Abstract
In 1594, the great horseman Antoine de Pluvinel opened France’s first military academy, aiming, he said, to render his students “capable of serving their Prince well, whether in peace or in war.”1 The academy filled a genuine need, as before that time young French nobles keen to fulfill the military calling of their estate had had to travel to Italy for training, where they studied at the riding school of Cesare Fiaschi in Ferrara or in Naples with Federico Grisone, Giovanni Battista Pignatelli (at whose school Pluvinel had studied for six years), or Cesare Mirabbello. After a stay that usually began no earlier than age 14 and lasted one or two years, students returned to France, where they commanded respect through their poise in the saddle.
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Notes
Antoine de Pluvinel, L’Instruction du roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval ed. René de Menou (Paris: Michel Nivelle, 1625), 200. Pluvinel outlines the program of study, concluding that it aims “de les rendre capables de bien servir leur Prince, soit en paix, soit en guerre.” On Pluvinel’s academy and subsequent ones modeled on it see
Albert Folly, “Les Académies d’armes (XVIe et XVIIe siècles),” Bulletin de la Société du VIe arrondissement du Paris 2 (1899): 162–71
Maurice Dumolin, “Les Académies parisiennes d’équitation,” Bulletin de la Société Archéologique, Historique &Artistique 26 (1925): 417–28; Commandant de la Roche, Les Académies militaires sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1929)
Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree: Ideals of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), ch. 8
Mark Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), ch. 3.
François de la Noue, Discours politiques et militaires ed. F. E. Sutcliffe (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 147–48. Also see
Michel de Montaigne, Essais ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier, 3 vols. (Paris: PUF, 1982), vol. 1, 153
Alexandre de Pontaymery, L’Academie ou institution de la noblesse françoise, in Les Oeuvres (Paris: Jean Richer, 1599), 3v–6r
Salomon de la Broue, Le Cavalerice françois 3 vols. (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1602), vol. 1, 2
Thomas Pelletier, La Nourriture de la noblesse (Paris: veufve Mamert Patisson, 1604), 96r–v; and Pluvinel, L’Instruction du roy 195.
La Noue, Discours politiques et militaires 153. La Noue’s advice was seconded with a detailed plan published by Samson de Saint-Germain, Sieur de Juvigny, Advis de l’établissement de quatre académies en la France (Rouen, France: Raphaël du Petit Val, 1596).
Baldessare Castiglione, The Courtier trans. George Bull (London: Penguin Classics, 1976), 94–95. This notion is refuted by Count Lodovico da Canossa.
Plato, The Republic trans. Richard Sterling and William Scott (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1985), 102.
Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire second ed. Cathy M. Yandell (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 75.
René de Menou, seigneur de Charnizay, La Pratique du cavalier 4th edn. (Paris: Jean Corrozet, 1629), 11.
John A. Lynn, Giantof the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 284–87, 601.
See Orest Ranum, “Courtesy, Absolutism, and the Rise of the French State, 1630–1660,” Journal of Modern History 52 (1980): 426–51.
On classes of heavy and light cavalry, see Ronald S. Love, “All the King’s Horsemen: The Equestrian Army of Henri IV, 1585–1598,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991): 510–33
Treva Tucker, “Eminence over Efficacy: Social Status and Cavalry Service in Sixteenth-Century France,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 1057–95.
Thomas Bedingfield, The Art of Riding translation and abridgement of Claudio Corte, Il cavallarizzo bk. 2 (London: M. Denham, 1584), 18.
On the military career see Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle; and David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624–1642 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
See au Gédéon Tallemant, Sieur des Réaux, Les Historiettes de Tallemant de Réaux 3rd edn., ed. Louis Jean Nicolas Monmerqué and Alexis Paulin Paris, 9 vols. (Paris: Techener, 1854–60), on Henry de Montmorency, “il estoit brave, riche, galant, liberal, dansoit bien, estoit bien à cheval, et avoit tousjours des gens d’esprit à ses gages …” (vol. 2, 307); on the Comte de Cramail, “Il a tousjours esté galant: il estoit propre, dansoit bien, et estoit bien à cheval” (vol. 1, 507); and, conversely, his criticism of Bassompierre, “il n’a jamais bien dansé: il n’estoit pas mesme trop bien à cheval; il avoit quelque chose de grossier; il n’estoit pas trop bien desnoué” (vol. 3, 339).
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations trans. Edmund Jephcott, rev. edn., ed. by Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and Stephen Mennell (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000).
On the repertoire of civility manuals see Roger Chartier, “From Texts to Manners. A Concept and Its Books: Civilité between Aristocratic Distinction and Popular Appropriation,” in The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 71–109.
See the history of manners in Elias, The Civilizing Process 1–182. For a deft overview of civility in early modern Europe see Jacques Revel, “The Uses of Civility,” in Passions of the Renaissance ed. Roger Chartier, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol. 3 of A History of Private Life general eds. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1989), 167–205.
The Letters Patent is reproduced in Frances A. Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1988), 319; I quote her translation, p. 23.
Pierre de Ronsard, “Préface à la musique,” in Oeuvres complètes ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1993–94), vol. 2, 1171.
Antoine de Pluvinel, Le Maneige royal où lon peut remarquer le defaut et la perfection du chevalier en tous les exercices de cet art (Paris: G. Le Noir, 1623), 63.
Descriptions, diagrams, and engravings of the ballet can be found in François de Rosset, Le Romant des chevaliers de la gloire (Paris: Veuve Bertault, 1612), fols. 69r–74v; Honoré Laugier de Porchères, Le Camp de la place Royale (Paris: Jean Micard and Toussaint du Bray, 1612), 116–47; Pluvinel, Le Maneige royal 59–63; and Histoire generale de tout ce qui s’est passé au Parc Royal sur la resjouïssance du Mariage du Roy avec l’Infante d’Espagne (Paris: Anthoine du Brueil, 1612), 14–16. For facsimiles of the choreographic and musical sources of the ballet, see Carrousel 1612 introduction by Kate van Orden (Geneva and Paris: Éditions Minkoff, forthcoming). On the sixteenth-century origins of the ballet à cheval see van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms. For an overview of the carrousel see Jacques Vanuxem, “Le Carrousel de 1612 sur la place Royale et ses devises,” in Les Fêtes de la Renaissance ed. Jean Jacquot, 3 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 1956), vol. 1, 191–203.
Federico Grisone, Gli ordini di cavalcare (Naples: G. P. Suganappo, 1550). For a modern edition of sections of Grisone’s treatise see
Carlo Bascetta (ed.), Sport egiuochi: Trattati e scritti dal XV al XVIII secolo (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1978), 205–25, relevant passages at 222–24.
Cesare Fiaschi, Trattato del modo dell’imbrigliare, maneggiare et ferrare cavalli (Bologna: A. Giaccarelli, 1556). Selections with plates reprinted in Bascetta, Sport e giuochi 227–40.
Hans Delbrück stresses this point in The Dawn of Modern Warfare trans. Walter J. Renfroe, Jr., vol. 4 of History of the Art of War (Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 124.
For a few of the sources that express the view that absolutism was “always in the making, but never made”—an interpretation that of course implicates public spectacles all the more directly in its fabrication—see Fanny Cosandey and Robert Descimon, L’Absolutisme en France (Paris: Seuil, 2002)
Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992)
David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (London: Edward Arnold, 1983).
La Noue, La Cavalerie françoise 141–45; Claude-François Menestrier, Traité des tournois, joustes, carrousels et autres spectacles publics (Lyon: J. Muguet, 1669).
Nicolas Faret, L’Honneste Homme ou l’art de plaire à la court ed. M. Magendie (Paris: PUF, 1925), 12, “Or, comme il n’y a point d’hommes qui ne choisissent une profession pour s’employer, il me semble qu’il n’y en a point de plus honeste, ny de plus essentielle à un Gentil-homme que celle des armes.”
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© 2005 Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker
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van Orden, K. (2005). From Gens d’armes to Gentilshommes: Dressage, Civility, and the Ballet à Cheval. In: Raber, K., Tucker, T.J. (eds) The Culture of the Horse. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09725-5_8
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