Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the

Transcription

Walled Towns and the Shaping
of France
From the Medieval to the Early
Modern Era
Michael Wolfe
WALLED TOWNS AND THE SHAPING OF FRANCE
Copyright © Michael Wolfe, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–60812–2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolfe, Michael.
Walled towns and the shaping of France : from the medieval to the
early modern era / Michael Wolfe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–230–60812–4
1. City and town life—France—History. 2. City walls—Social
aspects—France—History. 3. Cities and towns—France—History.
4. Fortification—France—History. 5. Authority—Social aspects—
France—History. 6. France—Social life and customs. 7. France—
History—Medieval period, 987–1515. 8. France—History—16th century.
9. France—History—Bourbons, 1589–1789. I. Title.
DC33.2.W65 2009
944⬘.02—dc22
2009002650
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: September 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
C on t e n t s
List of Maps and Illustrations
iv
Preface
v
Part I
The Walls Go Up (900–1325)
1 Urban Legacies and Medieval Trends up to 1100
2 Lords and Towns (1100–1225)
3 Capetian Expansion and New Urbanism, 1225–1325
Part II
3
19
39
The Walls Move Outward (1325–1600)
4 Bonnes Villes and the Hundred Years’ War
5 Royal Rulers and Bastioned Towns
6 Walled Towns during the Wars of Religion
57
75
97
Part III The Walls Come Down (1600–1750)
7 State Building and Urban Fortifications
8 Opening Towns, Closing Frontiers
123
147
Conclusion Palimpsests and Modern Trajectories
171
Notes
175
Select Bibliography
223
Index
251
M a ps a n d I l lust r at ions
Cover Henri IV before Amiens, 1597. By permission of the
Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. G151474).
Maps
1.1
2.1
3.1
4.1
6.1
8.1
Walled towns in Roman Gaul.
France, 1150–1250.
Bonnes Villes and Bastides, 1300.
Hundred Years’ War.
Wars of Religion, 1561–1629.
France, 1650–1710.
4
26
43
59
101
152
Figures
1.1 Vestiges of the Gallo-Roman theater in Poitiers.
By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. M74188).
5.1 Villefranche. By permission of the
Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. M73577).
6.1 Fortifications of La Rochelle, 1573. By permission of
the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. 87C 131083).
7.1 Views of Calais, Guigne, and Ardres by Joachim
Du Wiert, 1611. By permission of the Bibliothèque
Nationale (B.N. Vx 23 2989).
7.2 Surrender of La Rochelle, 1628. By permission of the
Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. 152878).
8.1 Tours in the late seventeenth century. By permission of the
Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. M74008 B15).
5
83
106
124
135
160
P r e fac e
The history of France can be read on the walls of its towns, even though most of
these walls no longer exist. Towns have played a decisive, yet changing set of roles
in the country’s history. This book focuses on these urban experiences, assessing the ways in which social and political practices, military technologies, physical
geography, and shifting regional networks shaped the emergence of new forms of
public authority and civic life. Towns and territorial rulers, chief among them the
monarchy, together constituted the “state” understood as a set of mutual relationships based on agreed upon rules and shared interests. These relationships became
embodied above all in the “wall,” an image at once both intensely physical and
deeply symbolic. This study presents a synthetic analysis based on an exhaustive
study of the vast secondary literature on French urbanism in general and hundreds of individual towns. It begins with a review of medieval towns and traces
their ensuing evolution to the eighteenth century when they began to be released
from the confines of their walls. A dynamic new kind of modern urban community began to take shape in advance of the revolutionary upheavals in politics and
industry after 1789. This long-term perspective offers a new interpretive framework
centered on urban fortifications, for how they were built, the contests to control
them, and how they shaped the lives of people both inside and outside them, all tell
us a great deal about the making of France.
The book has three parts. Part one, “The Walls Go Up (900–1325),” examines
the Gallo-Roman urban legacy and the rise of walled towns from the tenth century to the onset of the Hundred Years’ War. Part two, “The Walls Move Outward
(1325–1600),” explores how that conflict, together with new forms of monarchical
state authority, gunpowder weapons, and new fortification design theories from
Italy, all shaped towns up through the Wars of Religion. Finally, part three, “The
Walls Come Down (1600–1750),” charts the impact that a now dominant royal
state had on urban forms and communities, the emergence of a royal fortification
service, new ways of envisioning urban communities, and attempts to spur town
economic life, all of which required an expanded perimeter of fortified places in
Vauban’s ceinture de fer while towns in the “interior” began to be opened up for
new modern forms and practices of civic life to emerge.
This study contends that the historical genesis of modern France was over the
last millennium a largely ongoing urban phenomenon. Networks of urban communities, in relation first with feudatory powers and then the monarchy, gradually
defined from an ever widening regional ambit much of the country’s economic,
political, and cultural life. The distinction between “urban” and “royal” begins to
collapse as towns and the crown instead stood along a continuum of nascent public
forms and statist forces that—through conflict and accommodation—created so
much of the France we see today.
vi
P r e fac e
I wish to thank all the people and institutions whose generous support helped
me write this book. Both St. John’s University and Pennsylvania State University
provided me the generous time and resources necessary for research and writing.
The National Endowment for the Humanities gave me a summer grant years ago
that initiated this project. Another happy summer of research at the Newberry
Library, and repeated trips to the Bibliothèque Nationale and regional archives in
Amiens, Bourges, La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nîmes, as well as the Library of
Congress, the Widener Library at Harvard University, the Harlan Hatcher Graduate
Library at the University of Michigan, and the Huntingdon Library in San Marino,
California, all afforded me opportunities to delve into the rich documentary history of urban fortifications. Inter-loan librarians, especially the late Cathy Wagner
at Penn State, were tireless in tracking down all kinds of obscure French titles for
me on this town and that. And over the years, many colleagues and friends—you
know who you all are!—have read portions of this work or patiently listened to me
go on and on about my walls. My deep gratitude goes to you all. Finally, to my
family, who endured my long absences and the even longer time I spent sequestered
within the walls of my office, along with gratitude comes my love. I dedicate this
book to my lovely wife and best friend, Amy, with the promise that which Fate has
joined no walls will ever rend asunder.
Pa r t I
Th e Wa l l s G o Up (9 0 0 – 1 3 2 5)
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Ch apter 1
U rban Lega cies and Medieval
Trends u p to 1100
Gallo-Roman and Early Medieval
Urban Legacies
The contradictory impulse to be apart from yet also connected to the outside
world shaped the first Neolithic fortified settlements in what became France five
thousand years ago. This ambivalence became more pronounced in the timbered
stockades around later Celtic villages, described first by Julius Caesar. Roman
military encampments laid out by priests with the intersecting lines of the cardo
and decumanus defined a central enclosed space yet pointed to the world at large.
These fortified sites evolved after the second century CE into walled towns known
as oppida.1 Situated on rivers for trade and defense, Gallo-Roman oppida began
as simple quadrilateral enclosures pierced by gated ways. The massive brick walls
and towers that later ringed them arose as Roman power weakened in the third
century CE.2
Over one hundred oppida existed across greater Gaul, along with smaller walled
places known as castrums (castra; see map 1.1). Later Germanic invaders often
maintained and even bolstered these fortified places.3 In the fifth century, Visigoths
transformed the Roman amphitheater in Nîmes into a little town by closing off the
entrances and using the stadium’s upper tiers as ramparts. Shops, churches, and
residences for some two thousand people eventually went up inside the arena. The
amphitheaters in Poitiers and Arles underwent similar alterations that lasted into
the nineteenth century (see figure 1.1). Roman temples sometimes became converted into fortified redoubts known as castellums.4 Gallo-Roman fortifications
often disappeared because they served as stone quarries for later medieval building
projects.5 Traces of oppida abound in French towns today or in street names while
their distinctive roseate walls still stand in Le Mans and Valence.6
Late Antique walls fell into disrepair as towns shrank under Frankish rule
in the early Middle Ages. As a result, the Frankish nobility gradually assumed
more direct control of walled towns and fortified places. The Catholic Church
also played a pivotal role in shaping early urban enceintes to shield God’s people. Thick-walled Romanesque churches, often built by monasteries, offered refuge in towns as well as the countryside. Episcopal sees also established protective
zones in cathedral precincts. Church buildings provided a place to store food and
munitions as churchmen assumed local military authority. In 898, for example,
King Charles the Simple granted permission to the bishop of Noyon to rebuild the
4
Map 1.1
Wa l l e d Tow ns a n d t h e Sh a p i ng of F r a nc e
Walled towns in Roman Gaul.
old fortifications of Tournai. Concessions of authority to local nobility and clergy
surged as Carolingian power waned in the ninth and tenth centuries.7
While Gallo-Roman brick enceintes persisted in many places, new proto-urban
defensive works after the ninth century were mainly wooden stockades similar to
the rudimentary moat and bailey structures found in the countryside. Historians
must rely on archaeology to understand these sites, which usually consisted of a
circular enceinte composed of deep ditches fronting earthen walls topped with
a wooden palisade. Vestiges of these defenses still subsist in some street plans.8
After 900, rising commercial activity along rivers and coastlines renewed interest in
building fortifications in burgs from the Seine basin north to the Scheldt estuary.
Viking raids also stimulated fortification construction in places that then evolved
into trading centers. While Gallo-Roman continuities held sway in some areas,
the seeds of a new, expanded urbanism took root after 900.9 Gallo-Roman walled
towns had developed primarily as political and military centers, whereas medieval
Figure 1.1
Vestiges of the Gallo-Roman theater in Poitiers. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. M74188).
6
towns began as marketplaces and manufacturing centers. Another difference was
that Gallo-Roman walled towns diminished in number as one moved north, while
urban growth in the Middle Ages began most intensely in the north and generally
lessened as one moved south.
The partition of the Carolingian Empire in the ninth century into different
rulerships separated Aquitaine and Gascony from Neustria to the north. It fostered
in each area over time a sense of distinctive identity as a natio or gens sharing a
common descent but still belonging to a larger kingdom. This heritage of historic
connectedness survived as real public authority disintegrated among local feudatories, including the newly elected dynasty of Hugh Capet. Defensive relationships
and forms adapted to these new conditions. Indeed, notions of public authority, if
they survived at all, did so in arguments over control of fortifications. Local lords
known as castellans asserted their rights by building simple quadriangular castles
(châteaux-forts) over these incipient towns to manifest their military and administrative authority as seigneur.10 Ensconced in this redoubt, a lord and his retainers
offered protection to residents over whom they also exerted domination.11 Waves
of castle-building occurred with the collapse of Neustria as the Normans used
stone towers and rubble-filled walls as instruments to claim and dominate territory. These practices followed them into England after 1066 and eventually the
Mediterranean and Holy Land.12 Usually situated on higher ground, the châteaufort frequently spurred urban growth beneath its base as a lower town (basse ville)
developed as a residential quarters and market and manufacturing district.
Nascent urban communities after 900 arose in response to commercial opportunities, the emergence of local feudatory powers, and an abiding need for refuge.
These factors shaped their ensuing morphology as new towns appeared across what
later became France, with the heaviest urbanizing zones in the flatlands of Picardy
and Flanders, Normandy, and the Loire valley. These early towns went by a variety
of names. In the southwest, such a new settlement became called a castelnau. The
settlement of merchants and workers seeking a lord’s protection became known as
a faubourg or portus just beyond the castle or abbey gate; a self-contained community outside the castle was sometimes called the urbs mercatorum.13 Abbeys and
monasteries also prompted urban development by building fortified church complexes known as sauvetés to provide sanctuary to passing pilgrims.14 Last, fortified
farm houses in the wheat-growing region north of the Loire and the flatlands of
Champagne further testified to prevailing insecurities and the localization of selfdefense in the ninth and tenth centuries.15
The seigniorial authority of feudal nobles and churchmen over early towns
slowly waned after 1000 as population growth, a more dynamic economy, and new
sense of security emerged. Accelerating urbanization fueled the desire for more
communal autonomy. The château-fort or abbey church compound soon became
sites of tension between seigneur and local community groups. Seigneurial rivalries also played out in urban areas, particularly in southern France where noble
families often erected private towers to stake a claim over neighborhoods. Spatial
distance between the lord’s keep and the burg sometimes rendered the château-fort
a threat rather than a boon to local residents.16 While fortified churches and castles
consisted of stone, earthen ramparts topped by wooden palisades mainly protected
early towns after 1000. These modest enceintes, together with the nascent tissue
of streets, stone gates, marketplaces, and other public spaces, created a new kind of
civic space in medieval Europe.
Ur b a n L e g ac i e s a n d M e di e va l Tr e n d s
7
Urban growth after 1000 posed new challenges of governance and defense that
eventually led to the rise of communes. Aspiring municipal leaders discovered a new
rhetoric of the “public good” to justify authority over markets, public events, and
local health and safety, including defense against outside aggressors. The ensuing
“reconquest” of public space proceeded in a piecemeal, sometimes violent manner
but in time resulted in greater community control over urban life.17 The patterns
and relationships between these early towns and territorial rulers set the framework
for the subsequent development of Francia into France.
Regional Patterns and Shifting
Frontiers, 950–1150
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the lands of northern and western Francia
came to be dominated by rival feudatory lords who through dynastic marriage,
warfare, and the accidents of succession vied for power. These families included the
counts, dukes, and barons of lordships that stretched from Flanders and Brabant to
Picardy, Normandy, and the Ile-de-France and on to the Loire valley, Brittany, and
Champagne and then the vast Midi, greater Aquitaine, and, finally, Provence. The
evolving relationships between lords and their towns settled into enduring regional
patterns. Their success in dealing with unruly barons and castellans hinged in large
part on any aid they received from these early urban communities. Except for places
where Gallo-Roman walls remained intact, most urban settlements after the tenth
century possessed, at most, simple but effective earthen ramparts, wooden stockades, and perhaps a few stone towers and fortified gates. Yet even these modest
defenses represented a substantial investment of scarce resources and a strong measure of communal consensus. Control of fortified burgs, like castles, was decisive in
the quest to command a territory and its people. As towns developed, they articulated their own aspirations for greater independence. A three-cornered competition
for influence in both old and newly established towns after the tenth century pitted
burghers, nobles, and clergymen against each other, though with differing outcomes. Tempestuous communal movements in Flanders and parts of Picardy contrasted with the more orderly emergence of consular regimes in the Midi and the
gradual emancipation of towns in the Ile-de-France, Loire, and Berry, while urban
communities remained embryonic in Brittany until the late fourteenth century.18
While open conflict between seigneurial and urban interests certainly occurred,
less dramatic pragmatic negotiations more usually led lay and ecclesiastical lords to
shift more responsibility over self-governance to urban residents in their domains.
Magnates, particularly the Capetians, encouraged this process wherever possible
through devising courts of law for appeals and arbitration. The patterns of contest
and cooperation set in motion among early towns and aspiring feudatory rulers
proved of enduring significance.
Nowhere was urban development more precocious than in the areas comprising the extensive system of navigable rivers from the Scheldt, whose tributaries
connected the Rhine and Meuse, southward to the Somme and Seine basins. A
highly productive agricultural economy in these regions fueled population growth
and urbanization after the tenth century. However, few documentary descriptions
exist of early urban defenses in these areas before the thirteenth century. Feudatory
rulers initially benefited from urban growth, none more so than those in Flanders,
Brabant, Hainault, and Artois. In the tenth century, burgs in greater Flanders and
8
Picardy burgeoned along these waterways that connected the hinterland to the sea.
Artisans and merchants chose defensible sites, often close to a castellan’s tower,
from which to manufacture and sell their goods. In the second half of the tenth
century, the counts of Flanders authorized certain towns to hold fairs to encourage commerce. Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, and Tournai soon became bustling urban
centers dominated by reinforced citadels built by the twelfth-century counts of
Flanders, Thierry d’Alsace and Philippe d’Alsace. Especially impressive were the
piles in Ghent and Douai. A massive oval wall and gate encircled the castle keep at
Ghent. Its one-acre enclosure contained residences for the count, his servants, and
guards, and a central three-story tower (donjon), the oldest of its kind in western
Europe.19 The town proper of Ghent remained without walls until the thirteenth
century but did enjoy intricate water defenses in its canals. By contrast, Douai’s
first enceinte dated from the late tenth century and enclosed an area of one hundred acres that proved able to accommodate much of this early dynamic growth.
Tensions with the counts rose as Douai prospered. Almost certainly under Philip
of Alsace, the comtal château-fort underwent significant renovation and reinforcement, including a moat to protect it against attack from both inside and outside
the burg.20 Other towns subject to the counts of Flanders, such as Cambrai and
Lille, underwent much the same experience.21 The counts of Flanders also initiated in the twelfth century the construction of new ports at Damme and NieuwPort (Gravelines), while along the Meuse river the towns of Huy, Namur, Dinant,
and Liège soon grew beyond their original Carolingian settlements.22 Enceintes
largely remained secondary to commercial pursuits in towns in the domains of the
counts of Flanders until the thirteenth century when dynamic urban growth and
the intrusive, grasping ambition of the counts became a volatile combination.
More inland areas in the duchy of Brabant, such as Brussels, Louvain, and
Malines, urbanized only toward the end of the tenth century, with Nivelles as a
notable exception. The dukes of Brabant also founded new towns to secure control
of rivers in their territories to supplement the already established Walloon burgs
of Mons, Binche, and Fosses-la-Ville.23 As these towns flourished, the dukes of
Brabant and regional magnates began to bestow upon them privileges and obligations, including the shared responsibility of local defense, in charters. The earliest
such charter in the region was granted by the bishop-count of Liège to the town of
Huy in 1066. By 1100, most of these towns began to construct their first permanent enceintes of earthen ramparts topped by wooden palisades.
Commerce and more robust forms of feudatory lordship also shaped towns and
their defenses in Hainault and Artois. Towns in Hainault were among the first
anywhere to begin the shift from earthen ramparts to soaring stone walls in the
twelfth century under Count Baudouin IV, known as “the Builder” (le Bâtisseur).24
The towns of Binche and Le Quesnoy typified Baudouin’s approach as he added a
tower to the comtal château-fort and erected a crenellated curtain wall with fronting ditches around the burg.25 Urban growth in area towns, such as Valenciennes,
required regular expansion of the enceinte.26 Landrecies grew up around a ninthcentury tower built by the counts of Avesnes and received more permanent defenses
only after the count sacked the town in 1185 for failure to acknowledge his suzerainty.27 Much the same pattern occurred in the Artois. An exception was the important port of Calais, which received its first enceinte in the eleventh century thanks
to episcopal leadership.28 A short distance south was the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer,
an important Gallo-Roman oppidium from which Julius Caesar had launched his
9
invasion of Britain, whose solid and high fourth-century walls still stood 900 years
later. Thus by 1200, dynamic urban growth across Flanders, Brabant, Hainault,
and Artois fueled the rise of feudatory rulers whose power rested in large part on
controlling towns to tap into their wealth. They did so through a mix of coercion,
bluster, and occasional compromise. The most impressive fortified place continued
to be the comtal or ducal château-fort, which stood as a potent symbol of these
ambitions. Urban defenses, where they existed, mainly consisted of earthen ramparts with stone towers and fortified gates for protection. Investment in stone and
brick curtain walls, indicators of rising wealth and insecurities, remained highly
exceptional until 1200.
New burgs proliferated to the south in the domains of the Capetians across
Picardy and the Ile-de-France. Earthen ramparts with timbered fences were again
typical, along with stone keeps and fortified gates.29 The Capetians, like lesser lords
in these areas, devoted their limited resources to castle construction, some close
to these new burgs, but most not.30 Their main goal was to control regional transit points, not towns. Even their capital in Paris possessed but the remains of the
original Gallo-Roman enceinte. Exceptions can be found, of course. In Soissons, a
bishop in the ninth century added a new enceinte to replace the dilapidated GalloRoman one. The small burg of Crépy-en-Valois became fortified by Gautier II,
count of Vexin, in the early eleventh century, while the counts of Champagne
expanded the castle enceinte at Château-Thierry to enclose a new burg in the tenth
century. Elsewhere in Picardy, the original Gallo-Roman fortifications of Amiens,
Beauvais, and Corbie only underwent extensive repair and modification in the early
thirteenth century, as did the old Carolingian enceinte surrounding Compiègne.
Prior to 1150, Capetian territorial ambitions remained perforce modest and concentrated on asserting control in their core domains. As a result, their relations
with towns generally relied on mutual cooperation rather than confrontation,
unlike most other feudatory rulers at the time.
No starker contrast to Capetian relations with towns existed than in the vast
complex of areas to the west that came to form in the twelfth century the AngloNorman “empire” of the Angevins. Some historians have argued that vestiges of
Carolingian public authority remained strongest in ducal Normandy, as regalian
rights over fortifications and mints never became fully usurped there by castellans.
Power instead remained more territorialized than localized as dukes of Normandy
preserved the authority to regulate nobles’ construction of castles and conduct of
private warfare through their ducal courts.31 Other historians attribute the source
of ducal power in Normandy in malleable, aggressive forms of Germanic kinship.32
Kinship provided the main idiom for building political cohesion among clients
and claiming material resources for expansion. Carolingian public traditions in fact
complemented Germanic kinship practices to position the early dukes of Normandy
and their Angevin successors for expanded territorial control.
Inveterate castle builders, the Angevin dukes of Normandy invested little in
fortifying the new bustling burgs in this agriculturally rich region prior to the
1180s.33 Instead, they poured resources into massive, innovative polygonal
châteaux-forts that dominated early Norman towns as much as they protected
them. Significant among these were the castles built in the eleventh century at
Gisors and Fécamp. The original moat-and-bailey fort at Arques, protecting the
approach to the key port town of Dieppe, became replaced by Henry I Plantagenet
in the early twelfth century by a formidable new square enceinte and stone keep.
10
Together these and other castles formed an integrated defensive frontier system
known as a march.34 The major exceptions in Normandy, though for different
reasons, were Caen, Falaise, and Rouen. Around 1060, Guillaume le Bâtard built a
citadel on a stony outcropping overlooking the burg of Caen, which, together with
the newly constructed Abbaye-aux-Hommes and Abbaye-aux-Dames, defined the
general parameters within which the town later developed.35 Robert II Curthose
built both a new castle and a stone fortified enceinte around Falaise, the birthplace
of his father, William the Conqueror. The castle underwent considerable expansion
and reinforcement under Henry I, king of England, though not the enceinte. By
contrast, Rouen still possessed much of its original third-century Gallo-Roman fortifications circling the old castrum, though rapid population and economic growth
after 1100 quickly spilled over these confines. A new expanded earthen palisaded
enceinte went up after 1150 to incorporate the new outlying suburban parishes. As
a result, the size of the enclosed urban area nearly tripled before 1200.36 Urban
growth in Normandy strengthened ducal authority as it subordinated castellans
and the bishops.
Further to the west was Brittany. The Carolingians never subdued the restless Bretons who in the ninth century, under the leadership the Celtic chieftain
Nominoë, became an independent kingdom and then duchy. While the duchy
expanded briefly into Normandy and the Loire valley, its dukes later maintained
their autonomy by pitting the Capetians and Angevins against each other until the
early thirteenth century. Ducal authority in Brittany faced formidable resistance
from local baronial lords entrenched in moat-and-bailey castles throughout these
rugged lands. Starting with Alain II in the tenth century, Breton dukes concentrated
on building or securing these castles, such as the one at La Roche Goyon. They
also built ducal castles, which spawned the growth of a dozen or so small towns
across the Armorican peninsula. Baronial clans responded in kind, with the barons
of Clisson, for example, building their own strongholds in places such as Josselin
in the Morbihan region.37 The remote areas along the western coast of Finistière
proved especially hard to secure until the fifteenth century.38 In the east, towns
such as Fougères and Rennes became heavily contested by the dukes of Normandy
and Anjou.39 Breton castles and small towns possessed little more than the simple
but effective defense provided by moat-and-baileys and earthen palisaded ramparts
until replaced by stone walls and towers in the thirteenth century.40
Medieval Breton towns fell into three general categories. One set consisted
of older Gallo-Roman castrums, such as Dinan, Rennes, Carhaix, Vannes, and
Nantes. Despite recent decline, they remained under ducal control as leading
urban centers in the region.41 They usually lay along land routes, particularly at
river crossings, although maritime and fluvial conditions, with the exception of
the Loire, Vilaine, and Rance rivers, militated against easy travel and exchange.
A second set of towns sprang up around the castles and fortified abbeys along the
duchy’s frontier marches abutting Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou. The violence experienced along the Franco-Breton borderland at the time became reflected
in toponyms that included “la Bataille,” “la Terre gaste,” and “la Désertine.” A
final third category of Breton towns grew up as isolated burgs around monasteries
and seigneurial and ducal strongholds in the duchy’s rugged interior. Most such
places passed under ducal control in the eleventh century.42 As elsewhere, the countervailing impulses of separation and connection shaped the site selection of Breton
11
towns, as barons and monasteries strove for the latter while ducal authorities vied
to broaden territorial rulership.
Along the coast to the south, the Saintonge and Aunis most resembled Brittany
as local castellans built moat-and-bailey redoubts. Some of these castles became
rebuilt starting in the mid-eleventh century. Little urbanization occurred in this
region during the Gallo-Roman period. New burgs, such as La Rochelle founded
in 1130, relied mainly on natural obstacles, such as salt marshes, for protection.43
Eastward in the middle Loire Basin, including the Beauce and Berry, the contrast between riverine urban settlements and hinterlands dominated by castellans
became sharper. Dozens of original Gallo-Roman castrums and oppida survived
across this region. Many places, such as Le Mans, Angers, Bourges, and Orléans,
still possessed substantial portions of their third-century brick walls nearly a millennium later. In Bourges, remains of these walls remain visible along the “Promenade
des Remparts” behind the new Hôtel-de-Ville and at the foot of Jacques Coeur’s
Palace. The streets of the upper old town still follow the arc of the Late Antique
enceinte.44 In Orléans, Gallo-Roman walls from the fourth century jut out today
near the cathedral, while the street layout retains the distinctive intersection of the
cardo and decumanus. Smaller burgs developed after the ninth century up the various tributaries of the Loire, often near the castles of local castellans and abbeys.
After Carolingian authority collapsed, comtal leaders initially assumed responsibility for castle and fortification construction. Ninth-century Meung-sur-Loire, for
example, received a stockade and towers. In the tenth century, Thibault III, count
of Chartres and Blois, had castles, usually stone dungeons, erected at Châteaudun,
Chinon, and Janville and enclosed the burg of Blois. However, the weakly defended
town of Chartres fell to Robert I, duke of Normandy, one of his many adversaries,
after a short siege in 963 and suffered a terrible sack as a consequence.45 Expanded
stone complexes became built in the twelfth century by Count Thibault V as he
sought to navigate the conflict between the Capetians and Angevins. The one at
Châteaudun remains standing today over one hundred feet high with the walls at
the base some thirty-five feet thick.
Among the earliest successful attempts at building up a cohesive feudatory lordship was the county of Anjou. The county of Anjou is often regarded as a model
small feudal state that preserved aspects of public authority into the eleventh century. In the late tenth century, Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou, became known as “le
grand bâtisseur” in the middle Loire valley for the some thirty major fortifications,
most stone castles, he had erected in places such as Angers, Durtal, MontreuilBellay, and Langeais.46 He also had built scores of moat-and-bailey strongholds,
most along the Breton and Norman frontiers, that formed a thick defense-in-depth
system to safeguard his domains from armed incursions. Finally, Fulk Nerra also
fielded a formidable army, for its day, of up to six thousand fighters, a third of whom
were mounted knights, which he used to vanquish his rivals, such as Breton Count
Conan of Rennes at the battle of Conquéril in 996 and Count Odo II of Blois in
1016. His military campaigns suggest an awareness of De re militari by Vegetius,
a late Roman writer who also addressed the subject of fortifications.47 The bestknown and most impressive of Fulk’s dungeons was the massive keep at Loches.
It was his principal residence and soared over one hundred feet high. Fulk Nerra’s
successors further expanded Angevin sway throughout the greater Loire valley. His
son, Count Geoffrey II, known as “The Hammer” (le Martel), waged war with his
12
neighbors and secured Angevin control over Maine and, though short-lived, the
Saintonge. Geoffroy also began to replace earthen and timbered ramparts around
some burgs with more permanent stone and brick fortifications. In Saumur, for
example, he ordered a stone enceinte built to protect the town from the count of
Poitiers.48 Important towns, such as Tours and Vendôme, remained without even
simple earthen ramparts until the thirteenth century, however.49
Comtal authority quickly disintegrated after Geoffrey Martel’s death in 1060
when castellans seized castles and attributes of lordship. Angevin fortunes briefly
waned as a result of the succession struggle against Geoffrey III that eventually
brought to power Count Fulk IV. Fulk IV spent most of his long rule recovering
lost domains and positioning the Angevins to extend their holdings through warfare to the south over the unruly barons of Poitou; to the east into Touraine at the
expense of the counts of Blois; and through marriage to the north into the county
of Maine.50 His recapture of Tours, an important market town and vital communications center, consolidated Angevin control of the middle Loire, which he further
secured through significantly enhancing the great castles of Chinon, Loches, and
Loudun.
Fewer Gallo-Roman fortified settlements existed the further east one moved,
apart from the emplacements along the Rhine. The flatlands of ChampagneArdennes actually contained fewer than a dozen oppida. Only the Gallo-Roman
walls of Langres remained in decent condition by the eleventh century. The
fourth-century walls at Châlon-sur-Marne, for example, while still extant during the Merovingian era, were woefully dilapidated by the thirteenth century,
while Mézières was reduced to little more than a fortified wooden bridge on the
Meuse river. Rheims remained the chief town in the region in the Middle Ages
mainly as an episcopal center and site of royal coronations. Few of its Gallo-Roman
walls remained in serviceable condition by the eleventh century. In 1125, Count
Thibaut II of Blois inherited the county of Champaigne. Along with Rheims, the
towns of Bar-sur-Aube, Troyes, Lagny-sur-Marne, and Provins chosen by Count
Thibaut II to host the celebrated Fairs of Champagne possessed sufficient wealth
and importance to merit the construction of a vastly expanded fortified enceintes.51
The remaining burgs in Champagne possessed only modest defenses prior to the
thirteenth century. Until then, the counts of Champagne concentrated on castle
construction, though rarely did these consist of much more than simple moatand-bailey forts apart from exceptions at places such as Rethel, Donchéry, and
Chaumont-en-Bassigny.52
Patterns of urban development and forms of fortifications to the east in Lorraine
and Alsace, which formed part of the Empire until the seventeenth century, resembled those in Champagne. Moat-and-bailey castles and fortified farms and churches
predominated under the control of regional lords, such as the counts of Bar. Power
became even more diffuse through subinfeodation following the collapse of the
Kingdom of Lotharingia in the tenth century. The most advanced castle enceintes
were built at Bitche and Givet in the twelfth century.53 The only Gallo-Roman
urban centers of any real note in Lorraine were Metz and Verdun.54 While Verdun
became a middling ecclesiastical center, Metz remained preeminent through the
Middle Ages. Nancy was only a hamlet until the eleventh century when Gérard I,
count of Metz, erected a castle nearby that in time helped to make Nancy the ducal
capital.55 Mézières and Thionville arose as Carolingian strongholds in the ninth
century and remained behind earthen ramparts until the 1200s.56 The Capetian
13
toehold in Vaucouleurs in western Lorraine received in the twelfth century a
stone enceinte with seventeen towers built by Robert de Joinville at the behest of
Louis VI of France. The only major urban fortifications in Alsace prior to the thirteenth century existed in Strasbourg, a key transit point across the Rhine. Because
of its swampy location, Strasbourg’s defenses at first largely consisted of water
defenses supplemented by earthen ramparts and fortified gates.57 Smaller burgs
slowly developed after the tenth century in and around castles and monasteries. As
a result, feudatory lordship remained quite fragmented in Lorraine and Alsace and
the overall level of urbanization low until the thirteenth century.
South in the county and duchy of Burgundy, urban fortifications as well as rural
castles were more developed before 1200 because of its growing economic prosperity.58 A number of Burgundian towns had once been important Gallo-Roman
oppida. Autun, originally named Augustodunum after the first Roman emperor,
still had substantial portions of its Gallo-Roman enceinte standing, including
numerous semi-circular towers and four fortified gates.59 Dijon was another
Gallo-Roman oppidium whose original walls and towers remained basically intact
until 1150 when Eude II, count of Champagne, ordered a new expanded enceinte
built to accommodate recent growth in Dijon. These new works included eighteen stone towers and eleven fortified gates.60 Auxerre, Mâcon, and Vienne also
adapted their old Gallo-Roman defenses to meet new needs. In twelfth-century
Auxerre, Guillaume IV, count of Mâcon, authorized an enlarged enceinte, as did
the counts of Nevers at Cosne-sur-Loire. Auxonne, by contrast, shrank so much it
built a smaller earthen ramparted area within the original Gallo-Roman walls in
the tenth century. The Gallo-Roman citadel at Besançon survived relatively intact
until Eudes II replaced it with a new castle in 1153. He also ordered defenses
built around the new burg below the castle on the right bank of the Doubs river.
Eudes II also ordered the construction of the first stone castle at Dole to secure
control of the eastern part of the duchy.61 New towns in Burgundy developed at
places such as Montbard and Chablis to include wooden stockades and earthen
ramparts. Finally, ecclesiastical authorities also sponsored the construction of fortified churches and abbeys, as at the Benedictine priory at La Charité-sur-Loire
in 1164, around which grew up burgs. Further south lay Lyons, located at the
vital confluence of the Rhône and Sâone rivers. Originally known as Lugdunum
and once of the preeminent oppida in all of Gaul, Lyons served as the chief transit
point between Burgundy and points south in Provence and Italy. Despite recent
growth, Gallo-Roman walls built in the first century remained Lyons’ principal
line of defense a millennium later. Urban development elsewhere in the upper
Rhône valley was modest. In higher elevations, as elsewhere, castles proliferated
to reflect the fragmented nature of political power.
In remote areas of the Midi such as Auvergne, castle construction flourished
while urban growth was unremarkable prior to 1200. A handful of towns, such
Moissac and Clermont, began as Gallo-Roman castra, while a few new burgs at
places such as Cusset and Montferrand emerged after the ninth century.62 The
ensemble of fortification at Aurillac typified much of the region. Its castral donjon
dated to the eleventh century and underwent substantial rebuilding in the twelfth
century, receiving new stone towers, while earthen palisaded ramparts surrounded
the burg. Apart from its episcopal castle, Clermont’s third-century walls remained
the sole line of defense for the town until the fourteenth century. The new adjoining burg of Montferrand, encouraged by the counts of Auvergne, likewise possessed
14
little more than a donjon prior to the late fourteenth century. An earthen rampart
ringed Cusset by the twelfth century. Evidence indicates that Riom and Saint-Flour
only erected defenses to supplement their natural site advantages in the thirteenth
century.63 Poverty and isolation accounted for the tardy urbanism of Auvergne
prior to 1200.
Across southern France stretched the vast, complicated lands of greater
Occitania. This region comprised the duchy of Aquitaine, the county of Toulouse,
and marquisate and county of Provence, as well as an assemblage of lesser feudal
entities, especially along the northern slope of the Pyrenees. Provence technically
remained part of the Empire and a number of its towns, such as Arles, Avignon,
and Marseille, enjoyed special privileges as Imperial cities. This region had been
the mostly highly urbanized in all of Roman Gaul, especially along rivers in the
east and the Mediterranean littoral. Narbonne, Montpellier, Nîmes, and Marseille
remained fairly prosperous and regularly invested in the upkeep and expansion of
their Gallo-Roman walls to fend off Muslim raids. More modest new burgs, such
as Lorgues, Digne, and Sisteron, did the same.64 Rural villages also erected walls or
constructed dwellings to form an enclosed perimeter.65 Indeed, the state of urban
fortifications in Provence prior to 1200 well surpassed that of Flanders in scale and
sophistication. In fact, the counts of Provence expanded their territorial rulership
after 1000 largely in alliance with walled towns, whose charters—most granted in
the twelfth century—routinely confirmed municipal control over the ramparts.66
Outside Provence, Occitan towns prior to 1200 enjoyed considerable independence as local nobles, clergymen, and burghers vied for dominance. In Narbonne,
power became divided among these groups, while in Toulouse merchants dominated. In Montpellier, noble families held sway, while church prelates assumed
lordship over the towns of Mende, Viviers, Le Puy, and Rodez.67 The continuing
influence of Roman law and the practice of partible inheritance stunted the emergence of the feudal relations found north of the Loire, where comtal authority
remained potent. As a result, local noble families, such as the Trencavels, viscounts
of Béziers, routinely defied their nominal overlords, the counts of Toulouse. The
counts of Toulouse thus relied even more on assistance from local towns to check
noble ambitions and the territorial aspirations of the kings of Majorica, which
required in turn further confirmation of urban autonomy across greater Occitania.68
Inland towns, such as Toulouse and Montauban, the latter established only in the
mid-twelfth century, relied mainly on natural topography for protection.69 Claims
that towns and villages founded after 1000 across lower Occitania adhered to a
planned circular form remain controversial, though their defenses in either case
generally remained quite rudimentary.70
Southwestern France from Poitou to the Pyrenees comprised the sparsely populated remainder of the duchy of Aquitaine. Few towns of any major size existed
before 1200. Local ecclesiastical and lay lords, such as the Plantagenets, sowed the
seeds for later urbanization by building scores of castles and fortified churches.71
On the Touraine-Poitou border along La Creuse river was the castle at La Guerche,
a word that derives from the Frankish word for fortifications (werki).72 To the
north of the Dordogne river in Poitou was Poitiers, a fortified town originally
settled in the Gallo-Roman era. The Capetians rebuilt its defenses after capturing
it in the mid-twelfth century. The new burg of Thouars also possessed a fortified
enceinte in the twelfth century.73 Further south in Périgord, the town of Périgueux
became the principal residence of the counts of Poitou in the twelfth century.
15
Together with the bishop, they oversaw the construction of the new comtal castle
Barrière and an enceinte for the burg with twenty-eight stone towers and four fortified gates.74 Finally there was the bustling port city of Bordeaux, founded by the
Romans in the first century as Burdigala. A quadrilateral enceinte with some one
hundred towers ringed Bordeaux by the end of the third century as the Germanic
menace mounted. Bordeaux shrank so much thereafter that in the seventh century
its residents took refuge in the old amphitheater. Its fortunes improved after 1000
even though Bordeaux did not begin to fortify its burgeoning neighborhoods until
the mid-thirteenth century. Like many other growing towns across France at the
time, dynamic growth coupled with the lack of any serious military threats militated against investments in new defenses beyond simple earthen ramparts that
threatened to obstruct expansion.75
Design innovations in castle construction became apparent around 1100. Until
then, castle towers used for both defense and as residences usually took upright
rectangular forms, as at Langeais and Loches and in the huge keep at Ghent. This
design form carried decided drawbacks because its corners created dead angles that
enemies could exploit, while the verticality of the walls made them vulnerable to
attack by improved siege engines. An early response to these problems can be found
in the huge polygonal castle tower built by the Anglo-Normans at Gisors in the
late eleventh century. The quadrifoil keep erected by Amaury II, lord of Montfort,
at Houdan and the convergent cylinders of the mid-twelfth-century donjon at
Étampes introduced more articulated fronts that mitigated these vulnerabilities.
These more sophisticated—and expensive—forms of castle design provided a model
when generalized later to solve problems encountered in building fortifications to
protect the bustling towns of the High Middle Ages.
Prior to 1200, fortifications in France for the new towns growing up around
the castles of local lords usually consisted of earthen ramparts topped by timbered
palisades, reinforced at most with a few square stone towers and fortified gates. The
only significant exceptions were the Gallo-Roman walls, often of indifferent condition, of older established towns. Earthen ramparts around these burgs represented
an extension of the moat-and-bailey model of early castle construction. As such,
it was highly pragmatic solution to the early needs of urban defense. For a society plagued by widespread scarcity and poverty, it was also cheap to build. Local
authorities often lacked effective means to tap, mobilize, and direct resources.
Expanding the scale and design complexity of fortifications thus required substantial economic and political changes. Increasing economic activity and population
growth after 1000 created pressures and opened opportunities for both feudatory rulers and these early medieval towns. By the eleventh century, a number of
these competing lordships from Flanders all the way to greater Occitania held sway
over unstable, yet increasingly potent coalitions of towns, castellans, and churchmen. Their spheres of influence, while fluctuating, became demarcated in terms of
hereditary holdings and riverine systems. Medieval frontiers should be thought of
not as linear boundaries but rather as a mosaic of overlapping jurisdictional zones
and competing family and feudal interests. This explains why the contest for territory consisted of endless legal wrangling, complex patterns of intermarriage, and
claims to service and fealty. Reasserting the old precept of the “rendability” of a
castle’s parapets or a town’s walls to its local lord or ratifying its concession loomed
large because castles and walled towns played the most pivotal roles in translating
claims to territory into actual control.76
16
The Origins of the B ONNES VILLES
The emergence of these “good towns” (bonnes villes) as key players in regional politics found ready encouragement from French kings and feudal magnates.77 The
bonnes villes, in turn, leveraged political and fiscal concessions from these territorial
rulers to enhance their autonomy. A potent measure of the increasing power and
stature of towns lay in the quality of their walls. Most towns and burgs in 1100
possessed earthen ramparts and stockade fences. By 1300, almost all boasted crenellated stone and brick enceintes bristling with mighty towers and fortified gates.
The transition to more permanent and substantial urban defenses required if not
the permission then at least the acquiescence of local lords. It also needed a sufficient level of economic development to generate the wealth necessary for such a
huge, ongoing investment, as well as municipal institutions and communal consensus to bring about such work.78
The rise of bonnes villes coincided with the emergence after 1100 of communes
of freemen who formed partnerships with great territorial magnates expressed in
agreements called charters.79 Charters spelled out the privileges and responsibilities that made a place a free town or ville franche. That freedom also defined the
limits of authority that local churchmen and lay lords exercised over the town.
No right was more cherished than self-defense as embodied in a town’s walls and
militia. Guilds and neighborhood associations generally assumed these duties as
part of their control of municipal government.80 Municipal regimes took varying
form. Some towns elected officers to a council (échevanage); others relied on a selfselecting committee (consulat); while others became subject to appointed officials
known as provosts (prévôts).81 In practice, most towns shared features of all three
types as defined in the charter. What mattered most was the image that a town
projected to the outside world, and nothing spoke more loudly than solid, massive walls and towers.82 All that medieval writers might laud about a town flowed
from this guarantee of security. After 1100, the existence of walls so defined bonnes
villes that “closed town” (ville fermée) soon became a synonymous term for them.
Medieval gardening practices echoed this new urban culture. Like towns, gardens
began by an act of enclosure formed by a fronting ditch, an embankment of piled
soil topped by a paling fence, live hedge, or stone wall.83 Like a town’s walls, garden
boundaries demarcated legal jurisdictions and private property holdings. Above
all, towns and gardens offered sanctuaries where order and abundance prevailed
so long as inhabitants performed their duty.84 Failure to do so opened the way for
savage, wild nature to invade.
While not planned, medieval towns usually conformed to a mix of rectilinear
and radial layouts depending on topography and the disposition of anchor points,
such as a church, marketplace, or castle.85 Walls also defined a fiscal zone, with
excise taxes levied at the gates from which the main thoroughfares led to the
markets. These revenues, in turn, underwrote the construction and maintenance
of municipal defenses. Murage taxes began to appear after 1100 along with the
establishment of militias as urban defense became institutionalized.86 Medieval
towns also often had to cope with water management problems such as flood control, unstable foundations due to a high water table, and the provisioning of potable water and ridding of waste.87 The articulation of the urban enceinte shaped
the disposition of streets, marketplaces, fountains, churches, and civic buildings.
More informal means of access and egress across the defensive perimeter came in
17
the form of private doors known as posterns; drainage channels and pipes also cut
through the walls to flush storm water and refuse out of town. Medieval towns
organized space into distinctive zones for occupational specialties, residential districts, university quarters, enclaves for family and clientele networks. Each town
was a complex mosaic of many pieces, some better integrated into communities
than others.88
A town’s walls established a social topography between an “inside” and “outside” world. Walls served to seal a town off from the outside world to which streets
otherwise sought connection.89 The rapport between inside and outside became
figuratively expressed in debates over who belonged to a town’s active citizenry.
Among the most visible expressions of the coveted status of bourgeois was the
privilege to enter freely through a town’s gates. In general, the rise of the communes after 1100 broadened the body of active citizens to include artisans along
with merchants and professional groups, such as lawyers and doctors.90 Political
rights went to persons whose skills and ability to produce wealth served the town.
Responsibility for self-defense made it incumbent to draw on these groups to man
walls and guard gates and organize the wherewithal to construct them. Montpellier
in late twelfth century offers an early example with the establishment of the Oeuvre
de la Commune Clôture, which took on the task of building and maintaining fortifications.91 Defending a town thus required the mobilization of substantial human
and material resources that in turn shaped the sense of civic community found in
the bonnes villes. While a royal captain or sergeant seated in the château-fort might
try to check the independent aspirations of townspeople, local feudatories usually
sought out accommodations with the towns.
The appearance of more permanent and formidable defenses around medieval
towns did not represent a defiance of state authority but an early manifestation of
it. The relations between towns and great feudatory lords, including the Capetians,
recognized the expertise and decision-making authority of municipal regimes for
their locales. The regulation of trade and manufactures, the provision of public services, such as water and waste management, and the maintenance of public ways and
places fell under the purview of the towns, as did the duty to uphold public order
and maintain urban defenses. The crown and great lords limited their interference
in such matters because they relied upon support from the towns to maintain and
possibly expand their domains. The evolving nexus of relations between towns and
feudatory rulers saw the towns implement broad policy mandates from the lords in
fairly autonomous ways adapted to local needs and circumstances. Fortifications,
along with militias and military supply, formed the most important and costly area
of this shared concern. As a result, new areas of legislation and legal procedures
opened up in the towns that further defined the early contours of the medieval
state that in time transformed old Francia into a new regime known as France.92
Ch apter 2
L ords a nd Towns (1100–1225)
A
fter 1100, municipal self-governance advanced in tandem with the great feudatories across Francia as they all pursued sustained and increasingly aggressive programs to consolidate and expand their domains. Some, such as the Angevin dukes
of Normandy and greater Anjou and the counts of Flanders, enjoyed spectacular
if fleeting success. Others, such as the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy and the
counts of Champagne and Toulouse, enjoyed modest but enduring gains. And then
there were the Capetians, whose early prudence and good stewardship set the stage
for dramatic progress in the thirteenth century. These assertions of power required
mounting military campaigns against local castellans and rival feudatories, pursuing advantageous dynastic marriages, averting or exploiting succession crises, and,
finally, knitting alliances with the emerging towns. The altered scale and makeup
of urban enceintes mirrored the reemergence of public governance. The control
of church appointments, especially to episcopal sees, was particularly decisive and
affected towns as much as it did feudatory rulers. On this score, the Capetians held
a clear advantage in the regalian sees concentrated to the north and east of Paris.
More hegemonic than territorial in its nature, medieval rulership rested upon
a core area of direct control, such as the royal demesne or patrimonial holdings,
reinforced by networks of close clients and vassals among the local nobility and
townspeople, to realize claims—ambiguous, fragmentary, and often highly contested—based on seigneurial or dynastic right. Common to all feudatory rulers was
a relentless drive to establish law and order in their domains. This goal required
articulating fuller justifications of public law and marshaling resources to enforce
it. In both respects, the relationship between feudatory rulers and walled towns
proved crucial because towns provided fixed, stable points of authority in the form
of incipient law courts and stockpiled supplies to bolster the migratory nature of
feudatory rulership and support the lord’s troops.
The Capetians held a major advantage in the realm of public law due to their
undisputed royal dignity. And under Louis VI and Louis VII, they began to exploit
it. With the able assistance of Abbot Suger, Louis VI encouraged communal movements in his domains that in turn supported his efforts to diminish the influence
of local lords in their affairs. Louis VI especially cultivated communal movements
along the outer fringes of the Ile-de-France. The charters that he granted to them
recorded and defined rights and practices in the areas of justice, finance, commerce,
governance, and defense. The Capetians thus extended their influence by fostering
urban government. Towns in the historical core of the Ile-de-France, such as Paris,
never received royal authorization to establish communal associations or received
formal charters. As a result, their municipal regimes became subject to greater
20
direct domination by the crown. Support from all these towns helped Louis VI to
subdue defiant castellans, such as Ebbes de Roucy in 1102, Enguerrand de Coucy
in 1117, and Thomas de Marle in 1130. The ensuing confiscations and purchases
enlarged the royal domain to include Corbeil, Montlhéry, and Mantes. Louis VII
continued these practices when he granted a charter to Lorris, located in Loire valley near Orléans. This charter became a model for others that he granted to selected
towns in Aquitaine, Poitou, Gascony, and the Auvergne as Capetian ambitions
moved south of the Loire. In granting a charter, the Capetians usually insisted
on building a tower close to but not within a town’s walled perimeter to ensure a
nearby royal presence. In 1181, for example, Louis VII prevented the commune of
Soissons from incorporating the fortress of Saint-Médard into the urban enceinte
in order to maintain the royal castle’s independence.
The expansion of Capetian power beyond the Ile-de-France can be measured
by the growth of administrative districts known as prévôtés from twenty-five to
forty by 1150. Most of these royal officials took up residence in towns, such as
Bourges, Compiègne, Étampes, Laon, Orléans, Paris, Poissy, and Sens, where they
worked with municipal officials and feudal lords to collect royal income from local
tolls, excise levies, and land rents. They also oversaw the execution of royal justice.
Louis VII began to employ new officials known as bailiffs (baillis), again based in
towns, to supervise the prévôts. As he secured his base in these towns and outlying
castles, Louis VII continued to wage campaigns to secure new territorial claims.
In 1169, the bishop of Puy appealed to him for protection from the viscount of
Polignac, who routinely harassed pilgrims and travelers making their way through
the Auvergne. Louis VII besieged the viscount’s stronghold of Nonette and later
converted it into prévôté. He also invaded the lands of Thibaud V, count of Blois,
during which his soldiers burned a church in Vitry killing several hundred persons
who had taken refuge inside. This atrocity caused problems with the papacy, for
which Louis VII atoned by undertaking the Second Crusade.
Dynastic marriages further advantaged the Capetians. Louis VI’s marriage
in 1115 to Adélaïde of Savoy forged closer ties with the papacy and brought the
French crown’s influence into the Rhône valley. The celebrated marriage in 1137 of
Louis VI’s son, the future Louis VII, to Eleanor of Aquitaine, positioned—until he
repudiated her—the Capetians to project royal influence to the southwest toward
Bordeaux and Toulouse. Louis VII mended fences with the house of Champagne
by marrying Adela of Champagne in 1160. Five years later, she bore his heir, Philip.
Louis VII then sought closer relations with the count of Flanders by arranging for
his son to marry Isabella of Hainault, the count’s niece. He also forged key diplomatic alliances, none more so than with Count Raymond V of Toulouse, who married the king’s sister Constance in 1154, to parry Angevin claims in the region.
Averting or exploiting succession crises further helped to shape regional power
alignments. Louis VI’s unsuccessful bid in 1106 to oust Henri I Beauclerc from
the Norman succession opened up a seesaw struggle with first the Angevins and
then the English that lasted until 1450. As fraught was the complex power struggle
over the southern Low Countries following the assassination of Count Charles the
Good of Flanders in 1127. To the west, the union of the House of Anjou with the
Anglo-Norman realm was brought about by the marriage of Geoffrey of Anjou and
Matilda, heiress to the English throne. Henry I’s death in 1135 set the stage for
further struggles between Matilda and Stephen of Blois over the Anglo-Norman
inheritance.
L or d s a n d Tow ns
21
This process of state formation was thus equally at work in neighboring lands
owing fealty to the French crown. The counts of Flanders ruled the wealthiest and
most urbanized area of northern Europe over which they deployed an elaborate
administrative system to control towns and the countryside. Attempts to formalize relations between the counts of Flanders and these towns in charters quelled
though never permanently settled disputes over the balance between municipal
autonomy and comtal control. Similar dynamics affected the evolving authority of
feudatories in Hainault, Brabant, and Artois. To the east, the house of Champagne
claimed right to dispersed lands across Champagne centered in the towns of
Meaux, Provins, and Troyes. To the west, they held through earlier marriages with
the houses of Vermandois and Blois territories in the upper Loire and the Beauce
based in the towns of Blois, Chartres, Sancerre, and Châteaudun. In 1153, Count
Thibault II demanded Tours in exchange for recognizing Henry II as duke of
Normandy, but finally settled on acquiring the fortresses of Amboise and Fréteval
for a five-year period before restoring them to Angevin control. Although the
counts of Champagne benefited from the celebrated fairs held in Troyes, Provins,
Lagny, and Bar-sur-Aube, they lacked sufficient resources to begin consolidating
their sprawling domains, checked in part, too, because of the complex and multiple
feudal allegiances they, like the counts of Flanders and dukes of Burgundy, owed
not just to the Capetians but also to the German emperor.1 Much the same pattern can be discerned in the lands of the counts of Toulouse, who advanced their
authority in alliance with walled towns. In 1144, in fact, Alphonse de Jourdain,
count of Toulouse, sponsored the founding of Montauban, choosing a formidable site overlooking the Tarn River along the road between Toulouse and Cahors.
Montauban benefited from the natural defenses provided by the Tarn and two of
its tributaries, the Tescou and the Garrigue, and the deep ravines along the northern and western approaches of the urban core. Walls, towers, and fortified gates
further reinforced the strength of the site, blending almost imperceptibly with its
existing features.2
The Rise of the Angevin “Empire” under Henry II
The most spectacular, if short-lived of these twelfth-century feudatory states was
the Angevin “empire.” Its sudden emergence under Henry of Anjou in the 1150s
profoundly upset the delicate balance of power in northwestern Europe. Its rise
actually grew out of earlier succession struggles over Normandy by Stephen of Blois
in the 1130s. Control of castles and alliances with towns powerfully shaped these
conflicts and their eventual resolution.3 Stephen of Blois’ military campaigns across
northern Maine and southern Normandy inflicted much damage to the towns.
His allies burned Lisieux to the ground in 1136, for example. In 1137, Stephen
sought Capetian aid by granting two vital frontier castles, Moulins-la-Marche and
Bonmoulins, to Rotrou III, count of Perche, a close ally of Louis VII. Meanwhile,
Geoffrey of Anjou won easy control of Caen and Bayeux in 1138. Falaise held out
as did other parts of Lower Normandy. The succession conflict only ended with
Stephen’s capture at the Battle of Lincoln on February 2, 1141.
Stephen of Blois’ demise allowed Geoffrey of Anjou to effect the final union
under the Plantagenets of Anjou, Normandy, and England. Geoffrey began by targeting key Norman towns and castles in the Avranchin and Stephen’s own county
of Martain. Geoffrey completed the conquest of western Normandy in 1143 with
22
the fall of Cherbourg. The last holdout, Arques, finally capitulated to the new
duke of Normandy in 1145. Geoffrey faced considerable resistance, however, from
barons such as Gerald Berlay, lord of Montreuil-Bellay, in the Poitevin borderlands
between Anjou and the duchy of Aquitaine. It took four years of bitter siege for
Geoffrey to finally capture this key castle, a conflict that involved many of his
neighbors, including Louis VII of France, who had appointed Gerald as seneschal
of Poitou.4 Geoffrey’s death in 1151 brought a vast, but problematical succession
to his son, Henry of Anjou. Henry received recognition that same year as duke
of Normandy from Louis VII but only after temporarily ceding to the Capetians
the Vexin borderlands between Normandy and the Ile-de-France. Henry obtained
Anjou through patrimonial succession from his father, Geoffrey. He dramatically
enlarged his family domains even further by marrying Eleanor of Aquitaine in
1152—a mere six weeks after Louis VII ill-advisedly had repudiated her. Finally,
he won the English throne in 1154 to become King Henry II. Fabulously wealthy
and politically astute, Henry II now overshadowed his nominal overlord, King
Louis VII of France, and sparked worry and eventual rebellion among the barons
across his domains south of the Loire.
Despite its wealth, the size and variegated nature of the new Angevin empire
rendered its continental holdings highly unstable.5 Henry II ruled a vast, complex
territory that stretched from the borders of Scotland all the way to the Pyrenees,
encompassing on the continent the duchy of Normandy, duchy of Brittany, Anjou
and Maine, and the vast duchy of Aquitaine obtained through his marriage to
Eleanor of Aquitaine. He exercised considerable centralized authority in the AngloNorman core through a royal-ducal administration based in towns and castles.
Outside of these domains, however, the Plantagenets lacked the requisite presence
in towns and castles, apart from a string of castles in the lower Loire valley and near
Anjou and Maine, such as Gorron, Ambrières, and Châtillon, to make their titular
authority real. In the mid-1170s, Henry II established four seneschals over his main
Continental holdings in Anjou, Poitou, Brittany, and Aquitaine, but they could do
little to enhance his central authority. Coins collected in England and Normandy
found their way to the treasuries at Chinon and Loches castles, where they paid for
armies to fight the Capetians and barons of Poitou. The Angevins used patronage
and, if necessary, force to capture castles and maintain loyalties. Towns became
perhaps the most consistent supporters of the Angevins, who also fostered municipal government through charters but—unlike the Capetians—did not often build
new keeps.6 The only exceptions were in Bayonne, where they erected the ChâteauVieux, a dungeon constructed in Niort, and the Château-Vauclair they had built
in La Rochelle. Instead, the Angevins readily allowed towns, such as Parthenay, to
collect local taxes to enhance their own defenses.
Henry II spent much of the 1150s and 1160s enforcing his rights over Chinon,
Loudun, and castles across Maine. He relied on a patchwork of officials—counts,
provosts, and seneschals—based in castles in towns in the lower Loire valley and
in western Touraine, such as Tours, Chinon, Baugé, Beaufort, Brissac, Angers,
Saumur, Loudun, Loches, Langeais, and Montbazon. Much of southern Anjou
and Maine remained dominated by fiercely independent barons who offered the
Angevins support only begrudgingly and for a price. Leading families in these
areas included the lords of Craon and Chemillé in Anjou and those of Mayenne in
Maine, the viscounts of Beaumont-sur-Sarthe and the lords of Laval, the lordship
of Chaumont, and finally the county of Vendôme. Henry II granted charters to
23
newly established communes in the towns of Le Mans and Angers in exchange for
their backing ducal power.7
Normandy was by far the most securely administered of the Angevin’s continental domains. Following the Capetian model, Henry II supplanted local prévôts
and viscounts with newly empowered baillis who exercised judicial and military
authority in twenty-eight bailliages. These bailliages resembled the English shires
and were strongest in the western duchy, while castellanies and towns became more
predominant as one moved east. Ducal control over the Norman church also was
a significant feature of Angevin power. Under the Angevins, Rouen emerged as
the capital of Normandy and the second largest town in France after Paris, with
a population of thirty thousand–forty thousand. The charter issued to Rouen by
Henry II in 1150, known as the Establissements de Rouen, became a model that
Richard and John later use with other towns in Angevin lands.8 This agreement
replaced land taxes (tailles) for customs duties (octrois). It was chiefly cash collected
in England and Normandy that bought the professional soldiers and siege equipment needed to demolish castles in Angevin domains south of the Loire. This
explains why the later loss of Normandy to the Capetians in the 1190s proved so
devastating to Angevin power.9
Louis VII and Henry II clashed over Normandy, especially in the Vexin, where
Capetian soldiers captured Neufmarché-sur-Epte in July 1152. As a result, several Normand marcher lords, including Hugh of Gournay, Hugh of Chateauneuf,
and Richer de L’Aigle, temporarily renounced their recent Angevin allegiances. In
1153, with the assistance of Thierry I, count of Flanders, Louis VII wrested out
of Henry II’s grasp the town of Vernon, which controlled a strategic bridge across
the Seine.10 Louis VII also was active along the Loire, encouraging Henry’s younger brother Geoffrey of Anjou. Louis VII also invited appeals for protection, as
occurred with the viscountess of Narbonne, even if he was not in a real position
to lend it. In 1154, he relaxed his assaults on the Angevin domains when Henry II
did homage for Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. This move enabled Henry II to
quell his brother’s revolt by capturing Chinon, Loudun, and Mirebeau in 1156. He
cemented his control over the lower Loire that same year when the citizens of Nantes
asked for his assistance in their rebellion against their lord, the count of Hoël, count
of Nantes. Henry II mended fences with the new count of Perche, Routrou IV, in
1158 by recognizing him as lord of the Norman seigneurie of Bellême; in return,
Henry regained the former ducal castles of Moulins-la-Marche and Bonmoulins.11
Geoffrey’s death in 1158 removed a familial threat, while his grant of Boulogne in
1159 to Matthew of Alsace, the son of Thierry, count of Flanders, paved the way
for a military alliance four years later against the Capetians, even though the counts
of Flanders technically served as vassals to the French crown. Henry II went on the
offensive against Louis VII in 1167 when he marched an army into Auvergne, where
he claimed several lordships; in 1170, he even mounted an audacious coup to seize
Bourges, the chief city in Berry and a key to extending influence to the upper Loire.
Diplomacy, patronage, and military success thus enabled Henry II to weather the
first serious challenge to his rule. But it was not to be the last.
Henry II’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine caused him even more grief, not
only because their relations soon soured but also because her ancestors had lost
considerable power in Aquitaine the previous century as castellans rose to dominance.12 Despite occasional opposition from his wife, Henry II worked hard to
expand ducal authority in Aquitaine, particularly in the crucial Poitou borderlands
24
in La Marche, by expanding the number of prévôts from ten to fifteen in the 1170s.
In Gascony, ducal officials exercised authority in the Entre-deux-Mers and BayonneDax regions and up the Garonne valley as far as Agen.13 Aquitaine and Guyenne
comprised a confusing collection of counties including Poitou and Berry in the
north, La Marche, the Limousin, Angoumois, Périgord, Saintonge and Aunis, and
Uzerches in the center, and in the south, Agenais, Quercy, Rouergue, and Auvergne.
Endemic small-scale warfare racked the region through the eleventh and twelfth
centuries and occasionally coalesced into full-scale rebellions against the countsdukes of Aquitaine. Castellans dominated the countryside, while powerful baronial
families controlled the towns of Angoulême, Thouars, and, to a lesser extent, the
bishopics of Limoges and Périguieux.14 The viscounts of Thouars, for example, held
over a dozen castles south of Saumur on the Loire all the way to the Ile d’Oléron off
the Atlantic coast, while the viscounty of Châtellerault—Eleanor’s homeland—lay
along the route from Poitiers to Tours. Similar such lordships lay scattered throughout the region to constrain comtal-ducal authority.15 Finally, ducal influence over
church appointments in Aquitaine-Guyenne was quite limited.
Over time, the number of castles controlled by the count-dukes of Aquitaine
steadily decreased. In 1190s, Richard only controlled about 20 percent of the
ninety or so castles in Poitou, and even fewer in adjoining territories. Nine distinct
rebellions broke out in Aquitaine against the Plantagenet between 1168 and 1199.
Leaders of these rebellions varyingly included the Taillefer counts of Angoulême,
the counts of Périgord, and the viscounts of Limoges as well as the lords of Lusignan
and lords of Rancon. While the Angevins tried to raze Poitevin castles whenever
possible, these places, such as the castle of Taillebourg, soon rose again from the
rubble in defiance.16 The eastern marches along the Aquitaine-Guyenne frontier
became flashpoints for conflict with the Capetians to the north and the counts of
Toulouse to the south. Angevin rule in these areas largely consisted of brutal punitive raids. Castellans held sway further south in Gascony; indeed, many held title to
castles as allodial property free of the tenurial rights of a feudal overlord.17
Angevin wars with the counts of Toulouse over Quercy, especially its chief town
Cahors, raged throughout the twelfth century.18 Indeed, Henry II mustered his
largest army ever in 1159 to enforce his wife’s claim to the county of Toulouse.
Count Raymond V of Toulouse managed, however, to hold out in large part because
of the support he received from the inhabitants of Toulouse. Nevertheless, Henry II
and his allies, the Trencavels and Ramon Bereguer IV, count of Barcelona, peeled
away from Raymond V’s control a number of castles in the upper Garonne valley
and in Quercy. Thus began the so-called forty years’ war between the Angevins and
the counts of Toulouse. Even had he been successful, Henry II was in no position to
enforce Aquitanian claims to lordship over Béarn, Bigorre, Comminges, Armagnac,
and Fezensac located in the Pyrenean uplands lest he risk alienating his ally, the king
of Aragon.
As a result, Angevin power in Aquitaine became even more dependent on towns.
Urban growth across the region increased in the twelfth century in places such as
Niort and Saintes in the north and Bayonne to the south, all key stops along the
pilgrimage route to Compestella. Bordeaux, in particular, thrived as commerce
down the Garonne River increased. As their influence over barons and castellans
diminished, Richard and John granted more and more charters to establish communes in key towns, including some seventeen in Normandy and a number across
greater Aquitaine, such as Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Bayonne, Dax, Oléron, Niort,
25
Saint-Jean-d’Angély, Saintes, and Saint-Émilion. Revenues from tallages and customs levies proved lucrative for the count-dukes as well as local barons who held
urban lordships. Even so, the lands of Aquitaine became a serious financial liability
for the Angevins.
Brittany became a Plantagenet satellite after Duke Conan IV, also earl of
Richmond in England, acknowledged Henry II as his lord.19 In 1166, Henry II
claimed the county of Nantes for his son, Geoffrey. He then subjugated the Breton
nobility in 1167–1169, forcing Duke Conan IV to abdicate, after which he married the ducal heiress Constance to Geoffrey, who he installed as duke in 1181.
Though occasionally intrusive, as seen in the creation of the office of seneschal of
Brittany, Geoffrey’s authority ultimately rested on placating the Breton nobility,
maintaining goods relations with Nantes, and securing the vital borderlands along
the Breton-Norman frontier. In doing so, it provided him a power base from which
to challenge his father.
Indeed, Henry II’s efforts to enhance the cohesion of Angevin patrimonial titles
and lands constantly ran afoul as his and Eleanor’s sons Henry, Richard, Geoffrey,
and John grew to manhood, because each of them demanded a dynastic apportionment commensurate with their soaring ambitions.20 The intrigues of his estranged
wife and the wily young Philip II of France only inflamed these family troubles for
Henry II and exposed the inherent weaknesses of the Angevin edifice. Castellans
and towns played important roles in these internecine struggles. When Richard
provoked a rebellion among the Poitevin barons in 1173, for example, the towns
of La Rochelle and Saintes slammed their gates shut in his face, forcing him to
take refuge in the nearby castle at Taillebourg as Henry II reasserted control over
Poitou. In reward, Henry II confirmed and expanded La Rochelle’s municipal liberties. Two years later, once father and son reconciled, Henry II gave Richard an
army to conquer the very Poitevin barons with whom he had just allied. He moved
against the castle of Le Puy de Castillon in the county of Agen, capturing and
demolishing it after a two-month siege. In 1176, he attacked Aimar V, viscount of
Limoges, taking his castle at Aixe and then the city of Limoges itself after a short
siege. Richard then shifted attention to Gascony and occupied the towns of Dax
and Bayonne. He eventually stopped on the Iberian border after he seized the castle of Saint-Pierre, which he then had razed. In 1178–1179, Richard responded to a
rebellion in the Aunis and Saintonge by Geoffrey III, lord of Rancon, by besieging
and capturing a string of castles lying in the Charente valley. Unable to take Pons,
he eventually captured the castle of Richemond and several other fortresses in the
region. His military prowess earned him the enduring sobriquet Lionheart (Coeur
de Lion).
Louis VII’s death in 1080 opened up opportunities for Henry II to reassert his
authority without Capetian meddling. Egged on by Henry II, powerful neighbors
of the Capetians soon ravaged the borderlands of the fifteen-year-old new king,
Philip II, forcing him to take refuge in the royal castle in Compiègne. However,
within a decade Philip II reversed his bad fortunes through inheritance, diplomacy, and military conquest. After Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, besieged
Corbie but failed to capture it in 1184, Philip II reached an accord with him that
brought under Capetian control key areas of Picardy and lands along the southern border of Flanders. These included the Valois area around the town of Crépy,
the Vermandois towns of Péronne, Ribemont, Saint-Quentin, and Montdidier, the
large town of Amiens and its adjoining hinterland. Finally, they agreed that upon
Map 2.1
France, 1150–1250.
27
Philip of Alsace’s death, which came on crusade in 1191, the towns of Arras, Douai,
Bapaume, Saint-Omer, and Aire in Artois would pass on to the French crown.
No sooner did Philip II make these gains then he began establishing prévôts and
baillis, as well as control over castles and town enceintes, building them anew or reinforcing them. His accord with the count of Flanders enabled him to shift his attention against the Angevins. Richard’s provocative move in 1181 against the count of
Sancerre ignited another revolt by the Poitevin barons. As a preemptive measure,
Richard seized Périgieux before the rebellion got off the ground, yet brewing troubles
with his brother Henry, especially over Richard’s new castle of Clairvaux just below
the Loire River, forced him to return to the Poitevin frontier. Plantagenet domains
fractured further along fraternal as well as feudal lines as Geoffrey of Brittany now
joined the fray. The February 1183 siege of Limoges pitted the quarreling Angevins
and their respective Poitevin allies against each other. Henry II finally captured the
citadel of Saint-Martial in Limoges in June and promptly razed it to the ground.
Behind all this fractious conflict among the Angevins was Philip II. Sensing a propitious moment, the French king invaded the Vexin, but the campaign proved fruitless.
He enjoyed greater success in Berry where he gained footholds across the Loire in
Issoudun and Graçay. He made further headway in the duchy of Burgundy, capturing through siege the stronghold of Châtillon-sur-Seine; he also gained through
wardship the county of Nevers. Finally, as Henry II lay dying in June 1189 Philip
took control of Le Mans and its surrounding region of Maine. In the next month,
Tours—the lynchpin to the Loire which was, in turn, the key to Angevin dominions
on the continent—fell to the young Capetian king, who now clearly enjoyed the
advantage as Richard I came to power (see map 2.1).
Castles and the Collapse of the Angevin Empire
The ensuing struggles between Philip II and Henry II’s successors, Richard I and
John I, marked a decisive turning point in the formation of feudatory principalities and the evolution of medieval France. Philip II sought to extend Capetian
power beyond the Ile-de-France to Picardy in the north, westward to the Vexin
and Normandy, and then in a southerly arc into Maine, the Loire valley, and Berry.
His success enabled him to implement new governmental practices in justice and
finance that established the medieval foundations of the French state. Walled towns
played a pivotal role in effecting these changes; indeed, towns served as both sites
and agents of royal state power.21 New more hierarchical modes of thought among
Parisian theologians began to influence Capetian rulers and their officials to conceptualize royal authority as an orderly system of feudal lords and vassals at the
head of which stood their suzerain, the king, to whom they all owed homage but he
to no one. Philip II was the first Capetian king to make regular use of these ideas
to subordinate his rivals among the great feudatories, above all the Angevins, in
his law courts located in the towns.22 Despite its feudal trappings, French kingship
under Philip II and his successors grew out of and depended upon support of the
king’s bonnes villes.
The final showdown between the Capetians and Angevins began in 1190 when
Richard I and Philip II, as well as a number of other great feudal princes, answered
papal calls to rescue the Holy Land from Muslim domination. Each king made
extensive plans and agreements before embarking on the Third Crusade. Richard I
hoped a marriage alliance with Sancho VI of Navarre would secure his southern
28
holdings from Raymond V of Toulouse. As the price for recognizing Richard I’s
installation as duke of Normandy in 1189, Philip II had demanded Norman Vexin
but settled for Angevin recognition of his lordship over Issoudun and Graçay in
Berry and a withdrawal of future claims to lordships in Auvergne. Richard I and
Philip II vied with each other while on crusade, which was rather typical of noble
behavior at the time. Illness and opportunity following Philip of Alsace’s death
brought Philip II back to his kingdom in fall 1191. Richard I, who arrived in the
Holy Land rather late, was avid to win glory and remained on to fight the infidels
for another fifteen months. In the meantime, despite promises to respect earlier
agreements, Philip II set about making inroads in the Eure and Avre valleys in
order to capture the gateway to Normandy, the Vexin.
It was Philip II’s good fortune that Leopold V, duke of Austria, seized Richard I
on Christmas Day 1192, as he passed through Vienna on his way home. Leopold V
of Monteferrat threw him into prison for reputed involvement in the murder of his
cousin Conrad of Montferrat, and for slights he had suffered from the English king
at the siege of Acre in 1191. Richard I did not win his release until February 1194
and only after his mother paid a huge ransom. Philip II busily plied favors and took
military action to extend his influence into the Vexin and down the Loire. He won
over Richard I’s younger, overly cunning brother, John, whose lack of an inheritance
from his father lent him the nickname “Lackland” (Sans Terre). John persuaded a
number of local barons and castellans to open their castles to the Capetian king,
including the great fortress of Gisors, thus opening the way to Rouen.23 Desperate
to win his release, Richard even borrowed twenty thousand marks from Philip II by
granting him as surety the castles of Drincourt and Arques in eastern Normandy
and Loches and Châtillon-sur-Indre in the Touraine. Although Philip II never
reached Rouen, he did capture Dieppe in 1194. He demolished the new citadel built
six years earlier by Richard I and torched the town before withdrawing. Faced with
mounting opposition in England, John obtained more French support in January
1194 in exchange for surrendering Angevin claims to Tours and key castles in the
Touraine as well as all of Normandy east of the Seine, except for Rouen, along with
Vaudreuil, Verneuil, and Evreux. Finally, John granted Moulins and Bonmoulins to
the counts of Perche and Vendôme to Louis of Blois, both allies of Philip II.
But French gains proved transitory, for upon his return to England in March
1194, Richard I quickly used his English support to raise an army to reclaim continental possessions lost during his imprisonment. Richard I launched his campaign
in two directions, Touraine and Aquitaine, capturing the town of Angoulême on
July 22, 1194. As his military successes mounted, former vassals, especially the
Norman marcher lords, and his wayward brother John rallied to his standard.
As a sign of his loyalty, John ordered the Capetian garrison in Evreux executed
when he handed the place over to his brother. Richard I also mended fences with
Raymond VI of Toulouse, who married his sister Joan, by ceding him both Quercy
and the county of Agen. By 1196, Philip II was increasingly on the defensive especially after he lost Aumale and the lordships of Tillières and L’Aigle along the Epte
River that bisected the Vexin.24 Because Richard I could not count on the divided
loyalties of the Vexin nobles, he created new ducal castles—none more imposing
than the one erected at Gaillard in Les Andeleys in 1197—to intimidate the local
nobility. But these moves only served to alienate them further.25
Richard I intended the castle at Gaillard to block any future Capetian advances
down the Seine toward Rouen. This castle was the most sophisticated and costly
29
fortification complex of its day.26 Built in just two years on a rocky tor overlooking
the river, elements of Château Gaillard’s design influenced future fortification construction by the use of concentric rings of defense and a more compact defensive
perimeter. Like any fortified place, Château Gaillard also required an adequate garrison and the means to endure a lengthy siege. Providing such men and materials,
in turn, relied on Richard I’s firm leadership. The hazards of war, however, brought
Richard I to a surprising end on April 6, 1199, when a random crossbow bolt fired
during the otherwise inconsequential siege of the small castle of Châlus-Chabrol
near Limoges, mortally wounded him.
This turn of fate brought the Angevin inheritance to John Lackland, a man
whose ruthlessness and lack of principle quickly estranged long-time Angevin supporters and opened the way for Philip II to smash Angevin power once and for all.
Philip II began by inviting John I’s vassals to appeal to his royal law court (curia
regis) for justice against the last Angevin.27 John I’s refusal to submit to the ensuing judicial sentences provided Philip II all the legal pretext he needed to invade
his disobedient vassal’s lands. Beginning in 1201, the Capetian king again peeled
away barons and castellans across upper Normandy and in Anjou and Maine. He
also encouraged John I’s impressionable young nephew, Arthur of Brittany, to defy
his uncle, who captured him in August 1202 at Mirebeau. Arthur became even
more useful to Philip II when he died, presumably on his uncle’s orders, sometime
in the next nine months. This shocking murder sparked a group of barons, led by
Guillaume des Roches, from across Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou to switch
allegiance to Philip II. Brittany also staunchly opposed the Angevins as it now came
under control of the Poitevin baron and ally of Philip II, Guy de Thouars, the new
husband of Constance of Brittany. Philip II’s brief incursion into Poitou, though it
irked Thouars, succeeded in touching off a revolt by the Lusignans against John I,
who now faced trouble on multiple fronts.28
With these gains in the lower Loire valley, Philip II turned to his main objective, Normandy.29 Earlier that January, after playing host to the visiting King of
England, Count Robert of Sées suddenly opened the town of Alençon to Capetian
forces, thus signaling a general revolt against John I that soon stretched across
southern Normandy and Maine all the way to the Breton marches. In return,
Robert apparently received the title of count of Alençon from the French king.30
Castles along Normandy’s eastern frontier—Boutavant, Eu, Aumale, Drincourt,
Mortemer, Lion-la-Forêt, and Gournay—quickly fell after Philip II’s invasion in
May 1202, leaving only Château Gaillard, ably commanded by Roger de Lacy,
constable of Chester, blocking the way to Rouen. Philip II initially moved to cut
Château Gaillard off by capturing surrounding fortresses. The fall of the mighty
castle of Vaudreuil in June without a fight severed Gaillard’s ties to Rouen along
the left bank of the Seine. John I attempted to recoup his fortunes by besieging
Alençon in August, but after that failed he decided to quit Normandy for good.
Isolated and inadequately garrisoned, Château Gaillard valiantly resisted the
sappers and siege engines that Philip II deployed in a siege that lasted until March
1204. After Château Gaillard capitulated, Philip II swept across Normandy in April
and easily captured Verneuil and Arques. By May, he controlled Argentan, Falaise,
Caen, Bayeux, Conches, and Lisieux, while his Breton allies seized the Mont-SaintMichel and Avranches. Finally, on June 4, 1204, Rouen opened its gates to the
triumphant Philip II, who celebrated his conquest of the Norman capital by razing
the ducal castle and replacing it with a new royal citadel.
30
John I’s continental empire collapsed like a house of cards.31 In 1202, Guillaume
des Roches and a coalition of Angevin barons, among them Juhel de Mayenne
and Robert de Vitré, seized towns across Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, places
such as Angers, Beaufort, Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe, Le Mans, and Saumur. By the
next summer, Philip II subdued the last stubborn Angevin garrison in Tours and
consolidated his control of the Loire valley when he captured the great castles
at Loches and Chinon. Eleanor of Aquitaine’s death on March 31, 1204, further hastened capitulations to the Capetian ruler across Poitou, Saintonge, and
Aunis. By Christmas 1204, only the towns of La Rochelle and Oléron remained
loyal to John I in Poitou. Further south in Guyenne, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Bazas,
Saint-Émilion, and La Réole held firm for the moment. However, Alfonso VIII of
Castile, abetted by local prelates and counts, took advantage of the collapse of ducal
authority in Aquitaine to establish Castilian garrisons in key castles north of the
Gironde. Only Bordeaux held out, thanks to the leadership of its archbishop. With
all of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou under his control, Philip II
graciously concluded a peace with John I in October 1206. The French monarchy
was now the new hegemon of Western Europe.
Early Challenges to Capetian Power
The sudden growth of Capetian power brought about a realignment of the great
fiefs. Contested successions in Champagne, Brittany, and Auvergne left their ruling families little choice but to acquiesce to greater Capetian dominance. Philip’s
relations with Champagne through his mother remained close. Many scions of the
house of Champagne died on crusade, including most recently Count Thibaut III
in 1201. His widow, Blanche of Navarre, then pregnant with the future Thibaut IV,
was in no position to resist Philip II’s demand to be guardian for her children. He
extracted from her and later young Thibaut IV promises not to fortify the key
towns of Coulommiers, Lagny, Meaux, and Provins in Champagne.32 In Brittany,
Guy de Thouars’s difficulties in quelling the restless Breton baronage made him
more dependent on Philip II, who in 1211 forced him to affiance his eldest daughter, Alix, to Pierre de Dreux, second son of a royal cousin, Robert II, count of
Dreux. Brittany passed from Thouars to Pierre de Dreux in 1213. Real power in
the duchy, however, still remained very much in the hands of the Breton baronage,
as Pierre de Dreux later discovered.
In Auvergne in 1209, Philip II confiscated most of the lands of Count Guy II,
who no longer had the Angevins to protect him. Four years later, the French king
sent a royal army under Guy de Dampierre to occupy Riom, Nonette, and Tournoël
and replaced the ousted Count Guy II. Philip II placed clients in charge of Flanders
and Boulogne who he hoped would be pliable. Yet Renaud de Dammartin, count of
Boulogne since 1191, despite extracting additional titles and territories in Picardy
and Artois from Philip II, made overtures to John I in 1210 after Philip II forced
him to affiance his daughter to the king’s bastard son by Agnès de Méran, Philippe
Hurepel. Hurepel became count after his stepfather’s death at Bouvines in 1214.
Crusading zeal in the house of Flanders opened up opportunities for Philip II
to manipulate the Flemish succession in Capetian favor, first promoting as the
new count Philip, marquis of Namur, in 1206, followed by Ferrand of Portugal in
1212. Yet Ferrand soon turned against his patron when the king’s bellicose son, the
future Louis VIII, seized Saint-Omer and Aire from Flemish control.
31
Philip II’s attempt to influence the Imperial election following Philip of
Swabia’s assassination in 1208 proved much less successful, as Pope Innocent III
backed Otto of Brunswick, a nephew of John I who had just pledged fealty to the
Roman pontiff. The election of Otto persuaded him and John I to try to convert
rising anti-Capetian sentiment into an open coalition after 1212. A measure of
Capetian ambition was Philip II’s daring plan to invade England thwarted only by
the destruction of his expeditionary craft at Damme in May 1213. Nevertheless,
Philip II went on to seize Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, and Douai over the next year.
Meanwhile, John I and Emperor Otto IV rallied opponents and erstwhile allies of
the Capetians for a two-pronged attack in spring 1214, with John I leading a force
from Poitou to invade the Loire valley, while Otto IV and the count of Flanders
assembled an army to confront the French in the Artois. John I lost his nerve, however, at the siege of the castle of La Roche-au-Moine near Angers in April, when he
fled before a small relief force led by Prince Louis. John I’s sudden exit convinced
Philip II to gamble on a pitched battle at the little town of Bouvines on July 27,
1214—something he had studiously avoided during his long reign. The French
victory at Bouvines paved the way for further Capetian advances in the thirteenth
century, advances that again shaped the physical makeup of walled towns and their
place in both the kingdom and adjoining fiefdoms. The truce at Chinon in 1214
between Philip II and John I secured Capetian control of nearly all Angevin lands
north of the Loire. Rebellious Poitou was to become part of the Capetian inheritance upon John I’s death. After long years of war, Philip II recognized the need
for peace to secure the monarchy’s newly won lands.
Prince Louis, however, wished to continue his father’s bellicose policies. After
all, it was his seizure of Saint-Omer and Aire that had pushed the one-time French
protégé, Count Ferrand of Flanders, into the waiting arms of the anti-Capetian
coalition. Prince Louis also meddled in affairs south of the Loire. In 1215, French
lawyers and disgruntled English barons concocted for Prince Louis a French claim
to the English throne, which led him the next May to invade England from Calais.
He laid siege to Dover and Windsor in July as he moved toward London. Yet the
death of the hated King John in October together with papal condemnation of
the invasion led a number of English barons to rally to the side of the infant King
Henry III of England. This turn of events forced Prince Louis to withdraw the
next year after signing the Treaty of Lambeth.
Upon returning to France, Louis joined forces with Simon IV de Montfort for a
crusade against the religious dissidents in Occitania, the Albigensians. These wars
introduced a new, more savage kind of warfare into Western Europe. Simon IV
de Montfort’s improbable conquest of most of the county of Toulouse and portions of the duchy of Aquitaine in the Albigensian Crusades (1209–1255) brought
the lands of Occitania under eventual Capetian control.33 The localized nature of
Occitan politics nurtured the spread of Catharism in the twelfth century. Indeed,
the name Albigensian derived from the town of Albi, thought to be the epicenter
of the movement. The counts of Toulouse and a good number of Occitan prelates generally tolerated the Albigensians, despite mounting pressure from Rome.
Violence rose in 1181 when a papal legate aroused local Catholic nobles to attack
the Cathar town of Lavaur in the Trecavel domains, but the siege failed to stop
the movement’s spread. Papal entreaties for action went mostly to Philip II, but
he was in no position to invade Aquitaine in the 1180s. The Angevin collapse in
1204, however, left Raymond VI of Toulouse isolated and vulnerable to French
32
depredations, especially after the 1207 murder of the legate, Pierre de Castelnau,
who had excommunicated the count and placed his lands under interdict. In reaction, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade against the heretics and appealed for
support from the Capetian king.
It took Philip II two years to authorize the duke of Burgundy and the counts
of Nevers, St. Pol, and Boulogne to lead a modest contingent of knights, among
them Simon IV, lord of Montfort, to fight the Albigensians. These French crusaders enjoyed surprising success thanks to the foolhardiness of their adversaries. An ill-considered sortie by the inhabitants of Béziers, the main redoubt of
Raymond-Roger of Trencavel, allowed them to enter on July 22, 1209, whereupon
they massacred most of the populace. Loaded with booty, the crusaders moved to
besiege Carcassonne. Well-fortified with stone walls and some twenty-six towers,
Carcassonne was quite formidable. However, refugees overwhelmed the city as the
food and water supply soon became perilous in the sweltering August heat. On
August 7, the besiegers captured the city’s two main suburbs. Faced with the prospect of another massacre and no relief from his protector, Pedro II of Aragon,
Raymond-Roger reached terms with the crusaders for an orderly evacuation and
pillaging on August 15. The new papal legate, Arnaud Amaury, however, had him
arrested and all the Trencavel family’s domains confiscated. He even hawked the
title of viscount to Catholic princes in the crusading army, all of whom spurned
his offer. Indeed, once the obligatory service of forty days was up for them, most
wanted nothing more than to go home with their booty.
All, that is, except Simon de Montfort, who hailed from a small seigneury
in the Ile-de-France. Ambitious, talented, and ruthless, Simon IV de Montfort
stayed on to lead a small but battle-hardened army against the larger, but disunited
forces of Occitan lords, which included the reluctant Count Raymond VI, who
still hoped for reconciliation with the pope. The legate conferred the title of viscount upon Simon IV in October; Raymond-Roger Trencavel’s death in prison in
November enabled him to consolidate control over domainal castles in Aude region
around Carcassonne.34 In December, Monfort even won recognition from Pope
Innocent III as a direct vassal of the papacy.
Montfort’s campaign in 1209–1210 enjoyed further success as a number of
Trencavel towns opened their gates to him without a fight. Emboldened, he went
on to attack and capture fortified places in the lands of the counts of Foix. Fearing
the worse, local Occitan lords and Cathar refugees launched counterattacks against
Montfort’s overstretched force in spring 1210, sparking revolts in recently taken
places such as Castres, Lombers, and Montréal. Montfort’s reaction was ferocious, as he burned any Cathars who refused to abjure their beliefs (which meant
most of them); he also routinely mutilated prisoners, such as the one hundred or
so he took after the siege of the castle of Bram in early 1210. His use of terror
against the four castles of Lastours-Cabaret—Cabaret, Tour Régine, Surdespine,
and Quertinbeaux—which lay just to the north of Carcassonne, was typical.
This imposing redoubt dominated the valley of the Orbieu River and provided a
haven for fleeing Cathars and Trencavel loyalists. After Pierre-Roger de Cabaret, a
Trencavel vassal, repulsed Montfort’s initial attack in early summer 1210, a pitiful
spectacle unfolded as Montfort forced a band of enchained prisoners, their ears
and lips hacked off and eyes gouged out, led by a lone one-eyed unfortunate who
told the defenders of Latours and Cabaret that the same fate awaited them if they
did not immediately surrender. Unfazed, the defenders refused. Montfort instead
33
moved to capture Minerve and Termes in late 1210, which ended the last major
centers of resistance in the southern parts of his new domains.
Encouraged by Montfort’s startling success, Arnaud Amaury, now archbishop
of Narbonne, in March 1211 issued an ultimatum to the beleaguered Raymond VI
of Toulouse to either eradicate heresy in his lands or risk their confiscation. In
response, Pedro II of Aragon rallied the Occitan lords of Foix and Comminges into
a coalition to resist the threat of a complete takeover of the region by Montfort. In
May, Montfort returned to besiege and capture the last two Trencavel strongholds
of Cabaret and Lavaur. He inflicted atrocities so horrific on the poor residents
of Lavaur that dozens of towns and castles around Toulouse surrendered to him
without a fight. Montfort then turned his attention in June to taking Toulouse.
The largest town in Occitania and fiercely independent, Toulouse had a population
of twenty-five thousand and an imposing set of defenses that proved impossible to
breach, however.
Montfort’s failure allowed Raymond VI and his allies to take the initiative,
chasing Montfort and his dwindling army through the lands of the count of Foix,
which he ravaged along the way. In September, they finally cornered Montfort in
the town of Castelnaudary, where he found himself now besieged. In a daring sortie against considerable odds, Montfort inflicted a stunning defeat on Raymond VI
and thus escaped almost certain capture.35 Raymond VI soon recovered and went
on to recapture upward of sixty places held by Montfort across the county of
Toulouse toward Carcassonne. The conflict seesawed over the next year as a new
infusion of French crusaders came to assist Montfort. In 1213, Pedro II intervened with an Aragonese army, which besieged Montfort’s stronghold at Muret,
just south of Toulouse. Again, Montfort sallied forth and trounced the panicstricken Aragonese and their allies, slaughtering most of the Toulousan infantry.
Raymond VI fled to the court of King John I the next year after Philip II’s victory
at Bouvines in late July.
These decisive shifts in the balance of power both to the north and south of the
Loire whetted Capetian expansionist ambitions in greater Occitania, especially after
Simon de Montfort’s successful campaign in the Dordogne River valley in 1214
brought southern Poitou into his sphere of influence. In spring 1215, Philip II had
Prince Louis lead a Capetian army to join Montfort in a push to take Toulouse,
which opened its gates to them in May. He also commanded Toulouse to destroy
its walls, fill in its moats, and prepare to accept Montfort as its lord. Yet this seeming triumph of Montfort and the French was short-lived. Narbonne, dominated
by its archbishop Arnaud Amaury, who was also papal legate, refused him entry,
as did Montpellier held by the Aragonese. Prince Louis imprudently interfered
in the region on Montfort’s behalf, forcing Narbonne in May 1215 to swear allegiance to Montfort and to raze its fortifications. In November, after much debate,
Pope Innocent III finally acceded to pressures from the French to recognize Simon
de Montfort as the new count of Toulouse, together with the titles of duke of
Narbonne and viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne.
Montfort returned to Paris in early 1216, rendering homage to Philip II for
his fiefs in April. Yet French ambitions in England and growing problems with
the papacy militated against any further support by the Capetians of Montfort.
Montfort therefore turned his attention eastward to Provence, which served as a
rallying point for his enemies among the Occitan nobility and townspeople who
challenged him at every turn with raids and revolts, especially after Raymond VI
34
arrived in Marseille in April 1216 with his son, who became Raymond VII when
his father conceded to him the comtal title to Toulouse and the marquisate of
Provence. The county of Provence, which encompassed most of the southern
region, including Marseille, was held by the House of Aragon, which also pledged
its support to Raymond VII. Together they led a new Occitan coalition in May
against the garrison that Montfort had recently installed in Beaucaire, located on
the Provençal side of the Rhône. Nearby Avignon contributed a particularly large
contingent. Unable to relieve Beaucaire over the next three months, Montfort suffered his first major military defeat when the garrison surrendered to Raymond VII
in August.
Unrest soon broke out across Montfort’s domains, beginning with an uprising
in Toulouse. In 1216, while Montfort tried to put these disturbances down, he also
led an army into the Pyrenean foothills in an effort to knock out the counts of
Comminges and Foix and thus block another Aragonese intervention. Montfort’s
siege of Toulouse, which began in September 1217, went poorly and dragged on
into the next year largely because he lacked the requisite manpower and funds given
his other pressing obligations. Fearing the worst if Simon took the city, a chronicler
described how “[e]veryone began to rebuild the walls. Knights and burgesses, ladies
and squires, boys and girls, great and small carried up the hewn stones singing ballads and songs.”36 On June 25, 1218, after several desperate attempts to capture the
suburb of St. Cyprien and thus control the river, Montfort mounted an all-out attack
on the walls and was killed when a stone hurled from the parapets crushed his skull.
Simon IV de Montfort’s death dramatically changed the nature of the struggle in Occitania. His achievements soon unraveled after Pope Honorius III’s call
to Philip II and Prince Louis to intervene to prop up Montfort’s son, Amaury,
essentially went unanswered. The result was Amaury’s resounding defeat by the
combined forces of Raymond VII of Toulouse and the count of Foix at battle of
Baziège in 1219. Prince Louis and Amaury briefly joined forces later that year
in the massacre at Marmande, located on the border between the Agenais and
English holdings around Bordeaux. However, the French king recalled his son
from the upcoming effort to take Toulouse, which failed as a result. Raymond VII
wasted little time, retaking numerous towns and castles, including Castelnaudary
and Montréal, in 1220. Amaury made one last effort to recoup his losses by mounting a siege against Castelnaudary that lasted from July 1220 to March 1221. His
failure left him little choice but to abandon his father’s hard-won domains. In fact,
both Amaury and Raymond VII offered the county of Toulouse to Philip II in
1222, but he refused lest he become mired in the deadly quagmire of Occitania.
A generation of warriors passed away over the next eighteen months, among them
Raymond VI of Toulouse. His death reaffirmed his son Raymond VII’s claims to
the titles. Upon his death in 1223, Philip II bequeathed to Louis VIII a kingdom
more than double its size since his accession nearly a half-century earlier. Capetian
domains north of the Loire rested firmly in royal control, though the ever turbulent barons of Poitou, led by Geoffrey IV of Rancon, lord of Gençay, soon mounted
a challenge to the new king—just as they had to the Angevins—that quickly spread
to neighboring Saintonge and Aunis. Meanwhile, the powerful Hugh of Lusignan
and Savaric of Mauléon, lord of Talmont, extended their sway over areas of northern Aquitaine.37 Why the expanded Capetian kingdom did not suffer the same fate
as the Angevin empire rested principally on the different roles that walled towns
and castles came to play under Philip II.
35
Urban Enceintes and Castle Construction
under Philip II
Philip II’s relations with walled towns and castles proved decisive for both the conquest and consolidation of the expanded royal desmesne. He continued in more
systematic fashion the established Capetian practice of granting charters to urban
communes in neighboring fiefdoms in advance of their absorption. Walled towns
provided a base from which to project royal influence through the prévôts and baillis established to enforce royal justice and collect royal taxes. Indeed, the decline
of independent castellan families after 1200 became more marked as efficient, centralized royal government grew.38 The revenues raised by towns not only paid for
walls and the hire of mercenaries, but also for urban militias largely composed
of new crossbow contingents.39 Already in the twelfth century, observers such as
the jongleur Guiot of Provins lamented that the noble knight had ceded his place
of honor on the battlefield to “the miners, engineers, crossbowmen, and artillerymen,” all of whom played essential roles in the new siege warfare.40 In the
charters he granted, Philip II usually favored the interests of urban merchant and
professional groups over those of local churchmen and nobles. An exception was
Étampes, which saw its charter annulled by the king in 1199 when the commune
infringed upon the rights of local lords in the town.41
Capetian influence over episcopal appointments in regalian sees based in towns
represented an ancillary urban policy that furthered royal aims. Bishops owed the
crown military services as well as other obligations. Controversy over the metropolitan status of Dol in Brittany, for example, stemmed from Angevin fears that
it could provide the Capetians a toehold from which to extend their influence.42
While Henry II’s and Richard Lionheart’s heavy exactions on churches and abbeys
won them few friends among the clergy, the tensions between ducal and clerical
regimes, even in the Norman Church, did not contribute significantly to the weakening of Angevin power or pave the way for the Capetian ascendancy.43 Philip II
continued the practice of issuing charters of protection to prelates, often at a great
distance from Paris, for it established a justification for later intervention. The
growth of the medieval state under Philip II thus hinged on the vital partnership
among walled towns, episcopal sees, and the monarchy.
Control of castles amplified the regional position the crown achieved in the walled
towns. Castleguard service received close attention in the registers inventorying
military services to the crown. Indeed, well-organized castellanies served as anchor
points in towns and their surrounding hinterlands. Until the Battle of Bouvines in
1214, Philip II’s military campaigns revolved almost exclusively around sieges of
castles. A survey conducted between 1206 and 1210 identified 113 castles in the
possession of the Capetian king; after Bouvines, this number grew considerably.44
He had new castles built and older ones, as at Chinon, substantially modified.45
The thickest concentrations of fortified places existed in an arc extending eastward
from the coast of the Pas-de-Calais along the Flemish frontier before dipping south
to the Thiérache and Laon. Another network of castles lay south of Paris between
Orléans and Sens, while a third line of them extended up the Seine valley from Paris
to Rouen, particularly in the much contested Vexin. When Philip II took Rouen in
1204, he ordered its walls razed and a new citadel constructed to the north of the
burg. A final grouping of castles was located along the Franco-Norman frontier
to the north in the Beauvaisis. It should also be noted that Philip II held outlying
36
castles further afield in Poitou and Auvergne and to the east in Champagne. These
places effectively marked the course of future Capetian expansion.46
Reinforcing this pattern were the massive royal keeps and stone crenellated walls
that Philip II had built in towns he chartered. He aimed to protect the vital core
of his kingdom centered on Paris by fortifying places in the major river valleys that
served as arteries of commerce as well as potential invasion routes. The lower and
upper Seine understandably received early attention, while areas along the Somme
and upper Loire assumed increasing importance after the collapse of Angevin power
in 1204. Areas to the east along the Marne proved, at least for the time being, less
worrisome given Philip II’s close relations with the House of Champagne. The
scale of these constructions, and the investment it all represented, was unprecedented as Philip II enclosed nearly every major burg within the royal demesne by
the end of his reign.
Royal expenditures on urban fortifications represented the costliest item in
the king’s budget. Philip II sponsored wholly new sets of stone fortifications for
Compiègne, Corbeil, Laon, Mantes, and Melun. Other enceintes, as in Normandy
and the Artois, became revamped with the addition of rounded towers and formidable new gates. Such construction projects required an adequate tax base for
funding as well as the organizational capacity to marshal the necessary men and
resources. For these, the cooperation of newly empowered municipal communes
was essential. If necessary, as in Rheims and Châlon-sur-Marne in Champagne,
Philip II even lent local authorities the funding necessary to realize such projects.47
Fortification construction under Philip II achieved a remarkable level of efficiency
that enabled him to build more with less than the Angevins. The king also only
entrusted castles in towns and the countryside to castellans of proven loyalty or
circumscribed their prerogatives when he made them seneschal.
Fortifications under Philip II incorporated important architectural innovations
that first began in Angevin lands before reaching their fullest expression in the
Capetian desmesne.48 One by one, older-style moat-and-bailey castles either became
eliminated or replaced after 1150 with huge stone keeps surrounded by walls and
moats. The most innovative was Richard Lionheart’s castle complex at ChâteauGaillard. It tailored a sophisticated defensive system for a very formidable terrain.
It was approachable from only one side and laid out a defense-in-depth composed
of three-walled layers along a single axis. Its outer machicolated wall sported on
its flanks an articulated, elliptical facing designed to eliminate dead angles, within
which lay a trapezoidal curtain wall buttressed by four rounded towers. Protecting
the castle’s most vulnerable side was a huge triangular fort with powerful towers at
its points and fronted by a deep ditch.49
While none of Philip II’s fortifications achieved the design complexity of Gaillard,
the one built by his close ally Guy de La Roche, on a bend of the Seine near Mantes,
did approach it. The castle complex of La Roche-Guyon melded the overall design
schema of the fortress with the rocky escarpment, highlighted by a subterranean
passageway chiseled through solid bedrock connecting the lower eleventh-century
keep near the river and a new upper castle. The lower keep also received enhancement in the form of an advanced system of defense-in-depth that commanded—in
the name of the king—the most important river in the Ile-de-France.50 By contrast,
the common design of Philip II’s fortification projects articulated simpler forms
that could still be built fairly efficiently and for far less expense.
37
The similarity of these keeps reflected increased central oversight of design and
execution. Rectangular keeps in towns gave way first to polygonal towers during the twelfth century and then to rounded ones under Philip II. Strengthening
spurs, known as becs, buttressed the sides of these rounded castles. Irregular polygonal forms nevertheless persisted in the castles built in Montreuil-sur-Mer, Yèvresle-Châtel, and Dourdan.51 In Laon, located on a high promontory overlooking
the Picard plain, Philip II replaced the square donjon erected by his father with a
massive new rounded keep. He did the same in places he conquered, such as Pontde-l’Arche and Falaise, and inherited, such as Montargis and Ribemont. One of
the best surviving of Philip II’s keeps is in Étampes. With its distinctive cloverleaf
floor plan, it loomed over the burg below and was accessible by a drawbridge that
spanned a deep dry ditch. They were often three storeys in height and composed
of converging cylinders, as at Étampes and Ambleny, or one massive cylinder, as at
Châteaudun. Their rounded façades and evenly spaced arrow slits improved defensive fields of fire and mitigated the impact of missile attacks.52 The king’s close ally,
Simon IV de Montfort, built a similarly innovative castle at Houdan.53 Starting in
1216, Adam II de Chailly, viscount of Melun, adapted the philippean fortification
system to his ancestral castle at Blandy-les-Tours to the east of Paris, adding three
huge cylindrical fronting towers.
The spread of crossbows in urban defense shifted the earlier emphasis of
strengthening the inner keep to bolstering defensive firepower along the outer
walls. Town defenses in modest burgs such as Villeneuve-sur-Yonne became more
sophisticated and systematized in terms of all their component parts, as walls, towers, gates, and firing stations became integrated into mutually supportive ensembles.54 Quadrilateral enclosures for castles, with rounded towers at the corners as
in Caen, introduced greater regularity and foreshadowed the later design forms of
the bastides built in Occitania.55 Walls became much thicker, up to twelve feet, thus
necessitating more substantial foundation work; moats, too, became wider and
deeper, utilizing water features wherever feasible. Drawbridges and fortified gates
became multilayered defenses, often utilizing a proto-bastion known as a barbican.
Troyes and Provins, as well as an older one on Bar-sur-Aube, indicate the existence
by the early thirteenth century of formidable machicolated curtain walls protected
by rounded watch towers and fortified gates, all meant to provide merchants a
strong sense of security as they went about their business.56 The increased sophistication of urban defenses was nowhere more apparent than in Paris, whose GalloRoman walls only ever protected the Ile-de-la-Cité.57 Before leaving on crusade
in 1190, Philip II ordered the rebuilding of the royal castle and residence of the
Louvre, which served as a prototype for other urban citadels built during his reign,
such as the keep erected at Dun-le-Roi in Berry by its local lord. He also had a formidable fifteen-hundred-meter circuit of walls erected to enclose sprawling new
neighborhoods on both the Right and Left Banks, leaving room in the expanded
periphery for future growth.58 Philip II authorized these new kinds of enceintes
throughout his lands at places such as Bourges, Melun, Compiègne, and Péronne.
Those not finished in his lifetime, Prince Louis later saw to completion.59
Philip II’s reign thus marked a turning point for the French monarchy and its
bonnes villes. It also provided a model for other feudatory princes to emulate in the face
of future Capetian aggression. The impetus behind improving urban fortifications
came mainly from rulers as they sought to secure control of territory. Crenellation
38
first served as a symbol of princely domination before it became a sign of municipal
independence.60 Townspeople generally cooperated because they received in return
confirmation and expansion of their town’s liberties in charters. Municipal institutions and the urban economy certainly possessed the capacity to execute and fund
these substantial—and expensive—public works projects. However, siege warfare
was largely directed against castles, not towns, though there were certainly notable
exceptions. The expensive transition to stone enceintes, while definitely well underway in the first part of the thirteenth century was therefore far from ubiquitous,
especially in lands north of the Loire River. Rising wealth and population fueled
dynamic growth as old urban cores gave way to sprawling faubourgs. The politics
of just where to draw the line defining a town’s edge became further compounded
by the competing claims of crown, church, and local seigneurs over jurisdiction.
Any decisions to expand municipal walls to incorporate suburbs represented a significant modification of the city’s identity and social topography by its reallocation
of bourgeois rights. Municipal ordinances commonly referred to their jurisdiction as “la ville et les faubourgs,” which was at once associative and dissociative,
and became confirmed every day with the ritual opening and locking of the town
gates. The faubourg served as a transitional zone to the burg proper and represented a town’s colonization of lands along the axes of roads leading from the main
gates. Militarizing the urban edge further thus carried important, often irrevocable
implications for a town’s relationship with the outside world.61 Unless otherwise
prompted by feudatory rulers, most towns still found sufficient comfort in their old
earthen ramparts and stockades. Any desire to close towns off ran headlong into
strong incentives to be open to the outside world. Yet the new, more brutal forms
of war unleashed on towns in Occitania during the Albigensian Crusades pointed
to a dark future for urban communities. As insecurities steadily rose over the next
century, towns underwent profound alteration to their makeup and attitudes.
Ch apter 3
Ca pet ia n Ex pansion and New
Urba nism, 12 2 5–1325
The evolving relationship between towns and feudatory princes took more sta-
ble institutional form in the thirteenth century. As such, it provided an essential
framework for the return of public governance in the lands of old Francia. Leading
the way were the Capetians, whose ascendancy prompted like efforts by other
regional rulers, such as the counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Toulouse, the
dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, and, above all, the kings of England in their continental domains. Urban economies produced more wealth that, in turn, whetted
bourgeois ambitions to realize more self-rule and flaunt their self-importance.
Perhaps the most potent expression of these urban aspirations came in the grand
cathedrals that merchants and artisans paid so dearly to erect. These huge, soaring edifices dramatically changed the entire visual aspect of medieval cityscapes
even more than royal keeps or old lordly châteaux-forts. Yet as competition among
feudatory rulers continued, and more brutal, large-scale forms of warfare visited
new horrors on communities, towns began to invest more heavily in massive stone
walls and towers for security. In time, the great age of cathedrals gave way to the
hard times embodied in the fully militarized urban edge.
The Capetian monarchy underwent significant institutional change in the thirteenth century. One telling expression came in the more systematic use of apanages. An apanage was a concession of a fief to a cadet son for his lifetime, after
which it reverted to the crown. Primogeniture meant the royal dignity passed fully
to the eldest son. Apanages thus maintained the integrity of the royal domain
while mitigating the possibility of destabilizing fraternal strife in the royal family.
Louis VI and Philip II had made limited use of them, while Louis VIII broadened
the practice to avert the kinds of dynastic rivalries among his sons that had torn
the Angevin house apart. His first-born son, the future Louis IX, born in 1214,
was the next in line to the throne. In 1224, Louis VIII granted the county of
Artois as an apanage to his second son, Robert; the counties of Anjou and Maine
went to his third son, John, while the county of Poitou went to his youngest
son, who became known as Alphonse of Poitiers. What began as a familial solution touching dynastic patrimony became a fundamental law of the kingdom over
time. The legal doctrine of inalienability of the royal domain rendered the French
monarchy a public office, not a personal possession of the king’s family.1 Forms
of public governance both in the towns and the crown thus matured in tandem
during the thirteenth century.
40
Capetian Expansion to the Treaty of Paris (1259)
Upon his accession in 1223, Louis VIII took steps to carry the momentum of
Capetian conquests into the Auvergne and Aquitaine. Using force and patronage,
he first aimed to subdue the Poitevin baronage. He won over Hugh of Lusignan,
count of La Marche, in June 1224 by offering him hereditary right over the towns
of Saintes and Oléron; he even promised him the lordship of Bordeaux if he captured it from the English. With memories of the recent massacre at Marmande still
fresh, Louis VIII easily captured the towns of Niort, Saint-Jean d’Angély, and La
Rochelle later that summer. That left only the ports of Saint-Malo and Royan north
of Gascony in Plantagenet control, though neither of them proved suitable to support invasions later in 1230 and 1242. Meanwhile, Hugh led a Capetian army into
Gascony, which prompted the towns of Saint-Émilion, Saint-Macaire, Langon, La
Réole, and Bazas to surrender, but significantly not Bordeaux, which became the
Plantagenet’s principal toehold on the continent.
Louis VIII next turned his sights to Occitania, which still remained unsettled
in the aftermath of Simon IV de Montfort’s recent conquests. Despite initial papal
misgivings, the Capetian king proclaimed a third crusade against the Albigensians
from Bourges in January 1226. He set out in May down the Rhône valley, but
his way became blocked by Avignon, an independent provençal town that feared
French domination.2 Its bridge over the Rhône was a key to the Capetian campaign
into Occitania. Even though the town council had just added a new rampart to its
old Gallo-Roman walls, it agreed in early June to open its gates to Louis VIII and
pay an indemnity of six thousand marks. Louis VIII ordered Avignon’s walls torn
down and its ditches filled in, but the work did not progress very far. Another sign
of Capetian presence in Avignon came when Catholic authorities established new
religious houses along the town’s edge. Other towns in Provence, such as Beaucaire
and Marseille, followed Avignon’s example by surrendering to the pope and accepting French garrisons. Defections from among Raymond VII’s supporters across the
Rhône soon included the towns of Béziers, Carcassonne, and Nîmes. In western
Occitania, however, the city of Toulouse rallied, as it had in the past, for the beleaguered count of Toulouse. A handful of smaller strongholds, such as Montségur,
also held fast. In September 1226, Louis VIII prepared the ground for conquest
by transferring the county of Toulouse to his youngest son, Alphonse of Poitiers.
Unexpectedly, however, the king contracted dysentery the next month and died on
November 8, leaving the crown to the twelve-year-old Louis IX and his mother,
Blanche of Castile, who became regent. The Capetian gains of the last half-century
now suddenly seemed quite precarious.
That recent Capetian advances survived this crisis largely reflected the resiliency of the French’s crowns relations with towns, even in lands just newly won.
Louis IX received renewed pledges of allegiance in 1227 and 1228 from towns in
the old Trencavel lands, such as Albi, Carcassonne, and Béziers, and places along
the lower Rhône. The split in Occitania between a French dominated east and
a truncated county of Toulouse to the west became formalized in the Treaty of
Paris in 1229. This agreement between Blanche and Raymond VII divided the
hereditary lands of the counts of Toulouse into the seneschalcies (sénéchaussées)
of Beaucaire and Carcassonne. Furthermore, Raymond VII agreed to marry his
daughter, Jeanne of Toulouse, to Louis IX’s brother, Alphonse of Poitiers. The
treaty recognized Raymond VII’s title as count of Toulouse, including Agenais,
C a p e t i a n E x pa n s ion a n d Ne w Ur b a n i s m
41
Rouergue, and parts of Albigeois and Quercy, during his lifetime, after which it
would pass to Jeanne and Alphonse, and then their children. In the event they died
childless, the county of Toulouse would revert to the French crown. The treaty
also reconciled Raymond VII to the Church. As a further precaution against revolt,
Blanche required Raymond VII to turn over all his remaining castles and fortified
towns for the next ten years, among them Castelnaudery, Lavaur, Montcuq, Penne
d’Agenais, Cordes, Peyrusse, Verdun-sur-Garonne, and Villemur. He was also
forbidden to establish new towns, known as bastides. Last, Raymond VII had to
reward about thirty towns, chief among them Toulouse, that had remained loyal to
him by demolishing their walls and filling in their ditches. Although Raymond VII
hoped a change in fortune would enable him or a new successor to revisit these
treaty provisions, the reality of Capetian power in Occitania only became firmer
over the next twenty years.
Settling the crown’s affairs in Occitania enabled Blanche and Louis IX to deal
with opposition elsewhere. One threat lay to the east of Paris from the vigorous
young count of Champagne, Thibaut IV. Anticipating a clash with his Capetian
cousin, Thibaut IV had bolstered the key fortified towns and castles in his domains
since the early 1220s.3 But Thibaut IV never raised the standard of revolt. Instead,
that came from an uprising among the barons of Poitou in 1235 against Alphonse,
and by implication his brother the king, instigated by their uncle Pierre de Dreux,
duke of Brittany. With the help of towns along the Loire and loyal barons, such
as Geoffrey IV of Rancon, Blanche subdued these threats as her son neared his
majority in 1240. To secure control of this unsettled region, she authorized the
construction of massive new citadels, such as the one at Angers that had a walled
perimeter of over one thousand yards, seventeen huge rounded towers, and a cavernous fronting ditch.
Yet unrest continued to roil Poitou. The most serious threat to Capetian power
under Louis IX began on Christmas day, 1241. Spurred on by King Henry III of
England, the powerful baron of Lusignan, Hugh X, led another Poitevin rebellion
against Alphonse. Alphonse and Louis IX, again with the assistance of Geoffrey IV
of Rancon, quickly raised an army of thirty thousand men. Equipped with siege
engines, they methodically pried control of baronial castles along the Charente
River, including Hugh X’s ancestral castle at Montreuil-en-Gâtine. Their goal was
the Lusignan stronghold of Saintes. Henry III landed a relief force at Royan while
Count Raymond VII of Toulouse, anxious to reverse his 1229 concessions, moved
north to assist the Poitevin barons. In July, these forces converged on the castle
of Taillebourg, where Louis IX and Alphonse were encamped. Much of the castle
remained in ruins since its destruction by Richard Lionheart in 1194. Situated at
a vital crossing on the Charente River between Saint-Jean-d’Angély and Saintes,
Taillebourg was effectively the gateway south into Aquitaine. On July 21, Louis IX
and Alphonse defeated the anti- Capetian coalition at the battle of Taillebourg
and again two days later at Saintes. Henry III withdrew to England, while the
duke of Brittany and the Poitevin barons reconciled with the victorious French
king. Alphonse chased Raymond VII back into Gascony. A papal excommunication of the count of Toulouse prompted a new wave of defections, including
the count of Foix, who pledged his allegiance to Louis IX. In what proved to be
the last major military action of the Albigensian Crusades, the French captured the
seemingly impregnable stronghold of Montségur after a grueling siege that lasted
from March 1243 to March 1244. Raymond VII’s death five years later brought
42
about the transfer of the county of Toulouse to his daughter Jeanne and her husband, Alphonse of Poitiers.
Occitania henceforth became known in Paris for its regional dialect as Languedoc,
sandwiched between Provence and Aquitaine. In 1246, the county of Provence
passed to Louis IX’s brother Charles of Anjou and his descendants, though it still
held ties to the Empire and the House of Savoy. Capetian authority developed most
fully in the county of Toulouse under Alphonse. He organized it into five seneschalcies based in Périgord-Quercy, Rouergue, Toulouse-Albi, Carcassonne-Béziers,
and Beaucaire-Nîmes. He astutely kept on capable men to head these posts, such as
Sicard d’Alaman, who had worked for Raymond VII, and southern men of proven
loyalty, such as Jordan IV, lord of Isle-Jourdain located in the Gers, and Eustache
de Beaumarchais, a minor lord from Auvergne. Alphonse also transplanted established Capetian institutions in his capital of Toulouse, such as a Parlement to dispense royal justice and a Chambre de Comptes to monitor finances. Finally, he
encouraged the formation of a regional assembly or estates (états) in which Occitan
towns played a leading role.4 Local legal and linguistic practices prevailed as the
Capetians made no real effort to “frankify” Languedoc. A treaty with Aragon in
1258 ceded to the Capetians all lands north of the Pyrenees, with the exception of
the lordship of Montpellier. The Capetians now controlled nearly half of Occitania
and enjoyed their broadest support from the towns. In 1259, Henry III of England
finally came to terms with Louis IX in the Treaty of Paris. It confirmed English
possession of Quercy, Limousin and Saintonge, while it reaffirmed Capetian claims
to Poitou, Maine, Anjou, and Normandy. He also agreed to recognize the French
king as his liege lord. Through confiscations and forced marriages, Louis IX and
Alphonse advanced the position of their Poitevin allies in the region. The main
opponents of Capetian power in Occitania henceforth became the Pyrenean barons
and counts of Béarn, Foix, and Comminges. The geographic confines of Capetian
rule now embraced most of the lands that later became modern France. In all its
diversity, the most consistent unifying feature of this expanded medieval polity was
the monarchy’s partnership with towns.
New Urbanism in Southern France: Bastides
As these struggles over territory raged in greater Occitania, a new kind of planned
urban community known as a bastide developed and spread that profoundly transformed this vast region. While other parts of France saw new towns established after
1220, those failed to compare with the scale of activity in Aquitaine and the Midi
where upward of six hundred bastides were founded (see map 3.1).5 Most bastides
were fairly modest in size, ranging from several hundred to perhaps two thousand
residents. Like elsewhere in France, population growth and the desire to develop an
area’s economic potential lay behind the establishment of new towns. Indeed, the
establishment of bastides declined after the staggering population losses caused by
the Black Death in the late 1340s.
Like north of the Loire after the ninth century, new towns in greater Occitania
after 1200 often grew up in close proximity to castles and fortified abbeys. Some
of them eventually became bastides, while others did not; often it was a question
of semantics. The biggest difference lay in how much self-rule a new town enjoyed
as expressed in its charter.6 In some cases, modest villages evolved into bastides
Map 3.1
43
Bonnes Villes and Bastides, 1300.
through the intervention of the crown or lords. A good number of bastides actually represented new communities, as indicated in the frequency of the toponyms
“Villeneuve” or “Labastide.”7 Some place names evoked site features, such as a
promontory (“mont”) or river (“sur-Lot”), while others referenced important
towns in Spain (“Barcelone”) or Italy (“Pavie”) where nobles from Occitania had
recently campaigned.8 A few bastides even carried the names of their founders.
Briatexte, for example, was established in 1287 by Simon de Briseteste, seneschal of
Carcassonne, on the site of the Cathar village of Toueilles that Simon de Montfort
had razed to the ground in 1212.9
Many motives lay behind the establishment of bastides. Economics was often
paramount as local lords hoped to attract settlers to cultivate the land, harvest timber, and develop manufactures. Bastide charters offered manorial peasants a chance
to escape their servile status, and the manorial dues that went with it; they could
even own and bequeath property. Grain cultivation, timbering, viniculture, and
44
manufactures promised profits for residents in bastides and the lords sponsoring
them. Site selection, usually along rivers, had to strike a balance between defensibility and commercial exchange.10 Bastides also promoted the rule of public law,
while the foundation of Catholic religious houses and parish churches helped stem
the tide of Albigensianism. Last, bastides provided islands of refuge and security in
an often violent world.
The juridical foundation of a bastide took several possible forms. One way was
when a local lay or clerical lord, or cartels of smaller fief holders, directly authorized it. Another occurred when a suzerain, usually the French or English king,
acquired a territory through transfer (cession) from the local lord; while the third
came about through a usufruct agreement known as an acte de paréage between the
suzerain and the local lord. These initial agreements later became formulated in the
bastide’s charter.11 In general, paréage agreements curtailed the autonomy of local
castellans. Bastides thus helped to establish a royal legal and fiscal presence (both
French and English) by serving as seats for jugeries, vigueries, and baillis. Alphonse
of Poitiers was particularly adept at using royal judicial officers to adjudicate legal
differences with local lords. Indeed, by 1271 the French crown had established its
political presence in Languedoc largely through acts of paréage with local abbeys,
priories, and lay lords. Economic and fiscal provisions came in articles on the disposition of arable land, building lots, labor dues, markets, and guilds. Other provisions defined municipal administration, usually under elected jurats or consuls,
who handled local justice and regulations, tax collection, and public works, including fortifications. Local defense became further addressed in articles establishing
a militia.12 Bastide charters lacked regularity until Alphonse began to model them
after the ones he granted to Villefranche-de-Rouergue and Monclar d’Agenais. His
seneschal Eustache de Beaumarchais was even more systematic, using prototypes
based on the charters he granted to Gimont and Najac.
Upon finalizing an act of paréage or cession, the first step in actually building
a bastide came with the fixatio pali. This ceremony consisted of planting a large
pole on the spot destined to become the marketplace, affixed atop of which were
banners displaying the coats-of-arms of the king or great lord who sponsored the
bastide’s foundation. The founder’s agents, usually clergymen, supervised the surveyors who laid out the bastide according to the terms of the paréage.13 Notaries,
judges, bailiffs, the seneschal, and even the bishop also often attended. Next came
the préconisatio or proclamation of privileges outlined in the charter that public
criers broadcast across the land to attract settlers. Surveyors then staked out the
building parcels, garden plots, and arable lands, separating each area with ditches
and earthen mounds. The measurements needed to be precise because they determined a person’s tax rates. The principal avenues of a bastide were wide enough
for two carts to pass. Commercial establishments and public buildings set up shop
along these thoroughfares, which led to the central marketplace. Narrower streets
for one-way traffic bisected these avenues to create the residential districts. Finally,
there were the walkways and sunken channels to funnel waste out of the bastide.14
The founding lord normally assumed responsibility for constructing communal
buildings, such as the parish church (often fortified), municipal hall, marketplace,
mills, bakeries, and, where possible, fish ponds. Residents had to build their houses
within a stipulated amount of time, usually one year. Most were two storeys, with
a shop on the ground level and the domicile up above. A courtyard in the rear
served as a latrine. The charters often stipulated the materials to be used, features
45
of the façade, street alignment and dimensions.15 Functionality and efficiency thus
guided these new models of medieval urbanism.
Bastide designs varied regionally in orthogonal and, on occasion, radial schemas
fitted to local topographical conditions. Like castles, many bastides were built on
promontories with streets fitted to a place’s hilly contours.16 Others grew up at key
river crossings with a main avenue perpendicular to the river.17 Bastides in Quercy
often had single main avenues bisected by streets much like rungs on a ladder.18
Several types of bastides developed in Armagnac and Périgord. Some had fairly regular grids formed by residential blocks intersected by avenues and streets.19 Others
had elongated yet still orthogonal grids laid out along a principal avenue flanked by
two side streets.20 A further type in Gascony was characterized by a central square
formed by two sets of intersecting perpendicular avenues off of which went side
streets to form the residential blocks.21
Establishing a bastide often altered the local balance of power as well.22 In fact,
the expansion of the county of Toulouse in the twelfth century largely depended
on the foundation of new towns. Count Alphonse de Jordan of Toulouse founded
the first bastide in 1144 in Montauban to extend his authority into Quercy.23 His
successor, Count Raymond V established bastides in the 1170s in Castelnau-deMontmiral in the Albigeois, Lauzerte in Quercy, and Puymirol, Tournon, Penne,
and Pujols in the Agenais.24 After the setbacks of the first Albigensian Crusade,
Count Raymond VII created the bastide of Cordes in 1222 to signal his independence from the Capetians.25 His seneschal, Sicard d’Alaman, became particularly
active by founding dozens of bastides in the 1240s and later served Alphonse of
Poitiers in the same capacity.26 Henry III of England’s officials in Gascony also
hurriedly built castles and established bastides after 1230 to secure what remained
of their holdings in Aquitaine. The English also subsidized local allies to establish
bastides.27 Finally, they reined in factionalism among the notables of Bordeaux
when it threatened to destabilize this vital base of operations in Anglo-Gascony.28
Local lords and counts, especially in the Pyrenean highlands, remained active in
founding bastides into the fourteenth century to block creeping French and English
influence.29 The counts of Armagnac, Pardiac, and Astarac sponsored over twentyfive bastides in their ancestral lands, while the neighboring counts of Comminges
founded ten.30 Finally, the fiercely independent counts of Béarn and Foix also
established new towns to secure their domains.31
The establishment of bastides brought a much greater level of localized state
rule to southwestern France. Nowhere was this more evident than in the central
roles played by seneschals. Raymond VII of Toulouse led the way by employing
first Doat d’Alaman and then his son Sicard to found over a dozen bastides in the
1230s and 1240s. Other counts in the region, such as the houses of Foix, Béarn,
and Bigorre, emulated this practice into the early fourteenth century. Alphonse
of Poitiers made perhaps the most ample use of these officials who devised an
almost formulaic process for creating a bastide. During his long rule in Toulouse,
he and his seneschals established over one hundred bastides. These men included
Pierre de Landreville and Gui de Caprari, who oversaw Rouergue, Thome de
Novilla, Blaise Le Loup, and Jourdain de Lubret in Toulouse, Simon de Briseteste
in Carcassaonne, Guichard de Marziac in Périgord and Quercy, Jean de Trie and
Guillaume de Carsan, and finally the indefatigable Eustache de Beaumarchais,
who became responsible at the end of Alphonse’s lifetime for the Toulousain and
the Albigeois. Beaumarchais went on to serve Philip III and Philip IV.32 English
46
monarchs also relied heavily on seneschals for the foundation of bastides throughout greater Aquitaine and Gascony.33 The seneschals of Guyenne included Jean de
Lalinde, Lucas de Thanay, Jean de Grailly, Bonet de Saint Quentin, and Geoffrey
de Rondeboeuf. In Gascony, there were Robert de Leyburn and John de Hastings
d’Eu, while Alméric de Créon, A. de Genoa, and Guillaume de Montaigut also
served as seneschals but it remains unknown where they did so.34
The Treaty of Paris in 1259 defined the Anglo-French frontier across Aquitaine
largely in terms of these castles and bastides. Mutual mistrust and difficulty in
controlling local lords, especially in the Agenais and Quercy, quickly undermined
the agreement, as did continuing efforts by both sides to encroach on each other’s
domains by founding new bastides. In the 1240s, for example, Alphonse of Poitiers
established bastides between the Lot and Garonne up to the Tarn as a buffer zone
in Gascony to protect the Toulousian inheritance.35 He also built bastides further
along the Tarn River near Villemur abutting the lands of the Roger IV, count
of Foix, while to the northeast in Aveyron he initiated the foundation of a number of important bastides, such as Villefrance-de-Rouergue.36 Alphonse also completed a number of bastides started earlier by Raymond VII at Gémil, Le Fousseret,
and Carbonne. He used judicial appeals to the new Parlement of Toulouse and
generous subsidies to influence the allegiance of local lords across Aquitaine.37
Some local fief holders and ecclesiastical foundations, especially abbeys, sought out
Capetian protection from aggressive feudatories, such as the counts of Pardiac and
Armagnac, who also sponsored bastides. As a result, nearly fifty lordly and comtal
bastides became affiliated with the seneschalcy of Toulouse alone.38
All this maneuvering by Alphonse paid off for the Capetians when he and his
wife died childless in 1271 and the county of Toulouse reverted to the new French
king, Philip III.39 With the able assistance of the seneschal of Toulouse Eustache
de Beaumarchais, Philip III pushed further westward along the Lot, Garonne, and
Dordogne Rivers toward the Agenais after Henry III died in 1272. However, the
new English king, Edward I, forced Philip III to cede the Agenais back.40 After
Philip III’s death in 1285, the number of bastides established by the French diminished while those founded by the English steadily increased. With the assistance
of his seneschal Jean de Grailly, Edward I of England founded thirty-five new bastides, principally along the Lot and Garonne Rivers, during his long reign, while
his French counterparts created only eight new ones.41 Indeed, the Gascon war
started in 1294 by Philip IV aimed to roll back recent English advances by seizing
newly fortified places in Aquitaine while Edward I was embroiled with the Scots.42
However, the French disaster at Courtrai in 1302, when Flemish urban militias
resoundingly defeated an army of mounted knights, forced Philip IV to return
these places to the English.43 The warring parties reached an accord that technically restored the status quo but left unresolved nagging differences now almost a
century old. Indeed, the Anglo-French clash in 1323 over the fixatio pali for the
new bastide of Saint-Sardos in the Lot and Garonne region marked the opening
salvo of the Hundred Years’ War.44
New Directions for Castles and Urban Enceintes
The visible aspect of medieval towns changed profoundly during the thirteenth
century as earthen ramparts progressively gave way to enceintes built of stone and
brick. In time, these new ramparts and towers defined, together with the soaring
47
church spires, the distinctive, individual profile of a town, much like a person’s
face.45 These innovations in municipal fortification design grew out of the new
directions in castle construction already well underway by 1200. The novel design
realized at Château Gaillard in the 1190s, in particular, heralded the new premium
placed on defense-in-depth that over time became generalized across France, indeed
all of Western Europe. Typical was the castle of Saint- Gobain in the Laonnais.46
This new castle integrated the huge rounded towers and machicolated walls of this
new design with more amenities for the residential quarters. The towers, for example, dedicated the top two levels to defense, with a firing and observation platform
on top and arrow slits on each floor to cover approach angles. All of this was then
superimposed upon a ground floor that provided living quarters with fireplaces
and sleeping areas. The castle complex of Blanquefort in the Gironde incorporated these kinds of features, as did revamped castles across Poitou, the Charente,
and Saintonge and the Aunis.47 The military functions of castles diminished,
indeed almost disappeared in the imaginary visions of “fantastic castles” (châteauxfantastiques) found in Books of Hours that combined elements of Gothic cathedral design and Moorish architecture encountered while in crusade.48 The growing
sophistication of fortifications, in turn, required more elaborate techniques of siege
warfare. Manuscript copies in Latin of Vegetius’s De re militari circulated widely
after the eleventh century and it was translated into French in 1284 and 1290 by
Jean de Meung and Jean Priorat. Vegetius was a great proponent of siege towers.
Another source of inspiration came from experience on crusade in the Middle East,
whence also came perhaps as early as the 1290s the first encounters with gunpowder weapons.
The transition to urban enceintes in stone and brick began where urban development was most precocious, namely, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, and the Artois.49
A new approach to securing control of a newly conquered place came a century later
in 1298, when Philip IV ordered the construction of a royal citadel known as the
Château de Courtrai on the outskirts of Lille’s enceinte.50 Feudatory princes usually
initiated the conversion and expansion of these defensive ensembles to safeguard
as well as dominate the towns upon which so much of their power rested. They
often devoted their earliest attention, and considerable expense, in strengthening
the château-fort found in or just on the outskirts of these towns as, for example,
in Tournai, and Lille.51 Some towns, Ghent in particular, chafed under this more
intrusive princely presence in their midst. Towns complained less vociferously about
the costs of reinforcing their outer wall and gates, or in improving their militias.
By the mid-thirteenth century, Namur, for example, boasted a new double-walled
enceinte with four towers, two of which remain extant today, namely, the Tour aux
Chartes and the Tour au Four.52 Bruges created an innovative fortification system
that integrated brick ramparts with its intricate waterways.53 Fortified gates, always
a vulnerable spot, began to receive fronting outworks known as barbicans in the
thirteenth century; these proto-bastions heralded perhaps most clearly the new premium placed on defense-in-depth.
The scale and expense entailed by these vast public works proved comparable
and as long in duration as raising a Gothic cathedral. Lille is among the beststudied examples of what these projects entailed.54 Planning teams headed by master masons and municipal revenue officers organized huge work sites that employed
hundreds of skilled and unskilled laborers, procured cut stone from quarries or set
up kilns to fire hundreds of thousands of bricks, and managed massive excavations
48
that frequently required complex drainage and pumping technologies.55 In the
process, suburbs were razed or relocated, neighborhoods cleared or recast, and
public places expanded or reoriented.56 Building new stone and brick fortifications
often initiated a cascade of ensuing infrastructure changes in medieval towns, as in
Douai, which left them transformed both on the edge and inside.57
Rebuilding urban enceintes in stone and brick generally diminished the further
one moved south from Flanders and Brabant. Yet examples of such new fortified
ensembles still abound. In Calais in 1229, for example, Philippe Hurepel, count of
Burgundy, built a massive château-fort and restored the adjoining fortifications of
the upper town.58 The enceinte of the Capetian maritime stronghold of Montreuilsur-Mer received new crenellated walls and several new towers.59 Hurpel also oversaw the construction of the first major enceinte around the port of St-Omer. A short
distance south was the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, whose solid and high GalloRoman walls underwent considerable repair and expansion under Hurpel in the
1220s. The restored enceinte stretched some fourteen hundred yards with four fortified gateways and some twenty towers protecting the now crenellated curtain wall.
The castle conformed to the new polygonal plan emerging at the time, absent a dungeon, with nine towers flanking the compound’s angled exterior.60 In Normandy,
the Capetians also authorized and helped pay for rebuilding expanded enceintes
for a number of towns, and royal châteaux-forts even more. For example, twenty
years after Philip II had Rouen’s enceinte razed, the city began work on new-style
crenellated curtain walls, dozens of stone towers, and six fortified gates to enclose
additional suburbs, nearly doubling the enclosed area yet again. However, Beauvais
and Noyon located to the north of Paris remained virtually open towns throughout the thirteenth century. In part, the choice often came down to building a new
cathedral or new walls.
Less wealthy feudatory rulers could not undertake such measures to fortify their
towns. In comtal Champagne, towns sometimes began new fortifications projects
that they never completed. In Châlons-sur-Marne, for example, large gaping sections of the enceinte, which began in the 1220s at the initiative of Thibault IV,
remained unbuilt at the end of the century. Even though it hosted important trade
fairs, Troyes still only possessed earthen mounds topped with a wooden fence on
the eve of the Hundred Years’ War. Major towns in the Loire, such as Tours, and
Poitiers in Poitou were in similar straits, though as insecurities mounted after 1300
so did their earnestness to erect new stone and brick fortifications.61 Périguieux
stands out in this respect.62 Further to the west in ducal Brittany, urban fortifications remained largely earthen ramparts and wooden palisades. Urban fortifications there after 1200 mostly took the form of ducal and baronial keeps, some of
which incorporated polygonal elements. Yet there were exceptions. Under Pierre
de Dreux, duke of Brittany and count of Penthièvre from 1212 to 1237, Nantes
witnessed the building of a considerably expanded and strengthened enceinte that
enclosed nearly seventy-five acres surrounded by twenty-three hundred yards of
curtain walls and towers. As a measure of the builders’ technical prowess, the sections along the Erdre and Loire rivers had to overcome particularly daunting hydrological problems. The defenses at Rennes received newly reinforced gates, a deeper,
wider ditch, and a new irregular hexagonal enceinte that encompassed over twentytwo acres. Pierre de Dreux apparently received his sobriquet “Mauclerc” because
some of this construction intruded upon church properties. This flurry of activity
slowed considerably after 1286 and only resumed after the outbreak of the Breton
49
War of Succession, which lasted from 1341 to 1365. One exception was in 1308
in Saint-Malo, shortly after it had passed into French royal control, when residents asked the king for permission to revamp the town’s fortifications in the new
style found in the towns of their trading partners in Flanders. Philip IV refused to
allow them, fearing the town would be more difficult to control if its walls became
stronger. Whereas a century before, feudatory rulers almost always initiated new
urban enceintes, in the fourteenth century it was the towns that pursued them
most avidly as they assumed more and more of the burden—and accompanying
opportunities—of self-defense.
In Gascony and Languedoc, competition between the English and French, as
well as ambitions of local feudatory lords to preserve if not increase their own
territories, encouraged a number of important new-style fortification projects in
towns over the thirteenth century. Edward I was quite adroit in adopting this
new approach in Gascony, which provided a later springboard for expanded
English influence on the continent. The English devoted considerable attention to strengthening the defenses and their sway over municipal institutions in
Bordeaux.63 The French did likewise in Carcassonne, where the crown sent builders in the 1240s to revamp its defenses in order to make it their base for controlling lower Languedoc. Carcassonne’s new defenses used the old Visigothic
enceinte where feasible. Once completed, another ringed enceinte, replete with
massive towers and fortified gates, was erected. Louis IX also furnished generous
subsidies for improvements to Carcassonne’s enceinte starting in the 1230s, which
eventually resulted in its distinctive set of concentric walls with huge towers and
gates reinforced with iron grills. In the process, Carcassonne razed two extramural suburbs in 1240 for a new town laid out in an orthogonal grid that became
incorporated into the expanded enceinte.64 Philip III ordered such work in the
county of Toulouse when it reverted to the monarchy in 1271 upon the deaths of
Alphonse and Jeanne. Philip IV did the same in the eastern part of the kingdom
in Provins and Château-Thierry after the reunion of the county of Champagne. In
Nîmes, new fortified gates became built in the 1220s and a new royal château-fort
a century later, though otherwise the town still mainly relied on its original GalloRoman walls for protection. Even the kings of Majorca got involved in sponsoring
new fortifications in Perpignan.65
Capetian expansionism in the Auvergne and the Bourbonnais and further south
of the Ardèche into Languedoc and Provence in the thirteenth century altered
both the form of municipal government and the fabric of towns.66 Both sides of
the Rhône witnessed the further consolidation of consular regimes that began to
undertake more ambitious projects of urban amelioration, including the erection of
formidable curtain walls and towers built in mortared stone and brick. Louis VIII’s
prohibition to the municipal council of Avignon against restoring its walls lapsed in
1234, not long after the king’s death, as the town began work on a new imposing
set of stone fortifications one hundred feet beyond the Gallo-Roman enceinte to
form a double ring of defenses. However, in 1251, Alphonse of Poitiers ordered the
definitive destruction of Avignon’s ramparts, leaving only its exposed older curtain
wall until the papacy assumed control of the town in the fourteenth century and
had them rebuilt as they appear today.67
Like towns long since established across France, the fortifications of most bastides typically consisted of little more than wooden palisades atop earthen mounds
fronted by shallow ditches. Had building fortifications been required for every new
50
bastide, far fewer would have been founded because of the crippling cost. Many
bastides, in fact, never grew large or wealthy enough to afford stone walls. The
economic development of a bastide in terms of trade, manufacturing, and agriculture provided the necessary fiscal foundation to support an enceinte and militia.
Funding the construction and subsequent upkeep of bastide fortifications often
required negotiations and accommodation between the founding lords and local
residents. Promises by the founding lord to underwrite these expenses, while perhaps well-intentioned and meant to attract settlers, frequently went unfulfilled.
Stone fortifications thus served as a sign of tutelage, not independence for a bastide.68 In turn, residents often resisted shouldering the expenses, which meant construction could drag on for years. In Libourne, for example, the fortified enceinte
begun in 1281 was only completed sixty years later. More common was the decision
of founder-lords to reserve the right to erect a castle or keep in or near a bastide.
Whether it became viewed as a source of sanctuary or symbol of the founder-lord’s
power depended on circumstances, above all the latter’s temperament.
Only forty of the 125 bastides founded by the English in Gascony after 1259, for
example, ever erected permanent fortifications.69 By contrast, the French crown frequently authorized sophisticated stone fortifications, including fortified gates, curtain walls, archer stations, and a chemin de ronde, for bastides and established towns
as they pushed into Gascony and southwest Aquitaine.70 It appears that only with the
outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337 did there exist enough incentive to finish the task of fortifying, often when the lord ceded control of local revenues to the
municipality with the understanding that they were to be used to erect defenses. As
insecurities increased in the 1290s, however, the pace of founding new bastides lessened but not pressures to erect or enhance the defenses of those places already established. Stone walls first went up for bastides situated along contested frontiers, such as
the Lot and Dordogne Rivers. Charters rarely mentioned bastide fortifications before
1290. Even if a bastide’s residents wished to erect defenses, they still needed special
permission from the crown or local suzerain, which was not always forthcoming. Yet
by the 1320s, lords granted charters that left the decision (and costs) for fortifications almost entirely to the discretion of local officials. New castle construction also
seemed to rise at the time, as Anglo-French relations entered a tenser and ultimately
more violent phase with the onset of the Hundred Years’ War.71
When bastides did invest in enceintes, they often became the town’s most impressive and distinctive feature. The fortifications of Aigues-Mortes, a bastide founded
by Louis IX along the Mediterranean to support his crusading activities, remain
the most exemplary surviving example today.72 Another is Beaumont-de-Lomagne,
which possessed by the early fifteenth century an imposing, thick machicolated
curtain wall nearly twenty-five feet high that ran more than three thousand feet in
circumference. Square towers guarded the gates topped by firing stations (hourds),
while rounded ones with arrow slits (meutrières) punctuated the periphery of the
wall at prescribed intervals. A water-filled moat some thirty feet wide ringed an
enceinte spanned by drawbridges. Private entrances (poternes) occasionally pierced a
town’s walls and prompted concerns about security. In some places, such as Cordes,
population growth quickly spilled out beyond the walls built in the 1220s, necessitating in time the construction of second ring of fortifications in the 1340s, a third
in the early 1400s, and a fourth set of walls in the 1440s.73 Fortified houses, one
adjoined to the other, sometimes formed the enceinte, with individual property
51
owners responsible for their upkeep. The walls of some bastides became irregular or
discontinuous as a result.
The further militarization of urban communities in these areas actually set
the stage for conflicts between these better fortified and armed towns and feudatory princes. In the 1290s starting in Languedoc, the relationship between
the Capetians and walled towns in their domains entered a more contentious and
increasingly bureaucratic set of relationships. Growing fiscal demands from the
crown to fights its wars with the English, particular its efforts to convert customary aids into permanent forms of taxation, became seen by the towns as contrary to
their chartered franchises. Resistance in the south centered on Toulouse and Albi
and required granting new charters with expanded privileges for these burgs.74 As
a result, towns began to form regional leagues to militate for their common interests.75 Anglo-French rivalries centered primarily on control of Guyenne. In 1294,
they went to war, which the French won fairly easily, overrunning Flanders and
Guyenne. However, Philip IV found it impossible to hold to these conquests, as an
uprising of cloth workers in Flanders led to his crushing defeat at Courtrai in 1302,
which forced him to restore much of Guyenne to Edward I. A struggle between
the papacy and the French Crown over clerical taxation, which Philip IV eventually
won, nevertheless diplomatically isolated the French after 1305. The suppression
of these conflicts often led to orders to demolish these new enceintes. The FrancoFlemish war of the 1320s, for example, resulted in the demolition of walls of captured rebel towns such as Douai and Tournai. But no sooner did the walls go down
than towns set about to rebuild them larger and stronger than before.
Weakened as a result of these setbacks, Philip IV and his advisors became by
necessity open to a different kind of relationship with walled towns. Coercion
increasingly gave way to compromise as crown and towns slowly devised new ways
to structure their historical partnership. Solutions varied from one town to the
next, and in different regions, though among the most common results was the
formation of local assemblies (états) from their earlier leagues that could express
collective viewpoints and with which the king could consult as circumstances dictated. Walled towns in France after 1300 thus helped to establish an institutional
framework that profoundly shaped the development of the French monarchical
state over the next five hundred years. Towns played a vital role alongside the
clergy and nobility in these gatherings of estates. The succession of short-lived and
general weak kings in the ensuing transition to Valois rule furthered these developments.76 In 1321, Philip V convoked a kingdom-wide assembly of estates—or
Estates General—where he proposed sweeping reforms to recover alienated royal
domains and coinage rights, as well as a first-time bid for a war subsidy during
peace-time that failed to achieve much of anything. Instead, the crown resorted to
the long-standing piecemeal approach of arm-twisting Jews and Italians and negotiating separate deals (compositions) with local elites in towns and the countryside,
all of which further reinforced the particularized nature of medieval state authority
in France. Prior to the emergencies of the Hundred Years’ War, the French monarchy generally found it difficult to raise a steady, adequate amount of revenues with
which to finance its ambitions.
The spark that ignited the conflagration in fact came when the English forces,
led by the lord of Montpezat, violently thwarted the French attempt in the 1320s to
build a bastide at Saint-Sardos near Bordeaux.77 Legal proceedings in the Parlement
52
of Paris failed to extract an oath of homage from Edward II. This led in July 1324
to a French invasion of the Agenais against Montpézat, besieging and capturing La
Réole. In preparation for the expected full-scale war as well as renewed rebellion in
Flemish towns, Charles IV stepped up his efforts to raise war subsidies and levying
new taxes on wine and wool. He also ordered his seneschals in Toulouse, Périgord,
Beaucaire, and Carcassonne to summon local contingents from the towns; apart
from areas in upper Languedoc, many burgs apparently preferred to pay a lump
sum rather than actually mobilize sergeants.
Invoking claims of evident necessity, the French crown initiated a wellcoordinated series of fiscal-military preparations in 1324–1325 to exploit potential
sources of revenue by empowering royal enquêteurs-réformateurs to bargain more
successful subsidy agreements from the towns and crack down on fraudulent fief
transfers. The towns, in turn, ferociously defended their chartered privileges even
as they began to further institutionalize the mechanisms of revenue extraction by
apportioning the demands by hearth (feu) in local districts (jugeries). Negotiations
proved acrimonious and protracted. Complaints to Paris took time to yield any
restraints on local royal officials who zealously pursued their charges by selectively
issuing military summons as a pressure tactic to speed the collection of a tax, even
after the war ended.78 In northern France, by contrast, towns responded to these
tax requests mainly through indirect taxes (aides). The crown also began to regularize levies through forced loans imposed on royal officials, such as notaries and
sergeants. Yet difficulties of collection persisted, which the crown dealt with by
convoking assemblies of barons, clergymen, and town leaders as well as by pushing
local royal commissioners to be even more assiduous.
This mix of diligence and caution continued to characterize the actions of the
new Valois dynasty after 1328. In 1329, for example, anticipating hostilities with
the new English king Edward III who delayed his homage, the French king ordered
his bailiffs and seneschals to seek a war subsidy from the towns and châtellenies of
their respective jurisdictions, promising that all collections would be stored locally
until war actually broke out. When the threat of conflict receded, Philip VI ordered
his officials to return what revenues had already been collected.79 In 1333, the
crown ordered bailiffs and seneschals to inspect the fortresses and naval ports in
the kingdom and report on their condition. With this information in hand, it then
set about to raise royal and municipal taxes to defray the costs of repair, though the
revenues collected yielded much less than was necessary to achieve full military preparedness. As a result of the crown’s miserable fiscal predicament, more and more
of the burden of defense fell by necessity on to the shoulders of the localities most
affected, forcing upon them then the difficult decision of whether or not to raise
the monies needed to improve security.
Preparations for war, along with occasional clashes, continued over the next
eight years. In 1331, Charles of Alençon led a French force against the town of
Saintes, while in 1335, Mile de Noyers, a Burgundian in service of the French,
seized the stronghold of Sainte-Colombe across the imperial frontier in the east
near Vienne, which he quickly garrisoned. Tensions mounted most acutely, as they
always seemed to do, in Gascony. In 1335, Cordes upgraded its defenses against
Anglo-Gascon marauders, who also attacked places across Béarn. The count of Foix
led French forces in the taking of the town and castle of Puymirol; the French also
bolstered their garrisons in key castles. English machinations in the Low Countries
in 1336 so exasperated Philip VI that he ordered the confiscation of Guyenne in
53
May 1337. Unbeknownst to people at the time, this decision marked the onset of
the Hundred Years’ War, a conflict that in time lent further momentum to the patterns and developments already underway since the late thirteenth century.
As France entered the Hundred Years’ War, no uniform system of public taxation emerged but instead there developed a wide range of varying practices and
expedient understandings on fiscal matters, though patterns and habits were beginning to take root, particularly in the towns that later helped to shape the further
development of urban fortifications. In effect, the French crown began to cede to
the towns the right to collect established war subsidies for the purposes of local
security that the crown could no longer guarantee. An early example of this trend
occurred when Tournai escaped royal taxation in 1328 in order to prepare local
defenses.80 The transition to stone and brick fortifications along the edges of these
medieval towns reflected the growing complexity of the urban communities within
them. Within the walls, there developed intramural rivalries and conflicts between
competing groups within the urban elite as well as wider social tensions, and occasional violence with popular classes. Striving for more independence meant more
responsibilities for municipal governments, particularly in self-defense. The organization of civic militias usually accompanied the demarcation of the militarized
perimeter; shops specializing in the manufacture and sale of arms also proliferated
to provide the wherewithal for defense. All of this depended on the continuing
development of a market system. Urban economies continued to grow and diversify
as commercial ties deepened both locally and regionally. New guilds and professional groupings, such as lawyers and notaries, continued to form. In this dynamic
society, communal unity often proved very fragile but also surprisingly resilient.
Soaring crenellated walls and mighty fortified gates created a greater sense of separation between towns and the outside world that began in the suburbs then radiated outward into plat pays and beyond. This estrangement imbued the culture of
the bonnes villes with a strong sense of identity that became expressed in parchment
charters embossed with great wax seals, heraldic devices, and special insignia, and
its new skyline defined by walls, towers, and church spires. These interconnected
urban networks knit the kingdom together in terms of economics, social values,
and civic culture even as the competing dynastic claims of the French and English
crowns tore it apart during the long and complex struggle waged over the next
century.
Pa r t I I
Th e Wa l l s Mov e O u t wa r d (1 3 2 5 – 16 0 0)
Ch apter 4
B O N N E S V I L L E S and the Hundred
Years’ W ar
N
o one in the 1330s knew it marked the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War.
Apart from the succession dispute, the main reasons for fighting—to secure land
and men’s loyalties—remained little changed since the twelfth century. Yet for towns
in France, this period brought decisive change in their governance and appearance.
The crisis and near collapse of royal authority, particularly under Charles VI and
the minority of his son, the Dauphin, together with the escalating scale of war
and the advent of gunpowder, altered both the rule of kings and the social order.
These conflicts made possible, indeed necessary, ever greater urban independence
and expenditure as towns assumed more responsibility for their own security. The
result was the imposing crenellated stone and brick walls and towers considered
today so archetypical of medieval towns.
The Crisis of Royal Authority
Towns usually do not spring to mind when thinking about the Hundred Years’
War.1 Instead, dramatic battles and personalities vividly color historical narratives that first began in the contemporary works of Froissart and Christine de
Pisan.2 Efforts to control territory, however, largely hinged on either concessions
to towns or sieges to take them. Concessions took the form of expanded liberties
and tax powers, while siege warfare increased in scale and complexity. The dukes
of Burgundy, for example, prospered by playing to the urban crowd, whereas the
counts of Flanders did not. English success partly derived from adjusting early on
to the new power of towns. When Charles VII followed suit after 1430, French
resurgence soon followed.3 Until then, aristocratic disdain for bourgeois culture
was particularly pronounced at the new Valois court.4 Indeed, the French disasters
at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt arose out of an excess of noble élan. While these
battles affected the course of the war, sieges largely shaped its ebb and flow given
the critical importance of walled towns as places to garrison soldiers and muster
companies, stockpile food and armaments, assemble a skilled work force, and procure a ready source of cash.
In the fourteenth century, war finance destabilized public order through excessive borrowing and periodic currency devaluations. A telling indicator of the
extent of the French crown’s taxing powers can be seen in the census of hearths
and parishes conducted in 1327–1328. The lands excluded from it included the
remaining apanages of Alençon, Artois, Bourbon, and Evreux, and a few great
58
fiefs, namely, Blois, Brittany, Burgundy, Flanders, Nevers, and Guyenne.5 Urban
leaders responded by assuming even more responsibility over local governance. An
early example occurred in February 1335 when forty-four northern French towns
met to discuss the closure of the royal mints, as did towns in the south.6 While
regional assemblies offered initial great promise, this devolution of public authority
to walled towns occurred in more fragmented fashion, especially after the Estates
General of 1357 brought about the revolt in Paris led by Étienne Marcel.7 Indeed,
late medieval state-building in France arose from below in a piecemeal process
of negotiation and resistance that profoundly altered the governance and physical
aspect of walled towns.8
This shift toward local self-governance also reflected the limited ability of either
side to secure fortified places but for a short time, which in turn affected war
finances.9 The French crown mainly relied on Paris and Rouen to fill its coffers, but
faced rising resistance there and elsewhere to its requests for more revenues as conflict with the English escalated after 1337. Philip VI’s attempt to impose a hearth
tax in Languedoc sparked wide unrest. His ensuing negotiations with towns confirmed their privileges in exchange for a reduced lump sum payment to the crown,
sometimes euphemistically styled a “loan.” Local municipal officials also gained
more control over tax collection. In their protests, towns across the kingdom often
cited the deficiencies of their fortifications to argue for keeping any money raised
locally to meet local needs first. In 1340, Périgueux, for example, levied a special
tax for its fortifications that the crown effectively covered by granting the town an
exemption for a like amount.10 As setbacks mounted for Philip VI in the 1340s, he
thus ceded to his bonnes villes greater measures of self-rule.11
English ambitions on the continent initially suffered more from overreach than
from a lack of resources. When Edward III annulled his oath of homage to Philip VI
and proclaimed himself King of France in 1337, he sent an expeditionary force to
Aquitaine under Henry of Lancaster, duke of Derby. This army quickly conquered
Périgord and the Agenais by successfully besieging bastides and castles.12 Few places
put up a fight lest they suffer brutal reprisals. These early, easy gains soon unraveled
because of Edward III’s preoccupation with the Low Countries, however.13 While
his forces ravaged the Thiérache in 1339, he lost control of Ponthieu and areas north
of the Gironde. The French pushed south through Saintonge toward Bordeaux as
the last English footholds in the Agenais surrendered. Meanwhile, Philip VI’s main
ally in Gascony, Gaston III, count of Foix, laid waste to lands south of the Adour
but ultimately failed to capture any significant English fortresses or bastides. Yet
Valois’s gains in the south opened the way for Flanders, by far the kingdom’s richest province, to join up with the English. Walled towns in France responded to the
fluidity of these conflicts by fending for themselves because the king’s armies could
not protect them.14 This emphasis on self-defense explains why the French defeats
at Crécy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356, where King John II was captured, did not
result in a significant loss of territory.15 After 1415, it was English cannons blasting
away at Norman towns more than the battle of Agincourt that opened the way for
Henry V’s successes (see map 4.1).
In the fourteenth century, the basic framework governing the French crown’s
fiscal relations with town burghers became established and endured until the end
of the Old Regime. Royal domains constituted the principal ordinary source of
income, after which clerical tenths, feudal aids from the nobility, and war subsidies
from towns made up the king’s “extraordinary” revenues. New arguments based
Map 4.1
Hundred Years’ War.
60
on public necessity provided added justification.16 Feudal aids levied to ransom
John II in the 1360s solidified the trend toward commuting the military service of
the nobility and towns into cash payments to hire mercenaries. Royal bailiffs and
seneschals, men closely tied to local urban and noble families, exacted dues, particularly on domainal lands. Periodic attempts at more central control, particularly
through the king’s Chambres des Comptes, never seriously challenged increasing
local control over the royal tax system.17
In contrast to the French crown, English rulers enjoyed advantages beyond
the much vaunted longbow. Their better financial footing based on the wool
trade reliably supplied revenues for its fight against the French.18 Second, their
long hostilities with the Welsh and Scots gave the English considerable experience with defending a frontier and dealing with small-scale insurgency so typical of the Hundred Years’ War.19 Finally came the early recognition that control
of Normandy and Gascony began in the major towns such as Bordeaux, Rouen,
and Caen where they cultivated close relations with merchant groups and local
urban notables.20 Commercial exemptions and preferments inspired the allegiance
of Gascon and Norman towns, particularly among wine producers in the Bordelais
and cloth merchants in Rouen.21 One of Edward III’s first acts after the capture of
Calais in 1347 was to grant the city a privileged position for the transit of English
cloth, lead, and tin.22 In turn, these trade relations generated revenues for fortification work.23 Towns also formed regional trade networks that over time became
paramilitary organizations.24 Even after Henry V’s invasion of northern France in
1415, Gascony still depended on the urban league organized by Bordeaux rather
than an English army for its protection against the Dauphinists.25 Larger towns
sometimes tried to shift the burden of their own defense to smaller burgs, which
only bred resentment. The duke of Bedford’s like efforts to create regional leagues
in Anglo-Normandy around Caen and Rouen proved much less successful in large
part because he could not quell the riotous behavior of his soldiers.26 A common
reaction, particularly in Anglo-Gascony and Anglo-Normandy, was to launch an
appeal to the Parlement of Paris, which gave the French Crown a convenient excuse
to intervene. When Anglo-Gascon towns fell to the French in the 1440s, they
occasionally sought indemnities from Paris to cover the additional cost of shipping
wine to England.27
The laws of war at the time recognized for towns that the local necessity of
self-defense often trumped broader loyalties to lords and kings.28 In addition, the
greater independence towns enjoyed from outside interference rose as their stone
and brick walls became higher and thicker.29 Broad principles of royal sovereignty
became articulated by the king’s lawyers, but real policy relied on pragmatic negotiation with local elites, especially over taxation.30 After the disasters of the 1340s,
the French crown gradually transferred to towns, along with the right to levy taxes,
greater control over their assessment. In time, town finances relied upon annual
auctions of municipal tax farms over octroi and aides, rental properties, guild fees,
and fines. The bulk of these revenues went into local fortifications, although the
monarchy still occasionally demanded cash payments and forced loans, all of which
usually required confirmation of chartered privileges. Even Charles VII prudently
concentrated on taxing the countryside rather than towns to support his new
standing army in the 1430s.31
Towns began sustained investment in new stone and brick fortifications just as
France entered a prolonged period of economic stagnation and heightened mortality
B O N N E S V I L L E S & t h e Hu n dr e d Ye a r s’ Wa r
61
caused by the Black Death.32 One response was better record-keeping tracking how
towns spent this money.33 Another was the formation of public debt. Start-up costs
often relied on the sale of life annuities (rentes viagères) bought by local elites who
benefited from better security and the 3–5 percent rate of return.34 Managing public debt thus accompanied the assumption of greater control over local taxes. All
this also required an increase in the size and jurisdictional competence of municipal government. While fortification construction dominated municipal account
books after 1300, towns undertook lots of related infrastructure projects for civic
buildings, street improvements, new fountains, and marketplaces. The physical
aspect of towns both inside and on the edge thus changed dramatically in the late
Middle Ages.35
The shift from taxes on real property to indirect excises effectively meant peasant producers and urban consumers paid for most municipal building projects,
not wealthy elites.36 Town fathers tried to promote among the populace a broader
commitment to the common good to justify such sacrifices; they also punished
tax evaders and shirkers whenever possible. This sense of the public good often
crumbled most tragically during a protracted siege. At the 1446 siege of Rouen,
for example, town officials, anxious to stretch food supplies, expelled peasant refugees, women, children, and the urban poor whom they considered to be “useless
mouths” (bouches inutiles).37 Rarely did a besieging army allow these poor wretches
through their lines; instead, they suffered a piteous fate trapped outside the very
walls they had helped to build through their labor and taxes.
Urban strife frequently turned on questions of taxation and commodity prices.38
With military successes in the 1370s, Charles V enjoyed a fleeting period of fiscal
solvency that led him, shortly before his death in 1380, to decree the elimination of the hearth tax (fouage) established in 1327. Subsequent financial problems
and Charles VI’s ill-advised decision to reestablish even higher levies resulted in
France’s first widespread tax revolt.39 It began in Rouen with an uprising known
as the Harelle. Residents saw the rise in excises on salt and wine as a direct contravention of the town’s recent new charter accorded by Louis X in 1315. The civic
militia did little to suppress the ensuing unrest. When the French crown finally
restored order in 1391, it severely curtailed Rouen’s autonomy and demolished its
oldest tower to symbolize its subjugation. Rouen’s welcome of English occupation
twenty-five years later stemmed from lingering hard feelings. In the Massif Central
after 1382, armed bands known as the Tuchins also refused to pay new royal taxes
and attacked royal officials before their eventual suppression several years later by
Jean, duke of Berry.40 Finally, and perhaps most spectacularly, was the revolt of the
Maillotins in Paris. Also sparked by the reestablishment of recently abolished taxes,
the Maillotins—named after the lead hammers (mailles) rioters wielded—attacked
royal tax collectors and money-lenders before their brutal suppression by the king’s
soldiers.41 All these agitations confirmed the French crown’s diminishing ability to
monitor municipal finances as new stone-and-brick fortifications went up around
the bonnes villes during the Hundred Years’ War.
While factions in towns sometimes clashed over how to pay for new fortifications, the willingness of towns to invest in self-defense rose in tandem with heightened insecurities after 1340.42 Banditry, Free Companies of marauding soldiers
known as “flayers” (écorcheurs) and fearsome raids (chevauchées) sowed panic across
the kingdom.43 With payments perpetually in arrears, company captains, such as
Jean V de Bueil, count of Sancerre, known as the “fléau des Anglais” (plague of
62
the English), relished attacking towns for the rich spoils they offered.44 The sack
of Poitiers in 1346 by English raiders and the pillaging of Amiens in 1358 after
artillery bombardment by the king of Navarre convinced both towns to reorganize
and expand their militias.45 The 1355 chevauchée by the Black Prince was especially
infamous. In mid-summer, he set out with several hundred men from Bordeaux
to ravage Languedoc as he worked his way back through southern Gascony laying
waste to upward of five hundred towns and villages not loyal to England.46 Violent
struggles in Provence as comtal power collapsed after 1348 continued intermittently over the next fifty years. As a result, local lords such as Raymond de Turenne
were able to hold sway over and extort money (pâtis) from vulnerable communities
through controlling a system of fortresses in the countryside.47 French soldiers
did much the same to Burgundy twenty years earlier.48 Rural revolts, such as the
Jacqueries, stoked fears in towns too.49 These heightened insecurities fueled local
willingness to invest in self-defense.
Walling Towns in Stone and Brick
At the outset of the Hundred Years’ War, most French towns possessed defenses that
ranged from barely adequate to woefully deficient. A 1335 general survey revealed
the deplorable condition of so many places across the kingdom. The enceintes
of Saint-Quentin and Rheims, for example, which guarded the main approaches
toward Paris from the north and east, remained only half-completed. A century
later, however, most French towns possessed sophisticated, multilayered defenses
already beginning to adapt to new gunpowder weapons. This transformation of the
urban fabric recast the composition of communities within these enhanced walls as
well as their relations with regional and royal authorities. The Hundred Years’ War
was no simple struggle between the French and English but rather a congeries of
regional conflicts often only loosely related to dynastic interests. The resulting violence reinforced these earlier regional patterns and forms of urban development.
On occasion, the French crown asserted it age-old regalian right to control
the walls of towns in the kingdom. In 1320, the monarchy appointed two masters of works to every province to work with municipal officials to improve urban
defenses.50 Following the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, which marked the highpoint
of English hegemony on the Continent, the French crown continued to push its
bonnes villes to repair and expand their enceintes. Charles V issued an edict in Sens
on July 19, 1367, that ordered all his bonnes villes to repair their fortifications immediately. He even gave special permission to towns to harvest timber from domainal
forests. An informal royal fortification service began to take shape on January 31,
1371, when he ordered every bailli in the kingdom to hire two or three men with
military experience, called chevaliers in the decree, to inspect all fortifications in
their districts.51 Few bonnes villes resisted the crown’s entreaties given their recent
experiences and recognition that the best defense began at home. Such emergency
decrees could not mask the fact that towns controlled their enceintes, not agents of
the crown until at least the 1430s. The shift to stone-and-brick enceintes in towns
thus largely occurred at the local level and on local initiative.
One exception for the Capetians was La Rochelle. Attacks by the Black Prince
in the 1350s convinced La Rochelle to shift its allegiance to Charles V in 1372.
In return, the French crown lavished even more privileges on the town and placed
its municipal government under local merchants and professionals. Charles V
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appointed a royal governor in 1373 to oversee a revamping of the town’s defenses.
The old royal castle was torn down in the late fourteenth century and its stones
used to extend and strengthen the enceinte. The crown periodically expanded
La Rochelle’s privileges in the fifteenth century to build, maintain, and upgrade
defenses that eventually became among the most sophisticated of any bonne ville
in France.
While the Capetians ceded more control to towns over their fortifications, other
feudatory lords remained fully engaged in directing (and paying for) work on urban
defenses in their domains. None were more active than the dukes of Burgundy,
who between 1363 and 1419 sent their agents on regular inspection tours, writing
reports and making recommendations not only on military matters but also on how
to improve commerce and attract new residents.52 The dukes insisted that any alteration to a town’s fortifications required their authorization.53 Towns in Hainault
had to submit their plans for inspection and approval before any contracts could be
issued.54 Bolstering ducal authority, in fact, sometimes appeared to be the principal
objective, as, for example, in the rebuilding of the châteaux in Écluse in 1384 and
Coutrai in 1386. They also at times commanded persons living in the vicinity of
a walled towns, the so-called retrayants, to shoulder some of the costs of building
fortifications, arguing that they could take refuge there in case of emergency.55 In
1412, in Dole, for example, Duke Jean the Fearless agreed to pay a lump sum of
three hundred livres annually for work on the enceinte, provided the town contributed six hundred livres toward the same end.56 Burgundian dukes thus leveraged
their own resources to convince towns to commit to costly fortification projects.
Even so, insecurity remained high and local commitment to invest in self-defense
rose accordingly.57
Ducal suzerainty in Brittany became recognized across most of the Armorican
peninsula by 1300. The decision by Duke Jean III in 1317 to reconstitute the apanage of Penthièvre for his younger brother, Guy, split the duchy and paved the way
twenty-five years later for the War of Ducal Succession. This conflict pitted Jean
de Montfort, supported by the English, against Charles de Blois, backed by the
French. On the eve of that conflict, local lords and increasingly the duke dominated
Breton towns. But just as occurred in towns in Capetian domains, war opened the
ways for Breton towns to acquire greater control over their own self-defense as
ducal authority weakened. Jean de Montfort and Charles de Blois both encouraged municipal independence to win the loyalty of townspeople. In fact, Jeanne de
Penthièvre, Charles’ wife, convoked a meeting of the Estates General of Brittany
in 1352 where for the first time towns sent delegates to represent the Third Estate.
Municipal governance of Breton towns became shared between elected councils
and military commanders (capitaines) appointed by the ruling seigneur, usually the
duke but not always.58 Together, the capitaine and town officials assumed control
over local revenues to fund new fortifications since the Breton War of Succession
mainly consisted of sieges. Rennes changed hands three times in the 1350s, while
Vannes underwent four sieges in 1342 followed by a twenty-year occupation by
the English, for example. Urban fortifications in stone and brick went up around
many Breton towns after 1350s in response to these insecurities, though a number
still relied in the 1400s on earthen ramparts and wooden stockades. Despite their
low level of commercial development, Breton towns in general undertook significant modernization of their fortifications comparable to trends in wealthier, more
urbanized areas of the kingdom.
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The triumph of the Montforts in 1364, with English help, brought efforts to
roll back these recent gains in municipal liberty by restoring ducal authority over
Breton towns. In response, many Breton towns opened their gates to the French.59
Charles V of France, however, pushed the Breton towns right back into the arms
of Duke Jean IV when his constable Olivier Clisson tried to annex the duchy by
force in 1379. Over the next half-century, the Montfort dukes of Brittany sponsored the construction of new or expanded ducal citadels in over two dozen Breton
towns. Breton baronial families, such as the Lavals, Rohans, and Rieux, did the
same in burgs under their lordship. Examples include the Château de l’Hermine in
Vannes, the Tour Neuve in Nantes, and new donjons erected in Dinan, Brest, and
Saint-Malo. In exchange, Breton dukes and lords granted these towns fiscal selfgovernance and the right to fortify and raise militias so long as they paid for them.
Their mutual relationship thus remained a partnership that affirmed ducal and
seigneurial suzerainty in exchange for confirming a reduced, but still significant
measure of municipal autonomy in the shift to stone and brick enceintes.
In Normandy, the most important urban fortification project of the fourteenth
century focused on Rouen. In 1346, Philip VI authorized a new expanded stone
and brick enclosure around the old town and selected suburbs. Work began on
westside neighborhoods of Saint-Eloi, Sainte-Hilaire, and Aubevoie and then
extended eastward until it enclosed an area twice the size contained within the
earlier twelfth-century enceinte. As Rouen’s periphery became solidified, its militia
was reorganized under the command of the mayor. Despite their wealth, few other
towns in Normandy received the right to erect new, more formidable defenses—a
factor that contributed to the province’s easy conquest by the English in 1410s and
the French in the 1440s.60
Fortification projects reflected the dramatic increase in municipal state power
perhaps most fully.61 Town councils needed to decide about where to build, what
to demolish, what businesses to be relocated—all of which required expanded statutory and enforcement powers. They appointed new kinds of public functionaries,
such as comptrollers and masters of works, to oversee these projects, subcontracting different tasks to specialized groups such as masons, carpenters, ropemakers,
and haulers.62 Work gangs of up to one thousand persons strong, including women
and children, needed to be organized to excavate and haul materials. The resulting
stone towers and brick walls testified to the remarkable capacity of urban authorities to mobilize vast resources for self-defense.63 The pace of construction, as well
as its extent and complexity, depended on the commitment of a town’s residents to
finance their enceinte. Amiens, for example, already possessed considerable newstyle defenses by the 1350s, while Lisieux, by contrast, did not seriously invest in
them until the 1420s, and then largely at the prompting of the duke of Bedford.
Towns assumed direct responsibility for their own fortification as part of their
traditional duties or devoirs de cloison.64 These duties included managing entry and
egress, raising bridges and opening gates, and the regulation of markets and manufactures. In Nantes, taxes known as the méage, a word that derived from muid, a
measure for grains and beverages, and the “farthing for a pound” (denier par livre)
underwrote fortification costs.65 Other special levies for paving (devoirs de pavaige)
and streets (droit de passage) raised funds too. Borrowing through bonds or rentes
also became necessary. Administering these finances in turn spawned the expansion of municipal government to employ more officers and define more regulations
as local state authority grew.
65
Fortification construction and maintenance consumed huge amounts of
resources.66 Lille was typical of many as nearly 50 percent of its annual revenues
went into its stone-and-brick enceinte during the fourteenth century; when hostilities ebbed in the mid-fifteenth century, it still spent nearly half the amount on its
walls and intricate system of water defenses. Determining the wall’s circumference
meant balancing projected costs with anticipated revenues; deciding which faubourgs, if any, could be incorporated within the walls; and arranging the unpleasant expropriations to clear away private residences and church buildings standing
in the way.67 Towns sought to economize by recycling materials wherever possible;
the demolitions of buildings necessary to expand a town’s defensive perimeter provided fill and salvageable brick, wood, and metal for immediate reuse. The new
walls built for both Orléans and Bourges in the fourteenth century even contained
Gallo-Roman detritus. Sometimes the demolitions that came as a consequence of
military defeat opened the way for advances in fortification design and sophistication when they were rebuilt.68 Tours saw crossbow platforms (hourds) built along
the perimeter of its citadel in 1365. The expanded military periphery opened up
commercial opportunities for towns to exploit. Towns often leased out towers and
gatehouses and sold fishing and pastorage rights to moats and the glacis. Mention
is even found of rabbit warrens in ditches. Municipal authorities had to police the
periphery to prevent unlicensed use or even theft of stone and timber.
Town officials invoked the idea of the public good to argue for the common
obligation of all inhabitants to build and maintain ramparts, a symbol of municipal
liberty. The share of such costs fell disproportionately on the lower classes. Direct
taxes on property owners provided a fairly insubstantial part of the funds necessary
for building, in large part because those who held wealth usually enjoyed various exemptions that the crown confirmed in a town’s charter.69 In lieu of paying
taxes, urban notables made voluntary bequests to the town or, in an emergency,
forced loans. Churchmen often resisted, claiming clerical immunity, even though
the crown regularly denied it.70 Although the crown sometimes threatened to confiscate church property for failure to pay, clergy commonly found it possible to have
their contributions construed as a free gift (don gratuit) to preserve at least a fictitious exemption. These amounts hardly approached the sums generated by excise
taxes on essentials such as wine, beer, and salt.71
The inelasticity of these products together with a town’s role as regional market center put urban officials in a privileged position to reach into the pockets of
consumers, rich and poor alike.72 Wine and beer taxes alone provided upward of
50 percent of a town’s revenues; indeed, the mighty walls of late medieval towns
stood as sober testimony to their inhabitants’ unquenchable thirst for alcoholic
beverages. Municipal surveillance of markets and taverns sought compliance but
encouraged subterfuge. The very walls and gates built with these revenues furthered
their collection. The regressive character of excise taxes expanded the boundaries of
the urban community, as did the conscription of labor gangs, known as pioneers,
from among the urban poor and the forced contributions of surrounding peasant
villages to work on a town’s walls.73 Tax evasion or efforts to shift the burdens of a
town’s defense to other neighboring burgs or villages in the countryside increased as
the Hundred Years’ War went on, as did open resistance to the tax collector.
Yet open resistance paled in comparison to the silent compliance to increasing
levels of taxation during the Hundred Years’ War, for the ability of town governments to undertake such large-scale projects hinged on the willingness of residents
66
to make these tremendous, ongoing investments of capital and labor. In this way,
a town’s walls stood first and foremost as evidence of local public spiritedness that
gave real life to the puffed-up rhetoric about civic liberty long found in municipal
charters. This commitment sometimes proved to be episodic, rising in tandem with
insecurity and diminishing in times of peace. Public support also frayed when law
suits held up construction if property owners sought either to block expropriations
or win higher indemnities. Such communal cooperation also informed fortification
construction in peasant villages and bastides.74 This massive investment in protection, while not a guarantee against a successful siege, raised considerably the stakes
of such an undertaking by the enemy, be he a local seigneur, marauding mercenary
commander, or the king. Localized state power in towns thus became stronger
than that exercised by territorial rulers at the time.
When circumstances finally compelled townspeople to begin building walls,
they did so in earnest after the mid-fourteenth century. The age of cathedrals then
gave way to the age of urban fortifications, which permanently changed the country’s political landscape. By the mid-fifteenth century, virtually every bonne ville
possessed the distinctive curtain wall, often machicolated and replete with towers
and fortified gates, fronted by either a ditch or a moat. If funds permitted, faubourgs were often encompassed by the works, along with adjoining pastures, cultivated fields, and vineyards. As urban fortifications became more substantial, it was
not long before residents began to petition for the right to build up against or even
atop them; failing that, people sometimes simply arrogated rights to the enceinte
by pilfering materials, punching through drain pipes, or even hidden entryways.
The demographic collapse after 1350 at best temporarily relieved pressures to burst
out of the restraints imposed by the newly militarized urban edge.
The Advent of Gunpowder Weapons
Gunpowder was invented in Song China and used for both ceremonial and military
purposes, as it would in Europe. Several sources suggest knowledge of how to make
gunpowder arrived in the West after the mid-thirteenth century. In 1249, Roger
Bacon alluded to a mysterious compound that resembles gunpowder in his Epistolae
de secretis operibus. Twenty years later, in his Opus tritium, Bacon provided a reasonably correct formula for its manufacture as well as warned about the mixture’s
explosive power. The polymath Albert the Great left a compilation from around
1270 that included a piece attributed to a certain “Marcus Graecus,” entitled Liber
Igneum ad comburendos hostes. In it can be found several recipes for making gunpowder. Murky references to wartime applications of gunpowder appear during the
early fourteenth century in the Low Countries, Spain, and Italy. Only in the late
1330s do the first indications of gunpowder weapons, the so-called pot-de-fer guns,
begin to show up in France.75
Over the next several decades, evidence of gunpowder weapons in Western
Europe quickly proliferates as do signs of the first responses in fortification design.
In 1345, the French had two dozen cannons made in Cahors for use at the siege
of Aiguillon. Thirty years later at the siege of Saint-Sauveur, the French reportedly deployed over thirty guns. The Burgundians reportedly used 140 cannons
that fired stone balls during the siege of Odruik in 1377, though that same year
Charles V of France captured 134 places in Guyenne without the use of a single
gun.76 In the 1411 siege of Ham, forces under Jean II the Fearless reportedly fired
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three shots from a bombard known as Griet, built in Saint-Omer, upon which the
town capitulated. Christine de Pisan mentioned gunpowder weapons several times
in her history of the reign of Charles V composed around 1410.
Weapons and fortifications underwent both transitional adaptation and radical invention during the Hundred Years’ War. For example, the trebuchet was
long used mainly against soft targets such as gates and battlements, and continued
alongside gunpowder artillery well into the fifteenth century; similarly, crossbows,
invented in the eleventh century, persisted in the early modern period and greatly
shaped the design of hand-held gunpowder weapons. Heavy artillery in the form of
bombards and mortars complemented rather than supplemented traditional siege
engines such as the battering ram and trebuchet. They gradually tipped the scales
in favor of the attack once a besieging force deployed and supplied enough guns
to pulverize a town’s thick walls. Traditions of technological innovation remained
vibrant even before the full advent of gunpowder, as, for example, in the notebooks of the physician and engineer Guido de Vigevano, who entered the service
of Philip VI in 1335. Vigevano offered to build novel military machines, such as
self-propelled wagons and siege engines. This same imagination allied with craft
expertise in metallurgy fueled the rapid technological development of gunpowder
weapons after 1350.
Early gunpowder weaponry fell into three general categories: hand-held guns,
varying in size and appellation, such the arquebus and culverin; light cannon,
known as a veuglaire, capable of firing balls up to one hundred pounds at a range
of 400–650 yards; and heavy mortars that launched balls of up to eight hundred
pounds over 600 yards, though only twice per day because loading was a complicated, time-consuming process. At first, cannons consisted of wooden tubes
reinforced by iron rings, something a wheelwright built. Prone to frightening
explosions, cannon crews likely prayed fervently to St. Barbara, their patron saint,
before lighting the touch hole. By the early fourteenth century, single-cast barrels
out of iron began to be forged, then in bronze, which held up very well to the stress
of repeated firings. Improvements in gun carriages, which by the 1430s became
regularly equipped with wheels, lent greater mobility to such weaponry while on
campaign. While lead balls are mentioned as early as 1368, stone balls remained in
use into the early fifteenth century, when they first began to be wrapped in iron
then eventually entirely cast in iron. Difficulties in deployment, slow rates of fire
and inaccuracy, gas leaks that sapped a shot’s velocity, the unreliability of poorly
corned gunpowder, all hindered the effectiveness of gunpowder artillery in siege
warfare. As these problems were overcome, so the new technology became increasingly decisive in sieges and field engagements. Casting cannon and shot opened
the way for calibration, which brought greater efficiency, though the full benefits
of standardizing gun bores and missiles was not realized until the seventeenth
century. Finally, improvements in the corning of gunpowder made it burn more
evenly, which both reduced the chance of an accident and improved a gun’s accuracy. Yet refinements in the assault potential of gunpowder weapons, both cannons
and hand-held guns, also carried over into their use to defend a place.
Henry V’s campaign in Normandy in the 1410s marked the first time gunpowder weapons played a decisive role in the Hundred Years’ War. The campaign
largely consisted of the slow, methodical besieging and capture of fortified places,
beginning with Harfleur.77 Most Norman towns possessed antiquated defenses and
readily surrendered, such as Caen. An exception was Rouen, whose recently rebuilt
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defenses withstood an English siege from July 1418 to January 1419.78 Rouen’s
suburbs and fortifications suffered heavy damage from English cannons that took
decades to repair. The town of Montargis similarly suffered during its 1427 siege by
the English.79 At the siege of Orléans in 1428–1429, the duke of Bedford decided
against taking guns from English-held towns, especially Paris, and instead opted to
starve out the Dauphinist garrison.80 This misdirected siege strategy set the stage
for Jeanne d’Arc’s dramatic rescue of the city. The English also never took the MontSaint-Michel despite a long siege from 1434 to 1435 because the citadel was out of
range of enemy gun emplacements on the mainland.81 The effective use of artillery
in field battles came later at the battles of Formigny in 1450 and Castillon in 1453
because of improved gun carriages. In both cases, however, a charge of heavy cavalry, not the guns, turned the tide in favor of the French. The enhanced mobility
of French artillery also enabled Charles VII to concentrate it effectively during his
campaign to retake Normandy, as at Pontoise in 1441 and Dieppe in 1443.
Noble commanders in the Hundred Years’ War, such as Jean de Bueil, count
of Sancerre, already recognized that successful sieges—both for the attacker and
defenders—hinged on a sustained concentration of resources, technologies, and
new forms of organization, all key tenets in the emergence of modern warfare.82
Design innovations perhaps derived in part from growing familiarity with classical military theory and practices. Early treatises on military engineering, such as
Fra Egidio Colonna’s De regimine principum libri tre, composed in 1285, and Fra
Bartolomeo Carusi’s Tractatus de re bellica, which appeared in 1345, circulated
in France and provided readers an introduction to classical Greco-Roman writers,
particularly Vegetius, Frontinus, and Aineas the Tactician, on the subjects of fortifications and siege warfare.83 In fact, Colonna even dedicated his work to Philip IV
of France. Fortification design remained largely in the hands of indigenous skilled
artisans who drew on their own local craft traditions for inspiration. Familiarity
with gunpowder weapons not only arose from new forms of urban warfare, but
towns also pioneered this new technology in terms of its manufacture in foundries
and saltpeter works. Towns thus made possible the very technology that threatened
to destroy them.84
The impact of gunpowder technology on fortification design was evolutionary
rather than revolutionary. Debates over these architectural responses arise because
gunpowder weaponry prompted piecemeal adaptation of established fortification
features rather than new designs until the development in fifteenth-century Italy
of the bastioned trace. These modifications occurred as municipal defenses continued their late medieval transition to stone and brick.85 These fortification features,
present beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, offered improved fields of fire for
crossbows and then guns as well as distance to keep siege engines and then cannons
at bay. Stricter enforcement and expansion of the non aedificandi zone outside the
enceinte up to one hundred yards represented one of the earliest responses to gunpowder weaponry, despite constant pressures by residents to intrude upon this vital
space separating the town from the outside world.
Existing masonry techniques allowed builders to reinforce fortifications in the
face of gunpowder weapons. Laying bricks in interlocking angled rows, with cut
stone on all corners, top edging, base, and interspersed in the walls—sometimes
vertically or in arcs—added reinforcement. The initial premium placed on a wall’s
height gradually gave way over the fifteenth century to an emphasis on a more
horizontally oriented defense-in-depth. The profile of the outer walls also began
69
to slope slightly inward and became thickened with a terraced rampart up against
the interior side to withstand artillery barrages as the force of the cannon balls
became absorbed into the pile. The wall in effect became a sort of skin covering
the earthen rampart. Gates received a good deal of attention as they were potentially the most vulnerable spots along the enceinte. Fronting ditches increased in
depth and width, which helped to provide the material for the earthen rampart;
they also became more articulated with respect to maximizing fields of fire and
bolstering outworks, such as barbicans, boulevards, and half-moons, which became
increasingly common features in urban fortifications after the mid-fifteenth century. Covered wooden firing stations hanging atop the walls (hourds) were replaced
by stone galleries that provided protected defensive fire from small and medium
guns both straight ahead and along the wall’s flanks. Intermediate defensive works
included the escarpment, counter-escarpment, and occasionally a low-lying parapet
(fausse braie) that ran between the base of the ramparted enceinte and the main
ditch. Builders also modified firing slits (archères) to meet the needs of hand-held
guns and artillery (cannonières). Covered firing galleries (casemates) built into the
base of the rampart, ventilated to remove the smoke of spent gunpowder, also
began to appear during the fifteenth century, as did artillery platforms, often placed
on cropped towers. Beyond the counter-escarpment lay the glacis, which steadily
increased in size to keep pace with improved gun ranges. Ditches also diminished
the exposed profile of the enceinte since much of it lay below the lip of the ditch.
Many towns, especially in northern France and the Low Countries, took advantage
of water in urban defenses through moats and controlled floods. A very sophisticated system of defense-in-depth developed, posing multiple obstacles in the path
of any attacker, from the portcullis to the drawbridge, postern, and fronted by
detached forts and blockhouses as walled towns responded to the threat posed by
gunpowder weaponry in the fifteenth century.
Little evidence of these early adaptations, such as the massive earthworks raised
around Paris under Charles V, exists today. On the Right Bank, the most likely
direction of approach by an invader, these dirt mounds rose over thirty-five feet
high and were crowned by a wooden palisade and fronted by a watery moat. Only
in scale, not design, did these fortifications really differ from those found around
early medieval burgs in the tenth century. On the east of Paris, Charles V also
had erected the massive fortified citadel known as the Bastille to protect the Porte
Saint-Antoine, while to the southeast rose the Château de Vincennes. While the
capital’s periphery became strengthened, the original royal palace at the Louvre
gradually lost its military features and instead became primarily a residence for
the royal family and the court. None of these fortified works in Paris demonstrated a knowing adaptation to gunpowder weapons, which in any event neither
side ever deployed against the capital during the long conflict.
Ample architectural and textual evidence of early adaptations to gunpowder
weapons exists in towns from the Low Countries all the way south to Gascony
and Languedoc. Fortifications sometimes adapted older forms for new purposes.
A detached artillery outwork (boulevard d’artillerie) became devised during the
Armagnac siege of Arras in 1414. Additional constructions in timber and packed
earth transformed two barbicans into bastions to protect the town’s main gates. In
the 1420s, the first artillery towers appeared in Douai by cropping and reinforcing
the Tour des Dames, while crossbow firing platforms became gunner’s stations.86
At the Porte Notre-Dame, a series of interlocked guardhouses, reinforced entryways,
70
some thirty gunslits, chains, and portcullises came together to form a fortified
gate designed to protect from outside attack as well as potential betrayal within.
Lille was attacked in 1411 and 1414 during the war between the Armagnacs and
Burgundians.87 In advance of the 1411 Armagnac siege, Jean II, duke of Burgundy,
ordered the town to remove all trees and gardens around the town’s four-mile-long
perimeter and had the ditches cleared of debris. Six of Lille’s eight gates already had
barbicans in brick with firing slits for crossbowmen. Records from 1414 mention
the construction of two bastions (bollewers) out of packed earth and timber, similar to the ones at Douai, to protect the Porte Saint-Pierre and Porte Saint-Sauveur.
Firing slits for cannons in new blockhouses began to appear in the lower portions
of some towers. Lille’s royal château of Courtrai, built in the early thirteenth century, underwent extensive remodeling in the early 1400s to meet the gunpowder
challenge.88 Similar trends in architectural adaptation and innovation can be found
in Normandy.89 In Rouen, the English erected in the 1420s a new citadel on the
southwestern corner of the city that came to be called the Vieux Palais. It featured
traditional turrets with innovative gun slits. In 1419, they built a fort known as the
Barbicane on a small island to protect the bridge over the Seine from artillery fire.90
They established a foundry in the Halles in the 1430s to produce cannon and shot.
Elsewhere across Normandy, however, towns remained woefully underprepared to
defend against gunpowder and suffered accordingly during the last decade of the
Hundred Years’ War.91
Architectural responses to gunpowder only first became evident in Brittany
in the 1450s under Duke François II. By that time, more integrated defensive
ensembles could be erected based on past experience elsewhere in France and
Flanders. Dinan provides a case in point. Improvements to its enceinte came when
the Maréchal de Rieux, the duke’s second in command, commanded Jean II de
Coëtquen, ducal captain of Dinan, the Master of Artillery Jean de Mauhurgeon,
and Olivier Baud, war treasurer, to undertake the repairs to accommodate gunpowder weapons.92 Bastions (boulleverts) became incorporated into Dinan’s defenses
along with the construction of pentagonal barbicans to guard two of the town’s
four main gates. Five horseshoe-shaped artillery towers were added. Existing towers became converted into artillery blockhouses (cannonières). Rennes saw its walls
greatly enhanced during the first half of the fifteenth century to enclose two new
adjoining faubourgs. This new fortification construction largely adhered to the
existing defensive framework, adding to it and adapting it to meet the gunpowder
challenge later in the century. Older square towers became converted into artillery platforms, while rounded towers received new gunslits to provide flanking
fire along the curtain wall.93 Nantes erected two new sets of expanded defenses
between 1421 and 1476, which incorporated some of these new design features.
Evidence of these trends can also be found in the Loire valley. The fortifications of Orléans, for example, incorporated a mix of forms prior to the siege of
1428–1429. Rebuilt and expanded in stone and brick in 1356, its enceinte added
four earthwork bastions (boulevards) in 1414 to protect its main gates from artillery
attack. Both the French and English also built detached forts (bastilles) along the
river and around the town. Jeanne d’Arc’s daring frontal assaults on several of these
forts established her early reputation as a fearless, inspired leader.94 Further to the
south among the bastides, these trends became apparent by mid-century. Some, such
as Bonnegarde and Arouille in the Landes disappeared entirely as a result of this
conflict; others such as Aiguillon and Saint-Foy-la-Grande suffered terrible damage
71
from which they scarcely recovered. Bordeaux threw up boulevards in 1450–1451
to fend off the threat of French cannon. Such labors went unrewarded as the city
fell in early 1451.95 Some local lords sponsored building projects to protect against
gunpowder weapons. Parthenay, for example, withstood a four-month-long siege
by the Dauphin in 1419 but eventually fell in 1427 to Arthur de Richemont, constable of France and future duke of Brittany. One of his first acts was to strengthen
the château; fifteen years later came mention of a bastion to protect it from artillery attack.96 Older towers were cropped and transformed into artillery platforms
later in the century. Lisieux’s defenses after 1420 also used a mix of materials and
forms to enhance its enceinte. Thirteenth-century stone towers guarded the gates,
while the perimeter was a hybrid of masonry work and wooden palisades with
fronting ditches. Lisieux’s eastern edge actually still rested on its fourth-century
Gallo-Roman wall. An effort was made to reduce the vulnerability to cannonfire of
the stockaded portions of the wall by articulating outworks in the forms of firing
stations (guarites) and small timbered blockhouses (barbaquennes).
To the east in Burgundy, even the defenses of small towns such as Chablis underwent substantial modification during the Hundred Years’ War.97 In 1370, the royal
prévôt, the Sire de Noyers, added a square stone tower named the Tour du Roy to
reinforce the tenth-century walls around the lower town. Even the monks of nearby
Saint-Cosme erected a tower and strengthened the walls around their monastery to
protect against pillage.98 In Lorraine, Nancy’s eleventh-century enceinte expanded
in the fourteenth century under ducal leadership to enclose adjoining suburbs into
a more complex girdle of fortifications.99 Adaptations to gunpowder weaponry
appeared in 1435 in the form of bastions (bellewarts) and the establishment in 1458
of an artillery depot (grange).
The popular modern image of the medieval city as an unplanned, overcrowded
jumble more appropriately fits cities during the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, as the swelling defense-in-depth associated with the bastioned trace stifled any tendency toward urban growth by militarizing substantial acreage on the
periphery. This shift from the vertical emphasis of medieval fortifications to the
horizontal orientation of early modern defenses began during the Hundred Years’
War. It represented the single most significant structuring factor in shaping the
form and character of late medieval and early modern French towns.
Royal Resurgence and the B ONNES VILLES after 1430
After 1430, Charles VII and Louis XI used gunpowder weapons to excellent effect
to expel the English, subdue the Burgundians, and renew royal attempts to project
its full authority across the kingdom and beyond. Walled towns both contributed
to this royal agenda and represented a potential obstacle to it. In some places, the
monarchy constructed new royal citadels to dominate towns; in others it sponsored the construction of new enceintes; while in yet others it actively demolished
the walls of towns and castles. The partnership between the French crown and its
bonnes villes thus became increasingly problematic after the close of the Hundred
Years’ War.100
These changes coincided with the creation of a standing army and a royal artillery service. The Estates General of 1439 marked a watershed when it affirmed the
king’s monopoly over declaring war and peace, minting money, and authorized the
creation of the first standing army based on a permanent land tax, the taille, which
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largely fell on the peasantry. Returning to an earlier initiative by Charles V in the
1370s, Charles VII established in 1445 royal financial administrators who oversaw
all fortification projects that used royal revenues.101 This decree coincided with
the creation of heavy cavalry units (compagnies d’ordonnance) composed largely of
noblemen. Regularly paid and trained, the compagnies d’ordonnance furnished a
better disciplined and sustainable force to fight the king’s wars without terrorizing
his subjects.102 An artillery service also became organized thanks to the tireless
efforts of Pierre Bessoneau, France’s first maître de l’artillerie, and the Bureau
brothers who helped turn the tide against the English after 1435. In the 1450 campaign of Normandy, French troops with substantial artillery support captured in
one year over sixty fortified towns and castles, many of which had taken the English
several months to seize a generation before.103 In fact, Caen, despite its sizeable garrison, capitulated immediately after the first barrage of Charles VII’s heavy guns.
Some English strongholds attempted to mount a credible defense, but in vain.
Artillery technology underscored the crucial role assumed by the bonnes villes
by the end of the Hundred Years’ War. Together these urban centers, now more
independent yet in prudent partnership with the crown, provided the infrastructure upon which French military power rested in the early modern period, complementing rather than countering the monarchy’s moves under Charles VII and his
successors to build a standing army and strengthen the crown’s fiscal hold on the
peasantry.104 In meeting the challenge of siege warfare, town governments secured
greater control over the local population and economy to marshal the resources
necessary to build walls, develop armament industries, form urban militias, and
requisition food supplies from the countryside for the king’s army. In exchange, the
crown acknowledged the towns’ relative autonomy.105
Royal citadels garrisoned with troops under royal command had been used to
mixed effect in the fourteenth century in places such as Paris, Courtrai, and Lille.
They began again to play an important role in the crown’s efforts to control towns
under Charles VII after his conquest of Normandy in 1435 and Aquitaine in 1453.
In the case of English Guyenne, Charles VII sought to construct new or rebuild
old castles located along the Adour and Gironde rivers in order to impede English
naval traffic. Louis XI continued this policy in Roussillon after 1462, Burgundy in
1477, and Artois, also in 1477. Royal citadels usually became built near the most
strategically situated gate and on appropriated lands, preferably ecclesiastical properties of a necessary size. Louis XI considered royal citadels as much needed administrative centers for running newly conquered lands as military bases from which to
launch new invasions, as occurred in Brittany from Pouancé and Angers; FrancheComté from Dijon, Auxonne, and Beaune; Flanders from Arras; and Catalonia
from Perpignan, Collioure, and Puigcerdà. The first mention of the word “citadelle,” which comes from the Italian citadella (little city), can be found in Jean Le
Meingre’s Livre des faits du maréchal Boucicaut, written around 1420.106 Walled
towns resented and sometimes resisted but could not always stop the construction of
royal citadels. Citadels evoked criticism from military theorists, such as Machiavelli
who strongly condemned them as symbols of a prince’s weakness and wickedness.
The best citadel, by contrast, was for the prince not to incur the people’s hatred,
he argued. Charles VII invoked the principle of “seureté universelle” to justify his
confiscation of urban keeps and donjons as well as his assertion of the monarchy’s
direct jurisdictional authority over all fortifications in the kingdom.107
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The end of the Hundred Years’ War ushered in a century of peace that began
for the first time to demarcate the modern “interior” and “frontier” areas of what
became modern France. A measure of this change was the rapidity with which
English influence—a factor in Continental politics since the early twelfth century—
became confined after 1450 to a few coastal toeholds.108 Another was the establishment under Louis XI of a postal courier service to improve communication and thus
royal control of the kingdom. After the Hundred Years’ War, the social makeup of
urban elites further narrowed into closed oligarchies that over time became more
entangled in the widening royal administration, creating within the towns growing
ties but also tensions between Ville and État.
One of Louis XI’s maxims addressed the crown’s new commitment to military preparedness during times of peace: “A long peace is often dangerous to a
state, unless the sovereign takes care to keep the youth continually prepared, to
have always a well disciplined body of troops, to conserve good officers, and to
guard that his fortifications do not decay, that his arsenals and magazines are not
depleted, and to keep an open eye to know what is happening to his neighbors.”109
Louis XI only mentioned urban fortifications nineteen times in all of his correspondence in reference to seven bonnes villes, namely, Amboise, Amiens, Beauvais,
Laon, Lyon, Poitiers, and Rheims. Nevertheless, under him, a royal fortification
service headed by specially trained architects began to emerge after the 1472 siege
of Beauvais.110 Vauzy de Saint-Martin, a master of works in the town of Cusset,
was hired between 1476 and 1483 to oversee the reconstruction of fortifications in
Cusset as well as other places across the Bourbonnais, such as Beaune, Auxonne,
and Dijon. He created an innovative type of gunport that allowed easier pivoting
of the cannon across a larger field of fire. He also incorporated water-filled galleries
under the drawbridges to counter enemy attempts to mine these vital entrances.
The monarchy assumed a much more forceful approach to dealing with towns
under Louis XI. Along with an improved artillery and fortification service,
Louis XI also strove to maintain a peacetime army of abut twenty-four thousand.
With these instruments he pursued aggressive campaigns against his enemies and
their towns. Jean de Haynin’s memoirs recount in detail the brutality of the 1465
siege of Montlhéry.111 In the 1460s, Louis XI pursued much firmer policies toward
the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy. When the king annexed Roussillon in 1462,
he faced an insurrection in Perpignan that he brutally repressed. Sixteen years later,
he had the early fourteenth-century keep built by the Aragonese transformed into a
citadel, replete with cannon openings trained both on and outside the town. At the
same time, he sponsored major improvements to the enceinte, such as brick fronting bastions before the gates and artillery platforms at regular intervals around the
curtain wall. Louis XI’s success against the Burgundians in the 1470s allowed him
to seize the prosperous towns in the southern Low Countries and Lorraine that the
French had long coveted.112 The death of Duke Charles the Bold before the gates
of Nancy on January 5, 1477, cleared the way for substantial territorial gains by the
French monarchy. In response, towns in these regions redoubled their efforts to
strengthen their defenses by adding outworks to thwart enemy cannon.
Demolitions proved as significant as new construction under Louis XI. Lisieux,
for example, saw its fortifications dismantled as a result of the Seigneur de
Parthenay’s plotting against Louis XI during the Guerre Folle (1485–1487), though
Charles VIII soon thereafter authorized their reconstruction, which began in 1492
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and lasted until 1523.113 A number of Burgundian towns also witnessed systematic
dismantlement of just enough of their enceintes to render them easily vulnerable to
royal action. Charles VIII’s order in July 1488 to destroy the castle of Saint-Aubindu-Cormier, located in the Breton marches, was doubly symbolic. First, it created
a physical reminder of ducal independence following the recent Breton defeat by
severing the castle keep in two, leaving only the side facing France intact. In the
seventeenth century, the grounds even became part of a garden complex for the
royal provincial governor who maintained it as an archaic attraction. But not all
demolitions were punitive in nature. In Amiens, for example, Louis ordered the
demolition of the town’s original twelfth-century fortifications between 1479 and
1482 to open the way for improvements to the expanded stone-and-brick enceinte
begun in the late fourteenth century. It included the completion of the strongly
fortified the Porte of Montécu, begun in the 1390s, on the crucial north side of the
city, which symbolized Amiens’ importance as a formidable frontier city.114
During the Hundred Years’ War, the bonnes villes of France became more independent as they assumed more responsibility for local self-defense and governance.
Overall, the French crown, except during the reign of Charles V, could do little
but accept this devolution of authority following military defeats and the ensuing
crisis of royal government. As a result, regional patterns of urban development
across the kingdom became even further solidified as the walls became remade into
brick and stone. Medieval fortification design proved sufficiently plastic to meet
the early challenge of gunpowder weaponry, though such adaptations failed to keep
pace with advances in the accuracy, mobility, and firepower of these guns. Starting
in the 1430s, the French crown under Charles VIII and Louis XI implemented
measures to raise France’s first standing army, create a permanent artillery service,
and ensure adequate revenues to support campaigns that drove the English, the
Burgundians, and the Aragonese out of its claimed domains.115 In the process, it
began to redefine its relations with the ruling elites of the bonnes villes, and also
with the nobility and the clergy, through a combination of cajoling, cooption, and
outright coercion. As the fifteenth century came to a close, the French monarchy
stood poised to embark on an era of expansionism that proceeded in fits and starts
down to the early nineteenth century.
Ch apter 5
Roy a l Rulers and Bastioned Towns
The French invasion of Italy in 1494 altered the balance of power across Europe,
setting in motion a series of wars that raged over the next sixty years. Yet the
insecurity caused by these conflicts remained largely confined along the expanded
frontiers of the kingdom following the Hundred Years’ War and Burgundian War.1
Inside these boundaries the long domestic peace that France enjoyed discouraged the previous high commitment to strengthening urban enceintes. In his La
Monarchie de France, published in 1515, the Piedmontese Claude de Seyssel distinguished between the kingdom’s periphery and interior when it came to security,
arguing that the latter needed to contribute to strengthening the former. That was
why, he argued, the crown should encourage economic development inside the
kingdom, such as Lyon, in order to generate the necessary wealth.2 In time, the
impetus for municipal fortification projects steadily moved from the bonnes villes
to the crown. Renewed economic and demographic growth after 1500 saw many
towns simply outgrow their walled confines.3 As in the thirteenth century, older
towns expanded and new ones were founded, such as Brouage on the Atlantic coast
and Navarrins in the Pyrenees, after 1470.4 No concerted program to upgrade
municipal fortifications, except for places identified by the crown in the borderlands, accompanied this new period of urban growth until the 1550s.5
Novel approaches to fortification design began in Italy after 1450 and soon
spread across Europe through itinerant Italian architect-engineers and printed
works on fortification design, surveying, and mathematics. The bastioned trace,
when adopted, further closed off towns from the outside world by expanding the
militarized periphery. Its geometric scheme merged the aesthetic and practical to
bolster a town’s prestige and strengthen it against artillery attack.6 The adoption
of the bastioned trace in France grew out of the long wars between the Valois
and the Hapsburgs and became adapted to local conditions and medieval building
traditions. Urban society continued to stratify and be dominated by ever narrower
hereditary oligarchies who mediated relations with the crown. A new figure, the
professional engineer and architect, emerged to create new kinds of built spaces in
towns that reshaped urban life in the early modern period.
Financing fortification projects after 1500 required reversing the highly localized revenue system established over the past two centuries to redirect funds from
inside the kingdom to its emerging edge.7 But the bonnes villes often resisted these
attempts. The crown also began in the sixteenth century to create a better system of payment and supply known as the étapes based in walled towns.8 Bound
up in the changing role of towns in the kingdom was the monarchy’s relationship with urban oligarchies, which it increasingly co-opted through the conferral
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of nobility, the growth of venal offices in finance and the judiciary, and ties of
credit. As in the Middle Ages, tax exemptions continued to figure prominently.
Accompanying these realignments were new forms of urban factionalism between
families still ensconced in the Ville and those who increasingly identified with the
monarchical État.9
Warfare changed after 1500, so much so that some historians refer to it as a
“Military Revolution.”10 New forms of bastioned fortification design, known in
French as the trace italienne, developed to counter artillery and the early modern
state’s escalating capacity to make war. Contrasting Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy
in 1494 with François I’s descent twenty years later tellingly reflects the rapidly
changing nature of siege warfare. While artillery made up only a modest portion
of Charles VIII’s original force, François I relied on the technical assistance provided by the Spanish engineer Pedro Novarro and his pioneers to bring in upward
of fifty siege guns, thirty carts loaded with shot and powder, and twenty-five hundred horses requisitioned for the arduous trek through the Alps. Field fortifications
built for these large infantry armies yielded another place for experimental design
innovations by skilled military engineers who relied on large crews of conscripted
pioneers to move earth and even divert rivers.11 The use of bastions in temporary
field fortifications was evident at the battles of Ravenna in 1512 and Verona in 1516.
The hordes of pikemen found in European armies after 1450 transformed them
into mobile fortifications whose tactical maneuvers prompted new thinking about
articulated urban defenses. The impact of the Italian Wars on fortification design in
France derived both from experiences while on campaign and increasingly through
the circulation of foreign engineers and printed manuals in the kingdom.
Changing Fortification Design
Medieval design mainly changed as a result of Renaissance practices of disegno
and linear perspective in their modes of visual representation and use of projective
geometry.12 Renaissance visual naturalism relied on illusion, on an ability to trick
the viewer into thinking something artificial was real; the artist and the engineer
thus became a sort of magician able to conjure something out of nothing. Changes
in nomenclature reflected this shift. The word engineer was derived from the Latin
ingenium, whose root geno referred to the innate “genius” that all natural objects
possessed according to Aristotelian philosophy. This implied knowledge of how
to manipulate wood, stone, and metal. Ingenium also connoted the capacity to
give life in the sense of engendering, which meant the ability to create artifice.
Similarly, the word technology comes from the Greek techneˉ, which also signified the ability to invent something unique. In the Middle Ages, the specialists in
constructing military machines or “engines,” such as siege towers and trebuchets,
came to be called the ingeniarius or, in medieval French, engegneor.13 In the fourteenth century, with the advent of gunpowder weaponry, the term artillator came
to designate the person who built devices and managed arsenals. Town records in
the fifteenth century mention the hire of maîtres artillators who collaborated with
master masons and carpenters on fortifications.
By contrast, the term architectus fell into disuse in the Middle Ages as master builders no longer needed the formal education required in Antiquity.14
Instead of the kinds of projective drawings identified by the Roman encyclopedist
R o y a l R u l e r s a n d B a s t ion e d Tow ns
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Vitruvius—the ichnographia (plan), orthographia (elevation), and scaenographia
(perspective)—medieval builders superimposed a design plan directly at the worksite using templates.15 The difference thus lay more in modes of graphic representation than in actual technique. Indeed, the use of discrete, repetitive units added
together for the vertical articulation of space in Gothic cathedrals resembled the
horizontal organization of space in the bastioned trace.16 In both cases, builders
relied on mathematics, mainly Euclidean geometry.17 After 1450, knowledge of the
ideas and practices in Antiquity became amplified and imitated through the texts
and illustrations contained in new print editions.18
Renaissance engineering thus became an ambivalent combination of art and
science.19 It represented a reevaluation, not abandonment of medieval building traditions, which relied primarily on empirical, not theoretical knowledge.20 It also
entailed a gradual separation of the roles of engineer and skilled artisan in both the
design and building process. Different kinds of workplace cultures slowly developed for design decisions and execution, aspects of which remained medieval while
others became decidedly new. The persistence of classifying military engineers as
craftsmen until after 1650 reflected the enduring essential value of manual expertise and knowledge of materials for the creative adaptation of an ideal design plan.21
The new bastioned trace required realizing the geometrical possibilities of a particular place to create a distinctive solution to meet defensive needs. Applied mathematics lent solutions of greater precision but did not yield axiomatic principles to
make engineering a science until the eighteenth century.
Early Renaissance architectural theory drew on a variety of Greco-Roman
sources to inform design. Principal among them were Euclid’s geometry and
Vitruvius’s principles on right proportion.22 Other ancients included Archimedes,
Frontius, Livy, Pliny the Elder, Caesar, and Vegetius.23 While medieval references
to these writers existed, their use in the Renaissance relied on more critically accurate and available editions of their works, thanks to humanist scholarship and print.
Craft knowledge once reliant on oral transmission became converted into bookish knowledge elaborated through textual, notational, and illustrated techniques.
Applications of Euclidean geometry to fortification design became common in
Italy after 1450 in first manuscripts and then printed manuals as artist-designers,
such as Filarete, Sangallo, and Da Vinci, recognized the utility of polygonal forms
to counter artillery fire.24 Mathematics education also improved over the course of
1500, especially with the Jesuits. These treatments of the bastioned trace become
more theoretical and systematic over time as fortification design morphed from an
art into a science.25
Printing helped bridge the divide between learned university culture and the
craft trades. Local craft practices became transformed into discursive disciplines as
workshop-trained artists fashioned a new identity as architect-engineers whose skill
combined manual, experiential knowledge with text-based learning, especially in
mathematics. Leon Battista Alberti stands out as the pivotal thinker in this transition toward new forms of urban design and fortifications. Drawing on Plato and
Pythagoras, Alberti’s substitution of the geometer for the statesman or philosopher
privileged mathematics as the form of intellection most akin to God’s manner of
viewing the universe.26 It afforded a deeper sense of self-realization that in turn
informed moral choice and duty. Archimedes became an exemplar of moral virtue
because the study of mechanics represented mathematics in action to transform the
78
world. Indeed, Alberti prescribed mastery of the art of “moving weight and joining
of bodies” as the first quality for architects that set them apart from mere craftsmen, slavishly bound by manual techniques.27
Alberti’s Ten Books of Architecture of 1452 exerted an enormous influence through
its dicta on subsequent discussions of architectural and urban design, including
fortifications.28 In it, Alberti proposed the creation of a completely new type of
architectural language inspired by the classical idiom of Vitruvius. For Alberti, the
three main goals of design were firmitas (strength), utilitas (utility), and venustas
(beauty). In turn, they required the application of the concepts of ordinatio (order),
disposito (arrangement), eurythmia (proportion), symmetria (symmetry), decorum
(decor), and distributio (distribution) for realization. Subsequent debates over the
meaning of these terms did not blunt their significance in both civic and military
architecture. Urban planning became a form of communication akin to rhetoric,
which enhanced a city’s capacity for virtue, reinforced social hierarchies, and conveyed a sense of grandeur.29 Enclosure or openness in design carried political meaning. A tyrant strove for separation, he argued, by dividing a city with great walls
overlooking his subjects’ houses, whereas a republic relied on a winding network
of streets that afforded citizens unobstructed views of each other. Surveillance and
accessibility became centralized in a tyrant’s city and mutually linked in a republican one.30 In the Italian edition of Re aedifiatori, Cosimo Bartoli translated the
word structura as muramenti (walling) to emphasize Alberti’s intention to reduce
all raised structures to the walls of fortifications on the edge, with civic buildings
and neighborhoods within, and even the domestic spaces of private residences.
Architecture reclaimed its place among the liberal arts, rather than as a set of
craft skills, though Alberti linked it strongly to the field of mechanics, thus joining
skill (ingegnio) and learning (disciplina). Alberti was perhaps the first to consider the
problem of depicting the totality of a visual field. The challenge, faced by cartographers as well as architects, was to reconcile the mathematical abstraction of bird’seye or ichnographic views with empirical observation of a town’s profile against the
horizon by an earthly viewer. An early attempt to systematize the processes of measurement involved in such a task was Alberti’s Ludi Matematici. Military engineers,
in particular, realized early on the inestimable value of improving the accuracy of
measuring visual fields for both fortification design and ballistics.
Yet while Alberti considered the skills of the architect-engineer as often more
decisive than the leadership of generals in achieving victory, he reaffirmed the
traditional hierarchy of building forms that he believed (wrongly) had existed in
Antiquity, starting at the bottom with the most functional structures, such as
city walls, then moving upward to more ornate and expensive buildings, such as
churches and palaces. As a result, military architecture continued to be viewed as a
mechanical art until the late sixteenth century when it finally became mathematically grounded. Until then, a fortress or fortified city existed as a kind of machine
or engine, at least in theory, designed and operated by specialists known as engineers. In fact, the same designers took the appellation of architect when treating
higher status structures and assumed the name of engineer when discussing the
new bastioned trace fortifications.31
Alberti’s revival of Vitruvian architectural theory, especially the core notion
that craftwork and construction had to be informed and guided by reason and
mathematics, came to France primarily through print and translations. Giovanni
Sulpicius’s first printed edition of Vitruvius’s De architectura in Venice in 1486
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quickly spawned numerous editions, translations, and commentaries that circulated across Western Europe.32 In 1511, Fra Giovanni Giocondo published a folio
edition of Vitruvius in Venice that used his philological skills to restore Vitruvius’s
original Greek terms and correct much of the Latin. His version made it possible
for reliable translations of Vitruvius to be published, first in Italian then in other
European languages, including French.33 Illustrations in his Vitruvius mainly concerned machines used in construction and war, along with ancient buildings and
the five Orders. Cesare Cesariano brought out another better illustrated Italian
translation in 1521. Trained as a painter and architect, he also worked as a military
engineer. In his commentary on Vitruvius, Cesariano elaborated at length on the
relationship between reason (ratiocinatio) and building (fabrica).34 Architecture,
he argued, literally represented a concrete manifestation of ideal forms mathematical at base. Mechanical devices that assisted architecture to realize this goal also
reflected this close relationship. The first French translation came in 1526 from a
prior Spanish translation and introduced Vitruvius to a French audience for the
first time in the vernacular.35 By the 1540s, the craft of building as expressed in
print was a vibrant discursive field.
Classical urbanism also inspired proponents of the ideal city to propose new
ways to think about the spatial and functional relationships among a city’s military, economic, social, and political aspects, emphasizing regularity, harmony, and
beauty as the desired normative qualities.36 New towns, such as Vitry-le-Français
in France and Palmanova in the Veneto, offered an opportunity to experiment with
radiocentric forms.37 Existing towns proved much less amenable to the dictates
of ideal city design, however. Except for wide main streets leading to squares and
marketplaces, there tended to be a disconnection between radially configured newstyle bastioned fortifications on the periphery and the orthogonal layout within
the walls. As the urban edge became more articulated and extended outward, it
further impeded day-to-day functional needs of the town based on circulation and
exchange.
Most historians contend that the new bastioned trace first appeared in fifteenthcentury Italy.38 They cite Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed the innovative pentagonal fortifications at Vicopisano in the 1420s, hailed in its day as the most
advanced in Europe, and likely took part in building new fortifications at Pisa in
1424. Yet evidence outside of Italy suggests comparable developments in reticulated fortification design were already underway among the Ottoman Turks and
in northern France and the Low Countries. In fact, the Italian military engineer
Bonaiuto Lorini attributed in 1596 the invention of new-style bastioned fortifications to the French.39 The straightforward story found in Italian architectural treatises must be distinguished from the more complicated one revealed at fortification
building sites in France where medieval design practices converged with, rather
than became displaced by, the more systematic radial geometric aesthetic coming
out of Renaissance Italy.
The impulse to indent and project along a circular defensive perimeter sprang
not from the compelling classicized elegance of geometry, which held the circle as
the most perfect form, but rather from the practical necessity to enhance flanking
fire along the curtain walls and maximize fields of fire covering approaches. The
celebrated shift to pentagonal forms in fifteenth-century Italy appears overstated
when comparing firing slits in fourteenth-century Flemish towers to similar ones
depicted in the plans for Sforzinda by Antonio Averlino, known as “Filarete.”40 This
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iconic new Renaissance town actually mirrored the spatial arrangements found in
late medieval cities in the Po valley, such as Pavia and Lodi.41 The radial design used
by Filarete also resembled the depiction of Milan found in a fourteenth-century
map accompanying a history of the city by the Dominican friar and chronicler
Galvano Fiamma.42
Experimentation in design occurred most fully not in stone but rather in the
notebook sketches of artists.43 Early Italian architectural treatises, some in manuscript notebooks and others eventually published, helped to establish the crucial textual and visual parameters for experimentation in fortification design over
the next two centuries. Even before they began to appear in print, designs of
new-style bastioned trace fortifications circulated quite widely in Italy and then
the rest of Europe, with copying considered a high form of flattery. The Sienese
Mariano Taccola’s De ingensis, composed over the first half of the fifteenth century,
reflected the continuing vitality of craft traditions of innovation.44 Another early
source for military technology was Roberto Valturio’s treatise Elenchus et index
rerum militarium, written between 1455 and 1460 but eventually published in
Verona in 1472, which became the best-known military book of the fifteenth century. Building his arguments out of a deep and thorough study of ancient Greek
and Latin sources, Valturio used profuse illustrations to demonstrate techniques of
defense and attack.45
Even more influential was Francesco di Giorgio, who analogized urban design
with the human body in the 1480s and 1490s. Trained in Siena as a painter and
sculptor, di Giorgio became one of the most widely respected architect-engineers
in Italy in his day. He also later gave advice and prepared plans for fortifications
built by Duke Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino in the Opusculum de architectura, which contained hundred of drawings of machines and fortifications.46 His
interest in mechanical devices or ingegni came out most clearly in his small notebook of sketches, composed around 1465, known as the Codicetto. It contains
drawings of war machines, pumps, and cranes used in construction, and fortifications designed to resist gunpowder weaponry. He introduced the innovative idea
of slanting fortification walls in order to deflect the impact of a cannonball. He
also experimented with different polygonal forms. Di Giorgio expanded on these
topics in the Trattati, which treated architecture, engineering, urban planning,
and the military arts in an integrated fashion.47 In these two tracts, he evinced a
deep interest in maximizing defensive fields of fire and solving problems encountered in construction. Alongside radial designs are found designs proposing a
centralized orthogonal city with a central plaza, ideas perhaps inspired by Pope
Nicholas V’s remodeling of Rome in the 1460s. Di Giorgio exercised a wide influence on later architects in Italy, including Sebastiano Serlio, who later worked in
France in the 1540s.48
Other better-known Italian artist-designers built on di Giorgio’s legacy to
varying degrees. Although Leonardo da Vinci demonstrated in the Madid
Codex I and the Codices Atlanticus a deep interest in mechanical devices, including machines of war, he did not link it explicitly to urban design and fortifications.49 Breakthroughs in the application of Euclidean geometry to painting, as in
Piero della Francesca’s De prospective pingendi, written around 1470, powerfully
influenced not just painting but also printed illustrations, including fortification
design.50 Michelangelo’s notebooks also clearly demonstrated his appreciation of
the geometric foundations of fortification design. But he had to wait until the
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1520s to actually realize them on the ground, best seen in the Fortezza de Basso,
after he assumed responsibility for rebuilding the bastioned defenses of his native
Florence during its siege in 1529.51
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger is usually credited with defining the classical form of the Italian bastioned trace or citadella sangallesca.52 His schematics
for pentagonal bastions contain a plethora of descriptive text to accompany the
drawings to better instruct the reader in how the mathematics of his “system” of
layered defense-in-depth worked. Antonio collaborated with his uncle Giuliano,
a well-accomplished military engineer and architect in his own right, on the construction of the bastioned Fortezza Nuova at Pisa and bastioned fortresses (rocca)
in the Papal States. By the 1520s, other Italian cities such as Siena and Lucca followed suit in erecting reticulated bastioned defenses in stone, brick, and packed
earth. Although Italians dominated new theories of fortification design, important
contributions from other countries indicate the vitality of fortification design outside Italy. The novel design of the Fort of Salses by the Spanish engineer Ramio
Lopez in 1498 is a case in point.53 Yet not all observers thought security could be
found in sturdy walls. Machiavelli was not alone in arguing that fortifications were
a potent sign of a prince’s weakness, not strength.54
Bastioned Fortification in Valois France
Urban enceintes in France first began to be modified according to the new Italian
idea of the bastioned trace in the 1520s. High costs and the lack of immediate
threats convinced most towns not to undertake such projects, however. Moreover,
while fortification manuals disparaged medieval curtain walls and towers, these
established features of urban defense retained considerable value during the early
modern period. Some towns, such as Parthenay in the 1520s, built new fortifications that purposely harked back to earlier medieval forms of high, imposing towers, aiming more toward ostentation than practical defense. As late as the 1580s,
Brantôme still extolled the tried-and-true old curtain walls as preferable to newstyle brick bastions, and a whole lot cheaper to build. Urban fortifications evolved
as composite forms, incorporating elements of antiquated defenses into newly
refurbished works. Late medieval urban fortifications modified established features
of active defense to parry the threat of gunpowder weaponry. Even though the
machicolated gallery lost its raison-d’être due to the increased firepower of artillery, it still possessed aesthetic value as many towns continued to maintain and even
build them until the end of the sixteenth century. The decorative value of galleries
found at the château of Azay-le-Rideau, built in 1518, can be seen in the fact that
they did not even have firing holes.
While Italy was the main theater of conflict, the Valois-Hapsburg confrontation shifted in the 1520s to include the Low Countries and the west bank of the
Rhine. New-style bastioned traces largely appeared in the borderlands as both
sides undertook to upgrade and better organize defenses. Italian engineers figured
prominently in most of these projects.55 The French first encountered the new
Italian theories of fortification design following Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy.
The subsequent service of Italian military engineers to the crown and the growing influx of print publications on fortifications and mathematics brought these
ideas to France.56 The movement of masons and architects across the Southern
Alps was quite common in the Middle Ages, and Italian military engineers and
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architects followed in their paths.57 Among the motivations behind publishing
was an author’s desire to attract a patron, which was certainly the case of the
Veronese designer and scholar Fra Giovanni Giocondo. A close associate of di
Giorgio, Fra Giocondo was an expert in hydraulics, fortresses, and bridges as well
as an accomplished architect and philologist. A Neapolitan record of payment in
1492 indicates that Fra Giocondo and a painter named Antonello da Capua copied
126 drawings from two notebooks by Francesco di Giorgio, one on architectural
and the other on military engineering.58 He presented public lectures and tutored
aspiring architects in Vitruvian theory while in Paris from 1495 to 1505. The
French humanist Guillaume Budé referred to him as an architectus regius for his
service to Charles VIII. In 1509, Fra Giocondo participated in the French siege of
Parma; he also probably designed at the time the semicircular bastions for Padua
and Treviso.59 Later, he reputedly designed gardens and waterworks at Chambord
for François I. However, there is no evidence that Fra Giocondo actually ever
designed any fortifications for construction in France during his tenure there.
French interest in Italian-style bastioned defenses rose around the time of
François I’s capture at Pavia in 1525 and two-year stay at the Hapsburg court
in Madrid. The Imperial siege of Mézières in 1521, stoutly defended by Bayard,
brought about a decision afterward to begin construction of a bastioned trace.60
The duke of Vendôme’s decision in 1522 to raze castles in the Artois convinced
towns in Hainault and Flanders to improve their defenses along Italian lines.
Meanwhile, an Anglo-Imperial invasion from the north marched on Paris while
a Spanish force moved against Bayonne.61 While Paris took steps to shore up its
fourteenth-century defenses, Toulouse hired Anchise da Bologna in 1525 to design
a half-moon outwork in case of Spanish attack. Thirteen years later Antonio da
Castello and Fabrizio Cecliano da Napoli added another to the city’s enceinte. The
1524 Imperial invasion of Provence aimed to besiege Marseille because it was so
poorly defended.62 In response, the French crown ordered the immediate construction of sloped earthen ramparts and artillery platforms, which gangs of soldiers and
civilians, including women and children, threw up in three frantic days of work.63
After François I regained his freedom in 1525, he set about to strengthen the
defenses of towns along his realm’s frontiers. To underwrite these expenses, he created new tax, the crues de taille, on towns in the interior. On the northern Flemish
frontier, work quickly got underway to create a two-tiered layer of fortified places
composed first of an outer ring in upper Picardy in Ardres, Thérouanne, Montreuil,
Doullens, and Guise shielding an inner array of walled towns made up of Amiens,
Saint-Quentin, Vervins, and Mézières.64 Rebuilding urban fortifications in Rouen
and Caen, both still damaged from the Hundred Years’ War, got underway in
Normandy to avert possible English incursions.65 Further to the west, reconstruction
projects began as Brittany became integrated into the realm.66 To the east, Chaumont,
Troyes, Langres, Vitry, and Villefranche in Champagne received attention to block
Imperial threats from Lorraine, as did Dijon, Beaune, and Chalons in Burgundy
across from Franche-Comté and Lyon, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and Marseille, which
faced Savoy and the Piedmont (see figure 5.1).67 To protect approaches across the
Pyrenees, the enceintes of Bayonne and Narbonne underwent extensive rebuilding
in the late 1520s and 1530s.68 Repairs also continued across a number of towns and
castles in greater Guyenne, all heavily damaged during the Hundred Years’ War.69
Port towns received defensive upgrades, with the construction of a new fortified
enceinte at Le Havre-de-Grace and new bastioned elements added to the walls of La
Figure 5.1
Villefranche. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. M73577).
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Rochelle. It was an impressive start to consolidating France behind what Cardinal
Richelieu and then Sébastien Le Prestre, lord of Vauban referred to later in the seventeenth century as the well-defined and well-defended borders of the pré carré.70
The Imperial invasion of Provence and Picardy in 1536 prompted renewed efforts
by the French to fortify places along these vital frontiers. Towns across Dauphiné
saw their fortifications revamped.71 In lower Provence, the provincial governor
Anne duke of Montmorency, worked to strengthen the defenses of Arles, Tarascon,
Beaucaire, Marseille, Avignon, and Aix. After a hasty inspection, Montmorency
decided to abandon Avignon and Aix in order to concentrate on shoring up Arles
and Marseille. In Arles, six new earthen bastions rose up along the town’s periphery, while the Roman arena was converted into an artillery platform.72 Experienced
military engineers helped supervise these projects.73 Meanwhile, in Picardy, the
French began in August 1536 to upgrade the defenses of Laon and Saint- Quentin,
while Imperial forces moved against Péronne, recently bastioned in the 1520s, to
use for an attack on Paris.74 In a panic, the bishop of Paris, the cardinal Du Bellay,
organized and paid for with church funds new earthwork defenses. Péronne managed to repulse the Imperial attack; Montreuil-sur-Mer, on the other hand, fell the
next year with scarcely any resistance.75 The military situation along these borderlands was very fluid, like the condition of fortified places, as both sides scrambled
to meet their mutual threat.
Italian military engineers began regularly showing up in French service in the
1530s. Among the most accomplished was Girolamo Bellarmato, an exile from
Siena who in 1538 became a royal engineer with skills in mathematics and cartography. He claimed credit for completing the fortifications at Le Havre-de-Grâce
originally begun in 1518. In 1544, he was working on Dieppe’s port defenses
when the crown hurriedly called him to help protect Paris, which was threatened by
another Imperial invasion. Bellarmato had the walls of the capital again reinforced
with earthen ramparts and new outworks and artillery platforms.76 In March 1547,
and again in 1550, Bellarmato was in Burgundy where he designed a citadel for
Châlons-sur-Sâone and a new castle for Bresse. In between he traveled to Picardy to
inspect the king’s fortifications. Bellarmato is likely the author of the anonymous
treatise Delle fortificazioni, a work that begins with a long disquisition on arithmetic, geometry, and surveying followed by a section on designing bastions to suit
any polygonal form.77
Another prominent Italian military engineer active on France’s eastern frontier
was Girolamo Marini, who hailed from Treviso, a small town near Modena. He
entered French service in the Piedmont campaign of 1537 and provided advice,
along with several other “fortificateurs,” on reinforcing the defenses of Pinerolo.
Blaise de Monluc praised Marini’s expertise and credited him with teaching him,
while on campaign together in the Piedmont, the new mathematical techniques of
calculating artillery trajectories that Monluc used to such good effect at the 1542
siege of Perpignan.78 For his outstanding service, the king granted him the rank
of captain (chevalier). Italian military engineers also appeared along the kingdom’s
northern borders in the mid-1530s. Antonio da Castello took his name after the
city of Castello in Umbria and began his career in service to the duke of Urbino.
In 1536, he entered French employ and designed new bastioned defenses for StPol in Artois. Although soldiers and pioneers labored intensely to erect the works
in three short months, the place still quickly fell to Imperial forces. The French
blamed the inadequacy of the design, while the Italians attributed the defeat to
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French cowardice.79 Gian-Battista Belluci da San Marino, known as “Il Camerini”
who later designed the massive fortifications in Sasso, Italy, also reportedly served
in France in the late 1530s.80
In the 1540s, French use of the bastioned trace became more evident in its
northern Italian campaign and along the northern and eastern frontiers of the kingdom. Italian military engineers figured prominently in much of this work. Mario
Savorgnano, from near Pescara, for example, entered French employ in 1543 and
helped redesign Landrecies’ fortifications following an Imperial siege.81 Later in
the early years of Henri II’s reign, Savorgnano, along with his brother Germanico,
prepared reports on Italian fortifications in anticipation of a possible French campaign to reclaim Naples. In the early 1540s, Guillaume Du Bellay, François I’s
commander in northern Italy, counseled François I to fortify towns and castles
in the Piedmont in the Italian style to consolidate control over the territory. This
included new bastioned works in Turin, Pinerolo, Savigliano, and Cherasco.82 Du
Bellay apparently used plans, long since lost, prepared by Girolamo Marini and
brought to Paris by the lord of Villegaignon in May 1541.83 Marini’s vast enceinte
in Turin became celebrated in the writings of both Tartaglia and Rabelais.84 The
result was a fortified city considered by many observers at the time as the most
advanced in all of Italy, if not Europe.85 It anchored the line of permanent defenses
that François I envisioned erecting along all the exposed frontiers of the kingdom
so that, as Rabelais put, “henceforth France will be superbly bound and the French
peacefully secured.”86 In fact, François Rabelais chronicled his patron Guillaume
du Bellay’s campaigns in Piedmont in a 1542 work (now lost) called Stategemata
after Frontinus.
These new lines of fortified places in the emerging borderlands helped bring
about the failure of the 1544 Anglo-Imperial invasion of France. Charles V and
Henry VIII agreed on a two-pronged invasion that bypassed fortified French
towns in order to converge on Paris. Monluc, for one, seriously questioned the
wisdom of this strategy, since these fortified places could easily interdict communications and supplies. Ensuing events proved him right.87 The English no sooner
invaded than they realized they needed to secure Boulogne to ensure access to the
sea. But it took them nearly two months to capture, and then it only fell because
of the ineptitude of its French commander.88 Interestingly, the French attempt to
retake Boulogne three years later revealed the limits of some these supposed Italian
experts, for example, Antonio Mellone. He was a mason’s son from Cremona who
entered French service in 1536. In 1542, he assisted in strengthening the defenses
of Boulogne and returned with the French in 1545 to retake Boulogne. Using
plans drawn up by Girolamo Marini, he built a new bastioned fort across the harbor known as Fort d’Outreau. Mellone’s command of mathematics and surveying
became dubious when he omitted to account for the slope of the talus, which
meant the artillery could not fit on the parapets.89 Mellone then relocated the fort
in such a way that it could not adequately cover approaches to the harbor. To his
credit, he did the honorable thing and died during the ensuing siege.
To the east, François I expected Charles V in 1544 to march toward Paris along
the valley of the Marne. He therefore ordered the Dauphin to reinforce Châlons, a
place “hardly fortified,” as was Troyes in Champagne.90 Instead, Charles V besieged
Saint-Dizier, which some sources suggest was an open town while others mention
its new bastioned defenses.91 Likely, these were hastily erected earthen works of the
kind commonly found at other frontier towns. Despite furious assaults, Imperial
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forces failed to capture Saint-Dizier, which suffered heavy damage during the siege.
With the English invasion force bogged down before Boulogne, the two-pronged
assault on Paris was doomed, leaving a furious Charles V no choice but to make
peace with the French in September 1544.
Once again with peace, François I turned to strengthening places-fortes along
the frontiers by sending the duke of Vendôme to Picardy and Martin du Bellay
to Champagne.92 Du Bellay visited extensively across the province to report on
the places most in need of attention. He took with him Girolamo Marini. The
report called for upgrading the fortifications of Mézières and Mouzon as well as
building a new fortified place opposite Stenay on the Meuse River, which reverted
to the duke of Lorraine. Marini also provided advice on rebuilding the city of
Luxembourg after its capture in 1543 and overhauling the defenses of Saint-Dizier
with three new bastions in advance of the Imperial invasion in 1544.93 François I
selected Marini to design the new town of Vitry-le-Français, which replaced Vitryen-Perthois after a devastating Imperial siege in 1544. Marini eschewed the opportunity to create de novo the first thoroughly integrated and symmetrical bastioned
urban enceinte in France and instead fell back on the time-honored, and more
practical, orthogonal grid.94 Finally also in Champagne, the French bolstered the
defenses of the château of Saint-Menhoult; Chaumont-en-Bassigny also began new
fortifications; while in Coissy he started to erect a citadel. In summer 1546, after
concluding peace with the English, François I sent out on an arduous tour of these
fortified places that likely hastened his death in March 1547.
Italian military engineers also served the Anglo-Imperial cause in the Low
Countries and in other Hapsburg lands. In 1535, Charles V hired the Italian
architect-engineer Benedeto da Ravenna to oversee a design program for the enceinte
of Perpignan that incorporated features of the new trace italienne. Baldassare
Vianello, another Italian, contributed as well. A siege by the French in 1542,
which ultimately failed, exposed weaknesses in the design that Philip II eventually
addressed in 1564 when a detached citadel was added, again designed by Italians,
Giambatista Calvi and Giorgio Setara, both from Milan. The articulated periphery
of the bastioned trace became folded into the established enceinte in a process, like
in France, of adaptation rather than outright replacement. Assisting the English at
the 1542 siege of Boulogne was Girolamo Pennacchi from Treviso.95 Pennacchi,
in fact, is commonly credited with introducing the bastioned trace to England.
Trained as a painter, Pennacchi began his career serving Venice and the papacy,
notably on the defenses of Bologna.96 Another was Donato Buono de’ Pellizzuoli
who came from Bergamo and designed the citadels built at Ghent and Cambrai.97
Yet another was Gabrio Serbelloni from Milan who in the 1560s accompanied the
duke of Alba to the Spanish Netherlands where he contributed fortification designs
and assisted in planning sieges.98 Finally, there was Chiapino Vitelli from Castello
in Le Marche. He worked for the Spanish on a variety of projects in Italy before
going briefly to the Low Countries in 1567 to serve the duke of Alba. The French
tried unsuccessfully to entice him to join them.99
The dukes of Lorraine also hired Italian military engineers and architects to
design fortifications for the duchy, dangerously caught between the ambitions of
the Valois and Hapsburgs. The ducal house of Guise devoted most of its attention
to bolstering the defenses of the ducal capital, Nancy, to meet the threat of siege
guns. Signs of ruin from the Burgundian wars of the 1470s could still be found
fifty years later. In the late 1520s, Duke Antoine had two stone-and-brick bastions
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constructed to protect the town’s two main gates. While it is unclear if Italian military engineers assisted him, Antoine had campaigned in Italy with Imperial forces
during the 1520s where he had witnessed first-hand the new trends in fortification design. In 1544, the Italian engineer Bathazare da Padova visited the duchy
for several months, inspecting fortified sites, including Nancy, and composing a
report containing his recommendations. He had worked several years earlier in
Spain and on the defenses at Perpignan. Another Italian engineer named Ambrosio
Principiano, who hailed from Genoa, came to Lorraine in 1546. He had served
Antoine Perronet de Granvelle since 1539, working on projects such as the fortifications at Dole. Two years later, Antonio da Bergamo became the leading engineering consultant on what was now a complete makeover of Nancy, a position he held
on and off over the next fourteen years. Balthasar Paduano, about whom little is
known, apparently assisted him. In 1552, Henri II of France gained control of the
Trois-Évêchés of Toul, Metz, and Verdun, which brought Lorraine much more into
the French sphere of influence, as did the marriage of Charles III, duke of Lorraine,
to his daughter, Claude de France. As a result, Nancy after 1550 boasted of some
of the most advanced bastioned fortifications in all of Europe. Indeed, Lorraine
continued to play a leading role in sponsoring new urban and military design well
into the seventeenth century. Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre on the Pyrenean
border with Spain, hired a French military engineer named Robert Chinon in the
1550s. Chinon later participated in the 1573 siege of La Rochelle.
The accession of Henri II in 1547 saw a continuation of the monarchy’s commitment to strengthening fortified places along these nascent frontiers.100 Even
the capital underwent its most significant defensive upgrade since the reign of
Charles V under the leadership of Antoine Duprat, the garde de la prévôté, with the
reinforcement of its existing ramparts and the addition of new outworks, especially
along the city’s northern edge.101 The spread of Calvinism among the nobility and
to a number of the bonnes villes created new lines of division both confessional and
geographical. Walled enceintes came to play a critical role in the ensuing Wars of
Religion in France after Henri II’s sudden death in 1559. Until then, Henri II saw
through to completion many of the fortification projects in the borderland begun
by his father.
Along the Flemish frontier, Henri II encouraged further progress on the
bastioned enceintes of Corbie, Péronne, and Amiens. After Charles V captured
Thérouanne in 1553, a key town in the Artois, Henri II had Hesdin’s recently
razed defenses replaced by a full trace italienne designed by the Flemish military
engineer, Sebastien Van Noyen.102 Two of Girolamo Marini’s sons, Camillo and
Gieronimo, served Henri II in the 1550s. Camillo furnished important advice
along with a French engineer named Jean de Saint-Rémy to the duke of Guise at
the siege of Metz in 1552, while Gieronimo held the post of royal fortification engineer in Picardy where he consulted on fortification projects at Amiens, Corbie, and
Péronne along the northern frontier.103 In the northeast toward Luxembourg and
Lorraine, the king had Mariembourg rebuilt in 1552 using a quadrangular layout
and Philippebourg and Rocroi in 1554 according to a pentagonal schema. In 1550,
La Rochelle began construction of a massive bastion on its northern perimeter
called the Boulevard de Ludde, later renamed Boulevard de l’Évangile in 1562 after
the Calvinist party controlled the city. Henri II placed even more importance on
royal citadels, such as the one built in Mézières (1550), Metz (1552), La Rochelle
(1555), and Calais (1558). All of them proved so massive that whole neighborhoods
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had to be demolished, causing much consternation and resentment. Friction with
the bonnes villes was definitely on the rise on the eve of the Wars of Religion.
The career of several Italian military engineers bridged the last of the HapsburgValois Wars and the beginning of the Wars of Religion. One was Jacopo Fusto
from Urbino. Nicknamed Il Castrioto after an unfortunate groin wound, Fusto
long served the papacy before joining the French in the mid-1550s. His advice
to upgrade the defenses of Saint-Quentin was pointedly ignored in the run-up to
the disaster of 1556. In 1558, the Constable Montmorency recommended that
Henri II employ Fusto and another engineer, Vincenzo Locatelli, to design three
forts to be built in Navarre to counter rising Huguenot sentiment.104 After the
fall of Calais to the French in 1558, Fusto drew up plans to bolster the port city’s
defenses. He proposed an octagonal bastioned enceinte, using the old wall in places
and constructing new ones where necessary, adding casemates and deeper ditches.
Fusto was captured by Imperial forces during the French siege of Gravelines in
1558 but released soon after. Later that same year, Fusto conducted a survey of
the defenses of Amiens for Henri II; in 1559, he received the title of inspector
general of all the realm’s fortifications. He left designs and models for fortifications in places in Languedoc, Provence, the Lyonnais, Champagne, Picardy, and
Normandy, most never built, however, as detailed in the book he coauthored with
Girolamo Maggi, Delle fortificatione delle città, which appear in 1564.
Vincenzo Locatelli, a native of Cremona, also entered the service of Henri II as
a military engineer in 1556. His first commission consisted of restoring the king’s
fortresses in Picardy. He along with two other Italian military engineers assisted the
French campaign led by the duke of Guise to recapture Calais in 1558.105 Locatelli
also conducted inspections of Bordeaux, Bayonne, and La Rochelle. Locatelli proposed the construction of a royal citadel at La Rochelle to quell its turbulent populace, but local opposition from churches and residents whose properties would be
expropriated and intrigues at court derailed the project. He fell out of favor with
the French court after the death of Henri II, thereafter working intermittently for
the king of Spain and Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, eventually settling in the
mid-1560s into the service of the duke of Alba.
Sallustio Peruzzi came from Florence and was the son of the celebrated Baldassar
Peruzzi. In 1561, he designed bastioned defenses for Avignon lest it fall to Huguenot
forces in southern France.106 Also arriving in the 1550s was Agostino Ramelli from
Ponta Tresa in Lombardy, who became more famous for his wondrous book of
mechanical devices published later in the 1580s. Fleeting mention can be found of
others, such as Jacomo Seghizzi from Modena; Bartolomeo Campi, who later died at
1579 siege of Maastricht; Francesco Paciotto, who fortified Mons in the 1550s and
died years later at the siege of Arras107; Maggi da Anghiari, who later became one
of Henri III’s chief architects; Gabrio Serpelloni from Milan; and Marco Aurelio da
Pasino,108 who in 1570 designed the fortifications at Sedan. Some just exist as simple names, otherwise unknown, such as Giantomaso Scala, Gioachino da Comno,
Giacomo Orologio, and Bernardino da Vimercate. Many others likely disappeared
from the record. Taken as a group, these itinerant Italian military engineers helped
bring to France through their work and collaborations the new design forms of the
bastioned trace.
The effectiveness of even hastily constructed bastioned fortifications in vanquishing a huge besieging army can be seen most vividly in the Imperial siege of
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Metz in late 1552. It was the largest military action undertaken by any European
power during the sixteenth century. The Imperial army that eventually gathered
before Mez totaled around 45,000 infantry, made up of 17,000 Spanish and Italian
infantry and 28,000 Landsknechte, some 7,000 cavalry, and another 5,500 pioneers.
The some 150 assorted cannons brought to besiege Metz ranged from light field
guns to heavy Mauerbrechern (wall-smashers).109 Adequate shot and powder were
on hand. Metz’s main defenses still largely relied upon thirteenth-century curtain
walls and towers raised overtop of the original Gallo-Roman enceinte. Canals and
marshes also provided significant water defenses for the city. Most of these various works were in a state of considerable disrepair when the French arrived in the
spring.110 With the assistance of Camillo Marini, François, duke of Guise, revamped
its defenses in summer 1552 in advance of the Imperial invasion by adding expanded
earthworks and a new citadel on the exposed southwestern flank. Even so, Metz
remained quite vulnerable. Yet strategic and diplomatic blunders combined with a
logistical breakdown to thwart an Imperial force ten times the size of the French
garrison in Metz.111 Another important aspect of the siege of Metz was its representation in print culture and its impact on public opinion across Europe.112 The information side of warfare, from propaganda to journalism to policy making, became
another significant feature of the early modern Military Revolution as seen in
both the French disaster at Saint-Quentin in 1557, which so discredited Constable
Montmorency, and the French victory at Thionville, where Pietro Strozzi died, and
Calais in 1558, which heightened the prestige of the duke of Guise.113 These changing fortunes played out further during the upcoming Wars of Religion.
Engineers and Innovation in France up to 1560
The development of new Italian-inspired fortification design in France up to 1560
relied on more than the labors of itinerant Italian military engineers working for
the French crown and its adversaries. Continuing developments in the areas of
applied mathematics, mechanics, improved instrumentation, and better modes of
graphic and textual representation in print gave further and broader impetus to
the spread of the bastioned trace as military engineering began to claim a scientific character.114 After 1500, princes took a keen interest in practical applications
of mathematics to ballistics and fortification design both to secure territory and to
associate their legitimacy with rational principles. The monarchy’s drive to redirect and increase tax revenues for these purposes and the sustained beginnings of
France’s first royal fortification service contributed to turning the crown’s ambitions into reality on the ground. These new pressures to bend the kingdom to
the monarch’s will elicited a variety of responses that affected its relations with all
groups in French society, most particularly the notability of the bonnes villes.
Since the early 1500s, printed works in Latin, Italian, and increasingly French
made available new design ideas and mathematical applications for fortifications
and ballistics to a wide readership that included noblemen, humanist savants,
and skilled artisans such as masons, carpenters, and sculptors. Military manuals
intended for the “perfect” captain, dozens of which appeared in the century, invariably addressed these subjects, if sometimes confusedly. Works on engineering and
practical mathematics also proliferated and usually touted their value by showing how to solve difficult calculation problems related to war. Still other works
90
discussed the latest instruments and clever devices to assist in performing these
tasks. Most of these manuals provided ready critiques of various forms advocated
by other theorists in the emerging market of engineering ideas. At base, most of
these treatises eschewed prescriptive formulae and instead strove to train readers
how to think critically.
Arithmetic primers and geometry manuals printed in French after 1500, while
certainly influenced by Italian trends, exhibited a less abstract nature on the crucial
subject of perspective geometry. This pragmatic approach to the representation of
realistic architectural space can be seen in the work of an obscure canon from Toul,
Jean Pélerin, who wrote under the name “Viator” (voyager). In 1505, he published
the first French work exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, De Artificiali perspectiva. The perspective renderings in the text, however, bore no relationship with
the perspective geometry discussed in the text.115 Pélerin’s approach to linear perspective was much simpler than the ones already developed in Italy. He presented
a formulaic but effective three-point system using a series of pyramids with the
apexes along the horizontal (or “pyramidal”) line. Indeed, Pélerin made no effort
to maintain the illusion of a vanishing point in the rear of the picture. His form of
perspective image thus did not record the objective world but instead reproduced it
through a specific method of construction. Pragmatic applications mattered more
for him that theoretical accuracy, as it did also for military engineers at the time.
Pragmatism always competed with general principle in applied mathematics and
fortifications design. Writers and practitioners wrestled with this problem and came
up with varying solutions. Some emphasized geometric rigor; others went into construction techniques and the qualities of materials; while still others stressed military tactics. One of the earliest printed manuals on military engineering, Battista
della Valle’s Libro continente appertinente ad Capitanii, married interest in the
bastioned trace and urban planning with explosives and a multitude of other topics
ranging from uniforms and signaling systems to the psychology of soldiers. He also
discusses how to attack a fortified place, touching on the deployment of artillery,
digging trench works, and even describing the various kinds of gabions that can be
used in different situations. The apparent crudeness and simplicity of the woodcuts
belie their value in explaining the function of various offensive and defensive operations. First published in Naples in 1521, this treatise went through eleven editions
in thirty-seven years, including a French translation in 1526. Della Valle served
the dukes of Urbino, as did a number of other Italian military engineers who later
served in France.
Another early printed work in fortification design was Albrecht Dürer’s
Etliche underrict zu befestigung der Stett/Schloss/und Flecken, which appeared in
Nuremberg in 1527. Dürer promoted large-scale urban fortifications as a way to
employ a city’s poor. He also discussed the methods of building bastions and the
king’s citadel, going into the relationship between site selection and design features
for not only a city’s military defenses but also the location of various craft industries
and activities as well as civic buildings and places, all predicated on reinforcing the
ruler’s authority. His book also offered an illustration using a panoramic bird’seye view of a besieged city.116 Finally, Vannoccio Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia offered
expert descriptions, accompanied by excellent illustrations of the latest techniques
involved in mining, metallurgy, and gun founding. His work helped to disseminate
new knowledge that reflected the rapidly improved production and performance of
gunpowder weaponry during the mid-sixteenth century.117
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Among these early publications, the most important work affecting fortification design in the sixteenth century was Nicolò Tartaglia’s La nova scientia, published in 1539. Tartaglia bridged the craft and university worlds. He worked in
foundries in his hometown of Brescia and taught himself advanced mathematics.
His exploration of the practical mathematics of gunnery and Aristotelian physics significantly advanced understanding of ballistics, which, in turn, prompted
a rethinking of the Euclidean foundations of fortification design.118 The Nova
scientia is divided into five books, only three of which Tartaglia ever published.
His analysis of parabolic flight and the uniform movement of all projectiles forced
designers to recalculate the contours of the outworks and talus using rules of
perspective to establish proper lines of sight. The need to calculate distances and
terrains properly to ensure a shot’s accuracy established a connection with cartography and surveying, which Tartaglia discussed here and in later publications. In
1543, he edited a Latin compilation of works by Archimedes on mechanics and
hydrostatics.119 He published the first vernacular edition of Euclid’s Elements specially annotated for artisans and engineers, no matter how mediocre. Finally, his
La gionta del sesto libro di quesiti, et inventioni diverse in 1554 discussed a wide
range of topics related to siege warfare, boasting—much as Vauban would in the
next century—that with this knowledge a commander could take any city no matter how supposedly impregnable.
More scientific and mathematically based methods of siege warfare soon ensued
in the wake of Tartaglia’s publications.120 His influence was most readily visible in
the works of the Novarese engineer Girolamo Cataneo—Dell’Arte Militare, published in 1559, and Opera nuova di fortificare, published in 1564, which appeared
in French ten years later. It discussed the geometrical principles of fortification
design, surveying techniques for the proper construction of a bastion, and tactical considerations from both the defensive and offensive viewpoints. The effective
military engineer had to know how to formulate objectives, evaluate constraints,
weigh alternatives, and come up with the best solutions to problems as they arose.
Cataneo thus still strove to strike a balance between general theory and actual
practice. Another early work inspired by Tartaglia, but of negligible influence, was
Giovan Battista Belluci’s Nuova invenzione di fabricar fortezze, written around
1550 but not published until 1598.
The Italian military engineer Giacomo Lanteri, also from Brescia, worked on the
practical implications of Tartaglia’s ideas.121 In his 1557 Due dialoghi . . . del modo
di disegnare le piante delle fortezze secondo Euclide, he used the supple form of the
dialogue to convey his lessons about warfare through the refined, genteel conversation among educated, well-bred gentlemen, which included Girolamo Cataneo. In
the book, Lanteri wrestled with how to construct polygonal fortifications, tackling
problems such as the optimal spacing and orientation of artillery platforms and the
best ways to use surveying instruments. Lanteri proclaimed that Euclid held the
answer to every fortification design problem. He recommended in particular the use
of models as test devices.122 Lanteri’s practical bent came through two years later
in another work touting the advantages of earthen ramparts—a practice long since
perfected in Northern France and the Low Countries.123 He also addressed how
to organize a workplace, site logistics and materials, and complex devices, such as
pumps and levers. His work became a useful handbook for novice military engineers
and also acquainted noble readers and rulers with practical aspects of constructing
bastioned fortifications.
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A third important Italian military engineer who wrote on the subject in the
1550s was Giovan Battista de’ Zanchi from Pesaro. His Del modo di forticar le
città, published in 1554, dealt exclusively with bastioned defenses.124 Zanchi discussed site considerations when evaluating different design schemas articulating
the enceinte’s edge. Like other practitioners, he stressed empirical experience over
rigid formulaic theory. Tartaglia’s ideas came to France via Zanchi’s work with
the publication in 1556 in Lyon of Jean de La Treille’s French translation entitled La manière de fortifier villes, chasteux et autres lieux forts. Over the next fifty
years, a distinctive school of French fortification design developed, inspired by
these and other Italian works, which culminated in the innovations of Jean Errard
and Claude Flamand in the 1590s.
Advances beyond Pélerin’s methods of rendering perspective came from the influence of Italian painters brought to France in the 1530s to work on Fontainebleau.
They include Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio, and Giacomo Barrozi da
Vignola, all proficient in perspective whose work can still be seen today in the palace. Most important, however, was Sebastiano Serlio, whose books on architecture
became so popular in France that he became François I’s chief architect in the early
1540s. Serlio devised another easily accessible technique to render perspective for
stage scenery. He provided particularly good guidance for properly using a compass
to delineate curved lines in ovoid spaces.125 And he wrote a manual on fortification
design, though it did not circulate widely.126
Subsequent draftsmen in France, such as Philibert de l’Orme and Jacques
Androuet du Cerceau, expanded further upon Pélerin’s approach. Androuet du
Cerceau’s Leçons de perspective positive, published in 1576, complemented his earlier
collection on architecture and the building trades, Excellents bâtiments de France. In
it, he presents sixty lessons in a do-it-yourself format, complete with easy-to-follow
illustrations to guide the student or builder.127 Du Cerceau purposely omits mention of Euclidean geometry in his primer, as he strove for readers to master applied
technique rather than bookish knowledge. By contrast, the use of more advanced
perspective geometry comes through in the work—both built and written—of
Philibert de L’Orme. A close look at the trompe that L’Orme built at the château of
Anet between 1549 and 1551 featured in his Premier tome de l’architecture sixteen
years later, reveals the ongoing innovations possible in the craft tradition.128 As the
name suggests, a trompe aimed to appear to flout the laws of gravity. The techniques featured by L’Orme grew out of the stonecutting traditions of the masons;
his father, in fact, was a master mason.129 In the introduction to the Premier tome,
L’Orme insists on the importance for both architects and masons to know geometry. Indeed, no built work can begin without the fundamental—and foundational—
act of squaring up. The difference now was the increasing appearance of this craft
knowledge in print and in connection with discussions of advanced mathematics
that eventually led to the breakthroughs of algebraic geometry and the calculus in
the next century.
Works devoted to mathematical theory also contained practical information for
builders and merchants. The first such book printed in French was Larismetique
by Étienne de La Roche, published in Lyon in 1520. From Villefranche, La Roche
studied under Nicolas Chuquet, known for his work in algebraic notation, and
taught commercial mathematics for twenty-five years in Lyon. Lyon offered a wellestablished book market that introduced mathematical work by Italians to a French
audience.130 Larismetique was essentially a pastiche of basic algebra drawn from
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Chuquet, Luca Pacioli, and a Lyonnais banker named Philippe Frescobaldi.131 It
included solutions using algebra for problems familiar to merchants and builders,
such as calculating volumes. True advances in geometry only came in 1542 when
Charles de Bouelles published his work in practical geometry.132 Reprinted four
times in the next twenty years, this work aimed to teach its readers the rudiments
of Euclidean geometry, covering general principles, angular figures, squaring the
circle, dimensions of solids, and the cubic volume of the sphere. The renowned cartographer Oronce Finé provided the book’s many woodcuts, visually illustrating
principles logically notated in the text.133 Bouelles provided a much more powerful combination of advanced projective geometry focused on a variety of practical
problems.
Another important figure in advancing mathematical knowledge in France was
Jacques Peletier. He wrote a primer on arithmetic in 1549, a short introduction
to algebra in 1554, and later translated several of Finé’s Latin manuals on practical geometry. In 1573, he composed his own work on geometry, De l’usage de
géometrie, explicitly aimed at practitioners. After a brief résumé of basic Euclidean
theorems, Peletier provides several dozen examples of practical applications for surveyors, such as measuring a building, a plot of land, or a mountain.134 He also
pointed out flaws in some of Euclid’s original proofs. Another major theorist of
perspective in sixteenth-century France was the artist Jean Cousin. Cousin also
bridged the craft world of applied mathematics and the learned culture of court.
What Cousin’s treatise lacked in originality was made up for in clarity of expression
and practicality of application.135 In his 1560 Livre de perspective, he achieved complex results using fairly simple means long used by craftsmen. The Netherlands also
boasted of its own experts, who wrote in French or had their works translated into
French. The most noteworthy was the Flemish fortification expert Simon Stevin,
whose French editions of treatises on arithmetic and algebra appeared in Leiden in
1585.136 His work on perspective looks at a number of innovations such as the case
of calculating the perspective for making a drawing on a canvas that is not perpendicular to the ground, and the case of inverse perspective.
A substantial body of printed works on practical mathematics, surveying, and
fortification design thus existed in France before 1560. Much of this material was
Italian in origin or inspiration, though over time French expertise in these various
fields began to emerge. Together, they offered a variety of techniques, some old
and some new, to solve practical problems.137 Writers often trained in universities
approached these problems from a more theoretical perspective, while others, frequently artisans steeped in traditional building techniques, published manuals and
treatises on applied mathematics. Both of these groups together defined the parameters of the emerging professions of “architect” and “engineer.” Italian innovations
on built forms and enduring craft traditions of building practice also became evident in the actual bastioned fortifications constructed in sixteenth-century France.
While artist-engineers designed, it was still masons and carpenters who dominated
most phases of design execution into the seventeenth century.138
Since 1500, an embryonic royal fortification service took shape in the
Administration of Royal Buildings (bâtiments royaux) to oversee a growing number of urban projects that by the 1530s included large-scale fortifications financed
by the crown. The crown used provincial governors and their lieutenants to oversee
these efforts and created in 1515 comptrollers (contrôlleurs) in most major towns
to ensure money was properly spent. In the 1520s, there came new general taxes
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for fortifications and garrisons in the frontier regions of Picardy, Champagne, and
Provence. In 1532, the crown tapped half the local excise taxes, lamely referred to
as loans, earmarked for town walls in the Ile-de-France, Normandy, and the Loire
valley for these projects. Many towns refused to comply with the decision to export
their revenues to other locales. Two years later, François I renewed this order,
demanding this time that all these funds be sent immediately to Paris for eventual
disbursement later. He also committed all proceeds from the droits féodaux for the
next six years to defray the costs of fortification construction in towns along the
frontier.
To ensure further oversight of work sites, long the purview of masons who served
as masters-of-work, the crown appointed business administrators (intendants des
bâtiments royaux) and then in 1536 the office of the Surintendant, first held by
Philibert de la Bourdaisière, the king’s chief finance minister. In 1537, François I
inspected walled towns across Languedoc and Provence, while he ordered the Italian
military engineer Antonio Castello to do the same in Picardy. Some historians, in
fact, attribute the success of the Valois in capturing and fortifying so many places
after 1530 to their superior administrative and financial organization.139 Another
reason for taking a geographic approach lay in the fact that regional administrative
responsibility for fortifications was in the mid-sixteenth century divided among
the four royal secretaries of state who, together with the provincial governors, initiated inspections, reviewed reports, and saw through to completion repairs and
construction.140 Parallel efforts to organize the royal artillery service got underway
during François I’s reign as well.141
The hardening of France’s frontiers under the Valois impeded traditional networks of commercial exchange along rivers and disrupted industries, particularly
textiles. Rising fiscal demands on the bonnes villes bred resistance and resentment
as towns found the king loath to confirm, let alone expand, municipal privileges
in exchange for cash. Meeting these obligations led urban oligarchs, eager to preserve their own tax-exemptions, to pass these new burdens onto groups lower down
the pecking order or villages and secondary towns in the region. Social antagonisms rose correspondingly and the nature of royal rule changed with time.142 La
Rochelle presented a case in point as François I revamped a narrowed municipal
council to do his bidding while ordering walled towns in the Aunis to bolster
coastal defenses and pick up half the cost of La Rochelle’s new fortifications.143
The Rochelais rebelled in 1542 over an increase in the salt tax (gabelle); he reluctantly eased the tax and pardoned them the next year as they, in turn, promised
never again to defy royal authority.144 Much the same occurred on a larger scale in
1548 when higher salt taxes ignited unrest up and down the greater Loire valley
and in the salt-producing areas along the coast.145 Valois’ pragmatism thus usually
trumped obstinate assertions of royal prerogatives if local resistance became too
strong.
And stronger it certainly became, not only in La Rochelle but across the kingdom, as a result of the spread of Calvinism during the 1540s. While the 1559
Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis saw Henri II and Philip II trade nearly two hundred
fortified places with each other in an effort to better clarify the contested frontier
regions between them, the kingdom’s interior remained as highly militarized as it
was during the Middle Ages. Most towns still possessed formidable if antiquated
walls, motivated militias, and arsenals brimming with firearms, cannons, gunpowder, and shot. The monarchy’s capacity to wage war had always been a function
95
of the readiness of nobles and towns to fight for it. Now this capacity to make
war was turned on the kingdom when Henri II suddenly died on July 10, 1559.
France quickly fell prey to noble factionalism, urban unrest, and simmering confessional hostilities as none of the sons who succeeded him, nor his wife and queen
Catherine de Médici, proved able to stop the kingdom’s descent into the maelstrom
of violence known as the Wars of Religion.
Ch apter 6
Walled Towns du ring the
Wars of R eligion
A fter 1560, France experienced violence on a scale comparable to the horrors of
the Hundred Years’ War. Sieges framed these conflicts beginning with the 1562
massacre in a barricaded barn in Vassy and ending with La Rochelle’s dramatic fall
in 1628. These struggles brought profound physical changes to towns and altered
their relationship with the crown. While most sieges took place against Protestant
strongholds, the consequences of urban insecurity in time touched all towns in
France. The experience of urban warfare in France during the Wars of Religion
unfolded in three main phases. The first period, from 1559 to 1598, encompassed
first Calvinist and then Catholic resistance in towns until the conversion and triumph of Henri IV in the 1590s. The ensuing twenty-year interlude of peace saw
the monarchy inaugurate a new set of relationships with the bonnes villes. Finally,
in the early 1620s conflict with Huguenot towns resumed and only ended after a
series of sieges that redefined relations between those towns and the crown. While
the bonnes villes sought at first to refortify their walls, they faced with the eventual
establishment of peace a monarchy committed to tearing them down.1
The rapidity of the urban response to rising insecurities after 1560, from rebuilding walls to expanding militias, reflected the continuing importance of towns in
the making of war. As in the Hundred Years’ War, the need for self-defense also
offered towns an occasion to realize a broader sense of community, subject to factions to be sure, but also capable of sustained bursts of public unity that transcended class and confession. The image of humble fishermen working side-by-side
with great merchants in repairing and defending the walls of La Rochelle in 1628
offers a compelling, though hardly unique example. It is essential to realize that
townspeople did not see these as conflicts with their king. The bonnes villes much
preferred strong kings to weak ones, believing that their cherished liberties could
only be secure if the monarchy was stable. Municipal fortifications, therefore, never
represented an intentional defiance of the crown’s authority, but rather a localized
expression of public governance connected ultimately to the king. The monarchy
did not seek to subjugate towns through sieges in order to become “absolute”;
indeed, the interests of urban elites still largely coincided with the monarchy as
they had during the Middle Ages. Towns took complicated positions depending on
a host of mainly local factors; indeed, most bonnes villes never actually resisted the
king’s men during the Wars of Religion. The crown’s efforts to subdue Calvinist
towns, such as La Rochelle and Nîmes, or Catholic Paris under the League relied
upon the active, often quite enthusiastic support of nearby towns, Catholic and
98
Calvinist. When resistance did become explicitly anti-royalist, it was shocking to
most contemporaries.2
Arguments that Calvinist sympathies in southern France represented some sort
of broader proto-nationalist identity overlook these complicated regional cleavages
and dynamics.3 Urban factionalism in both Calvinist and Catholic towns revolved
not only around confessional issues but also around the continuing cooption of
urban elites into royal administration. The relentless narrowing of the urban notability across the bonnes villes of France from the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, though open to the occasional inclusion of new families from
commerce or even the rural nobility, created a virtual monopoly by these families
over customary municipal posts and royal judicial and fiscal offices. Indeed, this
control became institutionalized through the proliferating practice of venality. The
shift in towns from regimes based on customary liberties to legal ones predicated
on the royal prerogative thus elicited complex reactions from urban notables ranging from resistance to complicity.4 New fiscal relations offered added opportunities
to intertwine local elite and royal interest through tax polices and credit. Until the
1620s, urban elites and the monarchy strove to perfect, not break, the traditional
partnership that had tied them together for so long.5
The disintegration of royal authority after 1559, just as in the Hundred Years’
War, saw municipal officials once again assume more direct responsibility for
security, self-governance, and religious affairs, which for some meant embracing
Calvinism while for others it entailed a commitment to militant Catholicism. The
crown was at first loath to move any gendarme companies stationed in citadels and
fortified towns along the kingdom’s frontiers to the interior. Mobilizing such auxiliary forces for a field army constantly broke down due to insufficient funds and
poor recruiting methods.6 As revenues to the royal treasury dwindled, so company
captains failed to pay their men, who in turn seized their payments directly—and
often brutally—from the local populace. Such direct plunder in lieu of payment
prevailed during the Wars of Religion through the Thirty Years’ War until the
royal administration finally organized a more effective system to pay and supply its troops.7 Proven warriors, such as Michel de Castelnau and François de la
Noue, deplored the decidedly ignoble behavior of these “gens-pillent-hommes”
and “gens-tuent-hommes.”8 Men of law called for the rule of law, compassion, and
the values associated with urban living, not brute force. Such sentiments fueled
criticism of aristocratic dueling, which challenged the king’s claimed monopoly on
the use of violence.9 Measuring the impact of sectarian violence on French society
is no easy task. Attempts to quantify the damage have relied on printed sources
of dubious reliability, while local studies raise questions about typicality. Even so,
most historians agree France suffered demographic and economic declines due to
violence comparable to those experienced in the Hundred Years’ War.10
The burst of urban fortification construction after 1560 can still be seen today
in the boulevards and large plazas that ring the older downtown districts of provincial towns such as Amiens, Bourges, Nîmes, and Montauban. The medieval curtain
walls and towers typically found around most towns now received the more articulated edge of the bastioned trace. Towns in the kingdom’s interior suddenly in the
1560s began to devote attention to their defenses after a near century of neglect.
Municipal officials in Bourges and the local provincial governor the marquis of
La Châtre raised resources to expand the enceinte to include outlying faubourgs.
Town fathers in Orléans eschewed the offer of lower taxes to raze the walls and
Wa l l e d Tow ns du r i ng t h e Wa r s of R e l ig ion
99
instead agreed to higher levies to rebuild them.11 Some towns, such as Blois, had
already converted sections along their periphery to leisure and commercial pursuits.12 Castles, too, underwent modernization where funding permitted. Just as
in the Middle Ages, the duty of building and protecting a city’s walls fell on virtually everyone who lived within them and nearby outside. Repair and reconstruction also took place for many castles and villages originally fortified in the late
Middle Ages.13 Fortified churches also again became common in areas such as the
Thiérache, Lorraine, and Gascony.14 Despite factional infighting, most towns—
Catholic and Calvinist—quickly managed to modernize their defenses under the
direction of architect-engineers familiar with the new Italian fortification designs.
War readiness also entailed stockpiling food to victual passing armies. The
crown authorized towns to exercise new procurement powers to enhance the regulation of the local grain market and bread prices. Wholesale merchants, attracted
by tax exemptions and financial guarantees, contracted through local officials with
the crown to provide the vast quantities of grain, wine, and meat necessary to feed
the king’s soldiers. Lack of administrative oversight, however, led to a great deal
of fraud and mismanagement.15 In the absence of coin, company captains sometimes paid their men in loaves of bread.16 It is therefore all the more remarkable
to note the occasions when the monarchy overcame such procurement challenges.
The effects of supporting long sieges or large field armies strained regional logistical networks shaped by market relations, coercion, and bureaucratic fiat. Overall,
the crown’s ability to sustain such operations improved over the course of the Wars
of Religion.17
Towns also provided skilled and unskilled laborers who the crown mobilized to
assist the army, particularly during a siege. The success or failure of such a complex operation often depended on the availability of pioneers to dig the trenches,
build the artillery platforms, and handle the onerous manual tasks that soldiers
found so distasteful. Conscription was often necessary in the absence of adequate
pay. Inclement weather, lack of food, and the hazards of attacking a well-armed
bastion with only a shovel often quickly diminished their numbers, as happened at
La Rochelle in 1573.18 Municipal officials sometimes met the crown’s demands for
work gangs, and rid the town of a nuisance, by using the burgeoning poor rolls.
Skilled workers, such as carpenters, masons, and teamsters, also had to be forced
to assist the king’s army lest they be imprisoned or lose their property. Contracts
provided no guarantee of payment once operations ended, however. Finally, town
furnished militia companies, often quite reluctantly, to aid the king’s army.
Towns served as centers for the production and stockpiling of armaments. Most
towns possessed well-stocked armories. At the outset of the wars, Bourges, for
example, had hundreds of firearms, pikes, halberds, corselets, helmets, daggers,
and swords, together with ample supplies of ammunition and powder.19 Most, if
not all of these tools of war were produced locally. Even local religious houses
became involved, especially in the manufacture of saltpeter. Intended for the local
militia and garrison, these war materials could be sold or, as often occurred, requisitioned by the crown but often never paid for. Regional arms centers existed in
Tours, Breteuil, Saint-Étienne, Forez and Lyon, together with foreign suppliers in
Milan, Brescia, and Liège.20
The rapid emergence of a formidable Huguenot military machine, first seen at
the Battle of Dreux in December 1562, reflects the prevailing level of militarization in French society.21 Another is the ubiquity of arms in the hands of the general
100
populace, though determining precise numbers is difficult. Urban militias, though
socially restrictive, clearly offered men of fairly substantial means the opportunity
to learn how to handle a weapon and work together as a team, whether by simply
guarding the city’s walls and gates, or marching out to meet the enemy. Just how
well trained they were remains open to question, as some militia company statutes
had to explain the dangers of pointing loaded weapons at each other’s heads. Hefty
fines and repeated warnings apparently did not dissuade members from pilfering
weapons and shot from company stores. Meant to maintain order, urban militias
occasionally contributed to the mayhem as, for example, in the St. Bartholomew’s
Day massacres in Paris and provincial towns.22 Weapons lay close at hand for more
humble members of society. University students had upon matriculation to register
not only their names and places of birth, but also any arms they carried. Rowdy
street gangs of young men, some brandishing firearms, became such a public menace that some towns established curfews and mounted armed patrols. Local inns
required guests to register their weapons with municipal officials or face expulsion
from the city. Even peasants, often seen as hapless victims, possessed weapons such
as crossbows and spears. In the 1570s, peasants in Dauphiné formed an association
known as “les Defenseurs de la Cause Commune” dedicated to repulse any soldier
foolish enough to invade their area.23 Similar organizations existed in neighboring Provence as well as in other parts of France.24 Indeed, the various leagues and
armed unions that swept across the country during the Wars of Religion endured
into the next century with movements such as the Croquants and Nupieds.25
Confessional Politics and Conflict in
the B ONNES VILLES
For towns, the Wars of Religion occurred as much as conflicts within urban communities as between them. No bonne ville, not even the putative bastions of Calvinism
or the Catholic League, ever became a confessional monolith during the Wars of
Religion. The religious culture of urban France remained remarkably heterogeneous; while confessional politics in the towns often sought to align municipal
and ecclesiastical institutions, they rarely attempted to realize internal uniformity
through force. La Rochelle, for example, tolerated and at times persecuted its sizeable Catholic minority, just as Calvinists experienced much the same treatment in
Catholic Orléans and Lyon. The advent of the Reformation had divisive consequences in towns as factions within them vied through political maneuvering and
outright violence for control. These conflicts quickly assumed broader regional and
countrywide dimensions through the networks of alliance and influence that permeated the kingdom. The cases of La Rochelle and Nîmes are instructive. In the
early 1560s, conflicts within La Rochelle brought about royal intervention with
the installation of a garrison of some twelve hundred soldiers, a threat to raze the
enceinte, and a move by the crown to seize municipal revenues to build a citadel.
In Nîmes, sectarian disputes revolved around the intrusions by the Parlement of
Toulouse in municipal affairs, especially the establishment of a Présidial court in
the 1550s.26 Tensions finally exploded in the 1567 Michelade massacre set off by
the crown’s decision, at the behest of local Catholics, to lodge soldiers in Huguenot
households.27
The course of the religious wars and the fragile interludes of peace between
them revolved in large part around the control of walled towns (see Map 6.1). Local
Map 6.1
Wars of Religion, 1561–1629.
102
studies reveal underlying patterns, such as the social appeal of Calvinism among
artisans and certain kinds of merchants, as well as the close rapport between noble
leaders and members of the clergy. At the same time, they also show that each place
experienced the Reformation in its own way. In the first War of Religion from April
1562 to March 1563, the Huguenots initially enjoyed spectacular successes by seizing important bonnes villes in the greater Loire valley and Berry, such as Orléans,
Blois, Tours, Angers, Le Mans, and Bourges, while Nantes managed to fend off a
Huguenot attack.28 Sectarian strife swept across Champagne, Burgundy, Provence,
and Dauphiné to the south and Normandy and Picardy to the north.29 Closer to
Paris the town of Meaux was sacked by Huguenot raiders. In Normandy, by far
the kingdom’s richest province, Louis, prince of Condé and local sympathizers
seized Rouen and a number of other important strongholds. Amiens, the single
most important walled town facing Spanish Flanders, seemed for a while poised
to embrace Calvinism. Huguenot unrest in the southwest from the Midi to the
Pyrenees grew out of the long Aquitanian traditions of urban revolt dating back to
the Albigensian Crusades.30 Parthenay suffered extensive damage when Huguenots
set fire to the town in 1562, as did a number of original bastides. The appeal of
Calvinism became strong in small towns such as Condom or major cities such
as Bordeaux, and spread quickly across whole regions, particularly in Armagnac
and the Landes. Religious rioting shook Toulouse and Sisteron in 1562, provoking intense Catholic responses.31 Marseille, too, was wracked by divisions.32 In
Lyon, the appeal of Calvinism inflamed local labor divisions and catapulted the
Huguenots into control for a brief time. By late summer, Huguenots led by Condé,
seemed poised to take over significant portions of the kingdom. However, the
eventual royal and broader Catholic reaction to these early Calvinist successes gave
a foretaste of the long confessional struggles ahead.
Huguenot iconoclasts ransacked Catholic worship sites in many towns despite
disapproval by local Calvinist authorities. Like the king, Condé encountered resistance where he tried to raise funds in captured towns, such as Orléans, to pay
his soldiers. Catholic hegemony was established in Tours by judicial fiat.33 After
some initial hesitation, La Rochelle opted to embrace Condé’s party when the
crown tried to install a royal garrison in the town. In response, the crown ordered
Monluc to raise an army to subdue La Rochelle, and even called on cities such
as Bordeaux, Nantes, and Toulouse to lend him men and material. The response
was desultory at best, as Monluc’s siege soon failed. Some of the greatest violence
attended the Huguenot seizure of Rouen in April 1562. In early October, a royal
army of over thirty thousand men besieged Rouen and took it in an assault on
October 19 that resulted in the city’s sack and the death of some one thousand
residents as well as a leading prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon.34 The crown
then ordered the destruction of the fort on Mont Ste. Catherine. Royal forces also
retook Bourges, while the duke of Guise besieged Orléans. Meanwhile, in Gascony,
Monluc waged a brutal campaign of massacres and summary executions against the
Huguenots; such decisive action, he claims, saved Bordeaux and Toulouse, “these
two strong bastions that allow us to hold the region,” from the peril of heresy.35
The Huguenots also briefly seized the new port of Le Havre, even welcoming in
an English garrison of three thousand men. Nevertheless, a hard fought siege by
Montmorency retook the town in July 1563; in gratitude for the Catholic victory,
the port town’s name was changed to Havre-de-Grâce. A plan of fortifications and
siege lines shows an enceinte with four bastions and four new artillery platforms,
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against which royal forces reportedly deployed sixty cannons.36 The new trace italienne fortifications thus affected the course of the first War of Religion and only
increased in importance as the conflicts endured into the next century.
After hostilities came to a fleeting close in the Edict of Amboise in March 1563,
the crown quickly moved in a series of edicts to assert its control over the bonnes
villes and their walls. In the Edict of Amboise, it sought to regulate religious practice in terms of their proximity to towns and their suburbs. Later in October,
Charles IX ordered the demolition of fortifications in towns, paid for locally, not
along the frontier in order to secure the realm after the recent troubles. No surprise
that this unfunded mandate from Paris resulted in few demolitions. If towns sometimes balked at raising money to rebuild their walls, they positively refused to do
so to tear them down. In 1564, the king invoked his right in the Edict of Crémieu
to appoint mayors, aldermen, and consuls in towns as he visited them during his
upcoming grand tour.37 Resentment remained muted at first though most towns
eventually regained control over municipal elections as the crown’s sway continued
to disintegrate. Ceremony often conveyed this message as well. For example, prior
to Charles IX’s visit to La Rochelle in September 1565, Montmorency removed all
artillery from the walls that thus prevented its customary salvos to greet the king,
who then refused to confirm, as was customary, the town’s privileges as a condition for entry. Instead, Montmorency simply cut the blue ribbon tied across the
gate that “barred” the king’s entry, saying such customs were now obsolete. The
message was clear: be silent and obey the king.38 An even more explicit bid for permanent control of town walls came in the 1565 Edict of Moulins when Charles IX
ordered annual inspections of all frontier fortifications by teams of royal military
engineers under the supervision of provincial governors and their lieutenants. The
edict aimed to establish greater central oversight by requiring the annual submission of reports and accounts for fortification projects to the Chambre des Comptes
in Paris.39 Periodic inspections by royal military engineers sought to validate the
work thus reported. A ruling in 1567 gave municipal officials the task to watch the
royal military engineers for any abuses, such as graft or lax duty.40 A makeshift system of accountability and checks-and-balances thus began to evolve in the emerging royal fortification service in the aftermath of the first religious war.
The monarchy’s brief flirtation with a policy of toleration ended in September
1567 with the renewal of sectarian warfare. Calvinists seized Orléans in late
September together with other strategic towns. The Huguenot capture of Chartres
in 1568 resulted in a long, brutal siege before the crown finally regained control.
In the Battle of Saint-Denis in November, where the constable Montmorency was
mortally wounded, superior Catholic forces drove Condé’s Huguenot cavalry away
from Paris. Yet this victory only enhanced the prestige of Catholic militants led by
the Guises. In response, Catherine de Médici convinced her son to concede even
more fortified towns and privileges to worship to the Huguenot party in the Peace
of Longjumeau the following March, which in turn only emboldened its leaders
to seek to secure fortified towns across the lower Seine and the Saintonge in the
ensuing third War of Religion.
After Condé died at the Battle of Jarnac in March 1569, the mantle of leadership
passed on to Gaspard de Coligny. His partisans planned to seize Nantes in 1569
but apparently lost nerve thinking the town’s defenses too formidable.41 They also
attempted to surprise Bourges, but likewise failed. The Huguenots did, however,
capture Saint-Jean-d’Angély, whose municipal council had reformist sympathizers;
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they used rubble from the churches they demolished to strengthen its enceinte.
Control of this key town opened the way to extend their position in the Limousin,
especially after Coligny’s victory at the Battle of La Roche d’Abeille in June 1569.42
Coligny besieged Poitiers, which occasioned virulent Catholic attacks on the admiral as the polemical war of words also escalated.43 To the south in the Pyrenees,
Huguenot forces also lay siege to Navarrenx. Only the Catholic victory at the Battle
of Moncontour in October stemmed the Huguenot tide as royal forces went on
to recapture Niort, Fontenay-le-Comte, Saint-Maixent, and Saint-Jean-d’Angély in
the greater Saintonge.44 Refugees poured into La Rochelle, which further radicalized this bastion of the Reformed religion in France. As the 1560s came to close,
and after three religious wars, the longtime rule of war that control of territory
hinged on controlling walled towns never seemed truer.
The use of fortified towns as the currency of power in the Wars of Religion
became abundantly evident in the Peace of St. Germain in August 1570, which
for the first time identified four “safe towns” (places de sûreté) for Huguenots,
namely, La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité. Other towns, including the capital Paris, became designated as exclusively Catholic towns. The renewal
of war after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres in 1572, overwhelmingly urban
in nature, saw the struggle turn even more on sieges of walled towns.45 The crown
targeted the major urban centers of Huguenot resistance, such as La Rochelle,
Montauban, and Sancerre. Its leadership decimated and its membership demoralized, Reformed congregations relied as a result even more on the walls of their
towns for survival.
Fortifications and Sieges after the
St. Bartholomew’s Massacres
Since the outbreak of war in 1562, both sides had worked frantically, though not
always successfully, to strengthen the defenses of walled towns in their control or
to mount operations by force or stealth to capture an opponent’s fortified places.
Improvements to municipal defenses, while desired by most towns, yielded mixed
results due to the lack of money, insufficient direction, or contradictory signals
from leaders, including the king. Towns relied on special levies, forced loans, property seizures, and other expedients to underwrite the costs of these new defensive
works. Some towns, such as La Rochelle and Amiens, added significant bastioned
features to their enceintes; others such as Rouen proposed construction projects
that, for a variety of reasons, never got built. In Nantes, in 1571, Charles IX ordered
new fortifications around the faubourg Saint-Similien, while the town council preferred to demolish that suburb and instead devote scarce resources to enclosing the
La Fosse neighborhood. This difference of opinion meant any overhaul of Nantes’
fortifications languished, for when hostilities in the lower Loire finally ended in
1598 only two bastions were near completion.
The most dramatic changes to urban defenses occurred in Huguenot strongholds, beginning with La Rochelle, the anchor for the Reformed faith in the west
and chief link to England across the Channel. The revamping of its defenses,
mainly the citadel, was already underway in Henri II’s reign. Like many towns, La
Rochelle’s defenses folded the new bastioned trace into older medieval elements as
seen in contemporary views.46 The Porte de Cougnes, the main gate into the city,
for example, dated back to the late twelfth century and integrated part of the older
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Cluniac priory of Notre-Dame de Cougnes with the Tour d’Aix covering its flank.
It was rebuilt in 1411 with a reinforced portal and two new protective towers; in
1472–1474, a fronting brick bastion was added. Further repairs to the wall joining
the priory and the Tour d’Aix took place over the next thirty years. Finally, on the
eve of the religious wars in 1558, municipal officials ordered a much larger earthen
bastion boulevard built on the priory’s cemetery, which had to be relocated.
The 1562 siege exposed serious weaknesses in La Rochelle’s defenses, which a
newly installed Calvinist municipal council addressed in earnest in 1568. It commandeered royal revenues, extracted forced loans from local Catholics, and conscripted labor from nearby villages to raze the faubourgs, rip up Catholic cemeteries,
and demolish Catholic churches and chapels, using the rubble for new bastioned
outworks and ramparts. This work continued intermittently over the next five
years. These improvements to La Rochelle’s fortifications reinforced the existing
thirteenth-century curtain walls in places and added new bastioned features, especially on its vulnerable approaches to the north and east. Forced loans also raised
money for a Huguenot navy that later proved crucial in protecting La Rochelle’s
access to the sea. New-style Italian fortification features began to be introduced
more systematically after La Rochelle hired the Friulian engineer, Scipio Vergano,
in 1569. Four years later, ironically, the crown paid Vergano to direct siege operations against the Calvinist stronghold. By that time, La Rochelle had replaced
him with Robert Chinon, an engineer who had overseen several projects for Henri
d’Albret, king of Navarre and governor of Guyenne in the early 1550s. In October
1572, Robert Chinon designed and oversaw the building of a counter-escarpment
in front of the fortified gate. Vergano oversaw initial construction on a massive
bastion called the Boulevard Neuf or des Dames to guard approaches to the Porte
Maubec on the eastern, landward perimeter of the city. In 1570, Jeanne d’Albret,
queen of Navarre, Henri I, prince of Condé, and Gaspard de Coligny urged city
officials to continue work on the enceinte with the addition of the Bastion du
Gabut (or des Vases) that flanked the Tour Saint-Nicolas guarding the mouth to
the harbor. Funerary stones from the Church of St. Sauveur apparently adorned
its seaward façade. In fact, four parish churches were razed along with another
four ecclesiastical buildings just outside the walls; the belfry of the priory church
became converted into an artillery platform, with casemates eventually constructed
behind the altar. An orillon was then built across the drawbridge to protect it from
flanking fire, which contained decorative stones from the demolished priory and
the royal coat-of-arms, along with the suddenly ironic inscription Le bon Roy entretiendra son people en paix (see figure 6.1).
The 1573 siege of La Rochelle lasted from January to June 1573. The inability of the crown to take the place reflected the hard limits of royal power when it
came to siege warfare. First was the insufficiency of the royal army led by Henri,
duke of Anjou and the future Henri III, who arrived with his entourage, which
included Henri de Navarre and Condé, both recent converts to Catholicism. The
royal besieging force numbered only twelve thousand men, not the forty thousand
promised by his brother Charles IX. Anjou had to draw pioneers, though never
enough of them, from as far away as Normandy and Berry, while the powder and
artillery he assembled came from armories in Picardy and Burgundy. The French
navy, such as it was, failed to cut off La Rochelle by the sea, which meant the town’s
provisions would never run short. By contrast, La Rochelle possessed daunting
fortifications that bristled with nearly two hundred cannon and were manned by a
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Figure 6.1 Fortifications of La Rochelle, 1573. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale
(B.N. 87C 131083).
large, well-motivated militia and English contingents, all ably led by the celebrated
warrior François de la Noue. Horrible weather eroded the morale and ranks of the
besiegers, while time became an ally of the besieged. The closest the Catholics
came to capturing the city was on April 4 when they opened a breach in the Bastion
de l’Évangile. However, the Huguenots quickly filled it with bales of wool, bolts
of cloth, beds, barrels, and sacks of dirt. With that, the monarchy’s moment for
victory passed.
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Technical experts assisted Anjou during the siege. Besides Scipio Vergano,
other Italian engineers included Paolo Emilio Fieschi and Greghetto Guistiniani,
both from Genoa, and Agostino Ramelli. They prepared sketches of La Rochelle’s
defenses, helped properly deploy artillery and plan approach trenches, and lay mines
under walls and bastions. The French military engineer Ambroise Bachot was also
apparently present during the siege, though in what capacity is uncertain. The
impact of these experts on siege operations appears negligible. Indeed, the inadvertent early explosion of a mine set by Ramelli, which killed nearly two hundred men,
suggests the limits of their expertise. At this moment, defenses informed by the
latest engineering acumen held a distinct advantage over similarly informed modes
of attack, as they would until well into the next century.
Propaganda also played a role, albeit a minor one, in the siege. A short anonymous pamphlet, Discours et recueil du siege, covered the highlights of the siege
from a royalist point of view.47 It justified the operation as a punishment against
seditious heretics and said La Rochelle would have surrendered if the “foreigners”
inside did not hold the town in thrall. Finally, it appealed to all gentilshommes to
risk their lives and wealth for the king. However, royal publicists found no real
incentive to publicize the many difficulties and diminishing chances for success
experienced by Anjou’s besieging force. When the siege finally ended, there were
some thirteen hundred estimated dead in La Rochelle and up to six thousand
casualties in the royal army. In the July 11 accord, the crown confirmed all of La
Rochelle’s privileges into perpetuity and pardoned its inhabitants. The stout resistance of one walled town thus doomed the monarchy’s hopes of reclaiming control
of its entire kingdom.
Despite its successful resistance, La Rochelle quickly fell prey again to intense
factional rivalry. Like many bonnes villes, La Rochelle was dominated by a narrow
oligarchy bounded together by ties of family, business, and faith. Yet when dealing with outside powers, the Rochellais—Catholic, Calvinist, or foreign residents
alike—usually closed ranks quickly. In the Treaty of Beaulieu, concluded on May 6,
1576, to end the fifth War of Religion, the new king Henri III again confirmed
all of La Rochelle’s privileges and pledged that the town would never be subject to
a royal governor ever again. Town fathers also imposed all kinds of conditions on
visits by Huguenot lords, such as Henri de Navarre, newly returned to Calvinism.
Condé’s request in 1577 to La Rochelle for support beyond the town’s immediate
needs required substantial concessions. La Rochelle’s interests remained above all
quite local as seen in its involvement in the 1587 War of the Three Henris. Its main
interest was to close the port of Brouage, a nearby competitor for maritime commerce, where in 1586 it sank twenty ships loaded with stone in the main harbor
channel, an act that foreshadowed the great sea dike constructed by the crown in
1628 during the final siege of La Rochelle.
After the 1573 siege, the Rochelais quickly set about rebuilding the Bastion de
l’Évangile, which had borne the brunt of the attack, reinforcing it with a masonryfaced counterscarp. A ravelin named after La Noue was built in front of the Boulevard
de l’Épître. The work that received the most attention and funding was reinforcing
the Porte de Cougne on the northeastern corner of the city. Besides its inherent
vulnerability, this gate also held symbolic importance, since it opened on the road
that eventually led to Paris and through which royal officials and occasionally the
king made their ceremonial entries. Finally, they also authorized the construction
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of the Fort de Saint-Nicolas. These projects continued for the next half-century and
were only finally completed as civil conflicts reignited in the 1620s.
The fortifications of Montauban, a major Huguenot stronghold located in the
heart of Languedoc, also underwent dramatic change during the early Wars of
Religion that dissuaded the crown from besieging it after the St. Bartholomew’s
Day massacre.48 Since the 1562 siege by Blaise de Monluc, Montauban had committed huge resources to enhancing its security. While ambitious plans for upgrading Montauban’s defenses went back to the early 1540s, much of the work remained
incomplete twenty years later, as, for example, the brick bastion at the Porte de
Campagnes begun in 1541. Also needing completion were the bastions at Porte
Moustier, while a 1555 inspection revealed a large section of the wall near the
bridge across the Tarn had fallen down. The city was thus open to easy capture by
any determined enemy.
Work on Montauban’s defenses only resumed in earnest when the Calvinists
came to power in 1557.49 Among the municipal council’s first actions, as occurred
in La Rochelle and other Huguenot towns, was the move to convert the Jacobin
church into an artillery platform to guard approaches across the Tarn. It also had
a defensive trench dug around the faubourg located across the Tarn.50 Bastioned
outworks also went up around the town’s other gates, thus extending the enceinte
beyond the original medieval core. Although unfinished, the town’s defenses held
off Monluc’s siege in 1562 long enough to reach a deal with the crown, but only
after municipal officials had agreed to demolish the enceinte. Three years later
when Charles IX visited Montauban during his grand tour, the walls and new outworks remained standing. Work on them began anew in 1568 and continued into
the late 1580s, giving Montauban in the end among the most modern defenses in
all of France.
As occurred elsewhere, elements of the new-style Italian trace became added
to reinforce the existing enceinte’s most vulnerable spots, resulting in an uneven
but overall considerable expansion of the town’s militarized periphery. Three new
bastions went up across the Tarn in the 1580s around the newly named suburb
of Villebourbon, after Henri de Navarre who helped pay for them.51 These were
earthen works, much less expensive than brick-faced ones but still effective. A
gateway across the fronting ditch was protected by a half-moon. Work also began
on fortifications planned for the suburbs around the rest of Montauban with the
addition of horn-works and ravelins.52 While certainly inspired by Italian design
concepts, Montauban’s fortifications departed from them in many important,
pragmatic aspects. For example, the angles of its bastions were sometimes obtuse,
sometimes acute. This irregularity contrasts with the noted preference given to
right-angles by the Italians. In fact, the ratio of bastion to curtain resembled ideas
of engineers who had worked under the Alsatian military engineer and architect
Daniel Specklin, whose work in Strasbourg was possibly familiar to some Calvinist
refugees in Montauban.53 As a result of all this work, while occasionally menaced
after 1562, Montauban was not again besieged until 1621 during the final phase
of the Wars of Religion. These massive investments in self-defense thus bought its
residents nearly sixty years of security.
The monarchy’s limited ability to prosecute a successful siege can be seen in
the difficulties it encountered and finally overcame in the case of Sancerre, a small
hilltop town on the upper Loire near Nevers. A hasty siege in 1568 saw three local
royal governors, François, count of Entragues, and François de Balzac, marquis
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of Orléans, and La Châtre of Bourges, assemble their garrisons to march against
Sancerre. They failed. The better known siege of 1572–1573 took place against
the background of the St. Bartholomew Day massacres as refugees from Orléans
and Bourges flooded into Sancerre. Perched high on a peak overlooking the Loire,
Sancerre was ringed by walls measuring only a half mile in circumference pierced
by four gates, the Porte-Vieille, the Porte-Feuhard, the Porte Saint-André, and
the Porte-Oison. Twenty-three towers attached to private residences within the
walls further enhanced the town’s defenses in case of a breach. Its total population,
including refugees, was around three thousand. It was by comparison with most
bonnes villes a decidedly small town. What was most famous about the siege was the
textual account it yielded by the Calvinist pastor Jean de Léry.54
In late 1572, shortly before La Châtre arrived with army, a Catholic faction
inside Sancerre tried to seize a fortified tower located on the eastern edge of the
town facing the river. Had they succeeded, the ensuing siege would likely have been
much shorter. Resistance in Sancerre was bi-confessional, as Catholics who had not
fled joined ranks with Huguenots to fight the king’s troops. André Johanneau, a
lawyer, served as governor of the town, a post he had held since the outbreak of
the troubles more than a decade before. He thought that the crown would be too
occupied with the siege of La Rochelle and its campaign in Languedoc to devote
much attention and resources against Sancerre. As a result, food was not sufficiently stockpiled, surrounding villages remained standing to provide shelter for
the besiegers, and reinforcement of the town’s fortifications proceeded laxly. Only
in late December did town authorities show more alacrity in preparing for the
impending conflict, requisitioning food from nearby villages.
Military operations against Sancerre began in early January 1573 as La Châtre’s
forces, some seven thousand strong, converged to take up positions. It was thus half
the size of the army before La Rochelle for a place nearly seven times smaller. Those
facts and the lack of preparation on the part of Sancerrois gave a decided but by no
means guaranteed advantage to La Châtre. On January 13, La Châtre sent a herald
to summon the town to surrender. Johanneau seized the unfortunate and had him
put to death—a breach of military etiquette that La Châtre never forgave. In early
February, La Châtre began to position his artillery in Saint- Satur at the base of the
promontory atop which sat Sancerre. Local masons and carpenters, not Italian military engineers, provided technical expertise for both attackers and defenders. The
artillery barrage from mid-February to early March softened up the town’s defenses
but never breached them. La Châtre abandoned this approach in favor of starving
Sancerre into submission because Anjou ordered him to send most of his cannons
down the Loire and then on to La Rochelle. High rates of desertions, a common
problem for besiegers, also plagued La Châtre.55 From March to June, royal forces
cordoned off Sancerre, whose food supplies soon disappeared. As famine set in,
news came on June 2 that Nîmes had sent a relief force of one hundred horses and
one thousand arquebusiers to rescue Sancerre. In a bid to hold out longer, the
defenders expelled the “useless mouths” along with desperate residents who hoped
to escape starvation, but royal forces refused to let them pass through the lines.
Their fate was a piteous one.56
By early August, conditions became so desperate inside Sancerre that the town’s
leaders finally agreed to open surrender talks with La Châtre. La Châtre eventually
offered them the same conditions accepted on July 11 by La Rochelle, Montauban,
and Nîmes plus sixty thousand livres as compensation, which he later reduced
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to forty thousand. Amazingly in light of the recent famine conditions, the town
raised these funds by selling one thousand barrels of its celebrated wine hidden
away in municipal cellars. La Châtre had the leaders of the resistance, among them
Léry, escorted away for their own safety to Blet. Johanneau, however, remained
only to be assassinated on September 12, his body found in pit near the market
hall. Catholic priests celebrated a Te Deum after a solemn procession to the Halle
as La Châtre reestablished Catholic service in newly consecrated churches across
town. Protestants worship became confined to private homes. La Châtre had the
town’s gates burned, ditches filled in, and walls and towers knocked down. He
also removed the town’s clock and bell, which dated to 1509, from the belfry and
transported them to his château in Nançay as spoils of war. In these ways, La
Châtre stripped Sancerre of its marks as a bonne ville. La Châtre finally returned to
Bourges in late October after the king named Antoine de Bar, lord of Buranlure, as
the new governor of Sancerre. It was a hard fought royal victory, the last major one
for the Valois dynasty before its collapse in 1589.
The 1573 Edict of Boulogne recognized the results of the crown’s inability to
take Huguenot strongholds, with the exception of Sancerre, by granting the rejuvenated members of the Reformed movement eight places de seurété. Synods raise
money and men in a system akin to the emerging royal one that tried to distribute
war costs as broadly as possible. Within a year, war broke out again, only this time
the Huguenots took the offensive in Normandy and Champagne. Long sieges,
such as the fifteen-month ordeal at Ménérbes in 1574–1575, remained the norm
for both sides as the advantage overwhelmingly rested with the besieged. Many
Huguenot and Catholic towns accordingly redoubled their efforts to strengthen
their defenses. Modest towns, such as Lisle d’Albigeois near Montauban, invested
considerable resources into their fortifications. Condom did the same. Catholic
governors encouraged the construction of new citadels, as in Mâcon. Huguenot
unrest rose markedly after 1575 in places such as Charité-sur-Loire, near Sancerre,
and Romans in Dauphiné, and Albi near Montauban.57 As divisions grew, Henri III
called an assembly of the Estates General in Blois in 1576, but it only accelerated
the further disintegration of royal authority by focusing criticism on the crown.
The Catholic League and Fortified Towns
Nowhere was this crisis more evident than in the emergence and subsequent spread
of a militant Catholic insurgency known as the Holy League. Over the next twenty
years, scores of decidedly Catholic bonnes villes turned away from the Valois and
the first Bourbon king and instead sought security, as they had since the fourteenth
century, behind their own walls. While aristocratic leaders such as the Guises often
dominate literature about the Holy League, the nobility in general felt rather
ambivalent about involvement in Catholic militancy. Instead, the movement was
primarily urban in nature and oriented toward local issues and concerns, except
naturally in Paris where discourse and action embraced the entire kingdom.58 Even
so, the ascendancy of the Holy League in the capital was still largely keyed to
neighborhood and institutional dynamics within the city, particularly the Hôtelde-Ville and the Parlement, which went back to the 1550s.59 The movement began
in Picardy in 1576 with a sworn association known as the League of Péronne.
Henri III tried but failed to co-opt the movement, which instead turned for leadership to the Guise family. Even so, the sustaining force and orientation of Catholic
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militancy initially rested in minor towns, such Abbeville and Péronne.60 Economic
troubles certainly compounded the prevailing religious and political anxieties and
contributed to their spread, even among the peasantry and opened up opportunities for political action by women.61
By the 1580s, the Wars of Religion as conflicts on the ground became more
complex socially and actually represented a shifting amalgamation of struggles over
largely local issues loosely informed at best by the controversies over high court
politics and the king’s religion. Local studies since the nineteenth century reveal
the varieties of civil and religious strife tearing France apart. One near constant
across the kingdom was the central role of walled towns. Nearly all wrestled with
the problem of communal solidarity in the face of internal tensions and external pressures. Some became anchors of militant Catholicism, while others tried
to maintain biconfessional harmony. In Picardy, urban alliances in the 1580s even
knitted towns together with foreign powers.62 Towns in Champagne sought to
dampen Catholic enthusiasm as a way to keep the power of the Guise family at
bay.63 In Burgundy, similar dynamics pitted municipal officials and, in the case of
Dijon, judges in the Parlement against not just the Huguenots but intrusions from
Charles de Lorraine, duke of Mayenne.64 Annonay and Belleville in remote areas
of the upper Rhone also raised the standard of the League in a bid to receive outside help. In Normandy, sympathy for the Catholic League was animated by deep
concerns over security and became amply evident in small burgs and large towns as
Huguenot raiders remained active in the province.65 Saint-Malo, for example, cultivated more of a republican than a frankly religious spirit to shore up communal
solidarity.66 In April 1589, François de Bourbon, duke of Montpensier, led a royalist force to capture Caen then marched northward seizing town after town until he
finally entered Honfleur in June. The Leaguer takeover of Rouen in February 1589
did not position them to control all of Normandy, however. Indeed, the conflict
over control of the lower Seine in the 1580s and early 1590s closely paralleled the
Capetian and Angevin contests of the twelfth century.
Another such parallel was further to the south where the Loire valley from
Nantes all the way into the Velay was effectively a frontier between the Huguenot
south and Catholic north of the kingdom. Provincial governors, such as La Châtre,
encouraged the movement to strengthen their positions in key towns, such as
Orléans.67 The Holy League also found considerable support in Brittany, a place
largely untouched by Calvinism. Local barons used Leaguer rhetoric as an excuse
for old fashioned brigandage.68 In other instances, the provincial governor, the
Duc de Mercoeur, a member of the Guise family, proved instrumental.69 Even so,
Breton bonnes villes like Nantes managed, albeit with difficulty, to maintain some
measure of their customary autonomy as they struggled to maintain communal
unity in the face of rising sectarianism.70
Across the Loire to the south, Leaguer sympathies found ready root in the Midi
in Aurillac. In Poitou and the Limousin, places such as Limoges took up the cause
of militant Catholicism at the behest of local preachers and the radical press.71 Henri
de Navarre spent much of his time campaigning in Guyenne.72 In the Agenais, his
estranged wife, Marguerite de Valois, played a particularly noticeable role as did
recent memories of savage violence, such as the massacres at the castle of Semens
near La Réole in 1580. In Languedoc, the Politique provincial governor Henri de
Damville, duke of Montmorency, tried to steer a middle course between Calvinism
and militant Catholicism. Some towns there, such as Toulouse, sided with the League
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because of the conservatism of the judges in the Parlement as well as long-standing
rivalry with nearby Calvinist Montauban.73 Much the same combination of factors
lay behind the embrace of the Leaguer cause by Aix-en-Provence and Marseille.74
Toulon became the site of especially nasty conflict between the pro-Leaguer town
council and its governor, the pro-Valois Jean-Louis de Nogaret de la Valette, duke
of Épernon. In Dauphiné, intercommunal struggles pitted leading cities such as
Grenoble against lesser towns such as Mure. Finally was the case of Lyon. Once a
hotbed of Calvinism, it now became in the 1580s a leading center of Catholic militancy under the leadership of its provincial governor, Charles-Emmanuel of Savoy,
duke of Nemours, and archbishop, Jacques de Pellevé. In the 1580s, the destruction wreaked by sectarian conflict became even more generalized across France,
from Rocroi on the Flemish border and Jametz in Lorraine all the way south to the
foothills of the Pyrenees. The most vulnerable places were castles, small towns, and
rural villages, though even these sites could prove daunting. As was the case in the
earlier religious wars, indeed even as far back as the Hundred Years’ War and the
Albigensian Crusades, some of the most brutal violence occurred in the southwest.
Huguenots successfully besieged Castellane in upper Provence. Men under Charles
de Gontaut, duke of Biron, for example, completely destroyed the small town of
Gontaud and put its populace to the sword in 1580. Henri, duke of Joyeuse, waged
similarly pitiless campaigns in the mid-1580s in Rouergue and the Saintonge, even
launching a surprise attack on La Rochelle.
The most common response to insecurity, if more difficult to execute because
of poor economic conditions, was for a community to strengthen its fortifications.
This was true for large bonnes villes, noble castles, and peasant villages. Perhaps the
most stunning urban transformation in the late sixteenth century was of Nancy
in Lorraine.75 A massive new Italian trace began around the ducal capital incorporating suburbs and redesigning plazas and boulevards to showcase the ruler’s
power and grandeur. Towns in the French kingdom held no such ambitions and
instead worked to repair their existing, still largely medieval curtained enceintes. In
Châtillon-sur-Seine in Burgundy, for example, in the 1580s under the leadership of
local militia captain Sebastien Noirot, fortification work included demolition of the
town’s decrepit castle so that it could not be used to garrison Mayenne’s soldiers.
Mention of a “gros boullevert” suggests the place already possessed some elements
of the bastioned trace. Some towns, such as Chalons, managed to use the stationing
of garrisons to their advantage. In Brittany, the rise of the Catholic League spurred
improvements to the fortifications of Nantes including the building of new bastions
and outworks, all of which required greater exploitation of the surrounding hinterland. In Dinan, Mercoeur ordered in 1582 two of its four gates permanently closed
and had bastions and half-moons incorporated into its enceinte, although lack of
funds hampered these plans. Rather than build or repair fortifications, instances
of systematic demolition begin to occur, as, for example, in late 1588 and early
1589 when Catholic troops under Louis de Gonzague, duke of Nevers, razed to
the ground the castles of Montaigu and La Garnache to prevent Huguenots from
using them again. In Nantes, Mercoeur’s wife, Marie de Luxembourg, duchess of
Penthièvre, took a prominent role in Nantais affairs inspecting the garrison, stockpiling munitions, supporting campaigns, such as the successful one against Blain in
November 1591. She also ordered the demolition of maisons-fortes in Poitou. Steps
were taken to strengthen Nantes’ fifteenth-century ramparts with the addition of
bastioned elements at key areas along the enceinte.76
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Although present across the kingdom, the Holy Catholic League was by no
means a cohesive movement but rather a highly localized phenomenon shaped
largely by local factors in which walled towns played a central role. As in the early
fourteenth century, Catholic towns in the 1580s began, much as Huguenot communities had in the 1560s in their synods, to create new kinds of regional assemblies or takeover existing ones to coordinate their actions.77 Also evident was a
growing readiness by local parties, Catholic and Huguenot, to arrange their own
local truces outside of royal supervision.78 Another response consisted of stricter
enforcement of militia obligations, which often proved more trouble that it was
worth, as did the special taxes levied to guard against the heretics. The balance
between worries over security and the will to sacrifice varied from community to
community and became based on the circumstances of any given moment. And no
moment seemed more perilous than the period from the Leaguer takeover of Paris
in May 1588 to the assassination of Henri III in August the following year, which
brought the Calvinist leader Henri de Navarre to the Catholic throne of France.
Early Bourbon Rule and the B ONNES VILLES
While the ruling dynasty changed, the nature of the religious wars generally did
not alter much after 1589. Royalists and Leaguers largely vied to hold on to fortified places or capture their opponent’s places. Even before he came to power, Henri
de Navarre besieged towns and castles across the Touraine, culminating in the sack
of Vendôme. After the regicide, Huguenots seized castles across lower Languedoc
and Périgord. Meanwhile, League forces based in Orléans attacked Châtillon-surLoire. Further to the south, Joyeuse sent out his Catholic forces in Toulouse to
besiege the tiny town of Jegon. The war remained a highly localized phenomenon as field engagements by now much smaller armies than clashed in the 1560s
brought no resolution to the conflict at the battles of Arques in September 1589
and Ivry in March 1590.
Perhaps the most telling continuity lay in the limits of the new king’s ability to
realize a military solution after Ivry when he besieged Leaguer Paris. Henri IV prepared for the siege by first capturing Corbeil, Melun, and Montereau on the upper
Seine to interdict river traffic into Paris. Even though his commanders pressed him,
especially the Huguenot ones, to launch a direct attack against Paris, Henri IV
preferred to starve the city into submission by accepting a peace accord that recognized his royal authority without subjecting his capital to a brutal sack. Agostino
Ramelli apparently lent his technical expertise—such as it was—to the king, as did
Ambroise Bachot.79 Only at the end of the summer was the dreadful siege finally
brought to an inconclusive end when Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, marched
from the Netherlands with a relief force.
Unable to take Paris, Henri IV concentrated his military efforts in spring 1591
on securing the key walled towns that commanded the main supply lines to the
capital. He began with Chartres in the Beauce, the principal source of grain for
Paris. Successfully besieged by the Prince de Condé back in 1568, Chartres held
out for two-and–a-half months before it fell. The decisive moment came when the
royal commander had a special covered pontoon bridge built by an Italian engineer
named Vergano, likely a relative of the eponymous Scipio who died in the 1573
siege of La Rochelle. This “nouvelle machine,” the roof of which was protected by
thick layers of sod to absorb cannon fire, allowed the king’s men to attack across an
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open ditch into a breach, only to be repulsed. A few days later, with no sign of help
on the way, town officials agreed to open their gates to Henri IV, who treated them
and the League garrison with exceptional generosity by allowing it to march out
with their arms and baggage. It indicated again the new king’s desire to forge relations with his rebellious Catholic subjects based on gentleness (douceur), not force.
In Dauphiné, the Huguenot commander François de Bonne, duke of Lesdiguières,
enjoyed similar success when he besieged Digne in 1591.
The siege of Rouen from January to April 1592 fitted this same pattern. Henri IV
hoped to cut off the town and make its situation so hopeless that it had no choice but
to submit to him. Divisions between the municipal council and the Leaguer commandant, André de Branca, marquis of Villars, gave the royalists cause to rethink a
negotiated surrender might be possible. Over much of 1591, Villars had the town’s
defenses strengthened by the addition of artillery platforms and expanded fronting ditches. He even had a new fort built on Mont Ste-Catherine to replace the
one destroyed in the aftermath of the 1562 siege. Yet Rouen still lacked an articulated bastioned edge to provide flanking fire to cover the main approaches to the
enceinte. These incomplete fortifications meant Villars had to carry out an active
defense using his guns and sorties to prevent Henri IV’s forces from positioning
their guns in such a way as to blast their way into the city. What Villars could not
anticipate was the good fortune to have such a small royalist force, only some ten
thousand men, deployed against Rouen. Under the able command of Biron, this
army was unable either to circumvallate the town or concentrate sufficient force to
take advantage of any breaches. Henri IV had to split his forces again because of the
likely intervention by Parma from the Spanish Netherlands. Engineering ingenuity
offered one possible solution to the manpower shortage. One of the most intriguing aspects of this siege of Rouen was the attempt to construct a floating artillery
platform from which to pummel, from the middle of the Seine, the city into submission. It would also block all river traffic to Rouen. Edmund Yorke, an English
engineer, headed up this elaborate and time-consuming scheme, which he had first
proposed back in July. Only in mid-March 1592 was the barge finally completed
from materials carried downstream from Pont de l’Arche. But Yorke miscalculated
the size and angle of approach of the trench works approaching the Thuringe bulwark; the trenches also lacked sufficient redoubts from which to repel sorties by the
defenders. The siege of Rouen thus formed part of an overall strategic and tactical
challenge that was beyond Henri IV’s current military capabilities to overcome.80
Sieges became much more effectively fought out in print than on the ground
during the Wars of Religion. They generated an enormous occasional literature and
signaled the rising importance of influencing public opinion.81 These printed materials took a wide variety of forms depending upon the audiences targeted. Simple
leaflets and placards were suitable for quick distribution in the streets or posting
in public places. Others took the form of eyewitness accounts or memoirs, such as
Léry’s famous description of the 1573 siege of Sancerre, to lend the narrative verisimilitude and thus veracity.82 Noblemen composed their own types of memoirs,
often modeled after Caesar’s Gallic Wars, while judges such as Jacques-Auguste
de Thou wrote histories after the manner of Cicero and Tacitus. And finally a new
kind of proto-journalism began to emerge, sometimes in serial fashion, presenting
a mix of description and partisan analysis. Novel forms of mixed media combining
text and images shaped public perceptions of events and in turn broader opinion.83 Until the conversion of Henri IV in 1593, a rough balance existed between
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pamphlets sympathetic to Huguenot and Leaguer towns, often produced by printers within the walls of the very towns besieged by the crown, and publications promoting a royalist perspective of events.84 More effective censorship policies under
Henri IV and self-policing in the print trade gradually tipped the balance over the
control of information in the crown’s favor after 1600.
Henri IV accomplished the conquest of his kingdom after 1593 not by military
means but through carefully crafted images and ceremonies that conveyed messages
of clemency and reconciliation, not hatred and vengeance.85 Not that sieges, most
noticeably at Laon in 1594, and skirmishes came to a complete end. It was more
that the soft powers of persuasion rather than the hard force of arms mainly shaped
the end of the Wars of Religion under Henri IV. Reconciliation with Leaguer
towns after 1593 assumed a highly ritualized and predictable character that emphasized the king’s sincerity as a Catholic and magnanimity as a ruler, on one side, and
the undying devotion and good intentions of his subjects on the other. This basic,
traditional message, not artillery cannonades, opened the bonnes villes to the first
Bourbon king. The first was Meaux on January 1, 1594. Others, such as Orléans
(February 1) and Pontoise (February 11), soon did the same, followed by the spectacular rendition of Paris (March 22), after which there came a general wave over
the spring of places such as Troyes (March 29), Rouen (March 30), Havre-de-Grâce
(April 8), and Lyon (May 10), to name just a few. These agreements borrowed generously from past edicts of pacification.86 The difference now lay in the readiness of
Catholics to forget their recent differences and accept Henri IV as Catholic king,
and the Huguenots’ increasingly nervous trust in their erstwhile protector. Urban
notables of both confessions affirmed the historic partnership between their bonnes
villes and the monarchy in the language of chartered liberties, which, in some cases,
went back to the twelfth century.87
The restoration of bonhomie between the king and his towns, though ostensibly a return to the past, actually set the stage for a fundamental reshaping of the
relationship between the monarchy and urban communities.88 In a selective but
quite decisive manner, Henri IV’s government began to target individual towns
for “reform” of their finances and municipal elections. Municipal reform under
Henri IV varied from town to town. Citing the disruptions in revenue collection
caused by the past wars, the crown argued it was necessary to put urban finances
back in good order. The crown forgave some portion of past debts, restructured
the rest, and restored regular revenue collection to ensure future payments. To be
implemented properly, these reforms required empowering new royal treasurers
and comptrollers at the local level with improved central auditing oversight and
record-keeping by the Chambre des Comptes in Paris. In the 1590s, Henri IV
made permanent in lands he controlled the grande crue or crue des garnisons originally established by François I to cover the cost of maintaining gendarme companies in garrisons. He extended these practices to Champagne in 1594, the pays
d’élection in 1597, and Brittany and Languedoc in 1598. They enabled Henri IV to
disband most of his army by keeping a fixed number of men stationed in garrisons
throughout the country; in some places, the crue surpassed the taille. Finally, the
king also began to demilitarize select areas by ordering the demolition of castles—a
policy his successors later sought to generalize across the kingdom.89
Town indebtedness loomed as a large problem in the 1590s, much of it the result
of bearing the costs of war, particularly fortification construction and maintenance.
Municipal indebtedness threatened the political stability of the towns, upon which
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the crown’s general pacification of the kingdom largely depended. To ensure the
good management of a town’s finances and other affairs, Henri IV also reformed
municipal elections in such a manner to further entrenched urban oligarchies into
self-selected hereditary dynasties holding venal and appointed royal offices. Civic
militias, if not outright disbanded, became largely honorific associations of little
military worth but considerable social prestige. These changes matured into the
seventeenth century and epitomized the diminished military role of towns, except
along the frontiers, and the closer mutuality of interest that bound urban elites
together even more with the crown. Henri IV’s municipal reforms thus largely
retained as a façade the traditional forms while ensuring that positions of responsibility went to men of demonstrable loyalty to the regime.90
Under Henri IV, the monarchy created an enduring royal fortification service
headed by Francophone experts who brought science and bureaucracy together
to reshape the kingdom and its urban communities. The episodic visits of Italian
engineers typical under the Valois soon became replaced by more permanent missions by French experts. This shift grew out of several factors. A generation of
young men, including nobles, for example, had received mathematics education
in the curriculum of Jesuit secondary schools since the late 1550s.91 Among the
advocates of this new kind of curriculum in academies for nobles established by
the crown were Pierre d’Origny, François de la Noue, Jean de Saulx-Tavannes, and
Alexandre de Pontaymery. The first such academy was likely the one founded just
outside Paris by Antoine de Pluvinel in 1594. It joined traditional elements of the
older warrior ethos, embodied in such disciplines as equitation, fencing, and dance,
with a new premium on professionalism and technical training in history, geography, mathematics, and the art of fortification. Autodidacts among literate skilled
artisans used manuals in French, some translations while others original compositions, on practical geometry, pyrotechnics, and the construction of mensuration
instruments to teach themselves. In the 1570s, publications by French specialists
on surveying and design began to appear in greater number. Derivative in nature,
they marked the widening ambit through which the new approaches pioneered by
the Italians spread to literate artisans in the building trades. By the 1590s, a sufficient number of men versed in a common technical culture existed for Maximilien
de Béthune, duke of Sully to begin to organize them into a formal royal fortification service. They could be relied upon to draw reliable maps and city plans as well
as execute projects involving hydraulics, mechanics, stereonomy, surveying, and
measuring heights and distances.92
While professional jealousies persisted between school-trained engineers and
artisanal experts, most practitioners of the military arts appreciated the importance of both approaches. Experience of how materials such as stone, brick, and
wood behaved under different conditions easily coexisted with discussions of
Archimedean mechanics and Euclidean geometry. Explanations of how to manipulate instruments of mensuration used in the field, from simple squares, compasses,
to plumbs to more complex devices such as astrolabes, sextants, and new tools,
yielded practical applications as well as leaps of imagination on the ideal city. French
military engineering writers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
searched for ways to render qualitative experience into quantitative systems in order
to make the best choices and decisions.
Increasing sophistication in technical design illustration fostered broader appreciation and understanding among patrons and practitioners. Jacques Besson’s
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Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum was published in 1571 and he was soon
invited to Paris to serve as the king’s “master of engines.”93 A Huguenot, Besson
fled to England the next year after the massacres. The work was elegantly conceived
and so popular that François de Béroalde de Verville published an expanded edition in 1578. However, it still lacked the technical sophistication found in Agostino
Ramelli’s classic work Le diverse et artificiose machine, published in Paris in 1588.
He began his career serving the condottiere Gian Giacomo de’ Medici in the Italian
wars of the 1550s and later became a royal military engineer to the kings of France.
Written in both Italian and French, this book rightly marks an important turning
point in the history of technology and technical illustration, especially in its use of
exploded views for all sorts of devices.94 Like Besson, Ramelli praised the “excellence” of mathematics in engineering but showed no real knowledge of it. He still
very much worked within the craft tradition blending practical solutions with occasional flights of fancy. His illustrations were not blueprints but rather mechanical
puzzles for readers to figure out.
In his introduction, Ramelli bemoans the theft by a close, unnamed associate of
drawings he had laboriously prepared on the subject of fortification design. Recent
research suggests the culprit was none other than Amboise Bachot, who had
long worked as Ramelli’s engraver and occasional military engineer.95 These were
likely the forty-three illustrations of military machines and fortifications found in
Bachot’s Le Timon, published in 1587, and in which he hailed Ramelli as the new
Archimedes and another Daedelus. Bachot presents himself as the captain of the
“guerriers mathématiques,” ready to lead his men forth armed with compasses and
plumb lines. Bachot’s Le Gouvernail (“The Rudder”) offered a nautical image usually associated with the king who directed the ship of state. Published in 1598, it
expanded further, though not very originally, on fortification design along with
shorter sections on geometry, perspective, surveying instruments, and military
machines. Though he shows up earlier in some records, Bachot entered royal service on a more permanent basis in 1590 through the patronage of Jacques le Roy,
lord of La Grange, who governed Melun, a key town southwest of Paris. Le Roy
hired Bachot to revamp the town’s dilapidated fortifications. He arguably became
the first Frenchmen to head the nascent royal fortification service.
Historians have long identified the first distinctly French school of fortification design with architect-engineer Jean Errard, and, to a lesser extent, Claude
Flamand. This, however, is misleading on several counts. To begin, neither man
was even French. Errard was from Bar-le-Duc in Lorraine, which formed part of
the Holy Roman Empire, while Flamand, as his name bespeaks, was from Flanders.
Although a Calvinist, Errard received his initial training at the Catholic court of
Charles III, duke of Lorraine, then went to work for Henri de La Tour, duke of
Bouillon, a fellow Calvinist, while Flamand spent a number of years in the service
of the Duke of Würtemberg. A confluence of European influences shaped both
men’s careers. Early in his career, Errard collaborated closely with the Italian military engineer Orfeo da Galliani. His design approach reflected the continuing
predominance of Italian design practices, although Dutch influences become discernible later in his career. Flamand’s guide to fortifications likewise derived from
his own study of Italian and Dutch treatises on the subject as well as his own wartime experiences.96
In many ways, Jean Errard brought together the worlds of skilled artisans, the
textual traditions of Italian engineers, and nascent royal bureaucracy.97 Like most
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fortification engineers after 1550, Errard received solid training in mathematics,
surveying, and mechanics. Indeed, it was in these areas, not fortification design,
which came later, that French technical writers first excelled. Errard’s initial publication in 1583 was a translation of portions of Euclid’s Elements. In it, he treated
the mathematical applications of mechanical instruments and devices, such as
the Archimedean screw and cylindrical cams. His later treatises on fortifications
built upon these earlier, practical foundations.98 These works were supplemented
by “do-it-yourself” lesson books in practical mathematics and geometry, which
helped local artisans adapt new bastion designs the existing urban fabric. Actual
projects on the ground in the bonnes villes during the Wars of Religion showed that
this process of adoption and adaptation usually proceeded independently of the
crown. The common assumption that the new technologies and “scientific” expertise associated with the Military Revolution only benefited the state at the expense
of groups in society such as townspeople bears reconsideration.
Errard’s Fortification, published in 1594, focused much more directly and consistently on the pragmatic aspects of military engineering. This included geometrical principles of design and ballistics, as well as knowledge of materials used in
masonry. A good deal of the work treats irregular polygonal fortifications, receiving particular inspiration from Bonaiuto Lorini. Errard’s La fortification réduite en
art et démontrée of 1600, addressed to the nobility, proposed that a place’s defenses
rested more on its garrisoned infantry, equipped with muskets, than its artillery,
which consumed enormous amounts of powder. Infantry was more maneuverable
and capable of more rapid rates of fire. Errard therefore recommended that enormous bastions be built, manned by lots of individual shooters and spaced about
every two hundred meters, which was the effective range of handguns at the time.
He also advised very high escarpments and the construction of covered firing galleries and half-moons in the outworks, again to increase firepower. In his preface, Errard made clear his intention to persuade both the king and nobility of the
importance of mathematics in war. Thus there was a strong rhetorical element in
the “proofs,” which cited Alberti’s humanist tenets of utility, beauty, and power.
Contemporaries of Errard broadly echoed these themes of high-minded pretense and mundane practicality. For example, Henri de Suberville’s treatise on the
“henrymètre,” named after the first Bourbon king, offered a new device designed
to capture and coordinate different measurements to more accurately and simply calculate volume and proportion from one fixed position. Suberville promised
that his instrument would help when besieging a place. He went beyond Bachot
in likening the military engineer to a king who commanded his troops in the field
of battle.99 Joseph Boillot also elaborated on the connection between geometry,
instruments, and solving problems on the ground. His 1598 manual on instruments of war cited the human eye as the most excellent one of all, followed next
by the hand, which then manipulated various tools guided by the eye to discern
“le vrai lieu” (the true place).100 Boillot’s invocation of seeking “divine proportions” introduced Neoplatonic, metaphysical elements absent in Errard. A more
frankly religious cast came the Savoyard mathematician and Huguenot Jacques
Perret de Chambéry folio of plates, composed in 1594, which invoked Scripture
in his designs of fortifications and war machines. Perret entered Henri IV’s service
after the French conquest of the duchy in 1600. A year later, he published a magnificently illustrated book on idealized fortified towns.101 Modeled after Filarete’s
radiocentric plan for Sforzinda, his designs ornamented town walls with biblical
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quotations drawn mainly from the Psalms, much as Bernard Palissy had done in his
work on gardens published nearly forty years earlier. Artillery treatises in French
by David Rivault de Flurance, among others, encouraged innovation and spread
valuable technical information, while Jacques de Fumée’s derivative compendium
on military science in 1613 advanced the knowledge of practitioners in the field.102
Finally, advances in cartography in late-sixteenth-century France had clear political and military applications. The works of Maurice Bouguereau and Nicolai de
Nicolay stand out in particular in this regard.103
The birth of a new royal fortification service and the monarchy’s new policies
toward the bonnes villes converged most dramatically in Amiens after its near disastrous seizure by Spain in 1597.104 Disgruntled former Leaguers and slipshod security by town officials allowed a small band of Spanish cavalry to take Amiens,
where Henri IV had stockpiled huge amounts of cannon, powder, and shot for
his planned invasion of the Spanish Netherlands. Its capture allowed the aged
Philip II of Spain to win a more favorable peace from the French the next year at
Vervins, for Henri IV had to forestall his invasion plans in order to retake the most
strategic walled town in northern France. Once he regained control of Amiens,
he stripped the municipal government of much of its autonomy. For reasons that
remain obscure, Henri IV sent not Bachot but rather Jean Errard to the city to
oversee repairs to the fortifications and begin design of a royal citadel.105 Errard’s
imposing royal citadel just north of the Somme absorbed the Porte de Montrécu
to form a pentagon with brick escarpments that soared sixty feet in height. It both
protected and loomed over the city, much as the Bourbons strove to do elsewhere
in the century ahead.
The spring of 1598 brought peace to France in the forms of the Edict of Nantes
in April and the Treaty of Vervins in May. Both accords enabled the kingdom to
enjoy an unprecedented generation of relative calm until religious wars and the
conflict with the Hapsburgs resumed in the 1620s. Although less celebrated than
the treaties of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) and of the Pyrenees (1669), the Peace of
Vervins represented an important turning point in the long struggle between the
early modern rulers of France and Spain. Intimately connected to the Edict of
Nantes, the Peace of Vervins contributed enormously to France’s recovery under
Henri IV, just as it marked the final defeat of Philip II, who had long tried to promote Hapsburg dynastic interests by championing militant Catholicism. In retrospect, historians can now see that this treaty signaled the beginning of the Spanish
monarchy’s long decline as a hegemonic power and France’s corresponding rise to
prominence during the Grand Siècle. It enabled Henri IV and his chief minister,
Sully, to embark on an ambitious series of reforms known as the “Grand Projet” to
transform the monarchy and, with it, French society.
Maintaining religious peace was critical. The Edict of Nantes achieved this end
most imperfectly and only temporarily.106 Yet it must still be counted a great success despite deep misgivings about it by Huguenots and Catholics alike. As in the
earlier settlement between Henri IV and Leaguer towns, the Edict of Nantes reaffirmed many of the barriers between Catholic France and the Huguenot minority, barriers that virtually foreclosed any eventual integration between the two
except by conversion to the dominant religion. The special courts or Chambres
de l’Édit erected to implement the decree’s provisions, though limited in scope,
channeled sectarian conflict into the king’s courts whenever possible.107 The edict
thus provided a means by which to contain the Huguenot community within the
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framework of royal institutions and laws. The urban edge became one of the chief
means by which to define these confessional barriers. Provisions in the edict delineated rights of worships largely by reference to towns and their suburbs. Moreover,
besides the king’s word, fortifications subsidized by the crown figured as the strongest guarantee of security for the Huguenots. The secret brevet or articles granted
by Henri IV on April 30 ensured Huguenot control of over two hundred “safe
places” already in their jurisdiction. Nearly half of them were fortified towns garrisoned by troops paid for by the crown or guarded by a local civic militia. The king
granted these concessions for eight years, subject to renewal. Thus was created what
Cardinal Richelieu later called in the 1620s the Huguenot “state within the state”
(see map 6.1).
Pa r t I I I
Th e Wa l l s C om e D ow n (16 0 0 – 1750)
Ch apter 7
S t at e Building and Urban
Fortif ications
Peace after 1598 allowed the kingdom a chance to begin to recover from the mis-
ery and devastation inflicted by nearly forty years of civil war and ever recurring
conflicts with the Hapsburgs. Henri IV and his ministers, led by Sully, embarked
on an ambitious program to change how the monarchy ruled the country.1 These
changes touched institutions at the center in Paris and across France as a whole,
particularly in the towns. Centralization certainly increased, but also did the
renewal of traditional partnerships with the social elites in the nobility, clergy,
and urban notability. Indeed, as had been the case since the twelfth century, the
growth of royal rule again relied on the active cooperation of towns, which continued to be the engines of commerce and mainstays of the crown’s military system.
By 1609, Henri IV seemed confident enough to resume the European contest with
the Hapsburgs. However, his untimely assassination in 1610 forestalled French
intervention in the Empire and soon gave rise to weak royal rule, noble factions,
and confessional unrest that yet again plunged France into religious war. The difference this time was the rapidity and finality with which the monarchy settled
these problems in the 1620s, a period of crucial transition.2
No change was more decisive in the monarchy’s success than its greatly enhanced
ability to mobilize and sustain a major military campaign, which it did against La
Rochelle in 1628 and then against the Hapsburgs after 1635. While its roots arguably went back to the crucial reforms undertaken by Charles VII and Louis XI in
the fifteenth century, the more immediate cause was Sully’s administrative consolidation of the crown’s war making apparatus following the debacle at Amiens in
1597. In 1601, Sully proposed to the king the goal of strengthening frontier fortifications by building polygonal enceintes, no doubt an allusion to Jean Errard’s ideas
(see figure 7.1). Three years later came a survey of the condition of all these places,
along with the grand règlement of 1604, in which Sully proposed organizing military engineers, who numbered between eighteen and twenty-four along with local
contrôleurs des fortifications, by defining their duties and assigning them to specific
territories. He ordered them to make regular inspections of fortifications in their
areas and report recommended construction or demolition projects. He appointed
a chief engineer to direct inspections and construction projects in four vital frontier
provinces, Picardy, Champagne, Dauphiné, and Provence. In the wake of the 1594
siege, Henri IV had some of Laon’s walls removed and erected a new bastioned
citadel near the old Porte Saint-Georges.3 In the seventeenth century, its ditches
became filled in and the old Capetian keep was demolished, while the eighteenth
Figure 7.1 Views of Calais, Guigne, and Ardres by Joachim Du Wiert, 1611. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. Vx 23 2989).
S t a t e B u i l di ng a n d Ur b a n For t i f ic a t ion s
125
century witnessed the gradual carving away of the ramparts for new houses and
new leisure areas. In 1602, Henri IV ordered Rennes to dismantle the Porte aux
Foulons. Civic militias began to lose military relevance in a number of French
towns after 1600 and continued to do so into the Regency when in 1613 Marie de
Médici suppressed them in much of Normandy and the Ile-de-France, the longstanding obligation for residents to guard walls now slated for demolition. Militias
thereafter endured despite the gradual disappearance of walls as venal offices that
carried honorific benefits.
It became general practice under Henri IV for the crown to assume initial construction costs of new urban fortifications, leaving maintenance costs to municipal authorities. The crown could do this because fiscal reforms stabilized revenue
collection and built up financial reserves for it to invest, though just how much
remains difficult to establish.4 In this manner, the crown gained much greater
control over deciding where and how to modernize fortifications. Sully paired military engineers with better trained cartographers in teams responsible for maps of
specific regions and towns of strategic importance.5 Men such as Jean de Beins,
Claude Chastillon, Jacques Fougeu, and François Martilleur set up in workshops
and created hundreds of plans and maps that enabled leaders in the central government literally to see and thus govern the kingdom more effectively.6 Powerful
officials known as intendants also began to be used more systematically in the
army and provinces. Sully merged these various functions together in part because
he held the important posts of superintendent of finance, superintendent of buildings, superintendent of fortifications, and grand master of the artillery. He was also
royal governor of the citadels of Amiens, Calais, Ponthieu, and the Trois-Évêchés in
Lorraine.7 Through bureaucratic reform and personal consolidation of key offices,
Sully thus created for the crown a basic framework for projecting military power
abroad and safeguarding the borderlands at home. The question for the monarchy
was about what had to be done to the scores of walled towns held by the Huguenots
across the kingdom following the Edict of Nantes.
Siege Warfare and the End of
the Wars of Religion
The assassination of Henri IV in 1610 sparked rising confessional tensions, noble
unrest, controversies in the parlements, anxiety in the bonnes villes, and insurrections
in the countryside.8 The Estates General of 1614, rather than solve these problems,
only revealed their intractability during the unstable Regency of Marie de Médici.
The first sign of trouble came in 1611 when Huguenots at the Assembly of Saumur,
fearful the Edict of Nantes would be overturned, created the Union Protestante to
organize paramilitary “assemblées de cercle” based in fortified towns. The young
Louis XIII promised to uphold his father’s security guarantees but declared all such
assemblies seditious.9 Defections of Huguenot nobles through Catholic conversion
further weakened the Huguenot bonnes villes and opened the way for new, decidedly less religiously motivated leadership of the Reformed cause under Henri II,
duke of Rohan.10 The Regency’s clumsy meddling in Huguenot affairs only worsened these suspicions, as when it attempted in 1612 to remove Rohan as governor
of Saint-Jean-d’Angély and rig the mayoral election in La Rochelle.11
Emboldened by the ascent of the Catholic devout party in the Regency, Catholics
used the law courts and outright coercion to reclaim sites of Catholic worship
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in Huguenot areas by destroying Calvinist temples and cemeteries. Huguenots
responded by waging iconoclastic campaigns once again against Catholic churches
and shrines. In Montpellier, they even sent bells from local Catholic churches to
foundries to be rendered into cannon. Huguenots towns, led by Montauban and
Nîmes in the south and La Rochelle in the west, prepared for war by rearming and
repairing their fortifications.12 A closer look at La Rochelle and Montauban reveals
the final phase of urban self-defense in France.
A 1621 view of La Rochelle identified in its accompanying description the present state of the city’s defenses as well as its history and privileges. In the lower
left are what appear to be three soldiers surveying the city’s militarized perimeter.13 The city’s medieval curtain walls became refashioned in the Dutch style
between 1596 and 1612. Marshes and waterways continued to protect the city
on all sides except the north, where imposing new bastions went up. The Tour de
Saint-Nicolas, the Tour de la Chaine, and the Tour du Garrot or la Lanterne, all
newly repaired, guarded the mouth of the harbor. In the southwest corner rose the
new Tour de Moureilles; it housed the city’s treasury and records of the Reformed
Church. Angled outworks, particularly in front of gates, bristled along the perimeter. La Rochelle’s defiance became encapsulated in a stone inscription over the
old Porte des Cougnes that read Dieu m’a béni pour la retraite des Siens (“God has
blessed me to protect his children”).14 All this work again required the razing of the
faubourgs of Tasdon, Saint-Éloi, and Fronsac, which only exacerbated the problem
of overcrowding in the old town.15 The newly walled faubourg Ville Neuve, further
bolstered by a new bastion protecting the Porte de Maubec, failed to alleviate this
problem. Indeed, that the gate did not connect to any of the streets laid out in the
Ville Neuve reflects the lack of concern for residential needs.16 Royalist publicists
naturally presented these actions as evidence of Huguenot plans to rebel against
the king.17
Montauban’s defenses also underwent significant change in the early seventeenth century. Municipal officials inspected it defenses on May 20, 1610, just
days after news arrived of Henri IV’s assassination. They carefully justified the
inspection as a precautionary step against unnamed threats in and outside the kingdom; they also cited the example of other towns in the region. The inspection
revealed the distressing degradation of the city’s defenses since the end of hostilities
in the 1590s. Consuls authorized but apparently never collected a special levy of
four thousand livres on residents for repairs; how much work resulted before 1620
remains unclear. Whether that failure was local opposition to new taxes or action
by the crown also remains unclear. Only in October 1620 as open war resumed
did repair work begin in earnest on five large bastions and horn works from the
Lagarrigue rivulet along the perimeter of Villenouvelle. In some places, medieval
curtain walls still offered viable defenses, especially in high elevated areas or where
bedrock complicated attempts at mining. Topography and geology thus still mattered, often decisively.18
Over the next ten years, many other Huguenot walled towns followed suit. Even
small burgs fortified anew. The Huguenot stronghold of Layrac in Aquitaine, for
example, threw up three earthen bastions, possibly brick-faced and with a wooden
palisade, set in a ditch “à la huguenotte,” behind which stood a medieval curtain
wall composed of stone and brick along with several towers. Over the main gate
stood the “citadel,” which was just a large tower.19 The defenses of Huguenot
towns often became a flashpoint of contention. In the 1615, for example, the royal
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law court in Castres ordered the one-time bastide of Brusquès in the Aveyron to
demolish its fortifications.20 The Huguenot stronghold refused to comply and led
the creation in 1621 of a regional alliance with the neighboring towns of SaintAffrique, Belmont, Lacaune, and Silvanès known as the Union de Brusquès.
It was the political struggle over who controlled the walls, towers, and gates
more than confessional differences that rendered Huguenot towns the target of
royal military repression in the 1620s. La Rochelle offers a case in point of the
infighting among urban notables and rising conflicts with the crown. Social tensions among disgruntled bourgeois who demanded a broader share of municipal
offices had roiled La Rochelle since the 1590s until they exploded into open revolt
in 1614. The resulting divisions compromised the town’s efforts to defend its independence in the 1620s.21 Contention was especially sharp over control of the militia, which still remained important there, and arsenals. The insurrection in 1614
began with the seizure of the Tour Maubec, which housed an arsenal, and the
installation of new padlocks on several key gates. Ensuing negotiations between the
leaders of the opposition and the town council centered on these locks and keys.22
Sully, as governor of Poitou, notified the new governing group in La Rochelle,
known as the Council of Forty-Eight, of the crown’s unwillingness to recognize
these forced changes. Similar factional divisions plagued other Huguenot and even
some Catholic towns as they wrestled with the question of whether to defy or seek
accommodations with the crown.23
The year 1614 also witnessed a noble rebellion led by Henri II, prince of Condé.
These developments were not unrelated, for a good many Huguenot nobles in the
southwest, prompted by Rohan, joined Condé’s rebellion despite his Catholic faith.
On December 10, Condé even met with the new-installed burghers of La Rochelle
to discuss an alliance, though the Rochelais prudently kept their distance. In a show
of force, the civic militia—some fifteen hundred strong—turned out for review by
the prince, all fully armed and ready for battle. Cannons boomed from the artillery towers ringing the city. Louis XIII eventually settled the rebellion by making concessions in the Treaty at Loudon in 1616, which showered Condé and the
Huguenots with money and confirmed their privileges, though it also renewed the
call to reestablish Catholicism in Béarn. Rohan became governor of Poitou, a post
that Sully had given up. The Regent Marie de Médici also reconfirmed the terms
of the Edict of Nantes, agreed to pay pastors and garrisons more, and extended
Huguenot control of places de sûreté for another six years. The treaty did not calm
the situation but instead harkened back to the weak rule of the last Valois.
Civil war most threatened to break out in western France where the rapacious
duke of Épernon, governor of Saintonge, and his allies aspired for greater local control. On November 17, 1616, the armed circle of Brittany, Poitou, and Saintonge
assembled in La Rochelle to consider how to parry Épernon’s threat to install royal
garrisons in western towns. Épernon’s ally, César, duke of Vendôme, fomented
intrigue in Brittany, entering the walled town of Vannes with fifteen hundred troops
in June. He also ordered repairs to the ramparts in Lamballe and Guingamp in his
duchy of Penthiève. Henri, duke of Retz, fortified for him Machecoul and Belle-Ile,
while the others organized the defense of Vannes and Hennebont. In response, the
Breton estates signaled their loyalty to the Regent by ordering the demolition of a
dozen châteaux and disarming the châteaux of Ancenis and Machecoul. In January
1616, troops under Benjamin de Rohan, duke of Soubise, and the duke of Vendôme
threatened Nantes, though the Treaty of Loudun on May 3 temporarily calmed the
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situation. In January 1617, the crown tried to placate the western Huguenots by
ordering Épernon to remove the garrisons in Tonay- Charente and Surgères as well
as dismantle their fortifications and those of Rochefort. Meanwhile, La Rochelle
readied for war by deepening its ditches and reinforcing dilapidated sections of
its walls. In response, Louis XIII mobilized area urban militias on his side, as at
Nantes. Unrest also became evident in the northern French town of Rethel, which
prompted a short royal siege.24 It seemed just a matter of time before the conflict
became white hot.
War finally came in 1620 when Louis XIII, despite opposition from the
Huguenots as well as his mother (for more personal reasons), sought to reestablish
the Catholic Church in Béarn. The plan was for the king to march with a force
of ten thousand men from Caen in Normandy to Pau at the foot of the Pyrenees,
establishing garrisons along the way. He began by brushing aside Huguenot armed
opposition in Normandy and easily defeated Marie de Médici’s paltry force at the
battle of Pont-de-Cé. Catholic armies consolidated their conquest of Huguenot
towns by lodging soldiers, enticing residents to convert with exemptions from
quartering. They also reestablished or opened new religious houses from which
to preach and monitor devotional behavior. While the Huguenots committed
atrocities out of mounting desperation, Catholic forces cruelly imposed the faith
through wanton violence as military momentum shifted in their favor. The laws
of siege warfare continued to receive scant respect during these last, perhaps most
violent of the French wars of religion.25
In December 1620, deputies from French Reformed churches assembled in
La Rochelle to rally against this latest Catholic threat, even though Louis XIII
declared the assembly illegal. They called for the eight circles to raise armies and
collect funds. But the response among Huguenot nobles, their ranks thinned by
Catholic conversion, failed to materialize, which left the onus of defending the
cause on Huguenot towns, led by La Rochelle and Montauban. The royal campaign enjoyed early success when it captured Saint-Jean-d’Angély on June 24, 1621.
Louis XIII had the town’s walls razed and its communal government abolished; he
even tried to change its name to Bourg Louis.26 From this base, the king’s favorite
and former falconer, Charles, duke of Luynes, advised Louis XIII to secure control
of fortified places across Touraine and Poitou before moving ahead in late summer.
Earlier in April, Condé, now fighting for the king, had moved into the Midi to
besiege Montpellier. But Louis XIII only invaded the Vendée in late July, while the
duke of Mayenne arrived before Montauban in August.
This delay gave Huguenot towns that were further away crucial additional time
to prepare their defenses. On March 1, 1621, the wife of the mayor of La Rochelle
along with more than three thousand women and girls, marching to drumbeats carrying their own special banner, began work on a fort to protect the Porte Neuve.27
In May 1621, the faubourgs surrounding La Rochelle began to be torn down. On
July 7, the company from the Saint-Nicolas quartier tore down the royal château.
Yet the crown decided to split its attention between La Rochelle and the Huguenot
strongholds in Languedoc, reasoning that Rohan’s small army could not be at two
places at once. Épernon headed up the attack against La Rochelle, where the Italian
engineer Pompée Targoni designed a quadrilateral fort a half league from the city’s
wall appropriately enough named Fort Louis. On September 11, Épernon launched
a four thousand–five thousand men strong assault against the Coureilles side of
the city, which was repulsed by a daring sortie of some fifteen hundred Rochelais.
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The Rochelais flotilla under Jean Guiton inflicted a severe defeat upon the superior
royal navy under Charles I, duke of Guise.28 In a surprise attack, Soubise managed
to capture Olonne in the Vendée. As a result, a stalemate quickly developed before
the walls of La Rochelle.
The crown’s strategy foundered less, however, on the situation at La Rochelle
and more on events to the south in Montauban. Work on Montauban’s defenses
was far from finished when Mayenne arrived before the city.29 This situation influenced the duke’s plan to have Charles de Valois, duke of Angoulême, attack from
the west, for the town’s Huguenot commander Henri Nompar de Caumont, duke
of La Force, also mobilized a troop of women under fire that dawn to unload
six hundred barrels filled with earth to build a rampart to bolster the partiallybuilt hornwork there.30 Even as Mayenne’s forces swelled to nearly twenty-five
thousand by late August, the lines of circumvallation around the city could not
be closed.31 The besiegers methodically approached the walls in zigzag trenches
until September 1 when Mayenne had deployed several dozen cannons against
the town’s main bastions and outworks. As quickly as royalist cannonades weakened Montauban’s defenses, La Force had them rebuilt. Attempts to breach were
repulsed with heavy losses each time. A few weeks later, a musket ball to the head
killed Mayenne while he inspected the advanced trenches. Undaunted, the new
royal commander François de Bassompierre pressed forward in several places using
artillery and sappers over the next bloody weeks, but with little progress.32
In late September, the tables turned when a relief force under Rohan moved
south to outmaneuver Angoulême’s cavalry screen and take the nearby stronghold of Saint-Antonin.33 The besiegers now risked becoming the besieged, subject to attack in two directions while Rohan’s forces also harassed supply lines
and interdicted foraging parties. As a result, Luynes opened negotiations with
Rohan on October 8. Rohan quickly agreed to the construction of a royal citadel
in Montauban so long as he could guard it, while Luynes, in a bid to divide the
Huguenot opposition, sought a promise from Rohan not to provide any future
support to La Rochelle.34 While negotiations took place, François Bassompierre
decided to concentrate his forces for a massive attack on Bastion du Moustier.
Although his guns managed to breach the bastion walls on October 17, the ensuing frontal assault met ferocious resistance from the near entirety of Montauban’s
garrison, which included a company of women.35 Talks dragged on for another
two weeks before the king decided to lift the siege. Once again, morale and tactical acumen, both in battle and repairing damaged fortifications, prevailed over the
superior numbers and gunpowder technology of the crown. Condé’s long siege of
Montpellier likewise failed in late September for similar reasons.
Despite these setbacks, the renewal of war with the Huguenots otherwise went
well for the monarchy, for elsewhere it captured a number of important Huguenot
walled towns. These marginal gains can be seen in the Treaty of Montpellier,
reached in November 1621. Preparations for further conflict accompanied this
putative peace. While it reconfirmed the Edict of Nantes and authorized periodic
Huguenot synods, it also proscribed the assemblies of circles, removed twenty-four
places de sûreté from Huguenot control, and ordered the demolition of key castles
and fortifications at Nîmes, Castres, Uzès, and Millau, allowing only La Rochelle
and Montauban to retain their defenses.36 In a further gesture to the Rochelais,
Louis XIII offered an empty promise to raze Fort Louis and the fort on the Ile-de-Ré,
even though work continued on both over the next five years. Meanwhile, the duke
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of Guise established royal naval control of the Ile-de-Ré. Rohan and his younger
brother, Soubise, refused to sign the agreement. On May 10, 1622, royal forces
defeated Soubise at the battle of Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, capturing six hundred
Huguenot prisoners who became briefly interned at Nantes. As a result, Rohan
had to surrender to the king on May 11, 1622. In June, Louis de Bourbon, count
of Soissons, began work on another fort near La Rochelle, which began shelling
in July.37 In 1622, the crown appointed Charles Leber Du Carlo, a royal engineer
and cartographer, to redesign the fortifications of Brouage, which it hoped would
replace La Rochelle as the kingdom’s premier maritime commercial center on the
Atlantic.38 In response, La Rochelle launched its own ambitious naval armament
program and began to stockpile powder and shot. The city council also levied special excises and raised loans to pay for lodging foreign soldiers, mostly English and
Dutch. Local obstruction and espionage proved endemic. In May 1621, for example, Rochelais officials arrested a local Catholic nobleman and his son who tried
to obstruct work on La Rochelle’s defenses. They also expelled Catholic priests
from the town.39 Montauban enjoyed three years of relative calm as both sides
prepared for renewed conflict. Royal forces remained nearby at Montech, while
the Montalbanais repaired and reinforced their fortifications. When Épernon led
a royal army into the region in 1626, authorities in Montauban reached an accord
that promised them no hostilities if they, in turn, refused to lend assistance to
La Rochelle during the upcoming royal siege where the fate of the Reformed cause
soon became decided.
Cardinal Richelieu’s ascendancy at the royal court after 1624 brought added
energy to the crown’s long-standing desire to subdue Huguenot fortified towns
and buy off those Huguenot noblemen it could not co-opt through conversion.
War came in 1625 when the hotheaded Soubise seized the Ile-de-Ré. Rohan reluctantly joined him, though his efforts to raise troops in Languedoc fared miserably
as towns such as Nîmes, Uzès, and Alès refused to open their gates to him. In
September, the royal navy seriously damaged La Rochelle’s fleet when it tried to run
the blockade. Richelieu ordered Jean de Saint-Bonnet, lord of Toiras, to retake Ré,
which he did in a daring attack that sent Soubise into exile in England. La Rochelle
resisted Richelieu’s overtures to settle hostilities and instead in December 1625
erected a fort at Tasdon between the town’s walls and the Coureilles point, sent
envoys to England to forge an alliance with Charles I, and stockpiled food for the
inevitable siege. Meanwhile, Henri III, duke of La Trémoïlle, a Huguenot commander sent by the crown, tendered peace overtures to the Rochelais who rejected
them out of hand because they called for the public practice of Catholicism and
demolition of the town’s walls.
La Rochelle’s ties with the English, while dictated by necessity, compromised
efforts by the city to defend its cause as bon françois. Yet the English had their own
agenda, for their emissaries in March 1626 concluded an accord with the French
crown that very much disadvantaged La Rochelle, even though it proved shortlived. In April, demolition of Fort Tasdon began. Controversies over the English
alliance fueled further factionalism inside the city. Indeed, Buckingham’s foolhardy
expedition to seize the Ile-de-Ré in June 1627 provided Richelieu all the excuse
he needed to declare war against La Rochelle. Toiras dug in and held out against
English attackers, as Richelieu reckoned that a successful siege hinged on controlling the island. Meanwhile, Angoulême tightened control over key places around
the town and began to dig lines of circumvallation. The Rochelais responded by
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building a new fort between the Porte Saint-Nicolas and Tasdon. School buildings became converted into arsenals. In September, guards on the city ramparts
noted the construction of two new forts by the royal forces at Bongraine and la
Moulinette and the beginning of another one, the Fort de La Mothe, between
Fort Louis and Porte des Deux-Moulins. The mayor ordered city batteries to fire
upon these encroaching menaces on September 10. The last siege of La Rochelle
had begun.40
The dramatic siege of La Rochelle in 1627–1628 marked a key turning point
in the monarchy’s relations with the Huguenot community and marked the final
end of independence for the bonnes villes.41 Under Richelieu’s leadership, the royal
victory became possible because of the crown’s expanded capacity to mobilize
military force and technological expertise as well as shape public perceptions of
the conflict through a concerted propaganda campaign. Indeed, the pamphlet
literature on military and political events is more voluminous on the 1628 siege
of La Rochelle than any other episode in early modern France. The Rochelais
tried to rally Huguenot opinion in Languedoc with pamphlets that decried the
crown’s aim to establish citadels within the walls of their towns.42 Royal propagandists liked to tout the presence of Huguenot nobles in the king’s army as evidence the conflict did not concern religion. However, public conversions of these
same noblemen to Catholicism belied this conceit. None was more spectacular
than La Trémoille’s abjuration of Calvinism on July 18 in a ceremony hosted by
Cardinal Richelieu in the royal camp. Jacques Callot’s monumental engraving of
the siege allowed viewers a panoramic virtual experience of the conflict.43 The
Bibliothèque Nationale alone possesses nearly three thousand separate pieces that
relate different aspects of the siege. Granted, many are reprints of earlier tracts or
pastiches of several already published, with light additions of new material; some of
these publications treat very circumscribed time periods, while others approached
the siege allegorically. It was an unprecedented attempt to mold public opinion in
favor of the king’s arms.
The main goal for the besieged, as in past sieges, was to draw out the conflict
to win concessions from the crown, especially the destruction of Fort Louis. In
August 1627, Louis XIII appointed his scheming brother, Gaston d’Orléans, as
commander of the royal army sent to besiege La Rochelle, though he could issue
no orders without explicit permission from the king or cardinal. Jealousies and
rivalries among aristocratic commanders plagued the royal effort throughout the
siege. Louis XIII’s arrival on September 12 enabled him to attend personally to
many details of the siege. He and Richelieu strove to pay the soldiers on a regular
basis, keep them well housed and well supplied; they also imposed strict discipline.
The army they deployed eventually swelled to 18,000 men and 800 horses by summer 1628, while 250 ships of varying sizes and sorts, 13 of them ships of the line,
participated in the siege.44 The total cost of the operation was around forty million
livres—a full year’s revenues, to which should be added the personal sums spent
by noble grandees. The pope authorized clerical revenues for the siege that French
prelates only begrudgingly began to transfer in summer 1628 as “free gifts” (dons
gratuits). As a result, Richelieu and the surintendant Antoine Ruzé d’Effiat borrowed huge sums to keep the siege going.
Besieging La Rochelle posed immense technical and logistical difficulties. The
besieging force drew its supplies from a wide regional ambit based in urban centers
such as Poitiers and Niort. River traffic down the Sèvre as far as Sérigny regularly
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delivered munitions that carters then hauled to La Rochelle. The town’s formidable
defenses made a direct assault almost certain suicide. The decision was therefore to
starve the town into submission, which meant building and maintaining long lines
of circumvallation and a seawall during the winter. All this work required a vast
workforce and much stone and timber; special machines had to be built to hoist
and place these materials into position. The most daunting technical challenge was
without question blockading La Rochelle’s harbor. Earlier that spring, the crown
hired the Italian engineer Pompeo Targoni to solve this problem. As far back as
1621, Targoni had proposed using special machines to bar the port; in April 1627,
in fact, he tested a prototype on the Seine called an estacade. It consisted of floating barges with cannons strung together by an immense chain supported by barrel buoys tethered to wooden pilings.45 Targoni proposed stretching a net across
the channel to prevent fish from entering the harbor, thus cutting off one of the
few remaining sources of food for the city. Several observers expressed skepticism
about Targoni’s plan and pushed for a cruder solution, which the king embraced
on November 19 when he ordered forty ships from Bordeaux sunk in the channel.
A fierce storm three days later, however, smashed the makeshift dike to pieces.
Meanwhile, Targoni fell from favor and the next year actually was thrown into
prison, along with his family, on trumped up charges of spying for Spain.46
In November 1627, Richelieu passed the seawall project to the architectengineer Clément Métézeau and the master mason Jean Thiriot.47 Expanding on
Targoni’s initial scheme, they envisioned a monumental stone dike fifty-five feet
wide at the base and twenty-five feet high that stretched nearly a mile in length,
with a six-hundred yard opening in the middle to accommodate the tides. Work
began in January 1628, as did problems. Skilled artisans dragooned from elsewhere soon deserted. A storm on January 10 swept away the wooden pilings set
in place the previous fall because they lacked a sufficient foundation. A week later,
Rochelais saboteurs destroyed the flotilla of boats sent out to repair them. Yet
repairs resumed right away. Richelieu also ordered iron chains from Bordeaux,
Niort, Saintes, Angoulême, Poitiers, and other places to be twisted about the cables
suspended across the channel. On January 21, nine more ships from Bordeaux were
sunk to strengthen the foundation. The next night, a Rochelais raiding party stole
out under cover of fog in rowboats with ladders to cut the cables. The attack failed,
however, because most of the sailors involved arrived drunk.
The dike eventually became more stabilized when Métézeau realized he needed
to taper the platforms, much like a pyramid, down to the seafloor and array them in
a zigzag pattern across the harbor mouth. Two stone jetties shaped like scorpion’s
claws guarded the channel bisecting the dike.48 The seawall in effect became an
underwater bastion. Between them were stone pylons, barricades of wooden beams
connected by iron rings atop barrels to ships lashed together by chains. Finally in
April, under the direction of Bernard du Plessis-Besançon, came the construction of
a huge system of some two-hundred stone and wooden obstacles deployed between
the seawall and La Rochelle to impede an enemy attack. Du Plessis-Besançon had
them built in workshops set up in Saintes, floated down the Charente, and then
hauled to the harbor of La Rochelle.49 Illustrations of these “chandeliers du PlessisBesançon,” as contemporaries referred to them, can be found in images of the siege
depicting the seawall with its floating artillery platforms and system of interlocking
timber trusses.50 Despite all these monumental labors, a fierce storm on July 29
still destroyed portions of the dike and dispersed the floating fence. Métézeau and
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Du Plessis-Besançon remained undaunted and undertook repairs immediately lest
the English tried to take advantage of the situation to relieve the city.
Assistance from other Huguenot communities, so vital in the past, proved desultory despite ongoing efforts by Rohan and Soubise. Castres actually refused them
entry, while Montauban, long a hotbed of militancy, remained on the sidelines
until March when Millau revolted and Rohan briefly seized Pamiers. Although
several other towns soon declared for the Huguenot cause, the momentum of resistance petered out in early summer 1628 as a force under Condé joined Henri II,
duke of Montmorency, in chasing Rohan’s small army out of Pamiers. Condé and
the aged Épernon besieged the town of Saint-Affrique in the Aveyron. Accounts
of the siege highlight the role of the town’s women, who repaired the walls and
fought like Amazons. Another siege at Mirabel in the Vivarais also saw royal forces
prevail.51 Ensuing defeats at Nîmes and Alès left Rohan in no position to relieve
La Rochelle, which remained the sole site of Huguenot resistance to the might of
the French crown.
Sealed off and alone, La Rochelle became doomed as a result of the monarchy’s
combination of engineering acumen, superior resources and sheer doggedness. La
Rochelle’s necessary reliance on the English continued to create problems. Its alliance with Charles I of England in late February required a promise not to consider any talk of peace with the king of France without the English king’s explicit
consent. Upon learning of this condition, Richelieu’s propagandists derided the
Rochelais’ claim to be bon François. By May 1628, food supplies ran perilously low
and promises of English help never materialized. Buckingham’s arrest in June and
eventual assassination in August further weakened English interest in mounting a
determined relief effort. Letters to Charles I seeking relief noted the growing stranglehold on the city.52 In late 1627, a special war council headed by the mayor Jean
de Godefoy and composed of four aldermen, four peers, eight burghers, and two
councilors from the Présidial court became created and invested with extraordinary
powers to deal with all military matters. Later friction between the war council,
headed by Jean Guiton since his election as mayor in April, and the Présidial court
headed by Raphäel Colin over jurisdictional competence and authority became so
bad that each faction tried to arrest the other on charges of treason.53
This factionalism only compounded La Rochelle’s mounting desperation as
spring turned to summer and food shortages gave way to starvation. Richelieu
tried to inflame social tensions in the city by spreading handbills that claimed the
rich in La Rochelle had plenty to eat while the poor went without. Price controls on
food failed to stem inflation. At the siege’s height, a dog’s head went for ten livres,
an egg also for up to ten livres, and a single grape for one livre eight sous—all many
times an average day’s pay.54 Anyone caught hoarding food or selling it above these
designated prices risked imprisonment and confiscation of all their goods. As the
situation worsened for La Rochelle, desertion among its defenders became more
common. If caught by royal forces, deserters were stripped of all their possessions
and sent back naked to the city, where they lingered before its walls knowing full
well they faced hanging if they went inside. Women captured collecting herbs or
shellfish just outside the walls were cruelly raped and also sent back naked. Royal
sharpshooters picked off children in sport if espied doing the same. In August,
Richelieu issued an order to shoot on the spot anyone caught outside the city
wall. Cases became reported of starving Rochelais offering themselves as objects of
debauchery to royal troops in exchange for a crust of bread. In September, people
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resorted to plaster, carrion, bones dug from graves and dung for food. In October
came reports of cannibalism as well as descriptions of well-off merchants who
climbed into coffins placed in churches with prayers to God on their lips as they
prepared to die. The siege also took its toll on the royal forces into the fall as supplies dwindled, desertions increased and morale flagged. The siege of La Rochelle,
like most sieges, became a grim contest of attrition and endurance.
Official calls for La Rochelle to surrender became a recurring ritual upon
Louis XIII’s return to the siege on April 25. At first, they occurred each week and
then in August each day as a herald-at-arms accompanied by two trumpeters dutifully marched up before the main gate in the morning demanding it be opened.
Elaborate refusals by the mayor and city officials from the parapets, who mixed cordiality with bravura, formed the requisite counterpoint to these encounters. In late
September, all hope for La Rochelle vanished when the English fleet under Lord
Lindsey finally arrived but kept its distance from the French batteries overlooking
the harbor. Informal talks with Richelieu soon opened but made little headway,
as the cardinal insisted upon a triumphal entry while the Rochelais insisted on
meeting the king in front of the gate. Upon these ceremonial differences turned a
highly significant shift in the relationship between the crown and this last of the
great independent bonnes villes. Richelieu insisted the surrender be unconditional
and utter and that the town beg for the king’s “grâce.” When Daniel de la Goutte,
speaking on behalf of the city, recalled to the king La Rochelle’s past support of his
father, Louis XIII reportedly replied: “I pray to God that you render your honor
not because of the straits to which you have been reduced. I know well that you have
always been trouble makers, full of tricks and ready to do anything to challenge my
authority. I therefore pardon your rebellion with the promise that if you are henceforth good and faithful subjects, I will be a good king” (see figure 7.2).55
With the monarchy’s triumph at La Rochelle arrived an opportunity for Catholics
in southern France to exact revenge against the Huguenots. Recognizing the volatility of the situation, Richelieu moved quickly in 1629 to provide royal safeguards for the beleaguered Huguenots while rendering them militarily impotent.
He achieved this goal in the peace treaty known as the Grace of Alès. Located near
Nîmes in lower Languedoc, Alès was one of the last Huguenot places besieged by
Louis XIII. After it capitulated on June 17, 1629, Richelieu issued the eponymous
treaty eleven days later to conclude France’s last War of Religion. While it confirmed the right to hold Calvinist services in selected sites, it called for the immediate destruction of the thirty-eight fortified places still held by the Huguenots. Few
places, however, actually fully lost their defenses right away, if at all. In many ways,
the announcement of the intention to demolish town walls rather than actually carrying it out allowed the monarchy to make the momentous point that henceforth
its authority was paramount and unquestioned in the kingdom.
The fall of La Rochelle marked a decisive turning point in the monarchy’s relations with the bonnes villes and the kingdom at large. Of the estimated twentyeight thousand inhabitants at the start of the siege, only some fifty-four hundred
remained alive at the end. By 1636, it had rebounded to eighteen thousand and
eventually surpassed its original size by 1700.56 Symbolic monuments in print and
onsite presented a simple picture of urban submission and royal magnanimity.57
The reality of pacification unfolded in a more complex manner in the months and
years ahead, at times reflecting the crown’s preeminence while at others signaling
the enduring importance of local interests. No town underwent more thorough, if
Figure 7.2
Surrender of La Rochelle, 1628. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. 152878).
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still, partial demilitarization under Louis XIII than La Rochelle. In this respect,
it provides a benchmark for the ensuing grand rasement (“great demolition”).
La Rochelle’s pacification began with a triumphal procession through the city
on October 29 and the public reestablishment of Catholicism on All Saints Day
when Louis XIII attended a mass celebrated by Richelieu at the church of SainteMarguerite, a former arsenal during the siege. Over the next several weeks, the
crown expanded its local prerogatives, curtailed municipal liberties, and strengthened its dispenser of royal justice in the Présidial Court. The temple in the Place du
Château was converted into a Catholic cathedral. No one could own or sell weapons without special royal permission. All artillery and munitions were transferred to
Brouage.58 The crown sought to make Rochefort into its main western naval base,
despite perpetual silting problems in the Charente that required constant dredging. However, by the early 1640s, La Rochelle again possessed a reconstituted civic
militia and cannons to provide welcoming salvos to visiting dignitaries.59
Administration of the city henceforth lay in the hands of royal officers attached
to the office of seneschal. The king appointed Gaspard Cougnet, lord of La
Tuilerie, to serve as intendant of La Rochelle in November 1628 with jurisdiction
over the Aunis and Saintonge. The Présidial court absorbed many of the functions
once the purview of the town council. Municipal government was overhauled,
with the crown exercising much more direct control over staff and jurisdictional
matters. A royal garrison was also established. At the same time, Louis XIII and
Richelieu allowed for Rochelais notables once prominent in the resistance, such
as Jean Guiton, to make amends and reenter public service.60 Only Charles Venier
La Grossetière, former page to the king who served in the Rochelais army, was
executed.
Most telling of all was what happened—and did not happen—to La Rochelle’s
fortifications. Louis XIII apparently resolved to dismantle all fortifications not facing the sea during an after-dinner walk on his first day in the city. Two days later,
accompanied by Richelieu and leading court nobles, the king again went forth
into the streets only this time all residents had been ordered to stand before their
houses along the promenade route. The excursion culminated when the royal party
watched the wall between the Porte de Maubec and the Porte de Saint-Nicolas torn
down.61 Two weeks later, a royal proclamation abolished the city’s privileges, suppressed its governing apparatus, confiscated its cannons and melted down its bells,
and ordered the immediate demolition of all its defenses except the towers guarding approaches from the sea. Yet this work of destruction never began as attention
instead turned to removing the network of forts and lines the besiegers had put in
place around La Rochelle so it would not longer be cut off from the immediate hinterland. The sea dike also required dismantling, especially after a ship foundered
and sank on December 12 while trying to cross it.
All land covered by La Rochelle’s fortifications, including those in the Neuve
Ville, were given to Claude de Rouvroy, lord of Saint-Simon and Grand Louvetier
de France, who was Louis XIII’s favorite at the time. The king made this grant
on December 30, 1628, and the property came to be known as the Fief Saint
Louis, comprising some one hundred and thirty acres, including all of the Neuve
Ville.62 The grant entitled Saint-Simon to all building materials in the domain and
established seigniorial rents and dues that ratified the eradication of La Rochelle’s
franchises. Many of the contracts drawn up between renters and Saint-Simon reveal
plans to improve these properties for commercial, manufacturing, and residential
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purposes.63 However, Saint-Simon soon sold this property, estimated to be worth
over eighty thousand livres, to a local tax farmer named Louis Martin for some
forty-two thousand livres. Apparently this transaction greatly peeved the king
because it effectively transferred control of property encircling the city back to the
Rochelais.64
After 1628, demolition of parts of the fortified gate complex began, with much
of the rubble used to help reconstruct the priory church, vestiges of which, such
as embrasures, remain visible to this day.65 The Neuve Ville area became the center of Counter-Reformation activity in La Rochelle. Walls and outworks became
replaced by Catholic religious houses and a new fiscal barrier. The fortified gate
at the Porte de Maubec survived as the entryway into a garden pavilion for a new
noble townhouse.66 Fortification areas were put to new purposes. Fronting ditches
to the west of the rue Chef-de-Ville became the site of a new Protestant cemetery
in 1635; another area near the Pont de la Courbeille comprised part of the property ceded to the Chartrains in 1646 for the Hôpital Saint-Barthélémy.67 In these
ways, the militarized periphery gave way to a new kind of city. Nothing reflected
La Rochelle’s new status as a frontier town in the kingdom than Louis XIV’s decision in the 1690s to rebuild its westward facing defenses while leaving the quarters
facing east open.
The G R A ND R ASEMENT
Finally able after 1629 to remove town walls without armed resistance, the Bourbon
monarchy now faced the reality that it was no longer so pressingly necessary to do
so. Since the twelfth century, the threat of rasement was made and, much less
often, acted upon during the course of countless conflicts. Indeed, during the
Wars of Religion, it occurred with considerable regularity in the case of castles.68
For the bonnes villes, it was a more problematical proposition both in terms of
expense and political consequences. As urban notables became more involved in
the office-holding, credit, and social networks related to the monarchy, so their
interests became more bound together with it in their capacity as middling officials
of the crown.69 For those reasons, explicit demilitarization of the urban edge as La
Rochelle experienced, and a select handful of other towns, was altogether exceptional. Demilitarization of a different sort nevertheless transpired for towns not
along the kingdom’s frontiers. It was a process of deferred maintenance and then
outright neglect, or misappropriation or revamping for new uses. Once proud symbols of urban prestige, town walls eventually served as archaic reminders of a past
that now lived most vividly on the pages of antiquarian histories.
Not that the crown had not threatened rasement of the defenses of any town that
defied it during the last Huguenot war. In 1622, for example, Montmorency’s order
to raze Nîmes’s enceinte never got off the ground until after 1630. Demolition of
Montauban’s wall began in 1628 but remained incomplete.70 The peace accord with
Montauban on August 17, 1629, required the town to dismantle its fortifications.71
However, a petition from the consuls shortly after Richelieu’s triumphant entry
combined soft obstruction with careful negotiation to blunt the crown’s attempt
to tear down its walls.72 When it became clear the demolitions would go ahead,
town officials shifted tack and argued, this time successfully, that the costs be
spread out across Guyenne.73 As it turned out, Montauban’s walls actually underwent repairs authorized by the crown during the Fronde. In 1628, Richelieu had
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walls brought down at Saintes, Niort and the Ile-de-Ré. Castles and fortified towns
in Poitou, such as Lusignan, Montaigu, and Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, underwent
dismantlement as far back as the 1590s. This practice resumed in 1622 as a result of
Soubise’s revolt in lower Poitou but only became systematic following the fall of La
Rochelle.74 Towns that remained loyal to the crown, such as Parthenay, Bressuire,
and Thouars, were spared, while others such as Fontenay-le-Comte retained walls
because they retained operational importance. Huguenot places de sûreté, such as
Loudon and Saint-Maixent, saw their walls torn down, as did the former Leaguer
stronghold of Tiffauges. The walls of other towns, some of which went back to
the twelfth-century, such as Talmont, La Roche-sur-Yon, Commequiers, and
Maillezais, either became demolished entirely or more symbolically reduced by
having their ditches filled and towers cropped.
Demolitions of castles and fortified churches in Languedoc accelerated after
Montmorency’s revolt in 1632. The fortified church of Maguelone, which went
back to the eleventh century, was dismantled as a defensive structure—in effect,
demilitarized—upon orders by Richelieu in 1632.75 The small burg of Maugio
near Montpellier saw its status reduced to a village following the demolition of its
walls and filling of its ditches, while a collegial church in Montréal saw its walls
torn down.76 Local sentiment favored demolition, mainly to remove a constant
financial drain on nearby villages, while the crown desired to remove a potential
obstacle to its authority. Some castles in the heart of the kingdom even saw their
fortifications modernized in the early 1600. The castle of Saint-Amand-Montrond
in the Cher, for example, originally built in 1225 and recently updated by Sully in
1606 underwent further expansion after 1621 when it passed into the possession
of the Condé family. An engineer named Jean Sarrazin oversaw this work, which
continued intermittently to mid-century. However, in the Fronde this stronghold
came under royal siege and eventually capitulated on September 1, 1652. Mazarin
ordered its immediate destruction, as he did castles of other nobles who had defied
him and the crown. Curiously, much the same contracting process occurred to
demolish walls as to build them. A contract awarded in November 1633 to take
down fortifications in Montauban went to the mason Jean Bourgeois, who six years
earlier had received the contract to repair them.77 When Richelieu ordered the
walls of Montflanquin demolished in 1632, he had the stones used to rebuild an
Augustinian convent that the Huguenots had partially destroyed in the 1560s.
The outlines of a more comprehensive approach to the kingdom’s defenses took
shape under Richelieu and accelerated following the fall of La Rochelle. In 1625,
the cardinal put in place a policy of construction and demolition that designated
fortified places to strengthen and those “in the heart of the realm” (au coeur du royaume) to demolish for the sake of the king’s état.78 Toward these ends, he reshaped
and expanded the royal fortification service along the lines already established
by Sully. In the vital area of finances, he called for the creation of three general
comptrollers whose sole duty was every year to audit all accounts of fortification
expenses. Costs of demolitions were usually borne locally, which caused resentment
or obstruction. Richelieu also proposed establishing a royal engineer along with
a team of assistants, such as surveyors and draftsmen, in every major city in the
realm. He subordinated them to the intendants of the army and no longer the provincial governors to ensure greater central control. As a result, the crown devoted
increased attention after 1630 to shoring up frontier defenses from Flanders to the
Pyrenees.79 In the east, along with walled towns, fortified churches found renewed
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purposes in Lorraine and the Thiérache during the brutal campaigns of the Thirty
Years’ War.80
In a royal declaration of July 31, 1626, Louis XIII announced his intention
to review the status of all fortified places. An Assembly of Notables met in Paris
in December 1626 to February 1627 to consider this same question. In his celebrated Avis au Roi of January 11, 1629, Richelieu called for the demolition of fortifications except those along the kingdom’s frontiers. These edicts distinguished
recently built stone-and-brick bastions, which they slated for destruction, from the
older curtain walls and earthen ramparts, which they ordered not to be touched.81
Other memos from the 1640s echoed this distinction when detailing additional
demolitions.82 The cardinal envisioned a defensive system of specially fortified
and garrisoned towns and places that formed a vast glacis around the realm further reinforced through diplomatic alliances and judiciously distributed subsidies.
Towns generally welcomed the crown’s efforts to raze châteaux-forts as decreed in
1626, despite the order’s indifferent implementation.83 One reason for the failure
to follow through with this intention lay with the crown, which found new purposes for the older medieval castles inside the enceintes. In Loches, Angers and
Bourges, they served to lodge royal governors; in Angoulême, Tours, Saumur, Dax,
Lourdes and Niort, they provided hospitals and prisons; while in Troyes, Foix and
Tarascon, they became simply prisons. Citadels also housed royal garrisons of varying sizes to maintain local oversight by crown. The crown’s ambitious program of
rasement thus failed to be realized for a variety of reasons, not least of which was
France’s formal entry into the Thirty Years’ War in 1635.
Louis XIII and Richelieu also initiated their fair share of new fortification projects
along the frontier incorporating the latest designs. The port town of Brouage was
of special interest to the cardinal. After the fall of La Rochelle, he ordered Charles
Leber du Carlo to design a citadel for this strategic site that served as the chief naval
arsenal and hospital along the Atlantic coast. Illness prevented Carlo from overseeing construction, which fell to Pierre de Conti, lord of La Motte d’Argencourt. The
new enceinte represented the most up-to-date bastion design, though Vauban later
criticized it as unnecessarily excessive. It also strove for aesthetic expression in the
multicolored brick patterns and ornamentation, all of which reflected the power
and grandeur of the French monarchy. Yet silting proved relentless, which explains
why later Louis XIV and his minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, decided to construct
a new fortified port on France’s western coast, Rochefort, even though Vauban
erected new fortifications for Brouage just as it became superseded.
When the walls began to be torn down or, as more often occurred, allowed to
fall into desuetude after 1630, urban notables fairly quickly recognized the pecuniary and proprietary advantages afforded by converting the vast acreage consumed
by “defense-in-depth” to more lucrative uses. As a result, the long-standing image
of the fortified bonne ville gradually gave way to a new discourse on la commerce
and the city after 1650, where it has remained by and large down to the present.
Signs of this new kind of townscape can already be discerned during the Wars of
Religion. Fortification projects occasionally opened up opportunities for a fuller
revamping of urban space beyond immediate military needs. The scale of such
operations usually depended on the money and commitment of powers behind
them. Parceled allotments raised much of the necessary capital, supplemented by
infusions by the crown or wealthy investor syndicates, to underwrite these projects. In fact, the foundation process was not markedly different from that of a
140
medieval bastide. In the process, the militarized edge, long the dominant feature
of French towns, slowly yielded to new urban forms fashioned to reflect the values
of public pageantry, commerce, and greater leisure and hygiene. Growing interest
in roads, canals, and bridges bespoke this new sensibility. In 1605, for example,
work began on a canal connecting Briare, located on the Loire, and Montargis
to the north. This project ultimately aimed to join the Loire and Seine. This first
link, known as the canal de Briare, employed up to twelve thousand laborers at a
time over the next near forty years until the canal opened in 1642. This project was
entirely financed by a consortium of private investors. Centuries of seeking security
through enclosure thus gradually gave way in the early 1600s to the pursuit of a
more open engagement with the outside world.
The shift toward this new urbanism at first reflected a mix of princely and mercantile interests mediated through new ideas about architectural grandeur and elegance. At its core was the great square.84 Perhaps the most precocious experiment
was in Nancy, the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine. Nancy’s transformation into a
ducal showcase began in the 1560s. Over the next fifty years, Nancy’s new walls
connecting the bastioned perimeter exhibited polychromatic geometric patterns
made out of red, green, and black bricks. Cut stone was used on all the edges (parements), while a sophisticated hydraulic system connected to the Meuse allowed regulation of the water levels in the surrounding ditches. To accommodate its growing
population, ducal officials planned a new town (Ville Neuve) for Nancy, though
debates continue over whether Italians or local masons designed it. The plan eventually called for the razing of the two older faubourgs south of the city, as well as
the village of Saint-Dizier to the north, replaced by the Ville Neuve laid out orthogonally with six streets running north to south, traversed by four streets going east
to west. Surrounding this new district, which quadrupled the size of the city, was
an imposing new enceinte composed of eight massive bastions replete with halfmoons, a large ditch, and glacis.85 Duke Charles III poured huge sums of money
into this ambitious project, which continued on until 1620, twelve years after his
death. Some medieval features, such as the towers found on some of the gates in the
old town, survived despite these wholesale changes. Despite all this expense, Nancy
offered virtually no resistance when French forces conquered it in 1633.
Paris under Henri IV witnessed several other significant attempts to elevate
the grandeur of the king’s capital, particularly the Place Dauphine, the Place
Royale, the Hôpital Saint-Louis, the Place de France, and the Pont Neuf.86 Under
Louis XIII, the Île Saint-Louis underwent significant change, as did the Pré-auxClercs and the neighborhood in and around Richelieu’s Palais Royal. In nearly
every instance, these urban rebuilding campaigns cleared out dwellings and businesses occupied by artisans and even humbler residents and replaced them with
housing and shops for the wealthy. Urban renewal projects in the seventeenth
century reinforced the trend toward greater social stratification. These projects
also concentrated on lightly built areas inside the old city walls, with the exception
of projects that took place in the suburbs. Areas such Saint- Germain held potential, but high property prices or the difficulties of relocating influential religious
houses impeded urban development. Even earlier royal legislation, such as the
edicts issued by Henri II in 1548 and 1554 forbidding any construction outside
the city’s walls, remained in effect until 1638 when the royal government loosened
this stricture by allowing building within an expanded perimeter outside the walls
known as the bornage, demarcated by stone markers.
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New towns became built elsewhere in France in the early seventeenth century.
On the Meuse River across from Mézières was erected in 1608 a huge new palacecity named Charleville, after its patron Charles de Gonzague, count of Rethel and
Nevers. The architect was probably Claude Métézeau, later famous for the dike at
La Rochelle.87 Inspired by the Italian città ideale, its checkerboard pattern had at
its center an elegant square dominated by the ducal palace and aristocratic townhouses. Its close resemblance to the Place Royale (now des Vosges) in Paris was due
to the fact that Métézeau’s brother Louis designed it. Sully planned another new
town, Henrichemont, in 1608 on land that he had purchased north of Bourges.
Intended as a Huguenot place de sûreté, Henrichemont took a radiocentric form
with one large central plaza surrounded by four subsidiary ones. The town remained
only partially built as a result of its namesake’s assassination in 1610 and Sully’s
subsequent fall from power. An interesting early example of this neoclassical urbanism where the mercantile character dominated was in Montauban. Ravaged by fire
in the early 1600s, municipal officials undertook an ambitious rebuilding of the
commercial heart of the town, creating an arcaded square for shops and residences
in 1614. Indeed, one of the reasons Montauban neglected its enceinte before 1620
was because of its financial commitment to this project.88
These trends continued under Louis XIII. The continuity comes through well
in the case of Havre-de-Grâce. After nearly forty years of decline following the
1563 siege, this important port town began its renewal in September 1603 when
Henri IV ordered work to restore the harbor as part of a larger plan to revitalize
commerce on the Seine. Finally in the 1630s, due to Richelieu’s continuing commitment to the project, Havre-de-Grâce became firmly established as the vital link
between the Seine and the sea. The cardinal-minister sought to delineate the port
town’s military and commercial functions, reserving the Bassin du Roy for ships-ofthe-line, built in the huge new naval dockyards that he had erected, while confining commercial craft to just outside the harbor and along the main quay. Richelieu
had a chance to express his own urban vision in the eponymous ville-residence
he started in 1625. Located in the borderlands between Poitou and Touraine at
his ancestral château, it received a bold new design by Jacques Lemercier, a royal
architect, after Louis XIII elevated Richelieu to the peerage in 1631. Lemercier’s
brothers, Pierre and Nicolas, oversaw the project. Completed in 1642, the town
of Richelieu resembled in many respects a typical medieval bastide. Walls enclosed
a quadrilateral layout pierced by three monumental gates, while the fourth was a
false gate constructed for the sake of symmetry. It had two main squares: the Place
Royale, subsequently renamed the Place des Religieuses for its academy for boys
and a convent for girls, and the Place du Cardinal, later known as the Place du
Marché, which was the commercial and political center of the town. Upon the cardinal’s death, the new town ceased to grow though visitors frequented it over the
next century, including Louis XIV, Jean de La Fontaine and Voltaire.
Warmaking after 1630
In the 1620s, Philippe Dupuy, one of the king’s librarians, composed a memoir
that asserted there had not been twenty consecutive years of peace in France since
the establishment of monarchy under Pharamond.89 Behind this grim observation lay the historical development of the fiscal-military state in France, an entity
best defined as an unstable yet enduring set of social relationships and institutions
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that reached their high point under the monarchy in the reign of Louis XIV.
The Bourbon triumph at La Rochelle reflected the outmost limits at the time
of the monarchy’s ability to field and wage effective warfare. Its success sprang
as much from engineering as from the logistical network that sustained, at enormous expense, the royal armies assembled there and in Huguenot Languedoc for
those many months. Historians now doubt whether a Military Revolution of the
kind that occurred in Sweden and the Dutch Netherlands adequately describes
developments in seventeenth-century France. The fragility of royal military power
under the late Valois, and even the modest size of the French army under Henri IV,
reflected France’s real limitations as an armed power into the 1620s. Despite moves
under Sully to create a more effective military bureaucracy, the armies fielded by
Richelieu against the Huguenots and then the Hapsburgs still largely relied on clientele networks, ad hoc financing, and creative cajoling.90 Patronage and venality
buttressed and amplified the informal, yet powerful bureaucratic mechanisms of
influence and obedience wielded by the crown.91 The increasing use of army intendants considerably enhanced the central control of Richelieu and his war ministers,
Abel Servien and François Sublet de Noyers.92 As a result, the royal army under
Louis XIII grew, though estimates by historians range from eighty thousand to
two hundred thousand.93
A major reason why these coercive powers of mobilizing men and material for
war became more effective under Louis XIII and his son lay in the continuing development of engineering science and professional engineers. Even after Jean Errard’s
death in 1611, French military engineering practice still drew heavily on Italian and
Dutch writings on general architecture and fortifications, which emphasized the
significance of geographical location, political context, and rituals of foundation
when constructing fortifications.94 Translations proved common and apparently
sold well.95 Most of these writers tended either to privilege theory or praxis, but
rarely both. The Dutch mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin was an exception. His La Castramétation, published in 1618, stressed efficiency and low cost
rather than geometric regularity in the design of military encampments and fortified
enceintes, while in his Oeuvres Mathématiques, which appeared in 1634, he pointed
the way toward the analytic geometry of Descartes and Desargues.96 Writers who
tended toward high-minded discussions of cosmology and universal truth found
inspiration in the work of Vincenzo Scamozzi, especially his remarkable bastionededged radial design for Palmanova. He also strove to create a functioning city, balancing its residential and commercial needs with those of humane governance.97
Scamozzi’s interest in Hermeticism resonated with the mysterious Rosicrucian
movement popular among intellectuals, artists, and craftsmen in France, where he
actually spent some time.98 One of them was the accomplished engineer Samuel
Marolais, whose books on fortifications and practical geometry glossed Dutch and
Italian works, presenting impassioned discussion of anthropomorphic analogies
and the magical powers of the compass and other surveying instruments but no
real mention of any actual applications to built forms.99 Dilettantes, such as the
moralist Honorat de Meynier, also dabbled on the subject of fortifications, trying
to make it fashionable for a decidedly civilian audience.100
On the other end of the spectrum were the do-it-yourself architectural and
surveying manuals that continued to be reprinted and emulated until the midseventeenth century. A manual on practical geometry attributed to the sixteenthcentury Toulousain alchemist Denis Zacarie, styled in the frontipiece as a “professor
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of mathematics,” appeared in 1618 and included a treatise on the compass.101
Using his pseudonyms Clément Cyriaque de Mangin and Denis Henrion, Pierre
Hérigone published numerous treatises on advanced and practical mathematics
during Louis XIII’s reign.102 New editions of Euclid’s Elements regularly poured
off the presses.103
Despite Errard’s modest design innovations, continuity and conservatism generally prevailed in architectural and urban design until 1650. Rational calculations
of size, capacity, and cost increasingly drove architectural design from individual
buildings to entire cities and their fortifications. In 1624, for example, the king’s
physician, Louis Savoit, published his Architecture française des bastimens particuliers, which later was edited and reissued by no less an expert than François Blondel
in 1673 and 1685. Pierre Le Muet’s Manière de bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes,
printed in 1623 and reissued four times, like Du Cerceau, presented plans of different kinds of residences suited to purpose, status, and available acreage. Mathurin
Jousse’s handbook for stonecutters and carpenters on the basics of stereonomy, Le
Secret de l’Architecture, signified a final displacement, begun the previous century
by De l’Orme, of traditional craft methods learned in shops by bookish knowledge
from published experts. A similar desire to impart a mathematical foundation to
the treatment of basic materials essential to construction animated Josse’s L’Art
de la Charpenterie. Works on surveying, explosives, and ballistics appeared by the
dozen.104 While such manuals still proffered advice to men in the building trades,
they increasingly pitched their message to would-be patrons, including royal officials, as well as common soldiers.105 They merged technical expertise with managerial skills to train, in time, military engineers capable of serving in the top echelons
of the royal government.
This kind of technocratic profile increasingly characterized men involved in the
royal fortification service under Louis XIII. In the 1620s, Jean Fabre, an engineer
in the Valtelline campaign, wrote a short work on fortifications that appeared in
1629.106 Pierre de Conty d’Argencour served at the 1628 siege of La Rochelle and
designed the new royal citadel.107 Conty d’Argencour became Richelieu’s favorite
engineer and oversaw the completion of the celebrated coastal defenses of the port
towns of Brouage and Havre-de-Grâce in the 1630s. He also oversaw fortification
repairs in Péronne in 1632. Another was Abraham Fabert, the son of a printer from
Metz, who enjoyed a career remarkably similar to that of Vauban a generation later.
Despite his humble background, Fabert received a solid training in mathematics
and drawing that enabled him to become one of the premier military engineers of
his day, though he never published on the subject. His skill and bravery brought
him rapid promotion during campaigns against the Huguenots in the 1620s, the
war against the Duchy of Lorraine in the early 1630s, and continued service in
the Thirty Years War in 1635 until its conclusion at the Treaty of the Pyrenees in
1659. He also participated in the Fronde of the princes in the early 1650s. In 1633,
Fabert became governor of Metz, received the title of marquis in 1650, and a year
later was named lieutenant-général of the royal armies. His career reached its zenith
with his appointment in 1658 as marshal. Fabert created a number of regional maps
during the 1620s, particularly of the emerging eastern frontier from the Ardennes
south through Champagne.108
Another highly capable man versed in engineering and management was Antoine
de Ville from Toulouse. De Ville brought a high level of mathematical expertise to
his designs, using both advanced geometry and logarithms, newly invented in the
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early seventeenth century.109 His career took him across much of western Europe.
He participated in the crown’s campaigns against Huguenot towns in southern
France and the 1628 siege of La Rochelle In 1624, he entered the service of the
Dutch and a year later joined Savoyard forces in the Piedmont. He took part in
many sieges, experiences that later powerfully influenced his theory of fortification
design and ideas about conducting siege warfare. After France’s formal entry into
the Thirty Years’ War in 1635, De Ville entered the employ of Cardinal Richelieu,
working with French forces in Picardy and Hainault, where he again lent technical
assistance in sieges at Landrecies, Castelet, and Hesdin. De Ville mentioned an
engineer named Capitaine Le Rasle, who served in the regiment of Champagne in
fortified works in that region and along the Meuse.
Antoine de Ville was France’s most original fortification design theorist since
Jean Errard, whose work he knew well since he was involved in the publication of
an edition of Errard’s original treatise in 1620. In his own published works, De
Ville aimed to educate officers in the new technical aspects of war “à la moderne,”
integrating discussion of resource management with advanced geometry and surveying. It also contained a brief section on fortifications, a subject he delved into
in great detail in his massive treatise published in 1636.110 He grouped his treatment into three main points that covered bastion design, construction, and an
active defense. He emphasized adapting designs to the contours of the terrain as
much as possible, a feature noticeable in his plan in 1643 for the defenses of SaintJean-Pied-de-Portis. In his book on a commander’s duties, De Ville examined the
proper deployment of men, weapons, and supplies in scrupulous planning that foreshadowed Vauban’s later statistical formulations.111 He also discussed the need to
build citadels to safeguard frontier towns against foreign enemies or a recalcitrant
population.
Under Louis XIII, cartographers and geographers for the king continued to
work closely with royal military engineers. They honed their techniques for greater
accuracy and complexity to guide both the prosecution of war and propagandistic
depictions of it to influence public opinion. Among them were Jacques Maretz,
Pierre Bertius, and the extraordinary Jacques Callot and Sébastien de Beaulieu in
the 1620s and 1630s.112 As a result, conceptions about urban place and territorial
space profoundly altered as each could now be effectively captured in an image that
guided its capture or secured its rule.113 More sophisticated languages of visual
representation and powerful forms of mathematics, like the calculus, eventually
developed as did refined methods of etching for expensive printing projects, such as
atlases and huge wall maps that diffused new modes of seeing “like a state.”114
The transformation of classical mechanics into the engineering sciences during
this period also played an important role. At one level, there occurred a gradual
shift away from Aristotelian notions of attribute and qualities toward more materialistic explanations that emphasized form and movement seen as the displacement
of matter in space and time. The scholastic terminology of Aristotelianism became
replaced by the precise language of mathematics, which paved the way for many key
scientific breakthroughs. The use of mathematics and physics to explain physical
phenomena enabled seventeenth-century engineers to move beyond the empirical craft traditions that for so long had informed the techniques of defense and
attack. Here the work of the mathematician Merin Mersenne figured prominently,
for through his translations several of Galileo’s most important treatises become
known in France. Publications on warfare and practical mathematics only increased
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after 1630, among them René Descartes’ famous treatise on method.115 The inveterate bibliographer Gabriel Naudé’s Syntagma de Studio militari, published in
Rome in 1637, was the earliest compendium of books with which any student of
military matters should be familiar. A popular manual that many engineers later
working for Vauban undoubtedly used was the Elementa geometrie praticae, published in 1654 by the André Tacquet, who taught at the Jesuit colleges in Louvain
and Antwerp. The lessons were organized in such a manner that the assiduous student could teach himself basic geometry and algebra.
In the late 1640s, Blaise de Pagan further underscored the importance of taking
topography into account when designing defenses-in-depth, with a tight integration and coordination of all elements in the enceinte and its outworks. He also
advised that the flanks of bastions be perpendicular to the line of defense to allow
for more effective enfilade firing.116 Throughout the seventeenth century, the
overwhelming majority of treatises on or related to military architecture equated
geometry with reality. Count Pagan’s works on architecture allied its underpinning
mathematical principles with the geometrical order expressed in the Copernican
theory of the cosmos, as he elaborated on in his books on the planets and astrology. This spatial dimension in Pagan’s work led him to recommend to study the
geometry of defense-in-depth—a notion that Vauban, a close reader of Pagan, later
took to heart.
While towns continued to quarter soldiers, provide supply depots, and manufacture armaments as before, what changed was the greater central direction
under the Ministry of War through the army intendants. The decision in 1643 to
create commissaires généraux des vivres to inspect and supervise victuallers hired
by the crown to supply the troops when garrisoned or on the march at étapes preserved the entrepreneurial aspect but increased royal oversight and control. In the
1630s, Servien prepared instructions for conducting a comprehensive inventory
of resources in each généralité for use in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1645, Pierre
Fortin, lord of La Hoguette, renewed the call for such a survey in his Catéchisme
Royale. In addition, regular reports by war commissars (commissaires de la guerre)
in 1630s and 1640s provided the crown with a comprehensive view of the state of
the kingdom’s fortifications. In 1645, Michel Le Tellier created new intendants
des fortifications to review and oversee the implementation of plans drawn up by
royal military engineers. As venal offices, they proved of limited effectiveness,
however.117
Alongside the continuing development of the royal fortification service were
significant changes in war finance during the Thirty Years’ War. Tax levels rose
precipitously under Louis XIII, perhaps as much as 400 percent; greater recourse
to short-term credit, forced loans, and the sale of offices funneled even more money
into the king’s coffers.118 After 1635, France nevertheless still encountered serious, intractable problems in meeting military payrolls, supply needs, and discipline
among its burgeoning numbers of troops.119 Challenges to the soaring “tax of
violence” of the fiscal-military state erupted across France during the Thirty Years’
War and ensuing conflict with Spain, which only ended in 1659.120 While this treasure underwrote the crown’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War and war with
Spain, its collection took a devastating toll on a society “in crisis” experiencing
economic distress and stagnant population growth both in towns and the countryside.121 Peasant revolts and uprisings in towns and eventually among the nobility
in the Fronde rocked France from the late 1630s to the mid-1650s as a result.122
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Areas of the kingdom that became theaters of war suffered especially deleterious
effects.123 Nowhere was this destruction more pronounced than in Lorraine, as
Jacques Callot’s etchings made graphically clear. Richelieu’s death in 1642 and
Louis XIII’s the next year left the throne to a minor king, the young Louis XIV,
and the regency of his mother, Anne of Austria, and her chief minister (and paramour), Cardinal Mazarin. However, perhaps the most significant aspect of this
“revolutionary moment” was that these social disorders remained episodic and
fragmented. Indeed, urban communities—with a few major exceptions, such as
Paris and Bordeaux—stood steadfastly by the crown during these years of strain
and weakness, even most tellingly the Huguenot towns. The absence of widespread
opposition in the towns, and their general commitment to sustaining the royal
war machine, largely account for France’s triumph over the Hapsburgs in the 1648
Peace of Westphalia and the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. Their fundamental commitment to the regime and the key roles that urban notables played in the areas of
finance, law, and commerce strengthened the monarchy as never before. As a result,
the coercive powers necessary for waging wage in the early modern era advanced
most in France under Louis XIV, as the rest of Europe soon discovered.124
Ch apter 8
O peni ng Towns , Closing Frontiers
Les grandes villes sont fort du goût du gouvernement absolu . . .
—Louis-Sébastien Mercier
Changes after 1650 opened up a new distinctive phase of urban development that
eventually ushered in the modern city in France.1 Peace inside the kingdom raised
questions about the need to keep up urban enceintes. Local choices often coincided
with royal interests, though benign neglect probably brought down more walls
than active demolition. The collaborative nature of relations between the crown
and towns became increasingly coercive under Louis XIV and his successors.2 The
crown’s growing monopoly on violence after the Fronde and discursive claims to
sovereignty, together with the growing oversight of royal intendants in municipal
affairs, brought about a steady loss of municipal independence.3 Urban notables
usually proved pliable because they became even more closely tied to royal officialdom as Ville and État merged. Royal cooptation of municipal officials culminated
in the 1690s when the crown, strapped for money to fund its wars, converted most
municipal posts into venal offices, though later in 1717 the Regency moved to roll
back these measures. The exclusion of middling urban groups from town councils
and royal offices over the eighteenth century together with higher fiscal exactions
through forced loans bred resentment and eventually contributed to the monarchy’s overthrow in 1789.4
These social and institutional changes must be seen against the Sun King’s foreign policy. Louis XIV sought to extend and secure his territories, especially in the
Low Countries and the west bank of the Rhine. Building and capturing fortified
places were key components of this strategy, which the great Sebastien Le Prestre,
lord of Vauban, formulated and executed for the king. Louis XIV’s initial military
successes against the Dutch spurred the creation of European coalitions against
France that eventually rolled back territorial gains in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1668, the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678, and Truce of Ratisbon in 1684.5 Along
the crucial northeast frontier, the royal fortification service led by Vauban worked
assiduously to defend these frontiers through a vast interconnected fortification
system paid for by the transfer of resources from interior regions. Security in effect
became nationalized. The ensuing coalitions against France severely tested this system. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 forced France to surrender recent gains in the
Low Countries and the Franche-Comté. Later in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713,
Louis XIV renounced additional claims in the Artois and Flanders.6 War and diplomacy continued throughout the eighteenth century to modify these boundaries,
which largely remained stable until the French Revolution.
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The Royal Fortification Service after 1650
Louis XIV was intimately involved in royal fortification policy.7 In fact, he spent four
times as much on fortifications as civilian buildings, including Versailles.8 Overall,
the proportion of royal expenditures on the army and fortifications steadily rose
from 47 percent in 1683 to 73 in 1691, while for the navy it went from 9.5 to 16 percent. Added to all this was the direct costs borne by communities for quartering soldiers.9 By the time of the War of Spanish Succession, it is safe to say that upwards of
85 percent of all royal revenues went for war. The growth of bureaucracy, where the
royal fortification service was but a small key part, mirrored this rise in spending. In
1658, Mazarin assigned to Michel Le Tellier the newly created office of commissaire
général des fortifications held by Louis-Nicolas de Clerville, who had assumed the
title in 1652. In 1661, the king further reorganized royal fortification services by
shifting responsibility away from the four secretaries of state to his two chief ministers, Le Tellier and Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Family dynasties dominated the royal fortification service like the rest of royal government. Family ties and clientage yielded
little ground to merit, though men of considerable ability did come to the fore.10
The Le Tellier and Colbert clans only differed in the scale of their success. Michel
Le Tellier was succeeded in 1666 by his son, François-Michel, marquis of Louvois,
whom the king entrusted with fortifications in newly conquered areas and existing
frontier provinces. Colbert, who headed royal commerce and finances, supervised
the fortification of ports and coastal regions.11 Over the next twenty years, this territorial distribution changed in accordance with the shifting frontier. Newly occupied
areas, such as Flanders in 1667 and Franche-Comté in 1674, came under the war
ministry, while interior provinces went to Colbert and his successors.
Louvois and Colbert approached the question of defense differently in the areas
they managed. Nearly every year as head of the Ministry of War, Louvois toured
some frontier area to gain first-hand knowledge of conditions.12 He was especially
interested in integrating the fortified places along the frontier into a systematic
ensemble. As a result, the distinction between frontier and interior areas grew
administratively sharper until the eighteenth century when the Ministry of War
formally assumed full responsibility over the frontier provinces while interior ones
fell to the Maison du Roi, tellingly renamed the Ministry of the Interior after 1789.
Royal legislation discriminated between these two zones as well. The Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, for example, did not apply to frontier provinces in
the north and east of France where substantial populations of new Calvinist and
Lutheran subjects lived.
Military engineers generally worked for Le Tellier and Louvois, while architects
found employ more often with Colbert.13 Whereas Louvois entrusted the inspection of fortifications to provincial intendants, Colbert established three intendants
of fortifications, which were venal offices, to inspect places under his jurisdiction.
Where Colbert appointed for each important place a chief engineer and a small
team of assistants, Louvois preferred to shift his engineering personnel around in
four brigades he organized to assist during siege campaigns. Redundancy and professional jealousies hampered relations between these bureaucratic cliques. In fact,
Vauban nearly suffered professional disaster in the early 1660s when he became
implicated in pecuniary improprieties at Brisach committed by Charles Colbert,
lord of Saint-Marc, intendant of Alsace and cousin of the great Colbert. As a result,
Vauban gravitated into Louvois’s orbit. In 1690, shortly before his death, Louvois
O p e n i ng Tow ns , C l o s i ng F r on t i e r s
149
gained control over all coastal fortifications and confided these combined duties to
his cousin Michel Le Peletier de Souzy, who became directeur général des fortifications des places de terre et de mer for the entire realm. Vauban was apparently never
seriously considered for this position but enjoyed an excellent working relationship
with Souzy.14
The rise of Vauban to head up Louis XIV’s royal fortification service culminated
a process of professional evolution that went back to the late sixteenth century.15
Born in Burgundy on May 15, 1633, Vauban joined the royal army during the
Fronde at age eighteen and eventually rose to the rank of Marshal of France in
1703. Vauban began his military career serving the frondeur Louis II de Bourbon,
prince of Condé, in 1653, but soon went into royal service when he was named an
ingénieur ordinaire du roi in 1655. In 1667, at Louvois’s instigation, Vauban submitted an alternative plan to Clerville’s design for the crucial citadel at Lille that
favorably impressed Louis XIV. Henceforth, Vauban became the king’s preferred
military engineer though he only assumed the office of commissaire général des
fortifications in 1678, a year after Clerville’s death. While pushing to help Louvois
centralize the royal engineering corps, Vauban faced increasing difficulties after his
patron’s death in 1691 in gaining access to the king. Instead, he now had to work
through men such as Louis François Marie Le Tellier, marquis of Barbezieux, who
was Louvois’s son and successor as secretary of state for war; Louis Phélypeaux,
count of Pontchartrain, contrôleur général des finances from 1689 to 1699; and
Michel de Chamillart, contrôleur général des finances from 1699 to 1709 and secretary of war from 1701 to 1709.16
Vauban developed his ideas on reforming the training and operations of the
royal engineering corps in a service manual written in the early 1670s.17 A chief
engineer (ingénieur en chef ) was appointed to each généralité and was responsible
for developing proposals for repairs and new projects that he submitted to Vauban
for review. Vauban then consulted with the appropriate minister and sometimes
the king for final approval and funding. Vauban also helped to coordinate the
implementation of treaties by working with local intendants, legists familiar with
local laws, and engineers who had the surveying and cartographic skills essential to
ensure proper execution of a treaty’s terms. Vauban’s interests in reform extended
to fiscal policies that set aside social privilege in favor of common obligations.18
He was a resolute empiricist steeped in the writings and currents related to his
fields of interest. He embraced the tendency to quantify, yet remained pragmatically attuned to the nuances of circumstance and situation. He constantly sought
out information, but eschewed grand pronouncements of infallible theory. And he
acknowledged the materialist nature of reality promoted by the mechanical philosophy.19 Devoid of any underlying metaphysical or cosmological meaning, design
for Vauban was all a matter of lines, angles, and volumes adapted to solve discrete
problems. He rejected dogmatic statements in favor of what one architectural historian has called “quantitative rational planning.”20 In sum, Vauban was the first
enlightened technocrat.
Instructional manuals printed after 1650, including Vauban’s, reflected this
shift.21 Claude-François Milliet Dechales, a Jesuit from Savoy, for example, underscored the importance of Euclidean geometry and dynamics in his discussion of
building materials and structures, especially carpentry, in his frequently republished 1674 treatise Cursus, seu mundus mathematicus. His L’Art de Fortifier of
1677 went so far as to reduce all military problems to questions of lines and angles.
150
Unlike architecture and engineering, hydraulics continued to depend on intuition
and individual experience when it came to water defenses, canal building, or garden fountains until it, too, became more scientifically oriented in the eighteenth
century.22 Further refinements in printed technical manuals after 1650 broadened
the range of instructional materials for tutors or autodidacts to use to learn about
fortification design and ballistics. Sébastien Le Clerc’s Pratique de la géométrie
sur le papier et sur le terrain: ov par vne méthode nouvelle, printed in 1669, for
example, conveyed most of its lessons through a page of text opposite an easy-tofollow illustration. Teams of experts pooled their talents for publications. A royal
engineer, engraver, and professor of mathematics, for example, collaborated on the
composition of L’expérience de l’architecture militaire, which appeared in 1687 and
incorporated emblematic elements along with text and illustrations, as did the 1693
book by the mathematician Jacques Ozanam, Méthode de lever les plans et les cartes
de terre et de mer, which contained detailed illustrations showing all kinds of surveying instruments. Another avenue for promoting interest and discussion about
these subjects came with the founding of the Journal des Savants in 1665.
The new style of French classicism imparted greater uniformity in urban design,
including fortifications. Its genesis formed part of what came to be called the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. The architect Claude Perrault developed
a new modern style inspired by Vitruvian precepts but guided by its own rationality.23 He began his career as an anatomist and later disparaged the notion that the
human body epitomized ideal architectural proportion. Perrault’s own research
into ancient monuments convinced him that there existed no prescribed Roman
style but instead a variety of them in different regions of the Empire. Unlike earlier
interpreters of Vitruvius, Perrault refused to allow for optical adjustments in his
designs, asserting instead the Cartesian concept about the purity of human vision.
Architects should instead be free to realize the unique and self-sufficient rationality of the built form itself. François Blondel, another noted architectural theorist
at the time, challenged Perrault claims for a new modern style by affirming the
superiority of ancient forms. While Blondel enjoyed considerable support at court,
Perrault’s ideas encouraged a more historicist appreciation of different styles in the
past, including the long reviled Gothic.24 Thus began a long debate about France’s
national identity as expressed in public architecture that endures to this day.
Claude Perrault viewed architecture as a profession that required specialized
training and mastery of a range of technical disciplines before actually trying to
build something. Mathematics was critical, especially Euclidean geometry, as a
tool to remake physical reality.25 Geometry thus became steadily reduced to rules
of operation stripped of symbolic significance in the new French classicism and
military engineering. The gradual abandonment of Vitruvian mysticism in France
became complete when Jean Dubreuil and Gérard Desargues developed more powerful applications of geometry, now known as algebraic geometry, to a whole range
of both practical and abstract problems that in time severed the once hallowed
link between the macrocosm and microcosm. With the invention of calculus by
Newton and Leibniz in the 1680s, mathematics became a potent tool for architects
and engineers to use to forge new understandings of the natural world as well as
the means to reshape it to fit human needs. The French royal state utilized these
techniques for its own dynastic purposes.
Vauban agreed with the stipulation for training military engineers by beginning with theory before practice. As such, he reversed the medieval methods of
151
apprenticeship that privileged experience over theory. Training included not just
drawing, but also an understanding of materials, such as stone and wood, practical
geometry, and the art of surveying, which in turn required geometry, trigonometry, mechanics, hydraulics, and cost accounting. Craft experience and intuition had been replaced by the engineer’s mastery of mathematics and structural
dynamics. This new type of education for the architect-engineer eventually became
institutionalized with Blondel’s Cours de l’architecture, which appeared between
1675 and 1683 and were originally delivered as lectures at the Royal Academy
of Architecture. Created in 1671 by Colbert, the Royal Academy of Architecture
aimed to form a distinctly French canon of architectural principles guided by reason and elegance.26 It became increasingly involved in devising proposals to ameliorate urban conditions, calling for improved public lighting, marketplaces, public
baths, fountains, prisons, hospitals, and so on. The creation of public parks also
became important. And French neoclassical gardening design contained obvious
parallels with the emerging cartographic rhetoric of the pré carré.27 Engineers
involved in military design projects often contributed their talents to such horticultural undertakings.28 While outside France the older metaphysical orientation of
practical geometry remained prevalent during the eighteenth century, the methods
developed by the French in the 1600s promoted in the royal academies and emerging polytechnic schools eventually became the basis for planning and construction
in the industrial era.
The C EINTURE
DE
F ER and the P RÉ C A RRÉ
The ambition to secure France’s borders through an integrated system of fortified
places goes back to at least the sixteenth century, if not earlier. Under Louis XIV,
realization of this strategic vision lay as much with Louvois as it did Vauban (see
map 8.1).29 Vauban’s famous letter in January 1673 to Louvois articulated anew the
goal to render the kingdom a pré carré (“dueling field”) whose boundaries would
be secured by a ceinture de fer (“belt of iron”) composed of newly fortified places.30
Vauban conceived of the frontier as a spatial ensemble, not a line, shaped by local
traditions and topography. During his career, Vauban modified the fortifications
of over 160 cities and planned 9 new towns, all them tied together in a system that
ringed the kingdom. Work on the ceinture de fer began in earnest following the
Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678 and continued into the eighteenth century to create
through conquest and diplomacy a dense network of frontier defenses. It eventually consisted of two lines of fortified places, the first made up of fourteen places
from Dunkirk to Givet31 and the second of sixteen places that stretched from Calais
to Stenay.32 Another forty-two places stretched from Langres through Alsace and
the Franche-Comté then southward down the Rhône to the Mediterranean.33
Fifteen redoubts lay in the Alps and another twelve guarded the frontier along the
Pyrenees.34 Finally, seventeen fortified places protected France’s coast lines.35 In the
northern areas, the two lines of fortified places ran perpendicular to the rivers and
main land routes. Mobility of garrisons for mutual defense relied upon improved
roads, bridges, and waterways. Vauban had special maps prepared to inventory local
resources, such as fortresses, forges, mills, quarries, and forests. Defense of any one
place really thus depended on the entire ensemble of fortified places.
The territorial ebb and flow of Louis XIV’s many wars resulted in fortification
projects whose utility and importance varied greatly.36 Imperial towns captured by
Map 8.1
France, 1650–1710.
153
the French underwent a variety of experiences. In 1661, after the formal annexation of Lorraine, Louis XIV ordered Nancy’s elaborate bastioned defenses razed
to the ground only to turn around eighteen years later and order Vauban to rebuild
them, this time more hastily and with less concern for their aesthetic appearance.
Yet in 1698, when Lorraine again became part of the Empire, its fortifications
came down anew, this time permanently. In the case of Metz, Vauban’s designs had
to wait until the 1730s and 1740s to be completed by Louis de Cormontaigne.37
Luxembourg City’s fortifications became substantially modified first by the Spanish
between 1671 and 1684 and then by the French under Vauban. Strasbourg had
steadily added bastioned elements to its medieval enceinte since the fifteenth century, though it only began an integrated bastioned trace in the 1630s. Work continued on it until 1681 when the city opened its gates to Louis XIV without a fight.
Vauban then proceeded to strengthen its enceinte even further. Across the Rhine,
the new town of Neuf-Brisach, while significant in terms of design, was essentially
a waste of money when it came to actual defense. In the Franche-Comté, fortifications went up and down several times. Dole, for example, saw the French begin to
demolish it fortifications in 1668; a year later, the Spanish retook the town and set
about repairing them. Finally in 1688, Louis XIV recaptured Dole and ordered
their permanent destruction after deciding to retain only Besançon and Belfort as
fortified places in the duchy.38 Vauban, however, spared Dole’s bastion guarding
the bridge and part of the curtain wall, still visible today in private gardens.
Models and maps provided the king and the broader public a ready-made opportunity to grasp the monumentality of the ceinture de fer. Early on in 1668, Louvois
ordered Vauban to oversee the creation of models of places, or plan-reliefs, ceded
to France in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle to show to the king. The collection
began with the royal cartographer and engineer Alain Manesson-Mallet’s model of
Pinerolo and grew over the next thirty years to some 144 models of 101 different
captured towns.39 Built precisely to scale and with great attention to topography by
specially selected royal engineers, the models enabled the king to see the individual pieces of the great ceinture de fer constructed by Vauban. Vauban used them to
show the king details of proposed projects; they also served as symbolic expressions
of the Sun King’s military prowess. In 1686, Charles de Pène was named director
of this group of royal engineers dedicated to building plans-reliefs. The models
thus served as another tool to help realize France’s military ambitions. Much like
maps, these models mediated a new kind of relationship between ruler and place,
now rendered into a miniaturized version rather than an actual site to visit.40
Literature on fortifications published in the latter part of Louis XIV’s reign
reflected the growing emphasis on detached forts and mighty citadels rather than
heavily bastioned city walls. From 1683 to 1686, Vauban personally supervised
the drawing and compilation of 240 of France’s cities into three volumes that he
intended as a gift for Louis XIV. Nicolas de Fer’s Atlas royal, for example, published
between 1699 and 1702, provided its readers a compendium of maps and plans
depicting nearly two hundred fortified places along the frontiers of the kingdom.
In 1702, he published a collection of maps and geographical descriptions related
to the War of Spanish Succession. That same year, a collection related to military
action in Italy was printed, while three years later another collection appeared with
maps and plans connected to the war in the Empire. These collections allowed the
French public an opportunity to follow the campaigns, recount engagements, and
envision specific places mentioned in news publications, such as the Gazette de
154
France. Other similar publications by De Fer went under the title of “théâtres de la
guerre” that reflected their spectacular nature.41
The ceinture de fer ultimately relied upon the monarchy’s ability to conduct
or resist a siege. During his long career as a military engineer, Vauban worked on
hundreds of fortresses and directed forty sieges, all of them successful. Much of his
“system,” at least as deduced by his pupils later on, can be found in his Traité de
l’attaque des places, written after his last siege at the age of seventy. It was a secret
document not intended for publication, but composed for Louis of France, duke of
Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV. In 1706, he wrote Traité de la défence des places,
which presented three “systems” of defense that showed continuities with earlier
traditions as well as original contributions to the art of siege warfare. The first system refined earlier Italian and French designs of the bastioned trace, the second
introduced detached bastions around the perimeter, while the third, epitomized by
the expensive works at Neuf-Brisach, added a further set of elaborate outworks to
the detached bastions.42 The vast majority of fortification projects initiated under
Vauban until well into the eighteenth century subscribed to the traditional format
of the first system. For all intents and purposes, therefore, continuity rather than
change characterized fortification design practices under Louis XIV. Vauban’s tenure as superintendent of royal fortifications witnessed as much demolition as building with the constant clearing away old defenses considered financial liabilities or
potential threats to the king’s authority.43
Vauban’s real genius lay in formulating an empirical basis for attack.44 He honed
his skills throughout his long career.45 The geometry of attack took advantage of
the inevitable geometric limits of defense-in-depth through the use of parallels to
approach, slowly but surely, within firing range of the enemy’s defenses without
exposure to deadly flanking fire. The familiar zigzags on graphic depictions of
siege operations at the time bear this method out quite well. It became so wellorganized that Vauban could eventually predict with great accuracy the exact time
the assault would be ready since once he knew the terrain and the size of the
labor force on hand, he could calculate the rate of the parallels’ progress down to
the foot. Even though he resisted theory and systematization, Vauban nevertheless
posited several general principles to guide the course of a siege.
In fortification design, Vauban largely emulated, as seen in Strasbourg, Jean
Errard’s huge bastions with supporting half-moon outworks from which massed
infantry could fire. He also took up at Belfort and Landau, for example, Pagan’s
idea to add another line of detached bastions with casemates and artillery emplacements connected to the main enceinte by low covered passages called tenailles. At
Neuf-Brisach, Vauban laid out the curtain walls between two bastions in a broken
fashion to improve flanking fire. He also added another set of half-moon outworks
to the detached bastions outside the main ditch. Depending on money and time,
Vauban sometimes combined these elements using local materials and terrain features to the best advantage. But siege warfare theory did not always correspond to
its actual practice, as considerations of time and expense often pushed commanders
later in the War of Spanish Succession to opt for an all out assault rather than the
methodical yet costly efficiency of Vauban.46
Intendants’ reports to the duke of Burgundy in the late 1690s reflected a new
awareness of France’s “natural” frontiers defining the pré carré. Together they
articulated a sharp distinction between the more militarized zone of a “France
périphérique” and the demilitarized areas of the “France intérieure.”47 They also
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commented on the changing urban forms in each zone. Most towns appeared to
remain enclosed within walls and ramparts that no longer possessed any military
importance. Some intendants cited impracticality and expense as reasons not to
fortify towns in the interior.48 Others recalled past civil wars when commenting
on recent demolitions. Most reports described in detail local fortifications, noting
where they had disappeared or become absorbed into the changing urban fabric.
Some noted how gardens had sprung up along the base of old walls, where houses
now intruded. Intendants in frontier provinces boasted about the massive new citadels and the garrisons they housed. Castles still dotted the countryside, many quite
dilapidated and others but ruins, while along the frontier modern forts controlled
the countryside between larger villes fortes.49
The C ITÉ - C ASERNE on the Frontier
The military character of frontier towns became most inscribed in their parade
grounds, citadels, and gates. In his Les Travaux de Mars, ou l’art de la guerre,
published in 1684, Manesson-Mallet formulated rules on where to situate parade
grounds to ensure protection and control of the city. Efficient circulation of soldiers meant demolishing cul-de-sacs to open up the city. Rather than the urban
center, the best location for a citadel was on the periphery where it could reinforce
the enceinte and dominate the town. Under Louis XIV, royal citadels in frontier
towns served as bases for launch conquests abroad and protected the kingdom
from invasion. Sometimes geography required establishing more than one citadel,
such as occurred in Besançon, which was bisected by a river; fear of sedition sometimes made the same argument, as was the case in Bordeaux, which had three royal
fortresses, and Marseille, which boasted four. Classically designed arches in towns
bespoke this sense of collective security provided by cités-casernes with inscriptions
such as the motto Securitati perpetuae.50
The impetus behind barracks derived from the general push under Louis XIV
to professionalize the royal army and shield the populace from excessive contact
with it. Popular protest had long arisen over issues related to the military, such
as fiscal exactions, quartering soldiers, or insults to local pride.51 Antitax movements erupted throughout the kingdom after 1660. The crown still largely relied
on poorly trained local militias and armed posses raised by local nobles to quell
domestic disturbances. Louis XIV extended his control over urban militias mainly
to raise revenue by selling service exemptions to wealthy notables. On rare occasion, such as the dragonnades against Huguenots in 1685 and the quelling of the
armed insurgency in the Cévennes in 1702, the crown used the troops of the
line to enforce its religious policies but with little success and much bad press.52
Although not averse to using troops against the populace, Louis XIV’s military
reforms aimed to improve their day-to-day relationship.53 Accountability in mustering and payments reflected improved administrative oversight.54 As a result, the
life of common soldiers markedly improved, especially for the wounded and invalids, as did their discipline.55
Towns remained the lynchpin for warmaking under Louis XIV and his successors.56 Requisitioning from towns such items as uniforms, bread, meat, wine,
munitions, and men was increasingly regularized during Louis XIV’s reign thanks
to the reforms of Le Tellier and Louvois.57 An ordinance issued on July 20, 1660,
regularized the material support (utensile) due the king’s soldiers from civilians,
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which included a bed, bed linens, a pot, glass, spoon, a place by the fire, and a candle. The utensile finally became converted into a general tax in 1690. Towns could
be relieved of the logement obligation if they agreed to pay for the construction
of barracks using designs by the king’s military engineers. However, in practice,
most barracks usually consisted simply of abandoned houses bought by municipal authorities. In time, economic interests led some town actually to solicit the
establishment of royal garrison.58 Yet private interest was not entirely eliminated.59
Barracks, usually situated along the inner edge of the walls, physically separated
soldiers from civilians and thus contributed to alleviating conflicts between these
two groups.
Vauban famously took a great interest in barracks, supplies, and support services
for garrison forces. In this, the French followed the innovations of the Spanish. The
first such separate housing for soldiers and officers was in the citadels of Lille and
Arras after 1668. An arsenal and hospital were also commonly situated in the military precincts, along with food depots, water cisterns, and refuse pits that enhanced
the garrison’s self-sufficiency. The powder magazine was placed within adequate
reach for the garrison on the town’s outskirts, but not too close in the event there
was an accident. Sentry posts at the gates of frontier towns fell exclusively under
the garrison’s jurisdiction. Other public buildings in the city also contributed to
the garrison’s welfare. Churches in town provided for the soldiers’ spiritual needs,
as did the chapel specially situated within the military compound. The Hôtel de
Ville closely worked with the garrison’s command, while marketplaces provided an
informal area for civilians and soldiers to interact. Local garrison commanders also
took a keen interest in bridges, canals, and hydraulic works, all of which carried
immediate significance for transport, supply, and defense. Overall, the distinction
between military and civilian spheres became sharper as towns saw their once independent role diminish and eventually disappear after 1650.60 The cité-caserne in
effect embodied the absolutist aspirations of royal rule in the kingdom at large.61
A telling indicator of the towns’ new place came after the 1659 Peace of Pyrenees
when the crown commandeered all municipal cannons in interior towns for deployment on the frontier. A system of royal artillery arsenals similar to Sully’s earlier
scheme developed. Towns sought indemnification, not always successfully, for the
loss of their cannon. Their loss was palpable and implicated urban identity, as the
individuality of each piece, their appearance, sound, name, conveyed a historical
connection between the town and its past. Some towns attempted to hide or disable cannons so they would not be moved. In Epernay, a cannon named the “chien
d’Orléans,” said to be used during Henri IV’s campaigns nearly a century before,
“accidently” fell from its tower platform. It smashed into pieces, which then some
townspeople stole and hid in their homes, piteous reminders of the lost independence of this bonne ville.62
The cités-casernes designed by Vauban usually sought to integrate the historic
layout of towns with the geometric dictates of fortification design, even in the nine
new towns he created between 1678 and 1698.63 These new towns eschewed the
Renaissance radial design in favor of the “checkerboard” pattern of older bastides.
Beyond the bastioned edge of most frontier towns lay a glacis that stretched up
to five hundred yards long. Its construction sometimes required the demolition
of faubourgs and prohibitions against new suburbs from developing. As a result,
towns along the ceinture de fer usually became more densely populated unless the
circuit of the bastioned enceinte incorporated new residential areas, as in Lille.
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This bastioned citadel was the first of eleven new ones designed by Vauban for
Louis XIV.64 He also remodeled many others. His use of local artisans to build
these citadels and new towns fostered syntheses of French and local indigenous
architectural styles.65 Vauban also oversaw the construction of smaller, detached
fortresses at strategic sites in this defensive zone, such as on the hilltop of Haurs
overlooking the Meuse River. In most cases, quadrilateral streets and a uniform
building code characterized new neighborhoods added to the expanded urban
perimeter of frontier towns.
Similar developments took place along the kingdom’s maritime edge. Colbert
had new ports created because he wanted to avoid placing royal naval facilities
in towns with a history of resisting royal authority, such as La Rochelle and
Marseille.66 In 1664, he sent Clerville and Charles Colbert de Terron to inspect
France’s coastline to identify the best sites for new ports. In 1670, he proposed the
new port town of Sète as primarily a commercial center on the southern end of
the Canal du Midi, while Toulon, established earlier in the century by Henri IV,
would be France’s main naval base on the Mediterranean.67 On the Breton coast,
Lorient was intended in 1666 to be the main base of the Compagnie des Indes
Orientales, though that changed in the early 1700 when the company moved operations to Havre-de-Grâce.68 Vauban also developed plans for Saint-Malo.69 Finally,
Rochefort in 1669 and Brest in 1681 became France’s main naval yards for the
royal fleet along the Atlantic littoral.70 Silting problems at Rochefort led Colbert to
decide to transfer main naval functions for the Atlantic and Channel to Brest.
Port towns experienced a special tension between overseas commercial engagement and defending the kingdom. In the early 1700s, Havre-de- Grâce became
headquarters of the Compagnie du Sénegal and the Compagne de l’Inde and
came to enjoy by the 1750s an enviable level of prosperity, despite the occasional
damage inflicted on it by English naval bombardments. Merchant ships competed
with the royal navy for access to quays and naval stores. For Colbert, port design
emphasized the shipbuilding functions at the expense of the civilian sector, which
he sought to separate into distinct zones. His organization of the royal forests
also related to naval policies.71 The master plan for Rochefort by Clerville, with
assistance from Louis Le Vau, best realized Colbert’s inflexible and ultimately
impractical urban vision. The other three new ports departed from this viewpoint
in the hands of Vauban, who redesigned Brest and Lorient.72 Fortifications for
these ports tended to be weak, though in the case of Brest an effort was made to
enclose the port town out of fear of a local uprising, which actually came in 1675
with the revolt of the “bonnets rouges” when peasants sacked the town. Vauban
got involved in building Brest after Colbert’s death in 1683. He helped to solve its
defensive problems by constructing a string of mutually reinforced forts beyond
the walls of the town. Brest’s isolation made it commercially very weak and thus
without an economic basis on which to develop its infrastructure, as opposed to
the case of Lille. Vauban’s design for parts of Brest paid scrupulous attention to
topography as he sought to increase circulation and regularity in appearance.
Finally, both Colbert and Vauban also devoted a good deal of attention
to strengthening the enceintes of well-established port towns, such as Calais,
Dunkirk, and Gravelines, as they came into French control as a result of
Louis XIV’s wars. In 1692, Louis XIV even ordered the château and fortifications of Cherbourg razed to make way for commercial warehouses.73 La Rochelle
underwent a different experience because much of its enceinte had been demolished
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under Louis XIII. In 1689, the crown authorized new fortifications facing seaward against the threat of Anglo-Dutch attack. He also wanted the forts on the
Ile-de-Ré and Il-d’Oléron repaired.74 La Rochelle’s new defenses mainly consisted
of an elevated earthen rampart, not unlike the barriers erected around medieval
towns in the twelfth century.75 These ramparts received masonry facing along the
street level, while the area above was planted with grass and trees and became a
parkland necklace over the eighteenth century. Following a revolt against the royal
governor in Marseille in 1660, Colbert worked closely with the royal intendant of
the king’s galleys, Pierre Arnoul, on expanding the enclosed urban core and adding
a royal citadel. His motives combined hygienic concerns about overcrowding with
the need to support the crown’s naval presence in the Mediterranean. His order
in 1666 to demolish the old walls elicited fierce opposition from city officials who
feared property depreciation and loss of rents. However, as terms became negotiated
more in their favor they joined Colbert’s effort to remake the port city to include
a splendid new neighborhood for the wealthy and cramped slums for the urban
poor in the old town. Defending coastal ports and the national frontier against the
threat of invasion remained high priorities during the eighteenth century.
Concerns about improving defensibility dovetailed with the new litmus desire
to make towns more salubrious environments. These twin demands on frontier
towns continued into the eighteenth century. The alpine town of Briançon, which
faced the Piedmont held by the Austrians after the 1713 Peace of Utrecht, saw
the engineer Heuriance design four forts around the town’s perimeter between
1720 and 1735 as well as the famous Pont d’Asfeld spanning the Durance river. In
Lorraine, the engineer Louis de Cormontaigne undertook to reinforce the already
considerable defenses of Metz and Thionville between 1728 and 1752, increasing the overall size of each town by about a tenth. The architect Jacques-François
Blondel designed the new expanded parade grounds in the heart of Metz, taking
that opportunity to widen and align several important streets to facilitate the
circulation of men and materiel. Military needs thus dominated design considerations for frontier towns.
Opening Towns
Greater efficiency and accelerating modes of exchange became the litmus of urban
vitality, not walls of stone and imposing gates. As population pressures and economic incentives grew to favor opening towns, old attitudes persisted that the
walled enceinte provided protection from attack and contagion, as well as a fiscal
boundary to collect excise taxes, to maintain public order, and discourage revolt.
Urban renewal projects on the edge or inside the enceinte occurred in a sporadic,
fragmentary fashion until the eighteenth century when more comprehensive plans
began to be pursued.76 Real estate speculation often shaped the changing urban
edge more than royal policy. Land on the periphery was often quite valuable. Local
clergy and notables vied for it for splendid new community or private residences or
hospitals, while merchants and manufacturers sought to realize commercial opportunities. Local entrepreneurs in royal fortification projects, be they construction or
demolitions, handled huge sums of money and became open to graft and corruption. Municipal officials and taxpayers gradually came to see the enceinte no longer
as a source of security but as a colossal waste of money. Urban discourse instead
now privileged enhanced circulation and communication provided by improved
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streets, bridges, and docks. Improving urban water supplies also became a priority
for public health, while the introduction of street lights transformed urban night
life (see figure 8.1).
The novelty of the urban forms that emerged after 1650 must not be overstated.
Terrain and historic infrastructure still constrained urban renewal possibilities.
The old adage “belles fortifications, bel urbanisme” continued to hold sway in
many minds and this created obstacles to achieving a harmonious neoclassical aesthetic. “New” towns often became loosely integrated appendages to “old” towns,
while suburbs continued to sprawl according to their own dynamics. The diminishing importance of the militarized edge only gave greater impetus to the centrifugal forces long at play in urban life. The new direction of urban development
in France after 1650 was by no means the product of state plans and oversight.77
Socioeconomic forces and enduring commercial networks established by habit as
much as geography continued to shape the new modern aspect of towns. Urban
demography still rested, as it did since the Middle Ages, on regular immigration
from the countryside. Social stratification continued as oligarchies narrowed even
further.78 With the loss of walls came a loss of corporate cohesion, too, as groups
and neighborhoods that once built, maintained, and defended them lost an opportunity to affirm sociability.79 Civic pride now resided in the open prospects of
squares and avenues and other signs of commercial prosperity. Antiquarian interest in towns rose as their autonomy declined, too. Efforts to maintain distinctive
urban identities retreated into the retrievable, and imagined, past.80
In France, the decision to preserve a town’s walls usually depended on its proximity to the frontiers.81 Police functions once associated with town walls now
shifted from local authorities to the crown. In times past, towns elected prominent
citizens in each neighborhood to oversee street cleaning and repairs as well as to
uphold law and order. After 1660, beginning in Paris, a powerful police administration controlled by the crown replaced this system. Provincial towns, such as
Rouen, expanded the number of inspectors and waste haulers to improve sanitation conditions.82 An edict of 1681 ordered the sale of debris from razed wall with
profits to king, though in fact often such money was used to plant public gardens
and construct tree-lined roads and alleys. The olfactory sensibilities of Frenchmen
and women became more acute as cultural attitudes changed, searching for agreeable smells and decrying offensive ones. Contemporary medical theory stressed the
importance of circulation in the body and the salutary effects of airing out dank
urban places. New forms of sociability, such as coffee salons, dining clubs, reading
circles, and freemasons’ lodges, encouraged mixing and mingling. Movement soon
began to surpass the impetus toward separation in urban life.
Colbert’s mercantilist policies similarly aimed to clear away internal obstacles to
trade and erect new ones along the kingdom’s edge. The urban landscape began
to change profoundly over the seventeenth century as towns became more open to
the outside world. The shift from closed to open cities was a Europe-wide phenomenon in the seventeenth century. Few French towns saw their urban cores radically
altered. Instead, most renewal projects consisted of grand gates, triumphal arches,
and the building of grand places royales. Even Vauban’s design programs for frontier towns remained wedded to the dictates of each place’s historic layout. Few
towns in the interior actually saw their walls completely razed. More often, the loss
of the urban edge’s military function was a piecemeal process of private appropriation or benign neglect.
Figure 8.1
Tours in the late seventeenth century. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale (B.N. M74008 B15).
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Royal urbanism after 1650 became more concerned about bon police than local
defense. Public order increasingly became conceived in terms of ameliorative programs that addressed aesthetic, moral, medical, and economic problems for which
gardens, promenades, and better drainage systems, not walls and cannons, often
provided the most effective answer. What differed from medieval practices of
urbanism was the more integrated, systematic approach taken by the central government and cadres of professional experts, rather than local notables and artisans,
to reshape the urban ensemble. The availability of printed treatises on classical
architecture, more uniformly trained architects and engineers, and greater bureaucratic oversight from the royal court encouraged the idiom of the ville néoclassique
to develop.83 Local municipal authorities readily embraced the new style and used
resources once dedicated to self-defense to realize it. Public squares also became
highlighted as they served as display spaces for the theater of royal civic culture.84
The influence of the royal court on French neoclassical urbanism was profound,
and it was no coincidence that many of the new city planners rising to the fore after
1650 were also scenic designers.
Paris provides a noteworthy though by no mean unique example.85 The capital’s
rapid growth prompted a reassessment of its defensive needs under Richelieu, who,
in 1631, ordered built the first significant expansion beyond the 1370s enceinte of
Charles V. The contract stipulated a tree-lined promenade just inside the perimeter,
much like south of the Porte St. Antoine in the gardens of the Arsenal. Nothing
came of Richelieu’s order until 1670 when Louis XIV had all fortifications on
the Right Bank razed, likely at the instigation of the architect François Blondel.
Louis XIV briefly considered a plan to build outlying detached fortresses connected by trenches, an approach taken up later in 1840. However, costs and fears of
their potential use against his own troops convinced Louis XIV to entrust the city’s
defense to Vauban’s ceinture de fer on the kingdom’s frontier.
The new open look of Paris was captured in the huge detailed plan by Pierre
Bullet and François Blondel in 1676. The remodeling of urban space to showcase “absolutist” power and advance commercial exchange centered on the grande
place, epitomized by the circular Place des Victoires.86 In lieu of walls, a new rampart planted with trees, known as the boulevard St. Antoine, rose up about twelve
feet along the northeast perimeter of the city from the Porte St Antoine to the
Porte St. Denis on eventually to the Tuileries. In this way, the word boulevard
shifted to signify a broad avenue, not bastion. The Portes St. Denis and St. Martin
received triumphal arches celebrating Louis XIV’s victories in the Dutch War. Trees
planted along all these ramparts in four rows formed a central drive wide enough to
accommodate carriage traffic easily, with two adjoining lanes for pedestrians. The
Luxembourg Gardens still partially retains this schema today. In 1679, commercial
traffic was forbidden on these new avenues and instead directed to the Rue Basse
du Rempart just outside the elevated ring road. Attempts to erect new ramparts
later during the War of Spanish Succession could not keep up with the exploding
growth of the capital city. In 1705, Louis XIV finally replaced remaining fortifications on the Right Bank in Paris with a large promenade.
It became increasingly difficult for authorities to determine just where Paris
began and ended.87 In the eighteenth century, cafés, cabarets, and other public
houses sprang up along the boulevards, along with places for entertainment.88 Paris’s
obsolete fortifications thus became converted to new leisure uses, with improved
police supervision, and as a tariff barrier.89 Tree-lined avenues crisscrossed Paris and
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radiated outward to the vast Bois de Vincennes and de Boulogne, once the king’s
preserves but now public parks. A new tree-lined avenue known as the Champs
Élysées connected the Tuileries to the circle at Étoile. Designed by André Le Nôtre
and eventually completed in 1724, it provided the Parisian bourgeoisie a promenade similar to the one created at Versailles to glorify the king. The full makeover
of Paris envisioned in the seventeenth century never occurred as Versailles instead
consumed most of the king’s attention and expenditures. The transformation of
Paris had to wait for Napoléon I and Napoléon III in the nineteenth century to
realize completion.90
Versailles became the first purposely designed open town in France.91 Several
earlier models inspired this great ville-residence: the new town of Richelieu of the
1630s, Nicolas Fouquet’s dazzling palace of Vaux-le-Vicomte of the 1650s, and
even Pope Sixtus V’s redesign of Rome in the 1580s. Designed by the team of
Le Nôtre and the architects Louis Le Vau and François d’Orbay, Versailles never
had a wall or ditch but instead assumed the shape of an orderly ensemble of palace, town, and garden that radiated forth into the world. Intended as a showcase
for the Sun King, Versailles required extensive demolitions and reshaping of the
landscape to achieve its final form. Strict regulation of residential and commercial
building facades, together with efforts to segregate occupational groups from the
more exalted class, proved impossible to enforce, however, because of the spectacular success of Versailles as a ville neuve.92
After 1700, towns increasingly asked permission to tear down their walls, citing new enlightened notions of the public good. Rouen, for example, had last
experienced military action of any importance during Henri IV’s siege in 1592. A
1773 military memorandum by a royal engineer presents a detailed picture of the
enceinte’s woeful deterioration since then. The Vieux Palais remained essentially
intact, while little remained of the Château de Bouvreuil beyond a couple of crumbling towers. An island fort built by the English in 1419 also remained intact. The
great ditches fronting the enceinte, while still in evidence, no longer held water
but instead decades of accumulated garbage. The five heavily fortified gates facing
landward remained in place. Elsewhere gapping holes pierced the walls, sections of
which had collapsed. Houses encroached in many places, as did kitchen gardens.93
The human pressures long pressing against the militarized edge finally began to
overwhelm it in towns no longer of military importance.
Connecting the Kingdom
The first comprehensive survey map of the kingdom’s landforms and waterways
began in 1679 at Colbert’s order by the astronomer Jean Picard.94 Picard developed
a novel method of triangulation based in the Observatory he had built in Paris.
The project languished until 1738 when the controlleur-général, Jean Orry, out of
concern to improve postal deliveries, took it over for the purpose of the new centralized administration through the École des Ponts-et-Chaussées.95 It eventually
continued to completion under Jean-Dominique Cassini and produced an accurate
map in eighteen sheets available upon subscription. The Cassini map proved useful to engineers and buttressed the monarchy’s territorial claims by “scientifically”
defining the frontiers. The detailed maps created by the royal engineer Claude
Masse charting the frontier abutting the Austrian Netherlands as well as interior
lands epitomized this attempt to capture and represent useful knowledge for the
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king.96 Maps composed for competitions in the 1770s and 1780s showed how
engineers renewed their commitment to aesthetics.97 The mapping competitions
at the École reflected this new vision of place and space subjected to human reason
to serve human needs. These experts played a central role in the modern economic
development of the country and introduced into the public arena a new emphasis
on uniformity, equality, and standardization, concepts antithetical to Old Regime
norms. This enlightened rhetoric of public utility expanded upon Errard’s original emphasis on “demonstrated” (démontrés) principles for fortification design to
encompass the entire kingdom. The inaccuracies and distortions of eighteenthcentury French maps came about because these engineers were surveyors, not cartographers. The Cassini map of France represented the accumulated measurements
of nearly thirty years worth of work, rendering it the cartographic equivalent of an
overexposed photograph.98 The cartographic imagination expressed in these maps
rendered them as much vehicles of ambition as instruments of accuracy.
While fortification construction remained vitally important along the country’s emerging frontier, public works projects inside this perimeter increasingly
emphasized openness and integration. Improved communications to integrate
the kingdom went back to 1629 when the crown created the position of postmaster general, first held by Hiérosme de Nouveau until his death in 1665 after
falling from horse.99 In the 1640s, Le Tellier established an office that dealt
exclusively with roads and marching orders for the king’s army.100 Louvois went
on to receive this post in 1668. Sorely understaffed, the royal postal service exercised inadequate control over couriers and local postal agents, and suffered serious competition from alternative mail services run by universities, towns, and
private firms. These concerns only became resolved at the end of the eighteenth
century.
Few beyond Louvois took an interest in improving roads and bridges.101 The
focus instead was on navigable waterways. Indeed, Colbert special order in 1664
proposed examining rivers, canals, and ports, but not roads; Vauban wrote frequently about waterways, but never roads. No mention of roads can be found in any
of the intendant memoirs for the young duke of Burgundy in the late 1690s even
though responsibility for their upkeep fell to the intendants. Canal projects figured
most prominently in the crown’s calculus to enhance the transportation network.
The Canal de Briare begun under Henri IV finally opened in 1642. In 1662,
Louis XIV and Colbert undertook the ambitious project, first suggested by PierrePaul Riquet, a salt tax administrator and army intendant, to connect the Garonne
River to the Mediterranean in the Canal des Deux-Mers, comprised of the Canal
du Midi (originally called the Canal Royal until 1790) from the Mediterranean
and the so-called Lateral Canal connected to the Garonne River, built later in the
nineteenth century.102 The Canal Royal opened in 1681, while the smaller but no
less important Canal d’Orléans did in 1691. Creating a systematic, interconnected
set of waterways required more accurate and comprehensive topographical surveys,
which only began to be undertaken in the last part of Louis XIV’s reign. They
also required the great technical finesse and innovation of a corps of professional
engineers as well as labor gangs truly pharaonic in scale. Much of all this had to
wait until the eighteenth century. Mercantile and military interests argued in favor
of developing a canal system that connected towns along France’s northern frontier whose rivers otherwise continued their course in lands held by the Dutch or
Hapsburgs. In 1693, for example, the Canal de La Haute-Deûle linked the Deûle
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and Scarpe rivers, which, in turn, connected Lille to Valenciennes and Douai, thus
bypassing Ghent in the Spanish Netherlands. Vauban envisioned a canal system
that would tie together the major fortified sites from Lille all the way to Dunkirk
on the coast. He also designed the sluices and channels in these hydraulic systems
to enable frontier towns along this axis to use controlled flooding, a longtime
Dutch tactic, in their defenses.
Regional transportation studies began in 1715, first in the généralité of
Montauban then later in Franche-Comté (1737), Berry (1739), Burgundy (1740),
and Champagne (1742). A desire to promote commerce led the monarchy to
expand the road system in 1720s. It began when the Ministry of War sent a questionnaire to intendants asking them to assess the condition of waterways and major
roads in their généralités. Information about the existing road system largely came
from maps created by the royal postal service. In 1738, the Contrôleur Général
Orry issued the Mémoire instructif sur la réparation des chemins that established the
corvée des routes that peasants deeply resented and that critics decried as a return to
hated feudalism. Orry’s memoir also set up a new nomenclature (and with it a hierarchy) by which to designate different kinds of roads: grandes routes, routes, grands
chemins, chemins royaux, chemins de traverse, each with its own specifications.103
This trend toward standardization increased over time. In the 1760s, a new inspector general of the corps Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet replaced the maligned corvée system with a special road tax levied on communities said to benefit from a
particular project. Enlightened public works still required expropriations, which as
always generated resentment and law suits.
Roads still remained subordinate to waterways until after 1750. Daniel-Charles
Trudaine created between 1745 and 1780 a staggering sixty-two volume atlas of
France with more than three thousand plates. In it, he delineated the highways and
byways that connected the country and identified the repairs necessary to improve
transportation and thus commerce. As road work proceeded ahead, travel times
shrank. By 1789, Paris was linked by roads to all the main towns in the kingdom;
they, in turn, began to be interlinked by new routes. Paris also embarked on building its own intra-urban transport system, first conceived by Blaise Pascal a century
before.104 Secondary roads at the provincial level largely remained on the drawing
board for another century. Use of statistical tables to resolve engineering problems
grew out of debates over calculating the corvée and modes of financing road and
bridge construction.105 Developing statistical formulae to ensure the accurate estimates thus became a necessity. It also provided the impetus behind the decision in
1786 to conduct a statistical survey of the condition of all roads and bridges, which
continued into the revolutionary era.
Enlightened Engineering and Urbanism
After 1700, engineering training continued to become more professional and scientific, while engineers—military and civil—became more firmly entrenched in the
royal bureaucracy. Claude-François Bidal, marquis of Asfeld, was appointed by the
Regency in 1718 to serve as general director of fortifications. During his tenure,
references to “la génie” appeared for the first time as royal engineers worked to
complete Vauban’s plan to encircle the kingdom with a network of interconnected
fortified places. The abolition of this office in 1743 arose partly because of administrative jealousies, particularly among the secretaries of state, as well as the rapidly
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changing scope and complexities of the royal engineering service. A brief experiment
of entrusting inspection responsibilities to maréchaux de camp proved a fiasco during the War of Austrian Succession, so much so that in 1746 Marie-Pierre de Voyer
de Palmy, count of Argenson pressed the king to reinstate the former system headed
by royal engineers. Eleven years later the office of director of the artillery service was
created, and even that only lasted a short time. Henceforth, the royal engineering
service became an essential part of the king’s government. In 1761, a central war
archives (dépôt de la Guerre) was formed to serve as a repository for all the different
engineering plans and maps drawn up over the years. In 1774, Emmanuel-Armand
de Richelieu, duke of Aiguillon ordered all regional directors of fortifications to prepare an atlas composed of plans for every place in the kingdom, depositing a copy
at the bureau des fortifications in Paris and keeping another in local archives. The
organization of information became a vital tool for reengineering the kingdom.
On February 1, 1716, the Regency headed by Philippe d’Orléans organized a
group of royal engineers devoted to civil engineering projects known as the corps des
Ponts-et-Chaussées. They soon vied with the engineers in the fortification corps after
which it was modeled. Over the next twenty year, this new branch of government
extended into every généralite. In these early years, the new corps operated in a flexible, decentralized manner, undertaking projects in a generally haphazard, uncoordinated manner. Criticism soon arose over the lack of professional competency
standards when recruiting engineers. Finally, in 1744, Daniel-Charles Trudaine,
the intendant of finances in charge of the corps, decided to remedy this problem
by creating a design review board in Paris to vet all road and bridgework proposals
submitted by engineers working for the corps. Three years later, Trudaine appointed
the engineer assigned to the généralité of Alençon, Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, to head
up the review board and added to its tasks the training of new engineers.106 This
new pedagogical mission marked the beginning of the École des Ponts-et-Chaussées
founded in 1747.107 At first, it enjoyed considerable autonomy but eventually came
under the intendant des finances, first François, marquis of Ormesson and then
Trudaine. The École des Ponts-et-Chaussées established a guiding professional
ethos devoted to the enlightened ideals of public utility that harked back to the
original Renaissance design notion of utilitas. As a result, the word “engineer”
came to designate a technician who worked on all types of machines applicable to
civil architecture, transportation, and manufacturing.108 The civil engineers quickly
became vocal critics of the king’s military engineers, who formed their own school,
the celebrated École Royale de Génie de Mézières in 1748.109
Thus was institutionalized the long-standing tension between ameliorating and
defending towns. This infighting also reflected the crown’s conflicting priorities
between building infrastructure for commerce or war, though after 1750 these two
spheres became seen as interconnected. The curriculum called for classroom study
during the winter and summers in the field assisting with public works projects. In
1775, the minister Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot ordered the creation of standardized tests that all engineering students had to pass in order to be licensed. In the
1770s, the school started annual competitions that asked graduating students to
prepare essays and design projects on improving commerce and agriculture. The
trend toward specialization and standardization in engineering training eventually
culminated in the 1790s in the founding of the École Polytechnique.110
Architectural design theory mirrored these changes in French technical education. After 1700, French architects and engineers perceived Vauban as a rigid
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theorist rather than as a flexible pragmatist.111 This new perception likely sprang
from the fact that most of Vauban’s writing on the subjects of sieges and fortifications did not appear until well after his death.112 Louis de Cormontaigne’s
Architecture Militaire early on transformed Vauban’s methods of defense and attack
into a scientific system.113 Joseph de Fallois’s L’École de la Fortification, published
in 1748, offered a “natural history” of fortifications that derived from primitive
man’s need to protect himself from wild animals and his fellow man.114
One of Vauban’s earliest promoters was Bernard Forest de Bélidor, professor of
mathematics in the royal artillery school and the writer of several important treatises
on engineering. His La science des ingénieurs of 1729 eschewed universal formula
and instead approached building from the perspective of structural dynamics of walls
not in terms of angles of fire but in relation to the thrust of the earth and the spacing between their buttresses. Like Vauban, Bélidor stressed the need to follow every
stage of the project, from tracing the design, to procuring materials, to managing
the construction site. Bélidor’s Nouveau Cour de Mathématique, which appeared in
1725, dealt with the general mathematical and physical characteristics of fortified
cities and military buildings. For him, the fundamental value was “convenience,”
which consisted of the engineer’s ability to translate every detail of the project into
the rational organization of the master plan (devis). Bélidor’s books became widely
used textbooks for training engineers throughout the eighteenth century. Another
prolific writer on engineering subjects was Louis-Charles Dupain de Montesson,
an army officer and royal ingénieur-géographe. His Construction de la fortification,
published in Paris in 1741, presented an almost axiomatic approach to fortification
design that did not live up to its promises when put into practice. His reduction of
engineering to pure mathematics became further apparent in his various works on
design and surveying, such as the Science des ombres (1746), Le dessinateur au cabinet et à l’armée (1753), L’Art de lever les plans (1763), and La Science de l’arpenteur
(1766). These manuals, together with textbooks on mathematics he published at the
end of his career, reflected his temperament as a pedagogue and the transformation
of engineering into technical sciences based on trigonometry and calculus.
While royal military engineers continued to adhere to Vauban’s vision of the pré
carré, new strategic thinking after the Seven Years’ War began to place a greater
emphasis on the speed and mobility of attack rather than on the virtues of stationary defense. The ideas of Marc-René de Montalembert were most central in this
change. Montalembert shifted the defense of a place to outlying detached fortresses,
thus allowing towns even on the frontier to begin to break out of their constricting
enceintes. Montalembert also emphasized, like Errard, fire power over the thickness
of its walls. He advocated what he called perpendicular fortifications consisting of
heavily protected blockhouses set at right angles to each other and bristling with
cannons.115 Étienne-François, duke of Choiseul, reorganized the French army after
1763 with these new principles in mind, as did Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval
who revamped the royal artillery corps. J.-A.-H. de Guibert’s Essai général de la
tactique in 1772 pushed this new military thinking even further, championing the
superiority of citizen soldiers over professionals and war based on movement rather
than stationary defenses—an approach Napoleon eventually embraced.116
Communitarian notions of the bonne ville gradually collapsed, like the walls,
after 1650. After 1700, travel literature and printed descriptions of towns associated medieval urban features, such as timber and wattle construction, sinuous, winding alleys, and boisterous marketplaces, with filth, overcrowding, and
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disorder.117 Towns became perceived as a hostile wilderness that could only be
redeemed through rational renewal.118 The new discourse denouncing Gothic
urbanism called for wholesale clearances to promote more healthful conditions by
improving the circulation of air, water, and human and animal traffic. It touted
rational rather than religious solutions to public health problems and social ills such
as poverty, prostitution, and child abandonment. Once viewed as repositories of civilized virtue, towns now became perceived as places rife with filth and corruption.119
Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne described streets in the popular neighborhoods of
Paris with deep revulsion, as did Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray in his book Les
amours du chevalier Faublas published in 1787. Jacques-Vincent Delacroix’s Lettres
d’un philosophe sensible of 1769 and Constant d’Orville’s Sophie of 1779 described
large cities as cancers on the body politic. Pierre de Marivaux and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau also heaped disdain on urban dwellers and life in much of their writings.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s futuristic Le tableau de Paris painted a devastating picture
of a contemporary city life that all disappeared in his imaginary Paris of the twentyfifth century. Writers even lauded the benefits of suburbs beyond the old enceinte.
The merging of ville with faubourg then plat pays fostered a reversal of perspectives.
The countryside, long reviled as a dim, barbarous place, became over the eighteenth
century the new touchstone of French identity as au fonds agrarian.
The landscape, both built and natural, became a metaphorical garden, to be
cultivated and nurtured by enlightened engineers. New formal gardening styles
after 1650 initially reflected the impulse toward rational order; however, the move
toward greater openness in urban design nourished interest in the naturalness of
English gardens as a way to contrast the urban and pastoral worlds. Works by Pierre
Patte and Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d’Argenville argued in favor of opening up
both gardens and cities, clearing away clutter to create vast open spaces. Mapping
exercises and competitions sponsored by the École des Ponts-et-Chaussées preserved
these geometric elements in fanciful, quasi-utopian designs alongside more irregular, “natural” designs drawing on the English garden tradition inspired by topographical renderings. Georges-Louis Le Rouge’s Les jardins anglo-chinois, published
in 1776, presented imaginative designs that incorporated geometric and irregular
elements to form dreamscapes (reveries) mixing urban and bucolic features. The
Physiocratic view of the countryside as the engine of economic progress merged
with these pastoral sensibilities of early Romanticism to recast views of city.
Neuf-Brisach was the last new town built by the French in continental Europe
during the eighteenth century; however, plans for new towns, some of them executed, can be found in France’s colonial holdings, such as Haiti, Louisiana, and
Canada.120 French towns became remodeled to varying degrees according to the
new principles of “enlightened” architecture. Among the grandes villes were Lyon,
Marseille, Nantes, Caen, and Bordeaux. Particularly evocative was the construction
of percées or “breakthrough streets” that literally cut through the old enceinte to
the suburbs and beyond.121 One obvious measure of this change came when towns
replaced buildings of wood with stone ones. Besides aesthetic considerations, fear
of fire and the rising price of timber made durable stone a more attractive choice for
the long run. Fires also cleared the way for wide renewal. A fire in Châteaudun in
1723 provided a rebuilding commission to Jules Hardouin Mansart, who designed
a layout still very evident today. After its disastrous fire of 1720, Rennes was rebuilt
by the architect Jacques Gabriel who took steps to make it a more open town by
aligning streets and straightening the course of the Vilaine River.122 Sometimes the
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local fortification service led the way, as when Nîmes in the 1740s nearly doubled in
size to accommodate growth fueled by the new silk industry. Caen also experienced
considerable growth as it opened up and became modern, seeing its population
nearly double during the eighteenth century.123 These trends also shaped frontier
towns. With most of its formidable enceinte gone, Nancy underwent transformation from a ducal capital into a royal town in the French style.124 In the 1780s,
Mézières petitioned to open up its walls to expand manufacturing activities to
better compete with its local rival, Charleville, which did not carry the same defensive obligations.125 Outward urban expansion sometimes outstripped a municipality’s established means of collecting revenues. Bordeaux, for example, continued
to collect tolls, as it always had, at its original medieval gates even though the
city sprawled far beyond them after 1750. In Paris, the fortified gates located at
the Porte Saint-Honoré, Porte de la Conférence, Porte Saint-Antoine, and Porte
Saint-Bernard came down between 1730 and 1787. In 1785, a “mur des fermiers
généraux” was constructed as a wooden palisade by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, who
installed sixty-two elaborate and quite expensive toll booths (“barrières”) to collect
taxes on goods coming into the city. This situation did not sit well with Parisians
as reflected in the quip, “le mur murant Paris rend les Parisiens murmurant.”126 In
1787, Ledoux was fired for excessive cost overruns; during the Revolution, many of
the toll booths became among the first targets of crowd violence in Paris.127
Neoclassical idea of symmetry and harmony reshaped many French towns during the eighteenth century. The alignment of streets often brought improved
paving, drainage, and even occasionally sidewalks, the first of which appeared in
Paris in 1781 on the Pont-Neuf. An edict in 1786 ordered the demolition of all
houses and shops on bridges in Paris that impeded traffic. Despite the demise in
1677 of Pascal’s scheme for a public transport system in Paris, other forms of travel
for hire became available in the form of open-air carriages called calèches or closed
ones known as fiacres. Neoclassical townhouses for royal officers and merchants
went up in posh districts, none more so than the Place Vendôme.128 The conversion of urban peripheries to leisure zones, which began in select towns in the seventeenth century, became more generalized in the 1700s. Bordeaux, for example,
in 1745 built a tree-lined promenade, the Allées de Tourny, on the glacis of the
citadel. During 1772–1780, a theater was also built there; after 1780, when the
citadel was demolished, a new quarter was laid out.129 Funds once earmarked for
defenses now underwrote the new course of urban circulation. The periphery no
longer barred entry but now facilitated it by directing traffic to specific quarters or,
conversely, allowed it to bypass the city rather than traverse it. New public squares
arose where mighty bastions once stood, providing for the transfer of particularly
noisome markets, such as livestock, to the old edge along with new retail establishments. Manufacturing establishments also easily relocated to the new outer suburbs, which became common in the upcoming industrial era. River traffic also
benefited from improved urban transport, as goods sent or delivered from the
docks could more easily be channeled out along the ring road.130 New wider gates
that allowed two carts to pass through at once replaced the imposing piles that had
long guarded urban entries. Elegant building facades eventually adorned buildings
facing the riverfronts, harbors, and some main avenues. The ebb and flow of people
and goods rendered urban communities into dynamic, inherently unstable entities,
nowhere more so than in the burgeoning metropolis of Paris.131
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The advent of public street lights in the late seventeenth century enabled the
development of new forms of nocturnal sociability that reshaped age-old patterns
of work and leisure. Paris led the way in 1667 at Colbert’s initiative.132 New lighting technologies for the stage and street brought about the creation of modern
night culture. More activities associated with business and pleasure moved into
the evening, so the time for activities such as closing of the city gates became more
and more late. A royal edict in 1697 mandated publicly funded street lights in
some thirty provincial cities, though not without some resistance concerning cost.
Rouen apparently took up the order for public illumination with zeal, installing in
three short years over 800 lanterns.133 In Caen, the number of street lanterns rose
from 257 in 1745 to 500 in 1785. As French towns installed large candle lanterns,
they opened up new ways to think about and act in urban space.134 Public lighting
served political purposes when shone upon symbols of royal and municipal authority. Street lights created clear, uniform spaces intended to promote law and order
as well as beautify the city, which encouraged new ideas and practices of policing
to develop.135 Groups that had long sought the cover of dark for their illicit or
immodest activities, such as young men, servants, apprentices, prostitutes, and the
like, resented the intrusion of lights into their world.136 Lantern smashing quickly
became common, with a royal decree issued as early as 1699 promising stiff punishment. Accompanying illumination was the adoption of street numbering systems
to identify addresses more accurately and thus further rationalize urban space. The
regulation of public space in turn allowed for the delineation of a private domestic
sphere to more fully develop.137
If one word epitomized enlightened urbanism, it was the notion of embellissement (beautification). In this respect, the urban ideals of voluptas and commoditas
derived from Vitruvius and touted since the Renaissance still held sway.138 Beauty
bespoke well-being, which in turn, as reformers from the abbot of Saint-Pierre to
the Physiocrats all argued, depended on an increasing volume and velocity of circulation of men and goods.139 These also provided the foundations of the monarchy’s
military power, which became conceived in terms of agrarian production, population, commercial exchange, and manufacturing capacity. Improved communication and transportation networks played crucial roles furthering these goals. Royal
civil engineers thus made it their mission to create markets for the freer circulation
of goods and ideas that advanced the public interest and the king’s authority. Yet
royal provincial administrators, particularly the intendants, constantly encountered
obstruction to these plans from local interests and habits.140
The economic benefits of opening up towns also became a common theme
in descriptions of French towns after 1750 where discussions of local manufactures and industries replaced earlier paeans about a place’s potent towers and
walls. Commercial exchange gradually replaced the mercantilist bias in favor of
manufacturing as the chief measure of a town’s vitality.141 Étienne Condillac’s Le
commerce et le gouvernement considérées relativement l’un à l’autre, written in 1776,
emphasized the importance of geographic location and good roads as key factors in
promoting exchange that expanded markets and led to increased division of labor
and production. Towns thus had good reason to vie for royal funds and support of
transportation projects that benefited them. Engineers conceived of towns as villesmachines in which the natural and human components worked like a clock. The
neoclassical emphasis on immutability and static order gave way to ideals stressing
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dynamism and fecundity. This process culminated in the laws promulgated during
the Revolution.
In the eighteenth century, spatial extension, not containment, characterized the
city. It also opened up urban politics. The prominent place of the walled enceinte
faded behind the burgeoning sprawl of the suburbs, as in the 1768 engravings of
Rouen by Jacques Bacheley.142 Cityscapes and plans highlighted the outward radiating thrust of avenues from the old urban core through the enceinte into the wider
world as the urban periphery became a zone of engagement, not separation.143
Investors sought commercial opportunities in urban and suburban property that
accelerated the pace of redevelopment and a host of ensuing social dislocations and
stresses.144 One prime site where these changes became evident was the workplace.
As architecture and engineering assumed a more enlightened character, so their
advocates began to question the expertise of guild masters in building trades.145
The Encyclopédie included construction under the mechanical arts, while treatises
regularly aimed to formulate a scientific basis for improved building practices.146
The theorists, known in Paris as the architectes-experts-bourgeois, suffered a setback
in 1775 when Turgot returned the authority to conduct building inspections to the
master builders. The tension between statist oversight and a more market-oriented
approach swung back with Turgot’s fall in 1776 as the government consolidated
the building guilds and placed them under the lieutenant général de police.147 These
disputes also raged in the provinces.148 Attempts to strike a balance between liberal
and statist tendencies proved unstable as friction mounted, eventually resulting in
widespread work stoppages in 1785 by journeymen and workers in the building
trades.
Along with new politics came new social practices nurtured by the new kinds
of mobility and sociability of the Enlightenment. The new secular sciences promoted changes to the city’s cultural geography with the building of laboratories,
observatories, botanical gardens, menageries, and such new sites for the production
and display of knowledge.149 They also remained the crucibles of royal power for
the manufacture of arms and munitions.150 While neoclassicism certainly left its
imprint on French towns during the eighteenth century, it did not obliterate the traditional pell-mell, medieval character still so alive in the urban fabric. The dictates of
enlightened urbanism framed the shaping of urban space to convey the Revolution’s
ideologies of change after 1789.151 And it continued into the nineteenth century in
state-inspired renewal projects and the process of industrialization, which in time
obliterated so much of the established urban landscape that in centuries before had
so powerfully shaped the contours of France.152
C onc lusion
Pa li mp sests and M odern
Tra jectories
In 1851, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, himself originally trained as a sapper, actually
convinced the Ministry of War to finance his restoration of the “medieval” walls
of Carcassonne, a town located sixty miles from the Spanish frontier (hardly a
hostile power at the time), with the clever argument that he was adapting them
for modern weaponry. It was his successor, Raymond-Adolphe Séré de Rivières,
the future “Vauban of the Revanche,” who added detached artillery bunkers outside Viollet-le-Duc’s Romantic fantasy and today’s popular tourist destination.
It is anyone’s guess against whom he intended to direct them. On the opposite
end of France, Lille retained great military significance into the early twentieth
century, though that role since the mid-eighteenth century had constantly run
up against pressures to expand the city’s industrial enterprises and transportation
network, especially railroads.1 At the outset of World War I, the French government declared Lille a ville-ouverte in the hope of sparing its destruction. It worked,
thus nullifying the massive efforts over the past two centuries to make it France’s
bulwark of the north. Ports such as Rochefort began to tear down their early modern fortifications in the 1920s and only completed the work in the 1970s. 2 Despite
these precedents, as is well known, France remained adamantly committed to an
enceinte for the nation with the ultimately pointless construction of the Maginot
Line in the 1930s. Today it offers chic housing opportunities and another spot for
tourists to spend their time and money, some of which no doubt helps to underwrite its maintenance.3
These cautionary tales about modern walls, large and small, must not blind
us to their earlier historical significance in the making of France. This study has
highlighted the distinctly urban origins of much of what makes France so distinct.
In doing so, it certainly does not intend to diminish the contributions of other
groups, such as the nobility, clergy, or peasantry. Yet it does contend that medieval walled towns constituted much of the essential scaffolding for the construction of this modern national community. The networks of relationships within
these urban communities and the ties of commercial trade and social exchange
that bound them together along rivers and across the land represent perhaps the
most perdurable feature of France over the last millennium. While geography may
not entirely be destiny, it does powerfully shape the contours of human communities. The walls that went up around these communities—from the simple wooden
palisades of the early Middle Ages to the sophisticated bastioned enceintes of
Vauban—powerfully expressed the sense of common purpose and emerging local
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identities that eventually coalesced into la France, in all its geographical, cultural,
and once linguistic diversity.
Historians have long recognized that medieval feudatories, such as the counts of
Flanders, dukes of Normandy, and Capetian kings, played pivotal roles in binding
these diverse areas together under their authority. The exercise of this authority
mixed collaborative and coercive methods depending on circumstances and local
traditions; yet out of this complex process both the “state” and this broader sense
of “France” in time arose. Many of the essential tools of public governance in the
areas of justice, finance, and war developed in medieval walled towns. These bonnes
villes provided territorial rulers, none more so than Philip II, sites for controlling
territory in exchange for recognition of local liberties. The ensuing contests with the
English in Aquitaine and greater Occitania turned in large part on the competition
to create new towns known as bastides. Medieval towns also served as a setting for
the emergence of a civic culture predicated on new cultural values and intellectual
skills. These values and skills increasingly made it possible for towns to undertake
grand public projects, such as cathedrals and curtained enceintes. Soaring spires and
machicolated towers reflected a powerful new sense of public duty that only grew
during the tumult of the Hundred Years’ War as towns embraced the necessary burdens of self-taxation and self-defense even further. With the French triumph in the
fifteenth century, towns provided even more the essential infrastructure to support
the crown’s new standing army and industries of the gunpowder age. The conquest
of Burgundy and long wars against the Hapsburgs in Italy ensued as the monarchy
now embarked on an ambitious program of territorial aggrandizement.
While the changing nature of war benefited the monarchy, it also prompted
towns to adapt and in time reinvent the ways they designed their defenses to meet
the new challenges of siege warfare. The rise of the new bastioned trace, which
began in Italy, required greater levels of technical expertise and more substantial
investments of resources to achieve. Until the mid-sixteenth century, the Valois
supported their bonnes villes in these efforts as a nascent royal fortification service
took shape. They did so particularly along the hotly contested borderlands between
France and Hapsburg holdings in the Low Countries, Lorraine, Savoy, and the
Pyrenees. In fact, by 1550, the familiar hexagon of modern France was already
clearly recognizable in early maps of the kingdom. And fortified places in these
borderlands became the principal markers of possession. Military engineering from
Italy and even homegrown expertise continued to push urban enceintes ever outward as defense-in-depth became the order of the day. As a result, towns began to
be encased within their own fortifications, separated even further from the hostile
world without.
As new forms of urban self-defense developed, so traditions of urban autonomy
began to become circumscribed by the crown. The monarchy’s creeping dominance over towns also arose because increasing numbers of the urban notability
construed familial advancement in terms of holding royal offices. Urban divisions
became exacerbated with the advent of the Reformation after 1550 as Calvinist
and Catholic walled towns defied the last Valois kings, often in the name of the
monarchy, during the Wars of Religion. These struggles frequently turned on the
contest over fortified towns, while attempts at peace—culminating eventually in
the 1598 Edict of Nantes—measured security in terms of who controlled specific
“safe places” across the kingdom. After 1600, the Bourbon kings and their ministers took halting but eventually decisive steps in establishing the crown’s sovereign
C onc l us ion
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claims over France. This change, in part, developed because of the increased
bureaucratic means, including a permanent royal fortification service, at its disposal. The potential for a relapse to the disorders of the past persisted into the
1620s when Louis XIII and Richelieu finally subdued the last major obstacle to
royal supremacy, the Huguenot walled towns. With the fall of La Rochelle in 1628,
France stood positioned to pursue its territorial ambitions once again. Its success
over the next sixty years in large part relied upon the willing collaboration of elites,
first Catholic and then Calvinist. Leading the way, as seen during the Fronde, were
the merchants, professionals, and officials in the towns.
One indicator of this more unitary, yet still deeply shared sense of public purpose under royal leadership came in the clearer definition of the “interior” and
“frontier” areas of the realm. A physical marker of this distinction increasingly
became the condition or even presence of walls around towns. Over the seventeenth century, the crown redirected more and more revenues once earmarked for
urban fortifications in the newly designated interior towns to the fortified towns
and places that created the kingdom’s celebrated ceinture de fer. This massive effort
to render France into one gigantic walled town also required the training and
mobilization of engineering experts to defend the kingdom and subdue the walled
towns of its adversaries. Vauban led this initiative, with the support of Louis XIV
and his war minister Louvois. Vauban also epitomized the new premium the monarchy placed on technical sciences and technology. This trend broadened in the
eighteenth century to include not just military matters but also civil projects, such
as roads, bridges, and urban renewal that strove to integrate France’s disparate
regions even more. As a result, pressures for town walls to come down grew as
urban vitality—and that of the kingdom—became defined in terms of circulation,
openness, and exchange. These enlightened values received further reinforcement
and amplification in the revolutions after 1789, both political and industrial.
In the nineteenth century, the periphery of major cities remained distinct from
the urban core as industries and working-class and eventually immigrant neighborhoods in sprawling bidonvilles became viewed as sites of danger and filth by the bourgeoisie and governing authorities, as remains the case to this day in the wake of the
recent riots along the outskirts of Paris and several other major towns. Traditional
aspects of life also persisted on the urban edge into the twentieth century. It still
served as a semi-agricultural zone, with small gardens, orchards, and small livestock
freely roaming in the old outworks, which formed a sort of green-belt of upward of
one hundred years around the city. Public executions even continued to take place,
as they had since the Middle Ages, at the barrière Saint-Jacques in Paris until 1870.
Looking at any modern map of France’s road and railroads systems one can see a
radial schema for France centered on Paris remarkably similar to some of the Ideal
City plans found in Renaissance treatises. As if to defy Charles Baudelaire’s bold
claim, later reinforced by Walter Benjamin, that Paris was the quintessential modern city, the French national government during the July Monarchy undertook the
massive reconstruction of the capital’s fortifications.4 Even when these fortifications eventually came down, the network of interlocking boulevards that replaced
them—the Maréchaux, named after Napoléon’s marshals—thus became inscribed
with memories of France’s military past. Ironically, the only real time these fortifications actually became used was during the Communard revolt of 1870–1871—a
revolt the French government only managed to subdue with the help of the hated
Prussians.5 The last remnants of the July Monarchy’s fortifications around Paris
174
came down after World War I, thus opening up a twenty-five-mile-long swath of
undeveloped land over four hundred yards deep. Initially a green belt was contemplated, but it fell before the crushing need to build affordable housing for the city’s
burgeoning population. Later in the 1970s, the present péréphérique highway was
built, which serves to this day to “contain” the capital city.6
Sometimes time and the forces of nature dictated the fate of a town’s fortifications. Montreuil-sur-Mer’s ancient enceinte became overtaken by vegetation after
1800 and today forms a charming park, while the royal citadel built at Amiens in
1597 is now an arboretum. Most French towns preserve palimpsests of their old
enceintes in the familiar ring road and large squares that drivers must negotiate
as they seek to enter the quaint “vieilles villes” today. Since the nineteenth century, it has been local antiquarians and now businesses dependent on tourism who
have become the greatest defenders of these walls as vital parts of France’s patrimoine. Gates and towers have been among the easiest sites to preserve because they
could be transformed into monuments glorifying the city’s past as the remaining
walls and other vestiges became subsumed by the modern city. With guidebooks
galore, visitors can at least still travel back in time to a past when town walls really
mattered.7
N otes
Chapter 1
1. Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler and Katherine M. Richardson, Hill-Forts of
Northern France: Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of
London No. XIX (The Society of Antiquaries, London, 1957); and Ian Ralston,
“The Use of Timber in Hill-Fort Defenses in France,” in Graeme Guilbert, ed.,
Hill-Fort Studies: Essays for A. H. A. Hogg (Leicester University Press: Leicester,
1981), pp. 78–103.
2. Jon Maloney and Biran Hobley, eds, Roman Urban Defenses in the West: A Review
of Current Research on Urban Defenses in the Roman Empire, with Special Reference
to the Western Provinces (Council of British Archaeology: London, 1983); and
Ronald M. Butler, “Late Roman Town Walls in Gaul,” Archaeological Journal, 66
(1959): 25–50.
3. Ferdinand Lot, Recherches sur la population et la superficie des cités remontant à la
période gallo-romaine (Libraire ancienne Honoré Champion: Paris, 1946–1953),
3 volumes.
4. Pierre Varène, Pierre and Jacques Bigot, L’enceinte gallo-romaine de Nîmes. Les
murs et les tours (Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique: Paris,
1992).
5. E. Will, “Les remparts romains de Boulogne-sur-Mer,” Revue du Nord, 42 (1960):
363–380; and Claude Seillier, “Les enceintes romaines de Boulogne-sur-Mer,”
Revue du Nord 260/66 (1984): 169–180.
6. J. Mertens, “La destinée des centres urbains gallo-romaines à la lumière de
l’archéologie et des texts,” in La genèse et les premiers siècles des villes médiévales
dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (Crédit Communal: Brussels, 1990), pp. 54–72; and
Charles Pietri and Noël Duval, La topographie chrétienne des cités de la Gaule: des
origines à la fin du VIIe siècle (Centre de recherches sur l’antiquité tardive et le haut
moyen âge: Paris, 1975–), 4 volumes.
7. Bernard S. Bachrach, “Military Organization in Aquitaine under the Early
Carolingians,” Speculum, 49/1 (1974): 1–33; and Charles L. H. Coulson,
“Fortresses and Social Responsibility in late Carolingian France,” Zeitschrift für
Archäologie des Mittelalters, 4 (1976): 29–36.
8. Collectif. “Les fortifications de terre en Europe occidentale du Xe au XIIe siècle
(Colloque de Caen, 1980),” Archéologie médiévale, 11 (1981): 5–123.
9. Adriaan Verhulst, The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1999); and Pierre Demolen, Henri Galinié, and Frans
Verhaeghe, eds, Archéologie des villes dans le nord de l’Europe (VIIe–XIIIe siècle)
(Société archéologique de Douai: Douai, 1994), pp. 83–91.
10. There is a vast literature on châteaux-forts. See André Chatelain, Châteaux forts,
images de pierre des guerres médiévales (Rempart: Paris, 1983); André Debord,
Andrés Bazzana, and J. M. Poisson, Aristocratie et pouvoir. Le rôle du château dans
176
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
No t e s
la France médiévale (Picard: Paris, 2000); and Jean-Pierre Panouillé, Les châteaux
forts dans la France du Moyen Age (Ouest-France: Rennes, 2003).
R. J. Bartlett, “Technique militaire et pouvoir politique, 900–1300,” Annales,
économies, sociétés civilisations, 41 (1986): 1135 –1159.
John H. Beeler, “Castles and Strategy in Norman and Early Angevin England,”
Speculum, 31/4 (1956): 581–601; and Pierre Héliot, “La genèse des châteaux de
plan quadrangulaire en France et en Angleterre,” Bulletin de la société nationale des
Antiquaires de France (1965): 238–257.
Marcel Grandjean, “Villes neuves et bourgs médiévaux. Fondement de l’urbanisme
régional,” L’Homme dans la ville (Cours général de l’UNIL: Lausanne, 1984),
pp. 61–100; and Philippe Contamine, Nicolas Faucherre, Gilles Blieck, and Jean
Mesqui, eds, Le château et la ville. Conjonctions, oppositions, juxtapositions (XIeXVIIIe siècles) (Éditions du CTHS: Paris, 2002).
For a general overview of this relationship, see David Abulafia, et al., eds,
Church and City, 1000–1500: Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 1992). More specific regional studies include Sheila
Bonde, Fortress-Churches of Languedoc: Architecture, Religion and Conflict in the
High Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994); and Stephen
Gardner, “The Influence of Castle Building on Ecclesiastical Architecture in the
Paris Region, 1130–1150,” in Kathryn L. Reyerson and Faye Powe, The Medieval
Castle: Romance and Reality (Center for Medieval Studies: Minneapolis, Minn.,
1984), pp. 97–123.
V. Hunger, ed., La Maison forte au Moyen Age (Éditions du CNRS: Paris, 1986).
Pierre Charbonnier, “Le château seigneurial: protection ou oppression?” in Philippe
Contamine and Olivier Guyotjeannin, eds, La Guerre, la violence et les gens du
Moyen Age (Éditions du CTHS: Paris, 1996), 2 volumes, v. I, pp. 223–234.
Jacques Heers, ed., Fortifications, portres de villes, places publiques dans le monde
méditerranéen (Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, 1985), p. 325.
David Abulafia, and Nora Berend, eds, Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices
(Ashgate: Aldershot, Hampshire, 2002).
See M. C. Laleman, “Gand et ses enceintes urbaines médiévales,” Annales de la
Fédération historique et archéologique de Belgique, XLVIIe congrès, Nivelles, 1984
(Nivelles, 1984), 2 volumes, v. II, 201–211.
Pierre Demolon, Douai, cité médiévale: bilan d’archéologie et d’histoire (Société
archéologique de Douai: Douai, 1990).
M. Roche, “Topographie historique de Cambrai durant le Haut Moyen Age (V–XIe
siècles),” Revue historique Nord de la France, Belgique, Pays-Bas, 57 (1976): 339–
365; and L. Vanderstraeten, “Recherches sur les fortifications de Lille au Moyen
Age,” Revue du Nord, 70 (1988): 107–122.
G. Despy, “Naissance des villes et des bourgades,” in Hervé Hasquin, ed., La
Wallonie. Le pays et les hommes (La Renaissance du Livre: Brussels, 1975), 3 volumes, v. I, pp. 93–192.
G. Despy, “Les phénomènes urbains dans le Brabant wallon jusqu’aux environs de
1300,” in Wavre 1222–1972. 750e anniversaire des libertés communales. Colloque
historique. Actes (Cercle historique et archéologique de Wavre et de la Région:
Wavre, 1973), pp. 21–53.
Michel de Waha, “L’apparition de fortifications seigneuriales à l’enceinte en
Hainaut belge aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Recueil d’études d’histoire hainuyère
offertes à M. A. Arnould (Hannonia: Mons, 1983), 2 volumes, v. II, pp. 121–142.
Alan Salamagne, “Les fortifications médiévales de la ville du Quesnoy,” Revue du
Nord, 63 (1981): 997–1008.
No t e s
177
26. Henri Patelle, “Le développement de Valenciennes du Xe au XIIIe siècle. Le
castrum, les bourgs, les enceintes. Étude topographique,” Mémoires du Cercle
archéologique et Historique de Valenciennes, 9 (1976): 21–52; and Alan Salamagne,
“La construction des enceintes médiévales. L’exemple de la troisième enceinte de
Valenciennes (XIIe siècle),” Valentiana, 9 (1992): 53–66.
27. Philippe Fournez, Histoire d’une forteresse Landrecies d’après des documents inédits
(Perrin: Paris, 1911), pp. 11–36.
28. F. Lennel, Calais au Moyen Age, des origines au siège de 1346 (Lille, 1908),
pp. 38–44.
29. Charles Higounet, Défrichements et villeneuves du Bassin parisien, XIe–XIVe siècles
(Éd. du CNRS: Paris, 1990).
30. André Châtelain, Châteaux forts et féodalité en Ile-de-France, du XIème au XIIIème
siècle (Créer: Nonette, 1983); Jean Mesqui, Ile-de-France gothique (Picard: Paris,
1988), two volumes, v. I, Les Demeures seigneuriales; and Christian Corvisier and
Malika Turin, L’Ile-de-France des châteaux forts (Parigramme: Paris, 2004).
31. Lucien Musset, Jean-Michel Bouvris, and Jean-Marie Maillefer, Autour du pouvoir
ducal normand, Xe-XIIe siècles (Annales de Normandie: Caen, 1985).
32. Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066
(University of California Press: Berkeley, 1988).
33. J. Broussard, “Hypothèse sur la fondation des bourgs et des communes en
Normandie,” Annales de Normandie, 8 (1958): 27–53. On Norman castles, see
Bernard Beck, Châteaux-forts de Normandie (Ouest-France: Rennes, 1986).
34. Marie-Madeleine Azard-Malourie, Château Gaillard et Gisors, citadelles du Vexin
(Édition du Cadran: Paris, 1963).
35. Jean-Marie Laurence, Caen aux XIe et XIIe siècles: espace urbain, pouvoirs et société
(La Mandragore: Condé-sur-Noireau, 2000).
36. Charles Richard, Recherches historiques sur Rouen. Fortifications-Porte Martin ville
(Rouen, 1844); and L.-R. Delsalle, “Les anciennes portes de Rouen,” Bulletin des
Amis des monuments rouennais (1995–1996): 13–37.
37. Michael E. Jones, “The Defence of Medieval Brittany: A Survey of the Establishment
of Fortified Towns, Castles and Frontiers from the Gallo-Roman Period to the End
of the Middle Ages,” Archaeological Journal, 138 (1981): 149–204; and André
Chédeville and Noël-Yves Tonnerre, La Bretagne féodale: XIe–XIIIe siècle (Ouest
France: Rennes, 1987).
38. Francis Michaud, Châteaux de Bretagne (Éditions Patrimoines & medias:
Chauray-Niort, 1996); and Patrick Kernevez, Les fortifications médiévales du
Finistère. Mottes, enceintes et châteaux (Centre regional d’archéologie d’Ale:
Rennes, 1997).
39. C. Gillot, “Les fortifications de Fougères,” Bulletins et mémoires de la société
archéologique et historique de l’arrondissement de Fougères, 7 (1963): 81–104.
40. Exceptional indeed was the stone castle in Gueméné-sur-Scorff built by the
Rohans in the twelfth century. In general, see the relevant chapters on this period
in Philippe Guigon and André Chedeville, Les fortifications du haut Moyen-Age
en Bretagne (Centre regional d’archéologie d’Alet: Rennes, 1997); and Arthur Le
Moyne de La Borderie and René Sanquier, L’architecture militaire du Moyen-Age
en Bretagne (Éditions “Rue des Scribes”: Rennes, 1991).
41. Jean-Marie Leguay, Un réseau urbain au moyen âge: les villes du duché de Bretagne
aux XIVe–XVe siècles (Maloine: Paris, 1981), chapters 1–2; Lionel Pirault and
Isabelle Rouaud-Rouaze, “La muraille gallo-romaine de Nantes,” Arts, Recherches,
et Créations, 54 (1997): 12–25; and P. de Contenson, “Les ramparts de Rennes,”
Bulletin monumental (1907): 431–444.
178
No t e s
42. H. Bourde de la Rogerie, “Les fondations de villes et de bourgs en Bretagne du
XIe au XIIIe siècles,” Mémoires de la société d’histoire et d’archéologie en Bretagne,
9 (1928): 69–106.
43. Jean Noël Luc, Jean Combes, and Michel Luc, La Charente-Maritime: l’Aunis et
la Saintonge des origines à nos jours (Éditions Bordessoules: Saint-Jean-d’Angély,
1981); and Robert Colle, Châteaux, manoirs et forteresses d’Aunis et de Saintonge
(Éditions Rupella: La Rochelle), 1984, 3 volumes. On La Rochelle, see Isabelle
Warmoes, “Les fortifications médiévales de La Rochelle. Étude des documents
iconographiques,” Mémoire de maîtrise d’archéologie, Université de Paris I, 1991,
2 volumes. One hundred illustrations compose volume II.
44. H. Boyer, “Les enceintes de Bourges,” Mémoires de la société historique, littéraire,
artistique et scientifique du Cher, 4 (1888–1889): 108–142; and Claude Dietrich,
Topographie und Verfassung der Städte Bourges und Poitiers bis in das 11 Jahrhundert
(Mathiesen Verlag: Lübeck, 1960).
45. André Chédeville, Chartres et ses campagnes, XIe–XIIIe siècles (Klincksieck: Paris, 1973).
46. Bernard S. Bachrach, Fulk Nerra, the Neo-Roman Consul, 987–1040: A Political
Biography of the Angevin Count (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1993).
47. Marcel Deyres, “Le donjon de Langeais,” Bulletin monumental, 128 (1970):
179–193; F. Lesueur, “Le château de Langeais,” Congrès archéologique de France,
106 (1948): 378–400; Jean Vallery-Badot, “Loches,” Congrès archéologique de
France, 106 (1948): 111–125; and Pierre Héliot, “L’Évolution du donjon dans le
nord-ouest de la France et en Angleterre au XIIe siècle,” Bulletin archéologique du
Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 5 (1969): 141–194.
48. Gustave d’Espinay, Congrès archéologique de France, Angers (Angers, 1871),
pp. 202–203.
49. Bernard Chevalier, Tours ville royale, 1356–1520. Origine et développement d’une
capitale à la fin du moyen âge (Nauwelaerts: Paris, 1975), pp. 8–13; and JeanClaude Pasquier, Le château de Vendôme: une histoire douce-amère (Éditions du
Cherche-Lune: Vendôme, 2000).
50. Sidney Painter, “Castellans of the Plain of Poitou in the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries,” in Fred A. Cazel, Jr., ed., Feudalism and Liberty: Articles and Addresses
of Sidney Painter (Oxford University Press: London, 1961), pp. 17–40; Marcel
Garaud, Les châtelains de Poitou et l’avènement du régime féodal, XIe et XIIe siècles
(Mémoires de la société des antiquitaires de l’Ouest: Poitier, 1964).
51. Elizabeth Chapin, Les villes de foires de Champagne, des origines au début du XIVe
siècle (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1976). Originally published in 1937.
52. J.-P. Boureux, R. Threis, and D. Bodovillé, Vestiges d’habitat seigneurial fortifié en
Champagne centrale (A.R.E.R.S.: Reims, 1987); and Jean Mesqui, Châteaux-forts
et fortifications de France (Flammarion: Paris, 1998), pp. 436–447.
53. Gérard Giuliato, Châteaux et maisons fortes en Lorraine centrale (Éditions de la
Maison des sciences de l’homme: Paris, 1992); and Marc Greder, Villes et villages
fortifiées d’Alsace. Histoire, description, photographes et plans (Éditions Salvator:
Mulhouse), 1993.
54. Claude Turrel, Metz: Deux mille ans d’architecture militaire (Éditions Serpenoises:
Metz, 1986); and La fortification en Lorraine: de l’enceinte gauloise de Metz à la
ligne Maginot (Association d’Histoirens de l’Est: Metz, 2003).
55. J.-L. Fray, “Nancy du XIe au début du XVe siècle. Naissance et évolution de la ville
médiévale,” Le Pays lorrain, 68 (1987): 21–39.
56. Alain Sartelet, Les fortifications de Mézières (Itinéraires du Patrimoine: Paris, 2003),
pp. 4–19; and Histoire de la fortification dans le pays de Thionville, des origines à la
ligne Maginot (La Municipalité: Thionville, 1970), pp. 3–5.f
No t e s
179
57. Jean-Pierre Klein and Jean-Jacques Schwien, “Strasbourg et ses fortifications au
Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne. Mise au point et essai de synthèse,” in Vivre
au Moyen Âge. 30 d’archéologie médiévale en Alsace (Catalogue des Musées de
Strasbourg: Strasbourg, 1990), pp. 21–31.
58. Guy Le Hallé, Histoire des fortifications en Bourgogne (Martelle Éditions: Amiens,
1990); and Yves Jeannin, Les enceintes médiévales des villes et bourgs de FrancheComté (Direction des Antiquités historiques de Franche-Comté: Besançon, 1981).
59. Émile Thevenot, Autun, cité romaine & chrétienne: histoire-monuments-sites
(L. Taverne and Charles Chandioux: Autun, 1932).
60. Jean Richard, “Les murailles de Dijon, du XIIe au XIVe siècle,” Mémoires de la
Commission des antiquités de la Côte-d’Or, 22 (1940–1946): 316–329.
61. Claude Fohlen, Histoire de Besançon (Nouvelle Librairie de France: Paris, 1964–
1965), 2 volumes, v. I, pp. 23–42.
62. Philip Bruno, Seigneurs et bâtisseurs: le château et l’habitat seigneurial en HauteAuvergne et Brivadois entre le XIe et le XVe siècle (Presses Universitaires BlaisePascal: Clermont-Ferrand, 2000).
63. Gabriel Fournier, “Les bourgs fortifiés de l’Auvergne,” Bulletin du Centre d’Études
et Recherches Archéologique Aérienne, 1 (1979): 15–36.
64. J. L. Taupin, “Les murs d’Avignon,” Les monuments historiques de la France
(CNMH: Paris, 1971), n. 2–3, pp. 141–186; and Odile Blum, Fortifications à
Marseilles (Edisud: Aix-en-Provence, 1990).
65. Monique Bourin-Derruau, Villages médiévaux en Bas-Languedoc: Genèse d’une
sociabilité (Xe–XIVe siècle), 2 volumes (L’Harmattan: Paris, 1987).
66. P.-A Février, Le développement urbain en Provence de l’époque romaine à la fin du
XIVe siècle (Fréjus: Paris, 1964).
67. Archibald Ross Lewis, “The Development of Town Government in TwelfthCentury Montpellier,” Speculum, 22/1 (1947): 51–67; and Jean Combes,
Montpellier et Le Languedoc au Moyen Age (Société Archéologique de Montpellier:
Montpellier, 1990).
68. Kathryn L. Reyerson and John Drendel, eds, Urban and Rural Communities in
Medieval France: Provence and Languedoc, 1000–1500 (Brill: Leiden, 1998).
69. René Caïrou, Narbonne: vingt siècles de fortifications (Commission archéologique
de Narbonne: Narbonne, 1979); and Pierre Varène and Jacques Bigot, L’enceinte
gallo-romaine de Nîmes: les murs et les tours (Éd. du CNRS: Paris, 1992).
70. Krzysztof Pawlowski revived nineteenth-century arguments in favor of indigenous
urban forms in the Midi prior to Capetian domination in his Circulades languedociennes de l’An mille: naissance de l’urbanisme européen (Presses du Languedoc:
Montpellier, 1992).
71. Joseph de Pous, “L’architecture militaire occitane (IXe–XIVe siècles),” Bulletin
archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques, 5 (1969), 41–139; and R. Crozet,
“Les églises fortifiées du Poitou, de l’Angoumois, de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge,”
Bulletin de la société des antiquités de l’Ouest, ser. 4, 1 (1951): 813–820.
72. Francis Michaud and Michel Garnier, Châteaux en Aquitaine (Éditions Patrimoines
& medias: Chauray-Niort, 1997); Sites défensifs et sites fortifiés au Moyen Age entre
Loire et Pyrénées: Actes du premier colloque Aquitaine, Limoges, 20–22 mai 1987
(Fédération Aquitaine, Bordeaux, 1990); and Jean-Paul Gaillard, Guide des châteaux
et anciennes demeures de la Charente (Librairie B. Sepulchre: Paris, 1994).
73. Michel Granger, Poitiers. La pierre, l’homme et la cité (Geste Éditions: Poitiers,
1993); Hugues Imbert, Histoire de Thouars (Laffite: Marseille, 1976/1871); and
Marie-Pierre Baudry, Les fortifications des Plantagenêts en Poitou, 1154–1242
(Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques: Paris, 2001).
180
No t e s
74. Arlette Higounet-Nadal, Périgueux, Dordogne: plan et notice élaborés (Éditions du
CNRS: Paris, 1984).
75. Charles Higounet, Histoire de Bordeaux (Fédération historique du Sud-Ouest:
Bordeaux, 1962), 8 volumes, v. II.
76. Charles L. H. Coulson, “Rendability and Castellation in Medieval France,” Château
Gaillard, 6 (1973): 59–67; and Jacques Boussard, “Service féodaux, milices et
mercenaires dans les armées en France aux Xe et XIe siècles,” in Ordinamenti
militari in Occidente 15e Settimane di Spolete 1967 (Centro Studi Alto Medioevo:
Spoleto 1968), v. I, pp. 131–168, 22–228.
77. The seminal study remains Bernard Chevalier, Les bonnes villes de France du XIVe au
XVIe siècle (Aubier: Paris, 1982). Ten years later, their origins became pushed back
two centuries. See Monique Bourin, ed., Villes, bonnes villes, cités et capitals: études
d’histoire urbaine (XIIe–XVIIIe siècle) offertes à Bernard Chevalier (Paradigme:
Caen, 1993). On the etymology of the appellation, see G. Maudvech, “La ‘bone
ville’: origine et sens de l’expression,” Annales economies, sociétés et civilizations, 27
(1972): 1441–1448.
78. Raymond Ritter, Châteaux-donjons et places fortes: l’architecture militaire française
(Larousse: Paris, 1954); and J. F. Finò, Forteresses de la France médévale, 3rd ed.
(A. & J. Picard: Paris, 1967), pp. 253–298.
79. David Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early
Fourteenth Century (Longman: New York, 1997); and Charles Petit-Dutaillis, The
French Communes in the Middle Ages (North Holland Publishing Co.: Amsterdam/
New York, 1978).
80. On the early evolution of municipal liberties and city charters, see Les origines des
libertés urbaines: Actes du XVIe Congrès des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement
supérieur (Rouen 7–8 juin 1985) (Presses Universitaires de Rouen: Rouen, 1990).
81. Albert Rigaudière, Gouverner la ville au Moyen Age (Anthropos: Paris, 1993),
pp. 21–50; and P.-C. Timbal, “Les villes de consulat dans le midi de la France,” in
Les villes (Société Jean Bodin: Brussels, 1955), v. I.
82. Albert Rigaudière, Penser et construire l’État dans la France du Moyen Age: (XIIIe–
XVe siècle) (Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France: Paris,
2003).
83. A twelfth-century encyclopedia defined a garden (ortus) as a space “surrounded
by ditches and hedges” (circumfoditur et circumsepitur) that separated it from the
wilder, uncultivated lands without. De bestiis et aliis rebus libri quatuor, chapter 13,
pl. 177, col. 154.
84. A. Higounet-Nadal, “Les jardins urbains dans la France médiévale,” Flaran 9 Auch
(1989): 68–89; Le Paysage urbain au Moyen Age (Presses Universitaires de Lyon:
Lyon, 1981); and Vito Fumagalli, Landscapes of Fear: Perceptions of Nature and the
City in the Middle Ages (Polity Press: Cambridge, 1994).
85. P. Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme (Henri Laurens: Paris, 1952), 3 volumes, v. II,
p. 238. Rural villages evinced much the same pattern of spatial development. See
Ghiselaine Fabre, Morphogenèse du village médiéval (IXe–XIIe siècle): Actes de la
table ronde de Montpellier, 22–23 février 1993 (Association pour la connaissance du
patrimoine du Languedoc-Roussillon: Montpellier, 1996).
86. Philippe Contamine, Jean Kerhervé, and Albert Rigaudière, eds, L’impôt au Moyen
Age: l’impôt public et le prélèvement seigneurial, fin XIIe–début XVIe siècle, 3
volumes (Comité pour l’Histoire Economique et Financière de la France: Paris,
2003).
87. André Guillerm, The Age of Water: The Urban Environment in the North of France,
A.D. 300–1800 (Texas A & M University Press: College Station, 1988); and
No t e s
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
181
Jean-Pierre Leguay, L’eau dans la ville au Moyen Age (Presses Universitaires de
Rennes: Rennes, 2002).
Jean-Pierre Leguay, La rue au Moyen Age (Ouest-France: Rouen, 1984).
Barbara Hanawalt and Michael Kobliaka, eds, Medieval Practices of Space (University
of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000).
Albert Rigaudière, “Hiérarchie socio-professionnelle et gestion municipale dans
les villes du Midi français au bas Moyen Age,” in Rigaudière, Gouverner la ville au
Moyen Age, pp. 167–214.
Lewis, “The Development of Town Government” pp. 55–58.
Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton University
Press: Princeton, NJ, 1970); and Rees Davis, “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of
a Concept?,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 16/2 (2003): 280–300.
Chapter 2
1. J. Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne et la formation du duché du XIe au XIVe siècles
(Société des Belles Lettres: Paris, 1954).
2. Roger Genty, Les Comtes de Toulouse: Histoire et Traditions (Éditions de Poliphile:
Ferrières, 1987).
3. Heather J. Tanner, “Reassessing King Stephen’s Continental Strategies,” Medievalia
et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, 26 (1999): 101–117.
4. In general, see Jacques Boussard, “Aspects particuliers de la féodalité dans l’empire
plantagenêt,” Bulletin de la société des antiquitaires de l’Ouest, 4/7 (1963): 29–47.
5. Ralph V. Turner, “The Problem of Survival for the Angevin ‘Empire’: Henry II’s
and His Sons’ Vision versus Late Twelfth-Century Realities,” American Historical
Review, 100/1 (1995): 78–96.
6. John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (Oxford University Press: New York, 2001),
second ed., p. 64.
7. R. Latouche, “La commune du Mans (1070),” Mélanges d’histoire du moyen âge
dédiés à la mémoire de Louis Halphen (Presses universitaires de France: Paris, 1950),
pp. 38–52; and H. Miyamtsu, “A-t-il existé une commune à Angers au XIIe siècle?”
Journal of Medieval History, 21 (1995): 117–152.
8. D. Bates, “Rouen from 900 to 1204: From Scandinavian Settlement to Angevin
‘Capital,’ ” in J. Stratford, ed., Medieval Art, Architecture, and Archaeology at
Rouen, British Archaeological Association, Transactions, 12 (1993): 1–11.
9. J. C. Holt, “The Loss of Normandy and Royal Finances,” in J. Gillingham and
J. C. Holt, eds, War and Government in the Middle Ages (Boydell & Brewer:
Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 72–94.
10. Jacques Le Maho, “Fortifications de siège et ‘contre-châteaux’ en Normandie (xie–
xiie s.),” Château Gaillard, 19 (1998): 24–41.
11. Kathleen Thompson, Power and Border Lordships: The Count of the Perche (1000–
1226) (Boydell: Rochester, NY, 2002).
12. Marie-Pierre Baudry, “Les châteaux d’Aliénor: palais, fortifications ou prisons?,”
Aliénor d’Aquitaine (2004): 119–127.
13. Robert Hajdu, “Castles, Castellans and the Structure of Politics in Poitou, 1152–
1271,” Journal of Medieval History 4 (1978): 27–54.
14. M. Garaud, “Les Châtelains de Poitou et l’avènement du régime feudal, XIe et XIIe
siècles,” Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 4 (1964): 34–61.
15. Pierre Bauduin, “Entre deux courtines de châteaux: une frontière entre Périgord
et Quercy au Moyen Âge?,” in Yves Guéna, ed., Château et territoire: limites et
mouvances (Diffusion les Belles Lettres: Paris, 1995), pp. 39–54.
182
No t e s
16. Hajdu, “Castles,” pp. 27–54.
17. C. Higounet, “En Bordelaise: ‘Principes castella tenentes,’ ” in P. Contamine, ed.,
La Noblesse du moyen âge, Xie–XVe siècles: Essais à la mémoire de Robert Boutruche
(Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, 1976), pp. 81–101.
18. R. Benjamin, “A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156–1196,”
Historical Research, 61 (1988): 270–283.
19. J. A. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire, 1158–1203
(Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000).
20. In 1183, encouraged by Geoffrey of Brittany, the young Henry joined a rebellion
led by the viscount of Limoges and Geoffrey of Lusignan to unseat Richard as
duke of Aquitaine. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, p. 37.
21. John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal
Power in the Middle Ages (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1983); and Jim
Bradbury, Philip Augustus, King of France, 1180–1223 (Longman: New York, 1998).
22. Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel, La mutation féodale, Xe–XIIe siècles (Presses
Universitaire de France: Paris, 1980); Gabrielle Spiegel, “The Cult of Saint Denis
and the Capetian King,” Journal of Medieval History, 1 (1975): 43–70; and idem,
“ ‘Defense of the Realm’: Evolution of a Capetian Propaganda Slogan,” Journal of
Medieval History, 3 (1977): 115–145.
23. Vincent Moss, “The Defence of Normandy, 1193–8,” Anglo-Norman Studies, 24
(2002): 67–84.
24. J. Green, “Lords of the Norman Vexin,” in War and Government in the Middle
Ages, pp. 27–49.
25. Charles L. H. Coulson, “Fortress-Policy in Capetian Tradition and Angevin
Practice: Aspects of the Conquest of Normandy by Philip II,” Anglo-Norman
Studies, 6 (1984): 15–34.
26. Ralph V. Turner and Richard R. Heiser, The Reign of Richard the Lionhearted:
Ruler of the Angevin Empire, 1189–99 (Pearson Education Limited: Edinburgh,
2000), pp. 235–240.
27. J. C. Holt, “The Casus Regis: The Law and Politics of Succession in the Plantagenet
Dominions, 1185–1247,” in Edward B. King, ed., Law in Medieval Life and
Thought (University of the South: Sewanee, Tenn., 1990), pp. 24–43.
28. Hajdu, “Castles,” p. 38.
29. Coulson, “Fortress Policy in Capetian Tradition I,” 13–38.
30. Daniel Power, “The End of Angevin Normandy: The Revolt of Alençon (1203),”
Historical Research, 74/196 (2001): 444–464.
31. J. C. Holt, “The End of the Anglo-Norman Realm,” Proceedings of the British
Academy 61 (1975): 112–134.
32. Theodore Evergates, Feudal society in the bailliage of Troyes under the Counts of
Champagne, 1152–1284 (The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, Md.,
1990), second ed.
33. Joseph R. Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades (Dial Press: New York, 1971); Jonathan
Sumption, The Albigensian Crusade (Faber: London/Boston, 1978); and Michel
Roquebert, Histoire des cathares. Hérésies, croisade, inquisition du XIe au XIVe siècle (Perrin: Paris, 2002).
34. Henri-Paul Eydoux, “Châteaux des pays de l’Aude,” Congrès archéologique des pays
l’Aude, 131 (1973): 211–236.
35. Joseph Salvat, “Castelnaudary pendant la guerre des Albigeois,” Bulletin de la
Société des Études (1930): 47–68.
36. Guillaume de Tudèle, Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, E. Martin-Chabot,
ed. (Les Belles Lettres: Paris, 1931–1957), v. I, chapter 15, p. 46.
No t e s
183
37. Sidney Painter, “The Houses of Lusignan and Châtelleraut, 1150–1250,” in Fred
A. Cazel, Jr., ed., Feudalism and Liberty: Articles and Addresses of Sidney Painter
(Oxford University Press: London, 1961), pp. 73–89.
38. Robert Hadju, “Family and Feudal Ties in Poitou, 1100–1300,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, 8/1 (1977): 117–139, esp. 122–123.
39. Susan J. Kupper, “Town and Crown: Philip Augustus and the Towns of France,”
dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University, 1976.
40. J. Orr, ed., Les Oeuvres (Manchester, 1915), vv. 180–200, pp. 14–16.
41. Mazime Legrand, Histoire d’Étampes (Res universes: Paris, 2003 [1902]),
pp. 112–118.
42. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 69–70.
43. R. V. Turner, “Richard Lionheart and the Episcopate in his French Domains,”
French Historical Studies, 21 (1998): 517–542; and Daniel Power, “The Norman
Church and the Angevin and Capetian Kings,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History,
56/2 (2005): 205–234.
44. Charles L. H. Coulson, “The Impact of Bouvines upon the Fortress-Policy of Philip
Augustus,” in Richard Eales, ed., Anglo-Norman Castles (Boydell: Rochester, N.Y.,
2003), pp. 367–388.
45. Stéphane Rocheteau, “Le château de Chinon aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Martin
Aurell, ed., La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204) (CESM: Poitiers, 2000), pp. 315–355.
46. Charles L. H. Coulson, “The Sanctioning of Fortresses in France: ‘Feudal Anarchy’
or ‘Seigneurial Amity’?,” Nottingham Medieval Studies, 42 (1998): 38–104.
47. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 69–70.
48. A. Erlande-Brandenburg, “L’architecture militaire au temps de Philippe Auguste:
une nouvelle conception de la défense,” in Robert-Henri Bautier, ed., La France de
Philippe Auguste. Le temps des mutations (CNRS: Paris, 1982), pp. 595–603 ; and
André Chatelain, “Recherches sur les châteaux de Philippe Auguste,” Archéologie
médiévale (1991): 115–169.
49. Pierre Héliot, “Le Château-Gaillard et les forteresses des XIIe et XIIIe siècles en
Europe occidentale,” Château-Gaillard. Études de castellogie européenne, 1 (1962):
53–75; Bernard Beck, Châteaux forts de Normandie (Éditions Ouest-France: Rennes,
1986), pp. 56–72; Joseph Decaens, “Le Château-Gaillard,” in L’Architecture normande au Moyen-Age (Édition Corlet: Caen, 1997), v. II, pp. 62–81.
50. Alain Quenneville and Thierry Delahaye, Le château de La Roche-Guyon: des grottes
au siècle des Lumières (Édition du Valhermeil: Saint-Ouen-l’Aumôme, 1993).
51. Jean-Claude Routier, “Les ramparts de Montreuil-sur-Mer,” Revue du Nord, 71
(1989): 205–214; Jean Vallery-Radot, “Yèvre-le-Châtel,” Congrès archéologique de
France, 90 (1930): 401–413; and Denise Humbert, “Le château de Dourdan,”
Congrès archéologique de France, 103 (1944): 236–245.
52. Pierre Héliot, “L’Age des donjons d’Étampes et de Provins,” Bulletin de la Société
Nationale des Antiquitaires de France (1967): 289–309; and E. Lefèvre-Pontalis,
“Le donjon quadrilobé d’Ambleny,” Bulletin monumental, 74 (1910): 69–74.
53. Jacques Harmand, “Houdan et l’évolution des donjons au XIIe siècle,” Bulletin
monumental, 127 (1969): 187–207.
54. Jean Vallery-Radot, “Le donjon de Philippe Auguste à Villeneuve-sur-Yonne
et son devis,” in Château Gaillard, Studien zur mittelalterlichen Wehrbau und
Siedlungsforschung, no. 2 (Graz: Cologne, 1967), pp. 106–112.
55. Pierre Héliot, “La genèse des châteaux de plan quadrangulaire en France et en
Angleterre,” Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquitaires de France (1965):
238–257; and Jean Vallery-Radot, “Note sur l’enceinte quadrangulaire du château
de Caen,” Bulletin monumental, 121 (1963): 69–73.
184
No t e s
56. Brice Collet, “Une ville fortifiée. Troyes du XIIe au XIXe siècle,” La vie en
Champagne, 389 (1988), special issue; Jean Mesqui, Provins: la fortification d’une
ville au Moyen Age (Droz: Geneva, 1979); and H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire
de Bar-sur-Aube sous les comtes de Champagne, 1077–1284 (Paris, 1859).
57. Considerable archeological work has been conducted on the fortifications of Paris
since the mid-nineteenth century when Haussmann’s demolitions exposed large
portions of the original medieval and Gallo-Roman city. These studies are ongoing
and make the enceinte of Paris perhaps the most thoroughly investigated defensive
ensemble in all of France. This rich literature begins with Alfred Bonnardot’s study
Dissertations archéologiques sur les anciens enceintes de Paris, suivies de recherches sur
les portes fortifiées qui dependaient de ces enceintes (Paris, 1852).
58. Maurice Berry and Michel Fleury, L’enceinte et le Louvre de Philippe Auguste, La
Délégation: Paris, 1988; Aimé Grimault, Anciennes enceintes et limites de Paris
(DAAP: Paris, 1988); Guy Le Hallé, Histoire des fortifications de Paris et leur
extension en Ile-de-France (Éditions Horvath: Lyon, 1995); and Roger Rottmann,
Murs et mémoires. La construction de Paris (Syros-Altérnatives: Paris, 1988).
59. Jean Vallery-Radot, “Quelques donjons de Philippe Auguste,” Bulletin de la Société
Nationale des Antiquitaires de France (1964): 155–160.
60. Charles L. H. Coulson, “Hierarchism and Conventual Crenellation: An Essay in
the Sociology and Metaphysics of Medieval Fortification,” Medieval Archaeology,
26 (1982): 69–100.
61. P. Lardin and J.-L. Roch, eds, La ville médiévale en deçà et au-delà de ses murs.
Mélanges offerts à Jean-Pierre Leguay (Presses de l’Université de Rouen: Rouen,
2000).
Chapter 3
1. Charles T. Wood, The French Apanages and the Capetian Monarchy, 1224–1328
(Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1966); and Andrew W. Lewis, The Royal
Succession in Capetian France: Studies on Familial Order and the State (Harvard
University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1982).
2. Jacques de Romefort, “Le Rhône de l’Ardèche à la mer, frontière des Capétiens au
XIIIe siècle,” Revue historique, 54/161 (1929): 161–220.
3. Charles L. H. Coulson, “Castellation in the County of Champagne in the Thirteenth
Century,” Château-Gaillard. Études de castellogie européenne, 9–10(1979–1980):
347–364.
4. Later in the Hundred Years’ War, Périgord-Quercy and Rouergue became English
possessions and thus not a part of the eventual Estates of Languedoc. As a result,
these two northern regions in old Occitania diverged historically from the eventual
royal province of Languedoc.
5. There is a vast literature on bastides. For overviews, see Alain Lauret, ed., Bastides:
villes nouvelles du Moyen Age (Édition Milan: Toulouse, 1992); and James Bentley,
Fort Towns of France: The Bastides of the Dordogne and Aquitaine (Tauris Parke
Books: London, 1993).
6. Benoît Cursente, Les castelnaux de la Gascogne médiévale: Gascogne gersoise
(Fédération historique du Sud- Ouest: Bordeaux, 1980).
7. Gilles Bernard, “Bastides et villeneuves,” in Charles Higounet, ed., Paysages et
villages neufs au moyen âge (Fédération historique du sud-ouest: Bordeaux, 1975),
pp. 65–83.
8. Bénédicte Fénié and Jean-Jacques Fénié, Toponymie occitain (Sud-Ouest Université:
Bordeaux, 1996).
No t e s
185
9. Guy Pons, “Briatexte, bastide des rois de France (XIIIe s.),” Aro Cal, 22 (1984):
4–12.
10. Michel Cassan and Jean Loup Lemaître, eds, Espaces et pouvoirs urbains dans le
Massif Central et l’Aquitaine, du Moyen Age à nos jours. Actes du colloque (Musée
d’Ussel: Paris, 1994).
11. Léon Gallet, Les traités de pariage dans la France féodale (Recueil Sirey: Paris,
1935).
12. Marcel Gouron, Les chartes de franchises de Guienne et Gascogne (Recueil Sirey: Paris,
1935); and Jean Decap and Georges Espinas, Catalogue des chartes de franchises de la
France. Les chartes de coutumes du Comminges (Recueil Sirey: Paris, 1957).
13. Hervé Leblond, “Recherches métrologiques sur les plans des bastides,” Histoire
et mesure, 2/314 (1987): 55–88; and Florence Pulol, “L’élaboration de l’image
symbolique de la bastide,” Annales du Midi, 103/195 (1991): 345–367.
14. Odon de Lingu de Saint-Blanquat, “Comment se sont créés les bastides du
sud-ouest de la France,” Annales économie, société et civilisation, 4 (1949): 46–72.
15. Cédric Lavigne, Essai sur la planification agraire au moyen âge: les paysages neufs
de la Gascogne médiévale (XIIIe-XIVe siècles) (Ausonius: Bordeaux, 2002).
16. Françoise Divorne, Les Bastides d’Aquitaine, du Bas-Languedoc et du Béarn: essai
sur la régularité (Aux Archives d’architecture moderne: Brussels, 1985).
17. Jean Boutonnet, Castelsarrasin: légendes et réalités du XIIIème siècle (Delpech:
Castelsarrasin, 1980); and Jean-Luc Barré, Villeneuve-sur-Lot: le temps d’une bastide
(APAMP Midi-Pyrénées: Toulouse, 1992).
18. Jean Paillas and Françoise Paillas, Une bastide en Quercy, Castelfranc: 5 siècles de
démocratie directe (Éditions du Roc de Bourzac: Bayac, 1992).
19. L. Testut, La bastide de Beaumont en Périgord, 1272–1789: étude historique et
archéologique (Feret et fils: Bordeaux, 1920), 2 volumes; and Léon-Jeffrey Hoare,
Castillonnès: les origines de la bastide (Centre d’étude des Bastides: Villefranchede-Rouergue, 1990).
20. Michel Coste, Monpazier, les clés d’une bastide (Librairie du château: Bonaguil,
2002); and P. Couet-Lannes and Pierre Tucoo-Chala, Sauveterre-de-Béarn (Société
des sciences, lettres et arts de Pau et du Béarn: Pau, 1980).
21. Xavier Beltour, Le particularisme aquitain-gascon au Moyen Age: ses origines et ses
formes (Princi Néguer: Pau 1999).
22. Jacques Dubourg, Histoire des bastides d’Aquitaine (Éditions de Sud-Ouest:
Bordeaux, 1991).
23. Michel Jantzen, ed., Permanence et actualités des bastides: Montauban, 14–16 mai
1987 (Section française de l’ICOMOS: Paris, 1988).
24. Pierre Lavedan and Jeanne Hugueney, “Bastides de l’Agenais: Villeneuve-sur-Lot,
Vianne,” Congrès archéologique de France (Paris, 1969), pp. 9–41; and Jean-Luc
Déjean, Les comtes de Toulouse, 1050–1250 (Fayard: Paris, 1988).
25. Marguerite Aribaud-Farrère, Le dernier Comte de Toulouse, Raymond VII, ou, Les
fastes de Beaucaire (Sodiep: Béziers, 1963).
26. Charles Higounet, “Bastides et frontères,” Le Moyen Age, 49 (1948): 113–130;
and Odon de Lingua de Saint-Blanquat, La fondation des bastides royales dans la
sénéchaussée de Toulouse aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Centre régional de documentation pédagogique de Toulouse: Toulouse, 1985), pp. 69–73.
27. Edouard Troplong, De la fidélité des gascons aux anglais pendant le Moyen âge,
1152–1453 (Princi Néguer: Pau, 2000); Jacques Gardelles, Les châteaux du Moyen
Âge dans la France du sud-ouest. La Gascogne anglaise de 1216 à 1237 (Publitotal:
Paris, 1972); and J.-P. Trabut-Cussac, L’administration anglaise en Gascogne sous
Henri III et Edward I de 1254 à 1307 (Droz: Geneva, 1972).
186
No t e s
28. Yves Renouard, Bordeaux sous les rois d’Angleterre (Fédération historique du SudOuest: Bordeaux, 1965).
29. Jacques Dubourg, Histoire des bastides de Midi-Pyrénées (Éditions de Sud-Ouest:
Bordeaux, 1997).
30. Jean-Philippe Garric, Valérie Nègre, and Nathalie Prat, Les bastides d’Armagnac
(Diagram: Toulouse, 1992).
31. Jesús Peribañez Otero, La ocupación del suelo en Béarn: siglos XIII y XIV: bastidas y núcleos de nueva fundación (Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio
Científico: Valladolid, 1997).
32. Didier Poux and Philippe Poux, Les bastides du Midi (APA Poux: Albi, 1997); and
Jean de Beaumarché, Le sénéchal: 1254–1294 (Lacour: Nîmes, 2003).
33. Margaret Wade Labarge, Gascony, England’s First Colony, 1204–1453 (H. Hamilton:
London, 1980).
34. J.-P. Trabut-Cussac, “Bastides ou forteresses, les bastides de l’Aquitaine anglaise et
les interventions de leurs fondateurs,” Le Moyen Age (1954): 81–85.
35. Mireille Mousnier, La Gascogne toulousaine aux XIIe–XIIIe siècles: une dynamique
sociale et spatiale (Presses Universitaires du Mirail: Toulouse, 1997); and Sylvie
Assassin, et al., Les Bastides de Lomagne (Diagram Éditeur: Toulouse, 1990).
36. Jacques Miquel, L’architecture militaire dans le Rouergue au moyen-âge et
l’organisation de la défense (Éditions françaises d’arts graphique: Rodez, 1981),
2 volumes; and André Ancourt, Villefranche, ville fortifiée (Association pour le
pays d’Oc: Marcillac, 1980).
37. Gilles Bernard, “Une ‘dépossession’ pour cause de bastide: l’affaire de Biterbe
(1292). Aux origines de l’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique,” Centre de
Recherches Académique des Inscriptions (January–March 1985): 178–185 and J. A.
Kicklinger, “French Jurisdictional Supremacy in Gascony: An Aspect of the Ducal
Government’s Response,” Journal of Medieval History, 3 (1979): 127–134.
38. Yves Dossat, Evolution de la France méridionale, 1249–1328 (Variorum Reprints:
London, 1989).
39. Gérard Sivéry, Philippe III le Hardi (Fayard: Paris, 2003); and Ivan Gobry, Philippe
III, fils de Saint Louis (Pygmalion: Paris, 2004).
40. David Stewart Bachrach, “Military Logistics during the Reign of Edward I, 1272–
1307,” War in History, 13/4 (2006): 423–442.
41. Caroline Shillaber, “Edward I, Builder of Towns,” Speculum, 22/3 (1947): 297–
309; and Jean Gardelles, “La fortification des bastides dans la Gascogne anglaise
jusqu’à la guerre de Cent Ans,” Congrès de la Fédération Historique du Sud Ouest
(1973): 7–28.
42. Joseph R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton University Press:
Princeton, NJ, 1980); and Jean Favier, Philippe le Bel (Fayard: Paris, 1998).
43. J. F. Verbruggen, “Flemish Urban Militias against the French Calvary Armies
in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” The Journal of Military History, 1
(2002): 145–169.
44. Pierre Chaplais, The War of Saint-Sardos (1323–1325): Gascon Correspondence
and Diplomatic Documents (Royal Historical Society: London, 1954).
45. Michel de Waha, “Philologie et archéologie: la description des ramparts de Bruges
par Monetarius,” Latamus, 43 (1984): 609–622; and Bernard Chevalier, “Le paysage urbain à la fin du Moyen Age. Imaginations et réalités,” in Actes du Congrès de
la Société des historiens médiévistes, Lyon, June 1980 (Presses Universitaires de Lyon:
Lyon, 1981), pp. 39–68.
46. Pierre Héliot, “Le château de Saint-Gobain et les châteaux de plan concentrique en
Europe occidentale,” Gladius, 12 (1974): 129–173.
No t e s
187
47. Alain Tridant, La forteresse de Blanquefort: XIe, XIIIe, XVe siècle: chantier
d’archéologie médiévale (Groupe d’archéologie et d’histoire de Blanquefort:
Blanquefort, 1992); and Philippe Floris and Pascal Talon, Châteaux, manoirs et
logis. La Charente (Éditions Patrimoines & medias: Chauray, 1993).
48. Henri-Paul Eydoux, Châteaux fantastiques (Flammarion: Paris, 1969–1973),
5 volumes.
49. Léon Zylbergeld, “Les villes en Hainaut au Moyen-Âge. Origines et premiers
développements (XIe–XIIIe siècles),” Recueil d’études d’histoire urbaine offertes à
M. A. Arnould (Hannonia: Mons, 1983), v. I, pp. 141–186; and idem, “Les villes
en Hainaut, des origines à la fin du XVIe siècle,” in Albums de Croy, V, Comté de
Hainaut II (Crédit Commiunal de Belgique: Brussels, 1987), pp. 35–113.
50. Giles Blieck, “Le château dit de Coutrai à Lille de 1298 à 1339. Une ‘citadel’ avant
l’heure,” Bulletin monumental, 155 (1997): 185–206.
51. Alain Salamagne, “Châteaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles en Cambrésis” Mémoires
de la Société d’Émulation de Cambrai, 102 (1993): 229–272; and idem, “Château
ou citadelle? Les fortifications de Tournai et la fin de l’architecture militaire
médiévale,” Mémoires de la Société Royale d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Tournai, 7
(1995): 5–31.
52. G. Despy, “Naissance des villes et des bourgades,” in H. Hasquin, ed., La Wallonie,
son histoire (De Laet: Brussels, 1998), pp. 93–192; and idem, “Villes et campagnes aux
IXe et Xe siècle: l’exemple du pays mosan,” Revue du Nord, 50 (1968): 145–168.
53. Michel de Waha, “L’apparition de fortifications seigneuriales à enceinte en Hainaut
belge aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Recueil d’études d’histoire hainuyère offertes à
M. A. Arnouls, Mons, 1983, 2 volumes, v. II, pp. 121–142.
54. Gilles Blieck and L. Vanderstraeten, “Recherches sur les fortifications de Lille au
Moyen Age,” Revue du Nord, 70 (1988): 107–122.
55. Michel de Waha, “Aux origines de l’architecture de briques en Hainaut,” in
Collectif, 1985, pp. 52–59.
56. Bernard Delmaire, “Les fortifications d’Aire au Moyen Âge,” Bulletin de la
Commission historique du Pas-de-Calais, 9/2 (1972): 147–153.
57. Alain Salamagne, Construire au Moyen âge. Les chantiers de fortification de Douai
(Presses Universitaires du Septentrion: Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 2001).
58. Alain Derville, “Une ville vers 1300 Calais,” Revue du Nord, 288/72 (1990):
737–756.
59. Jean-Claude Routier, “Les ramparts de Montreuil-sur-Mer,” Revue du Nord, 71
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60. Pierre Héliot, “Le château de Boulogne-sur-Mer et les châteaux gothiques de plan
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65. Pierre Vidal, La citadelle de Perpignan et l’ancien château des rois de Majorque
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du Midi français aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles,” in N. Bulst and J.-P. Genet, eds, La
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67. J. L. Taupin, “Les murs d’Avignon,” Les monuments historiques de la France, 2–3
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70. C. and D. Dryjski, Les bastides dans le Sud-Ouest Aquitain (Étude pour la Direction
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71. M. G. A. Vale, The Angevin Legacy and the Hundred Years War, 1230–1340
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72. Georges Jehel, Aigues-Mortes, un port pour un roi: les Capétiens et la Méditerranée
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79. J. Viard, “Les ressources extraordinaires de la royauté sous Philippe VI de Valois,”
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Chapter 4
1. Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, volume I, Trial by Battle (Faber &
Faber: London, 1990) and volume II, Trial by Fire (University of Pennsylvania Press:
Philadelphia, 1999); and C. T. Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and
France at War, c. 1300–c. 1450 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988).
2. Peter F. Ainsworth, Jean Froissart and the Fabric of History: Truth, Myth and
Fiction in the Chroniques (Clarendon: Oxford, 1990); Christine de Pisan, Le
livre de fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles Quint, ed. S. Solente, 2 volumes
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3.
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M. G. A. Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England,
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Fernand Lot, “L’état des paroisses et des feux de 1328,” Bulletin de l’École des
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Harry Miskimin, Money, Prices and Foreign Exchange in Fourteenth-Century
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London, 1971).
106. Denis Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut: (1366–1421). Étude d’une biographie héroïque (Droz: Geneva. 1988).
107. Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI. Étude du corps
des fortifications (Université Paul Valéry: Montpellier, 1979), p. 41.
108. David Garrett, ed., The English Experience in France, c. 1450–1558 (Ashgate:
Aldershot, Hampshire, 2002).
109. Cited in Charles Pinot Duclos, Histoire de Louis XI, v. IV, pp. 476–477.
110. See BN ff ms 20492 for documents detailing fortification repairs ordered by
Louis XI.
111. Jean de Haynin, Mémoires de Jean, Sire de Haynin et de Luvignies, 1465–1477,
D. D. Brouwers, ed. (Liège, 1905), 2 volumes, v. I, pp. 59–73.
112. Michel Bur, “Châteaux et places fortes en Lorraine au temps du Téméraire,” Le
Pays Lorrain, 1 (1977): 53–67; and E. Perroy, “L’artillerie de Louis XI dans la
campagne d’Artois (1477),” Revue du Nord, 26 (1943): 171–196, 263–296.
113. Henri Eugène Sée, Louis XI et les villes (Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints: Geneva,
1974 [1891]).
114. J. M. Currin, “ ‘The King’s Army into the Partes of Bretaigne’: Henry VII
and the Breton Wars, 1489–1492,” War in History 7/4 (2000): 379–412; and
David Grummit, “The Defence of Calais and the Development of Gunpowder
Weaponry in England in the Late Fifteenth Century,” War in History 7/3 (2000):
253–272.
115. J. R. Lander, “The Hundred Years War and Edward IV’s 1475 Campaign in
France,” in A. J. Slavin, ed., Tudor Men and Institutions: Studies in English
Law and Government (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1972),
pp. 23–41; and Philippe Contamine, “L’artillerie royale à la veille des guerres
d’Italie,” Annales de Bretagne, 71 (1964): 221–261.
Chapter 5
1. A majority of the king’s gendarme companies were stationed along the periphery of
the kingdom in garrisons in Picardy, the Pays Messin, and the Piedmont throughout most of the sixteenth century. See David L. Potter, War and Government in
the French Provinces, 1470–1560 (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1993).
No t e s
195
2. Richard Gascon, Grand commerce et vie urbaine au XVIe siècle. Lyon et ses marchands (Mouton: Paris, 1971), 2 volumes.
3. Between 1500 and 1700, it is estimated that urban dwellers as a percentage of
total population rose from 10 to 20 percent. See Renée Plouin, “Cités françaises
au XVIe siècle. Créations et reorganization,” in Marie Thérèse Jones-Davies, ed.,
Les Cités au temps de la Renaissance (Université de Paris-Sorbonne: Paris, 1977),
pp. 46–67.
4. Charles Gailly de Taurines, “Les bastions de Navarrenx et les origines italiennes de
la fortification moderne au XVIe siècle,” Bulletin de la société de Pau, 48 (1925):
5–24; and P. Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme (Henri Laurens: Paris, 1952),
3 volumes, v. III, pp. 72–73.
5. Gaston Zeller, L’organisation défensive des frontières du Nord et de l’est au XVIe
siècle (Berger-Levrault: Paris, 1928).
6. Simon Power, “Firepower and the Design of Renaissance Fortifications,” Fort, 10
(1982): 93–104.
7. Philippe Hamon, Jean Jacquart, and Françoise Bayard, L’argent du roi. Les finances
sous François I (Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France: Paris,
1994); and Martin Wolfe, The Fiscal System of Renaissance France (Yale University
Press: New Haven, Conn., 1972).
8. Paul Solon, “From Appatis to Étape: Institutional Innovation in Renaissance
Languedoc,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French
History, 21 (1994): 69–91.
9. N. Bulst and J.-P. Genet, La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’état moderne, XIIe–
XVIIIe siècles (CTHS: Paris, 1988).
10. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the
West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988).
11. Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy
(Rowman and Littlefield: Totowa, NJ, 1974), pp. 251–255.
12. Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi
to Seurat (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn., 1990).
13. Hélène Vérin, La gloire des ingénieurs. L’intelligence technique du XVIe au XVIIIe
siècles (Albin Michel: Paris, 1993), pp. 19–23.
14. N. Pevsner, “The Term ‘Architect’ in the Middle Ages,” Speculum, 17 (1942):
549–562; and idem, “Terms of Architectural Planning in the Middle Ages,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942): 232–237.
15. K. J. Conant, “The After-Life of Vitruvius in the Middle Ages,” Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians, 27 (1968): 33–38; and François Bucher,
“Medieval Architectural Design Methods, 800–1500,” Gesta XI (1973): 37–51.
16. Charles M. Radding and William W. Clark, Medieval Architecture, Medieval
Learning: Builders and Masters in the Age of the Romanesque and Gothic (Yale
University Press: New Haven, Conn., 1992), p. 34.
17. Xavier Malverti and Pierre Pinon, eds, La ville régulière. Modèles et tracés: actes du
colloque (Picard: Paris, 1997).
18. Mario Carpo, Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography,
and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory, Sarah Benson, trans.
(MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
19. J. R. Hale, Renaissance Fortification: Art or Engineering? (Thames & Hudson:
London, 1978).
20. Pamela Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of
Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Johns Hopkins University Press:
Baltimore, Md, 2001), pp. 30–31.
196
No t e s
21. Bernardino Rocco’s Des enterprises et ruses de guerre (Paris, 1570), underscored the
dangers of rigid thinking in favor of flexible pragmatism.
22. Joseph Rykwert, “On the Oral Transmission of Architectural Theory,” Anthropology
and Aesthetics, 5 (1983): 14–27.
23. Philippe Richardot, “La réception de Végèce dans l’Italie de la Renaissance: entre
humanisme et culture technique,” Studi Umanistici Piceni, 15 (1995): 195–214.
24. Vaughan Hart with Peter Hicks, eds, Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance
Architectural Treatise (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn., 1998).
25. Martha D. Pollak, Military Architecture: Cartography and the Representation of the
Early Modern City: A Checklist of Treatises on Fortification in the Newberry Library
(The Newberry Library: Chicago, Ill., 1991).
26. For this, he drew upon Aristotle’s Metaphysics (I.i.14–16) and Nicomachean Ethics
(X.viii.7). In general see, Christine Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early
Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence, 1400–1470 (Oxford University Press:
Oxford, 1992).
27. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books of Architecture, Joseph
Rykwaert, ed. (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1991), Prologue, p. 7.
28. It circulated as a manuscript after 1450 and was only published in 1486. Alberti
first discussed architecture in his Profugiorum ab aerumna, libri III or Della tranquillità dell’animo, composed in the early 1440s.
29. Carroll William Westfall, In this Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti, Nicholas V and the
Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447–1455 (Pennsylvania State
University Press: University Park, 1974).
30. Alberti, Ten Books, book V, chapter 1 and book IV, chapter 5.
31. Horst de La Croix, “The Literature on Fortification in Renaissance Italy,”
Technology and Culture, 4 (1963): 30–50; and Amelio Fara, Il sistema e la città.
Architettura fortificata dell’Europa moderna dai tratati alle realizzazioni 1464–
1794 (Sagep Editrice: Genoa, 1989).
32. Laura Marcucci, “Giovanni Sulpicio e la prima edizione del De architectura di
Vitruvio,” Studi e Documenti di Architettura, 8 (1978): 185–195; and Ingrid
D. Rowland, “Vitruvius in Print and in Vernacular Translation: Fra Giocondo,
Bramate, Raphael and Cesare Cesariano,” in Hart and Hicks, Paper Palaces,
pp. 105–121.
33. Vladimir Juřen, “Fra Giovanni Giocondo et les débuts des études vitruviennes en
France,” Rinascimento, 14 (1974): 101–115.
34. Francesco Paolo Fiore, “La traduzione vitruviana di Cesare Cesariano,” in Silvia
Danesi Squarzina, ed., Roma, centro ideale della cultura dell’antico nei secoli
XV e XVI da Martino V al sacco di Romma, 1517–1527 (Electa: Milan, 1989),
pp. 458–466.
35. Diego de Sagredo, Raison d’architecture antique, extraicte de Vitruve et aultres
anciens architecteurs, nouvellement traduit d’espaignol en françoys à l’utilité de ceulx
qui se delectent en edifices (Paris, 1526).
36. Luigi Firpo, La città ideale del Rinasciemento (UTET: Turin, 1974).
37. Horst de La Croix, “Military Architecture and the Radial City Plan in SixteenthCentury Italy,” Art Bulletin, 42 (1960): 263–290.
38. J. R. Hale, “The Development of the Bastion: An Italian Chronology,” in J. R. Hale,
et al., eds, Europe in the Late Middle Ages (Faber: London, 1965), pp. 27–43.
39. Lorini, Delle fortificationi (Venice, 1596), bk. III, chapter V, p. 156.
40. Luisa Giordano, “On Filarete’s Libro architettonico,” in Hart and Hicks, Paper
Palaces, pp. 51–65. Filarete also wrote the first vernacular architectural treatise in
1460 and dedicated it to Sforza.
No t e s
197
41. Nadia Corvini, “L’urbanistica e la fortificazione della città in epoca sforzesca,”
in Paola Medioli Masotti, ed., Parma e l’umanesimo italiano, Atti del Convegno
Internazionale di studi umanistici, Parma 20 ottobre 1984 (Antenore: Padua,
1986), pp. 39–54.
42. Giordano, “On Filarete,” p. 65.
43. Aemilo Fara, Bernardo Buontalenti (Electa: Milan, 1996), pp. 73–131.
44. Lon R. Shelby, “Mariano Taccola and His Books on Engines and Machines,”
Technology and Culture, 16/3 (1975): 466–475.
45. Pier Luig Bassignana, ed., Le machine di Valturio nei documenti dell’Archivio
Storico AMMA (Umberto Allemandi: Turin, 1988).
46. M. Dezzi Bardeschi, “Le rocche di Francesco di Giorgio nel ducato di Urbino,”
Castellum, 8 (1968): 97–140.
47. Simon Pepper and Quentin Hughes, “Fortification in late 15th Century Italy:
The Treatise of Francesco di Giorgio Martini,” British Archaeological Reports,
Supplementary Series, 41 (1978): 541–560; and Paolo Francesco Fiore, Città e macchine nel’400 nei disegni de Francesco di Giorgio Martini (L. S. Olschki: Florence,
1978).
48. Paolo Francesco Fiore, “The Trattati on Architecture by Francesco di Giorgio,” in
Hart and Hicks, Paper Palaces, pp. 66–85.
49. Pieto C. Marani, L’architettura fortificata negli studi de Leonardo da Vinci. Con il
catalogo complete dei disegni (L. S. Olschki: Florence, 1984); and idem, ed., Disegni
di fortificazioni da Leonardo a Michelangelo (Casa Buonarroti: Florence, 1984).
50. Margaret Daly Davis, Piero della Francesca’s Mathematical Treatises: The “Trattato
d’abaco” and “Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus” (Longo Editore: Ravenna,
1977).
51. Manetti Renzo, Michelangelo: le fortificazioni per l’assedio di Firenze (Libreria editrice fiorentina: Florence, 1980).
52. Christoph L. Frommel and Nicholas Adams, eds, The Architectural Drawings of
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and His Circle, vol. 1, Fortifications, Machines,
and Festive Architecture (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1994).
53. René Quatrefages, “La fortification en Espagne à l’époque de la Renaissance,” Les
cahiers de Montpellier, 11 (1985): 33–58. The trace italienne came to Portugal via
the Netherlands, as discussed in John B. Bury, “Francisco de Holanda: A Little
Known Source for the History of Fortification in the Sixteenth Century,” Arquivo
do Centro Cultural Português, 14 (1979): 163–202.
54. J. R. Hale, “To Fortify or Not to Fortify? Machiavelli’s Contribution to a
Renaissance Debate,” in Brian Bond and Ian Roy, eds, War and Society: A Yearbook
of Military History (Holmes & Meier: New York, 1975), pp. 1–23; and Richard J.
Tuttle, “Against Fortification: The Defense of Renaissance Bologna,” Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians, 41 (1982): 189–201.
55. J. Muller, “Les ingénieurs militaires dans le Pay-Bas espagnols (1500–1575),”
Revue internationale d’histoire militaire, 20 (1959): 467–478.
56. Jean-Michel Sallmann, “L’évolution des techniques de guerre pendant les
guerres d’Italie (14941530),” in Jean Balsamo, ed., Passer les monts: Français en
Italie—l’Italie en France (Éditions Honore Champion: Paris, 1998), pp. 59–81.
For much of what follows, consult Marino Viganò, ed., Architetti e ingegneri
militari italiani all’estero dal XV e XVIII secolo (Sillabe: Livorno, 1994–1999),
2 volumes; E. Rocchi, “Gli ingegneri militari italiani in Francia nel secolo XVI,”
Rivista Esercito e Nazione, 3 (1928): 125–138; and the still invaluable Carlo
Promis, Biografie di ingegneri militari italiani dal secolo XIV alla metà del XVII
(Turin, 1874).
198
No t e s
57. Marcel Grandjean, “Les architectes ‘génévois’ hors des frontières suisses à la fin
de l’époque gothique,” Nos monuments d’art et d’histoire, 1 (1992): 85–109; and
idem, “Maçons et architectes ‘lombards’ et piémontais en Suisse romande du XIVe
siècle à la Réforme,” in L. Golay, et al., eds, Florilegium. Scritti di storia dell’arte
in onore di Carlo Bertelli (Electa: Milan 1995), pp. 78–89.
58. Richard J. Betts, “On the Chronology of Francesco di Giorgio’s Treatises: New
Evidence from an Unpublished Manuscript,” Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, 36 (1977): 3–14, p. 12.
59. A. Lenci, “L’assedio di Padova del 1509: questioni militari e implicazioni urbanistiche nella strategia difensiva veneziana all’indomani di Agnadello,” Bollettino del
Museo Civico di Padova, 63 (1981): 123–155.
60. A. Chiquet, Bayard à Mézières (Nancy, 1893); and Guillaume Du Bellay, Ogdoade
(Paris, 1838), pp. 92–98.
61. Martin Du Bellay, Mémoires (Paris, 1838), v. I, p. 211; S. J. Gunn, “The Duke
of Suffolk’s March on Paris in 1523,” The English Historical Review, 101/400
(1986): 596–634; and Jules Aubert, “Le siège de Bayonne. Les Impériaux dans le
sud-ouest de la France en 1523,” Bulletin de la société historique de Bayonne (1929):
416–447.
62. Pierre Bartas, “Les défenseurs de Marseille en 1524,” Provincia, 6 (1926):
171–200.
63. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. I, p. 317.
64. J. de Meulemeester, “La fortification de terre et son influence sur le développement
urbain de quelques villes des Pays-Bas méridionaux,” Revue du Nord, 74 (1992):
13–28.
65. D. Angers, “Le redressement difficile d’une capitale régionale après la guerre de
Cent Ans. Caen, 1450–1550,” in Commerce, finances et société (XIe–XVIe siècles).
Recueil de travaux d’histoire médiévale offerts à M. le professeur Henri Dubois
(Univesité de Paris-I: Paris, 1993), pp. 84–103.
66. Dominique Le Page and Michel Nassiet, L’union de la Bretagne à la France (Skol
Vreizh: Morlaix, 2003).
67. Brice Collet, “Troyes, Châlons, Reims et leurs fortifications au début du XVIe
siècle,” La vie en Champagne, 445 (1993): special issue; and idem, “Les artistes
troyens au service de la fortification au XVIe siècle,” La vie en Champagne, 448
(1993): 14–16; Françoise Niellon, “Les forts de Villefranche et l’architecture militaire au milieu du XVIe siècle,” Archeologia, 147 (1980): 55–62; and Kathryn A.
Edwards, Families and Frontiers: Re-Creating Communities and Boundaries in the
Early Modern Burgundies (Brill: Leiden, 2002).
68. Paul Solon, “War and the Bonnes Villes: The Case of Narbonne, ca. 1450–1550,”
Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 17
(1990): 65–73.
69. Jean Lartigaut, Le Quercy après la guerre de cent ans: aux origines du Quercy actuel
(Éditions Quercy Recherche: Cahors, 2001) and R. Roudié, “Documents sur la
fortification des places fortes en Guyenne au début du XVIe siècle,” Annales du
Midi, 12 (1960): 43–47.
70. Daniel Nordman, Frontières de France. De l’espace au territoire, XVIe–XIXe siècles
(Gallimard: Paris, 1998).
71. Llewain Scott Van Doren, “Military Administration and Intercommunal Relations
in Dauphiné, 1494–1559,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 130/1
(1986): 79–100.
72. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. III, pp. 177, 256.
73. Ibid., p. 194.
No t e s
199
74. Pierre Fenier, Relation du siège mémorable de la ville de Péronne en 1536, J. Techener,
ed. (Paris, 1862 [1683]).
75. Nicolas Faucherre, Montreuil, ville fortifiée (Association des conservateurs de
musées du Nord-Pas-de-Calais: Pas-de-Calais, 1993).
76. René Herval, “Un ingénieur siennois en France au XVIe siècle: Girolamo Bellarmati
et la creation du Havre,” Études normandes, 40 (1960): 33–43.
77. Bibliothèque Nationale, Fond de Béthune, ms. 7744.
78. Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires, 1521–1575 (Gallimard: Paris, 1964), p. 71; and
Sébastien Silvani, “L’Aragon et la Corse. Les sièges de Perpignan en 1542 et 1597,”
Reflets Roussillon, 71 (1970): 38–43.
79. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. IV, p. 213; and Promis, Biografie, pp. 333–334.
80. Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI. Étude du corps
des fortifications (Université Paul Valéry: Montpellier, 1979), p. 50.
81. Promis, Biografie, pp. 385–386.
82. Du Bellay to François I, September 7, 1542, B.N. ms fr 5152, fol. 7 and Du Bellay
to d’Annebault, October 13, 1542, B.N. ms fr 5153, fol. 88.
83. Du Bellay to Montmorency, May 7, 1541, B.N. ms fr. 5152, fol. 2 and D’Annebault
to Du Bellay, April 7, 1541, B.N. ms fr. 5155, fol. 31. In general, see Martha D.
Pollak, Turin 1564–1680: Urban Design, Military Culture and the Creation of the
Absolutist Capital (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Ill., 1991).
84. Nicolò. Tartaglia, Quesiti et inventioni diverse (Venice, 1546), VI quesito 2, quesito 8 and Rabelais, Quart Livre, 1 xiv, pp. 60–61.
85. Tartaglia, Quesiti, VI, quesito 2, pp. 64–65.
86. Tiers Livre, v. I, p. 317.
87. Monluc, Commentaires, p. 170. See also Henri Luguet, “L’invasion de 1544 dans
le Soissonnais et le Laonnais,” Bulletin de la Société Historique de Haute-Picardie,
5 (1927): 97–139.
88. David Potter, Un homme de guerre au temps de la Renaissance: La vie et les lettres
d’Oudart de Biez, Maréchal de France, Gouverneur de Boulogne et de Picardie (vers
1475–1553) (Artois Presses Université: Lille, 2002).
89. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. IV, pp. 306–307; and Promis, Biografie, pp. 362–363.
90. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. IV, p. 261.
91. Ibid., p. 259. See also A. Rozet and J. F. Lembey, L’invasion de la France et le
siège de Saint-Dizier par Charles-Quint en 1544 (Plong: Paris, 1910); and Yvette
Quenot, “Une vue cavalière inédite du siège de Saint-Dizier en 1544,” Annales de
l’Est, 2 (1956): 83–92.
92. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. IV, p. 323.
93. A. Rozet and J.-F. Lembey, L’invasion de la France et le siège de Saint-Dizier (Paris,
1910). A plan of Saint-Dizier’s fortifications can be found in Charles-Hippolye
Paillard and Georges Hérelle, L’invasion allemande en 1544: fragments d’une
histoire militaire et diplomatique de l’expédition de Charles Quint (Paris, 1884),
pp. 123–125.
94. René Crozet, “Une ville neuve du XVIe siècle: Vitry-le-François,” La vie urbaine,
5 (1923): 291–309.
95. Lynn H. White argued this distinction belonged to the humanist reformer and
diplomat Jacopo Aconcio, who designed for Elizabeth I new bastions at Berwick
on the Scottish frontier. See “Jacopo Aconcio as an Engineer,” The American
Historical Review, 72/2 (1967): 425–444.
96. Promis, Biografie, pp. 138–140.
97. Ben Roosens, “Guerres, fortifications et ingénieurs dans les anciens Pays-Bas à
l’époque de Charles Quint,” Château Gaillard, 19 (1998): 37–53; and C. van den
200
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
No t e s
Heuvel, “Papiere Bolwercken”: De introductie van de Italiaane stedeen vestingbouw
in de Nederlanden (1540–1609) en het bebruik van tekeningen (Alphen aan den
Rijn: Caneletto, 1991).
Promis, Biografie, pp. 208–247.
Ibid., pp. 437–439.
Frederick Baumgartner, Henry II King of France 1547–1559 (Duke University
Press: Durham, NC, 1988).
BN ff 18781, fol. 23–25.
Jean Lestocquoy, “Les sièges de Thérouanne et Vieil-Hesdin d’après les dépêches
du nonce pour la paix Santa-Croce (1552–1554),” Revue du Nord, 37 (1955):
115–124.
Carlo Promis, “La patria et la famiglia di Girolamo Marini, ingegnere militare
del secolo XVI,” in Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per le
provincie di Romagna, 3rd series, v. XIX (Bologna, 1871), pp. 188–203.
Promis, Biografie, pp. 304–305.
Ibid., pp. 278–281.
Ibid., p. 353.
George Kubler, “Francesco Paciotto, architect,” in Lucy Freeman Sandier, ed.,
Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann (Institute of Fine Arts: New York, 1964),
pp. 176–188.
A. Philippoteaux, Recherches sur la vie et l’oeuvre de M. Aurelio de Pasino (1533–
1585), architecte italien des La Marche (Imprimerie André Suzaine: Sedan, 1930).
E. Finot, “Le siège de Metz et les finances de Charles-Quint,” Bulletin historique
et philologique du Comité des travaux historiques (1897): 260–270.
Jean Thiriot, Portes, tours et murailles de la cité de Metz. Une évocation de l’enceinte
urbaine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Est-Imprimerie: Metz, 1970); and Claude
Turrel, Metz: Deux mille ans d’architecture militaire (Éditions Serpenoises, Metz,
1986).
Michael Wolfe, “Au-delà des limites possibles. Comprenant la défaite impériale
au siège de Metz (1552),” in Jean-Pierre Poussou and Roger Baury, eds, Les monarchies européennes à l’époque moderne (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris,
2005), pp. 219–232; and Gaston Zeller, Le siège de Metz par Charles-Quint
(octobre-décembre 1552) (Société d’Impressions Typographiques: Nancy, 1943).
Our best French source on the siege is Bertrand de Salignac’s “Brief discours du
siège de Metz en Lorraine, rédigé par escript, de jour en jour, par un soldat à
la requeste d’un sien amy,” in L. Cimber and F. Danjou, eds, Archives curieuses
de l’histoire de France depuis Louis XI jusqu’à Louis XVIII (Paris, 1835), v. III,
pp. 119–138.
Nicolas Horfa Rodriguez, “La bataille de Saint-Quentin,” Histoire militaire, 3
(1959): 7–60; Gabriel Stiller, Relation du siège de Thionville de 1558. Une apologie
de François de Guise (Éditions Le Lorrain: Metz, 1959); and David L. Potter,
“The duc de Guise and the Fall of Calais, 1557–1558,” The English Historical
Review, 98/388 (1983): 481–512.
Rodney Palmer and Thomas Frangenberg, eds, The Rise of the Image: Essays on the
History of the Illustrated Art Book (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
Thomas Frangenberg, “The Image and the Moving Eye: Jean Pélerin (Viator)
to Guidobaldo del Monte,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49
(1986): 150–171; and L. Brion-Guerry, Jean Pélerin Viator. Sa place dans l’histoire
de la perspective (Les Belles Lettres: Paris, 1962), which provides Pélerin’s full text
on pp. 217–227.
No t e s
201
116. Giovanni Maria Fara, Albrecht Dürer teorico dell’archittetura: una storia italiana
(Leo S. Olschski Editore: Florence, 1999).
117. Vannoccio Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (Venice, 1540).
118. Serafina Cuomo, “Shooting by the Book: Notes on Niccolò Tartaglia’s Nova
scientia,” History of Science, 35 (1997): 155–188; and Mary J. Henninger-Voss,
“How the ‘New Science’ of Cannons Shook up the Aristotelian Cosmos,” Journal
of the History of Ideas, 63/3 (2002): 371–397.
119. Giovanni Battista Gabrieli, Nicolò Tartaglia: Invenzioni, disfide e sfortune
(Università degli Studi: Siena, 1986).
120. Stillman Drake and I. E. Drabkin, Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Selections
from Tartaglia, Benedetti, Guido Ubaldo, and Galileo (University of Wisconsin
Press: Madison, 1960).
121. Gloria Fivenza, “Giacomo Lanteri da Paratico e il problema delle fortificazioni
nel secolo XVI,” Economia e Storia, 4 (1975): 503–538.
122. Giacomo Lanteri, Due dialoghi (Venice, 1557), p. 54.
123. Due libri del modo di fare le fortificazione di terra intorno alle città, & alle castella
per fortificare (Venice, 1559).
124. Vérin, La gloire, pp. 137–138.
125. Vaughan Hart, “Serlio and the Representation of Architecture,” in Hart and
Hicks, Paper Places, pp. 170–185.
126. Nicholas Adams, “Sebastiano Serlio, Military Architect?” in Christof Theones,
ed., Sebastiano Serlio, Sesto Seminario Internazionale di Storia dell’Architectura,
Centro Internazionale di Studi de Architettura ‘Andrea Palladio’ di Vicenza
(Electa: Milan, 1989), pp. 222–227; and June Gwendolyn Johnson, “Sebastiano
Serlio’s Treatise on Military Architecture (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich,
Codex icon. 190),” dissertation, UCLA, 1984.
127. David Thomson, Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, les plus excellents bastiments
de France (Sand & Conti: London, 1988); and Françoise Boudon, “Les livres
d’architecture de Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau,” in Jean Guillaume, Les Traités
d’architecture de la Renaissance (Picard: Paris, 1986), pp. 367–396.
128. Jean-Marie Perouse de Montclos, Philibert De l’Orme: Architecte du roi (1514–
1570) (Mengès: Paris, 2000).
129. Joseph Rykwert, The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (MIT Press:
Cambridge, Mass., 1996).
130. Warren van Egmond, “How Algebra Came to France,” in Cynthia Hay, ed.,
Mathematics from Manuscript to Print 1300–1600 (Clarendon Press: Oxford,
1988), pp. 127–144. On Chuquet, see G. Flegg, C. Hay, and B. Moss, eds, Nicolas
Chuquet, Renaissance Mathematician (Reidel: Dordrecht, 1985).
131. Étienne de La Roche, Larismetique (Lyon, 1520).
132. Charles de Bouelles, Géometrie practique (Paris, 1542), reprinted in 1547.
133. Numa Broc, “Quelle est la plus ancienne carte ‘moderne’ de la France?” Annales
de Géographie, 92 (1983): 513–530.
134. Peletier, De l’usage de géometrie (Paris, 1549).
135. Jean Cousin, Livre de Perspective (Paris, 1560).
136. R. Hooykaas and M. G. J. Minnaert, eds, Simon Stevin: Science in the Netherlands
around 1600 (Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague, 1970); and K. Andersen, “Stevin’s
Theory of Perspective: The Origin of a Dutch Academic Approach to Perspective,”
Tractrix, 2 (1990): 25–62.
137. Frederick B. Artz, The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500–1850
(The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1966).
202
No t e s
138. Michael Wolfe, “Building a Bastion in Early Modern Amiens,” Proceedings of the
Western Society for French History, 25 (1998): 36–48.
139. Blanchard, Ingénieurs, p. 46.
140. David Buisseret, Ingénieurs et fortifications avant Vauban. L’organisation d’un
service royale aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles (CTHS Géographie: Paris, 2000).
141. Maximilien Buffenoir, “La famille d’Estrées, XVIe siècle, les grands maîtres de
l’artillerie,” Bulletin de la société historique et scientifique de Soissons, 2 (1957–
1960): 18–86.
142. J. Russell Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings,
Nobles and Estates (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, Md., 1994).
143. Kevin Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea: La Rochelle, 1530–1650. Urban Society,
Religion and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Brill: Leiden, 1997),
pp. 81–82.
144. Du Bellay, Mémoires, v. IV, pp. 100–106. See also the pamphlet entitled Voyage
du roy Françoys Ier en sa ville de La Rochelle l’an 1542 (Paris, 1542).
145. Jonathan Powis, “Guyenne 1548: The Crown, the Province, and Social Order,”
European Studies Review, 12 (1982): 1–16.
Chapter 6
1. Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, 1995).
2. Kathleen Parrow, From Defense to Resistance: Justification of Violence during the
French Wars of Religion (American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Penn.,
1993), vol. 3, pt. 6; and Arlette Jouanna, Le devoir du révolte. La noblesse française
et la gestation de l’État moderne, 1559–1661 (Fayard: Paris, 1989).
3. Janine Garrisson, Protestants du Midi, 1559–1598 (Privat: Toulouse, 1980); and
Miriam Yardeni, “Histoires de villes, histoire de provinces et naissance d’une
identité française au XVIe siècle,” Journal des Savants (1993): 111–134, for these
contrasting interpretations.
4. While this transition varied according to province, an excellent study of the
regional dynamics involved can be found in James B. Collins, Classes, Estates,
and Orders in Early-Modern Brittany (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
1994).
5. Daniel Hickey, The Coming of French Absolutism: The Struggle for Tax Reform
in theProvince of Dauphiné, 1540–1640 (University of Toronto Press: Toronto,
1986); L. Scott Van Doren, “Civil War Taxation and the Foundations of Fiscal
Absolutism,” Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French
History, 3 (1976): 35–43; idem, “Military Administration and Intercommunal
Relations in Dauphiné,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 130/1
(1986): 79–100.
6. Claude Michaud, “Finances et guerres de religion en France,” Revue d’histoire
moderne et contemporaine, 28 (1981): 572–596.
7. James B. Wood, The King’s Army, Warfare, Soldiers and Society During the Early
Wars of Religion in France, 1526–76 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
1996); and David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in
France (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2001).
8. See Madeleine Lazard, “Deux guerriers pacifists: Michel de Castelnau et François
de la Noue,” in Gabriel-Andre Perouse, Andre Thierry, and Andre Tournon, eds,
L’homme de guerre au XVIe siècle (Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne:
Saint-Étienne, 1992), pp. 51–60.
No t e s
203
9. François Billacois, The Duel in Early Modern France (Yale University Press: New
Haven, Conn., 1990).
10. James B. Woods, “The Impact of the Wars of Religion: A View of France in 1581,”
Sixteenth Century Journal, 15 (1984): 131–168; and Jean Prouzet, Les guerres de
religion dans les pays de l’Aude 1560–1596 (E. Ogier: Tulle, 1975).
11. A.D. Orléans, A. 2185, n. 12, October 18, 1563, and n. 16, Charles IX to Maire et
Écheveins de la ville d’Orléans, February 16, 1564, Paris.
12. B.N. Fonds français ms 15381, unpaginated.
13. Jean-Pierre Brancourt, “La monarchie et les châteaux du XVIe au XVIIe siècles,”
XVIIe Siècle, 30 (1978): 25–36.
14. Jean-Paul Meuret, Les églises fortifiées de la Thiérache (Société archéologique et
historique de Vervins et de la Thiérache: Vervins, 1977); and Gabriel Loirette,
“Fortifications des églises girondines au XVIe siècle,” Bulletin et mémoire de la
société archéologique de Bordeaux, 46 (1935): 33–44.
15. Jean-Eric Iung, “Le poids des guerres de religion en basse Auvergne, la nourriture
des troupes royales de 1567 à 1588,” Revue de la Haute-Auvergne, 65 (2003):
317–339.
16. Marie-Louise Fracard, “Les activités d’un munitionnaire au XVIe siècle. Le
Niortais Amaury Bourguignon, seigneur de La Barberie,” Bulletin philologique
(1977): 95–112.
17. Jean-Eric Iung, “L’organisation du service des vivres aux armées de 1550 à 1650,”
Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 141 (1983): 269–306.
18. B.N. Fonds Français mss 4765, fol. 15–54.
19. B. M. Bourges, EE 7.
20. Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe (The Johns Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore, Md., 1997).
21. David L. Potter, “The French Protestant Nobility in 1562: The ‘Associacion de
Monseigneur le Prince de Condé,’ ” French History, 15 (2001): 307– 328; and
Jean de Pablo, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire des institutions militaires
huguenotes,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 47 (1956): 64–76; 48 (1957):
192–216.
22. Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in SixteenthCentury Paris (Oxford University Press: New York, 1991), pp. 160–171; and Philip
Benedict, “The Saint-Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in the Provinces,” Historical
Journal, 21 (1978): 205–226.
23. Roger Pierre, “Un episode peu connu des guerres dites ‘de religion’: ‘Les Défenseurs
de la Cause Commune,” Association universitaire d’études drômoises, 15 (1968):
6–14; and B. Quesnal, “Paysannerie et gens de guerre au XVIe siècle,” Comptesrendus à l’Académie agriculturelle française, 66 (1980): 45–62.
24. Guillaume Barles, “Un episode des guerres de religion en Provence: Carcistes et
Razats (1575–1579),” Bulletin de la société d’études scientifiques et archéologiques de
Draguignan et du Var, 23 & 24 (1978–1979): 29–55; and J. H. M. Salmon, “Peasant
Revolt in Vivarais, 1575–1580,” French Historical Studies, 11 (1979): 1–28.
25. See Yves-Marie Bercé, Croquants et Nu-Pieds (Seuil: Paris, 1974); and René
Pillorget, Les mouvements insurrectionels de Provence entre 1594 et 1715 (A. Pedone:
Paris, 1975).
26. Robert Sauzet, Chroniques des frères ennemis: catholiques et protestants à Nîmes du
XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paradigme: Caen, 1992).
27. Joshua Evans Millet, “A City Converted: The Protestant Reform in Nîmes 1532–
1567,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2000, pp. 217–219. A.D. Gard, Bib.
Mun. Nîmes ms 185 (13837): “Enqête sur le massacre dit la Michelade.”
204
No t e s
28. J.-J. Meunier, “Un fait divers du siège de Bourges en 1562 raconté par un témoin
de marque, Ambroise Paré,” Cahiers archéologique et historique de Berry, 19
(1969/1970): 35–37; and Vicomte de Brimont, Le XVIe siècle et les guerres de la
réforme en Berry (Bourges, 1905).
29. Mark W. Konnert, Civic Agendas and Religious Passion: Chalons-Sur-Marne
during the French Wars of Religion, 1560–1594 (Truman State University Press:
Kirksville, Mo., 1994); and Penny Roberts, A City in Conflict: Troyes during the
Wars of Religion (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1996).
30. Garrison, Protestants du Midi, pp. 37–56; and Jacques Dubourg, Les guerres de
religion dans le sud-ouest (Éditions de Sud- Ouest: Bordeaux, 1992).
31. Mark Greengrass, “The Anatomy of a Religious Riot in Toulouse in May 1562,”
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 34 (1983): 367–382.
32. Kaiser Wolfgang, Marseille au temps des troubles (1559–1596). Morphologie sociale et
lutte des factions (Presses de l’EHESS: Paris, 1992); and Ellery Schalk, “Marseille
and the Urban Experience in Sixteenth- Century France: Communal Values,
Religious Reform, and Absolutism,” Historical Reflections, 27 (2001): 241–300.
33. David Nicholls, “Protestants, Catholics, and Magistrates in Tours, 1562–1572.
The Making of a Catholic City during the Religious Wars,” French History 8
(1994): 14–33.
34. Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge/New York, 1981), pp. 49–71.
35. Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires, 1521–1575 (Gallimard: Paris, 1964), p. 513; and
Arnaud d’Antin de Vaillac, “Monluc face à une guerre insurrectionelle (1562–
1569),” Bulletin de la société archéologique et historique du Gers, 78 (1977): 482–
495; 79 (1978): 53–66.
36. B.N. Fonds français ms. 15381, unpaginated.
37. Jean Boutier, Alain Dewerpe, and Daniel Nordman, eds, Un tour de France royal. Le
voyage de Charles IX (1565–1566) (Aubier Montaigne: Paris, 1984), pp. 250–251.
38. Kevin Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea: La Rochelle, 1530–-1650. Urban Society,
Religion and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Brill: Leiden, 1997), p. 195.
39. BM Amiens EE.273 and BN Fonds français ms 18781, fol. 21.
40. A. Fontanon, Les édits et ordonnances des rois de France (Paris, 1611), v. 1,
pp. 411–427.
41. Jean de Pablo, “La troisième guerre de religion (1568–1570),” Bulletin de la société
d’histoire du protestantisme français, 102 (1956): 57–91.
42. Jean de Pablo, “La bataille de la Roche l’Abeille,” Bulletin de la société d’histoire du
protestantisme français, 101 (1955): 1–25.
43. Marin Liberge, Discours du succes des affaires passez au siège de Poictiers (Paris,
1569) and his fuller account, almost a martyrology, the next year, Le siège de
Poictiers (Poitiers, 1570).
44. Clovis Boutin, “La bataille de Moncontour, 3 octobre 1569,” Bulletin de la société
scientifique de Châtellerault, 33 (1984): 33–46.
45. Janine Garrrison-Estèbe, “Les Saint Barthélemys des villes du Midi,” in Colloque
l’amiral de Coligny et son temps, Paris, 1972 (Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme
Français: Paris, 1974), pp. 717–729, 748–752.
46. See BN 87C 131083 and BN G150827 for these contrasting views.
47. Anonymous, Discours et recueil du siège de la Rochelle en l’année 1573 (Lyon,
1573).
48. See Philip Conner, Huguenot Heartland: Montauban and Southern French
Calvinism during the Wars of Religion (Ashate: Burlington, Vt., 2002).
No t e s
205
49. Hélène Guicharnauld, “Les fortifications de Montauban,” Bulletin de la société
archéologique et historique de Tarn-et-Garonne, 103 (1978): 7–23.
50. Le commandant Delaval, “Les anciennes fortifications de Montauban et le siège
de 1621,” Bulletin de la société archéologique et historique de Tarn-et-Garonne, 31
(1904): 73–90, 193–209, and 357–382, p. 79, n. 4.
51. Hector Joly, Histoire particulière des plus memorables choses qui se sont passées au siège
de Montauban et de l’acheminement d’icelui (np, 1624), p. 6. Joly was a Calvinist
pastor.
52. Guicharnauld, “Les fortifications,” pp. 20–22.
53. See Albert Fischer, Daniel Specklin aus Strassburg (1536–1589): Festungsbaumeister,
Ingenieur und Kartograph (Jan Thorbecke Verlag: Sigmaringen, 1996).
54. Géralde Nakam, Au lendemain de la Saint Barthélemy: Guerre civile et famine: Histoire mémorable du siège de Sancerre (1573) de Jean de Léry (Éditions
Anthropos: Paris, 1975); and Véronique Larcade, “Jean du Léry au siège de
Sancerre,” in Histoire d’un voyage en la terre de Brésil (Université Michel de
Montaigne Bordeaux 3: Pessac, 2000), pp. 49–87.
55. BM Bourges GG 124. Frank Delteil, “Le siège de Sancerre, 1573,” Bulletin de la
société d’histoire du protestantisme français, 120 (1974): 494–498.
56. Janet Whatley, “Food and the Limits of Civility: The Testimony of Jean de Léry,”
Sixteenth Century Journal, 15 (1984): 387–400.
57. L. Scott Van Doren, “Revolt and Reaction in the City of Romans, Dauphiné
(1579–80),” Sixteenth Century Journal, 5 (1974): 71–100; and Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie, Carnival in Romans (George Braziller: New York, 1979), trans., Mary
Feeney.
58. Peter Ascoli, “French Provincial Cities and the Catholic League,” Occasional
Papers of the American Society for Reformation Research, 1 (1977): 15–37; and
Wolfgang Kaiser, “Die ‘bonnes villes’ und die ‘Sainte Union’. Neuere Forschungen
über die Endphase der französischen Bürgerkriege,” Francia, 13 (1985):
638–650.
59. Robert Descimon and Élie Barnavi, Qui étaient les Seize? (Fédération des sociétés
historiques et archéologiques de Paris et l’Ile-de-France: Paris, 1984).
60. Ernest Prarond, La ligue à Abbeville, 1576–1594 (Dumouline: Paris, 1873),
3 volumes.
61. Annette Finley-Croswhite, “Engendering the Wars of Religion: Female Agency
during the Catholic League in Dijon,” French Historical Studies, 20 (1997):
127–154.
62. Edward Dickerman, “A Neglected Phase of the Spanish Armada: The Catholic
League’s Picard Offensive of 1587,” Canadian Journal of History, 11 (1976):
19–24; and Annette Finley-Croswhite, “Confederates and Rivals: Picard Urban
Alliances during the Catholic League, 1588–1594,” Canadian Journal of History,
31 (1996): 359–376.
63. Mark W. Konnert, Local Politics in the French Wars of Religion: The Towns of
Champagne, the Duc de Guise, and the Catholic League, 1560–95 (Ashgate:
Aldershot, 2006).
64. Henri Drouot, Mayenne et la Bourgogne: étude sur la Ligue (Privat: Paris and Dijon,
1937).
65. Jean Canu, “Les guerres de religion et le protestantisme dans la Manche,” Revue
départementale de la Manche, 14 (1972): 225–326.
66. Gilles Foucqueran, “Les prémises de la République malouine (1585–1590),”
Annales de la société historique et archéologique de St-Malo (1985): 265–282.
206
No t e s
67. François Hauchecorne, “Orléans ligueur en 1591,” Actes 93e Congrès Soc. Savantes
Tours, 1968, Bulletin philologique (Université François Rabelais: Tours, 1971), v. II,
pp. 845–859.
68. Bernadatte Lécureux, “Une ville bretonne sous la dictature d’un governement
ligueur: Morlaix en 1589–1590,” Mémoires de la société d’histoire et d’archéologie de
Bretagne, 66 (1989): 137–155.
69. B. Taylor, “La Bretagne et la première révolte de la Ligue (1584–1585),” Mémoires
de la société historique et archéologique de Bretagne, 49 (1969): 39–70.
70. Elizabeth Tingle, “Nantes and the Origins of the Catholic League of 1589,”
71. Louis Guibert, La Ligue à Limoges (Imprimerie-Libraire Ducourtieux: Limoges,
1884).
72. Christian Desplat, “Le rôle de Guyenne dans la conquête du royaume (1576–
1589),” in Colloque Henri IV—le roi et la reconstruction du royaume, sept. 1989
(J & D. Éditions: Pau, 1990), pp. 125–144.
73. Mark Greengrass, “The Saint Union in the Provinces: The Case of Toulouse,” The
74. Claire Dolan, “Des images en actions. Cité, pouvoir municipal et crises pendant les
guerres de religion à Aix-en-Provence,” in L. Turgeon, ed., Les productions symboliques de pouvoir XVIe–XVIIe siècle (Sillery: Quebec, 1990), pp. 65–86.
75. Pierre Pinon, “La capitale ducale de Charles III à Charles IV: Ville-Neuvre et
architecture nouvelle,” in L’Art en Lorraine au temps de Jacques Callot (Réunion
des musées nationaux: Nancy, 1992), pp. 69–94.
76. Alain Croix, Nantes et le pays nantais au XVIe siècle (S.E.V.P.E.N.: Paris, 1974);
and La ville construite: Nantes, XVIe–XXe siècle (ARDEPA: Nantes, 1991).
77. Francine Leclercq, “Les État provinciaux et la Ligue en Basse Auvergne de 1589 à
1594,” Bulletin philologique et historique, 2 (1966): 913–930; and Henri Drouot,
“Les conseils provinciaux de la Sainte-Union (1589–1595),” Annales du Midi, 65
(1953): 415–433.
78. Pierre Dardel, “Convention entre les habitants de Bolbec et les sieurs de Prêtreval,
Bobestre et Orange. Épisode de la Ligue en Normandie [1592],” Bulletin de la
société de l’histoire de Normandie, 16 (1968): 303–310.
79. A. Dufour, “Histoire du siège de Paris sous Henri IV en 1590,” Mémoires de la
société historique de Paris, 7 (1880): 175–270.
80. Hugh A. Lloyd, The Rouen Campaign, 1590–1592: Politics, Warfare and the
Early Modern State (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973); and Benedict, Rouen,
pp. 217–222.
81. Luc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identify during
the French Wars of Religion (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2002).
82. Michael Wolfe, “Writing the City under Attack during the French Wars of
Religions,” in Carlo de Dottor, ed., Situazioni d’assedio (CARLE: Siena, 2002),
pp. 179–183.
83. Philip Benedict, Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and
Perrissin (Droz: Geneva, 2007).
84. Denis Pallier, Recherches sur l’imprimerie à Paris pendant la Ligue (1585–1594)
(Droz: Geneva, 1976).
85. Michel de Waele, “Image de force, perception de faiblesse: La clémence d’Henri
IV,” Renaissance and Reform/Réforme et Renaissance, 17 (1993): 51–60; and
Michael Wolfe, “Amnesty and Oubliance in the French Wars of Religion.” Cahiers
d’histoire: La Revue du Département d’Histoire de l’Université de Montréal, 4 (16)
(1997): 45–68.
No t e s
207
86. Annette Finley-Croswhite, Henry IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in
French Urban Society, 1589–1610 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
87. Yves Durand, “Les républicains urbains en France à la fin du XVIe siècle,” Société
d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’arrondissement de Saint-Malo (1990): 205–244.
88. The following discussion rests largely on the work of Finley-Croswhite, Henri IV
and the Towns.
89. Michel Duval, “La démilitarisation des forteresses au lendemain des guerres de la
Ligue (1593–1628),” Mémoires de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Bretagne,
69 (1992): 283–305.
90. A case in point was Nantes, the last major town to submit to Henri IV. Guy
Saupin, Nantes au temps de l’édit (Geste Éditions: La Crèche, 1998).
91. François de Dainville, “L’enseignement des mathématiques dans les collèges
jésuites de France du seizième au dix-huitième siècle,” Revue d’histoire des sciences
et de leurs applications, 7 (1954): 6–21, 109–121; and Numa Broc, La Géographie
de la Renaissance (1420–1620) (Édition du C.T.H.S.: Paris, 1986).
92. Much of the discussion that follows is based upon the seminal work of David
Buisseret. See in particular his Ingénieurs et fortifications avant Vauban.
L’organisation d’un service royal aux XVIe–XVIIe siècles (CTHS: Paris, 2000).
93. Alex Keller, A Theater of Machines (Chapman & Hall: London, 1965); and Natalie
Zemon Davis, “The Protestantism of Jacques Besson,” Technology and Culture,
7/4 (1966): 509–515.
94. Agostino Ramelli, The Diverse and Ingenious Machines, Martha Track Gnudi, ed.
and trans. (The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, Md., 1976).
95. Martha Track Gnudi, “Agostino Ramelli and Ambroise Bachot,” Technology and
Culture, 15/4 (1974): 614–625.
96. Claude Flamand, La guide des fortifications (Montbéliard: 1597). His two books
on mathematics appeared in 1612.
97. Stéphan Gaber, “Jean Errard de Bar-le-Duc, ingénieur des fortifications du roi de
France Henri IV,” Le Pays lorrain (1990): 105–118; and Hughes Marsat, “Jean
Errard, entre loyauté dynastique et engagement confessional,” Bulletin de la
Société d’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 153/1 (2007): 9–19.
98. Jean Errard, Le premier livre des instruments mathematiques (Nancy, 1584); Les
six premiers livres des elemens d’Euclide (Paris, 1598), and Les neuf premiers livrees
des elemens d’Euclide (Paris, 1605).
99. Henri de Suberville, L’Henry-metre, instrument royale, et universal (Paris,
1598).
100. Joseph Boillot, Modelles artifices de fev et divers instrvmes de gverre (Chaumonten-Bassing, 1598), p. 10.
101. Jacques Perret, Des fortifications et artifices, architecture et perspective de Jacques
Perret (Paris, 1602); engravings by Thomas de Leu.
102. David Rivault, sieur de Flurance, Les elemens de l’artillerie (Paris, 1608) and
Jacques de Fumée, L’arcenal de la milicie françoise (Paris, 1613).
103. François Dainville, “Le Théâtre françois de M. Bouguereau, 1594. Premier atlas
national de France,” in Actes du 85e Congrès national des sociétés savantes (Paris,
1961), pp. 3–50; and Roger Hervé, “L’oeuvre cartographique de Nicolas de
Nicolay et d’Antoine de Laval (1544–1619),” Bulletin de la Section de Géographie
du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1955 (1956): 223–263.
104. Michael Wolfe, “Prélude à la paix: le siège d’Amiens (1597) et ses conséquences
militaries et diplomatiques,” in Jean-François Labourdette, Jean-Pierre Poussou,
and Marie-Catherine Vignal, eds, Le Traité de Vervins (Presses de l’Université de
Paris-Sorbonne: Paris, 2000), pp. 61–79.
208
No t e s
105. Roger Agache, “Images du siège d’Amiens de 1597 ou l’émphemère célébrité du
maleur,” Terre Picardie, 9 (1985): 32–40; idem, “La poliorcétique revue d’avion.
Le cas du siège d’Amiens par Henri IV,” Revue d’archéologie moderne, 4 (1986):
15–32.
106. Richard L. Goodbar, ed., The Edict of Nantes: Five Essays and a New Translation
(The National Huguenot Society: Bloominton, Minn., 1998).
107. Diane Margolf, Religion and Royal Justice in Early Modern France: The Paris
Chambre de l’Édit, 1598–1665 (Truman State University Press: Kirksville, Mo.,
2003).
Chapter 7
1. Maximilien de Bethune, Duke of Sully, Les Oeconomies royales, Bernard Barbiche
and David Buisseret, eds (Klinksieck: Paris, 1970), elaborates on this vision of
reform.
2. A.D. Lubinskaya, French Absolutism: The Crucial Phase, 1620–1629 (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 1968).
3. Suzanne Martinet, “Le siège de Laon sous Henri IV 1594,” Société historique de
Haute-Picardie, 23 (1978): 83–96.
4. James Collins, “Un problème toujours mal connu: Les finances d’Henri IV,” in
Henri IV. Le Roi et la reconstruction du royaume (L’Association Henri IV: Pau,
1989), pp. 145–164.
5. David Buisseret, “Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps in France before the Accession
of Louis XIV,” in Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography
as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe (University of Chicago Press:
Chicago, Ill., 1992), pp. 99–123.
6. Michel Desbrière, “L’oeuvre de Jacques Fougeu relative à la Champagne septentrionale pendant le règne de Henri IV,” in Catherine Bousquet-Bressolier, ed.,
L’oeil du cartographe. La représentation géographique de Moyen Âge à nos jours
(CTHS: Paris, 1995), pp. 233–244; David Buissert, “L’atelier cartographique de
Sully à Bontin: l’oeuvre de Jacques Fougeu,” XVIe Siècle, 174 (1992): 109–116;
François Boudon, “La Topographie française de Claude Chastillon. Proposition
pour une grille d’analyse des gravures,” Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale,
18 (1985): 54–73; and François Dainville, Le Dauphiné et ses confins vus par
l’ingénieur d’Henri IV Jean de Beins (Droz: Geneva, 1968).
7. David Buisseret, Sully and the Growth of Centralized Government in France,
1598–1610 (Eyre and Spottiswoode: London, 1968).
8. Yves-Marie Bercé, Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: An Essay on
the History of Political Violence, trans. Joseph Bergin (New York: Saint Martin’s
Press, 1987).
9. Alan James, “Huguenot Militancy and the Seventeenth-Century Wars of
Religion,” in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer, eds, Society and Culture
in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), pp. 209–223.
10. J. H. M. Salmon, “Rohan and Interest of State,” in Staatsräson. international
Kolloquium (Tübingen, 1974), pp. 152–179; and H. Dubled, “Le duc Henri de
Rohan et la révolte des Protestants du Midi jusqu’à la paix d’Alès (1617–1629),”
in Annales du Midi, 99 (1987): 53–78.
11. Kevin Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea: La Rochelle, 1530–1650. Urban Society,
Religion and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Brill: Leiden, 1997),
pp. 251–253.
No t e s
209
12. BM de Nîmes ms 158–159 (13822) and “Plan de la ville de Nismes avec ses fortifications” (1629) in BN 84C 122237.
13. BN 95 C 212804 and “Diaire de Joseph Guillaudeau, sieur de Beaupréau (1584–
1643),” Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis, 38 (1908): 1–39, p. 37.
14. Liliane Crété, La Rochelle au temps du grand siège, 1627–1628 (Perrin: Paris, 2001),
pp. 40–43.
15. Some twenty-four thousand residents, five thousand of them Catholics, became
packed into core neighborhoods that comprised less than a half-square mile.
Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, pp. 48–49.
16. Bertrand Schnerb, ed., Les enceintes urbaines XIIIe–XVIe siècle (CTHS: Paris,
1999), p. 238.
17. Anonymous, Les desseins et entreprise faicts à La Rochelle (Paris 1621).
18. Jean-François Fau and Jean Claude Fau, Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne: plan et
notice (Éditions du CNRS: Paris, 1983).
19. François Dainville, “Cartes des places protestantes en 1620 dessinées à la fin du
règne de Louis XIII,” Journal des Savants (1968): 214–243.
20. Jean-François Bouyssou, “La composition sociale de révoltés de Rohan à Castres
(1610–1629),” Revue du Tarn, 58 (1970): 145–167.
21. Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, pp. 241–243.
22. Ibid., pp. 278–291.
23. Georges Viard, “Catholiques et protestants à Langres au début du XVIIe siècle.
L’émotion du 2 janvier 1613,” Bulletin de la société historique et archéologique de
Langre, 17 (1977): 27–45.
24. Albert Baudon, “Le siège de Rethel en 1617,” Annales du Marne, 63 (1921):
155–166.
25. Brian Sandberg, “ ‘The Furious Persecutions that God’s Churches Suffer in This
Region’: Religious Violence and Coercion in Early Seventeenth- Century France,”
Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 29 (2003): 42–52.
26. Denys d’Aussy, “Henri de Rohan et le siège de Saint-Jean-d’Angély 1611–1621,”
Revue des questions historiques, 32 (1882): 98–146.
27. “Diaire de Joseph Guillaudeau,” p. 179.
28. Ibid., pp. 188–190.
29. Jean-Pierre Amalric, “L’épreuve de force entre Montauban et le pouvoir royal vue
par la diplomatie espagnole,” Bulletin de la société de Tarn-et-Garonne, 108 (1983):
25–40.
30. Delaval, “Les anciennes fortifications de Montauban et le siège de 1621,” Bulletin
de la société archéologique de Tarn-et-Garonne, 32 (1904): 73–90, 193–209, 357–
382, 374.
31. Ibid., pp. 195–198.
32. Ibid., p. 206.
33. Ibid., pp. 257–362.
34. Ibid., pp. 367–368. On Luynes, see Sharon Kettering, Power and Reputation at
the Court of Louis XIII: Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621) (Manchester
35. Delaval, “Les anciennes fortifications,” p. 370.
36. P. Coste, “Démolition des châteaux de Tartas et de Mont-de-Marsan en 1622.
Siège de Saint-Sever en 1622,” Bulletin de la société Borda, 44 (1920): 9–17.
37. “Diarie de Joseph Guillaudeau,” p. 211.
38. Alan James, “The Development of French Naval Policy in the Seventeenth
Century: Richelieu’s Early Aims and Ambitions,” French History 12/4 (1998):
384–402.
210
No t e s
39. Anonymous, Le banissement des prêtres de l’Oratoire hor de La Rochelle (Paris,
1621).
40. “Ordinances et proclamations, 147,” in Liliane Crété, La vie quotidienne à La
Rochelle au temps du grand siège (Hachette: Paris, 1987), p. 120.
41. David Parker, La Rochelle and the French Monarchy: Conflict and Order in
Seventeenth-Century France (Royal Historical Society: London, 1980) remains the
definitive account upon which much of the ensuing analysis relies.
42. Anonymous, Manifeste contenant les cause et les raisons (La Rochelle, 1627).
43. Jacques Vichot, Les gravures des sièges de Ré et La Rochelle (1625–1628). Deux chefs
d’oeuvres de Jacques Callot. Étude historique et descriptive (Association des amis des
musées de la marine—Palais de Chaillot: Paris, 1971).
44. L. Battifol, “Au temps du siège de La Rochelle,” Revue de Paris (1902): 118–155.
45. SHAT Génie mss 208a.
46. Crété, La Rochelle, pp. 148–149.
47. Printed portraits of Métézeau after the siege compared him to Archimedes. See BN
G152876.
48. Targoni proposed stretching a net across the channel to prevent fish from entering
the harbor, thus cutting off one of the few remaining sources of food for the starving city.
49. Horric de Beaucaire, “Les machines de Du Plessis-Besançon au siège de La Rochelle
en 1628,” Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis, 18 (1890): 368–387.
50. See BN P12380 and BN P12371 for examples.
51. J. Favre, “Le siège de Mirabel en 1628,” Revue Vivarais, 30 (1923): 229–233,
267–275; 31 (1924): 17–20.
52. Calendar of State Papers—Domestic, v. 101, n. 47III April 28, 1628, Plymouth
and Callot, p. 99.
53. P. S. Callot, Jean Guiton, dernier maire de l’ancienne commune de La Rochelle, 1628
(Quartier Latin: La Rochelle, 1967 [1880]).
54. “Diarie de Joseph Guillaudeau,” pp. 377–379.
55. Le Mercure Français, n. 14, part 2, p. 719.
56. Callot, Jean Guiton, p. 50.
57. BN G152861.
58. Natalie Fiquet and François-Yves Le Blanc, Brouage. Ville royale (Éditions patrimoines & medias: Chauray, 1996).
59. “Diarie de Joseph Guillaudeau,” pp. 405–407.
61. “Diarie de Joseph Guillaudeau,” p. 380.
62. Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, pp. 359–367.
63. Ibid., p. 366.
64. In 1636, Louis XIII again used the same procedures in Rouen. Jean-Pierre
Bardet, Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: La mutation d’un espace social (Presses
Universitaires de France: Paris, 1983), p. 77.
65. A contract issued by the city in November 1627 for work on the city’s defenses; six
years later, one of the masons who bid on this contract, a certain Jean Bourgeois,
was awarded one to tear down these very same walls. A.D. Tarn et Garonne, 3 EE1
fol. 224, liasse 4–6.
66. Schnerb, Les enceintes urbaines, pp. 231–238.
68. Jean-Pierre Brancourt, “La monarchie et les châteaux du XVIe au XVIIe siècles,”
XVIIe Siècle, 30 (1978): 25–36.
No t e s
211
69. François-Joseph Ruggiu, Les élites et les villes moyennes en France et en Angleterre
(XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles) (L’Harmattan: Paris and Montréal, 1997); Christophe
Blanquie, Les présidiaux de Richelieu: Justice et venalité (Éditions Christian: Paris,
2000); and Michel Cassan, ed., Les officiers “moyens” à l’époque moderne: pouvoir,
culture, identité (Presses Universitaires de Limoges: Limoges, 1998).
70. A.D. Tarn et Garonne, G 3 EE 1 (unpaginated).
71. A painting of Richelieu receiving the town’s surrender hangs in Versailles.
72. A.D. Tarn et Garonne, AA6 Livre Jaune fol. 85 r. “Articles presentez au Roy par les
Deputez de la ville en l’an 1629 [22 August] et la réponse audits articles en marge.”
73. A.D. Tarn et Garonne, G EE 1 (unpaginated).
74. P. Coste, “Démolition des châteaux de Tartas et de Mont-de-Marsan en 1622.
Siège de Saint-Sever en 1622,” Bulletin de la société Borda, 44 (1920): 9–17.
75. Sheila Bonde, Fortress-Churches of Languedoc: Architecture, Religion and Conflict
in the High Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), p. 119.
76. B.N. ff. ms 3150 and Roger Nègre, “Ce qu’il advent des fortifications de la collégiale Saint-Vincent à Montréal après le départ des partisans de Monsieur et du duc
de Montmorency en 1632,” Bulletin de la société des études scientifiques de l’Aude
1969, 68 (1968): 243–276.
77. A.D. Tarn et Garonne, 3 EE1 fol. 224, liasse 24.
78. G. d’Avenel, Lettres, Instructions Diplomatiques, et Papiers d’État du cardinal de
Richelieu (Paris, 1853), v. 5, p. 129.
79. René Souriac, ed., Décentralisation administrative dans l’ancienne France.
Autonomie commingeoise et pouvoir d’État, 1540–1630 (Association les Amis des
Archives de la Haute Garonne: Toulouse, 1992), 2 volumes; Hélène Vésian, Evelyne
Falvard, and Claude Gouron, eds, Châteaux et bastides en Haute Provence aux
XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Aubanel: Avignon, 1991); and Nicolas Faucherre,
“Fortifications royales [du pays basque, Pyrénées-Atlantiques] XVIe–XVIIIe siècles,” Les Monuments historiques, 147 (1986): 11–16.
80. Edmond Moppert, “Au pays messin en 1635–38. Pourquoi les églises fortifiées?” Voix lorraine (1969): 18–19; and Jean-Paul Meuret, Les églises fortifiées de
la Thiérache (Société archéologique et historique de Vervins et de la Thiérache:
Vervins, 1977).
81. B.M. Nîmes ms 57 (13944), also in M. Germain, Mémoires de la société archéologiques
de Montpellier, 7 (1877): 1–100.
82. B.N. FF ms 22205–22221 provides information on specific demolition projects
from Picardy to Languedoc.
83. Philippe Trottman, Les derniers châteaux-forts: les prolongements de la fortification
médiévale en France, 1634–1914 (G. Klopp: Thionville, 1993).
84. Richard Louis Cleary, The Place Royale and Urban Design in the Ancien Régime
(Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1999); and Ilaria Valente, Figure dello
spazio aperto. La place royale e l’architettura urbana in Francia (UNICOPLI:
Milan, 2000).
85. M. Georges-Leroy, “Nancy-ENSIC,” Bilan scientifique 1993-DRAC Lorraine,
Service régional de l’archéologie, 1994.
86. Hilary Ballon, The Paris of Henry IV: Architecture and Urbanism (The MIT Press:
87. Émil Baudon, Un urbaniste au XVIIe siècle, Clément Métézeau (Les Cahiers
d’études ardennaises: Mézières, 1956).
88. Hélène Guicharnauld, Montauban au XVIIe siècle. Architecture et urbanisme,
1560–1685 (Picard: Paris, 1991).
212
No t e s
89. B.N. Coll. Dupuy v. 550, fol. 46, “Mémoire pour faire voir que depuis
l’establissement de la monarchie françoise, l’Estat n’a pas eu vingt ans de paix
conséquetifs.”
90. Orest Ranum, Richelieu and the Councilors of Louis XIII (Oxford University Press:
Oxford, 1963); and Robert Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial
Governors of Early Modern France (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn.,
1978).
91. Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France
(Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1986).
92. Richard Bonney, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–
1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); and Douglas Baxter, Servants
of the Sword: French Military Intendants of the Army, 1630–1670 (University of
Illinois Press: Urbana, 1976).
93. David A. Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France,
1624–1642 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2001) argues for the lower
number, whereas John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army,
1610–1715 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1997) posits the latter.
94. Gabrielo Busca, Architettura Militare (Milan, 1619); and P. A. Barca, Avertimenti
e Regole (Milan, 1620).
95. See, e.g., Hendrik Hondius, Description & brève déclaration des règles générales de
la fortification (The Hague, 1625).
96. On Stevin, see J. T. Devreese and G. Vanden Berghe, Wonder en is gheen wonder.
De geniale wereld van Simon Stevin 1548–1620 (Davidsfonds: Louvain, 2003).
97. Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’Idea della architetuttura universale (Venice, 1615).
98. Francis Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Routedge & Kegan Paul: London,
1972); and P. Choné, “La Lorraine vue par un architecte italien. Le voyage de
Vincenzo Scamozzi, 28 mars–15 avril, 1600,” Le pays lorrain, 1 (1982): 65–88.
99. Samuel Marolais, Fortification ou Architecture Militaire (The Hague, 1615); and
Géometrie . . . Nécessaire à la Fortification (The Hague, 1628) contain finely rendered illustrations to accompany its glosses on Dutch and Italian works.
100. Honorat de Meynier, Les nouvelles inventions de fortifier les places (Paris, 1626).
101. Denis Zacarie, Traicté d’arithmétique, géométrie (Paris, 1618). See T. L. Davis,
“The Autobiography of Denis Zacharie: An Account of an Alchemist’s Life,” Isis
2 (1926): 287–299.
102. They were collected in his Mémoires mathématiques (Paris, 1613–1627), 2 volumes. See also Denis Henrion, L’vsage dv mécomètre (Paris, 1630).
103. See, for one among many examples, Pierre Le Mardelé, Les quinze livres des éléments géométriques d’Euclide (Paris, 1622), reprinted in expanded editions in
1632 and 1645.
104. Surveying works, all reprinted many times, include Jean Tarde, Les usages du
quadrant à l’esguille (Paris, 1621); Jean Boulenger, La géométrie (Paris: 1623);
and Michel Coignet, La géométrie (Paris, 1626). On explosives, see among others, Jean Appier Hanzelet, La pyrotechnique (Pont-à-Mousson, 1630).
105. René Le Normant, Discours pour le restablissement de la milice de France (Rouen,
1632).
106. Jean Fabre, Les practiques . . . sur l’ordre et reigle de fortifier (Paris, 1629).
107. Jean-François Pernot, “L’ingénieur Pierre d’Argencourt, le fidèle du cardinal,”
in Mélanges Corvisier: Le Soldat, la Stratégie, la Mort (Economica: Paris, 1989),
pp. 54–62.
108. B.N. C & Pl, Ge CC715(31) and Ge DD4121(62), of areas around Metz.
No t e s
213
109. Jean-François Pernot, “La guerre et l’infrastructure de l’état moderne: Antoine de
Ville, ingénieur du Roi (1596?–1656?), la pensée d’un technician au service de la
mobilization totale du royaume,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 121
(1987): 404–426.
110. Antoine de Ville, Les fortifications (Lyon, 1636).
111. Antoine de Ville, De la charge des gouverneurs des places (Paris, 1639).
112. Myriem Foncin, “La collection des cartes d’un château bourguignon, le château
de Bontin,” Actes du 93e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes (Paris, 1970),
pp. 43–75; idem and M. de la Roncière, “Jacques Martez et la cartographie des
côtes de Provence au XVIIe siècle,” Actes du 90e Congrès national des Sociétés
Savantes (Nice. 1965), pp. 9–28; Antoine de Roux, “Sébastien de Beaulieu: le
cartographe des sièges et batailles de la guerre de Trente Ans,” Bulletin du Comité
français de cartographie, 130 (1991): 23–27; and Jean-Marc Depluvez, “Noble
Jacques Callot, ingénieur de son altesse de Lorraine,” in Jacques Callot (1592–
1635) (R.M.N.: Paris, 1992), pp. 181–198.
113. Claude Petitfrère, ed., Images et imaginaires de la ville à l’époque moderne
(Maison des sciences de la ville: Tours, 1998); and David Buisseret, Envisioning
the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography (University of Chicago Press: Chicago,
1998).
114. Catherine Bousquet-Bressolier, “Le langage de la peinture dans la cartographie
topographique,” in idem, L’œil du cartographe, pp. 53–70; and Amir R. Alexander,
Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of
Mathematical Practice (Stanford University Press: Stanford, Cal., 2002).
115. René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (Leiden, 1637).
116. Blaise de Pagan, Les fortifications du comte de Pagan (Paris, 1645).
117. Louis André, Michel Le Tellier et l’organisation de l’armée monarchique (Slatkine
Reprints: Geneva, 1980 [Paris, 1906]); and idem, Michel Le Tellier et Louvois
(A. Colin: Paris, 1942).
118. Richard Bonney, The King’s Debts: Finance and Politics in France, 1589–1661
(Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1981); and Julian Dent, Crisis in France:
Crown, Financiers, and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (St. Martin’s Press:
New York, 1973).
119. Bernard Kroener, Les routes et les étapes. Die Versorgung der französischen Armeen
in Nordostfrankreich. Ein Beintrag zur Verwaltungsgeschichte des Ancien Regime
(1635–1661) (Aschendorff: Münster, 1980).
120. John Lynn, “How War Fed War: The Tax of Violence during the Grand Siècle,”
The Journal of Modern History, 65/2 (1993): 286–310.
121. Jean-Pierre Bardet, “La démographie des villes de la modernité (XVIe–XVIIIe
siècles): mythes et réalités,” Annales de démographie historique, 1974 (101–126);
and F. Lebrun, “Les crises démographiques en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Annales économies, sociétés, civilizations (1980): 205–234.
122. Madeleine Foisil, La révolte des nu-pieds et les révoltes en normandes de 1639
(Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, 1970); and Orest Ranum, The Fronde: A
French Revolution, 1648–1652 (W. W. Norton: New York, 1993).
123. Quentin Outram, “The Demographic Effects of Early Modern Warfare,” Social
Science History, 26/2 (2002): 245–272; and Myron P. Gutmann, War and Rural
Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Princeton University Press: Princeton,
1980).
124. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States (Oxford University Press:
Oxford, 1990), pp. 67–87.
214
No t e s
Chapter 8
1. Joseph Konvitz, “Does the Century 1650–1750 Constitute a Period in French
Urban History? The French Evidence Reviewed,” Journal of Urban History, 14
(1988): 419–454.
2. Fanny Cosandey and Robert Descimon, L’absolutisme en France, histoire et historiographie (Seuil: Paris, 2002); and William Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV
as Social Collaboration,” Past and Present, 188 (2005): 195–224, which updates
his seminal Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and
Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
1985). For a recent case study, see Michael Breen, Law, City and King: Legal
Culture, Municipal Politics and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon (University
of Rochester Press: Rochester, NY, 2007).
3. Joël Cornette, Le Roi de Guerre. Essai sur la souveraineté dans la France du Grand
Siècle (Payot/Rivages: Paris, 1993).
4. Gail Bossenga, “City and State: An Urban Perspective on the Origins of the
French Revolution,” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political
Culture. vol. 1, The Political Culture of the Old Regime, Keith Baker, ed. (Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1987), pp. 115–140.
5. Paul Sonnino, Louis XIV and the Origins of the Dutch War (Cambridge University
Press: New York, 1988); and Carl J. Ekberg, The Failure of Louis XIV’s Dutch War
(University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1979).
6. C. De Seze, “Comment Louis XIV a perdu Tournai,” Revue du Nord 183/46
(1964): 217–224.
7. Nicole Salat and Thierry Sarmant, eds, Politique, guerre et fortification au Grand
Siècle: Lettres de Louvois à Louis XIV (1679–1691) (Droz: Geneva, 2007).
8. André Corvisier, Louvois (Fayard: Paris, 1983), p. 519.
9. Ibid., p. 330.
10. Mark Potter, Corps and Clienteles: Public Finance and Political Change in France,
1688–1715 (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2003).
11. Joseph Konvitz, Cities and the Sea: Port City Planning in Early Modern Europe
(Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1978).
12. Corvisier, Louvois, pp. 170–176.
13. Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI. Étude du
corps des fortifications (Université Paul Valéry: Montpellier, 1979); and idem,
Dictionnaire des ingénieurs militaires (1691–1791) (Université Paul Valéry:
Montpellier, 1981).
14. All of this is well covered in Ben Scott Trotter, “Marshal Vauban and the
Administration of Fortifications under Louis XIV (to 1691),” PhD dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1993, pp. 95–140. His “Vauban and the French
Administration during the Second Period of Reform, 1691–1707,” MA thesis, The
Ohio State University, 1973, p. 98.
15. See Anne Blanchard, Vauban (Fayard: Paris, 1996) for the most recent biography.
16. Emmanuel Pénicaut, Michel Chamillart, ministre et secrétaire d’État de la guerre
de Louis XIV (1654–1721): Faveur et pouvoir au tournant du Grand Siècle (Droz:
Geneva, 2004).
17. Le Directeur général des fortifications ou Mémoire concernant les functions des différents officiers employés dans les fortifications was later published in Holland in
1702.
18. Nicolas Faucherre and Catherine Brisac, eds, Vauban réformateur. Actes du colloque du Decembre 15–17 au Musée Guimet (Association Vauban: Paris, 1983).
No t e s
215
19. Victoria Sanger, “Military Town Planning under Louis XIV: Vauban’s Method
and Practice (1668–1707),” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2000,
pp. 255–258.
20. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (MIT Press:
Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 212–213.
21. Ibid, pp. 87–128.
22. See A. Picon, “Entre science et l’art de l’ingénieur. L’enseignement de Navier
à l’École des Ponts et Chaussées,” in Patricia Radelet-de-Grave and Edoardo
Benvenuto, eds, Between Mechanics and Architecture (Birkhäuser: Basel, 1994),
pp. 257–274.
23. He articulated his ideas in his new translation of Vitruvius’s De Architectura (Paris,
1673), which supplanted Martin’s 1547 translation, and his seminal Ordonnance
des cinq espèce de colonnes (Paris, 1683).
24. Jean-François Félibien, Recueil historique de la vie et desouvrages des plus célèbres
architects (Paris, 1687).
25. Indra Kagis McEwen, “On Claude Perrault: Modernising Vitruvius,” in Vaughan
Hart with Peter Hicks, eds, Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural
Treatise (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn., 1998), pp. 321–337.
26. Hanno-Walter Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the
Present (Zwemmer: London, 1994), pp. 128–141.
27. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 1997); and Vincent Scully, “The Shape of France:
Gardens, Fortifications, and Modern Urbanism,” in his Architecture: The
Natural and the Manmade (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn., 1991),
chapter 10.
28. Hélène Vérin, “La Technologie et le parc: ingénieurs et jardiniers en France
au XVIIe siècle,” in M. Mosser and G. Teyssot, eds, Histoire des jardins de la
Renaissance à nos jours (Flammarion: Paris, 1991), pp. 131–139.
29. Corvisier, Louvois, p. 372; and Anne Blanchard, “La bonne sûreté du royaume” and
“Vers la ceinture de fer,” in André Corvisier, ed., Histoire militaire de la France,
v. I, pp. 134–148 and pp. 178–193.
30. Vauban to Louvois, January 20, 1673, in Vauban, Les Oisivetés de Monsieur de
Vauban, Michèle Virol, ed. (Septentrion: Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2000), v. II, p. 89.
31. Alain Salamagne, Vauban en Flandre et Artois. Les places de l’intérieur (Association
des amis de la Maison Vauban: Saint-Léger-Vauban, 1995).
32. Vauban et ses successeurs en Hainaut et d’Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse (Association
Vauban: Paris, 1994).
33. J. Reussner, “Strasbourg, place de guerre. Étude et project de fortification par
Vauban, octobre, 1681,” Annuaire de la Société des amis du vieux Strasbourg, 11
(1981): 49–88; and Maurice Gresset, Vauban et la Franche-Comté (Les amis de la
maison Vauban: Saint-Léger-Vauban, 1996).
34. Vauban et ses successeurs en Briançonnais (Association Vauban: Paris, 1995);
Vauban et ses successeurs dans les Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (Association Vauban:
Paris, 1992); Nicolas Faucherre and Philippe Dangles, “Les fortifications du
Bourgneuf à Bayonne. État de la questions, nouvelles hypothèses,” Revue d’histoire
de Bayonne, du Pays basque et du Bas-Adour, 146 (1990): 43–82; and Georges
Hachon, Vauban et le Roussillon (Association des amis de la maison Vauban:
Saint-Léger-Vauban, 1991).
35. Nicolas Faucherre and Jean-Marie Fontenau, eds, Vauban à Belle-Ile: Trois cents
ans de fortification cotière en Morbihan (Éditions Gondi: Paris, 1990); Nathalie
Moreau, Vauban et la côte atlantique entre Loire et Gironde (Association des amis
216
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de la maison Vauban Saint-Leger-Vauban, 1993); and Vauban et ses successeurs en
Charente-Maritime (Association Vauban: Paris, 1997).
Christopher Duffy, Fortifications in the Age of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great
(Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1985); and Paddy Griffith and Peter Dennis,
The Vauban Fortifications of France (Osprey: Oxford, 2006).
Jean Thiriot, Portes, tours et murailles de la cité de Metz. Une évocation de l’enceinte
urbaine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Est-Imprimerie: Metz, 1970), pp. 17–19.
Mémoires et documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de la Franche-Comté (Académie
de Besançon: Besançon, 2001), v. XV.
Vauban prepared a catalog in 1697. Antoine de Roux, Les plans en relief des places
du roi (A. Biro: Paris, 1989).
Nicolas Faucherre and Antoine De Roux, “Le ‘coup d’oeil militaire à la Galerie des
Plans et reliefs: L’Estat de 1696,” in Jacques Guillerme, ed., Les collections: fables et
programmes (Champ Vallon: Seyssel, 1993), pp. 144–162.
Marie Anne de Villèle, “Les Naudin et la cartographie militaire française de 1688
à 1744,” in Catherine Bousquet-Bressolier, ed., L’oeil du cartographe et la représentation géographique du moyen âge à nos jours (Éditions du CTHS: Paris, 1995),
pp. 147–173.
Alphonse Halter, Le chef-d’oeuvre inachevé de Vauban, Neuf-Brisach (La Nuée
Bleue: Strasbourg, 1992).
He detailed all this in two memoranda: Mémoire sur les places dont le Roi pourrait faire démanteler ou restituer plutôt que les faire prendre (1693) and Places du
Royaume à disarmer . . . comme peu nécessaires et à la charge de l’Etat (1697).
Nicolas Faucherre and Philippe Prost, Le triomphe de la méthode. Le traité de
l’attaque des places de Monsieur de Vauban ingénieur du roi (Gallimard: Paris,
1992).
Sanger, “Military Town Planning,” p. 18.
Jamel Ostwald, Vauban under Siege: Engineering Efficiency and Martial Vigor in
the War of Spanish Succession (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2007).
Anette Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV (Fayard: Paris, 1995); and
L. Trendard, Les Mémoires des intendants pour l’instruction du duc de Bourgogne
(1698) (C.T.H.S.: Paris, 1975).
B.N. ff ms 12381, fol. 29v.
André Corvisier, Les français et l’armée sous Louis XIV d’après les Mémoires des
Intendants (Université de Paris-Sorbonne: Paris, 1975), pp. 33–41, 108.
Victoria Sanger and Isabelle Warmoes, “The City Gates of Louis XIV,” Journal of
Urban History, 30/1 (2003): 50–69.
William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of
Retribution (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1997).
Roy L. McCullough, Coercion, Conversion and Counterinsurgency in Louis XIV’s
France (Brill: Leiden, 2007).
John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 1997); and André Corvisier, L’armée française de
la fin du XVIIe siècle au ministère de Choiseul: le soldat (Presses Univeristaires de
France: Paris, 1964), two volumes.
André Corvisier, Les contrôles de troupes de l’Ancien Régime (Ministère des armées:
Paris, 1968–1970).
André Corvisier, “Anciens soldats, oblats, mortes-payes et mendiants de guerre au
XVIIe siècle,” Actes du Congrès national des sociétés savantes, Nantes (CNRS: Paris,
1978), v. I, pp. 7–30.
No t e s
217
56. André Corvisier, “Le pouvoir militaire et les villes,” in Georges Livet and Bernard
Vogler, eds, Pouvoir, ville et société en Europe, 1650–1750. Colloque international
du C.N.R.S. (octobre 1981) actes (Éditions Ophrys: Paris, 1983), pp. 11–20; and
Nicolas Faucherre, “Des villes libres au pré carré. Genèse de l’état monarchique
en France,” in Antoine Picon, ed., La ville et la guerre (Éditions de l’Imprimeur:
Paris, 1996), pp. 65–87.
57. G. Perjées, “Army Provisioning, Logistics and Strategy in the Second Half of the
Seventeenth Century,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae, 16
(1970): 56–81.
58. Claude C. Sturgill, “Changing Garrisons: The French System of Étapes,” Canadian
Journal of History, 20/2 (1985): 193–202.
59. Guy Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service
and Private Interest, 1661–1701 (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2003).
60. Philippe Truttmann, Fortification, architecture et urbanisme aux XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles. Essai sur l’oeuvre artistique et technique des ingéniers militaires sous Louis
XIV et Louis XV (Service culturel de la ville de Thionville: Thionville, 1976),
pp. 15–16, 31–47.
61. Sanger, “Military Town Planning,” pp. 178, 207.
62. Auguste Nicaise, ed., Journal de Bertin du Rocheret (Paris, 1865), p. 105.
63. They were Longwy, Sarrelouis, Huningue, Fort-Louis, Montlouis, Montdauphin,
Montroyal, Phalsbourg, and Neuf-Brisach.
64. Sanger, “Military Town Planning,” pp. 108–110. The others were Arras, Bayonne,
Besançon, Fort-Louis, Marseilles, Montlouis, Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Strasbourg,
and Tournai.
65. Dominique Foussard, “De Vauban à Chaussard. Heurts, circuits et competition
de modèles architecturaux allogènes et autochtones en terre flamande,” Revue du
Nord, 68 (1986): 769–790.
66. Joseph Konvitz, “Grandeur in French City Planning under Louis XIV: Rochefort
and Marseille,” Journal of Urban History, 2 (1975): 3–42; and Martine Acerra,
Rochefort et la construction navale française, 1661–1815 (Libraire de l’Inde: Paris,
1993).
67. Alain Degage, “Les fortifications du port de Sète du XVIe siècle à nos jours,”
Revue de l’histoire des armées, 4 (1980): 45–63; and Jean Peter, Le port et l’arsenal
de Toulon sous Louis XIV (Economica: Paris, 1996).
68. Armel de Wismes, La vie quotidienne dans les ports bretons aux XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles (Nantes, Brest, Saint-Malo, Lorient) (Hachette: Paris, 1973).
69. Jean Peter, Vauban et Saint-Malo. Polémiques autour d’une stratégie de défense,
1686–1770 (Economica: Paris, 1999).
70. Jean Peter, Le port et l’arsenal de Brest sous Louis XIV (Economica: Paris, 1998).
71. Daniel Dessert, La Royale. Vaisseaux et marin du roi-soleil (Fayard: Paris, 1996);
and Roger Hervé, “Les plans de forêts de la grande réformation colbertienne,
1661–1690,” Bulletin de la Section de géographie du Comité des travaux historiques
et scientifiques, 34 (1961): 143–171.
72. Alain Boulaire, Brest au temps de la Royale (Éditions de la Cité: Brest, 1989);
and Annie Henwood, “La ville dans ses murs,” in Brest alias Brest, trois siècles
d’urbanisme (Mardaga: Liège, 1976), pp. 56–69.
73. Alain Demangeon and Bruo Fortier, Les vaisseaux et les villes. L’arsenal de Cherbourg
(Pierre Mardaga: Brussels/Liège, 1978).
74. Monique Moulin, L’architecture civile et militaire a XVIIIe siècle en Aunis et
Saintonge (Quartice Latin: La Rochelle, 1972).
218
No t e s
75. Bibliothèque Municipale de La Rochelle, ms. 60. Claude Masse, Histoire abrégée de la
ville de la Rochelle, fol. 23, contains a 1689 plan of town that shows these new works.
76. Philip Benedict, “More than Market and Manufactory: The Cities of Early Modern
France,” French Historical Studies, 20/3 (1997): 511–538.
77. Bernard Lepetit, The Pre-Industrial Urban System: France, 1740–1840 (Cambridge
University Press: New York, 1994).
78. For contrasting views, see Philip Benedict, “Was the Eighteenth Century an
Era of Urbanization in France?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 21 (1990):
179–215; and Bernard Lepetit, “Urbanization in Eighteenth-Century France: A
Comment,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1992): 73–85; and Philip
Benedict, “Urbanization in Eighteenth-Century France: A Reply,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, 23/1 (1992): 87–95.
79. Jean Meyer, Études sur les villes: milieu du XVIIe siècle à la veille de la Révolution
française (Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur: Paris, 1983), p. 269.
80. H. Sauval, Paris ancien et moderne contenant une description exacte et particulière
de Paris (Paris, 1654); and idem, Histoire et recherches des antiquitez de Paris (Paris,
1724).
81. Jean Meyer referred to this process as “la ‘déstructuration’ des forces d’autodéfense.”
Études, p. 12.
82. Jean-Pierre Bardet, Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: La mutation d’un espace
social (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, 1983), pp. 107–110.
83. Antoine de Roux, Villes neuves. Urbanisme classique (Rempart: Paris, 1997).
84. Allan Braham, The Architecture of the French Enlightenment (University of
California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980).
85. Andrew Trout, City on the Seine: Paris in the Time of Richelieu and Louis XIV
(St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1996).
86. Rochelle Zisken, “The Place de Nos Conquêtes and the Unraveling of the Myth of
Louis XIV,” Art Bulletin, 76 (1994): 147–162.
87. Jeanne Pronteau and Isabelle Dérens, Introduction générale au Travail des Limites
de la ville et faubourgs de Paris, 1724–1729 (Paris musées: Paris, 1998).
88. Henry H. Lawrence, “Origins of the Tree-Lined Boulevard,” Geographical Review,
78/4 (1988): 355–374.
89. Elizabeth Kugler, “The Promenade as Performance: A Study of the Landscape and
Literature of Seventeenth-Century Paris,” PhD dissertation, The Johns Hopkins
University, 1998.
90. David P. Jordan, Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussman
(University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Ill., 1995).
91. K. Burlen, et al., Versailles, lecture d’une ville. Développement morphologique et
typologie architecturale de la ville de Versailles (CORDA: Paris, 1978).
92. Frédéric Tiberghien, Versailles, le chantier de Louis XIV: 1662–1715 (Perrin: Paris,
2002).
93. Archives du Génie, carton Rouen.
94. Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660–1848: Science, Engineering, and
Statecraft (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Ill., 1987).
95. Guy Arbelot, “Le réseau des routes de poste objet des premières cartes thématiques de la France moderne,” Actes du 104e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes.
Bordeaux 1979. Section d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine (Imprimerie national:
Paris, 1982), v. I, pp. 97–115.
96. Claire Lemoine-Isabeau, Les militaires et la cartographie des Pays-Bas méridonaux
et de la principauté de Liège à la fin du XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle (Musée royale de
l’armée: Brussels, 1984).
No t e s
219
97. Antoine Picon and Michel Yvon, L’ingénieur-artiste. Dessins anciens de l’École des
Ponts et Chaussées (Presses de l’École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées: Paris, 1989).
98. Bernard Lepetit, Chemins de terre et voies d’eau. Réseaux de transport et organisation de l’espace en France, 1740–1840 (Éditions de l’EHESS: Paris, 1984).
99. The full title was Surintendance générale des Postes et relais de France et des chevaucheurs de l’Écurie du roi. Georges Livet, “Les routes françaises aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. État des questions et directions de recherches,” in L’homme et la route en Europe
occidentale au Moyen Âge et temps modernes (Flaran: Auch, 1982), pp. 107–149.
100. Corvisier, Louvois, p. 86.
101. J. Petot, Histoire de l’administration des Ponts et Chaussées, 1599–1815 (M. Rivière:
Paris, 1958).
102. André Maiste, Le Canal des deux mers, canal royal du Languedoc, 1666–1810
(Privat: Toulouse, 1968).
103. Lepetit, Chemins, p. 20. Guy Arbelot, “La grande mutation des routes de France
au milieu du XVIIIème siècle,” Annales économies, sociétés, civilizations, 38
(1973): 765–791.
104. Nicolas Papayanis, Horse-drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris: The Idea of
Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Louisiana State University Press:
Baton Rouge, 1996).
105. Lepetit, Chemins, pp. 24–26.
106. Guy Arbelot, “Les tournées de Jean-Rodolphe Perronet sur les routes de France,
1764–1763,” Annales des Ponts et Chaussées, 27 (1981): 64–71.
107. Antoine Picon, L’Invention de l’ingénieur moderne. L’École des Ponts et Chaussées
1747–1851 (Paris: Presses de ENPC: Paris, 1992).
108. Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment,
trans. Martin Thom (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1992); and Hélène
Vérin, La gloire des ingénieurs. L’intelligence technique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
(Albin Michel: Paris, 1993), pp. 33–39.
109. René Taton, “L’École royale du Génie de Mézières,” in René Taton, ed.,
Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIIIe siècle (Hermann: Paris,
1964), pp. 46–62.
110. B. Belhoste, “Les Origines de l’École polytechnique. Des anciennes écoles
d’ingénieurs à l’École centrale des travaux publics,” Histoire de l’education, 42
(1989): 13–53.
111. Jean Chagniot, “Vauban et la pensée militarie en France au XVIIIe siècle,”
Journal des savants, 132 (1982): 56–71.
112. His De l’attaque et de la defense des place, written in 1704, was only published in
the The Hague in 1737, while the Mémoire pour sevir d’instruction dans la conduite des sieges et dans la defense des places, which appeared in Leiden in 1740, was
originally penned in the early 1670s for Louvois.
113. This book was written in 1714 but only published in 1741.
114. Pérez-Gómez, Architecture, p. 221.
115. Janis Langis, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from
Vauban to the Revolution (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 2004).
116. Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–
1815 (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1997).
117. See the scathing remarks of Thomas Corneille about his native Rouen in
his Dictionnaire universel géographique et historique (Paris, 1708), v. I,
pp. 298–301.
118. Richard Etlin, Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and Its Legacy
220
No t e s
119. Sabine Barles, La Ville délétère. Médecins et ingénieurs dans l’espace urbain, 18e–
19e siècle (Champ Vallon: Seyssel, 1999).
120. Marc Grignon, Laing du soleil: Architectural Practice in Quebec City during the
French Regime (Peter Lang: New York, 1997).
121. B. Huet, et al., Mécanique de la percée urbaine de 1750–1900. Les trois percées
d’Orléans (Ville Recherche Diffusion: Paris, 1988).
122. Charles Nières, La reconstruction d’une ville au XVIIIe siècle (Presses Universitaires
de Rennes, Rennes, 1973).
123. Jean-Claude Perrot, Genèse d’une ville moderne. Caen au XVIIIe siècle (Mouton:
Paris, 1975).
124. Roger Kain, “Classical Urban Design in France: The Transformation of Nancy in
the Eighteenth Century,” The Connaisseur, 26 (1979): 190–197.
125. The fact that Joseph II was dismantling Imperial fortified places in the Austrian
Netherlands no doubt added weight to Mézières’s pleas. See Philippe Guignet,
Le pouvoir dans la ville au XVIIIe siècle. Pratiques politiques, notabilité et éthique
sociale de part et d’autre de la frontière franco-belge (Éditions de l’École des hautes
études en sciences sociales: Paris, 1990). Mézières had to wait until the end of the
Franco-Prussian War for permission to dismantle its fortifications.
126. Daniel Roche, Le peuple de Paris: Essai sur la culture populaire au XVIIIe siècle
(Aubier: Paris, 1981).
127. The Directory eventually resurrected them. See Guy Arbelot, “Les barrières de
l’an VII,” Annales economies, sociétés, civilizations, 32 (1975): 745–772.
128. Rochelle Zisken, The Place Vendôme: Architecture and Social Mobility in
Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1999).
129. Stephanie Whitlock, “Between Crown and Commerce: Architecture and
Urbanism in Eighteenth-Century Bordeaux,” PhD dissertation, University of
Chicago, 2001.
130. Bardet, Rouen, pp. 157–159.
131. David Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge/New York, 1986).
132. Lanternes d’éclairage public, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Potences d’enseignes et de
lanternes du XVe au XIXe siècle (Centre de recherches sur les monuments historiques: Paris, 1986).
134. C. Koslofsky, “Court Culture and Street Lighting in Seventeenth- Century
Europe,” Journal of Urban History, 28 (2002): 743–768.
135. Stéphane Van Damme, ed., “Discipliner la ville: L’émergence des savoirs urbains
(17e-20e siècle),” Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, 12 (2005): 3–140; and
Alan Williams, “The Police and the Administration of 18th-Century Paris,”
Journal of Urban History, 4 (1978): 157–182.
136. E. Pitou, “Jeunesse et désordre social: Les coureurs de nuit à Laval au XVIIIe
siècle,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 47 (2000): 69–92.
137. Natacha Coquery, L’espace du pouvoir. De la demeure privée à l’édifice public, Paris
1700–1790 (Seli Arslan: Paris, 2000).
138. L. Dufour, et al, Urbanistique et société baroque (Institut d’Études et de Recherches
Architecturales et Urbaines: Paris, 1977).
139. Jean-Louis Harouel, L’embellissement des villes. L’urbanisme français au XVIIIe
siècle (Picard: Paris, 1993).
140. François-Xavier Emmanuelli, Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien. L’intendance,
du milieu du XVIIème siècle à la fin du XVIIIème siècle: France, Espagne, Amérique
(H. Champion: Paris, 1981).
No t e s
221
141. See the excellent case study by Robert Schneider, The Commercial City: Toulouse
Observed, 1738–1780 (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1994).
143. M. Bonilla, et al., Cartes et plans. Saint-Étienne du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours (École
d’Architecture de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne, 1989) offers a case in point.
144. See the classic study by Maurice Garden, Lyon et les lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Les
Belles-lettres: Paris, 1975); and Daniel Roche, Le peuple de Paris: Essai sur la culture populaire au XVIIIe siècle (Aubier: Paris, 1981).
145. Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics, and the EighteenthCentury French Trades (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1989); and
Allan Potofsky, “The Construction of Paris and the Crises of the Ancien Régime:
the Police and the People of the Parisian Building Sites, 1750–1789,” French
Historical Studies, 27 (2004): 9–48.
146. Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, L’invention technique au siècle des Lumières (Albin Michel:
Paris, 2000).
147. Robert Carvais, “L’Ancien droit de l’urbanisme et ses composantes constructive et architecturale, socle d’un nouvel ‘ars’ urbain aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.
Jalons pour une histoire totale du droit de l’urbanisme,” Revue d’Histoire des
Sciences Humaines, 12/1 (2005): 17–54.
148. Pierre Bodineau, L’urbanisme dans la Bourgogne des Lumières (Université de
Bourgogne: Dijon, 1986).
149. Stéphane Van Damme, “The world is too large”: Philosophical Mobility and
Urban Space in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Paris,” French Historical
Studies, 29/3 (2006): 379–406.
150. Alder, Engineering the Revolution.
151. James Leith, Space and Revolution: Projects for Monuments, Squares, and Public
Buildings in France, 1789–1799 (McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal,
1991).
152. Louis Bergeron and Marc Roncayolo, “De la ville pré-industrielle à la ville industrielle: essai sur l’historiographie française,” Quaderni Storici (1974): 827–876.
Conclusion
1. Gail Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille
2. Roger Tessier, “La démolition des remparts de Rochefort. Première partie
(1921–1925),” Roccafortis, third series/n. 28 (2001): 353–363; and idem, “La
démolition des remparts de Rochefort (suite) (1925–1971),” Roccafortis, third
series/n. 31 (2003): 283–290.
3. P. Rocolle, “La fin des cités guerrières au XIXe siècle dans la France du Nord:
Essai de synthèse,” Revue du Nord, 84 (2002): 51–67.
4. John Merriman, The Margins of City: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier,
1815–1851 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1991).
5. Patricia O’Brien, “L’Embastillement de Paris: The Fortification of Paris during
the July Monarchy,” French Historical Studies, 9/1 (1975): 63–82.
6. Jean-Louis Cohen and André Lortie, Des fortifs au périf. Paris, les seuils de la ville
(Picard Editeur: Paris, 1991).
7. For recent sumptuous examples, see Jean Dutourd, Sentinelles de pierre: forts &
citadelles sur les frontières de France (Somogy Éditions d’art: Paris, 1996); and
François Dellamagne, Patrimoine militaire (Édition SCALA: Paris, 2002).
S elect B ibliography
The works listed below represent a selective guide to the principal secondary sources
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I n de x
Abbeville, 111
Acre, siege of (1191), 28
Adela of Champagne, queen of
France, 20
Adélaïde of Savoy, 20
Adour River, 58, 72
Agen and Agenais, 24, 28, 34, 40, 46,
52, 58, 111
Agincourt, battle of (1415), 57–58
Aigues-Mortes, 50
Aiguillon, siege of (1345), 66, 70
Aiguillon, Emmanuel-Armand de
Richlieu, duke of, 165
Aineas the Tactician, 68
Aire, 27, 30–31
Aix-en-Provence, 84, 112
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of (1668), 147, 153
Aixe, 25
Alaman, Doat d’, 45
Alaman, Sicard d’, 42, 45
Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo,
duke of, 86, 88
Albert the Great, 66
Alberti, Leon Battista, 77–78, 118
Albi, 31, 40–42, 110
Albigeois, 41, 45
Albigensian Crusades, 31–32, 38–45,
102, 112
Alençon, 29, 57, 165
Alençon, Charles II, count of, 52
Alès, 130, 133
Grace of (1629), 134
Alfonso VIII, king of Castile, 30
Alps, 76, 81, 151
Alsace, 12–13, 148, 151
Amaury, Arnaud, 32–33
Ambleny, 37
Amboise, 21, 73
Edict of (1563), 103
Ambrières, 22
Amiens, 9, 25, 62, 64, 73–74, 82,
87–88, 98, 102, 104, 125, 174
siege of (1597), 119
Ancenis, 127
Angers, 11, 22–23, 30, 31, 41, 72,
102, 139
Anghiari, Maggi da, 88
Angoulême, 24, 28, 132, 139
Angoulême, Charles de Valois, duke of,
129–130
Angoumois, 24
Anjou, 22, 29–30, 42
Anjou, counts and dukes of, 9, 11, 19
Anjou, Fulk III, count of, 11
Anjou, Fulk, IV, count of, 12
Anjou, Geoffrey II, count of, 11–12
Anjou, Geoffrey III, count of, 12
Anjou, Geoffrey V, count of, 20–22
Anjou, Henri, duke of, see Henri III,
king of France
Anjou and Maine, John, count of, 39
Anne of Austria, queen of France, 146
Annonay, 111
Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme
and king of Navarre, 86, 102
Antwerp, 145
Aquitaine, 6–7, 14, 20–25, 28–31,
34, 40–42, 45–46, 50, 58, 72,
126, 172
Aragon, kingdom of, 24, 34, 42, 73–74
Archimedes, 77, 91, 116, 118
Ardèche River, 49
Ardennes, 12, 143
Ardres, 82
Argenson, Marie-Pierre de Voyer de
Palmy, count of, 165
Argentan, 29
Aristotle and Aristotelianism, 91, 144
252
I n de x
Arles, 3, 14, 84
Armagnac, 24, 45, 102
counts of, 45–46, 69–70
Arnoul, Pierre, 158
Arouille, 70
Arques, 9, 22, 28–29
battle of (1589), 113
Arras, 27, 72, 88, 156
siege of (1414), 69
Arthur I, duke of Brittany, 28
Arthur III, duke of Brittany, 71
Artois, 7, 21, 27, 30–31, 36, 47, 57, 72,
82, 84, 87, 147
Artois, Robert, count of, 39
Asfeld, Claude-François Bidal,
marquis d’, 164
Asfeld, Pont d’, 158
Astarac, counts of, 45
Athens, Guy de La Roche, duke of, 36
Atlantic Ocean, 24, 75, 130, 139, 157
Aumale, 28, 29
Aunis, 11, 24–25, 30, 34, 47
Aurillac, 13, 111
Austria and Austrians, 158
Austria, Leopold V, duke of, 28
Autun, 13
Auvergne, 13–14, 20, 23–24, 28, 30,
36, 40, 42, 49
Auvergne, counts of, 13
Auvergne, Guy II, count of, 30
Auxerre, 13
Auxonne, 13, 72–73
Averlino, Pietro Antonio di, see Filarete
Avesnes, counts of, 8
Aveyron, 46, 127, 133
Avignon, 14, 34, 40, 49, 84
Avre River, 28
Azay-le-Rideau, 81
Bacheley, Jacques, 170
Bachot, Amboise, 107, 113, 117–119
Bacon, Roger, 66
baillis and bailliages, 20, 23, 27, 35, 44,
60, 62
Bapaume, 27
Bar, counts of, 12
Bar-le-Duc, 117
Bar-sur-Aube, 12, 21, 37
Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV,
count of, 24
Barrière, 15
Bartoli, Cosimo, 78
Bartolomeo, Fra, 68
Bassompierre, François de, 129
bastides, 37, 42–50, 58, 66, 102,
140–141, 156, 172
Bastille, 69
Baud, Olivier, 70
Baudelaire, Charles, 173
Baugé, 22
Bayard, Pierre Terrail, lord of, 82
Bayeux, 21, 29
Bayonne, 22, 24–25, 30, 82, 88
Bazas, 30, 40
Baziège, battle of (1219), 34
Béarn, 24, 42, 52, 127, 128
Beaucaire, 34, 40, 42, 52, 84
Beauce, 11, 21, 113
Beaufort, 22, 30
Beaulieu, Treaty of (1576), 107
Beaulieu, Sébastien de, 144
Beaumarchais, Eustache de, 42, 44–46
Beaumont-de-Lomagne, 50
Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, viscounts of, 22
Beaune, 72–73, 82
Beauvais, 9, 48, 73
siege of (1472), 73
Beauvaisis, 35
Bedford, John, duke of, 60, 68
Beins, Jean de, 125
Belfort, 153–154
Bélidor, Bernard Forest de, 166
Bellarmato, Girolamo, 84
Belle-Ile, 127
Bellême, 23
Belleville, 111
Belluci, Giovan Battista, 91
Belmont, 127
Benjamin, Walter, 173
Bergamo, 86
Bergamo, Antonio da, 87
Béroalde de Verville, François de, 117
Berry, 7, 11, 23–24, 27, 37, 102,
105, 164
Berry, Jean I, duke of, 61
Bertius, Pierre, 144
Besançon, 13, 153, 155
Besson, Jacques, 116
Bessoneau, Pierre, 72
Béziers, 32–33, 40, 42
I n de x
Bigorre, 24, 45
Binche, 8
Biringuccio, Vannoccio, 90
Biron, Charles de Gontaut,
duke of, 112
Bitche, 12
Black Death, 42, 61
Blain, 112
Blaise le Loup, 45
Blanche of Castile, queen of France,
40–41
Blandy-les-Tours, 37
Blanquefort, 47
Blois, 11, 21, 58, 99, 102
Blois, counts of, 12, 21
Blois, Louis I, count of, 28
Blois, Odo II, count of, 11
Blondel, François, 150–151, 161
Blondel, Jean-François, 158
Boillot, Joseph, 118
Bologna, 86
Bologna, Anchise da, 82
Bonet de Saint Quentin, 46
Bonmoulins, 21, 23, 28
Bonnegarde, 70
Bordeaux, 15, 20, 24, 30, 34, 40, 45,
49, 51, 58, 60, 62, 71, 88, 102,
132, 146, 155, 167, 168
Bouelles, Charles de, 93
Bouguereau, Maurice, 119
Bouillon, Henri de La Tour, duke of, 117
Boulogne, 23, 30, 32
Boulogne, Matthew of Alsace,
count of, 23
Boulogne, Renaud de Dammartin,
count of, 30
Boulogne-sur-Mer, 8, 48, 85–86
Edict of (1573), 110
siege of (1542), 86
Bourbonnais, 49, 57, 73
Bourdaisière, Philibert de la, 94
Bourgeois, Jean, 138
Bourges, 11, 20, 23, 37, 40, 65, 98–99,
102–103, 109, 139, 141
Boutavant, 29
Bouvines, battle of (1214), 30–33, 35
Brabant, 7, 21, 47, 48
Brabant, dukes of, 8
Brancaccio, G. C., 88
Bram, siege of (1210), 32
253
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille,
lord of, 81
Brescia, 91, 99
Bresse, 84
Bressuire, 138
Brest, 64, 157
Breteuil, 99
Bretigny, treaty of (1360), 62
Briançon, 158
Briare, 140
Canal de, 163
Briatexte, 43
Brissac, 22
Briseteste, Simon de, 43, 45
Britain, see England
Brittany, 7, 10, 22, 25, 29–30, 35, 48,
55, 63, 72, 82, 111, 112, 115,
127, 157
Brittany, dukes of, 10, 19, 32, 39, 63,
66, 73
Brittany, Alain II, duke of, 10
Brittany, Charles of Blois, duke of, 63
Brittany, Conan IV, count of, 25
Brittany, Constance, duchess of, 25, 29
Brittany, François II, duke of, 70
Brittany, Geoffrey Plantagenet, duke of,
25, 27
Brittany, Guy de Thouars, duke of,
29–30
Brittany, Jean III, duke of, 63
Brittany, Jean IV of Montfort, duke of,
63–64
Brittany, Pierre de Dreux, duke of, 30,
41, 48
Brouage, 75, 107, 130, 136, 139, 144
Bruges, 8, 31
Brunelleschi, Filippo, 79
Brusquès, 127
Brussels, 8, 47
Buckingham, George Villiers,
duke of, 133
Budé, Guillaume, 82
Bullet, Pierre, 161
Buranlure, Antoine de Bar, lord of, 110
Bureau brothers, 72
Burgundy, 13, 27, 48, 58, 62, 72, 84,
102, 105, 111–112, 149, 164, 172,
see also Franche-Comté
Burgundy, dukes of, 19, 21, 39, 57, 70,
73, 74
254
I n de x
Burgundy, Charles I, duke of, 73
Burgundy, Jean II the Fearless, duke of,
63, 66, 70
Burgundy, Louis of France, duke of,
154, 163
Cabaret, 32, 33
Caen, 10, 21, 29, 37, 60, 67, 72, 82,
111, 128, 167–169
Cahors, 21, 24, 66
Calais, 8, 31, 48, 60, 87, 125, 151, 157
siege of (1346), 48
siege of (1558), 88, 89
Callot, Jacques, 131, 144, 146
Calvi, Giambatista, 86
Calvinists and Calvinism, 87, 94,
97–121, 125–143, 155, 172–173
Cambrai, 8, 86
Campi, Bartolomeo de, 88
Canal du Midi, 157
Canada, 167
Caprari, Gui de, 45
Capua, Antonello da, 82
Carbonne, 46
Carcassonne, 32–33, 40, 42, 49, 52, 171
Carcassonne, Raymond-Robert of
Trencavel, viscount of, 32
Carhaix, 10
Carlo, Charles Leber du, 130, 139
Carolingians, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12
Carsan, Guillaume de, 45
Cassini, Jean-Dominique, 162–163
Castelet, siege of (1637), 144
Castellane, 112
castellans, 6–10, 19–20, 23–24, 29,
35–36
Castello, Antonio da, 82, 84, 94
Castelnau, Michel de, 98
Castelnau, Pierre de, 32
Castelnau-de-Montmiral, 45
Castelnaudery, 33–34, 41
Castillon, battle of (1453), 68
Castres, 32, 127, 129
Catalonia, 72
Cataneo, Girolamo, 91
Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of (1559),
94, 119
Cathars, see Albigensian Crusades
Cerceau, Jacques Androuet du, 92, 143
Cesariano, Cesare, 79
Cévennes, 155
Chablis, 71
Chalons, 82, 85, 112
Châlons-sur-Marne, 12, 36, 48
Châlons-sur-Sâone, 84
Châlus-Chabrol, siege of (1199), 29
Chambord, 82
chambres des comptes, 42, 103, 115
Chamillart, Michel de, 149
Champagne, 6–9, 12, 30, 36, 48–49,
85–86, 88, 94, 102, 110–111, 115,
123, 143, 164
Champagne, counts of, 19–21, 39
Champagne, Eude II, count of, 13
Champagne, Thibaut III, count of, 30
Champagne, Thibaut IV, count of, 30,
41, 48
Champagne, Blanche of Navarre,
countess of, 30
Charente River, 25, 41, 47, 132, 136
Charité-sur-Loire, 110
Charles V, emperor, 85–89
Charles I, king of England, 130, 133
Charles III, king of Western Francia, 3
Charles IV, king of France, 52
Charles V, king of France, 62, 64, 66,
69, 72, 74, 161
Charles VI, king of France, 61
Charles VI, king of France, 57, 61
Charles VII, king of France, 57, 60, 68,
71–72, 123
Charles VIII, king of France, 73–76,
81–82
Charles IX, king of France,
103–105, 108
Charleville, 141, 168
Charters, 8, 16, 19–23, 38, 44, 50
Chartres, 11, 21, 103, 113
Chartres and Blois, Thibault II, count
of, 11–12, 21
Chartres and Blois, Thibault V, count
of, 11, 20
Chastillon, Claude, 125
Château-Thierry, 9, 49
Châteaudun, 11, 21, 37, 167
Châteauneuf, Hugh, lord of, 23
Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe, 30
Châtellerault, 24
Châtillon, 22
Châtillon-sur-Indre, 28
I n de x
Châtillon-sur-Loire, 113
Châtillon-sur-Seine, 27, 112
Chaumont, 82
Chaumont, lords of, 22
Chaumont-en-Bassigny, 12, 86
Chemillé, lords of, 22
Cher River, 138
Cherasco, 8
Cherbourg, 22, 157
China, 66
Chinon, 11–12, 22–23, 30, 35
truce of (1214), 31
Chinon, Robert, 87, 105
Choiseul, Étienne-François, duke
of, 166
Chuquet, Nicolas, 92–93
Cicero, 114
citadels, 6, 8–9, 17, 22, 35–38, 47, 63,
69, 72, 86–87, 98, 119, 143–144,
149, 155–158
Clairvaux, 27
Claude de France, 87
Clermont, 13
Clerville, Louis-Nicolas de,
148–149, 157
Clisson, barons of, 10, 64
Cognac, 104
Coissy, 86
Colbert, Charles, lord of
Saint-Marc, 148
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 139, 148, 151,
157–159, 162–163, 169
Colbert de Terron, Charles, 157
Coligny, Gaspard de, 103–105
Colin, Raphäel, 133
Collioure, 72
Colonna, Fra Egidio, 68
Commequiers, 138
Comminges, lords of, 24, 33–34, 42, 45
Comno, Gioachino, 88
Compagne de l’Inde, 157
Compagnie des Indes Orientales, 157
Compagnie du Sénégal, 157
Compestella, 24
Compiègne, 9, 20, 25, 36–37
Conches, 29
Condé, Henri I de Bourbon, prince of,
105, 113
Condé, Henri II de Bourbon, prince of,
127–129, 133, 138
255
Condé, Louis I de Bourbon, prince
of, 102
Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, prince
of, 149
Condillac, Étienne, 169
Condom, 102
Conquéril, battle of (996), 11
Conrad of Montferrat, 28
Conty d’Argencour, Pierre de, 143–144
Corbeil, 20, 36, 113
Corbie, 9, 25, 87
Cordes, 41, 45, 50, 52
Cormontaigne, Louis de, 153, 158, 166
Cosne-sur-Loire, 13
Coucy, Enguerrand de, 20
Coulommiers, 30
Cousin, Jean, 93
Coutrai, 47, 63, 72
battle of (1302), 46, 51
Craon, lords of, 22
Crécy, battle of (1346), 57–58
Cremieu, edit of (1563), 103
Cremona, 88
Créon, Alméric de, 46
Crépy-en-Valois, 9, 25
Croquants, 100
Crusade
Second, 20
Third, 27
Cusset, 13, 73
Cyriaque de Mangin, Clément, see
Pierre Hérigone
Damme, 8, 31
Dauphiné, 84, 100–102, 110, 112,
114, 123
Dax, 24–25, 139
Delacroix, Jacques-Vincent, 167
Derby, Henry of Lancaster, duke of, 58
Desargues, Gérard, 142, 150
Descartes, René, 142, 145
Deûle River, 163
Deux-Mers, Canal de, 163
Dézallier d’Argenville,
Antoine-Nicolas, 167
Dieppe, 9, 28, 84
siege of (1443), 68
Digne, 14, 114
Dijon, 13, 72–73, 82, 111
Dinan, 10, 64, 70, 112
256
I n de x
Dinant, 8
Dol, 35
Dole, 63, 87, 153
Donchéry, 12
Dordogne River, 14, 33, 46, 50
Douai, 8, 27, 31, 48, 51, 69–70, 164
Doullens, 82
Dourdan, 37
Dover, siege of (1215), 31
Dreux, battle of (1562), 99
Drincourt, 28–29
Du Bellay, Jean, 84
Du Bellay, Guillaume, 85
Du Bellay, Martin, 86
Dubreuil, Jean, 150
Dun-le-Roi, 37
Dunkirk, 151, 157, 164
Dupain de Montesson,
Louis-Charles, 166
Duprat, Antoine, 87
Dupuy, Philippe, 141
Durance River, 158
Dürer, Albrecht, 90
Durtal, 11
Dutch, see Low Countries
Ebbes de Roucy, 20
Écluse, 63
École Polytechnique, 165
École des Ponts-et-Chaussées, 162, 165
École Royale de Génie de Mézières, 165
Edward I, king of England, 46, 49, 51
Edward II, king of England, 52
Edward III, king of England, 52,
58, 60
Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, 62
Effiat, Antoine Ruzé d’, 131
Eleanor of Aquitaine, 20–23, 25, 30
England and English, 6, 9, 22, 31,
39, 41, 86, 102, 117, 130, 133,
157, 172
Entragues, François de Balzac, marquis
of, 108
Entre-deux-Mers, 24
Épernay, 156
Épernon, Jean Louis de Nogaret de la
Valette, duke of, 112, 127–128,
130, 133
Epte River, 28
Erdre River, 48
Errard, Jean, 92, 117–119, 123,
142–144, 154, 163, 166
Étampes, 20, 35, 37
Estates-General, 51, 58, 63, 71, 110, 125
Eu, 29
Eu, John de Hastings d’, 46
Euclid, and Euclidean geometry, 77,
80, 90–93, 116, 118, 143, 150
Eure River, 28
Evreux, 28, 57
Fabert, Abraham, 143
Fabre, Jean, 143
Falaise, 10, 21, 29, 37
Fallois, Joseph de, 166
Fécamp, 9
Fer, Nicolas de, 153–154
Fezenac, 24
Fiamma, Galvano, 80
Fieschi, Paolo Emilio, 107
Filarete, 77, 79–80, 118
Finé, Oronce, 93
Finistière, 10
Fiorentino, Rosso, 92
Flamand, Claude, 92, 117
Flanders, 7–9, 14–15, 25, 30, 35,
47–51, 58, 70, 72, 82, 87, 138,
147, 148
Flanders, counts of, 8, 19–21, 39, 57, 172
Flanders, Charles I, count of, 20
Flanders, Ferrand of Portugal, count of,
30–31
Flanders, Philip of Alsace, count of, 8,
25–26, 28
Flanders, Thierry I of Alsace, count of,
8, 23
Florence, 81, 88
Foix, 139
Foix, counts of, 32–34, 41–42, 45, 52
Foix, Gaston III, count of, 58
Foix, Roger IV, count of, 46
Fontenay-le-Comte, 104, 138
Forez, 99
Formigny, battle of (1450), 68
Fortin, Pierre, lord of La Hoguette, 145
Fosse-la-Ville, 8
Fougères, 10
Fougeu, Jacques, 125
Fouquet, Nicolas, 162
Francesca, Piero della, 80
I n de x
Franche-Comté, 72, 82, 147–148, 151,
153, 164
Francia, 7, 16
François I, king of France, 76, 82,
85–86, 94, 115
Franks, 3
French Revolution, 147, 168, 170
Frescobaldi, 93
Fréteval, 21
Froissart, Jean, 57
Fronde, 137–138, 143, 145, 147, 149
Frontinus, 68, 77, 85
Fumée, Jacques de, 119
Fusto, Jacopo, 88
Gabriel, Jacques, 167
Gaillard, 28–29, 36, 47
Galileo Galilei, 144
Galliani, Orfeo da, 117
Gallo-Roman fortifications, 3–15, 37,
40, 48–49, 65, 71, 89
Garonne River, 24, 46, 163
Gascony, 6, 20, 24–25, 40–41, 45–46,
49–52, 58, 60, 62, 69, 99
Gémil, 46
Genoa, 87, 107
Germany, see Holy Roman Empire
Gers, 42
Ghent, 8, 14, 31, 47, 86, 164
Gimont, 44
Giocondo, Fra Giovanni, 79, 82
Giorgio, Francesco di, 80, 82
Gironde River, 30, 58, 72
Gisors, 9, 15, 28
Givet, 12, 151
Godefoy, Jean de, 133
Gontaud, 112
Gorron, 22
Gournay, 29
Gournay, Hugh, lord of, 23
Goutte, Daniel de la, 134
Graçay, 27–28
Graily, Jean de, 46
Granvelle, Antoine Perronet de, 87
Gravelines, 8, 157
siege of (1558), 88
Grenoble, 112
Gribeauval, Jean-Baptiste
Vaquette de, 166
Guibert, J.-A.-H. de, 166
257
Guingamp, 127
Guiot of Provins, 35
Guise, 82
Guise, dukes of, 86, 103, 110–111
Guise, Antoine I, duke of, 86
Guise, Charles I, duke of, 129–130
Guise, François, duke of, 87–89, 102
Guistiniani, Greghetto, 107
Guiton, Jean, 129, 133, 136
Guy de Dampierre, 30
Guyenne, 24, 30, 51, 52, 58, 66, 72,
82, 105, 111, 137
Hainault, 7, 8, 21, 47, 82, 144
Hainault, counts of, 8
Hainault, Baudouin IV, count of, 8
Haiti, 167
Ham, siege of (1411), 66
Hapsburgs, 75, 81, 82, 86, 119, 123,
142, 146, 163, 172
Harelle Revolt (1382), 61
Harfleur, siege of (1415), 67
Haurs, 157
Havre-de-Grâce, see Le Havre
Haynin, Jean de, 73
Hennebont, 127
Henri II, king of France, 85, 87, 88,
94, 95, 140
Henri III, king of France, 88, 105, 107,
110, 113
Henri IV, king of France, 97, 105,
108, 111, 113–115, 118–120,
123–126, 140–142,
157, 163
Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, 87, 105
Henrichemont, 141
Henrion, Denis, see Pierre Hérigone
Henry I, king of England, 20
Henry II, king of England, 9, 10,
21–27, 35
Henry III, king of England, 31, 41, 42,
45, 46
Henry V, king of England, 58, 60, 67
Henry VIII, king of England, 85
Henry Plantagenet, the Young King, 25
Hérigone, Pierre, 143
Hesdin, 87
siege of (1640), 144
Holy Land, 6, 14, 27, 28
Holy League, 97, 100, 110–115
258
I n de x
Holy Roman Empire, 12, 14, 21, 42,
117, 153
Honfleur, 111
Honorius III, pope, 34
Houdan, 15, 37
Hugh Capet, King, 6
Huguenots, see Calvinists
Hurepel, Philippe, 30
Huy, 8
Ile-de-France, 7, 9, 19, 20, 22, 27, 32,
36, 94, 125
Ile-d’Oléron, 24, 158
Ile-de-Ré, 129, 130, 138, 158
Innocent III, pope, 31, 32, 33
intendants, 125, 136, 138, 142,
145–149, 154–155, 158, 163,
164, 169
Isabella of Hainault, 20
Isle-Jourdain, Jordan IV, lord of, 42
Issoudun, 27, 28
Italy, 66, 77, 79, 80, 81, 85, 90, 153, 172
Ivry, battle of (1590), 113
Jacquerie, 62
Jametz, 112
Janville, 11
Jarnac, battle of (1569), 103
Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, 105
Jeanne d’Arc, 68, 70
Jegon, 113
Jesuits, 116, 145, 149
Johanneau, André, 109, 110
John I, king of England, 23–31
John II, king of France, 58, 60
Joinville, Robert de, 13
Josselin, 10
Jousse, Mathurin, 143
Joyeuse, Henri, duke of, 112, 113
Julius Caesar, 3, 8, 77, 114
July Monarchy, 173
L’Aigle, 28
La Charité, 104
La Châtre, Claude, marquis of, 98,
109–111
La Creuse River, 14
La Fontaine, Jean de, 141
La Force, Nompar de Caumont, Henri,
duke of, 129
La Garnache, 112
La Grossetière, Charles Vernier, 136
La Guerche, 14
La Haute-Deûle, Canal de, 163
La Marche, 24
La Motte d’Argencourt, Pierre de
Conti, lord of, 139
La Réole, 30, 40, 52, 111
La Roche, Étienne de, 92
La Roche-au-Moine, siege of (1214), 31
La Roche d’Abeille, battle of (1569), 104
La Roche Goyon, 10
La Roche-Guyon, 36
La Roche-sur-Yon, 138
La Rochelle, 11, 22, 24, 25, 30, 40,
62–63, 82, 87–88, 94, 100–104,
108, 112, 125–130, 138–140,
157, 158
siege of (1562), 102
siege of (1572–1573), 99,
104–108, 113
siege of (1627–1628), 97, 123,
131–137, 142, 143, 173
La Tuilerie, Garpard Cougnet,
lord of, 136
Lacaune, 127
Lacy, Roger de, 29
Lagny, 12, 21, 30
Lalinde, Jean, 46
Lamballe, 127
Lambeth, Treaty of (1215), 31
Landau, 154
Landes, 70, 102
Landrecies, 8
siege of (1542), 85
siege of (1637), 144
Landreville, Pierre de, 45
Langeais, 11, 15, 22
Langon, 40
Langres, 12, 13, 82, 151
Languedoc, 42, 44, 49, 51, 52, 58, 62,
69, 88, 94, 109, 111, 113, 115,
131, 138, 142
Lanteri, Giacomo, 91
Laon, 20, 35, 36–37, 73, 84
siege of (1594), 115, 123
Lastours-Cabaret, 32
Lauzerte, 45
Laval, lords of, 22, 64
Lavaur, 31, 33, 41
I n de x
Layrac, 126
Le Clerc, Sébastien, 150
Le Fousseret, 46
Le Havre, 82, 84, 115, 144, 157
siege of (1563), 102, 141
Le Mans, 3, 11, 23, 27, 30, 102
Le Marche, 86
Le Meingre, Jean, 72
Le Muet, Pierre, 143
Le Nôtre, André, 162
Le Peletier de Souzy, Michel, 149
Le Puy, 14
Le Puy de Castillon, 25
Le Quesnoy, 8
Le Rouge, Georges-Louis, 167
Le Roy, Jacques, lord of La Grange, 117
Le Tellier, François-Michel, marquis of
Louvois, 148, 149, 151, 153, 155,
163, 173
Le Tellier, Louis-François Marie,
marquis of Barbezieux, 149
Le Tellier, Michel, 145, 148, 155, 163
Le Vau, Louis, 157, 162
Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas, 168
Leibniz, Gottfried, 150
Leiden, 93
Lemercier, Jacques, 141
Lemercier, Nicolas, 141
Lemercier, Pierre, 141
Léry, Jean de, 109, 114
Les Andeleys, 28
Lesdiguières, François de Bonne,
duke of, 114
Leyburn, Robert de, 46
Libourne, 50
Liège, 8, 99
bishop-count of, 8
Lille, 8, 47, 65, 70, 72, 149, 156, 157,
164, 171
Limoges, 24, 29, 111
siege of (1183), 27
viscounts of, 24
Limoges, Aimar V, viscount of, 25
Limousin, 24, 42, 103, 111
Lincoln, battle of, 21
Lindsey, Robert Bertie, lord of, 134
Lion-la-Forêt, 29
Lisieux, 21, 29, 64, 71, 73
Lisle d’Albigeois, 110
Livy, 77
259
Locatelli, Vincenzo, engineer, 88
Loches, 11, 12, 15, 22, 28, 30, 139
Lodi, 80
Loire River, 6–7, 10–14, 20–42, 48,
70, 94, 102, 108, 109, 111, 140
Lombardy, 88
Lombers, 32
Longjumeau, Peace of (1569), 103
Lopez, Ramio, engieneer, 81
Lorgues, 14
Lorient, 157
Lorini, Bonaiuto, 79, 118
Lorraine, 12, 13, 71, 73, 82, 87, 99,
112, 117, 125, 139, 140, 143, 146,
153, 158, 172
Lorraine, Charles III, duke of, 87,
117, 140
Lorris, 20
Lot River, 46, 50
Lotharingia, 12
Loudun, 12, 22, 23, 138
Treaty of (1616), 127
Louis VI, king of France, 13, 19–20, 39
Louis VII, king of France, 19–25
Louis VIII, king of France, 30–34, 37,
39, 40, 49
Louis IX, king of France, 39–42,
49, 50
Louis X, king of France, 61
Louis XI, king of France, 71–74, 123
Louis XIII, king of France, 125–135,
139–146, 158, 173
Louis XIV, king of France, 137,
139–142, 146–161, 173
Louisiana, 167
Lourdes, 139
Louvain, 8, 145
Louvet de Couvray, Jean-Baptiste, 167
Louvois, see François-Michel Le Tellier
Louvre, 37
Low Countries, 58, 66, 69, 73, 79,
81, 86, 91, 93, 114, 119, 142,
147, 162–164, 172
Lubret, Jourdain de, 45
Lucca, 81
Lusignan, 138
Lusignan, Hugh IX, lord of, 34
Lusignan, Hugh X, lord of, 40–41
Lusignan, lords of, 24, 29
Luynes, Charles, duke of, 128, 129
260
I n de x
Lyon, 73, 75, 82, 92, 99–102, 112,
115, 167
Lyonnais, 88
Luxembourg, 86, 87, 153
Maastricht, siege of (1579), 88
Machecoul, 127
Machiavelli, Nicolò, 72, 81
Mâcon, 13, 110
Mâcon, Guillaume II, count of, 13
Madrid, 82
Maggi, Girolamo, 88
Maginot Line, 171
Maguelone, 138
Maillezais, 138
Maillotin Revolt (1382), 61
Maine, 10, 12, 21–22, 27, 29–30, 42
Majorica, kingdom of, 14, 49
Malines, 8
Manesson-Mallet, Alain, 153, 155
Mansard, Jules Hardouin, 167
Mantes, 20, 36
Marcel, Étienne, 58
Maretz, Jacques, 144
Marguerite de Valois, 111
Mariembourg, 87
Marini, Camillo, 87, 89
Marini, Gieronimo, 87
Marini, Girolamo, 84–87
Marmande, 34, 40
Marne River, 36, 85
Marolais, Samuel, 142
Marseille, 14, 34, 40, 82, 84, 102,
112, 155, 157–158, 167
Martain, county of, 21
Martilleur, François, 125
Martin, Louis, 137
Martinengue, François, count of, 108
Marivaux, Pierre de, 167
Marziac, Guichard de, 45
Masse, Claude, 162
Matilda, queen of England, 20
Mauhurgeon, Jean de, 70
Mayenne
lords of, 22
Mayenne, Charles of Lorraine, duke of,
111–112
Mayenne, Henri of Lorraine, duke of,
128–129
Mayenne, Juhel I, lord of, 30
Mazarin, Jules, cardinal, 138, 146
Meaux, 21, 30, 102, 115
Médici, Catherine de, 95, 103
Medici, Gian Giacomo de’, 117
Médici, Marie de, 125, 127, 128
Mediterranean Sea, 6, 14, 50, 151,
157–158, 163
Mellone, Antonio, 85
Melun, 36–37, 113, 117
Melun, Adam II de Chailly,
viscount of, 37
Mende, 14
Ménérbes, siege of (1574–1575), 110
Méran, Agnès de, 30
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, 147, 167
Mercoeur, Philippe-Emmanuel of
Lorraine, duke of, 111–112
Merovingians, 12
Mersenne, Merin, 144
Métézeau, Claude, 132, 141
Métézeau, Louis, 141
Metz, 12, 87, 89, 143, 153, 158
Metz, Gerald I, count of, 12
Meung, Jean de, 47
Meung-sur-Loire, 11
Meuse River, 7–8, 12, 86, 141, 144, 156
Meynier, Honorat de, 142
Mézières, 12, 82, 86, 141, 168
siege of (1521), 82
Michelangelo, 80
Midi, 7, 13, 42, 102, 111, 128
Canal du, 163
Milan, 80, 86, 88, 99
Military Revolution, 142
Militias, 16, 35, 44, 127, 155
Millau, 129, 133
Milliet, Claude-François Deschales, 149
Minerve, 33
Mirabel, 133
Mirebeau, 23, 29
Modena, 84, 88
Moissac, 13
Monclar d’Agenais, 44
Monluc, Blaise de, 84, 85, 102, 108
Mons, 8, 88
Montalembert, Marc-René de, 166
Montargis, 37, 140
siege of (1427), 68
Montaigu, 112, 138
Montaigut, Guillaume de, 46
I n de x
Montauban, 14, 21, 45, 98, 104, 109,
112, 126, 128, 130, 137–138,
141, 164
siege of (1562), 108
siege of (1621), 129
Montbazon, 22
Montcontour, battle of (1569), 104
Montcuq, 1
Montdidier, 25
Montech, 130
Montereau, 113
Montferrand, 13
Montflanquin, 138
Montfort, Amaury II, lord of, 15
Montfort, Amaury VI, lord of, 34
Montmorency, Anne, duke of, 84,
88–89, 102–103
Montmorency, Henri de Damville,
duke of, 111
Montmorency, Henri II, duke of, 133,
137–138
Montpellier, 14, 16, 33, 42, 126, 138
siege of (1621), 128–129
Treaty of (1621), 129
Montpensier, François de Bourbon,
duke of, 111
Montpézat, 51–52
Mont-Saint-Michel, 29, 68
Montlhéry, 20
siege of (1465), 73
Montréal, 32, 34, 138
Montreuil-Bellay, 11
Montreuil-Bellay, Gerald Berlay,
lord of, 22
Montreuil-en-Gâtine, 41
Montreuil-sur-Mer, 37, 48, 82, 84, 174
Montségur, 40–41
Morbihan, 10
Mortain, Robert of Sées, lord of, 29
Mortemer, 29
Moulins, 28
Edict of (1565), 103
Moulins-la-Marche, 21, 23
Mouzon, 86
Mure, 112
Muret, 33
Najac, 44
Namur, 8, 47
Namur, Philip I, marquis of, 30
261
Nançay, 110
Nancy, 12, 71, 73, 86–87, 112, 140, 153
Nantes, 10, 23, 25, 48, 64, 70,
102–104, 111–112, 128, 130,
167–168
Edict of (1598), 119, 125, 127,
129, 172
Revocation (1685), 148
Nantes, Geoffrey of Anjou,
count of, 23
Nantes, Hoël, count of, 23
Naples, 85, 90
Napoléon Bonaparte, 162, 173
Napoléon, Louis, 162
Napoli, Fabrizio Ceciliano da, 82
Narbonne, 14, 33, 82
Naudé, Gabriel, 145
Navarre, kingdom of, 62, 88
Navarre, Henri de, see Henri IV, king
of France
Navarrenx, siege of (1569), 104
Navarrins, 75
Nemours, Charles-Emmanuel of Savoy,
duke of, 112
Netherlands, see Low Countries
Neuf-Brisach, 153–154, 167
Neufmarché-sur-Epte, 23
Neustria, 6
Nevers, 58, 108
Nevers, counts of, 13, 27, 32
Never, Charles de Gonzague, count of
Rethel and duke of, 141
Nevers, Louis de Gonzague,
duke of, 112
Newton, Isaac, 150
Nicholas V, pope, 80
Nicolay, Nicolai de, 119
Nieuw-Port, see Gravelines
Nijmegen, Peace of (1678), 147, 151
Nîmes, 3, 14, 40, 49, 97–98, 109,
126, 129–130, 133–134,
137, 168
Michelade massacre (1567), 100
siege of (1573), 104
Niort, 22, 24, 40, 42, 104, 131–132,
138–139
Nivelles, 8
Noirot, Sébastien, 112
Nominoë, Breton chief, 10
Nonette, 20, 30
262
I n de x
Normandy, 6–10, 19–23, 28–30,
35–36, 42, 48, 60, 64, 67, 70, 72,
82, 88, 94, 102, 105, 110–111,
125, 128
Normandy, dukes of, 9, 10, 172
Normandy, Guillaume le Bâtard,
duke of, 10
Normandy, Robert I, duke of, 11
Normandy, Robert II, duke of, 10
Normans, 4, 6
Noue, François de la, 98, 106–107, 116
Nouveau, Hiérosme de, 163
Novarro, Pedro, 76
Novilla, Thome de, 45
Noyers, Mile de, 52
Noyon, 3, 48
Nupieds, 100
Occitania, 14–15, 31, 33–34, 37–38,
40–43, 172
Odruik, siege of (1377), 66
Oléron, 30, 40
Olonne, 129
oppida, see fortifications, Gallo-Roman
Orbay, François d’, 162
Orbieu River, 32
Origny, Pierre d’, 116
Orléans, 11, 20, 35, 65, 98, 100, 103,
109, 113, 115
Canal d’, 163
siege of (1428–29), 68, 70
siege of (1562), 102
Orléans, Gaston, duke of, 131
Orléans, Philippe, duke of, 165
Orme, Philibert de l’, 92, 143
Ormesson, François, 165
Orologio, Giacomo, 88
Orry, Jean, 162, 164
Orville, Constant d’, 167
Otto of Brunswick, emperor, 31
Ottomans, 79
Ozanam, Jacques, 150
Pacioli, Luca, 93
Paciotto, Francesco, 88
Padova, Bathazare da, 87
Padua, 82
Pagan, Blaise de, 145
Palissy, Bernard, 119
Palmanova, 79, 142
Pamiers, 133
Pardiac, counts of, 45, 46
Paris, 9, 19–20, 23, 35–37, 41, 48,
58, 61–62, 69, 72, 82, 84–86,
94, 97, 100–104, 107, 110, 113,
115–117, 123, 140–141, 146,
159, 161–170, 173
Assembly of Notables
(1626–1627), 139
treaty of (1229), 40
treaty of (1259), 42, 46
parlement, 42, 46, 52, 60, 100, 110,
111, 125
Parma, siege of (1509), 82
Parma, Alessandro Farnese,
duke of, 113–114
Parthenay, 22, 71, 73, 81, 102, 138
Pas-de-Calais, 35
Pascal, Blaise, 164, 168
Pasino, Marco Aurelio da, 88
Patte, Pierre, 167
Pau, 128
Pavia, 80
battle of (1525), 82
Pedro II, king of Aragon, 32–33
Pélerin, Jean, 90, 92
Peletier, Jacques, 93
Pellevé, Jacques de, 112
Pellizzuoli, Donato Buono de’, 86
Pène, Charles de, 153
Pennacchi, Girolamo, 86
Penne d’Agenais, 41, 45
Penthièvre, counts and duke of, 48,
63, 127
Penthièvre, Marie de Luxembourg,
duchess of, 112
Perche, Geoffrey III, count of, 28
Perche, Rotrou III, count of, 21
Perche, Rotrou IV, count of, 23
Périgueux, 14, 24, 58
Périgord, 14, 24, 27, 42, 45, 52,
58, 113
Périgord, counts of, 24
Péronne, 25, 37, 84, 87, 144
League of, 110
Perpignan, 49, 72–73, 86, 87
siege of (1542), 84
Perrault, Claude, 150
Perret de Chambéry, Jacques, 118
Perronet, Jean-Rodolphe, 165
Peruzzi, Baldassar, 88
Peruzzi, Sallustio, 88
I n de x
Pesaro, 92
Pescara, 85
Peyrusse, 41
Philip II, king of France, 20, 25–39,
48, 172
Philip III, king of France, 45–46, 49
Philip IV, king of France, 45–47, 49,
51, 68
Philip VI, king of France, 52, 58, 64, 67
Philip II, king of Spain, 86, 94, 119
Philip of Swabia, German emperor, 31
Philippebourg, 87
Physiocrats, 167, 169
Picard, Jean, 162
Picardy, 6–9, 25, 27, 30, 37, 82, 84,
86–88, 94, 102, 105, 110–111,
123, 144
Piedmont, 82, 84–85, 144, 158
Pinerolo, 84–85, 153
Pisa, 81
Pisan, Christine de, 57, 67
places de sûreté, 104, 110, 120, 127,
138, 141
Plato, 77
Plessis-Besançon, Bernard du, 132–133
Pliny the Elder, 77
Pluvinel, Antoine de, 116
Po River, 80
Poissy, 20
Poitiers, 3, 12, 14, 24, 48, 62, 131, 132
battle of (1356), 57, 58
siege of (1569), 104
Poitou, 10, 14, 20–25, 29–33, 36, 42,
47–48, 73, 111–112, 127–128,
138, 141
Poitou, barons of, 12, 22, 25, 27, 34, 40
Polignac, viscount of, 20
Politiques, 111
Pontchartrain, Phélypeaux, Louis,
count of, 149
Pons, 25
Pont-de-Cé, battle of (1620), 128
Pont-de-l’Arche, 37, 114
Pontaymery, Alexandre de, 116
Ponthieu, 58, 125
Pontoise, 115
siege of (1441), 68
Pouancé, 72
prévôts, and prévôtés, 16, 20, 23, 27, 35
Primaticci, Francesco, 92
Principiano, Ambrosio, 87
263
Priorat, Jean, 47
Provence, 7, 14, 33–34, 42, 49, 62, 82,
84, 88, 94, 100–102, 112, 123
Provence, Charles of Anjou, count of, 42
Provins, 12, 21, 30, 37, 49
Puigcerdà, 72
Pujols, 45
Puymirol, 45, 52
Pyrenees, 14, 22, 24, 34, 42, 45, 75,
82, 87, 102, 104, 112, 128, 138,
151, 172
Treaty of (1659), 119, 143, 146, 156
Pythagoras, 77
Quercy, 24, 28, 41–42, 45–46
Quertinbeaux, 32
Rabelais, François, 85
Ramelli, Agostino, 88, 107, 113, 117
Rance River, 10
Rancon, lords of, 24, 25
Rancon, Geoffrey III, lord of, 25
Rancon, Geoffrey IV, lord of, 34, 41
Ratisbon, Truce of (1684), 147
Ravenna, battle of (1512), 76
Ravenna, Benedeto da, 86
Regency, 164–165
Rennes, 10, 48, 63, 70, 125, 167
Rennes, Conan, count of, 11
Restif de la Bretonne, Nicolas, 167
Rethel, 12, 128
Retz, Henri, duke of, 127
Rheims, 12, 36, 62, 73
Rhine River, 7, 12–13, 81, 147, 153
Rhône River, 13, 20, 34, 40, 49,
111, 151
Ribemont, 25, 37
Richard I, king of England, 23–24,
27–29, 35–36
Richelieu, 141
Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis,
cardinal, 84, 130–146, 161, 173
Richemond, 25
Richier de l’Aigle, 23
Rieux, lords of, 64, 70
Riquet, Pierre-Paul, 163
Riom, 14, 30
Rivault de Flurance, David, 119
Rochefort, 128, 136, 139, 157, 171
Roches, Guillaume des, 29–30
Rocroi, 87, 112
264
I n de x
Rodez, 14
Rohan, lords of, 64
Rohan, Henri II, duke of, 125,
127–130, 133
Romans, 110
Rome, 80, 145, 162
Rondeboeuf, Geoffrey de, 46
Rouen, 10, 23, 28–29, 35, 48, 58, 60,
64, 70, 82, 102, 104, 111, 115,
159, 162, 169
siege of (1418–19), 67–68
siege of (1446), 61
siege of (1562), 102
siege of (1592), 114
Rouergue, 24, 41–42, 45, 112
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 167
Roussillon, 72–73
Royan, 40
Ryswick, Treaty of (1697), 147
Saint-Affrique, 127, 133
Saint-Amand-Montrond, 138
Saint-Antonin, 129
Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, 74
St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres
(1572), 100, 104, 108–109
Sainte-Colombe, 52
Saint-Cosme, abbey of, 71
Saint-Denis, battle of (1568), 103
Saint-Dizier
siege of (1544), 85, 86
Saint-Émilion, 25, 30, 40
Saint-Étienne, 99
Saint-Flour, 14
Saint-Foy-la-Grande, 70
Saint-Germain, Peace of (1570), 104
Sainte-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, 138
Saint-Gobain, 47
Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, battle of
(1622), 130
Saint-Jean d’Angély, 25, 40, 41, 103, 104
siege of (1621), 128
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Portis, 144
Saint-Macaire, 40
Saint-Maixent, 104, 138
Saint-Malo, 40, 49, 64, 111, 157
Saint-Martin, Vauzy de, 73
Saint-Médard, 20
Saint-Menhoult, 86
Saint-Omer, 27, 30, 31, 48, 67
Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 82
Saint-Pierre, 25
Saint-Pierre, Charles Irénée Castel,
abbot of, 169
St-Pol, 84
counts of, 32
Saint-Quentin, 25, 62, 82, 84
battle of (1557), 88–89
Saint-Rémy, Jean de, 87
Saint-Sardos, 46, 51
Saint-Satur, 109
Saint-Sauveur, siege of (1375), 66
Saint-Simon, Claude de Rouvroy, lord
of, 136–137
Saintes, 24–25, 40, 41, 52, 132, 138
Saintonge, 11, 12, 24–25, 30, 34, 42,
47, 58, 103–104, 112, 127
Salses, 81
San Marino, Gian-Battista da, 85
Sancerre, 21, 104
counts of, 27
siege of (1572–1573), 108–110, 114
Sancerre, Jean V de Bueil, count of,
61, 68
Sancho VI, king of Navarre, 27
Sangallo, Antonio da, 77, 81
Sangallo, Giuliano, 81
Sarrazin, Jean, 138
Sasso, 85
Saulx-Tavannes, Jean de, 116
Saumur, 12, 22, 24, 30, 139
Assembly of (1611), 125
Savaric of Mauléon, lord of Talmont, 34
Savigliano, 85
Savoit, Louis, 143
Savorgnano, Germanico, 85
Savorgnano, Mario, 85
Savoy, duchy of, 42, 82, 118, 144,
149, 172
Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert, duke of, 88
Scala, Giantomaso, 88
Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 142
Scarpe River, 164
Scheldt, River, 4, 7
Scotland and Scots, 22, 46, 60
Sedan, 88
Seghizzi, Jacomo, 88
Seine River, 4, 7, 23, 28–29, 35,
36, 70, 103, 111, 132,
140–141
I n de x
Semens, 111
seneschals (sénéchaux), 21, 22, 25, 40,
42, 45–46, 52, 60, 136
Sens, 20, 35, 62
Serbelloni, Gabrio, 86
Séré de Rivières, Raymond-Adolphe, 171
Sérigny, 131
Serlio, Sebastiano, 80
Serpelloni, Gabrio, 88
Servien, Abel, 142
Setara, Giorgio, 86
Sète, 157
Sèvre River, 131
Seyssel, Claude de, 75
Sforzinda, 79, 118
Siena, 80, 81, 84
Silvanès, 127
Simon IV, lord of Montfort, 31–34, 37,
40, 43
Sisteron, 14, 102
Sixtus V, pope, 162
Soissons, 9
Soissons, Louis de Bourbon, count
of, 130
Somme River, 7, 36, 119
Soubise, Benjamin de Rohan, duke of,
127, 130, 133, 138
Spain, 25, 66, 87, 119, 132, 145
Specklin, Daniel, 108
Stenay, 86, 151
Stephen of Blois, king of England, 20, 21
Stevin, Simon, 93, 142
Strasbourg, 13, 108, 153
Strozzi, Piero, 89
Suberville, Henri de, 118
Sublet de Noyers, François, 142
suburbs, 6, 38, 65, 66, 156, 159, 167,
170, 173
Suger, Abbot, 19
Sully, Maximilien de Béthune,
duke of, 116, 119, 123, 127,
138, 141
Sulpicius, Giovanni, 78
Surdespine, 32
Surgères, 128
Sweden, 142
Taccola, Mariano, 80
Tacitus, 114
Tacquet, André, 145
265
Taillebourg, 24, 25
Taillefer, counts of Angoulême, 24
Talmont, 138–139
Tarascon, 84
Targoni, Pompée, 128, 132
Tarn River, 21, 46, 108
Tartaglia, Nicolò, 85, 91, 92
taxes, 16, 23, 52, 58, 60–61, 64, 65,
72, 94, 114, 126, 145, 156
Termes, 33
Thanay, Lucas de, 46
Thérouanne, 82, 87
Thiérache, 35, 58, 99, 139
Thionville, 12, 158
Thiriot, Jean, 132
Thirty Years’ War, 137–145
Thomas de Marle, 20
Thou, Jacques-Auguste de, 114
Thouars, 14, 24, 138
Thouars, viscounts of, 24
Tiffauges, 138
Tillières, 28
Toiras, Jean de Saint-Bonnet,
lord of, 130
Tonay-Charente, 128
Toueiles, 43
Toul, 87
Toulon, 112, 157
Toulouse, 14, 20–21, 24, 33, 40, 51,
82, 102, 111, 113
siege of (1217), 34
Toulouse, counts of, 14, 19, 21, 24, 39
Toulouse, Alphonse of Jourdain, count
of, 21, 45
Toulouse, Alphonse of Poitiers, count
of, 39–46, 49
Toulouse, Raymond V, count of, 20,
24, 28, 45
Toulouse, Raymond VI, count of, 28,
31, 33
Toulouse, Raymond VII, count of, 34,
40–42, 45–46
Toulouse, Jeanne, countess of, 40–42, 49
Toulouse, county of, 14, 31, 40–42,
45–46, 49, 52
Touraine, 12, 14, 22, 28–30, 113,
128, 141
Tournai, 4, 47, 51, 53
266
I n de x
Tournoël, 30
Tournon, 45
Tour-Régine, 32
Tours, 12, 21–22, 24, 28, 48, 65, 99,
102, 139
Treille, Jean de la, 92
Trémoïlle, Henri III, duke of La, 130
Trencavels, viscounts of Béziers, 14,
24, 40
Trésaguet, Pierre-Marie-Jérôme, 164
Treviso, 82, 84, 86
Trie, Jean de, 45
Troyes, 12, 21, 37, 48, 82, 85, 115, 139
Trudaine, Charles Daniel, 164–165
Tuchin Revolt (1382), 61
Turenne, Raymond, viscount of, 62
Turgot, Anne-Robert Jacques, 165, 170
Turin, 85
Urbino, 84, 88, 90
Urbino, Montefeltro, Federcio da,
duke of, 80
Utrecht, Treaty of (1713), 147, 158
Uzerches, 24
Uzès, 129–130
Valence, 3
Valenciennes, 8, 164
Valle, Battista della, 90
Valois, 25
Valtelline, 143
Valturio, Roberto, 80
Van Noyen, Sébastien, 87
Vannes, 10, 63–64, 127
Vassy, massacre at (1562), 97
Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, lord of, 84,
139, 143–159, 164–165, 171, 173
Vaucouleurs, 13
Vaudreuil, 28, 29
Vaux-le-Vicomte, 162
Vegetius, 11, 47, 68, 77
Vendée, 128, 129
Vendôme, 12, 22, 28, 113
Vendôme, César, duke of, 127
Vendôme, Charles IV, duke of, 82
Venice, 78, 86
Verdun, 12, 87
Verdun-sur-Garonne, 41
Vergano, Scipio, 105–107, 113
Vermandois, counts of, 21
Verneuil, 28
Vernon, 23
Verona, battle of (1516), 76
Versailles, 162
Vervins, 82
treaty of (1598), 119
Vexin, 22, 27–28, 35
Vexin, Gauthier II, count of, 9
Vianello, Baldassare, 86
Vicopisano, 79
Vienna, 28
Vienne, 52
Vigevano, Guido de, 67
Vignola, Giacomo Barrozi da, 92
Vikings, see Normans
Vilaine River, 10, 167
Villars, André de Branca, marquis of, 114
Ville, Antoine de, 143–144
Villefranche (Champagne), 82, 92
Villefranche-de-Rouergue, 44, 46
Villemur, 41, 46
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, 37
Vimercate, Bernardino da, 88
Vincennes, château de, 69
Vinci, Leonardo da, 77, 80
Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 171
Visigoths, 3, 49
Vitelli, Chiapino, 86
Vitruvius, 77–79, 82, 150, 169
Vitry, 20, 82
Vitry-en-Perthois, siege of (1544), 86
Vitry-le-Français, 79, 86
Vivarais, 133
Viviers, 14
Voltaire, 141
Wales and Welsh, 60
Westphalia, Peace of (1648), 146
William, duke of Normandy, king of
England, 10
Winsor, siege of (1215), 31
World War I, 171, 174
Würtemberg, 117
Yèvres-le-Châtel, 37
Yorke, Edmund, 114
Ypres, 8, 31
Zacarie, Denis, 142
Zanchi, Giovan Battista de’, 92

Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the

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