French Aristocracy or Peerage

Aristocracy, peerage and nobility

The 21st century observer might observe that in early eighteenth century France there were civilians and noblemen and then conclude that one only needed to belong to the nobility in order to make a swift career. In historical fiction this is quite true, but in fact it was not. In the eyes of an early eighteenth century observer the nobility of France would not have been considered to be a homogenous group¹. Some noblemen clearly belonged to the very powerful while others belonged to the nearly penniless. The penniless were nicknamed 'hobereau', or falcon, for the smallest of the birds of prey. The very powerful lived at Versailles and were almost above the law.

This page is about that very small group of very powerful noblemen we could call the aristocracy or somewhat more inaccurate, the peerage. The term peerage probably did not have much meaning in France at the time, but is very useful to make a distinction between the powerful French nobility and the mass of the French nobility that more or less straggled along till the end of the Ancien regime. The careers of both parts of the nobility were more or less limited to the military. As regards promotion the powerful could however become colonel at age 16 while the penniless never became colonel.

Definition of the aristocracy

In my definition the French aristocracy would be somewhat larger than the peerage. It would consist of all the noblemen that were so rich or influential that they could life very independently had Louis XIV not constrained them to live at Versailles. These would then include the princes not belonging to the royal household, the bastards of the royal household, the peers and the dukes. Below the level of the dukes some noblemen were clearly aristocracy and some were clearly not. Below the level of count there was no aristocracy. A baron or a simple seigneur of a village was nobility, but would never be invited to Versailles.

The aristocracy and the exploitation of the rural population

The French aristocracy primarily got along by being the lord (seigneur) of a lot of land. This had often been granted as a fief by the king, but could also be held by another title. The amount of money the seigneur got out of this land was then dependent on his exact rights on this land. If he was the full owner he could get those working the land to pay a rent based on the economic value of the land.

At the end of the dark ages most of the land had however been worked by bondsmen or serfs. These held medieval rights somewhere between ownership and rent and these inheritable rights were complicated by personal obligations they owed to their landlord. By 1700 the seigneurs had been successfull in revoking most of these bonds. This had brought about the personal freedom of the people that worked the lands of the seigneur, but destroyed their rights to the soil. As this was a very unequal trade the powerful aristocracy was probably more successful in abolishing servitude and so got a much higher return on their lands than the lesser nobility².

The bondsmen were sometimes replaced by farmers paying a sensible rent in money, but there was a more thorough method of exploiting the French rural population. It was done by getting farmers to pay their rent in natura. These were the so called métayers, or those paying the rent with half (méta) their crop. Actually this was not half, but it was a much higher percentage than either the bondsman paid or the renter paying in money was prepared to pay. This rent often not only pertained to the soil, but also to the home of the farmer. It thus left the métayer with only one right towards his seugneur, and that was to join the homeless. It seems that somehow the big landlords of France succeeded in tranforming their fiefs into land rented out in this way³.

Other occupations of the aristocracy

The activities of the aristocracy were of course not limited to receiving the profits of their fiefs. By the preference of Louis XIV they were excluded from large parts of the administration, but some high offices were indeed reserved for the aristocracy. One of the highest of these was the governorship of a province. By 1700 the administrative powers joined to this function had been mostly replaced by the intendants, but it continued to be prestigious and profitable and to have military significance.