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Carnival in Romans: Mayhem and Massacre in a French City

The city of Romans, in Dauphine province in S. France, was the annual scene of a colorfully animated Mardi gras carnival. In 1580, however, winter festivities degenerated into bloody ambush. While costumed craftsmen & peasants mimed & danced their uprising in the streets, & notables & bourgeoisie hurried from banquets to balls in ostentatious finery, Jean Serve-Paumier, master craftsman, draper & popular party leader was assassinated, his supporters beaten & pursued by a mob hired by Judge Antoine Guerin, leader of the inflexibly reactionary part of the ruling party. More than a cruel incident, this night marked the intersection of an urban movement & even larger rural stirrings. Ladurie marshals a wealth of evidence & reveals the town of Romans as a microcosm of the political & religious antagonisms tearing 16th-century France.

Le Carnival de Romans: de la chandeleur au mercredi des cenders describes the massacre of about 20 artisans at an annual carnival. Ladurie uses the two surviving eyewitness accounts — one hostile towards the victims by Guérin, the other sympathetic yet often inaccurate by Piémond — along with such information as plague & tax lists, to treat the massacre as a microcosm of rural political, social & religious conflicts, thereby providing a good example of microhistory.

  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781842126271
  • Settings
  • Romans, Dauphine
  • Genres
  • history, france
  • Release date
  • 2003