Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250-1400

Although it is often assumed that resurgent royal government eliminated so-called ''private warfare'', the French judicial archives reveal nearly one hundred such wars waged in Languedoc and the Auvergne between the mid-thirteenth and the end of the fourteenth century. Royal administrators often intervened in these wars, but not always in order to suppress ''private violence'' in favour of ''publi...