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On the occasion of the eight hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bouvines (27 July, 1214), this essay examines its significance for the Capetian monarchy and its impact inside and outside the French kingdom. It argues that Philip II Augustus's victory safeguarded the administrative reforms he had undertaken since 1190, boosted royal ideology, extended royal control in northwestern and central parts of France at the expense of Anglo-Angevin claims, cleared the path for the Albigensian crusade in the south, and eliminated Flemish and German threats from the north and east ; the battle's ramifications for internal English, Flemish, and German affairs were far-reaching. The battle thus secured Capetian supremacy in France throughout the 13th century, but at the turn of the 14th Flanders and Gascony again posed intractable problems.

The French-Prussian conflict of 1870 leads the de facto annexation of Alsace and Moselle in the German Empire. This new land empire saw the arrival of many German immigrants, including Johann Baptist Keune, the first director of the Museums of Metz. With other German scientists, meeting within the Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Lothringische Altertumskunde (Society for the History and Archaeology of Lorraine), he will benefit the Moselle archeology of scientific advance that has the Germany in the late 19th century. For nearly twenty-five years, regional history is considerably enriched, not without a hint of political manipulation by the imperial power in order to legitimize the annexation of the Moselle Reich. However, the First World War has dramatically changed the career and fate of these researchers, forced to leave their adopted land in 1918-1919. Johann Baptist Keune, unjustly accused of wanting to steal artistic works that he has saved from fights between 1915 and 1917, returned to his hometown, Trier. While he has contributed to the reputation of the Museums of Metz between 1896 and 1918, he has only gained a local recognition as an independent researcher. However, scientific research tends to focus on this period for about forty years, in order to rehabilitate the memory and work of these researchers who have contributed to the development of regional history during the first German annexation (1870-1918).

What is considered as “being armed” in France in the high middle ages ? The king starts forbade to “carry weapons” in the mid-13th century, so as to condemn feudal wars. This implies to define accurately what is considered as “being armed”. While weapon carrying is absolutely and globally forbidden since 1265 in theory, the king's men do have to judge in practice, and in 1311 the Parliament defines the category of “armes notables et invasibles” (“remarkable and offensive weapons”), which are unusual and suitable for a deliberate attack. Weapons which are usually carried on a belt, such as swords and knives, are not forbidden, and can even be the mark of a high social level, which will be outlined when asking for the king's forgiveness. For all other weapons, specific licenses are required : licenses are issued by the king since 1265, for individuals such as nobles who are threatened, and merchants on travel. The knowledge and use of these licenses is an indicator of the reality of the weapon prohibition. The king needs to manage with two opposite needs : firstly, giving the population an incentive to keep arms so as to defend the kingdom, and secondly, making the roads safe by forbidding weapon carrying. By giving orders to his men who collect tolls on merchants (baillis des péages), the king gives precise instructions on the forbidden items. At the turn of the 14th-15th centuries, the king's men stop taking the “armed group” into account as a proof of an illegal case of “weapon carrying”, and start referring to a category of “prohibited weapons”. The list of “prohibited weapons” includes arms that are designed for war, sets of armour, protecting gear, pole arms and ranged weapons. Only the king's men are allowed to carry them, with a monopoly on military equipment, which is explicitly written in a 1487 act. The “armes notables et invasibles” described in the 14th century become “prohibited weapons”. This legal term sets a limit for what is accepted by law, and by the society. The “prohibited weapons” are a “missing link” between a situation where the king used to condemn wars between lords after armed fights, and the modern vision of an unarmed society where handling war weapons is a state monopoly.

The fighters of Pavia October 1524-February 1525. This paper is about the fighting experience of soldiers who have taken part in the siege and battle of Pavia from October 1524 to February 1525. Hopes and sufferings of soldiers as well as forms of warfare are examined. For German and Swiss mercenaries, the money to be paid and the forthcoming spoil of war were of great importance. For the imperial army, lack of money meant risks of plunder, indiscipline and desertions. Anyway, mercenaries who fought on both sides shared a common sense of reputation of their nation. They intended to stay faithful to those who hired and paid them. Those who were not mercenaries and made war on credit went into action for king's service, loyalty to the captains, the Spanish fought for patriotism, fidelity to the Emperor and for the town's people, loyalty to the emperor is more important than the freedom of the city. Fights are made of murderer attacks, a siege full of skirmishes for honour but also in order to find food and spoil of war, to take prisoners to get information and ransom, and finally to try to escape encirclement. Nevertheless, the battle of Pavia was not an unforeseen attack but a real battle that the Imperial army intended less for rescuing the town of Pavia than for preventing the scattering of the army as a consequence of the lack of money. The battle finally ended months of sufferings endured less from hunger or sickness than from cold, lack of wood and wine, exhaustion because of the buildings made during the siege, and less but not least, from psychological exhaustion caused by bombings, daily harassments and waiting. This study of soldiers' experience, based on spies' reports or contemporary letters changes the ordinary and simplistic interpretation of the battle of Pavia as the defeat of chivalry.

Paradoxes of order and fragmentary logics : a county enters in civil war (Brittany, 1589). Although the kingdom of France had been dominated for a generation by conflicts of a religious kind, the conditions which led Brittany to join the Catholic League in 1589 were quite different, since the province had largely kept out of the previous Wars of Religion. But the different logics at work in this process, which will be studied here, were not necessarily specific to Brittany. First of all, there was a general desire on the part of all social groups to protect the local order. This position was shared by a wide range of people, since royal officials, members of town councils and other prominent individuals (upper clergy, higher and middling nobility for example) all had a virtual obligation to serve the community, particularly when it was in difficulty. But because of their partisan diversity, their interventions almost invariably became a source of division that transcended the specifically local context. Thus they encouraged the extension of the conflict across the province. This first paradox of order found itself accompanied by a second one, namely that in order to preserve order it was often necessary to mobilize the populace, even though once armed, the populace was always suspected by the elites of thinking in terms of subversion. This contradiction was hard to manage, although order, security and peace seemed ultimately to be the major ‘social' demand of the ordinary population when such a crisis arose. The basis on which these partisan choices were made need to be analyzed. Some of the explanatory models, whether they are social or religious, fail to account for this division. Royalist Catholics adopted anti-Protestant positions just as clearly as did members of the Catholic League. It is hard to find a form of social conflict that would delimit the two camps, whether it concerns the conflicts between officials and merchants, town and country or peasants and their lords. In seeking more convincing explanations, we need to take account of inherited rivalries that pitted men of power or towns against each other. These rivalries were no longer regulated by the arbitration or the favour of a king who was himself disqualified by his own partisanship. Instead, segmentary logics inherent in the society of the time were at work, logics which may be characterized as political, but which in general had no ideological dimension. The capacity of military power to control key points and spaces then plays a key role in ensuring the local success of a party. As a factor in politicizing conflicts, military engagement then becomes widespread. This analysis of the logics that emerged should encourage a more general reflection on the conditions that permit the outbreak of civil war, especially in the early modern period.

Radio propaganda in France and in Germany during the phoney war. In French as well as in German and British historiography, German propaganda during the Second World War is generally considered to have been more active and more effective than its French counterpart. This article calls this notion into question by looking at radio propaganda in France and Germany, and re-evaluates the balance between the two. During the inter-war period, radio propaganda became increasingly organised, so that it may even be called ‘centralised' by the time war broke out on 3 September 1939. Centralisation of propaganda leads to complex institutions, where rivalries arise between various services, as all of them are reluctant to cede prerogatives in the domain of information and propaganda to other institutions. However, both nations had established such an institution, i.e. a radio propaganda service to broadcast propaganda targeted at the enemy. In France, the Section germanique and in Germany the Büro Concordia organised radio broadcasts in the enemy's language. Two kinds of programmes – ‘black' and ‘white' – aimed at demoralising the enemy's civilian population and army in various ways. While ‘black programmes' were disguised as national radio, pretending to be part of the broadcasting service of their listeners' country, ‘white programmes' explicitly stated that their information came from the enemy. Thus, both civilians and soldiers in France and Germany would potentially be exposed to enemy propaganda, which was intended to convince them of their future defeat, and hence of the futility of carrying on with the war. The approach the National Socialists took towards the French consisted mainly in virulent and aggressive anti-British propaganda. This campaign aimed at splitting the Franco-British alliance by attempting to lead the former to believe that they had been sent to the battlefield on their own and served British interests. Conversely, French propaganda targeted at Germany was more varied, yet two approaches figure prominently. The first approach taken was based on criticism of the SS, the SA, and Hitler, and called for a revolt of the German population against National Socialism, and Hitler in particular. The second line targeted the agreement Hitler and Stalin had reached in August 1939, by calling Hitler's authority into question. In both countries, France and Germany, radio propaganda was at work, employing the same methods, such as repetitions and slogans, and aimed at weakening the enemy's morale. Finally, there were no signs of particularities that could be attributed to French ‘democracy' or German ‘totalitarianism'.