Un coup de majesté manqué. Henri III aux États généraux de Blois (16 et 18 octobre 1588)
Work published with the financial support of the CRCV.
Alexandre Goderniaux, Un coup de majesté manqué. Henri III aux États généraux de Blois (16 et 18 octobre 1588), Genève: Droz, collection “Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance”, no. 203, Fall 2024, 264 p., 15,2 x 22,2 cm, €39 (ISBN: 978-2-600-06561-0).
Eleven works published and distributed by Henri III’s printers at the end of 1588 reveal a different story with regard to the Estates General of 1588 (Blois, France). They no longer confine the history of the assembly to the assassinations of the dukes of Guise (23 and 24 December, 1588), but rather invite readers to conduct an in-depth exploration of the assembly’s first two sessions (16 and 18 October, 1588). Links in a vast political communications operation, these tracts comprise substantial prolegomena through which Henri III’s governmental actions can be reassessed. In them, the sovereign restated the divine nature of his power and revealed a project of reform destined to be the foundation of a new era. At the same time, he hoped to calm civil unrest with a royal model text laced with fine words and good governance. These texts were also a cleverly prepared communications operation, in which the sovereign and his printers published an idealised version of the assembly, that stages, and triumphally crowns – on paper at least – the king and his success. Moreover, they are vivid proof of a failed royal coup, showing how Henri III attempted to neutralise the Catholic League through trickery, and thus once more be master of the game and of time itself.
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