The Society of Princes: The Lorraine-Guise and the Conservation of Power and ...

Routledge

The Society of Princes: The Lorraine-Guise and the Conservation of Power and Wealth in Seventeenth-Century France [Hardcover] Spangler, Jonathan\n\nProduct Overview\nThe princes \u00E9trangers, or the foreign princes, were an influential group of\ncourtiers in early modern France, who maintained their unofficial status as\n'foreigners' due to membership in sovereign ruling families. Arguably the most\ninfluential of these were the princes of Lorraine, a sovereign state on\nFrance's eastern border. During the sixteenth century the Lorraine-Guise\ndominated the culture and politics of France, gaining a reputation as a\npowerful, manipulative family at the head of the Catholic League in the Wars\nof Religion and with close relationships with successive Valois monarchs and\nCatherine de Medici. After the traumas of 1588, however, although they faded\nfrom the narrative history of France, they nevertheless remained at the\npinnacle of political culture until the end of the eighteenth cent-