How did warrior nobles' practices of violence shape provincial society
and the royal state in early seventeenth-century France?
Warrior nobles frequently armed themselves for civil war in southern
France during the troubled early seventeenth century. These bellicose
nobles' practices of violence shaped provincial society and the royal
state in early modern France. The southern French provinces of Guyenne
and Languedoc suffered almost continual religious strife and civil
conflict between 1598 and 1635, providing an excellent case for
investigating the dynamics of early modern civil violence. Warrior
Pursuits constructs a cultural history of civil conflict, analyzing in
detail how provincial nobles engaged in revolt and civil warfare during
this period. Brian Sandberg's extensive archival research on noble
families in these provinces reveals that violence continued to be a way
of life for many French nobles, challenging previous scholarship that
depicts a progressive "civilizing" of noble culture.
Sandberg argues that southern French nobles engaged in warrior
pursuits--social and cultural practices of violence designed to raise
personal military forces and to wage civil warfare in order to advance
various political and religious goals. Close relationships between the
profession of arms, the bonds of nobility, and the culture of revolt
allowed nobles to regard their violent performances as "heroic gestures"
and "beautiful warrior acts." Warrior nobles represented the key
organizers of civil warfare in the early seventeenth century,
orchestrating all aspects of the conduct of civil warfare--from
recruitment to combat--according to their own understandings of their
warrior pursuits.
Building on the work of Arlette Jouanna and other historians of the
nobility, Sandberg provides new perspectives on noble culture, state
development, and civil warfare in early modern France. French historians
and scholars of the Reformation and the European Wars of Religion will
find Warrior Pursuits engaging and insightful.
