French nobility

Pierre d'Hozier (1592–1660), genealogist and juge d'armes of France, employed to verify the French nobility

The French nobility (French: la noblesse française) was an aristocratic social class in France from the Middle Ages until its abolition on 23 June 1790 during the French Revolution.

From 1808[1] to 1815 during the First Empire the Emperor Napoléon bestowed titles[2] that were recognized as a new nobility by the Charter of 4 June 1814 granted by King Louis XVIII of France.[3]

From 1814 to 1848 (Bourbon Restoration in France and July Monarchy) and from 1852 to 1870 (Second French Empire) the French nobility was restored as a hereditary distinction without any privileges and new hereditary titles were granted. Since the beginning of the French Third Republic on 4 September 1870 the French nobility has no legal existence and status.[4][failed verification][5][6][7] However, the former authentic titles transmitted regularly can be recognized as part of the name after a request to the Department of Justice.[8]

Families of the French nobility could have two origins as to their principle of nobility: the families of immemorial nobility and the ennobled families.[9]

Sources differ about the actual number of French families of noble origin, but agree that it was proportionally among the smallest noble classes in Europe. For the year 1789, French historian François Bluche gives a figure of 140,000 nobles (9,000 noble families) and states that about 5% of nobles could claim descent from feudal nobility before the 15th century.[10] With a total population of 28 million, this would represent merely 0.5%. Historian Gordon Wright gives a figure of 300,000 nobles (of which 80,000 were from the traditional noblesse d'épée, lit. 'nobility of the sword'),[11] which agrees with the estimation of historian Jean de Viguerie,[12] or a little over 1%. At the time of the Revolution, noble estates comprised about one-fifth of the land.[13]

In 2016, it was estimated that roughly 4,000 families could claim to be French nobility, totaling around 50,000–100,000 individuals, or roughly the same number as they were in the 1780s.[14]

  1. ^ Bulletin des lois de la République française (in French). Vol. 186. January 1808. p. 177. Archived from the original on 28 January 2023. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  2. ^ Lentz, Thierry (2018). Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire: Napoléon et la conquête de l'Europe, 1804–1810 (in French). Fayard. p. 342. ISBN 978-2-213-61387-1. Archived from the original on 27 April 2023. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  3. ^ "Charte constitutionnelle du 4 juin 1814" [Constitutional charter of 4 June 1814]. Constitutional Council. Archived from the original on 6 July 2018. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  4. ^ Répertoire général alphabétique du droit français [General alphabetical directory of French law] (in French). Libraire de la Société du Recueil général des lois et des arrêts et du Journal du palais. 1901. p. 533. Archived from the original on 27 April 2023. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  5. ^ Valette, Régis (2007). Catalogue de la noblesse française au XXIe siècle [Catalogue of the French nobility in the 21st century] (in French). Robert Laffont. pp. 12–13.
  6. ^ Lancien, Didier; Saint-Martin, Monique de (4 July 2014). Anciennes et nouvelles aristocraties de 1880 à nos jours [Old and new aristocracies from 1880 to the present day] (in French). Les Editions de la MSH. p. 232. ISBN 978-2-7351-1371-2. Archived from the original on 27 April 2023. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  7. ^ Davis, William Stearns (1919). A History of France from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Versailles. Houghton Mifflin. p. 537. ISBN 978-0-598-77727-0. Archived from the original on 27 April 2023. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  8. ^ Guillaume, Marc (3 July 2006). "Le Sceau de France, titre nobiliaire et changement de nom". Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Clinchamps13 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Bluche, 84.
  11. ^ Wright, 15.
  12. ^ Viguerie, 1232.
  13. ^ Hobsbawm, 57, citing Henri Eugène Sée (1991), Esquisse d'une histoire du régime agraire en Europe aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles.
  14. ^ "Why France's aristocracy hasn't gone away". BBC News. 29 October 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2024.