ABSTRACT
Isolating the driving forces behind the Bordelais nobility's intervention has long divided historians. Throughout 1560, tensions had risen dramatically across the Bordelais, with violent confrontations becoming the norm rather than the exception. Confessional relations moved to breaking point, then shattered in the summer of 1561, as a brutal seven-month period commenced in which Catholic nobles were hounded from their property, assaulted and murdered. Over the following months, numerous Catholic gentilshommes reported being maltreated by their vassals, with some of the most violent episodes occurring on the Bordelais Agenais border. For the moment, Jacques-Benoit de Lagebton and the moderate party had maintained control over the militant and hostile nobility of the Bordelais, who were supported in their machinations by officers of the court and the provincial clergy. But matters were soon to change, as the recommencing of open war in 1567 saw a more determined Catholic consensus emerge at Bordeaux.
