Royal Courts

Courts, Royal [see also Monarchy]. The ambiguities in the concept of ‘court’ are conveniently summarized in the Dictionnaire of Furetière, who defines this term first as a place inhabited by a king, then as the king and his council, and finally as the king's suite. The reason for these ambiguities was the fact that most of the private life of kings was lived in public. The court included not only the king's servants in his capacity as ruler, but his household, with all its cooks, valets, secretaries, laundresses, falconers, buffoons, guards, and so on. Like other lords, the king was also surrounded by a clientele of lesser men, the courtiers, who shared his hours of leisure. The most successful courtiers became ‘favourites’ (mignons, as they were often called in the 16th c.). The competition for favours disgusted some observers, and attacks on the court (such as Alain Chartier's Curial) became a popular literary genre. There were also temporary visitors, suitors who ‘courted’ the king in the hope of favours.

The court was, therefore, comparable to a small town, its population fluctuating between 2, 000 and 15, 000. It was generally itinerant from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th c. Up to the reign of Louis XIV most kings circulated between a few favourite residences, including Blois, Fontainebleau, Chambord, Vincennes, and St-Germain-en-Laye, spending relatively little time in Paris despite the various rebuildings of the Louvre. Even Louis was itinerant, despite his love for Versailles. On his death in 1715 the court moved to Vincennes and then to the Tuileries, but returned to Versailles in 1722. Napoleon followed the example of his predecessors: he moved into the Tuileries in 1800, when he was still First Consul, and made it his base for the next 14 years.

Besides its domestic and political functions, the court was an educational institution, ‘the school of all that is honourable’ as one 15th-c. writer put it. Noble boys were sent to court to serve as pages and squires, and girls to wait on the queen. Participation in the court's rituals was a school of deportment, while court gossip was a form of political education. The court style of dress, conversation, and so on was followed with increasing attention by provincial élites (one of the main functions of the Mercure galant was to tell ladies in the provinces about the latest court fashions).

[Peter Burke]

Bibliography

• J.-F. Solnon, La Cour de France (1987)