Clientage, Elites, and Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century France

It is a pleasure to be able to discuss the two fine articles by Russell Major and Sharon Kettering. As these authors indicate, the question offidedites and clientage has not been studied very much in depthalthough recently there has been a flurry of work done on the subjectt-and both authors have made an important contribution here. That contribution, although evident to the specialist and to those who know the other work of Professors Major and Kettering, may not be fully clear to the general student of French history. Therefore I will briefly put these articles into the context of the authors' other work and then discuss some of their larger implications. Professor Major focuses on a single series of connected events-the abortive rebellion centered around Marie de Medici in 1619-20-in order to understand how the system of clientage functioned. His very effective analysis of several key manuscript

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