Tom Hamilton has produced a compelling and meticulous microhistory of a remarkable criminal trial, the 1599 prosecution at the Parlement of Paris of a French royalist military commander for war crimes. In a series of short, generously illustrated chapters, Hamilton brings to life the story of the peasants of Chaumot, who reported having suffered gratuitous depredations at the hands of royalist commander Mathurin Delacanche and his men during the Wars of Religion. Hamilton claims that the persuasive witness testimony produced in the trial resulted in the successful conviction of Delacanche, who was hanged in 1600.
This study challenges the predominant characterization of France after the promulgation of the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which mandated collective amnesia of civil war violence in the interests of re-establishing peace. Hamilton instead argues that the Delacanche trial was a landmark that illustrates that humanist ideals regarding the laws of war were already being put into practice at the French royal courts, much earlier than most historians so far recognize. Equally as important, this study explores the widespread suffering experienced by commoners during the French civil wars and exposes the gendered and fundamentally hierarchical nature of justice in early modern France.
Hamilton aims to foreground the lived experiences of the peasants of Chaumot. Three of the eight chapters focus on life in Chaumot and the dangers faced by rural populations during the ‘troubles’, considerations not normally highlighted in narratives of the Wars of Religion. In the 1599 trial, the peasants depict Delacanche as an abusive commander in Chaumot, a small village southwest of Sens where he faced no open resistance. They recounted how ten years earlier, during the winter of 1590–1591, Delacanche and his men forcibly appropriated animals and grain, leaving families destitute and indebted; gratuitously beat adult men; and publicly raped several women. Likely unaware of published criticisms of rape as a weapon of confessional warfare circulating at the time, the peasants represented the rapes in particular as an affront to the community as a whole. Hamilton’s foregrounding of the sexualized violence is nuanced, capturing the misogyny of the period, the ways in which rape was a standard technique of warfare then as now, as well as the practical difficulties of proving rape before the early modern courts. For his part, Delacanche denied responsibility for any excesses committed by his men, and countered that he secured the château of Chaumot because its seigneur was thought to be sympathetic to the League, a loose association of Catholic opponents to Henri IV’s accession to the throne.
Hamilton emphasizes that the peasants were not passive victims but active agents seeking justice for the atrocities they suffered. Yet, his effort to centre the narrative on the peasants of Chaumot, attested to by his exhaustive research in local notarial records, reveals the limits of the sources. The peasants come into focus only during the trial itself, a trial made possible by their seigneurial lord, Renée Chevalier.
Much of the narrative ultimately centres on Chevalier, a fascinating character in her own right, whose wealth, experience as a plaintiff and connections with the robe nobility in Paris made the peasants’ vengeance possible. Chevalier leaves rich archives in her wake, in large measure because she spent most of her adult life in litigation. Orphaned at a young age, Chevalier was raised by relatives who arranged a good marriage for her to a royal office holder in Paris in 1573. The early death of her first husband and the reluctance of her ward to hand over her inheritance, the seigneurie of Chaumot, led Chevalier to successfully challenge both her uncle and her mother-in-law in court. These early judicial victories cemented her fiscal independence and provided excellent training for her later conflict with Delacanche. Hamilton nevertheless makes clear how Chevalier’s status as a woman and as a widow limited her ability to defend her interests at times, notably in 1590 when the arrival of Delacanche at the château of Chaumot forced her to abandon the seigneurie.
Throughout her life, Chevalier took advantage of all opportunities afforded her, marrying five times, and thereby extending her wealth and influence. By the end of the 1590s, Chevalier was often residing at her centrally located hôtel in Paris, and notarial records demonstrate the extent of her familial connections among the robe elite. Chevalier wisely chose to pursue Delacanche as a plaintiff in Paris, first at the Connétablie court and then at the Parlement of Paris on appeal, rather than in Sens where he had cemented his power base. This seminal choice of judicial venue and the fact that Chevalier was well-connected with former royalists and Huguenots made it very difficult for Delacanche to successfully convince Parisian magistrates that the seigneur of Chaumot had been a Leaguer in 1590. While no doubt the eyewitness testimony of the peasants proved Delacanche’s guilt, his failure to impugn Chevalier and thereby justify his occupation of her lands may also have been pivotal to his conviction.
The public vengeance achieved by Chevalier and the peasants of Chaumot makes for compelling reading from which both experts and students will benefit. Further research in the vast French criminal archives will be needed to determine whether the Delacanche trial was indeed a landmark in early modern jurisprudence or an exception that nevertheless complicates our understanding of peacemaking in early modern France in important new ways.
