French ‘Reason of State’ from the Fall of La Rochelle to the Frondes Political Prudence in the Writings of Henri duc de Rohan and Gabriel Naudé

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FRENCH ‘REASON OF STATE’ FROM THE FALL OF LA ROCHELLE TO THE FRONDES POLITICAL PRUDENCE IN THE WRITINGS OF HENRI DUC DE ROHAN AND GABRIEL NAUDÉ

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Cover illustration: ‘Mazarin à Casal’

In Paul Lehugeur, Histoire de France en cent tableaux (Paris: A. Lahure, s.d. [1899]), 68r. Source: Gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

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French ‘Reason of State’ from the Fall of La Rochelle to the Frondes Political Prudence in the Writings of Henri duc de Rohan and Gabriel Naudé

Franse ‘staatsraison’ vanaf de val van La Rochelle tot de Frondes

Politieke prudentie in de geschriften van Henri duc de Rohan en Gabriel Naudé

THESIS

to obtain the degree of Doctor from the Erasmus University Rotterdam by command of the rector magnificus

Prof.dr. R.C.M.E. Engels

and in accordance with the decision of the Doctorate Board. The public defence shall be held on

Thursday 17 October 2019 at 11.30 hrs by

Jesper William Schaap born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

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Doctoral Committee: Promotors:

Prof.dr. R.C.F. von Friedeburg Prof.dr. H.J.M. Nellen

Other members: Prof.dr. H.A.M. Klemann Prof.dr. L. van Bunge Prof.dr. K. van Berkel

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This research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The study is part of a larger research project ‘Reason of state’ or ‘reason of

princes’? The ‘new monarchy and its opponents in France, Germany and the Netherlands, during the seventeenth century (2011-2016). The research was

supervised by prof. dr. R.C.F. von Friedeburg and comprised four projects of which the present study is one. Ingmar Vroomen examined the use of fatherland rhetoric in Dutch pamphlets (1618-1672) as a response to foreign threats and internal strife. Annemieke Romein studied the employment of fatherland-terminology in estate debates in Jülich and Hesse-Cassel between 1642 and 1655, and in Brittany France in the period 1648-1652. Marianne Klerk studied developments in understandings of ‘reason of state’ and ‘interest’ in the Low Countries during the second half of the seventeenth century, identifying the legacy of the Duc de Rohan’s analysis.

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vor den kunkelstuben jagen die löwen spinnen und prinzen

ungeheuer aus salz und blumen die spinnen jagen die prinzen

die prinzen gleiten die jagenden löwen in blumen die spinnen jagen die spinnerinnen

die löwen sind ungeheuer die spinnen sind aus salz die prinzen sind blumen

in front of the spinning-rooms lions chase spiders and princes

marvelous ones of salt and flowers the spiders chase the princes the princes chase the lions through the flowers the spiders pursue the spinners the lions are marvelous the spiders are of salt the princes are flowers Hans/Jean Arp – Die Wolkenpumpe (1917)

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Acknowledgements

The completion of the book at hand is like a case of arrhythmia. At times the research and writing process accelerated in moments of euphoria, at others it resembled a faint thump. Never did it progress in a regular pace. One moment I almost felt like I was looking over the shoulders of a Rohan or Naudé, the next these historical figures or their distant age barely meant anything to me. Of course I could use these lines to describe how much I learned from doing a PhD, experiences aplenty. However, I would rather present to the reader of the several hundred pages laying in front of her (and perhaps remind myself of) the joy of historical enquiry and the quest for meaning.

The most beautiful of times in the research process I experienced while tracing trails of evidence. I could approach my explorations into the past almost like detective-work, whether in the archives in Paris or in the gigantic wealth of digitized early modern prints online. In some of these moments it all seemed to come together. I leaved through the exact editions that Naudé may have consulted during the writing of his books and could virtually see the manuscript of Rohan’s De l’Interest des Princes pass from one hand to the next in the years between 1634 and 1637. What seems hard to conceive for a student commencing his or her history studies, is actually how much historical material remains unexplored. A historian may always stumble upon documents that shed new light on older interpretations of an event or a work. You can plan on finding them and return empty-handed. Yet you can also accidentally find side-paths that lead to thrilling new ideas and hypotheses. The two intermezzo chapters in this dissertation attest to the fact that you cannot always plot the research process. Hopefully they convey the great pleasure I felt in researching and writing them.

There are many people that deserve to be thanked for their contribution to my research and PhD experience. First up are my two supervisors. I want to express my gratitude to Robert von Friedeburg for giving me the opportunity to pursue my master thesis on Naudé into a PhD and for his encouragement and enthusiasm, especially in the later stages of my writing. I deeply thank Henk Nellen for the years of intensive supervision, his scrupulous reading of the many versions of my chapters, and for his unceasing belief in me and my research, even when I had a hard time believing in it myself.

Several other historians must be mentioned here. I greatly appreciated Frédéric Gabriel’s enthusiasm for my research to Naudé, the stimulating conversations and the opportunity to share my thoughts on the Mascurat at the seminar of the Parlement de Paris. I am particularly indebted to Mark Greengrass, David Parrott and Jonathan Dewald for their contribution to my research through their feedback and thoughts on Rohan (and Naudé) at the symposium Monarchy Transformed in Western Europe: its ‘reason of state’ and its opponents (1620s-1720s) in Rotterdam.

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vi I further thank Jim Collins for the enlightening tête-à-têtes during that same conference. Dirk Imhof (archivist Plantin-Moretus museum) and Marieke van Delft (specialist Old Prints KB) I thank for their assistance in my book-historical quest after the first edition of Naudé’s Considérations politiques. Through his lecture on the libertinage érudit Wiep van Bunge inspired me to delve into the work of Gabriel Naudé and other seventeenth-century French intellectuals. I thank Wiep, Hein Klemann and Klaas van Berkel as members of the doctoral committee that gave its fiat to this thesis.

Then a shout out to my fellow travellers, the EUR History PhD’s. Thank you all for bringing the fun into the PhD-experience. I specifically want to mention Laurie, Ingmar, Norah, and my room-mates in the last years of my PhD, Gijs and Wesley. Regina, with whom I enjoyed the many office-lectures of the research master Early Modern Intellectual History, also deserves to be thanked here. I especially want to express my deepest gratitude and love for Hilde and Marianne, my dearest Schnurrbartjes. There is no way of exaggerating how much our esprit de corps in the PhD maelstrom has meant to me; in fact, none of this would have been possible without you. It is a great relief to know that you as my paranymphs will have my back at the defence.

A PhD is a fickle trajectory. The characteristics of the work in combination with certain personality traits greatly impacted my life. With this in mind, I wish to acknowledge and express my gratitude to love lost and love gained.

Good friendship certainly is one of the finer things in life. It is the only wealth I can ever say to aspire and I do indeed feel myself a rich man in this regard. Even if at times it might have been hard to fully understand what I was doing, the companionship and support of my friends has kept me going. Juul, the all-nighter we pulled last year in the Ardennes to me captures our friendship at its best: the long deep conversations over ‘a few’ beers, the great music, and the shenanigans and crazy laughter. Bob, our friendship has brought us from kindergarten to fortnightly Feyenoord matches in De Kuip and somehow continues to deepen. Clau and Kaar, surely it’s been a while since I last confused your names back in our schooldays at De Willem, but I continue to value our bond as much as I did then. San, Meghan, Daphna, Ben, Marieke, Arne, Stefan and Eline you must all be mentioned here as well. I am a proud member of the exclusive historical society ‘History X’: Darragh, Erik, Frank, thanks for all the peaceful and not so peaceful discussions, the many pub nights and weekend trips. The Berkeley boys: Spoelie, Guido, Laurent, Toto, JB and Nic, I always look forward to the next reunion, even more so almost ten years on. BVV43, great pool of talent, thanks for all the welcome distraction on and off the pitch; ‘the Professor’ now at last is to receive his title, even if it is only that of Doctor.

Lastly, there is no way to communicate my deep gratitude for the perpetual support of my family. Opa and Oma, Oma Hilletje, and the rest of the family, now I finally finished my ‘little project’ and am about to ‘graduate’. Mientje, even though we are no longer the kids we once were,

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vii tangled up in laughter on the bench on our front porch, you’ll always be my funny little sis’. Your perseverance has been a real inspiration to me. Mams, thank you for your warmth, your love and your witticisms. The retreats at ‘hotel’ Chez Maman not only were indispensable to my wellbeing, my work also greatly benefitted from them. Pa, thanks for being the spark to my passion for history and your inexorable encouragement and support that kept it alive. It all began with our little ‘adventure tracks’ on family holidays in France, where we would hunt for archaeological discoveries of pre-historic man and visit all the beautiful castles, abbeys and museums. Even if ‘adolescent-me’ sometimes complained, without your historical interest and stories I would have never become the historian (and person) that I am today. It is a true bliss to have always known you amongst the most avid readers of my work. It is to you that I wish to dedicate this book.

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INTRODUCTION

The Transformation of the French Monarchy and the Rhetoric of

Political Prudence

“Ce n’est pas la justice qui fonde les royaumes, ni la vertu qui distribue les couronnes; le crime peut présider à l’origine des empires, l’imposture crée parfois de vastes religions, et une évidente iniquité fait souvent paraitre et disparaitre les États, comme si le mal était aussi nécessaire que le bien.”1

The research presented in this PhD-thesis revolves around the question of the nature and function of raison d’état argumentation in the seventeenth-century French monarchy by focussing on and comparing the work of two major authors, Henri duc de Rohan (1579-1638) and Gabriel Naudé (1600-1653). The purpose of this study is to reinterpret early seventeenth-century French understandings of raison d’état and interest. How did authors employ this newly fashionable topos of political prudence in the context of a French monarchy ever on the brink of the breakdown of order? In contrast to broader studies of raison d’état by Etienne Thuau and William F. Church, this study provides an in-depth exploration of two highly significant French cases of this political discourse in the period between 1610 and 1661.2_{On the one hand, the thesis}

examines the political writings of Henri duc de Rohan and his famous De l’Interest des princes et Estats de la Chrestienté (1638) in particular. On the other hand, it treats of the writings of Gabriel Naudé, an erudite Parisian who wrote well-known reflections on contemporary political discourse such as the Bibliographia politica (1633) and Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état (1639 3_{) but also more evidently polemical work like the Marfore (1620) and the Mascurat}

(1649 and 1650). These political publications of Rohan and Naudé are interpreted here as supporting, though never unambiguously and from different perspectives, an oftentimes ad hoc and haphazard politics of ‘crisis-management’. These authors never presented an abstract and coherent theory that displays processes of modernisation and secularisation in seventeenth-century politics. Instead, their reflections were inherently practical and circumstantial. Their

1_{Giuseppe Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1860), v.}

2_{Etienne Thuau, Raison d’état et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000); William}

F. Church, Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).

3_{The place and date of publication is an issue of some historiographical debate, which shall be further}

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2 particular uses of the rhetoric of political prudence were responses to ever-imminent and immediate political problems, challenges and crises.4

Some would call it realism, others cynicism; taking critical distance is a common strategy for coping with crisis. All the wiser from his experiences in contemporary politics Giuseppe Ferrari, the author of the lines above, concluded that injustice, vice, crime and imposture were an inseparable part of political history. Cosi va il mondo, that’s the way the world goes round, as the motto to his book Histoire de la raison d’État says. Historians familiar with the ‘reason of state’ topos, the ubiquitous early modern political catchphrase, could easily mistake the disenchanted words in the above citation for those of a seventeenth-century French author of the most audacious, ‘Machiavellian’ kind. It is for this exact reason that we might call the radical Italian federalist Ferrari (1811-1876) the last ‘theorist’ of raison d’État, while he otherwise should be considered the first modern historian of political thought.5

Ferrari made an attempt to retrieve the doctrine mysterieuse of ‘reason of state’, a kind of political black magic, he writes, that he unearthed from the most unexplored corners of mid-nineteenth century libraries.6_{As part of his greater philosophy of history, he sought to give raison}

d’état thinking pertinence, adapting it to the contemporary spirit of the mid-nineteenth century. In other words, he sought to put his historical work to use in the cause of the people by showing practical patterns in human behaviour in society.7_{Disillusioned by the fleeting hopes of a}

democratic revolution in France – where he spent most of his expatriate life teaching at universities – and his native Italy, Ferrari set himself to work on historical analyses in which he considered the precepts of ‘reason of state’ as expressions of universal laws of human nature.8_It

is the recent experiences of the newly found monarchy in Italy that may have reflected most prominently in the opening lines of the work. Echoing many among the authors he studied throughout the book, Ferrari sought to show l’homme tel qu’il est, to lay bare a grim truth about human nature.9

The peculiarity of Ferrari’s Histoire de la raison d’État lies in its conception of history. According to Ferrari, Raison d’État thinking taught the rhythm of historical progress. Human

4_{Whereas this study focusses on these particular early seventeenth-century French understandings of the}

topos, the work of my colleague in the NWO-project explores changes in the understandings of ‘reason of

state’ and ‘interest’ through the reception of Rohan’s work especially in the Low Countries. Marianne B. Klerk, “Reason of State and Predatory Monarchy in the Dutch Republic, 1638-1675: The Legacy of the Duc de Rohan” (PhD diss., Rotterdam, 2016).

5_{Sylvio Hermann De Francheschi, “L’histoire des idées politiques en France et en Italie. Parcours comparés}

d’une discipline (1920-1970)”, Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques 31, no. 1 (2010): 6-7.

6_{Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État, v-vi.}

7_{Gilda Manganaro-Favaretto, “Giuseppe Ferrari, le Risorgimento et la France”, Revue Française d’Histoire}

des Idées Politiques 30, no. 2 (2009): 363. See also, Clara Lovett, Giuseppe Ferrari and the Italian Revolution

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979).

8_{Manganaro-Favaretto, ”Giuseppe Ferrari”, 378.} 9_{Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État, xi.}

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3 history, he thought, is a process that follows 125-year cycles with important changes every generation (31.5 years). This rhythm is controlled by politics, the force that brings the world in motion.10_{As he stated it, Ferrari shared with his readers an occult science that had been killed by}

modern media and outlawed by the French Revolution of 1789; universal considerations of justice towered over public affairs and had caused reason of state to fade.11_{Grounded in a}

historical survey ranging from antiquity to the nineteenth century, the Italian philosopher of history argued that “while the principle of justice ensures and preserves nothing but the eternal returns, and eternal failures, of revolution, the doctrine of reason of state makes it possible to see through this and every other false claim of universal principle made by the state throughout human history.”12_{His motivation for the work was at least partly to retrieve the mythical moment}

in Italian history when a Risorgimento first seemed to become possible, i.e. the socio-political conditions of decline that prompted authors in early modern Italy to envision an independent and unitary Italian state. His history of ‘reason of state’ was a means to trace the roots of Italian patriotism and proto-nationalism.13_{The work was evidently the product of a man who was highly}

engaged in the political and socio-economic struggles of both countries he identified with. In a way, writing this history of raison d’état provided Ferrari the means to cope with his political disillusionment at the critical moment between the break of the revolutionary moment and his call to the newly established Italian Parliament just after the 1860 publication. As if it was a means to maintain the stability of his own political mind, a personal raison d’état.

In the above citation, – irrespective of the deeper semantic layers related to his revolutionary, confederalist and socialist preoccupations – Ferrari echoes the political cynicism abhorred, confronted and maintained by many Italian ‘reason of state’ authors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. However it equally recalls the reflections of two seventeenth-century French ‘intellectual mediators’ between Italy and France, Henri duc de Rohan and Gabriel Naudé. In fact, in a way not dissimilar to the case of Ferrari but ultimately the other way around, these two French authors commented on and intervened in French political affairs from a position of deep immersion in Italian diplomatic and political thought.

10_{“La Raison d’État enseigne [...] les distances, les intervalles, les retours qui alternent les gouvernements,}

le rhythme (sic) qui les oblige, dans l’espace aussi bien que dans le temps, à se succéder d’une manière déterminée avec tels ou tels chefs. Le monde a toujours obéi à ces lois qu’il a toujours ignorées et que la politique italienne a entrevues sous la forme absurde du précepte.” Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État, viii. On the 125-year cycles, see the book’s last chapter that opens with the statement: “La perfection de la raison d’État serait d’éclairer le philosophe au point de le rendre prophète.” Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État, 410-422; esp. 416-417. See also, Robert Bonnaud, “De Vico à Ferrari. Les grands chemins de l’histoire”, in Joseph Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État (Paris: Editions Kimé, 1992 [1860]), vii-xiii.

11_{Ferrari, Histoire de la raison d’État, x, 369.}

12_{Kevin McLaughlin, “On Poetic Reason of State: Benjamin, Baudelaire, and the Multitudes”, Partial}

Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 5:2 (June 2007): 252-253.

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4 Seventeenth-century France: a monarchy transformed

After the infamous defeat of the Swedish armies at Nördlingen in 1634, Cardinal Richelieu, the French premier ministre in the reign of Louis XIII, was more or less forced to decide upon entering the fray of the Thirty Years’ War and challenge the Habsburg alliance. Although the French government had long been supporting the forces of Habsburg enemies such as Sweden and the Dutch United Provinces, it took some time before Richelieu was convinced to engage in open warfare against Habsburg-Spain.14_{Open warfare against this grand dynasty was perceived as}

highly problematic given the disastrous series of armed conflicts that the French Crown fought over and on Italian soil against this ‘natural enemy’ in the period between the 1494 and the 1559. Financially, military as well as dynastically, the series of ‘Italian wars’ almost brought ruin upon the French Crown.15

Within a constellation of internal chaos and external warfare, political reforms and financial innovations a transformed France saw the light of day. The rivalry between the dynasties of Habsburg (Spain) and Valois / Bourbon (France) from the Italian wars in the 1490s onwards formed the kick-start of a European war- and arms race that led to new forms of early modern rule, i.e. dynastic rivalry transformed early modern monarchy. The insatiable need for financial means to maintain this war-race led to unparalleled levels of public debt and novel ways of financing warfare, which in turn created new groups with a vested interest in the government’s affairs. Old and new elites had to reinvent their relations with the Crown. This transition of early modern rule met with fierce criticism from social groups who felt left out in the changing structures of power within these monarchies and others who opportunistically sought to rise in the social hierarchy. At the same time, however, political reforms endorsed by princes and their ministers were legitimated and justified in pamphlets and other quasi-public pieces by many publicists. Central in the debates in the transforming monarchy was the notion of l’État and in its wake came the political rhetoric of raison d’état and intérêt.16

14_{Lucien Bély, La France au XVII}e_{siècle: Puissance de l’État, contrôle de la société (Paris: Presses} Universitaires de France, 2009), 222-223.

15_{Lucien Bély, La France moderne, 1498-1789 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2013), 91-98.} 16_{Mark Greengrass, Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585 (Oxford:}

Oxford University Press, 2007); James B. Collins, La monarchie républicaine: État et société dans la France

moderne (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2016); Robert von Friedeburg, “Response to introduction: “ideology”, factions

and foreign politics in early modern Europe”, in David Onnekink, Gijs Rommelse (eds.), Ideology and foreign

policy in early modern Europe (1650-1750) (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 11-28; Idem, “How ‘new’ is

the ‘New Monarchy’? Clashes between princes and nobility in Europe’s Iron Century”, Leidschrift 27, no. 1 (2012): 17-30; idem, “Wars with books. From which point onward should we employ the term 'ideology' with respect to our sources?”, in Karl Enenkel, Marc Laureys and Christoph Pieper (eds.), Discourses of

Power: Ideology and Politics in Neo-Latin Literature (Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag,

2012), 299-326; idem, “State forms and state systems in modern Europe”, European History Online (EGO) (2010). URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/friedeburgr-2010-en

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5 In contrast to the historiographical tradition that in line with the sociological interpretations of Max Weber envisioned the seventeenth-century crises as steps in an on-going and more or less continuous process of state-building, and the growing armies and ever increasing taxes as signs of developments towards a bureaucratic state, recent revisionism has shown that the development was not as top-down, linear and progressive as was perceived before. What comes to the fore in current historiography of early modern rule is a European constellation of greater monarchies in transformation and smaller powers facing not so much novel but certainly more dramatic and pressing problems during the seventeenth century.17_{The early modern European}

arms and war-race took an enormous toll on the various dynastic agglomerates, as the British historian John Morrill has recently called the large, heterogeneous and inherently instable political entities.18

In recent contributions to this historiography, historians have distinguished a number of characteristic developments that helped transform the great early modern monarchies. A first typical feature contributing to this transformation is participation in an unprecedented arms and war race among the greater European powers that presented them with unparalleled costs. A second trait is formed by the new ways to finance these wars through financiers, venality of offices, tax farmers (like the French intendants) creating enormous debts for the dynasties. The monarchies basically were regimes haunted by debt, always on the verge of bankruptcy. A concomitant third characteristic is the rise of new ‘financial’ elites. The new situation created not only a race for offices and entrance in the clientage-networks of the royal regimes, but also resentment, revolt and outright rebellion among the old elites, the higher nobility, and bourgeois merchants who were all competing for a place in the new constellation. The result of these changes and challenges faced by early modern monarchies were much larger dynastic agglomerates, a new elite aristocracy with lands in much more than one single province and a financial and judicial elite with a vested interest in the regime. As one of these large dynastic agglomerates, the French monarchy could become very powerful vis-a-vis a highly differentiated and divided society, but not by its own means of power; it always needed cooperation of the elites. Lacking effective channels of communication, coercive power for action or any institutionalized means to solve problems, the frail equilibrium of monarchical rule could also collapse catastrophically within a matter of months. Here the fourth and last feature of the transformation

17_{For a more elaborate treatment of the historiographical debate, see Chapter I.}

18_{The British historian John Morrill introduced the term ‘dynastic agglomerate’ to indicate the}

heterogeneous and instable nature of political entities in the early modern era both in the minds of people and in terms of physical boundaries. John Morrill, “Dynasties, Realms, Peoples and State Formation, 1500-1720”, in Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill (eds.), Monarchy Transformed: Princes and Their Elites in

Early Modern Western Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 17-43; idem,

‘Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown’: Dynastic Crises in Tudor and Stewart Britain, 1504-1746 (Reading: University of Reading Press, 2005).

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6 of monarchy comes in, that is the importance of ‘opinion’. Royal governments and other supporters of the monarchy consciously reminded their opponents of the dangers of a collapse of monarchy should cooperation fail. The engagement of elites – new and old, political and learned – in the battle of opinions aided in the development of a new ‘national’ rhetoric that centred on l’État. This rhetoric, no matter whom employed it, aimed to mobilize estate assemblies and a broader public of readers in order to prevent such an ill-fated collapse of political order.19

Revisionist historiography of early modern rule has had great implications for how we look at the French ‘absolute monarchy’ in practice, yet a lot of historians still accept the existence of ‘absolutist theory’.20_{But if new studies have established that there was no steady and intentional}

process of state-building, what remains of the political thought that historians traditionally thought to be its theoretical foundation? Did political theory contain a blue-print for legitimating ‘absolutism’ that was applied only imperfectly in political practice? Only recently historians have come to question what was always perceived as the theory that mirrored the practice. It may be true, as the American historian William Beik stated, that in historiography there still is “little dispute concerning the theory that the king had absolute authority, that is, authority unchecked by any institutional body. His reach was limited only by religion, conscience and the fundamental laws of the realm.”21_{However, if political practice proves to have been rather different, does that}

not force us to look again at (aspects of) the theory? Related as it is to the political thought normally termed ‘absolutist theory’, the question remains how the terminology of political prudence should be interpreted in light of the new findings. In a similar vain to what the American historian Johann Sommerville has recently attempted in grounding ‘absolutist theory’ more firmly in the context of contemporary monarchical rule, new questions should be brought to bear to the rhetoric of political prudence, in particular the political council guided by the vogue terminology of raison d’état and intérêt.22

19_{Robert von Friedeburg, “Response to introduction”, 19-21; Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill,}

“Introduction: Monarchy Transformed – Princes and Their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe”, in Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill (eds.), Monarchy Transformed: Princes and Their Elites in Early

Modern Western Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1-12.

20_{William Beik, the author of an important article reviewing revisionist historiography and responsible for}

coining the term by which the ‘new consensus’ is commonly known, ‘absolutism as social collaboration’, even states as much in the opening segment of the article. William Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration”, Past & Present 188, no. 1 (2005): 195–224; 195.

21_{Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV”, 195.}

22_{In a recent article the American historian Johann Sommerville attempts to show that the so called}

theorists of absolutism “adopted views which accord better with the modern model of absolutism as social collaboration than with the older idea that absolutists aimed at autocratic centralization and bureaucratization.” Johann P. Sommerville, “Early Modern Absolutism in Practice and Theory”, in Cesare Cuttica and Glenn Burgess, Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2012), 117-130.

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7 The rhetoric of political prudence

Different forms of political rhetoric proliferated in (semi-public) debates in seventeenth-century Europe. Political prudence was an important topos of political rhetoric, one including the family-resemblant terms of raison d’état and interest. Soon after its early sixteenth-century coinage, the terminology became fashionable beyond its original Italian political and diplomatic context. In the early seventeenth century it entered the atmosphere of a European-wide concern with warfare on an unprecedented scale. War was both background to, a cause of and at times resulted from a widening curiosity of a larger public in contemporary political affairs and the secrets of power. As the British historian Noel Malcolm recently pointed out, it is within this broader context of current affairs literature and political ‘news’ that we should view the rhetoric of political prudence.23_{In the first half of the century, in particular from 1618 onwards, there had been an}

upsurge in literature describing the politics and violent conflict in Europe. Public interest in this material with greatly varying truth value grew alongside it. News and information on the inner-workings of power spread in various forms, printed or in manuscript, in leaflets or in the transnational correspondence of scholars and ambassadors. In the form of rumours and songs it was also significantly part of an urban context of oral exchange. Although the terminology of political prudence at first may have been directed at cognoscenti, it nevertheless spread well beyond scholarly discussions or state councils.24

Many a genealogy of political prudence, commonly known as ‘reason of state’, has been written by historians.25_{This political discourse or “vocabulary of fashionable political cynicism” included}

23_{Noel Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda and the Thirty Years’ War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas}

Hobbes (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 2007), 92-109.

24_{Cf. Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda and the Thirty Years’ War, 92-109; Filippo de Vivo, “Paolo Sarpi}

and the Uses of Information in Seventeenth-Century Venice”, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News Networks in

Seventeenth-Century Britain and Europe (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2006), 35-49; Andrew

Pettegree, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

25_{A concise bibliography of raison d’état-historiography should include: Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism,}

the doctrine of raison d’état and its place in modern history (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957);

Etienne Thuau, Raison d’état et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000 [1966]); William F. Church, Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972); Roman Schnur (ed.), Staatsräson: Studien zur Geschichte eines politischen Begriffs (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1975); Peter Burke, “Tacitism, Scepticism, and Reason of State”, in J.H. Burns, M. Goldie, Cambridge History

of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 479-498; Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Yves-Charles Zarka (ed.), Raison et déraison d'État: théoriciens et théories de la raison d'État aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Presses

universitaires de France, 1994); Noel Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War; Harro Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, History of Political Thought 13, no. 2 (2002): 211-237; Horst Dreitzel, “Reason of State and the Crisis of Political Aristotelianism: an Essay on the Development of 17th

century Political Philosophy”, History of European Ideas 28 (2002): 163-187; Conal Condren, “Reason of State and Sovereignty in Early Modern England: A Question of Ideology?”, Parergon 28 (2011): 5-27; idem,

Argument and Authority in Early Modern England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,

2006); Laurie Catteeuw, Censures et raisons d’État. Une histoire de la modernité politique (XVIe _{– XVII}e_siècle) (Paris: Albin Michel, 2013).

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8 the terminology of ‘politics’, ‘reason of state', arcana imperii and ‘interest’ as well as near common place maxims nescit regnare qui nescit dissimulare (who does not know how to dissemble, does not know how to rule) and necessitas non habet legem (necessity has no law).26_{It is not my}

intention to reproduce all their findings here in detail, as this thesis concerns the seventeenth-century French context. The emergence and accommodation of the notion of stato, État and other derivatives, and in its rearguard the new notions of political prudence were closely related with the ruin of the unity of Latin Christianity as a result of the Reformation. The respublica christiana that increasingly proved irreparable brought a seemingly irreducible number of political communities along with it. In this new ‘geopolitical’ situation the old idea of a universal Christian society that gave meaning eroded and responsibility for the concord of faith and power transferred to the individual political entities, in spite of attempts of great powers to restore unity.27_{It was in Italy, one of the most fragmented areas of Europe, that a more cynical view of}

human nature, which due to Augustinian and Aristotelian precedents in itself was neither new nor heterodox, came to inform thinking about politics. Historians disagree whether the phrase ‘reason of state’ was already an established term of art when Francesco Guicciardini referred to la ragione e uso degli state in a 1520s manuscript that was only published fifty years later.28_That

Giovanni Della Casa saw no need to elaborate on a definition when he deployed the term in a (undelivered) speech of 1547 directed at the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V is generally taken as evidence that by the late 1540s ‘reason of state’ was widely recognized by Italian diplomatic and courtly elites as a term referring to the art of governing.29

It did not take too long for the fashionable terminology to reach other European polities, especially those troubled by denominational belligerence like France. The French reception at the court of Catherine de’ Medici from the 1560s onwards has traditionally been conceived of as ‘Machiavellian’, or better in the footsteps of Guicciardini. Recent historiography has established, however, that deeply spiritual neo-platonic ideas laid the foundation for a religiously inspired first French encounter with raison d’état.30_{Especially in periods of confessional strife and political}

turmoil the terminology was used in a polemical context by many sides and among various factions. Either authors sought to justify a prince or government’s actions or they criticized and

26_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 216-217; idem, “Reason of State”, in Hendrik Lagerlund (ed.),}

Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy (Dordrecht et al.: Springer, 2011), 1113-1115.

27_{Marcel Gauchet, “L’État au miroir de la raison d’État: La France et la chrétienté”, in Zarka (ed.), Raison et}

déraison d’État, 214.

28_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and reason of state”, 214; Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 39.} 29_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and reason of state”, 214-215.}

30_{Mark Greengrass, Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585 (Oxford:}

Oxford University Press, 2007); Denis Crouzet, Le haut Coeur de Catherine de Médicis: une raison politique

aux temps de la Saint-Barthélemy (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005). I have not been able to consult the latter book,

but its argument is discussed and elaborated upon in a review article by Luc Racaut. Luc Racaut, “Reason of state, religious passions, and the French Wars of Religion (Review Article)”, The Historical Journal 52, no. 4 (2009): 1077-1078, 1082.

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9 attacked persons close to and in the government or their policies. Historians have trouble finding evidence that the terminology was explicitly employed in court circles in the late 1560s and generally consider the Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 as a turning point. However, examples of the appearance of the exact phrase raison(s) d’Estat in the pamphlet wars of the late 1580s and 1590s during the last and most violent phase of the religious civil wars suggest a wider reception had been established by that time.31_{Influential neo-stoic and sceptic thinkers as Michel}

de Montaigne, Justus Lipsius and Pierre Charron never used the exact phrase raison d’état, nor is it unambiguous – especially in the former’s writing – whether they endorsed or rather criticised, satirized and undermined the precepts of Italian ‘reason of state’ authors. However, their discussions of the honest and expedient in government affairs (Essais, III.1) and political prudence (Politica, IV.14; De la Sagesse, III.2) proved to be used in support of differential political morality by authors of the early seventeenth century.32

The widespread use of the catchphrase in France only commenced full-fledged after the 1599 publication of Gabriel Chappuys’ French translation of Giovanni Botero’s Della ragion di Stato.33

Although this French reception evidently preceded the era of Richelieu’s ministry, the vocabulary of raison d’état has always been intimately connected with the cardinal-minister. Richelieu and the pamphleteers who supported him are generally considered to have appropriated the term and created a positive and specifically French adaptation of the terminology, while their opponents shared the fears of most Italian ‘theorists’ and mainly used it pejoratively. The terminology did not instantly fade away after the death of Richelieu. The troublesome period of internecine conflict of the Frondes is a case in point. In what has been called the Fronde des mots, pamphlets show elaborate use of the terms interest (d’état), interest des princes, raison(s) d’état and other connected terminology.34_{Whereas Cardinal-minister Mazarin’s opponents used the}

31_{See Pierre Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue for use of the term in Huguenot tracts arguing against Henry}

IV’s conversion. A well-known example is the anonymous pamphlet [authored by Jean de Sponde, who later converted to Catholicism with the king he had always served, Henry of Navarre] Advertissement au Roi, ou

sont déduites les raisons d’État pour lesquelles il ne lui est pas bien seant de changer de Religion (1589). This

pamphlet was later included in the fifth volume of the Mémoires de la Ligue among pamphlets of the year 1593. In an article on French Machiavellism and anti-machiavellism, the American historian Edmond M. Beame cited another pamphlet of 1591, in which the phrase ‘Raisons de l’Estat’ is found. Réponse à l’instance

et proposition que plusieurs font, que pour avoir une Paix générale et bien établie en France, il faut que le Roi change de Religion et se range à celle de l’Eglise Romaine, in Mémoires de la Ligue, IV (Amsterdam, 1758)

esp. 678 and 688. Edmond M. Beame, “The Use and Abuse of Machiavelli: The Sixteenth-Century French Adaptation”, Journal of the History of Ideas 43, no. 1 (1982): 47.

32_{For a discussion of Montaigne’s views on ‘reason of state’, see Robert Collins, “Montaigne’s Rejection of}

Reason of State in ‘De l’Utile et l’honneste’”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 23, no. 1 (1992): 71-94.

33_{Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, “L’établissement de la raison d’état et la Saint-Barthélemy“, Les Cahiers du}

Centre de Recherches Historiques 20 (1998) consulted online 01 October 2018. DOI: 10.4000/ccrh.2535

34_{Christian Jouhaud, Mazarinades: la Fronde des mots (Paris: Aubier, 1985); Hubert Carrier, Le Labyrinthe}

de l’État. Essai sur le débat politique en France au temps de la Fronde (1648-1653) (Paris: Honoré Champion,

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10 term in their verbal attacks known as mazarinades (e.g. Raisons d’état contre le Ministre estranger, 1649), it was also essential in the pieces defending the premier ministre.35

Many historians believe that the use of raison d’Estat in French political discourse declined strongly after the 1650s.36_{The phrase, however, was still rather pervasive in discourse of the}

learned by the end of the century and is present in learned lexicons such as Antoine Furetière’s universal dictionary (published posthumously in 1690). Under his second definition of Estat as the “domination or manner by which one governs a nation”, he straightforwardly adds the examples: “Ce Prince par cette alliance a fait un grand coup d’Estat. L’interest particulier cede à la raison d’Estat.”37_{Four years later, the long-anticipated official Dictionnaire of the Académie}

Française also included various formulations of political prudence among its illustrations to the definition of Estat: “le bien, la felicité de l’estat. […] maximes d’estat. […] raison d’estat”.38_Perhaps

the appearance of the associated terms in dictionaries attests of a standardization and a terminology no longer in vogue in political discourse. Either it had become gratuitous, or the government and political elites had discarded the term as political circumstances changed in France by the early 1660s.

The discourse of political prudence did not only appear in learned debates, nor was it the prerogative of political elites. Historians often illustrate the assumption that ‘reason of state’ was a highly fashionable catchphrase with the common-place refrain sung by Italian authors like Trajano Boccalini and Ludovico Zuccolo who deplored that “everybody was discussing ragion di stato”.39_{These prevalent concerns with the proliferation of the terminology were also soon found}

in France. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Antoine de Laval criticised how the new Italian jargon (le jargon des nouvellants de Rome, de Venise) of raison d’état is heard coming out of everyone’s mouth while the papers contain little else (les Gazettes ne parlent d’autre chose). Laval thought the situation so dire that due to pernicious curiosity even the lowest of soldiers and artisans mingled in discussions of political affairs and gossiped about the intentions and actions

35_{Célestin Moreau, Bibliographie des Mazarinades, Tome 3 (Paris: J. Renouard, 1851) 2. Moreau does not}

fail to mention that this pamphlet was discussed in the Mascurat (p. 208). As we shall see in Chapter V, Naudé counted this pamphlet among the better, well-argued pieces. An online query of a corpus of more than two thousand mazarinades digitized by the Projet Mazarinade (mazarinades.org/recherche) returned approximately two hundred individual pamphlets in which the family-resemblant vocabulary of political prudence was used.

36_{See for instance, Jacob Soll, “A Lipsian Legacy? Neo-Absolutism, Natural Law and the Decline of Reason}

of State in France 1660-1760”, in Erik de Bom, Marijke Janssens, Toon Van Houdt and Jan Papy (eds.),

(Un)masking the Realities of Power: Justus Lipsius and the Dynamics of Political Writing in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 307-324.

37_{Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague and Rotterdam: Arnout and Reinier Leers, 1690) no}

pagination, f. Eeeee 2.

38_{See the entry ‘Estat’ in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (1694) digitized on the website of the}

artfl-project. URL: https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/publicdicos/navigate/3/6897/

39_{Among the many authors to refer to these remarks, see Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda and the}

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11 of their prince and those representing them. Not simple obedience but curiosity for the mechanisms of power had taken sway in people’s heads. According to this author, everyone wanted to know how and why they are governed. What was worse, everybody deemed himself fit to say that something was done according to reasons or maxims of state.40

The use of the vocabulary of political prudence seems to have been widespread, but what exactly did it entail? Implied by the variety of authors, politicians and factions, not to mention a broader public, all using the term in different ways, raison d’état is highly elusive and enigmatic. Any attempt to define the terminology will probably be in vain, because soon after the phrase ragion di stato was coined it became a vogue term of the art of politics and as such it meant different things to different users. ‘Reason of state’, as the terminology is commonly known in modern debates, never became a well-defined concept in a theoretical framework tied to some theory of politics or the state.41_{As a provocative notion, it pointed towards a number of challenges}

in the business of politics and prompted an answer from those working within the confines of existing orthodoxies.42_{Many of the political questions counsellors, jurists, and scholastic}

philosophers had discussed ever since the receptions of Aristotle and Roman law from the twelfth and thirteenth century onwards, suddenly became subsumed under ‘reason of state’ by the “magnetic attraction of the term”.43_{Issues debated by a small group of thinkers included the}

relationship between honestum and utile, necessitas and the existence of exceptional norms, the bonum commune that trumped the bonum privatum, the status of political prudence relative to the other traditional virtues, and requirements for maintaining civic order and the stability of the community.44

Although the circumstances informing these concerns changed significantly, the notions were not altogether new. As the German historian Horst Dreitzel recently put it, in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Western-Europe saw “a refocusing on and crystallising of a broad range of ideas around a newly emerged and highly fashionable catchword”, albeit at variable pace and content in different regions and contexts.45

Before considering some of these aspects, however, let us first consider the linguistic

40_{Antoine de Laval, Desseins de professions nobles et publiques (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1612), 338a. The}

section on politics and raison d’état, not included in the original treatise published in 1605, first appeared in the second edition of 1612. Also cited by Gauchet, “L’État au miroir de la raison d’État”, 195-196. On Laval see, Church, Richelieu and Reason of State, 78-80.

41_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 214; Dreitzel, “Reason of State and the Crisis of Political}

Aristotelianism”, 168.

42_{Dreitzel, “Reason of State and the Crisis of Political Aristotelianism”, 168.}

43_{Dreitzel, “Reason of State and the Crisis of Political Aristotelianism”, 168-170. See also: Gaines Post, “Ratio}

publicae utilitatis, ratio status, and “reason of state,” 1100-1300”, in Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State 1100-1322 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 241-309.

44_{See Post, “Ratio publicae utilitatis, ratio status, and “reason of state””, 241-309.}

45_{Horst Dreitzel, “Reason of State and the Crisis of Political Aristotelianism”, 170. Also, Harro Höpfl,}

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12 innovation originating in the combination of the constituents of the phrase, raison and état, through which it allowed an amalgamation of meanings.46_{The French raison (as well as the Italian}

ragion) carried with it a broader semantic subtlety that might be obscured by transposing on it a simple notion of reason as rationality in our modern sense of the word.47_{In contemporary}

lexicons, raison referred to the faculty of the intellect distinguishing humans from animals.It is the faculty by which humans gain understanding, separate good from evil, discern right from wrong and communicate their insights in discourse. Raison meant good sense and right usage of the intellectual faculty and as such there was a normative aspect inherent in the word. Of course, raison could simply mean reasoning, argumentation, deliberation, discussion, reflection. It thus referred to all that is argued, said and provided in writing or speech to prove, confirm and persuade others of something, i.e. the products of such intellectual and discursive practices. Furthermore, raison as cause denoted a ground, motive, interest, justification, pretention, consideration or foundation for an action.48_{It could intimate true knowledge of the ends and}

means of human behaviour, and a method for action. As such the word might even carry the transferred meaning of justice. It was sometimes taken for a duty, a right, or equity, a certain equality or proportion among things.49_{Finally, contemporary dictionaries explain that among}

merchants une raison referred to an account book (un livre de compte), a report of quantity, in number or extent, or a certain sum.50

From its rise in the politically fragmented context of late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Italy the word ‘state’ most importantly referred to princes’ circumstances.51_{The term}

ambiguously referred to communities and the individual persons (princes) who embodied these ‘states’. Among the ‘new princes’ such as the Medici in Florence, conservare lo stato might refer to maintaining the condition of the prince as well as upholding the political regime. In this context

46_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 217-218.}

47_{Cf. J.H. Hexter, The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation (London: Routledge, 1973), 168; David}

Martin Jones, “Aphorism and the Counsel of Prudence in Early Modern Statecraft: The Curious Case of Justus Lipsius”, Parergon 28, no. 2 (2011): 80.

48_{The following meanings were included in Jean Nicot’s Thresor de la langue française (1604), Pierre}

Richelet’s Dictionnaire François (1680), Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire Universel (1690) and Le

Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1694). These dictionaries are available online at gallica.bnf.fr, the first

dictionary of the Académie française can also be consulted at the artfl-website Dictionnaires d’autrefois. Cf. Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 217-218.

49_{Jones, “Aphorism and the Counsel of Prudence”, 80. This is illustrated by e.g. Antoine de Laval, who used}

droit and raison interchangeable: “Je ne garde pas ici l’ordre ni les définitions des Jurisconsultes, ils les

étendent pour traiter leur droit civil et municipal à plein fonds, autant infini, qu’infinies sont les actions et volontés des hommes avec les évènements. Je raccourcis les miennes pour montrer seulement que la raison du droit civil ne va pas le train du droit de nature: le coutumier du civil. Le droit et raison de guerre les brise tous: la raison du droit des gens amollit celui de la guerre: la raison de Police court par tout si ce n’est que cette raison d’État l’en empêche. Car cette raison sans raison, ce droit tortue passe sur le ventre à tous les autres, ou à la plupart.” Laval, Desseins de professions nobles et publiques, 339a.

50_{The latter meaning if found in Pierre Richelet’s Dictionnaire François (1680), Antoine Furetière’s}

Dictionnaire Universel (1690) and Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1694).

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13 the term was therefore used to stabilize the position of a new, illegitimate prince.52_{When the}

term état gained acceptance in France in the second half of the sixteenth century, apart from being used to refer to the social strata within a society – i.e. the three états of nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie –, it also came to refer to the situation of the king.53_{In general, the word ‘state’}

therefore denoted “a condition of things (as in status reipublicae); status, standing or estate; the prince’s status, standing, position or office; the government or regime; or the commonwealth or polity, or its business, concerns or arrangements (as in the already familiar expression ‘matters of state’).”54

With authors like Niccolò Machiavelli and Francisco Guicciardini but especially the reception of their work from the late sixteenth century onwards major Christian assumptions on society and human behaviour and discourse in society gradually eroded.55_{Their cynical analysis of}

political life in a community as a dynamic struggle of interests proved to be as influential as it was deplored. Leading men and women – princes in particular – became rational agents with interests, always choosing to better their standing, their own situation. Although individuals would prefer to further their own cause, it clearly was best for the community as a whole when common interest ruled over those of individuals. The fittest to the task of discerning this common interest were the prince and his counsellors. More strongly than before, political council and rhetoric focussed on the means to the ends of political society instead of persuasion by reasoned speech and virtuous behaviour. Medieval, Thomist-Aristotelian moral philosophy concerned with Christian virtue made no distinction between actions on the various levels of communal life and required honest virtuous actions except in cases of utmost necessity (necessitas). Apart from these exceptional cases, lying, deception, and fraud were univocally condemned. In works like Il Principe and the Discorsi, Machiavelli showed a more cynical picture in which these condemned actions were common practise; in fact, the ‘new prince’ must always make use of both cunning and force. In calculations of expediency and (self) interest the actions of necessity became the norm.56

Although ‘Machiavellianism’ was virtually universally condemned, the Florentine’s work was indispensable. In political discourse authors in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century therefore simply had to confront it. Especially after the Saint-Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, Machiavelli was deemed responsible for the kind of political council that had caused the

52_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 215.}

53_{Meinecke, Machiavellism, 1-22; Laurie Catteeuw, "L’inacceptable face aux nécessités politiques: les}

relations entre censures et raisons d’État à l’époque moderne”, Les Dossiers du Grihl [online], Les dossiers de Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Les limites de l'acceptable, uploaded 14 June 2013; Catteeuw, Censures et raisons

d’État, 7-17.

54_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 218.} 55_{Von Friedeburg, “Wars with books”, 302.}

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14 violent death of thousands of French Huguenots. By the 1580s, ‘Machiavellism’ and ‘Machiavellist’ had become a pejorative designation for any political considerations indifferent to or contrasting religious precepts, morality and legal norms that the new catchphrase raison d’état was quick to absorb.57

Justus Lipsius’ Politica and Botero’s Della ragione di stato, both appearing in 1589, are two examples of important and influential political treatises in which the authors sought to come to grips with the ideas of and ascribed to Machiavelli. Lipsius, who was to exert a considerable influence on Pierre Charron, Gabriel Naudé, and French political thought in general58_{, engaged}

with the ideas and reputation of Machiavelli in the context of his discussion of prudence. Lipsius took the Aristotelian maxim that at least a ruler must be half good to inform his examination of what he called prudentia mixta, prudence mixed with fraud. In the fourth book of his Politica Lipsius attested that sometimes it is necessary to mix prudence with a bit of fraud. Just as wine mixed with a little water does not cease to be wine, nor does ‘watered down’ prudence cease to be prudence. Mixed prudence remains virtuous, Lipsius contends in this clarifying analogy. He then defines fraud as “clever planning which departs from virtue or the laws, in the interest of the king and the kingdom” before distinguishing between a light, middle and grave form of fraus.59

These forms, still farther departing from virtue, include distrust and dissimulation; bribery and deception; and perfidy and injustice. Lipsius condemns the third form of fraud, but this constraint might be deemed limited due to the ambiguity in the rest of the chapter.60_{According to Lipsius}

prudentia mixta was inescapable in facing the realities of political life and essential for good government.61

Giovanni Botero, the first to use the phrase ragione di stato in a book’s title, confronted Machiavelli’s ideas in his distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of reason of state. The work of this Italian Jesuit, who left the order to become a diplomat, popularized the term and established a tradition of ‘theoretical’ reflection on the practice of political prudence. He defined ragione di stato as: “State is a stable dominion over people, and Reason of State is knowledge of the means suitable for founding, conserving and augmenting a dominion established in this way. […] Although everything done with these ends in view is said to be done for Reason of State, nevertheless this term is used rather about things which cannot be reduced to ordinary and usual

57_{Höpfl, “Orthodoxy and Reason of State”, 218-219.}

58_{See for instance, Soll, “A Lipsian Legacy?”, 307-323; Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty}

Years' War, 101-102; Burke, “Tacitism, sceptisism, and reason of state”, 491-497; Jan Waszink,

“Introduction”, in Justus Lipsius (J. Waszink, ed. and tr.), Politica: six books of politics or political instruction (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2004), 1-213, in particular 31-48.

59_{Lipsius (ed. Waszink), Politica, 512-3.} 60_{Lipsius (ed. Waszink), Politica, 512-9.}

French ‘Reason of State’ from the Fall of La Rochelle to the Frondes Political Prudence in the Writings of Henri duc de Rohan and Gabriel Naudé

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

The Transformation of the French Monarchy and the Rhetoric of

Political Prudence