The Would-Be Commoner

by Ravel, Jeffrey

• ISBN13: 9780618197316
• ISBN10: 0618197311
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-10
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

In the tradition of "The Return of Martin Guerre" comes this dramatic tale of false identity, murder, and bigamy that riveted France during the reign of Louis XIV.

Author Biography

Jeffrey S. Ravel is an associate professor of history at MIT and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Historical Association, among others. He is a former editor of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.

Table of Contents

Contents
Illustrations and Maps	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Prologue: The Mystery of Louis de la Pivardière	p. xv
Becoming a Gentleman	p. 1
The Murder Narrative	p. 30
Preliminary Judgment	p. 64
Nobleman, Commoner, or Impostor?	p. 93
Stage Plays	p. 122
Judicial Doubt	p. 146
Interrogation	p. 164
Verdicts	p. 189
Epilogue: Rewriting a Cause Célèbre	p. 214
Notes	p. 235
Selected Bibliography	p. 268
Index	p. 271
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

BECOMING A GENTLEMAN Louis de la Pivardiere was born November 15, 1661, on a small estate in the Berry, a province in economic and demographic decline by the second half of the seventeenth century. He was the last of three sons and two daughters who survived to adulthood, and the only son born to his father's second wife. He and his siblings were acutely aware of the strategies followed by Old Regime families to build wealth and status over time. These included advantageous marriages that allowed for the consolidation of wealth, wise investments in land and annuities, and the purchase of royal offices that conferred various privileges. Contemporary noblemen in more dynamic provinces with extensive social networks and greater wealth had a chance of obtaining access to the upper ranks of the French military and administrative establishment. The young Louis, however, lived in the Berry, a stagnant province that boasted no considerable fortunes. He would find his path to fortune and social advancement blocked at every turn because of his modest origins. As in many other parts of France and Europe, the rule of primogeniture governed inheritance patterns in the Berry, and his father's modest landholdings went to his oldest half brother; shortly before his father's death, he insisted that Louis sign away his right to any remaining inheritance. Although he was one of the 170 or so titular noblemen in his district of the Berry, Louis received neither the training nor the means to live in the high aristocratic style of the end of the seventeenth century. He would have to overcome the handicap of his unexceptional beginnings if he wished to become a "gentleman." Before the 1500s, Pivardiere's native Berry and its capital city, Bourges, had played an important role in the ecclesiastical, political, and economic history of France. The archbishops of Bourges had overseen religious life in much of the southern part of the kingdom, while King Charles VII briefly relocated his court to Bourges in the 1420s, in part due to the presence of the wealthy financier Jacques Coeur. As in many other regions of France, though, the Protestant challenge to Roman Catholicism after 1500 led to theological disputes and civil strife. During the French Wars of Religion (15621598), Bourges and its surrounding area remained largely loyalist and Catholic, while pockets of Calvinist resistance took hold throughout the province. The severity of religious conflict, the plunder and pillaging of the countryside by armies fighting on both sides, and the forced emigration of religious dissidents all contributed to the region's material decline by 1600. In the first half of the next century an increasingly heavy tax burden, imposed by the Crown to finance its participation in the Thirty Years War (16181648), the final great military conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, further destabilized the province; tax riots broke out frequently in Bourges and other towns through the 1650s. In addition to the demands the war placed on the population, the seventeenth century was a period of famine and disease; plague struck the province particularly hard in 16281632, and famine claimed many lives in 16361638. During the Fronde (16481653), the civil war against the monarchy led by princes of the blood and disaffected royal magistrates, the Berry served as a base of operation for the Prince de Conde, one of the chiefs of the opposition faction. Intense local combat further damaged the area. By the beginning of the personal reign of Louis XIV in 1661, the year of Louis de la Pivardiere's birth, the signs of stagnation were unmistakable. Estimates based on tax rolls show that the total