Nicolas Le Roux. La faveur du roi: Mignon et courtisans au temps des derniers Valois (vers 1547-vers 1589).

Seyssel Champ Vallon, 2001. 806 pp. index. illus. tbls. chron, bibl. 36.50 [euro]. ISBN: 2-87673-311-0.

Nascent dynasties are inevitably concerned with their own legitimacy and are thus wont to malign their predecessors. Thus was the case with the Bourbons, who ascended to the throne in the person of Henry IV, upon the assassination of Henry III in 1589. Pierre de l'Estoile and various pamphleteers had already begun to vilify Henry III during his reign. Henry's image worsened in the hands of Bourbon propagandists, and the resulting negative image of this monarch remains until the present day. Indeed one twentieth-century historian referred to Henry as a "psychological case."

Nicolas Le Roux has undertaken to write about mignons, a term referring to the friends of the king, during the reign of the last Valois. While this book purports to cover the reigns of all kings from Henry II (1547-49), the main focus is on Henry III (1574-89). Le Roux sets out to examine favor--its practice, theory, and use--as well as the symbolism and gendering of favoritism within the French court. He begins by considering favoritism under earlier Valois monarchs, where old noble families mixed freely with the king, and then contrasts this to the system under Henry III, where only Henry's childhood friends had access to the monarch. Historians have long known that the distance between the king and his subjects increased during this reign. Rather than take the traditional, negative view of a monarch who failed to connect with the populace, Le Roux instead argues that Henry instituted a political strategy that maintained order by limiting access to the monarch as well as to state resources. Le Roux's examination of the mignons, who were defined by their privileges and responsibilities, not through the creation of specific titles, leaves us with a thorough understanding of the political, economic, symbolic, and discursive demonstrations of the value of proximity to the king.

The book is divided into three distinct sections of unequal length. Part 1 defines favoritism and then contrasts favorites of the early Valois, such as Anne de Montmorency, with the generation of mignons under Henry III. Part 2 analyses the hierarchical system of Henry's court and demonstrates how these men identified themselves through service to the monarch. Part 3, which constitutes approximately half of the book, is a deep reading of Henry's method of favoritism. After the death of the monarch's heir and brother, the duke of Alencon, in 1578, Henry instigated a new system with two archimignons, Epernon and Joyeuse, who in turn had their own clients. Le Roux demonstrates that this arrangement was effective in controlling religious disputes, at least until the death of Joyeuse in 1587. With only one surviving archimignon, equilibrium was destroyed and favor tilted heavily towards the Protestants. Thus Henry's conflicts with the Guise in 1588 directly resulted from his continued patronage of Epernon.

The breath and scope of Le Roux's research is remarkable. He not only rereads traditional sources such as chronicles, livres de raison, and contemporary biographies in a new light, but also considers some material from departmental archives as well as what he terms "objective sources," i.e., correspondence, notarial acts, registers, and tax rolls. The bibliography of secondary works is equally impressive and includes English-language scholarship. The book's main flaw stems from its strength, namely, Le Roux's meticulous research. Simply put, it is much too long, and the general reader gets bogged down in the discursive biographical sketches. Furthermore, Le Roux could have expanded his conclusions by incorporating current historiographical debates into the narrative. For example, in defining the terms favor, grace, and friendship, he does a linguistic, source-based investigation that while useful, could have been more theoretically informed by considering relationships with the king and the state. Similarly, while he cites Norbert Elias in the bibliography, the role of friendship in the civilizing process is treated only superficially. These complaints, however, are minor in the face of a thoroughly well-researched, fresh approach to the reign of the last Valois monarch, namely that Henry's reign can be defined by a contradiction--that the monarch distanced himself from the court through the use of intimacy. Furthermore, Le Roux's notes and prosopographical work makes this book an essential resource for any scholar working on sixteenth-century France.

EDNA RUTH YAHIL

University of California 

Los Angeles