← Not Just the Tudors
Not Just the Tudors
Tudor True Crime: Europe's Most Murderous Dynasty
00:39:10
Meet the Guise - one of France's most charismatic but bloodthirsty families
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe As a parent, you wear many hats. At dinner, you're the chef.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
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- [01:52]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Hamlet summed it up when he described his dysfunctional family as little more than kin and less than kind. But the something that was rotten in the state of Denmark was nothing compared to Europe's most murderous dynasty. For the last few episodes, I've been delving into the Not Just the Tudors archives and revisiting some of the extraordinary, true crimes that shook England in the early modern period. We've already looked at the murders of Christopher Marlowe, Amy Dudley and Thomas Overbury. Do go back and take a listen to those episodes if you haven't done so already. Today. I thought I'd round up this mini series of murders with an episode that first went out in February 2023 and focuses on not one specific murder, but an entire family who, intertwined with the Stuarts of Scotland, were involved in massacres, murders and the French wars of religion, as well as seizing the throne of France.
- [03:21]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Whether or not you know something about.
- [03:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The Guise family of France today, you are in for a treat. But if you don't, let me set the scene and introduce this powerful and beguiling family. In 1506, the Duke of Lorraine sent his son Claude to be raised at the French court, and Claude struck up a close friendship with the heir apparent.
- [03:46]
Episode Host/Interviewer
To the throne, Francois.
- [03:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In 1513, Claude was permitted to marry Francois cousin Anne Antoinette de Bourbon. And when Francois became King, Francois I In 1515, Claude was rewarded with military commands and household offices, such as the Master of the Hunt and the governorship of Burgundy, one of France's most important provinces, which had only recently ceased to be independent. In 1528, the king elevated Claude de Guise to a duchy peerage, making him tantamount to a prince. Claude And Antoinette had 12 children, and among the most prominent, whom you'll meet today were Marie de Guise, Francois de Guise and Charles de Guise. Marie de Guise married James V of Scotland. Their daughter was Mary, Queen of Scots, who later married the Dauphin of France, the heir to the French throne and future Francois II. Francois de Guise was a military man, later 2nd Duke of Guise, and Charles de Guise became Archbishop of Reims and Cardinal of Lorraine. King Francois I was succeeded by Henry II, and when Henry died in 1559, next to the throne was the Dauphin, now Francois II, crowned by none other than his maternal uncle, Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine. And as the young king was inexperienced and not in the best health, his mother, Catherine de Medici, directed his ministers to work with the king's uncles, the Guise. So little did he know it, but King Francois I had elevated a family who would dominate French history for the next hundred years. Here today to talk about the Guises and to set their actions in a wider European context of enmity and violence. I'm delighted to welcome Stuart Carroll, professor of Early Modern History at the University of York. He's the author of Blood and Violence in Early Modern France, Cultures of Interpersonal Violence in A Historical Perspective and Martyrs and the Guise Family and the Making of Europe. The latter was awarded the J. Russell, major prize by the American Historical association for the best French history book of the year.
- [06:04]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Susanna.
- [06:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb and you're listening to Not Just the Tudors from history.
- [06:09]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Hit.
- [06:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Professor Stuart Carroll. Welcome to Not Just the Tutors. It's an absolute treat to talk to you about this topic today. I've long been an admirer of your work, and now I have a chance to quiz you on it, which is wonderful.
- [06:24]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Well, thanks for inviting me, and hello to all you listeners out there.
- [06:28]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Thank you. You're joining us to talk about the geese in a themed month on murder and violence. And it's a topic that for many people, they might find, I don't know, their stomachs turned a little. But you have spent a lot of time working on violence. And so the first thing I have to ask you is what first drew you to working on this? And why are you still doing that? What keeps you there?
- [06:52]
Professor Stuart Carroll
It's a really good question. If you look at my website, you'll see that I write lots of books about violence, and it seems that I might be a very bloodthirsty and violent person. And the reason why I kind of got interested, it was actually what I'm really interested in social relations and how people get on in the past or often don't get on. And violence is a really good way into that, because violence leaves records, it leaves bodies. And we can say quite a lot about social relations through violence and the subject of violence. That's what I got into. Having studied the geese, I was interested in social relations, how the family formed a kind of family following, how they mobilize supporters. And that's how I first got interested in social relations, how they interact with each other. But they were involved in a series of vendettas and feuds with other families. And I got kind of interested in the whole idea of vendetta and feud as a subject and pursued that. And from there I went on to violence. But I've always still got that back of my mind, that issue about how people get on or don't get on, how they reconcile, how they fall out. So I'm quite interested in that whole issue of social relationships.
- [07:55]
Episode Host/Interviewer
That's interesting you mention vendettas, because I think that when we consider the 16th century and France, immediately, of course, our minds jump to the wars of religion. And we might think that religion is driving the vast majority of the murder and violence that we see, perhaps between the eminent families of France. Do you think that's fair or do you want to point to other causes of conflict.
- [08:19]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Yeah, and obviously religion is very important because you have Europe's largest Calvinist party, you have a million people at 10% of the population who are Protestant and they are opposed by a large proportion of Catholics. But it's also important to remind us that not everyone hates everyone else is beating each other up. There are plenty of Catholics who, although they think these people are heretics, don't want to kill them. Recent research is tending to show that the reason why the Reformation in France is so violent compared to say, what goes on in England or Germany is local. And that must mean political. And I think it's the political fallout which is driving very high rates of vendetta and violence. Now, of course they're infused with religious issues, but it may be that they're very difficult to untangle politics and religion. But it's the politics which is instrumentalizing the violence. You need the politics. When you get two religions, as it were, that doesn't necessarily mean people are going to start chopping each other up. You need something else. It seems to be the politics which is driving the violence.
- [09:23]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Let us think about this chronologically. I'd like to talk first about Francois ii, Duke de Guise and his brother Charles, Archbishop of Reims and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who both advised the young King Francois ii. Can you describe the manner and the style in which they worked with Francois? Is it fair to characterize them as self serving from the outset?
- [09:53]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Well, they have their family priorities and their family priorities had always been resistance to the House of Habsburg because they have claims in Italy and in the Empire and also, as we should probably discuss in England and Scotland, which were directly opposed to Habsburg Palace. The reason why the family was important in France was they're part of a kind of configuration which is this struggle between France and Spain. And they're very much part of the French party. So in the 1550s in particular, they are rewarded for their success in fighting the Habsburgs, particularly in Italy, they're rewarded with the marriage of their niece, who's very famous in this country, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, or the daughter of Mary of Guise, that's the sister of the two people you're talking about, Francois and Charles, they're her uncles and she is married to the Dauphin, Francis ii. So that's a reward. During this dynastic struggle between the royal houses ruling France and Spain. And at this stage in the 1550s, I said it's very much a case of resistance to Spanish hegemony, perhaps the.
- [11:06]
Episode Host/Interviewer
First major confrontation involving The Guise, whilst they're working for Mary Stuart's husband, Francois ii, is the Amboise conspiracy. Can you tell us about this and what the actions of the Guise were in it?
- [11:22]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Well, the conspiracy of Amboise is a revolt against Guise rule. What happened in 1559 is that the ruling king, Henry II, had died, and Francis II and his wife, Mary Stuart. Mary, Queen of Scots, had become King and Queen of France. But Francis ii is only 15 years old. He's not the brightest tool in the box, and it's his uncles, the Geese, who are running the show. There's lots of resistance to them, and the resistance to them comes from a family, the House of Bourbon listeners will probably know very well, who are called Princes of the blood, and they think they have a constitutional right to rule. And they are often supported by Protestants. Protestants are hostile to the Guise. The Guise are seen as doubling down on heresy trials. So the tumult of Amboise, or the conspiracy of Amboise, is an attempt really, to basically, I guess, topple and murder the Geese family. It's unsuccessful. It's brutally repressed. However, the fallout from that is actually the Guise realize that they cannot suppress Protestantism. What actually happens In France after 1560, the success of that is effectively to decriminalize heresy.
- [12:33]
Episode Host/Interviewer
And do you feel that the guy's response to this conspiracy could be regarded as unjustifiably murderous and bloodthirsty, or is it justified?
- [12:44]
Professor Stuart Carroll
In their own terms, Protestant propaganda portrayed this as vicious, bloody kind of repression. Many people, of course, thought this is perfectly legitimate execution of traitors. It's important also to point out the international context of what is going on, because as I pointed out, the Guise, or basically also running Scotland, Mary of Gies's regent in Scotland. One reason why they want to decriminalize heresy in France and prevent any further uprising is because there's a Protestant revolt going on in Scotland and there's an effective war to repress what's going on in Scotland. The Guise, also, through Mary Stuart, claim the crown of England. The French King, France ii, as I said, not the brightest tool in the box there. Nephew. Mary Stuart's husband, France ii, he quarters his arms with those of England. He's claiming to be king of England and Scotland and Ireland. So the Guise, they want to kind of settle things down in France. So they've got exciting projects about conquering what they call the Franco British Empire, that's creating an empire in the British Isles. And this is really the Guise plan. They want to kind of Keep things sweet at home. They don't really want a Protestant insurgency. Elizabeth, of course, Elizabeth I of England, very keen to promote any Protestant insurgency in France, who was going to keep the Guise firmly out of her neck of the woods, as it were.
- [14:01]
Episode Host/Interviewer
One thing I hadn't appreciated before reading your work is that this 1560 Edict of Amboise increases the threat to the Guise. The assassination attempts increase, the hunters become the hunted. Could you say a bit more about this? Because especially as this edict is supposed to be an attempt at toleration, whether you think that's a good or a bad thing at the time, it seems to be the opposite consequence.
- [14:24]
Professor Stuart Carroll
That's a good question. We tend to see Protestants as victims, certainly in the Anglo sphere. We see France had the largest Protestant church in Europe. One thing the Protestants are doing in France is they're also drawing a lot of classical ideas about tyranny and resistance to tyranny. And French Protestants are developing a political thought which sees it as legitimate to topple and kill tyrants. And although they're a minority in France, they can't really take over the, you know, defeat 90% of Catholics. They begin to, as it were, target certain individuals. They might be members of the Guise family or particular Catholic lords or sometimes tax collectors. That's often quite popular, who they see as tyrannous or representatives of malice and evil. And you begin to get this use of political assassination which becomes a feature of the French wars of religion. And in some ways, it's the Protestants who kind of kickstart that off.
- [15:26]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Yes. And I was just thinking, as you were saying, that I wonder if some of our way of seeing the French war's religion and what will happen over the next 40 years is informed by the narrative that's going on in England at the time and over the centuries to follow, you know, John Fox and the Book of Martyrs. And actually, it changes the way that Protestants have to be seen as martyrs. Whereas, you know, I'm quite aware that in the 1560s there are massacres of Catholics as well.
- [15:53]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Yeah, I mean, there are some massacres of Catholics. It's fairly limited. As you know, from Nimes, there's a famous massacre. That's because really, the Protestants are in a majority. Most of the massacres that occur tend to be committed by Catholics because they're in the majority and because they see the Protestants both as a heretical threat, but they see them also as insurgents. They see them as a political threat, they see them as seditious. And that, again, goes back to the political Thought you mentioned Fox. An early French edition of Fox states that the kings of France are simply the Captain General of God's elect. You can overthrow kings. So this is a new way of political thinking, and it's a threat to many Catholics, and they don't like it. Another example in the 1560s is the Ciceronian idea that the safety of the people is the highest law. This is something we'll see revived during the English Revolution and during the American Revolution, that the Calvinists in France are quite politically radical and Catholics react against this. They don't like this idea that the ancient constitution of France is being threatened and overturned. I think that politics is driving a lot of the violence.
- [17:01]
Episode Host/Interviewer
That's so interesting. Okay, so let's talk about the massacre of Vassy, 1562, that involves Francois du Tiguise, who earns the title the Butcher of Vassy. Can you tell us what happened and whether you think the Duke could have acted differently in the circumstances of that massacre?
- [17:21]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Yeah, sure. We need to go back a little bit to understand the context that France ii, the Guise, had been in power. Francis II was not only not the brightest tool in the box, he wasn't very healthy. And he dies in 1560, age 15. He's replaced by his brother, Anne Charles, and that's a minority. And Catherine de Medici, who's the Queen Mother, takes over. The Guise are effectively out of power. And in 1562, there is an official policy of toleration which allows Protestants to worship outside of the city walls. Guise is probably not very happy about this. In March 1562, he's on his way to Paris to oppose this and to join with other magnates who are very unhappy with this policy. He passes the small town of Vassy. What he finds is that the worshippers are worshipping inside the city walls against the edict of toleration. He and his men are not very happy about this. Now, of course, there's a spirit here in the law. The law was on his side. He was going to break up this meeting. The spirit, of course, is against this. What happens is it seems that his men don't like the attitudes of the Protestants. They get out of hand. They butcher 30, 40, 50 women and children. So, yes, he could have behaved differently. He tries to justify himself and say, well, you know, it wasn't my fault, I was provoked, et cetera. But I think most people at the time, certainly commentators in Germany, which was very important because there's lots of German Protestants who don't believe the geese. The Protestants certainly Don't believe the Guise and they actually take up arms in to defend the edict of toleration. So the massacre is very important in both dividing the peanut across Europe in seeing this is a black on white fight between good and evil. And also it leads to the Protestants actually taking up arms. The massacre is a very key event.
- [19:13]
Episode Host/Interviewer
And would it be fair to say therefore that the massacre of Vassy was the beginning of the French war's religion? It's certainly been seen as such. Do you agree with that view?
- [19:21]
Professor Stuart Carroll
It's the beginning of the campaigning and official fighting. But the civil wars had really bit like the American Civil War gets underway in 1861. But they've been fighting in Missouri and in Kansas, in the localities for a long time. Very vicious fighting. And the same is true of France that there's been low level fighting really from the late 1550s, which sometimes really has no relationship with what's going on at court and at the top. And some of that's really quite unpleasant. So you already begin to see the formation before that of what you might get called local militias or paramilitary groups, often small groups of people, both Catholics and Protestants, who are fighting each other already. Similar in some ways. Northern Ireland, I guess it's not always the whole people against the whole people. Neighbour is not turning against neighbour. It tends to be small groups of very highly motivated and very well armed local motables.
- [20:14]
Episode Host/Interviewer
And there was a fascinating etymological detail that it is Farsi that adds the word massacre to the political lexicon.
- [20:22]
Professor Stuart Carroll
The massacre is the chopping block in French. So we get lots of words from the 16th century which are new. I talked about this new politics. The language is changing and the word massacre unfortunately is a new one. And it's a word that's used by Protestants in particular to justify their cause and to paint the Guise in particular as dark and evil. The Antichrist.
- [20:52]
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- [21:53]
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- [22:35]
Professor Stuart Carroll
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- [23:10]
Episode Host/Interviewer
If we move to the first sort of major battle of the French wars of religion, the Battle of Dreux in 1562, it's fascinating that we've got people who are fighting their neighbors, people who have been their friends until very recently, potentially. But they also seem to be fighting between co religionists. Why were people fighting those who believed the same of them? Given that here we are thinking of the wars of religion as this great battle between the Protestants and the Catholics, which of course it is in large part. But would the sense that people were fighting those who were their co religionists have mattered to Francois Duke de Guise as one of the commanders? What was his motive?
- [23:44]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Yeah, I think we need to see religion as a bit of a spectrum. There are many Protestants, for example, particularly elite ones, they didn't like the idea of rebellion, of being seditious. So some of these people, like the head of the House of Bourbon, Antoine de Navarre, he's probably some Sort of evangelical, moderate, Protestant, we don't really know. But he certainly wasn't very happy in being a rebel. There are a couple of people like that. Many Catholics didn't particularly like the idea of butchering Protestants. So we need to see that as a bit of a continuum. Of course, what happens in any civil war situation is the more blood you have, it becomes much harder to be a moderate. And the longer the wars go on and the bloody they get, you need to choose your party. Moderation becomes more difficult because everyone's got blood on their hands. And you soon have a history of vendetta and of memories of killing, and you want to get revenge. So the first wars are rather different. I think the first war, you do see quite a lot of temporization, people not really kind of wanting getting in. You see quite a lot of side changing, people temporizing. Of course, that changes as the violence continues and it becomes more difficult to stay out of the fray.
- [24:55]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Yes. So during the course of the wars, in other words, the fact that these are going on is polarizing people, making them entrench in their positions and in making it more violent.
- [25:04]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Absolutely. And it becomes harder to stop the violence. You begin to get a narrative which is rooted not in moderation and toleration and temperance, but in stories of violence. One can imagine the ways in which, for example, we talked about Francois, Duc de Guise. He's assassinated in 1563. They claim it's a Protestant assassin. The family is just devastated and they swear vengeance. And memories of that begin to dominate their political thinking. They're opposed to toleration because the best way they can get at their opponents is when there's war going on. It legitimizes revenge.
- [25:40]
Episode Host/Interviewer
That's so interesting that these stories that we tell, the narrative about it determines the outcome here. His death is completely altering the political situation because it creates this sense that this is what we must do. This is now our mission is to revenge this death.
- [25:56]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Absolutely. And we actually have some documents which the Guise drew up and forced all their supporters to swear to and to sign that they would pursue Admiral Coligny, who's the leader of the Protestants, to the fourth generation of dissent, that this would be a vendetta and people would subscribe to this. And the Crown has a real difficulty in trying to get these families to reconcile and to sign up to peace treaties, because it's much easier to pursue an enemy when you've got war going on.
- [26:24]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Okay, so let's Skip forward some nine years now, talking of Coligny, and discuss the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of the Huguenots in August 1572. I'm sure we might have to draw on the 1560s, but this is explained in some quarters as a result of Guy's enmity. Please could you remind listeners what happened in the massacre and then tell me what you think the proportion of blame should be on the Guise themselves.
- [26:52]
Professor Stuart Carroll
I think when we come to the massacre which occurred between the 22nd and 24th of August, we need to keep in mind that the massacre that began on the 24th is actually two separate events. The first event is really an aristocratic one, and that is an attempt to decapitate the Protestant leadership, who comprise about 60, 70 people in Paris. I'll come back to why they're there in a moment. The thousands who are killed is a much more popular massacre and one that wasn't foreseen or wanted by the perpetrators of the aristocratic massacre. Now, the background to the aristocratic massacre is really rooted in politics and it's rooted in the fact that Coligny had what happens a very important event in European history, which is the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule. Coligny as wanting to go into the Netherlands, he had relied as the leader of the Protestant party in the 1560s on support from the Prince of Orange in the House of Nassau and on Dutch volunteers, Protestant exile volunteers from the Netherlands. He is honor bound and duty bound to support them in their hour of need. And he's going to go. Someone attempts to assassinate him on the 22nd of August. We don't quite know who that was. We actually know who pulled the trigger. We don't know why that was. But whoever wanted him out or didn't want him to go into the Netherlands. Possibly it was Catherine, but we can never know that for certain. Unfortunately for the assassin, that doesn't actually work because he's only wounded. The Protestants then cry vengeance. They want revenge, they want justice for this attempted assassination. It's clear that any judicial investigation would expose the plot, the conspiracy behind that and who wanted him out of the way. So the Crown calls a meeting on 23rd August. They decided this is the aristocratic decapitation phase, as it were. They decide Catherine, her acolytes, the Guise, they decide they're going to chop off the Protestant elite. They had gathered there for the marriage, which was to seal the peace between the leader of the Protestant party, Antoine of Navarre, and Catherine's daughter, Margot. There are thousands of Protestants in Paris, but the plot here is only to decapitate the top leadership. That's actually A list of names drawn up, 60 or 70. The problem with that is that when the aristocratic death squads go into the city to pick up these people and start chopping them, they make such a commotion that the city militia decides this is a good idea to join in. People clearly think it's legitimate to massacre anybody. So the whole thing really just gets out of hand. It's an aristocratic plot, a cunning plan which gets out of hand. And recent research also shows that the killers who kill about 2 to 4,000 people in Paris, again, are not the whole of the city. Paris is a population of 300,000. It's not the people. It tends to be members of the city militia. It tends to be a number of very highly motivated, ideologically driven, heavily armed killers, who are often people who hold public office, they're minor office holders, people who have a policing function. And these people are very unpleasant. Many of them are killing several hundred people. So in many respects, the killing is very similar to what happened. One could imagine this in Eastern Europe in the mid 20th century, called kind of Einsatzgruppen types of people, heavily armed, heavily motivated. It's not the general population, it's cadres of radical Catholics.
- [30:33]
Episode Host/Interviewer
And there's a certain pattern to the violence as well, I suppose, that we should touch on, which is that it is symbolic or related to the perceived crimes of the Protestants. You know, I'm thinking of the bookbinder in the Latin Quarter, forgotten his name, but who's burned, half dead, and then hauled into the Seine, or baptism of Nicholas de Mercier's daughter in the blood of her parents. These sort of terrible stories that have emerged from people studying the massacre.
- [30:59]
Professor Stuart Carroll
People are not just killed, they're eviscerated. Their bodies are chopped up. You know, colony's head is used as a football. People's genitals are cut off. It's extremely unpleasant. Bodies are dumped in the river. But this is nothing different than what's happening in the Ukraine than happened in Yugoslavia, than happened in Eastern Europe. In many ways. This is not something which is a kind of medieval atrocity. It looks forward to the violence of the 20th century in many ways. The wars of religion doesn't look back. It looks forward in many ways. It's the first ideological modern civil war that looks forward to modern conflicts. To understand that violence is a very difficult thing. It's a very sensitive subject. But one, I think, would want to look at what's going on in the 20th century to understand that it seems to be something related to the dehumanization of other people, often carried out by people with an ideological we also know of course that in many cases there's a material interest. Many of these people are neighbors of the people they killed. They had pre existing entities. Often they'd been involved in trying to arrest these people of harassing and intimidating them in the 1560s. And in many cases they were after their property as well.
- [32:16]
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- [33:17]
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- [33:53]
Episode Host/Interviewer
So to pick up the story chronologically again, let's look now to let's see, 1576 Henri III, Duke of Guise already, who's earned himself the moniker of Balafreus or Scar Face, and he forms the Catholic League. And this is very much that intersection of political and religious in it's a kind of frustration at the moderate policies of the new King Henri ii, and relations deteriorate between the Guise and the royal family when Henry of Navarro, a Protestant, is named as heir to the throne. Now can we talk about the so called War of the Three Henrys? And can we explain the context or actions of the Guise here as anything other than A lust for power, really.
- [34:35]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Again, it's very difficult to uncover private motivations and to see, you know, they are sincere Catholics and good Catholics, but clearly radical Catholicism in the sense of overthrowing the monarchy. Because this is what the League really, in the end, is dedicated to doing. They're dedicated to preventing anyone. Certainly, if you need to know something of your dynastic history here, that Henry III is the last vow king. He's the last Catholic heir. He doesn't have any children. His brother, who's the heir, dies in 1584, and the heir is Henry of Navarre, Ali de Bourbon. He's a Protestant. The Catholic League is dedicated to preventing Protestant succession. The Guise really don't have anywhere to go. They've been cut out of power by Henry iii. They're on their uppers financially, really. Radical Catholicism offers them a way back in, as it were. It's the only really root for them. And they really pitch their star to urban radical Catholicism, which is not only, again, just a religious thing, it also has a political kind of wing, which is to reconstitute the monarchy on a much more representative. It borrows a lot of that Protestant thinking about the sovereignty of the people. That is, in things like elected monarchy. They're going to elect their own king, who is a good Catholic, and they're going to have an Estates General, which meets regularly, a bit like an English parliament, because given the fact that 90% of the people are Catholic, you can pretty much ensure that you'll have a majority of Catholics running that. So they have a kind of radical political message, as well as a kind of bigoted religious one.
- [36:14]
Episode Host/Interviewer
And just when we thought the guy's story couldn't get any more murderous, we have Henri and his brother Louis assassinated. You tell the story really brilliantly in your book. How did they become hoisted on their own pattern?
- [36:26]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Well, what happens in 1588 is the Catholic League takes power in, effectively, a revolution. They rise up, they try to seize the King, but he runs out from Paris and the Guise really take over. Eventually, the King is enticed back, but he's very unhappy. He sees these as radicals, as revolutionaries, as upstarts, and he's very suspicious of the Guise. An Estates General is called, and the King realizes that the Estates General, that this is the future, and the future is he's going to be constrained by the people and the sovereignty of the people, and he blames the geese for that. And he decides to take power back. And what that is, effectively, is a counter revolution. He murders the Guise, he arrests Radical members of the Estates General. He's going to rule as an absolute monarch, either without the Guise or without the Estates General. So this is a kind of reassertion of royal will, of royal power, unconstrained either by the Guise or their kind of popular allies.
- [37:23]
Episode Host/Interviewer
We've dashed through the story of the guise in the 16th century. And, of course, anyone who wants to dig deeper into the story has a very good book to turn to in Martyrs and Murders. But I want to pick up a theme from Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe, because you explain that enmity is more than anger. It's a matrix of emotion and action and relationship, which you say psychologists have found important in the development of group cohesion and identity. So I want to ask you, do you think that enmity was at the core of the Guise family?
- [37:53]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Yeah. I think we can see ways in which enmity also gets worse during periods of civil war, that the whole point of the book was really to try and open that out and look at that in other contexts, both in England, both in Germany and France. It was to take the story of France to see whether that was applicable to other countries. And it is in different contexts. But enmity is something which I think we can all understand. We all have our own enemies. What's different about our societies? We've learned to trivialize them. In the past, enemies were much more serious. They posed a threat to one's existence, possibly one's life, one's religion. So enemies in the 16th and 17th, which were much more potent. When people talked about enemies, they usually use the English word quarrel, which I explained in the book. The English word quarrel in the 16th and 17th century means something very different to what it means today. It comes from the French word querelle, which really means a judicial complaint. It means a just grievance. Today, a quarrel is really something trivial between people who are really at heart, good friends. We have a quarrel in the 16th and 17th century. A quarrel is really a Manichaean struggle. It's God's quarrel. When Shakespeare talked about the quarrel between the houses of Lancaster and York, he did not mean something trivial. He meant something that was really serious. So when people have quarrels in the 16th and 17th century, these are akin to feuds or really public hostilities, and they're very serious. And, of course, they get serious during times of civil conflict. So the idea is to look at why that gets so serious in the 16th and 17th century. So I look at the Reformation, and I look at new Renaissance ideas about how you Pursue quarrels. And I try and also look about why that word changes. In the late 17th and 18th century. We learn to rather trivialize our quarrels and put our energies in the context of society, because society is a new word in the 17th century. The idea that we need to sort of calibrate our own egos and our own causes in terms of society, because if we pursue our own rights and our own egotistical desires, we may upset the apple cart.
- [39:59]
Episode Host/Interviewer
So can I ask you then about this broader argument? Because you are suggesting that we shouldn't demarcate the medieval and the early modern by saying after 1500 there is growing rational behavior and adherence to the law. That actually this is a period in which many of the narratives we've had about, say, the Reformation producing more effective social control, perhaps.
- [40:22]
Professor Stuart Carroll
There's certainly very good evidence that there's a significant increase in interpersonal violence at the end of the 16th century, peaking in the 17th. And sometimes that's caused by the state, because the state itself in the 16th and 17th century is not always a benign thing. It's taking taxes. It's not really interesting. All sorts of things that we take for granted today that the state might do and look after us. People often don't trust the state. It's certainly not interested in prosecuting most crimes. Most litigation, the 16th and 17th century is largely a question of people fighting out their own causes through private litigation. So litigation is also increasing at the same time as violence, because litigation is another aspect of rising conflict.
- [41:02]
Episode Host/Interviewer
I wonder what you made of Steven Pinker's book about the suggestion that there was a decrease in violence over the centuries.
- [41:11]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Yeah, violence goes down in the 18th century, certainly in Europe in 18th and 19th century. The trouble is that Pinker thinks that violence is always going down all the time. There's very good evidence from the US in particular that violence actually goes up in the 19th century, is very high in the 20th. So you need really to look at individual states and see why that was the case. It's not an overall decline all the time. So a good example is again, the US where, though homicide rates in particular were going down the 1990s, early 2000, the US in 2020 had a 30% increase in the homicide rate, the largest ever increase in the homicide rate. So we're very lucky and very fortunate that we live in a very peaceful society. Homicide rates are much lower. They were in the past, but they're not always going down all the time. One way, the job of the historian is to track why they go up and down. And there's no doubt that violence is probably going down in the late Middle Ages, because the Middle Ages, then there's very effective systems. There are courts and sophisticated cities, and there's the whole sacrament of penance and the Church making peace, the Reformation, the Renaissance. Social change is meaning that violence is exploding throughout Europe in the late 16th and early 17th century. And this is happening before civil war starts. Civil war just makes this a hell of a lot worse. And we've got very good evidence across Europe for this, and it seems to be a European wife phenomenon.
- [42:28]
Episode Host/Interviewer
So if we are to judge, finally, then, the Guise as a family who use murder and violence to secure their power, can we simply say that they are people of their time?
- [42:37]
Professor Stuart Carroll
I think that's a good point, unfortunately. What would you do in their situation? As a historian, we don't want to identify with people and say, what would you have done in this situation? And sometimes in a situation where a society full of mistrust and fear and civil war, it's quicker and easier to lash out first and use violence. It might be worth saying that that changes over time. In 1560, as we've seen, there is an attempt by the geese to actually lessen heresy prosecution. So then, kind of not all bad. But of course, as the civil wars go on, they tend, like most people, to harden their position. Civil wars are not conducive to moderation and to toleration, and they simply harden their position. So the answer to that is avoiding civil conflict in the first place.
- [43:22]
Episode Host/Interviewer
Absolutely. And that sounds like the topic for another podcast. But thank you very much for talking so fascinatingly about interpersonal violence and the context of the 16th century and the Guise, and also actually for bringing so many other examples that have really brought home the reality of. Of what was going on in that time. Thank you.
- [43:43]
Professor Stuart Carroll
Thank you very much for inviting me and thank you for listening.
- [43:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I hope you'll get the chance to go back and listen to our last three episodes investigating true crimes of the early modern period. The murders of Christopher Marlowe, Amy Dudley and Thomas Overbury, or were they. And I promise you there'll be plenty more suspicious deaths in future episodes to keep us sleuthing in the years to come. Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. And to my producer, Rob Weinberg, we are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line. And not just the tutors@historyhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode next time on Not Just the Tutors from History hit.
- [44:48]
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- [45:16]
Professor Stuart Carroll
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