The League in Burgundy

When Henri Drouot published his major study of the Catholic League in Burgundy in 1937, he argued that the principal cause for the split between Leaguers and royalists in the province was due to social tensions between the wealthy magistrates in the Parlement and the ‘bourgeoisie seconde’ who dominated the hôtel de ville in Dijon, namely the lawyers, solicitors, notaries and greffiers of the legal profession. This article challenges that assessment, arguing instead that the city council during the League was still controlled by merchants and other urban bourgeois, not the legal professions as Drouot assumed, and that the political divisions during the League were as much the result of difficult political choices and a variety of other factors, rather than solely the result of the social tensions between Drouot's ‘two bourgeoisies’. Thus, the article critiques Drouot's narrow use of the term ‘bourgeoisie seconde’ rather than the efficacy of the term itself.

Bourgeoisie · Economic history · Law and economics · League · Petite bourgeoisie · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Principal (computer security) · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics) · European Political History Analysis · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law