PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

les Citez sont edifiées… les loix sont en vigueur, les Republiques florissent, la
religion est maintenue, l’equité est gardé, l’humanité entretenué, les
mecaniques s’exercent… les riches prosperent, les disciplines et sciences sont
enseignées auec liberté… les citez peuplées, le monde multiplié. 684
The significance of peace was demonstrated by laudatory pieces which celebrated the
end of war and often praised the monarch for ensuring that all was well within the
kingdom. For example, the French poet Jacques Grevin (who dedicated a poem to
Boaistuau) wrote his Chant de joie de la Paix (1559) to commemorate the treaty of
Cateau-Cambrésis. On the other hand, war for Boaistuau was not a celebration of Life
but quite the opposite. It required the hard labour of unhappy citizens, exhausted the
financial provisions and human resources of the kingdom, and resulted in destruction:
Les villes et villages brulez… Les ars sont refroidis… Les vierges sont
violées… l’humanité est esteincte, l’equité est supprimé, la religion
contemnée, les lieux sacrez sont prophanez, le peuple pillé, les pauures
vieillardz sont captifz… les ieunes se desbordent à toute espece de mal. 685
War was rooted in the ambition and avarice of monarchs who wished to gain more
wealth and extend their rule, vices which were incompatible with the princely model
Boaistuau envisioned, as has been mentioned above.
However, it was not Nature’s intention that Man should be warlike. As a proof of this,
the writer compared him to animals – as in Bref discours de l’excellence et dignité de
l’homme. 686 As opposed to animals who were born with equipment provided by
Nature, useful for fighting and defending themselves (such as wings, claws, and sharp
684 Boaistuau, P., L’Histoire de Chelidonius Tigurinus, p. 109r.
685 Ibid, pp. 120r-120v. Many contemporary writers published related treatises expressing their reaction
to, and condemnation of, their warlike times. An example was Erasmus’s The Complaint of Peace
(1517), which was an oration by Lady Peace, addressing the reader in the first person. In the early
seventeenth-century, Thomas Middleton’s The Peace-Maker, or Great Brittaines Blessing (1619)
combined a call to universal peace with a condemnation of the practice of duelling.
686 See p. 189.
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