The nobility state relationship (11)

204 ' Antoni Mączak

army against the Ortomans before (according to an oft-ąuoted passage in hig memoirs)” he fmally met his idol, Henri IV But for this Lorraine nobleman, Saint-Germain-en-Laye was also abroad’.

Ifa foreigner wasloyal and able, he had a good chance ofwinningtheprinces fevour. One of the best examples is Pontus de la Gardle, founder of a great aristo-cratic family in Sweden: a French gentilhomme who had come to Denmarkin 1560, he was taken prisoner by the Swedes in 1565, supported Prince John against his brother Erie XIV was then ennobled and created baron (with adeąuate endow-ment) and fmally married the kings daughter; the diplomatic and military talents beąueathed to his descendants fullyjustifiedjohn IITs choice.

Menrion must be madę here of a country proverbial for its emigrants, namely Scotland Scots officers (nobody enquired about their noble status in their hóme country) were evident everywhere, particularly in the seventeenth century: in Denmark and Sweden, Muscoyy and Poland, and, by tradition, in France. It was not by chance that the piotters who killed Wallenstein were Walter Buder, John Gordon, and Walter Leslie. But Scots were not the only modem knights errant; ahnost any region where petty nobles were abundant was likely to offer them: the Romagna and Piedmont in Italy, Gascony in France, Franconia, or eastem Pomerania (draded between the duke ofPomerania and Poland). The von Krockow, minor military enterprisers from eastem Pomerania, played an active part in the Wars of Religion in distant France.

Employment of foreigners with noble status in the dvil administration was common in German principalities. In Bavaria, between 1511 and 1598, the foreign nobles constituted 38 per cent of councillors. Between 1470 and 1620,14 per cent of offirials in Brandenburg came from outside the margravate and this tendency continued; reriprocally, the Oberrdte in Prussia (members of the goveming coun-ril of the duchy) were brought from other Hohenzollern dominions: between 1525 and 1568, only five out of twenty were indigenous.⁴⁰

In France, foreign origins did not preclude acceptance as an indigenous noble, but in many other countries foreigners encountered formidable obstacles created by the rules ofincolatus (or indigenatus) which restricted the country s freedoms to natiye-born elites. But this is exactly why the rulers favoured the incomers who did not belong to local in terest gro ups and were morę dependent upon the prince.

The complei relationship between the State and the nobility cannot be reduced to a single formula. It began as a restructuring of the medieval fealty relationship under multiple pressures from what used to be called the 'crisis of the fourteenth century': monetarization of the economy, depopulation, Iow profits from farms

*    Franęois de Bassompierre, Memoires, I(Paris, 1870), 69, quoted after Mousnier(1974-80)'

185-

*    Comraunication of Dr Igor Kkolewski.

and rents, rising labour costs. The noble, according to his relative status, di$cov-cred new opportunities, tried to survive, or perished.

Several difFerent Solutions to this dilemma were found in eariy modem Europę.

The common denominator of European polities was not only the self-sustainmg growth of the dvil and military apparatus, but also its increasing professionalism.

The fate of the noble estate in a particular country depended on its will and abtlity to adapt itself to that challenge. Ideology and tradition usually worked against any change, but the most detrimental factor was probably a tendency to close ranks. Thus an estate could change into a caste, sometimes rapidly decreasing in mim-bers (as in Denmark before 1660). This was also typical of uiban patririates; many of them eąualled or surpassed the landed nobility in self-esteem and panache.

The survival and success of any gentry group in the eariy modern State depended on its will to absorb the most successful and potentially competitxve commoners, or to acąuire a legał and administrative education and bureaucratic skiłls (as in Sweden and many parts of Germany). Military skill was relatively easy to measure, and the science ofballistics and fortifications, tactics, and diill were constandy modemized, so that even in that sector—their traditional preserve—nobles had to leam new skills. And they often did.

The eariy modem State needed the nobles but its development simultaneousły coindded with increased public control over commoners and the bridling of elites (noble and non-noble), both as individuals and in their corporations. This was clearły visible in Sweden. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of the wealthiest families drew almost 90 per cent of their incomes from casteilananes, law courts, and other public sources. The same families, and numerom newcom-ers to their circle, continued to improve their position. But in this most spectacular success case of the seventeenth century, forced redistribution of national income (reduktum) was necessary to increase the dedsion-making power of the monarch and his kollegier. Everybody bhlr a few top aiistocrats was satisfied, because in the later seventeenth century most Swedish nobles were on the govemment payrolL⁴¹

It is morę difficult to generalize about the aristocracies; members of the upper-most stratum played very different roles and enjoyed different degrees of prestige. They too faced the dilemma: absorb, adapt, or perish. In a sense, the aristocracy and the ruler needed one another and each reflected the glamour of the other, ‘no nobility no king', but the converse was also true.⁴² The United Provinces demon-strated that even a regime run by the urban interest (the urban, 'bouigeois' elites) could find a suitable position and fit employment for its dwindling aiistocrats.

⁴¹    Literaturę on the reduktionen is growing fast, but see esp. Agren (1973), 237-64; see also Dahlgren (1973).

⁴²    Andreas Cramer was not a revolutionary destroying the aiistocrats; he was rather seeking to 'domesticate' them somewhat cynically, but for the princes glory.