Thomas More’s Utopia presented a vision of an ideal community in the future, surrounded by bonheur (happiness) that would inspire moral and political reflection down to the present. François Hotman’s Franco-Gallia (1573) is a vision of the French past that is at once historical and mythical, and that would inspire immediate revolutionary actions.1 Hotman believed that the institutions of the past had been corrupted at the expense of the natural goodness “of the people.” The Franco-Gallia is a call to grant powers back to the people through their meetings and estates. History was of greater consequence owing to these efforts to mobilize past attitudes, beliefs, and institutions, mythical or not.2
Hotman’s reading of Tacitus on the early German tribes would shape an idealized popular political culture. In his early chapters Hotman’s comments on tyranny are scarcely integrated into a vision of elective kingship, remarkably strong fighting powers, and love of peace. If a king lacks the qualities of a leader, he is deposed. There are occasions when it was good for sons to succeed to the crown worn by their long-haired fathers, but for Hotman dynastic claims are suspect and may lead to tyranny.
There had been bloody tyrants among Roman kings; and according to Gregory of Tours, the Frankish King Childeric “became licentious through too much luxury while he was reigning over the Francs and was beginning to seduce their daughters.”3 Aware of a plot against him, he fled to Thuringia.
In another instance, according to the abbot of Ursperg, “Aegidius [Giles] … proved a great tyrant who put several nobles cruelly to death.”4 Though he had debauched daughters of the people, he was not killed: he was merely driven out. Hotman’s harsh critical judgments about earlier kings, if not quite all of them, must have shocked readers of the more vulgaire popular histories by Paul Émile and Gaguin, who generally heroicize kings and who recognized the potential for violence between kings and the people. Yet there was little instability, because the people generally would intervene to set things right. For this reason, Hotman favors the presence of an aristocracy, a form of government that separated kings from commoners, thereby constituting an Aristotelian “mixed constitution” of divided powers.5 Kings simply did not have “une personne infinie et absolute.” In a strongly patriotic tone, Hotman says that the French have governed there, and have been governed there, for twelve hundred years.
A king rules over his subjects against their will.
The existence of a foreign body guard.
The third mark of tyranny occurs when all matters are judged by the comfort and will of him who governs, rather than by the ease and desire of the commonwealth and the subjects.6
Following the presentation of the marks, Hotman asks whether France has been subjected to tyrannical governance. The focus is on the roles played by councils and estates in potentially curbing royal power.7 (He borrows from Seyssel.) “Let the welfare of the people be the law” becomes anathema, as Hotman shifts from a general description of institutions to two specific instances in which royal power becomes too strong. In the War of the Common Weal (1465), the magnates united (temporarily) to force Louis XI to be more consultative and to stop raising revenues without taking into account the views of his subjects.8 Hotman recounts the War of the Common Weal as a successful use of force to maintain the balance between the powers of the people, those of the aristocracy, and those of the king.
Hotman’s second example is how calling a great council can mobilize subjects effectively, in this case, in order to annul an excommunication of the king and all his subjects that had been promulgated by the schismatic pope, Benedict XIII. In an attempt to resolve the schism, many secular authorities across Europe had intervened. Once the news had begun to circulate across the realm, King Charles VI, faced with excommunication, called a public council.
The council decreed that Benedict was a schismatic and did not have to be obeyed, and that the papal bull would be annulled “and torn to pieces before the eyes of the people.”9 After the deliberations, the rector of the University of Paris rose, took the bull, “and with the king looking on, … tore it asunder with his own hands.”10 Dressed in robes bearing the papal insignia, the papal nuncio and his assistants were flogged and “exposed to the mockery and derision of all, and provided a public spectacle for the amusement of the Parisians.”11 Hotman’s aim is to call attention to how the public council was used successfully, not only under very early kings, but in recent times as well. Similarly, if a king is defeated and captured, the realm remains.12
Here and there throughout the later chapters, Hotman notes that the Franks had been the guardians of liberty, “abhorring all tyranny, especially the domination of any Turkish tyrant,” who would force them to live like cattle.13 Essentially the same point is made about life under Louis XI.14 Still more colorful and trenchant is his depiction of the Egyptians: their tyrannical kings forced them to build pyramids.15
Not unlike Erasmus, Hotman demonstrates a very firm belief in his knowledge (savoir) of the past, and a remarkably serene outlook for the future. The disciplines that framed their research and their analysis would be fundamentally altered by their own writings. Hotman may have lacked the requisite patience to let his researches deepen to the point of accepting an atticist belief that the antique word could be understood, despite some changes of meaning. His history may not have been as close an ancestor of scientific history as Fauchet’s, but he pioneered in writing history that was written with an explicit argument, an argument that was akin to a legal brief.16 Legal training had made possible the elucidation of a single theme, or a congeries of themes, without bringing up commonplace religious and ethical questions that pervaded works by authors untouched by legal humanism.
While monarchies may slide into tyrannies, Hotman does not seem to fear that this sort of thing will occur in the France of the Valois. The strong, frequently repeated concepts are “people,” “estates,” and “councils”—but not “tyranny.” If there is such a thing as a charismatic word in Hotman’s Franco-Gallia, the word would be “people.”