Exile, Imprisonment, or Death

A vast distance separates the French monarchical state between the reigns of Louis XIII and his successors: a world in which the monarch was only one aristocrat among others, disciplining his rivals with an iron hand, gave way to a more ordered universe, one in which the king was obeyed almost blindly. Julian Swann’s book focuses on one of the most efficient tools of power used by French kings before the French Revolution: political disgrace. The transformation of the politics of disgrace, Swann shows, tells us something fundamental about the exercise of state power and French political culture in the last two centuries of the Ancien Régime. Political disgrace encompasses all ‘manifestations of royal disfavour’, from a snubbing at court to banishment within, or even outside, the kingdom, and imprisonment in a sinister dungeon for twenty years. The phenomenon was intrinsically linked to notions of dishonour, but it also had a religious dimension (dis-grace), which was all the more powerful since the monarch was sacred. No one was immune from disgrace, not even the princes of blood, or bishops, who could be confined in their dioceses, or corporate bodies such as courts of justice, cities or provinces. Disgrace took many forms: the spatial distance from the king, the manner in which the disgraced learned of his fate, the treatment of relatives and friends, the keeping of privileges in exile or their withdrawal, manifested the severity of one’s punishment. But, just as the king could disgrace his closest servants on a whim, he could decide to restore them to the court without justification. Sexual misconduct, drunkenness, cheating at cards or self-righteousness, not just political misdemeanours, could be causes for disgrace

Imprisonment · Political science · Politics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law