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Reviews
| The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth-Century France, by Jeffrey S. Ravel. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. 288 pages. $25.00, cloth.
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| Jeffrey Ravel's retelling of the Pivardière affair, a late seventeenth-century case of murder and imposture that became a mesmerizing cause célèbre for the French public, will fascinate undergraduates who themselves frequently struggle with the intricacies of creating their own identities. In late August 1698, Louis Dubochet, an ex-soldier turned town constable after his marriage to an inn-keeper's daughter, appeared before the judges of the Parlement of Paris claiming to be Louis de la Pivardière, a gentleman and officer in the king's army whose advantageous marriage to Marguerite Chauvelin in 1687 had made him the seigneur of a small estate in the Berry. With his appearance before the magistrates, he hoped to exonerate his wife of murder charges. Even though three centuries have passed since Attorney General Henri-Francois d'Aguesseau argued his case before the bench, the titillating aspects of the affair have not lost their appeal. In a culture where wealthy merchants like Mouseur Jourdain, the title character in Moliere's 1670 comedy-ballet Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Would-Be Gentleman), aspired to at least appear, if not become, members of the court aristocracy, few could understand why a nobleman like Louis would voluntarily abandon his title and the access to social prestige it afforded in order to adopt the persona and lifestyle of a commoner. |
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Louis lived on his wife's estate for several years, hunting, gambling, and enjoying the company of other minor nobility before finally pursuing a career in the military. His eventual promotion to the rank of lieutenant, however, came at a cost. By the end of the Nine Years' War, Louis was heavily indebted to relatives, neighbors, and especially his wife, who had advanced him funds to continue his military activities on the Flemish front. When Louis unexpectedly arrived at his wife's estate on August 15, 1697, in the midst of a holy feast, Marguerite greeted him with the recently acquired knowledge that two years prior, Louis had married a young woman named Marie Pillard from Auxerre and had fathered children by her. After the guests departed, the maids of the household reported that Marguerite berated Louis for taking a second wife, while he in turn accused her of infidelity with his one-time hunting companion, Prior Charost. Unable to resolve their differences, the couple retired for the night to separate sleeping quarters. By the time the household awoke the next morning, Louis had vanished. Several weeks elapsed before rumors of blood-stained floors and a naked corpse covered with bayonet wounds encouraged the royal judges of Chatillon to investigate the alleged assassination of Louis de la Pivardière by his wife and her lover. Judicial irregularities by vendetta-minded judges included the immediate confiscation of all Marguerite's movables as well as the imprisonment and relentless interrogation of her house maids, who eventually testified against their mistress. The overzealous prosecution of Marguerite and Prior Charost eventually forced Louis de la Pivardière's return to the Berry in January of 1698. The Chantillon judges dashed Louis's hope of quickly disproving the murder allegations against his estranged wife by accusing him of imposture despite numerous sworn statements by relatives and neighbors attesting to his identity. |
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Legal wrangling among the provincial judges coupled with intense public scrutiny and the king's interest in the case eventually forced judges from the high court to oversee investigation of the increasingly complicated Pivardière affair. Fearful of bigamy charges, Louis steadfastly refused to testify before the Parlement of Paris until the king granted him safe passage to and from Paris. The sensational nature of the case inspired numerous pamphlets as well as a play penned by Florent Carton Dancourt, Le Mari retrouvé (The Husband Returned), that entertained sold-out crowds at the Comédie-Française between October and December of 1698. Ravel's skillful use of these sources along with comparative material gathered from several contemporary imposture (e.g., Martin Guerre) and murder (e.g., Madame Tiquet) cases provide readers with additional sociopolitical context for understanding what transpired once the "would-be-commoner" finally appeared in court. The double life led by Louis de la Pivardière enables Ravel to explore fundamental questions about marital relations, class distinctions, and the role played by a centralizing state in determining personal identity in the latter years of the Sun King's reign. Ravel's lively prose will keep students engaged; his dogged pursuit of why Louis's behavior proved incomprehensible to his contemporaries will keep early modern scholars and anyone interested in issues of identity and judicial authority turning the pages. |
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| Roanoke College |
Whitney Leeson |
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