Autonomie nobiliaire, mémoire familiale et pouvoir du souverain sous Louis XIV

Résumé Fr En

Emmanuel-Théodose de La Tour d’Auvergne fut le tout dernier frondeur de l’Ancien Régime. Il chercha à concurrencer la monarchie et la dynastie royale en soutenant le rang et l’autonomie de sa propre maison à travers ses ancêtres. Cette tentative échoua. Louis XIV n’accepta ni les preuves ni les prétentions ni même le débat : lorsque deux lignées de la haute noblesse de cour se disputèrent leurs généalogies, le litige ne toucha pas la Couronne mais il renforça le rang du roi en tant qu’arbitre souverain. La revendication des La Tour d’Auvergne selon laquelle leur rang et leur autonomie nobiliaire n’étaient pas dûs aux grâces du roi mais à leur ascendance précapétienne était de nature à mettre en question et en danger souveraineté du Roi et prestige de la dynastie royale. Louis XIV réagit par la force : il détruisit les « chimères des Bouillon ». La souveraineté du roi de France reposait aussi sur sa maîtrise de la mémoire et l’histoire familiale des Grands, donc de leurs ambitions généalogiques.

Emmanuel-Thédose de La Tour d’Auvergne, Cardinal de Bouillon appears to be the very last frondeur in 17th century France, when he was trying to compete with the crown over memory and genealogy of his house as the ultimate signs of its autonomy. Whereas appeals to mythic ancestors had become obsolete, his attempt to provide historical substantiation for an ‘ambitious’ family tree was not only thoroughly ‘modern’ but also bound to support a claim that rank and legitimacy of the La Tour d’Auvergne as noble House were not dependent upon the King. Instead, the La Tour d’Auvergne had possessed their authority long before the Capetians. Such a claim, however, inevitably threatened rank and legitimacy of the royal house. The situation changed decisively and the emphatic intervention by the King became unavoidable. Royal motives in dismissing the La Tour d’Auvergne-claim were not simply the result of that much prized historical concept of ‘state-building’. Instead, the Crown’s response was itself bound up with the classic dynastic goals of the ‘famille des Bourbons’. Louis XIV and his House were not entirely above that society. To a great extent, the Bourbons were also anchored in the same system of rules, rank and conventions that governed aristocratic society.Never mind its “modernity”, the Cardinal’s ‘chimera’ was in fact a rearguard action. It showed how enduring was the use of genealogy in attempts to assert the independency aristocratic authority and resist the centralization of power. Yet at the same time the conflict demonstrated how the nobility had also begun to discard such genealogical ‘chimera’. Such claims appeared increasingly anachronistic and their claimants subject to ridicule as tragic, Don Quixote like figures. Thus, the Cardinal was by no means anachronistic in adhering to the principle of utilizing the family past to assert its prestige. What was anachronistic was the use of this principle to challenge royal authority. It was anachronistic because the monarchy had turned these disputes into a power struggle, in which it could, and would, violently assert its own views and suppress others. Louis XIV’s sovereignty consisted even of his disposal of his subjects ‘past’.