ABSTRACT
The early modern peasantry has traditionally been depicted as a class of legal outsiders. Rural communities have been portrayed as relatively unsophisticated smallholders and agricultural laborers upon whom the legal system imposed external constraints rather than providing an accessible forum for participation or an effective mechanism for redressing grievances. This reinterpretation of the legal agency of French peasants relies on the judicial fonds created and conserved by the extensive network of royal tribunals located within the broad jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris, in conjunction with provincial and communal records relating to litigation undertaken by villages. By presenting a close analysis of a major lawsuit brought by a group of villages in the province of Angoumois against their lord in connection with a dispute over one of the most controversial provisions of feudal law in eighteenth century rural life –the seigneurial corvée – this chapter presents an assessment of the ideas and attitudes that peasants expressed when seeking legal redress rather than pursuing extralegal modes of dispute resolution, illustrating how peasants objectively used the law and how they subjectively understood its function within the dynamics of the seigneurial regime.
