La Rochelle

La Rochelle is a port on the southwest coast of France in the Bay of Biscay. It is one of a number of French Huguenot ports that traded extensively with southern English ports, such as Plymouth and Bristol.

Huguenot fishermen and explorers to French Canada brought back produce that was sold on to the English.

Through the Huguenot connection Dutch merchants in La Rochelle imported produce from the East Indies and the Baltic. English traders were commercially very active in procuring this produce for their home markets.

La Rochelle was isolated from much commerce with interior France by politics, religion, swamp and forest. The Rochelais were sea merchants by necessity. In the years between 1570 -1620 the city merchants thrived on global trade – including the English channel ports and Newfoundland. Their home grown merchant fleet was small. Ships from elsewhere crewed by foreigners were the norm. Rochelais merchants hired others to risk their lives at sea preferring to contract out and establish partnerships with captains and overseas owners.

However,  La Rochelle and the surrounding area under its control (the Banlieue) bred ferociously independent sailors – not a few pirates among them. These sailors served on foreign and non-La Rochelle French merchant ships far and wide. It is probable that they were in the crews of French explorers and fishermen working their way south from Newfoundland into Northern Virginia. But, more important as far as these notes are concerned, is the fact that the merchant class became rich and firmly established as the leaders and office holders in the city. Wine trading and vineyard ownership by city merchants were major commercial enterprises. While there were intensely cultivated and extensive local vineyards, Rochelais merchants became the major distributors (as well as important owners) of the wine grown throughout the western regions of France. The focus by the merchants on local wine-growing  seriously impacted the amount of land used for cereal crops. Times of poor harvest created crises and damaged relations between the farmers and the city authorities, who controlled availability and price of cereal to ensure the city has adequate supply. In hard economic times, unemployed workers migrated to the city. This nearly destitute and expanding underclass resulted in growing popular disturbances – ruthlessly put down by the authorities – which further aggravated relations.

The local production of salt, its consumption and distribution were all controlled by the city, as well. Those non-Rochelais producers of salt had to sell their salt to city merchants and or use the distribution mechanisms of the city. Again all this was tightly controlled to the very significant advantage of the city. La Rochelle was a major fishing port, with a constant stream of fishing vessels sailing between France and the fishing grounds that stretched from Newfoundland to the Northern Virginia coastal waters. Salted cod was onward shipped to the huge commercial benefit of the city.

In the 12th century, English Kings, Richard I and Henry II, who ruled that part of France, had given La Rochelle self-governing privileges further confirmed and extended by French Kings from the 13th – 16th centuries. This extended to exemption from military service. In addition, normal Catholic control through local bishops and feudal control through the nobility were minimal at best due to the unique location of La Rochelle, its administrative, commercial and legal independence and its distance from more salubrious regions. The edict of Nantes signed in 1598 by French King, Henry IV, provided Calvinist protestants, in certain parts of France, substantial independence from Catholic control and self-governing rights, especially and specifically La Rochelle.  The edict further established La Rochelle as a self-governing city state, despite the staunchly Catholic farming and rural communities they control. This limited Catholic control made it easier for Protestant influence to increase. Calvinist pastors, initially from Geneva but later from elsewhere, came to La Rochelle and were able to convert leading citizens. The Calvinist dogma was more in keeping with the rugged self-reliant pragmatism of the Rochelais merchant class than a Catholic faith where unworldly or venal priests were the only intermediaries to God, as well as the arbiters of social behavior.

Noble estates in the region, for the most part minimally occupied, were  acquired by city merchants. This was further encouraged by exemption, granted by the Crown, for those merchants buying the noble estates from paying the customary feudal levy or tax to the Crown. This royal largesse in granting such self-governing control came from acceptance that the region around La Rochelle was barely governable and at the same time La Rochelle provided a very effective, well-armed and wealthy bulwark in the defense of France’s Atlantic coast line. But perhaps the most telling reason was the very considerable and regular financial contributions La Rochelle makes to the royal purse.

La Rochelle maintained good relations with King Louis XIII and his court, following Henry IV’s assassination in 1610. But, there was increasing dissatisfaction within the Paris national government and, separately, the Catholic hierarchy, with La Rochelle’s overt independence. Dissident citizens or travellers, as well as paid agents, with lurid tales to tell, were received and heard. There were regular attempts to undermine the standing of La Rochelle and subvert their active governance.

La Rochelle’s self-governance enabled the merchant class to develop a self-perpetuating government of senior and wealthy citizens, the 100 member corps de ville. New members were elected by the membership. This meant that the most significant families, through inter-marriage and alliances,  established permanent control over the government of La Rochelle and became the de facto new aristocracy. But within this aristocracy, the constant manoeuvring, forming and breaking of alliances created a long term unstable environment open to schisms, disputes and inter-family, multi-generational, vindictive rivalries.

At the bourgeoisie level of Rochelais society, the inability to penetrate the self-perpetuating corps de ville di not sit well, which led to unrest and occasional civil strife. The corps de ville was very protective of their aristocratic status and they separated themselves from the bourgeoisie to such an extent they were in danger of being unable to defend themselves if serious civil strife occurred. It is probable that La Rochelle’s militia, comprised for the most part of bourgeoisie, but whose senior officers are members of the corps de ville, would have little interest in defending a regime that is inimical to their own interests. The corps de ville’s isolation increased as opposition became more organized. In 1610, a small group of leading bourgeoisie merchants – in some cases as rich as any, but considered newcomers and not from the best families – began attempted negotiations with the central authorities to make election to the corps de ville more democratic.

In the highly confused state that existed in France since 1610 with the new King, Louis Xlll, wars, as well as political and religious ferment, La Rochelle was the focal point for local and national factionalism that further fermented strife.

The corps de ville, and all their self-granted privileges, were under threat and they had no interest in compromises that would reduce or even eliminate these hereditary rights. Nor were they able to understand the extent of their precarious isolation.

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