Absolute monarchy on the frontiers

Louis XIV’s military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy

Phil McCluskey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780719087165
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526110503
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Education Administration
• Index: History

French territorial ambitions and consequent military activity during the reign of Louis XIV ensured that a number of territories bordering on France were subject to military occupation for strategic reasons from the 1660s onwards. Drawing on extensive archival research, this study presents the occupation of two of these territories, Lorraine and Savoy, from a comparative perspective. It investigates the aims and intentions of the French monarchy in occupying these regions, the problems of administering them, and French relations with key local elite groups.

Absolute monarchy on the frontiers makes a significant contribution to understanding this crucial era in the development of civil-military relations. It also places the occupations of Lorraine and Savoy within the framework of recent scholarship on early modern border societies and frontiers, and on the practice of 'absolutism' at the frontiers of the French kingdom. The book will appeal particularly to scholars and students of early modern France and Europe.

Part III

The local elites under French occupation

5

The nobilities

Although they made up only a few per cent of the population, noble elites in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century were crucial in all areas of human activity: social relations, political and religious life, and economic enterprise.¹ When the French Government occupied a territory, therefore, circumspection and sensitivity in their dealings with the local nobles were usually more expedient than repression. In examining that relationship, this chapter looks at the way it evolved in each occupation and the means by which the French attempted to secure nobles’ allegiance. But French strategies cannot be explained without considering the attitudes of the nobles themselves, the forms of noble collaboration and resistance, and some of the factors which motivated nobles to co-operate, resist or adopt an approach somewhere between those two.

In this period many noblemen of Savoy and Lorraine had been, or were still, in uniform.² For the French occupier, therefore, the principal means of winning them over was to appeal to their service ethic by offering them positions in the French army. Yet they could not force foreign (or domestic) noblemen to serve, and many were permitted to stay at home after swearing an oath of allegiance to the king. This reflects the fact that nobles and rulers still saw their relationship primarily in personal terms, and service was to the ruling dynast rather than the impersonal state.³ It also shows that nobles continued to define themselves by reference to a code of honour. How far this code and the ideals behind it were compromised by occupation is an issue that has never been properly explored. It was often extremely difficult to reconcile the oath demanded by the French king with the oath they had sworn to their original sovereign. To compound the problem, the French often resorted to coercion, in particular property confiscation, to dissuade noblemen from leaving to join France’s enemies. Faced with the dilemmas of occupation, not all nobles could live up to the high (and sometimes mutually conflicting) ideals of their order, especially when faced with the very real threat of destitution.

As noble allegiance could be so unpredictable, the French often found it hard to strike an appropriate balance. First, much depended on the nobles’ relationship with their original sovereign, and this was conditioned by several long-term factors such as the diminution of the nobility’s political roles in the state, described in Chapter 1. Also crucial were the perceptions of the occupier, as well as personal and dynastic interests of individual nobles. In the past, historians ascribed patterns of resistance and collaboration among the nobility in Lorraine and Savoy to the strength of ‘national’ sentiments in each territory.⁴ More recent scholarship has highlighted the ‘supra-regional’ interests and loyalties of nobles in these frontier territories. In particular, William Godsey in his study of the Rhenish imperial nobility argued convincingly in favour of the notion of a ‘geo-cultural landscape’, which stretched far beyond immediate jurisdictional boundaries, and which anchored the nobility of the Rhineland into a much wider territorial sphere which stretched deep into what is today France and Belgium.⁵ Godsey showed that the indistinct nature of frontiers at this time, along with patterns of estate ownership, French military service, and linguistic and cultural affinities all helped perpetuate this continuum. This model is equally applicable to Lorraine, which lacked territorial cohesion and whose nobility was closely linked to both France (especially neighbouring Champagne) and the Holy Roman Empire.⁶ Likewise, in Savoy, noble attachments extended into Piedmont, the French provinces of the Lyonnais and Dauphiné, and the Swiss cantons. With much to lose whichever side they supported, nobles adopted various strategies to survive French occupation, and current research suggests that the maintenance of nobles’ social positions, particularly in small states and frontier zones, rested to a large extent on adaptation and accommodation.⁷

French strategies were also conditioned by certain expectations of noble behaviour, which could be incompatible with non-French nobilities. Historians have recently demonstrated that relations between the French crown and the provincial nobility evolved over the course of the seventeenth century. By the time of Louis XIV’s personal rule, French noble culture placed more emphasis on self-discipline, and less on individual pursuit of honour and gloire as in the first half of seventeenth century.⁸ The French would therefore have expected nobles in occupied territories to conform to a view that emphasised order and utility over strict attention to individuals’ rights. Yet in both Lorraine and Savoy they encountered nobles who had traditions and expectations of much more influence in political affairs than the majority of their French counterparts. Both of these territories therefore offer interesting perspectives on relations between rulers and elites during this period, not least because the French occupations began during periods of rising tension between the nobilities of Lorraine and Savoy and their respective ‘legitimate’ rulers.

Moreover, the French also had to contend with nobles whose position and status were in flux within their own societies. This reflects a broader trend, whereby poor noblemen were becoming politically marginalised in Europe.⁹ Among the Savoyard nobility, 22 per cent controlled about two thirds of the landed wealth of the order as a whole, while poorer nobles increasingly relied on fiscal privileges to sustain their social position.¹⁰ In Lorraine the situation was even more polarised, as a tiny elite enjoyed incomes of 4,000 to 12,000 livres per year, while the majority existed barely above subsistence level.¹¹ The cohesiveness of the nobilities was also weakened by changes in hierarchies during this period: in Lorraine and Savoy, as elsewhere, impoverished old noble families declined and new anoblis took their place. In Lorraine, the number of families belonging to the ancienne chevalerie dropped significantly in the seventeenth century, while the numbers and influence of the anoblis increased.¹² At the same time, social mobility allowed many among the Savoyard bourgeoisie to purchase noble titles, and a new robe nobility increasingly took the place of the older feudal nobility.¹³ The French often failed to grasp the subtleties in the internal dynamics of the occupied nobilities, and this had significant repercussions in their relations with nobles. It is therefore important to examine the nobilities of Lorraine and Savoy with an eye to their plural nature, beginning with the bulk of the nobility – those families often referred to, inaccurately, as ‘sword’ nobles.¹⁴

Nobles of Lorraine: ‘Little inclined to the service of the king’?

The behaviour of the French authorities and the Lorrain nobles in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of 1670 reflects political uncertainty over the territory’s future. Duke Charles IV of Lorraine fled his states in September with a small band of retainers, leaving his army of roughly 3,000 cavalry and 1,200 infantry in French-occupied Lorraine.¹⁵ Though this small force could mount only a symbolic resistance to the French invasion, many noble officers fought bravely at the defence of Epinal, and when the town fell many were taken as prisoners of war.¹⁶ The French soon realised, however, that there was no chance of these noble prisoners being able to raise their own ransoms, as most of them were poor gentilshommes verriers, and the ransoms were lowered from 100 écus to whatever they could pay.¹⁷ Over 200 Lorrain officers and cavalrymen who had been loyal to Charles IV were still in prison in Epinal and Metz in December 1670, when the king decided to free them.¹⁸ By that point, the French were increasingly optimistic that the Lorrain nobility were ready to desert the duke: Créqui reported that the majority of those who had followed Charles IV were leaving him in droves and were returning to their homes in Lorraine.¹⁹ When the prince de Lixin, for instance, decided to leave Charles IV in late November 1670, the French allowed him to return and live peacefully on his estates on the condition that he did nothing to ‘concern himself with the affairs of Monsieur de Lorraine’;²⁰ many others were reported to be disposed to do likewise.²¹ For the nobles, this was probably more out of necessity than choice: neither the duke nor the nobles had the means to support themselves in Cologne.²² But to facilitate their return, in December Louvois ordered that all Lorrain officers who had returned to their homes without first acquiring passports could stay, provided they gave up their arms and horses.²³ Despite this cautious optimism, the French were about to face real difficulties over the military activity of the Lorrain nobility.

The older feudal nobility of Lorraine proved particularly difficult for the French to deal with in the months after the conquest. By early 1671 several cavalry officers who had earlier been released from prison had returned to fight alongside Charles IV. This resulted in stricter passport controls at the frontiers on the Saar and with the Franche-Comté and Trier, and Créqui advised that the king should raise troops in Lorraine to make it more difficult for the duke to encourage these nobles to return to him.²⁴ The intendant and the governor both appear to have seriously underestimated the attachment of the feudal aristocracy to their duke. Charuel mistakenly believed that the Lorrain cavalry showed little sign of wanting to go to join Charles; he argued that most were married and had property to lose, and therefore had little inclination to leave, though this soon proved to be wishful thinking on his part.²⁵ By September, Créqui admitted to Louvois that they were a security risk: they could easily cross the border into Luxembourg, and he had received intelligence that most were keen to join the duke as soon as possible. This prompted the French authorities to adopt a fiercer stance: those who remained in Lorraine were confined to their homes; in addition, the prévôté officials where each cavalryman lived were told to keep a watchful eye on their movements, and to fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• A note on terms
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Maps
• Introduction
• I The eastern frontiers of France in the age of Louis XIV
• II Administration on the frontiers
• III The local elites under French occupation
• Conclusions
• Appendix: Officers of the sovereign companies of Savoy, 1690–1713
• Select bibliography
• Index