Contrary to their traditional image as a caste of intransigent reactionaries and parasites, this analysis maintains that pre-revolutionary nobility actually wer

In this book, a group of prominent French historians shows why the nobility remains a vital topic for understanding France's past. The contributors to this volu

Historians have long been fascinated by the nobility in pre-Revolutionary France. What difference did nobles make in French society? What role did they play in

The image of the debauched French aristocrat of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is one that still has power over the international public imagination,