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Coups d'Etat a la fin du Moyen Age? Aux fondements du pouvoir politique en Europe occidentale

2007; Oxford University Press; Volume: CXXII; Issue: 497 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/cem101

1477-4534

Richard Highfield,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

THE concept of coups d’état derives from Gabriel Naudé in his Considérations sur les coups d’état (1639). In November 2002 a group of international historians held a colloquium at the Casa Velásquez in Madrid to test out the validity of this concept in the middle ages, even if its crystallisation had to await the exercise of absolutism in the seventeenth century. Nineteen articles and two sets of conclusions sprang from two axes of research, the genesis of the modern state, and the monarchy as a source of conflict in the crown of Castile-León (1230–1504). Professor Genet introduces the collection by recalling two medieval political decisions, the first from France in the sixth century when Clothaire seized power in Merovingia. He killed not only Brunehart but the two sons of Thierry, and exiled the third. At this time there was nothing like a state. Secondly, he recalls the usurpation by Bolingbroke of the English throne in 1400 when he captured and overthrew Richard II. The whole episode was made to look as if it was legitimate and had general support. Moreover, by 1400 the English bureaucracy did resemble a core of government, if not yet a state. John Watts takes up the issue of the revolution of 1400 in his contribution to this volume. He shows that, though there were five (or six) usurpations and murders of anointed kings with power of the crown apparently at its weakest, there had nevertheless been a period of extraordinary institutional and constitutional growth. By concentrating on the personalities of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI, the structural levels of politics have been ignored. Usurpations were a good way of dealing with the problems which arose when kings failed to perform functions allotted to them by an ever more integrated polity. Of course one usurpation led to another, especially when usurpers proved unable to satisfy expectations. The scope of kings’ powers was taken for granted with warfare and justice the main spheres. Though one could seek to rescue the king from evil counsellors, it became ever more difficult to challenge a king in the name of the Commonwealth. Usurpations were preferred to depositions. Yet the centre was becoming more and more difficult to usurp.