Etienne Pasquier on French History and Female Strategies of Power

Abstract

Etienne Pasquier (1529–1615) was a renowned magistrate of the Parliament of Paris, a poet, an advisor to the last Valois kings as well as to Henri IV, and a founder of modern French historiography. While he moved in circles of prominent men Pasquier showed in his life and in his writings Les Recherches de la France and in his published Correspondence that women inevitably influenced the ascent of great men, as well as the course of French history itself. This chapter demonstrates how Pasquier gives women of consequence their due, be they heroines or renegades as they strategized to preserve the State in unsteady times of succession or of the king’s infirmity.