ABSTRACT
The year 1578 was perhaps the most remarkable to date in the recently begun reign of Henri III. Nicolas Le Roux identifies it as a major turning point, a moment of crisis in what another historian has called the ‘mignons system’, that accompanied and gave expression to the rapidly escalating tensions between the king and his brother, and, more widely, between the king and the nobility, especially the Guise family, from which would come the future leaders of the ultra-Catholic League.1 The same year also saw a significant degradation in the image of Henri III, who was derided ever more frequently by an increasingly hostile populace. The mignons and their relation to the king have been the subject of extensive commentary over the years, giving rise to diverse interpretations, mostly and especially until relatively recently, overwhelmingly negative, and often motivated by polemical interests.2 Historians now generally agree that the mignons served a number of important political functions, acting first and foremost as a screen between the king and the
1 Le Roux, La Faveur, pp. 376-416. The expression ‘système des mignons’ is used by Arlette Jouanna, ‘Faveur et favoris: L’Exemple des mignons de Henri III’, in Henri III et son temps: Actes du colloque international du Centre de la Renaissance de Tours, octobre 1989, ed. Robert Sauzet (Paris: Vrin, 1992), pp. 155-65 (p. 155).
