Votre recherche
Résultats 4 ressources
-
In 1346, Philip VI of Valois enacted the Ordinance of Brunoy. This lengthy document aimed at reorganizing the kingdom’s forest administration in order to ensure that royal forests remained sufficiently profitables and adequately managed. For most of the past century, historians have believed the Ordinance of Brunoy to be the first true expression of the forest policies of the French crown. In reality, Philip VI benefited from a wealth of regulations already in place which had been developped by his predecessors since the beginning of the XIIIth century. It can be argued that the reign of Philip Augustus, and especially his conquest of Normandy in 1204, truly marks the inception of the first forest policies by the French royal government. From that time on, royal forests in Normandy were managed according to a set of strict regulations aiming at limiting usage rights and guaranteeing a steady contribution to the kingdom’s finances. Forests during the Middle Ages served multiple purposes : beside their input in royal finances, they were vital to rural economy, and formed a space over which medieval princes exercised their justice, authority, power and generosity. The study of administrative sources from XIIIth and XIVth Normandy gives a better understanding of the development of these early policies, which revolved around the creation of a new administration headed by the masters of « Eaux et Forêts » and the formulation, under the auspices of common good, of a set of rules and regulations aiming at maintaining a balance between conservation, exploitation and usages. In truth, the forests of medieval Normandy were far from the archetypal woodlands of medieval litterature : they appear as a well delimited and rationalized space, managed and monitered by the king’s officers, and formed an area of contact and conflict between the royal government and the forests’ users.
-
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that warfare had a profound impact on medieval landscapes, which it transformed and altered considerably. As it stands, environmental history provides a new way to understand warfare, as “in the long perspective of global environmental history, warfare and the preparation for war stand out as a central dimension of how societies, states, and economics have been organized.” Whether it was intentional, as demonstrated by Philip Slavin's study on the use of fire and scorched earth tactics during the Anglo-Scottish Wars, or collateral, as shown by The Ecology of Crusading, Aleksander Pluskowski's research program which studies the influence of the Baltic Crusades on the region's ecosystem, medieval warfare significantly and lastingly affected the natural world as well as human populations. Consequently, it greatly impacted how medieval powers administered their natural resources; this in turn served to emphasize the growing importance of natural resources in military affairs and ultimately contributed to the development of sustainable forestry.Late medieval Normandy provides an excellent field of study, as it was at the forefront of the Hundred Years’ War, a conflict that exemplifies how warfare shaped both landscape and environment. If the English chevauchées and the war against the king of Navarre and his routiers brought great devastation to the Norman countryside, they also accentuated the strain on the duchy's forests at a time of growing military needs, therefore stressing the need for better regulations. As this paper will demonstrate, the royal forests of Normandy were of vital importance to the king of France. Not only were they an essential part of the province's economy; they were also a major military asset for the kingdom in time of war. Such a notion might seem anachronistic for the Middle Ages; but a “military asset” simply represents, according to its core definition, “something useful in an effort to foil or defeat an enemy.” While one could argue that, for the medieval era, the definition better suits fortifications or available military strength, Nicholas Morton has shown that the notion can also be applied to resources of the time such as crops, mines, flocks or, as this paper will argue, forests. Normandy's shipyards, and more precisely Rouen's Clos des galées, as well as its royal castles and fortresses all required an important timber intake for their daily operation and maintenance.
-
Au début du XVe siècle, les forêts domaniales devinrent un enjeu majeur dans les affaires du royaume de France. Gérées par l’administration des Eaux et Forêts, elles furent sur ordre du roi l’objet d’une surveillance particulière. L’étude du Coutumier d’Hector de Chartres, un registre du XVe siècle consignant les droits d’usage de centaines d’usagers des forêts du domaine normand de Charles VI, révèle la place que ces dernières occupaient dans la société en France dans les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. D’une part, le Coutumier démontre qu’elles étaient non seulement importantes dans l’économie de la province mais qu’elles jouaient aussi un rôle essentiel dans la vie autant à la campagne que dans les villes. D’autre part, avec l’analyse des ordonnances forestières du XIVe siècle et du début du XVe siècle, il illustre comment elles furent d’une importance capitale pour le roi puisque ce dernier y prenait le bois nécessaire à la construction de sa marine et à l’entretien de ses forteresses normandes et qu’il en tirait d’importants revenus dans un contexte d’hostilités avec l’Angleterre. Ainsi, une relation de réciprocité bénéfique pour le roi et les usagers s’installa à travers un complexe système d’usages et de redevances. En cherchant à protéger ces bénéfices, les rois de France tentèrent de gérer adéquatement leurs forêts, établissant ainsi les jalons d’une foresterie durable tournée vers la préservation des ressources sylvicoles et se posant en gardiens du bien commun.