This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This is the first scholarly study of the political and economic relationship between Louis XIV and the parlements of France, the Parlement of Paris and all the provincial tribunals. The author explains how the king managed to impose strict political discipline for which this reign, and only this reign, is known. Hurt shows that the king built upon that discipline to extract large sums of money from the judges in the parlements, thus damaging their economic interests. When the king died in 1715, the regent, Philippe d’Orléans, after a brief attempt to befriend the parlements through compromise, resorted to the authoritarian methods of Louis XIV and perpetuated the Sun King’s political and economic legacy. This study calls into question current revisionist understanding of Louis XIV and insists that absolute government had a harsh reality at its core. Based upon extensive archival research, this remarkable book will be of interest to all students of the history of early modern France and the monarchies of Europe.

Beginning with a discussion of familiar images of the French Revolution, this work looks at how the ancien régime became ancien as well as examining cases in which achievement failed to match ambition.

What Is the Third Estate? was the most influential pamphlet of 1789. It did much to set the French Revolution on a radically democratic course. It also launched its author, the Abbé Sieyes, on a remarkable political career that spanned the entire revolutionary decade. Sieyes both opened the revolution by authoring the National Assembly's declaration of sovereignty in June of 1789 and closed it in 1799 by engineering Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état. This book studies the powerful rhetoric of the great pamphlet and the brilliant but enigmatic thought of its author. William H. Sewell's insightful analysis reveals the fundamental role played by the new discourse of political economy in Sieyes's thought and uncovers the strategies by which this gifted rhetorician gained the assent of his intended readers--educated and prosperous bourgeois who felt excluded by the nobility in the hierarchical social order of the old regime. He also probes the contradictions and incoherencies of the pamphlet's highly polished text to reveal fissures that reach to the core of Sieyes's thought--and to the core of the revolutionary project itself. Combining techniques of intellectual history and literary analysis with a deep understanding of French social and political history, Sewell not only fashions an illuminating portrait of a crucial political document, but outlines a fresh perspective on the history of revolutionary political culture.

In this study of the Lit de Justice assembly, Sarah Hanley draws on history, legend, ritual, and discourse to show how constitutional ideologies were propagated in the Grand-chambre of the Parlement of Paris during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Discarding the traditional view of the Fronde as an abortive revolution against "absolute monarchy" during the minority of Louis XIV, A. Lloyd Moote analyzes it by studying the ambivalent role of its leading institutional element, the Parlement of Paris. France's highest tribunal, dedicated to law and the principles of royal absolutism, the Parlement was paradoxically, at the center of the opposition from the beginning of the movement for state reform in 1643. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This investigation not only revises what historians have long thought of the attitude of barristers toward the French Revolution, but also offers insights into the corporate character of Old Regime society and how the Revolution affected it. Fitzsimmons's study suggests that many propertied commoners during the Revolution were not politically engaged, that they were not necessarily associated with a party or cause simply because of their place within a set of social relationships.

This book assesses how and to what extent the governments of Cardinal Mazarin and Louis XIV controlled the Parlement of Paris in the two decades after the civil wars known as the Fronde. The history of this prestigious court of law bears directly on the broader issue of the growth of "royal absolutism." Few historians have examined the resurgence of royal authority after the Fronde from the vantage point of traditional institutions, and no other scholarly work deals extensively with the activities of Parlement during this controversial period. This study reveals the methods, achievements, and limitations of absolutism associated with the Sun King. The book investigates the impact of royal policies on the way the judges acquired and transmitted their posts, the sources of their wealth, the social composition of their court, and their judicial and administrative authority. Parlement's political activities and its conflicts with the crown over issues of judicial, financial, and religious importance also receive thorough treatment.The author's extensive archival research indicates that many widely held assumptions about declining importance of Parlement after the civil war are unwarranted. Although Parlement's political activities gradually declined, this transformation was neither as complete nor as irreversible as historians have asserted. Parlement retained some voice in affairs of state, and most of the administrative machinery it could employ to oppose royal policy remained intact. Moreover, the crown failed to attack the sources of parlementaire wealth, and the judges freely enhanced their court's status as a social corporation.