Crime and repression in the Auvergne and the Guyenne, 1720 - 1790

Cover -- Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of maps and table -- Preface -- Abbreviations and note on coinage -- Glossary of French terms -- Introduction -- Part I The means of repression -- A cheap police force -- Accounts -- Numbers -- Pay -- The implications of poverty -- Police recruitment and discipline -- The officers -- The men -- The maréchaussée at work -- Prévôts-généraux -- Lieutenants -- The brigades: location and patrols -- Military, civil and municipal duties -- The arrest of vagabonds and beggars -- Negligence and incompetence, success and failure -- The prévôtal court -- Competence -- Procedure and evidence -- Punishment -- The court's clientèle and the treatment of vagabonds -- Part II Crime and disorder -- Theft -- Violence -- Vol-violence -- Violence in the Auvergne -- Violence in the Périgord -- Police violence -- Rebellion and riot -- Main-forte -- Militia operations -- Disarmament -- Rebellion at the fête -- Rebellion at church -- Grain disturbances -- The maréchaussée in Revolution, 1789-1790 -- Epilogue -- Appendices -- 1. The maréchaussée on 1 January 1790 -- 2. Occupations of prévôtal prisoners in the Périgord, 1720-1790 -- Bibliography -- Index.

The book is a study of the police and criminal justice in eighteenth-century France, and of the crimes and disorders the authorities had to contain. It is concerned with two provinces - the Auvergne, in the mountainous centre, and the Guyenne, the hinterland of Bordeaux and is based on extensive archival research in administrative records, police reports and the transcripts of trials. Part one examines the means of repression available to the government: the national police force, the maréchaussée, and the police court of summary justice, the prévôté. It looks at the recruitment and discipline of policemen, their duties, methods of operating and efficiency; it also examines the treatment of beggars and vagabonds, the procedures of criminal justice, the evidence put before the judges and the punishments handed down. Part two studies the thefts, assaults, murders, riots and rebellions of the two provinces, particularly in the light of fashionable hypotheses about changing patterns of criminal behaviour