more expansive kingly role required a larger rather than a smaller supporting cast – local communities, corporate bodies, representative assemblies and aristocratic factions featured prominently in the royal script.

Viewed from this perspective the Estates were constructive rather than obstructive. Though not dependent on the king for their power, deft handling could harness them for royal purposes. To Major we owe the perception that Valois monarchs and Estates were not adversaries, both eager to make inroads on the power of the other so that as one waxed the other waned. Consultative Estates were not the victim of strong monarchy, as ‘absolutist’ historians assume. They were its creation.⁴ Estates were a useful mechanism for sampling the sentiments of the community and procuring its consent. As repositories of regional loyalties and experts on local conditions, their assessment of a problem was more finely tuned than any government agent’s. The crown had everything to lose and nothing to gain by smashing them. Estates in turn regarded a strong crown as a safeguard against oppression by local robber barons: kings were seen less as enemies of rights and liberties than as their defenders. This explains why in most provinces they consolidated their power as the monarchy established its own: central monarchical government and local self-government grew together. State-building and Estate-building were reciprocal actions.

It is otherwise hard to account for the policy of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century monarchs, who encouraged local participation even as they tightened monarchical control. Louis XI increased the administrative duties of the towns and enlarged their powers and privileges; in the sixteenth century important urban centres such as Rennes, Nantes and Saumur received charters confirming autonomous rights. They claimed to negotiate their tax contribution with the government. The citizens of Rouen began to refer to themselves as a ‘republic’. Duties undertaken by municipal authorities embraced law and order, health and welfare, social and economic regulation, defence and supervision of primary and secondary schools. At the same time, country villages began to elect syndics or permanent officials to administer their justice and finance. Similar officials were established by provincial Estates to run their corporate affairs, collect taxes and oversee their interests between sessions (usually a few days a year) – sometimes at the request of the crown. They also established clerks and archives, well before England’s parliament.

Nor did monarchs perceive noble power as a threat, providing they could exploit it for their own purposes. On the assumption that no early modern kings were skilful enough to manage this, an older school of historians argued that they relied instead on a new class of bourgeois administrators. When these subsequently received titles, they became a new class of service nobility, replacing the ‘old’ nobility which was conveniently undergoing economic decline. This is wrong on most counts. Administrators drawn from the bourgeoisie and lesser nobility were not new but medieval. The nobility had always been a service nobility, constantly renewed through royal office. Textbooks stress the distinction between robe nobles (noblesse de robe) who derived their titles from office, and sword nobles (noblesse d’épée) who inherited them. This was increasingly academic, since robe nobles usually abandoned their offices within a generation.⁵ The robe constantly intermarried with the sword and aped their life-style. And the older noble families were not declining, nor were they encouraged to. The crown wanted obedient nobles, not weak ones.

Justice was also decentralised. Instead of one parlement or sovereign court of appeal in Paris, more were inherited from the feudal rulers of Languedoc, Guyenne, Dauphine, Normandy, Provence and Burgundy. This spared litigious Frenchmen an expedition to Paris every time they lodged a judicial appeal. It was also a recognition of local interests, rights and customs – of which the provincial parlements were resolute defenders. Henceforth the sovereign courts aped the provincial Estates in the role of representatives of the king’s subjects. They also participated in the king’s legislative and administrative authority. Royal decrees which affected the rights of his subjects were vetted by the parlements. If they were found to relate satisfactorily to existing law, they were accepted, registered and promulgated. If not, an objection or remonstrance was sent to the king, who modified his proposals or issued a lettre de jussion, ordering registration regardless. Even then the king might have to preside personally over the parlement in a lit de justice in order to force it to give way.

To these formidable powers was added the parlement’s right of making laws, subject to the veto of the royal council. Known as arrêts, they covered most areas of government activity. Social and economic regulations extended to the repair and lighting of highways, the supply and price of food, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Dedication
• Introduction
• 1. Valois and Early Bourbons
• 2. Louis XIV Reassessed
• 3. A Highroad to Revolution?
• 4. France and England: Absolutism Versus Limited Monarchy?
• 5. France and England: Absolutism Versus Parliamentary Liberties?
• 6. A Theory of Absolutism?
• 7. Royal Prerogatives and their Context
• 8. Liberties and Consent
• 9. Life Cycle of a Myth
• Glossary of Recurrent Terms
• Bibliographical Essay
• Appendix I: The Régusse clientele
• Appendix II: The Oppède clientele
• Appendix III: Major European monarchs 1461–1833
• Map: Pre-revolutionary France: principal administrative, judicial and fiscal subdivisions
• Index