THERE TOO VIOLENCE DESTROYS PEASANTS' SALEABLE SURPLUS AND STRENGTHENS HIERARCH
War
Hunting, reserved to nobles, limits peasant surplus by trampling fields. It is a prelude to fighting, where after wasting their own revenues on horses and show, high-born opponents feast and intermarry.
Count Geoffrey's great pleasure is hunting. In chasing his prey, he tramples peasants' harvests.
-- 1950's schoolbook
"The great occupation of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, is war. He often fights neighboring lords."
Controlled violence helps things stay as they are.
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As in Africa crowds hamper army movement while emphasizing the king:
- Here wealthy townsmen are present and the figure in black on the left is a woman:
Tapestry (detail) Renaissance Museum / Claude Abron
- Civilians do not accompany campaigns, which are not raids without danger for attackers but real combats, which allow exploits that win royal favor. But Louis XIV's court accompanies his visit to conquered towns (in 1667 and 1672).
The Royal Entry of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse in Arras in 1667 by Adam van der Meulen, toward 1685 / zoom
- Corteges are arranged with the same insistence on hierarchy as those of Africa, plus waste (which the brief accounts on Africa do not mention):
The king, who had traveled for war on horseback, now for the first time went by coach [...]. The queen, Madame his sister-in-law, the marquise de Montespan, splendidly surrounded, was followed by many others; [...] The dauphin came next with his court, Mademoiselle with her own [...]. The crown's most sumptuous furniture was carried to the towns where one slept.
One found in each town a masked ball or fireworks. All the king's wartime household accompanied him and all his servants preceded or followed. Meals were like those at Saint-Germain [a palace]. The court visited all the conquered towns with that pomp. The main ladies of Brussels, of Ghent, came to see that magnificence; the king invited them to his table; he gave them presents of great gallantry. All officers of garrisoned troops received gratifications. It cost several times fifteen hundred gold louis by day in liberalities.
-- Le siècle [century]de Louis XIV by Voltaire, ed. 2015, p. 436.
- Hierarchy: when Louise de la Vallière, the favorite whom the king was abandoning, joined him uninvited and rushed down the hill to meet him, he furiously cried, "What! You ride before the queen!"
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Fighting stops on holidays, which take up one day in three (for the Ashanti, two days in three). Attacking Paris on a saint's day is one of the reasons for condemning Joan of Arc.
Horses are used as in Africa. They add show, allow exploits and let nobles tower over the commoners who are much more likely to be wounded or killed:
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There too they are used for flight and horsemen dismount for victory.
-- In that way 12th-century English knights defeat their astounded opponents:
The Pillars of the Earth, historical novel by Ken Follett, 1989
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Arms can be for show, not combat:
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| Sixteenth-century weapons at the Louvre |
Shield of Charles IX (toward 1560)
Louis XII leaves to quell rebellion, 1507, by Jean Bourdichon, manuscript illuminator at court of France / zoom
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Same idea
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| Northern Nigerian horseman, Presenta Barman, Instagram, no further information |
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Like martial spectacle in Africa,
chronicles, narratives and arts of the time
glorify a violence that
— except for civil wars
glorify a violence that
— except for civil wars
and Louis XIV's destruction of the Palatinate —
was (informally) muzzled in practice.
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