9 - Peace and Justice under the Absolute Monarchy

Summary

This chapter sets out the problem of disorder faced by Louis XIV and assesses the success and failure of his attempts to deal with it. The law, at least, was not the hammer of royal absolutism. The law continued to privilege reconciliation and arbitration over punishment. Under Louis XIV there were significant attempts to rationalise the system but negotiated justice prevailed until 1789. The high rates of violence that characterised France between 1560 and 1660 do not mean that France was a lawless society. The chapter argues that some of the problems that had beset France in the mid-seventeenth century reappeared around 1700. This was followed after 1725 by the remarkable efflorescence of French civil society. It concludes by suggesting that this social equilibrium was not overthrown by Revolution in 1789, but that the Ancien Régime system of social control was already under strain by the 1780s and that rocketing levels of interpersonal violence were indicative of the ways in which the political and constitutional crisis were impacting everyday social relations.