Remembering the Wars of Religion

The Edict of Nantes in 1598 and the Peace of Alais in 1629 required all French men and women to forget the conflict and troubles during the previous civil wars. Nevertheless, no one could forget, and the two sides sought to control the narrative of the Wars of Religion by rewriting both national and local histories. In effect, both sides continued the conflict after 1629 – not on the battlefield, but in print. Another means of restutution after the civil wars was through lawsuits. The three generations of civil war had also taken a heavy toll on the material lives of most French men and women in terms of mortality, taxes, loss of property, prices, and agrarian and economic production. Finally, the monarchy had evolved from a crown whose goal was to protect the common good ( le bien public ) to a crown whose primary goal was to protect the state ( le bien de l’état ), creating an absolute monarchy.