Journal Article

Paradoxes of order and fragmentary logics: A province enters into a civil war (Brittany, 1589)

Hamon, Philippe

2014

Overview

Although the Kingdom of France had been dominated for a generation by conflicts of a religious kind, the conditions that led Brittany to join the Catholic League in 1589 were quite different, since the province had largely kept out of the previous Wars of Religion. But the different logics at work in this process, which will be studied here, were not necessarily specific to Brittany. First of all, there was a general desire on the part of all social groups to protect the local order. This position was shared by a wide range of people, since royal officials, members of town councils and other prominent individuals (upper clergy, higher and middling nobility for example) all had a virtual obligation to serve the community, particularly when it was in difficulty. But because of their partisan diversity, their interventions almost invariably became a source of division that transcended the specifically local context. Thus, they encouraged the extension of the conflict across the province. This first paradox of order found itself accompanied by a second one, namely that in order to preserve order it was often necessary to mobilize the populace, even though once armed, the populace was always suspected by the elites of thinking in terms of subversion. This contradiction was hard to manage, although order, security and peace seemed ultimately to be the major “social” demand of the ordinary population when such a crisis arose. The basis on which these partisan choices were made needs to be analyzed. Some of the explanatory models, whether they are social or religious, fail to account for this division. Royalist Catholics adopted anti-Protestant positions just as clearly as did members of the Catholic League. It is hard to find a form of social conflict that would delimit the two camps, whether it concerns the conflicts between officials and merchants, town and country, or peasants and their lords. In seeking more convincing explanations, we need to take account of inherited rivalries that pitted men of power or towns against each other. These rivalries were no longer regulated by the arbitration or the favor of a king who was himself disqualified by his own partisanship. Instead, segmentary logics inherent in the society of the time were at work, logics that may be characterized as political, but that in general had no ideological dimension. The capacity of military power to control key points and spaces thus played a key role in ensuring the local success of a party. As a factor in politicizing conflicts, military engagement then became widespread. This analysis of the logics that emerged should encourage a more general reflection on the conditions that can lead to the outbreak of civil war, especially in the early modern period.

• Publisher: Presses Universitaires de France
• ISBN: 9782130629429, 2130629423