Conceptions of liberty during the Dutch revolt 1555–1590

Traditionally considered as selfish usurpers of the nation's will on the eve of the Revolution, members of the Ancien Régime parlements resorted to a falsely pre-revolutionary language has long convinced historians in their interpretations. Beyond the semantics associated with the remonstrance – a genre that is suggested here –, this paper wishes to re-insert the parliamentary dialectics against these arbitrary orders of the years 1787–88 into a broader socio-cultural field. Our aim is to show that what was at stake when dealing with the ‘sealed’ letters hinged around power and contestation within the public opinion expressed through various speeches in the Paris and provincial parliaments. The unanimous questioning of these lettres de cachet obviously concealed numerous differences and often illustrated confusion between the pre-revolutionary intentions, as expressed in leaflets, and the parliamentary speeches strongly intent on defending identity privileges. The parlements were, however, the driving force of the campaign against lettres de cachet and thus introduced the French people to what we can call rather a grammar of resistance. If they were the object of general denunciation right from the calling of the Etats généraux in July 1788 as if they had betrayed the Nation, this was because the French people were at the same time experiencing events that suddenly altered their identity along with their contesting of absolutism.