1st Edition

Crime, Justice and Public Order in Old Regime France The Sénéchaussées of Libourne and Bazas, 1696-1789

By Julius R. Ruff Copyright 1984
    242 Pages
    by Routledge

    242 Pages
    by Routledge

    This title, first published in 1984, is a case study of crime and criminal justice in rural, southwestern France in the last century of the Old Regime. Based on extensive research in criminal court records, often the only documentary evidence of the poor and illiterate, the study is a valuable addition both to our knowledge of Old Regime society and to our understanding of its judicial institutions.

    Rural, Old Regime France seethed with violence. Assault, homicide, and a violence of speech occurred frequently at all levels of society. The author’s finding that royal fiscal and judicial officials were recurring targets of this violence additionally contributes to our understanding of the revolutionary events ending the Old Regime. This system, providing in principle for judicial torture and corporal and capital punishments for relatively minor crimes, has long epitomized much that was wrong with pre-revolutionary France. But the law in principle is not the law in practice, and the author finds that both local and appeals courts seldom decreed such measures.

    This book will be of interest to students of history and criminology.

    List of Figures;  List of Tables;  List of Abbreviations and Note on Spelling;  Acknowledgements;  Introduction;  1. Libourne and Bazas  2. The Old Regime Criminal Justice System  3. Old Regime Justice in Practice  4. Crimes of Violence  5. Crimes Against Property  6. Crimes Against the Political, Religious and Moral Order;  Epilogue;  Appendix: The Social Classification Scheme;  Bibliography;  Index

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