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Warrior Pursuits

Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France

Brian Sandberg

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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. War...

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.

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Reviews

A remarkable work... Sandberg's study is a major contribution to the history of nobility in Modern France.

Sandberg's solid study certainly complements the work of Arlette Jouanna and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and should be welcomed and praised for offering English-speakers a (rather rare) glimpse of Renaissance Languedoc and Guyenne.

An important addition to the literature on the nobility of early modern France.

Brian Sandberg has written one of the most important regional studies of France’s militarized nobility... [A]ll early modern historians will need to read and ponder his conclusions.

Sandberg has gathered a prodigious quantity of information and documentation that shifts attention from the oft-told story of a relentlessly centralizing monarchy to the fluid, insecure, and bellicose behavior of a regional nobility.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
424
ISBN
9781421423982
Illustration Description
12 halftones, 1 line drawing
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Note on Citations and Translations
Prologue
Part I
1. The Great Quantity of Nobility That Is Found Here
2. The Grandeur and Magnificence of His Household
3. He Had No Trouble

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Note on Citations and Translations
Prologue
Part I
1. The Great Quantity of Nobility That Is Found Here
2. The Grandeur and Magnificence of His Household
3. He Had No Trouble Helping Himself to Money
Part II
4. With the Assistance of My Particular Friends
5. The Dignity and Authority of Their Charges
6. Actions the Most Perilous Being the Most Honorable
Part III
7. The Call to Arms from All Quarters
8. A Great Multitude of Soldiers
9. The Zeal of This Nobility
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
Brian Sandberg
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Brian Sandberg

Brian Sandberg is an associate professor of history at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of War and Conflict in the Early Modern World: 1500–1700.
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