Dauphiné: The Potential in Class Conflict

Dauphiné was another pays d’états where the issue of provincial rights and privileges produced a series of conflicts in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Here the crown by its efforts to increase taxation and revenue ignited a great contest between the nobility and the crown on the one hand, and the nobility and the third estate on the other. In contrast to Provence where the cleavages were essentially vertical and factional in nature, in Dauphiné efforts to raise taxes revealed deep divisions between the estates. In protecting its own interests, the third estate questioned the traditional privileges of nobility to the extent that the very notion of nobility came under attack. But this social conflict was much more complex than a simple dichotomy of noble vs. roturier. Over time it revealed fissures within the second and third estates. In challenging the rights of the nobility and in guarding their own interests, urban elites were placed in opposition to the peasantry and to urban artisans. As it played out, the conflict in Dauphiné encompassed a series of contests: noble vs. commoner, town vs. country, professionals vs. artisans, and bourgeois elites vs. anoblis. It brought into focus the growing divisions and subdivisions in provincial society. And the crown, in responding to the crisis over taxation, hardened the layers of horizontal solidarities, capitalized on an emerging national conscience, and succeeded in bringing about its desired tax reforms.