A Temperate Factionalism: Political Life in Amiens at the End of the Wars of Religion* Olivia Carpi At the end of 1584, after a respite of nine years, France became embroiled in a new civil war. After the death of his brother the duke of Anjou (10 June 1584), King Henri iii was without a male descendant and the Catholics were facing what for the vast majority of them was a frightening prospect: Henri of Bour- bon, king of Navarre and Henri iii’s cousin, but also a Protestant and leader of the rebel Huguenot party, had become the presumptive heir. As a consequence, a portion of the French nobility and some bourgeois in Paris and other cities in the kingdom formed a Catholic League, also called the “Holy Union” (the name preferred by its adherents), promoted by Henri de Lorraine, the duke of Guise, and supported by Philip ii, king of Spain. The League’s aims were made public in a manifesto issued on 31 March 1585: to force the king to resume war against the ‘heretics’, deprive Navarre from his claims to the throne, and also to thor- oughly reform the state, which the Leaguers condemned for its fiscal rapacity and authoritarian tendencies. Confronted by political and military pressure, Henri iii reluctantly promul- gated the Treaty of Nemours (18 July 1585), prohibiting the reformed religion and annulling any rights to the throne claimed by Navarre and his cousin, the prince of Condé. These concessions were, however, not enough to sat- isfy the most uncompromising Catholics. Their suspicion, even hostility, to the king, explains the insurrection in Paris of 12 May 1588 known as the Day of the Barricades. Henri iii was forced to flee Paris, which was left under the control of the Leaguers, and to sign the Edict of Union in Rouen (17 July), in which he confirmed the decisions taken three years earlier for the defence of the Catholic religion and also convoked the Estates-General. Henri iii hoped to regain control during the meeting of representatives from the three orders of the kingdom; however, he had to confront the numerous Leaguers attending the Estates who were determined to force him take decisions he considered an attack on his sovereignty. In an attempt to squelch the League—which he wrongly believed to be led solely by Guise—Henri iii ordered the assassination of the duke and his * Abbreviations: aca: Archives communales d’Amiens antérieures à 1790; BnF: Bibliothèque Nationale de France. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/9789004345348_009 <UN> 138 Carpi brother, the cardinal of Guise (both of which occurred on 23 and 24 December 1588), and the arrest of the League’s principal leaders. Yet, this “coup de majesté” failed to strengthen Henri iii’s control and provoked a radicalisation of many cities controlled by the League, cities against which he and his successor Henri iv fought for the next decade.1 In his Déclaration contre les villes rebelles of May 1589, Henri iii discussed the “faction of the League”, identifying the inhabitants “who diverted and separated the people from the obedience they owe” to their king, adding that the people “have been seduced by the scheming of those who would disrupt the public peace”. The king described the faction as members of a “heinous conspiracy” who, under cover of “our holy religion”, “daily try to lure to them and their party the other inhabitants”, exerting on them “every sort of cruelty”.2 Two years earlier, during spring 1587, in a letter by the duke of Nevers (governor of Picardy) to the king, the membership of this party was identified as “the gentlemen of the Guise”. The duke’s letter recounted how the members of this party had attracted to them many “satellites”, through “false rumours” and “money deposited with many persons whom they desire to make, by this means, obliged and well-disposed to them”.3 It was at the time of the Holy Union (1585–1598) that the terms “faction” and “party” acquired a pejorative meaning. In contemporary French diction- aries, a “faction” is defined as “a group which engages in a subversive activity in order that its interests prevail” and is a synonym for “plot”, “conspiracy”, “intrigue” and “sedition”. The first negative connotations of the term date back to the fourteenth century, but it was only during the 1580s in which it definitively acquired the sense of an association of plotters, or a group of po- litical troublemakers.4 1 Olivia Carpi, Les guerres de religion. Un conflit franco-français (Paris, 2012). 2 Declaration du roy contre les villes rebelles…, à Tours, chez Jamet Mettayer, 1589, fol. 3: “(…) Nous avons recherché par tous les moyens à nous possible de reduire et remettre par la dou- ceur tous nos subjectz en l’obeissance qu’ilz nous doivent, de laquelle plusieurs ayant esté seduitcz par les artifices et fausses impressions d’aucuns rebelles et perturbateurs du repos public et le nostre se sont distraicts et separez (…). Et s’efforcent journellement par toutes sortes d’artificieuses inventions d’attirer à eux et à leur party nos autres subjects et serviteurs qu’ils cognoissent avoir encores engravé en l’ame l’honneur l’affection et fidélité qu’ils doi- vent à leur Roy et Prince naturel, exerçant envers ceux qui ne veulent aderer toutes sortes de cruautez et inhumanitez (…) faire une telle punition et si exemplaire de ceux qui ont esmeu et soustiennent cette execrable conjuration”. 3 BnF, Mss. Fr. 3634, fol. 117. 4 Nicolas Offenstadt, ‘Guerre civile et espace public à la fin du Moyen Âge. La lutte des Arma- gnacs et des Bourguignons’, in Laurent Bourquin and Philippe Hamon, eds., La politisation. Conflits et construction du politique depuis le Moyen Âge (Rennes, 2010), 111–29; Loïc Cazaux, <UN>.