Blood and Violence in Early Modern France

The rise of civilized conduct and behaviour has long been seen as one of the major factors in the transformation from medieval to modern society. Thinkers and historians alike argue that violence progressively declined as men learned to control their emotions. The feud is a phenomenon associated with backward societies, and in the West duelling codified behaviour and channelled aggression into ritualised combats that satisfied honour without the shedding of blood. French manners and codes of civility laid the foundations of civilized Western values. But as this original work of archival research shows we continue to romanticize violence in the era of the swashbuckling swordsman. In France, thousands of men died in duels in which the rules of the game were regularly flouted. Many duels were in fact mini-battles and must be seen not as a replacement of the blood feud, but as a continuation of vengeance-taking in a much bloodier form. This book outlines the nature of feuding in France and its intensification in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, civil war and dynastic weakness, and considers the solutions proposed by thinkers from Montaigne to Hobbes. The creation of the largest standing army in Europe since the Romans was one such solution, but the militarization of society, a model adopted throughout Europe, reveals the darker side of the civilizing process.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: The Structure of Vindicatory Violence 1: The Origins of Dispute - Blood and Earth 2: The Origins of Dispute - Status and Honour 3: Honours and Prerogatives 4: Escalation: From Verbal Duel to Vindicatory Exchange 5: Conspiracy 6: Combat 7: The Rage of the Gods Part II: Violence and Society 8: Justice and the Law 9: Peace 10: Women, Sex, and Vindicatory Violence Part III: Violence and the Polity 11: The Crisis of the Religious Wars 12: Violence and Royal Authority in the Seventeenth Century 13: Solutions Conclusion Bibliography Index

Review :
Blood and Violence in Early Modern France deserves to be recognised as a major contribution to our understanding of social change and political transformation in early modern Europe as a whole. Its findings question conventional assumptions about the division between the medieval and early modern eras and undermine another of the settled but distorting polarities upon which twentieth-century historical interpretation has instinctively rested. Alex Walsham, Journal of Ecclesiastical History This is a book rich in research and extraordinarily provocative in its conclusions. Julius R. Ruff, American Historical Review This ambitious and eagerly awaited study...culminates a sustained body of accomplished scholarship. Paul Solon, Renaissance Quarterly excellent and thought-provoking book Robin Briggs, TLS