Popular Rebellion

Abstract

Popular rebellion was not a new phenomenon at the time of Richelieu and Mazarin: there had been a significant number of large rural disturbances in sixteenth-century France. The more important of these were the risings of the Pitauds in south-west France (1548), the Ligue des Vilains in Dauphiné (1579–80), the Gautiers in Normandy (1589), the risings in Brittany (1589–91), the Bonnets Rouges in Burgundy (1594), and the Tard-Avisés in the Limousin, Périgord and Saintonge (1594–5). The rebellions during the later stages of the French wars of religion show some signs of social antagonism, a consequence of the breakdown of civil order and the resulting oppressive behaviour of local gentry and office-holders. A second period of large-scale disturbances followed French intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. The most famous risings are those in the Angoumois and Saintonge (1636), the Croquants of Périgord (1637), the Va-Nu-Pieds in Lower Normandy (1639), and the Croquants of the Rouergue (1643). There were no large-scale risings during the Fronde, though small-scale tax rebellion was particularly serious. After the Fronde, there were further large rebellions in Guyenne in 1655–6, followed by the risings of the Sabotiers in Sologne (1658), and the Lustucru in the Boulonnais (1662) (Map 3).