62188 The nobility state relationship (8)

198 • Antoni Mączak revenues increased opportunities for the rich but could be also a prime factor in the soda] advancement of morę modest servants of the prince. In the tax State, elite participation was less direct.

As for the balance of achievements and losses, no single generał answer is valid for all countries of Europę, and the nobility *s relationship with the State was not a zero-sum gamę. Ironically, fulfilment of a nobility *s political programme was not necessarily identical with its long-term success. The Polish szlachta (nobility) was uniąue in achieving all their go ais at the expense of the urban elites and the Crown. However, first, the real winner was not the noble estate as a whole but only the magnates, or its wealthiest stratum; and second, in the longrun the price of their freedom was to be the ineffiaency of the State machinę and the eventual loss of national independence in 1795.

10.2 The Perspective ofthe State

Let me risk the sweeping statement that the nobleman’s relationship to the State (the monarch) was crudal for his status and for the intemal social hierarchy of the noble estate. Braddick*s as tu te comment, ąuoted above, does not invalidate J. P. Coopers observation that ‘the State was always the most serious potential or actual competitor of the nobles, whether in trying to assert its own monopoly of violence and power, or in competing with them in exploiting rural populations and in some cases urban ones’.²⁵

But this latter thesis needs ezplanation and perhaps limits. These competitors of the State were likely to be the high nobles or magnates not yet harnessed to the court chariot of the absolute ruler and still trying to rely on their territorial power-bases. Later on, they would lend the State their prestige, skills, and connections. The landed gentry had to accommodate themselves to, and in, the early modern State. Courses ofinstruction and sponsorship of elite education had already begun in the sisteenth cenrury, when the first elite schools and mili tary academies were founded. Some rulers encouraged travelling abroad as part of what Goran Rystad, discussing the Swedish case, calls the 'Europeanization process* of their respective countries, and as part of what was regarded as training for the prince’s service.

The reasons why the monarch direcdy needed the nobility can probably be roughly specified as follows: first, as an ornament to his realm; secondly, as a royal offi ciał dom (c±vil and military); and thirdly, according to Francis Bacon’s argument, to absorb the shock of peasant unrest over taxation. Each reason carried a different weight in particular countries.

The ‘ornament*, or prestige, argument was to reach its apogee in the Weltthe-atei** of royal courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it is easy to

" Cooper (1971), 30.    “ The term has been coinedby Alewyn and Salzle (1959).

The Nobility-State Relationship ■ 199

fbrget that the special relationship between ruler and high nobility had its origins in the feudal period: the prince had then been primus interpares, and in the subse-quent centuries he was equally interested in keeping the peers and aristocrats close to himself or, for all practical purposes, in check, and he was often in a better position to do so.

The growth of the modern State favoured any elite structure as long as it could be controlled by the centre and served that centre. This raised two crucial ques-tions for the nobles: that of competition with commoners in the civil service, and of eontrol of the process of ennoblement.

The danger to the noblesse d’epee (traditional inherited or ‘sword’ nobility) of competition from the commoners can be assessed only on a fragmentary and case-specifłc basis. As far as the French nobility is concerned, a thesis of their eco-nomic crisis’ has largely been rejected, although the situation varied in different regions.²⁷ However, the status and personal satisfaction of the gentiUtomme was defmed less by his income in absolute terms than by his relative social position. Traditional elites have always had problems adapting themselves to a new situation. In France, centralization affected the nobility on several levels. Under the early Bourbons, the nobles lost seats they had occupied under the Valois in all the principal councils of the realm.²⁸ This presented the upper strata of the nobility with a problem: the gentilshommes were interested in securing access to very many offices, both royal and ecclesiastical. What remained for them, however, were chiefly honorary dignities or military posts.²⁹ As David Bitton expressed it,

the nobility of the old regime was not a true ‘service’ nobility. Neither in military service nor in public service did it succeed in regaining dominance; neither of these was its spedf-ically recognised class function. When attempts to rectify the situation met with little suc-cess, the rationalisation of noble privilege was madę morę difficult, and the self-esteem of nobles was weakened.³⁰

This may help explain the political attitudes of the nobility just before the Revolution.

What makes the ąuestion so complex is the social category of bourgeois gentilshommes: the commoners (or patridans) ennobled by office-holding or through a noble way of life, Ennoblement by service was a process in inverse proportion to the recruitment of royal servants from among the noblesse de song (nobility of the blood): it was painfully perceived that way by the ‘true’ nobles.³¹ This also raised the problem as to which social positions qualified an individual in which

²¹ Jouanna (1989), 92., 96.    ²⁸ Mousnier (1970).    ²⁹ Berenger (1978), 147,151.

³⁹ Bitton (1969), 63. The complex and regionally diverse naturę of the French noblesse cannot be fully presented here.

³¹ Jouanna (1977). 34-

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