Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Lawyers, Politics, and the State in Early Modern France
- Chapter 1 Lawyers and Municipal Government in Dijon
- Chapter 2 The Avocats and the Politics of Local Privilege (1595–1648)
- Chapter 3 The Collapse of the Municipal Political System (1649–68)
- Chapter 4 From Local Government to Royal Administration (1669–1715)
- Chapter 5 Legal Culture and Political Thought in Early Seventeenth-Century Dijon
- Chapter 6 Custom, Reason, and the Limits of Royal Authority
- Conclusion: Avocats, Politics, and “The Public” in Eighteenth-Century Dijon
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - The Collapse of the Municipal Political System (1649–68)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Lawyers, Politics, and the State in Early Modern France
- Chapter 1 Lawyers and Municipal Government in Dijon
- Chapter 2 The Avocats and the Politics of Local Privilege (1595–1648)
- Chapter 3 The Collapse of the Municipal Political System (1649–68)
- Chapter 4 From Local Government to Royal Administration (1669–1715)
- Chapter 5 Legal Culture and Political Thought in Early Seventeenth-Century Dijon
- Chapter 6 Custom, Reason, and the Limits of Royal Authority
- Conclusion: Avocats, Politics, and “The Public” in Eighteenth-Century Dijon
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At the end of April 1643, Dijon's city council received a report that one of its conseils, Pierre Guillaume, had asked Parlement to prohibit the city's counselors from consulting with the municipal syndic in a lawsuit against the damoiselle Des Millieres. Guillaume also asked the court to forbid the mairie to use anyone other than the conseils to handle its legal affairs. In response to Guillaume's obvious attempt to hamstring the city in its dispute with Des Millieres, the city council affirmed that “as long as there are avocats among the échevins who would like to plead or write for the city's affairs and lawsuits, they will be employed and the procureur-syndic will not be obliged to seek the assistance of the conseils.”
Although it unclear whether Guillaume's request was ever granted or whether the mairie enforced its deliberation in the years that followed, the relationship between the six conseils de la ville and the échevins continued to deteriorate. At an assembly to discuss the doubling of an entry tax on wine in January 1648, another conseil, the former mayor Jacques Defrasans, was asked to recuse himself for an alleged conflict of interest. A few days later, the conseils asked Parlement to order that they be summoned to all general assemblies and allowed to sit with the chamber de ville, “as has always been done.” The city council responded by describing the conseils as a “corps extraordinaire” to be summoned only at the council's pleasure.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Law, City, and KingLegal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon, pp. 97 - 122Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007