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“Amphibious Power”: The Law of Wreck, Maritime Customs, and Sovereignty in Richelieu's France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2015

Francesca Trivellato
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The precise length of territorial waters, the swath of sea along the coast over which a state extended sovereign control, remained an object of debate during the seventeenth century. Some authors still adhered to the 100-mile boundary established by medieval glossators, whereas others embraced the so-called cannon-shot rule that set the limit to the reach of a shot fired from the land. But no one disputed the existence of territorial waters. Even Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), then Europe's greatest champion of the freedom of the sea, followed Roman law in conceding that a state could exert its sovereignty over littoral waters or inlets in a shoreline (diverticula maris). This rare point of agreement between theorists of mare liberum (the free sea) and defenders of mare clausum (the closed sea) did not eliminate all controversies concerning the governance of coastal waters. Particularly contentious were domestic and international disputes over the property rights on the cargo of sunken ships. What sources of law governed the assignment of ownership of salvaged wreckages? Who was entitled to compensation for assisting in the recovery efforts? And how did legal claims square with political maneuvering in domestic and interstate disputes over wreckages?

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Law and History Review , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 915 - 944
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2015 

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References

1. René-Josué Valin, Nouveau commentaire sur l'ordonnance de la marine, du mois d'août 1681 (New Commentary on the Ordinance on Seaborne Trade, of August 1681), 2 vols. (La Rochelle: Chez Jerôme Legier, Chez Pierre Mesnier, 1760), 2:638; Domenico Alberto Azuni, Sistema universale dei principi del diritto marittimo dell'Europa (General System of the Principles of European Maritime Law), 2 vols. (Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi, 1795–96), 1:57–58; and Sayre A. Swarztrauber, The Three-Mile Rule Limit of Territorial Sea (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1972), 10–35. The measure of one “mile” varied across time and place and information about ballistics in this time period is imprecise, but reliable estimates put at 1.5–2.5 kilometers the maximum reach of long-range cannons of the Spanish Armada: Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 197; Garrett Mattingly, The “Invincible” Armada and Elizabethan England (New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), 14.

2. Hugo Grotius (trans. Richard Hakluyt with William Welwod's critique and Grotius' reply; ed. and with an introduction by David Armitage), The Free Sea [1608] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004), 25–30; Grotius (ed. and with an introduction by Richard Tuck; from the edition by Jean Barbeyrac), Rights of War and Peace [1625] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), 459–70 (book II, ch. 3.7–12). Here and whenever they exist, I cite from contemporary or modern English translations. All other translations are mine.

3. For an introduction to these scholarly debates and further bibliographical references, see Lauren Benton and Richard J. Ross, “Empires and Legal Pluralism: Jurisdiction, Sovereignty, and Political Imagination in the Early Modern World,” in Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850, eds. Benton and Ross (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 1–18.

4. The most senior admiral to survive the 1627 tragedy published an account in Portuguese in that very same year. It is a fairly technical text meant to exculpate the author, chief general of the Portuguese navy after 1622 and official historian and cosmographer of the crown after 1618. See Dom Manuel de Meneses, Relacion de la perdida de la armada de Portugal del año 1626 (Account of the Loss of the Portuguese Navy in the Year 1626) (Lisbon: Pedro Craesbeeck, 1627). Another survivor followed suit three decades later: Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo, “Epanáfora trágica segunda,” (“Second Tragic Anaphora”) reprinted in his Epanáforas de vária história portugueza (Anaphoras of Various Moments in Portuguese History), 3rd ed. (ed. Edgar Prestage) (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1931), 118–209. Two modern studies discuss this disaster. The earliest one is written by a scholar of Old Regime France and examines it in relation to French politics and law: Yves-Marie Bercé, “L'affaire des caraques échouées (1627) et le droit de naufrage,” (“The Case of the Sunken Carracks (1627) and the Law of Wreck”) in État, marine et société: Hommage à Jean Meyer (State, the Maritime World, and Society: Studies in Honor of Jean Meyer), eds. Martine Acerra et alii (Paris: Presses de l'université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), 15–24. The second one, by a marine archeologist and an independent scholar with extensive knowledge of the subject, assembles long excerpts and translations from primary sources: Jean-Yves Blot and Patrick Lizé, eds., Le naufrage des portugais sur les côtes de Saint-Jean-de-Luz et d'Arcachon (1627) (The Shipwreck of the Portuguese Ships along the Coasts of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Arcachon [1627]) (Paris: Chandeigne, 2000). Anthony R. Disney makes a passing reference to this shipwreck in his recent synthesis: A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1:214.

5. Estienne Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer, divisées en trois parties: I. De la navigation. II. Du commerce naval & contracts maritimes. III. De la iurisdiction de la marine. Avec un traicté des termes de marine & reglemens de la nauigation des fleuves & rivieres (Usages and Customs of the Sea, Divided in Three Parts: I. On Navigation; II. On Overseas Trade and Marine Contracts; III. On the Jurisdiction on Seaborne Trade. With a Treatise on Maritime Terminology and the Regulation of River Navigation) (Bordeaux: Guillaume Millanges, 1647). A revised edition appeared in 1661 in two versions with identical pagination: a more ornate one (printed “En la Boutique de Millanges Chez Guillaume Taupinard, Marchand Libraire”) and one in black-and-white (printed “Par Iacqves Mongiorn Millanges, imprimeur ordinaire du roy”). Because the 1661 edition is more easily accessible than the 1647 one, from now on I will give all page references from both editions and cite them as UCM 1647 and UCM 1661, respectively. “Estienne” is the archaic spelling of Étienne.

6. Emma Rothschild has made the case that in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, “some of the greatest of the economic writings were the products of provincial setting”: Rothschild, “Global Commerce and the Question of Sovereignty in the Eighteenth-Century Provinces,” Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004): 3–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. For an earlier similar but less comprehensive effort written in Dutch, see note 27.

8. Melikan, Rose, “Shippers, Salvors, and Sovereigns: Competing Interests in the Medieval Law of Shipwreck,” Journal of Legal History 11 (1990): 165–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. In spite of repeated and convincing criticisms, the idea that commercial and maritime law across late medieval Europe and the Mediterranean was first and foremost a private-order and transnational normative system dies hard. Among its most vocal advocates are Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 333–46 and “The Law of International Commercial Transactions (Lex Mercatoria),” Emory Journal of International Dispute Resolution (1988): 235–310Google Scholar; Leon E. Trackman, The Law Merchant: The Evolution of Commercial Law (Littleton, CO.: Fred B. Rothman, 1983); and Benson, Bruce L., “The Spontaneous Evolution of Commercial Law,” Southern Economic Journal 55 (1989): 644–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct, ed. Daniel B. Klein (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 165–90. Their thesis continues to appeal to large segments of the academy and the broader public in spite of the convincing evidence brought by its detractors, among whom are Charles Jr. Donahue, “Medieval and Early Modern Lex Mercatoria: An Attempt at the Probatio Diabolica,” Chicago Journal of International Law 39 (2004): 21–36Google Scholar; Cordes, Albrecht, “Auf der Suche nach der Rechtswirklichkeit der mittelalterlichen Lex Mercatoria (Searching for the Legal Reality of the Medieval Lex Mercatoria),” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 118 (2001): 168–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kadens, Emily, “Order within Law, Variety within Customs: The Character of Medieval Merchant Law,” Chicago Journal of International Law 39 (2004): 9–65Google Scholar; and Kadens, Emily, “The Myth of the Customary Law Merchant,” Texas Law Review 90 (2012): 1153–206Google Scholar. Proponents of the existence of a so-called universal lex mercatoria do no always distinguish between commercial and maritime law, a lack of distinction that was characteristic of some early modern European writers on these subjects but that came to be progressively clarified during the seventeenth century. I discuss this issue elsewhere.

10. For the view of maritime law as inscribed in a trajectory from medieval universal and private customs to early modern national codes, see Trackman The Law Merchant, 17, 21, 23–27 and Berman, “The Law of International Commercial Transactions,” 42.

11. This characterization is repeated by the biographer of the governor of Guyenne who oversaw the recovery efforts in 1627, who also emphasizes the horrific spectacle of a wreck that resembled a city in ruin: Guillaume Girard (trans. Charles Cotton, Esq.), The History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, the Great Favourite of France (London: Printed by E. Cotes and A. Clark, for Henry Brome [etc], 1670), 441 (citation), 445; and Girard, Histoire de la vie du duc d'Espernon (The History of the Life of the Duke of d’Espernon) (Paris: Chez Augustin Courbeé, 1655), 420, 424. Some historians call such descriptions of Portuguese ships “exaggerated.” For example, Filipe Vieira de Castro, The Pepper Wreck: A Portuguese Indiaman at the Mouth of the Tagus River (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 148. Portuguese nãos were gigantic ships with four decks. Some documents refer to the São Bartolomeu and Santa Helena as naus (Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 252 n), whereas others call them navetas, suggesting they were of a smaller variant (Jean-Yves Blot, “Postface,” in Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 177, 198–99). This terminological instability is typical of the primary sources of the time.

12. Thus in Duarte Gomes Solis, author of two important works on Portuguese political economy and overseas trade in the 1620s, cited in Blot, “Postface,” 197.

13. In 1624, the crown paid 45,740 cruzados and 206 reis for the construction of the São Bartolomeu and Santa Helena. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Ataíde, Colleção, vol. 1, unpaginated folios. This source is also cited in Charles R. Boxer, “The Naval and Colonial Papers of Dom António de Ataíde,” in his From Lisbon to Goa, 1500–1750: Studies in Portuguese Maritime Enterprise (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), IX:33. Information on the ships' conditions and a dispute between the pilot and vice-pilot of the Santa Helena can be found in Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Conselho Ultramarino: Oriente, Índia, caixas 14.41, 14.51, and 15.176; Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Livros das monções, livro 22, fol. 138r and livro 25, fol. 258r.

14. Cleirac stresses that the Iberian legislation departed from the prevailing norm according to which, in case of a tempest or enemy's interference, ship captains were not obliged to bring the vessel back to the port of origin––a rule over which the Judgments of Oléron (art. 18), the Laws of Wisby (art. 31 and 35), and the French ordinance of 1584 (art. 35) were in accord: Cleirac, UCM 1647, 472; and UCM 1661, 455–56.

15. Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 7, 18.

16. Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique (1504–1650) (Seville and the Atlantic [1504–1650]), 8 vols. (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1955–59), 6.1: 474; Carlos Álvarez Nogal, El crédito de la monarquía hispánica en el reinado de Felipe IV (The Credit of the Spanish Monarchy during the Reign of Philip IV) ([Spain]: Junta de Castilla y León, 1997), 384.

17. Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 28, 33.

18. The survivor is de Melo, Epanáforas, 202. Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Ásia Portuguesa (Portuguese Asia), 3 vols. (Lisbon: H. Valente de Oliueira, 1666–75), 3:399 (part IV, ch. 2, no. 13); John Stevens, trans., The Portuguese Asia, 3 vols. (London: Printed for C. Brome, 1695), 3:339.

19. On the conditions of Portuguese trade in the Indian Ocean in the 1620s, see Charles R. Boxer, “On a Portuguese Carrack's Bill of Lading in 1625,” now in his From Lisbon to Goa, VII:176; and Disney, A.R., “The First Portuguese India Company, 1628–1633,” Economic History Review 30 (1977): 242–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Scipion Dupleix, Histoire de Louis le Juste, XIIIe du nom, roy de France et de Navarre (History of Louis the Just, Called Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre) (Paris: Chez Claude Sonnius, 1635), 444.

21. The specific reference is to the failed attempt to pass a comprehensive reform known as Code Michau: Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert eds., Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l'an 420 jusqu'à la révolution de 1789 (General Collection of Ancient French Laws, from the Year 420 until the Revolution of 1789), 29 vols. (Paris: Berlin-Le-Prieur [etc.], 1821–33), 16:223–344. Boiteux suggests that Richelieu was antagonistic to the implementation of many of those reforms solely because of his rivalry with Marillac, the Code's principal author: Louis-Augustin Boiteux, Richelieu grand maître de la navigation et du commerce de France (Richelieu Great Master of French Navigation and Commerce) (Paris: Ozanne, 1955), 110. By contrast, in Hauser's neo-Marxist interpretation, Richelieu is the leader of a bourgeois transformation, who played an important role in advancing the agenda of the Code Michau: Henri Hauser, La pensée et l'action économiques du cardinal de Richelieu (The Economic Thought and Action of Cardinal Richelieu) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1944), 48–73. John H. Elliott follows Hauser in this respect: Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 81–82. For Lauriane Kadlec, the opposition came from the parlements, the sovereign regional courts charged with ratifying royal decrees: Kadlec, ”Le ‘Code Michau’: La réformation selon le garde des Sceaux Michel de Marillac (The ‘Code Michau’: The Reform According to the Keeper of the Seals Michel de Marillac),” in Les Dossiers du Grihl: La Vie de Michel de Marillac et les expériences politiques du garde des sceaux (2012) http://dossiersgrihl.revues.org/5317#ftn1 (August 6, 2014). A revisionist take that emphasizes the contingency of Richelieu's commercial politics is presented in Erick M. Thomson, “Chancellor Oxenstierna, Cardinal Richelieu, and Commerce: The Problems and Possibilities of Governance in Early-Seventeenth Century France and Sweden” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2004).

22. Girard, Histoire de la vie du duc d'Espernon, 427; The History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, 447. The Spanish–French alliance against the Protestant powers was signed on March 20, 1627. For the background, see Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares, 89–96 and The Count Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 326.

23. André Lespagnol, Messieurs de Saint-Malo: Une élite négociante au temps de Louis XIV (Gentlemen of Saint-Malo: A Commercial Elite at the Time of Louis XIV) (Saint-Malo: l'Ancre de marine, 1990); Guy Saupin, Nantes au XVIIe siècle: Vie politique et société urbaine (Nantes in the Seventeenth Century: Political Life and Urban Society) (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996); and Gayle K. Brunelle, The New World Merchants of Rouen, 1559–1630 (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 1991).

24. A general ordinance on maritime law had already been issued in Sweden in 1668, although it did not have the same resonance across Europe. Johannes Loccenius, Sveciæ regni jus maritimum, lingua suetica conscriptum (The Maritime Law of the Kingdom of Sweden, Translated from the Swedish Language) (Stockholm: Typis Nicolai Wankivii, 1674); and Azuni, Sistema universale, 1: 255.

25. On Cleirac and his scholarship, see Adrienne Gros, L'oeuvre de Cleirac en droit maritime: Thèse pour le doctorat (The Works of Cleirac Concerning Maritime Law: A Doctoral Thesis) (Bordeaux: Imprimerie de l'Université, 1924).

26. François Mayssoni, trans., Le Livre du Consulat… nouvellement traduict de language espaignol & italien en françois (The Book of the Consulate… Newly Translated from Spanish and Italian into French) (Aix-en-Provence: Pierre Roux, 1577). The translation was conducted upon instigation of a merchant from Marseilles, Guillaume Giraud, and first printed in 600 copies. It was then reissued in a second edition: François Mayssoni, trans., Le Consulat… traduict de language espaignol & italien en françois (The Consulate… Translated from Spanish and Italian into French) (Aix-en-Provence: Estienne David, 1635). Cleirac references the Consolat in his commentary on multiple occasions.

27. The sections on the Law of Wisby, the imperial ordinance on marine insurance of 1563, the orders of the Hanseatic League of 1591, and the Amsterdam regulation of marine of 1598 appear to be translated from Handtvesten, ofte Privilegien, Handelingen, Costumen, ende Willekeuren der Stadt Aemstelredam (Charters, or Privileges, Acts, Customs, and Dispositions of the City of Amsterdam) (Amsterdam: Jacob Pietersz Wachter, 1639).

28. The booklet had previously appeared separately as Estienne Cleirac, Explication des termes de marine employez dans les edicts, ordonnances, & reglemens de l'Admirauté. Ensemble les Noms propres des Nauires, de leur Parties, & l'vsage d'icelles, l'Artillerie Navale, les liurees ou couleurs des Estendards & Pauillons de ceux qui voguent sur les Mers (Explanation of the Maritime Terminology Employed in the Edicts, Ordinances, and Regulations of the Admiralty, Together with the Norms concerning Ships, their Parties and their Usages, Naval Artillery, the Colors of the Sails of those who Travel by Sea) (Paris: Chez Michel Brunet, 1636).

29. Jean-Marie Pardessus, Collection de lois maritimes antérieures au XVIIIe siècle (Collection of Maritime Laws Issued before the Eighteenth Century), 6 vols (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1828–45); Pardessus, Us et coutumes de la mer, ou Collection des usages maritimes des peuples de l'antiquité et du Moyen Age (Usages and Customs of the Sea, or, Collection of the Maritime Usages of Peoples from Antiquity to the Middle Ages), 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1847).

30. Guy Miege, The Ancient Sea-laws of Oleron, Wisby and the Hanse-Towns Still in Force: Taken out of a French Book, Intitled, Les us & coustumes de la mer (London: Printed by J. Redmayne for T. Basset, 1686). Starting in 1686, Malynes's Consuetudo, vel lex mercatoria (first printed in 1622) was issued together with a number of other “tracts.” The Cleirac-Miege text thus replaced the earlier English translation of the Judgments of Olérons derived from Pierre Garcie, Le grant routtier (The Great Rutter) (Poitiers: au Pellican, 1520), rendered in English by Robert Copland, The Rutter of the Sea (London: John Waley dwellyngin Foster lane, 1557). See David W. Waters, ed., The Rutters of the Sea: The Sailing Directions of Pierre Garcie; A Study of the First English and French Printed Sailing Directions, with Facsimile Reproduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 38–39.

31. In Usance du négoce (Business Customs), a treatise on private banking and usury, Cleirac refers to the 1627 shipwreck in the preface, where he also describes his UCM as a work devoted to “le droict de coste,” as the law of wreck was then known in French: Cleirac, Usance du négoce (Paris: Chez Charles Angot, 1656), 3–4.

32. Cleirac, Usance du négoce, 4. See also Marcel Gouron, L'Amirauté de Guienne depuis le premier amiral anglais en Guienne jusqu’à la révolution (The Admiralty of Guyenne from its First Admiral until the Revolution) (Paris: Sirey, 1938), 262–63. What survives of the archives of the admiralty in Bordeaux does not allow verification as to what role Cleirac played more specifically.

33. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 42; and UCM 1661, 40. Elsewhere (UCM 1647, 124; and UCM 1661, 122), he cites a report about the conflicts between royal officials and local lords contained “in a green book of Bordeaux's comptroller, call number C, fol. 221.”

34. Cleirac, Usance du négoce, preface, 7. Already the first edition of Explications des termes de la marine was dedicated to the archbishop of Bordeaux, Henri d'Escouleau de Sourdis, who followed his older brother François in this charge and became a leading figure of the Catholic party as well as the commander-in-chief of the royal navy fighting the Huguenots and an opponent of the all-powerful governor of Guyenne, duc d’Épernon. See Robert Boutruche, ed., Bordeaux de 1453 à 1715 (Bordeaux from 1453 to 1715) (Bordeaux: Fédération historique du Sud-Ouest, 1966), 376–79; and Alan James, The Navy and Government in Early Modern France 1572–1661 (Suffolk, UK: The Royal Society and Boydell Press, 2004), 11.

35. Alexander Westrich, The Ormée of Bordeaux: A Revolution during the Fronde (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); Christian Jouhaud, Mazarinades: La Fronde des mots (Mazarinades: The Fronde in Words) (Paris: Aubier, 1985); and William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

36. Cleirac, Usance du négoce, 4.

37. Dedication in Cleirac, UCM 1647 and UCM 1661. In the 1671 and subsequent editions, this dedication is replaced by one to the president of the parlement of Normandie.

38. Between the late fifteenth and the late sixteenth centuries, the French crown oversaw a broad process that led to the writing down of regional coutumes, many of which regulated feudal prerogatives: Martine Grinberg, Écrire les coutumes: Les droit seigneuriaux en France, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (To Set Customs in Writing: Seigniorial Law in France from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2006); and Anne Zink and Jacques Poumarède, “Du ressort du parlement de Paris à celui de Bordeaux: Les procès-verbaux de coutumes d'Auvergne (1510) et des Lannes (1513),” (“The Deliberations of the Parlement of Paris and Bordeaux: The Inquiries about the Customs of Auvergne [1510] and Lannes [1513]”) in La coutume dans tous ses états (Customary Law in all its Conditions), eds. Jacqueline Vendrand-Voyer and Florent Grenier (Paris: La Mémoire du Droit, 2013), 79–110. Although Old Regime France is often described as being divided between the northern regions of customary law and the southern regions of Roman law, medieval coutumiers formed one of the sources of law in the south, as well.

39. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 6; and UCM 1661, 6. In those years, other commentaries on the Roman law on shipwreck appeared in Claude-Barthélemy Morisot, Orbis maritimi, sive, Rerum in mari et littoribus (On the Sea, or, Matters of the Sea and Littorals) (Dijon: apud Petrvm Palliot, 1643), 200–210 (book I, ch. XX); and Pieter Peck, In titt. Dig. & Cod. ad rem nauticam pertinentes, commentarii (Commentaries on the Titles Pertaining to Navigation in the Digest and the Justinian's Code) (Amsterdam: Adrian Wyngaerden, 1647), 188–297 (Lex Rhodia de iactu) and 330–341 (Antoninus). Animated debates about the dating and the textual accuracy of the Roman Lex Rhodia de iactu and the Byzantine Lex Rhodia ensued soon after but are not relevant here.

40. On the intractable variety of norms regarding freightage, jettison, and salvage across medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, see Melikan, “Shippers, Salvors, and Sovereigns”; Constable, Olivia Remie, “The Problem of Jettison in Medieval Mediterranean Maritime Law,” Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 207–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hassan S. Khalilieh, Islamic Maritime Law: An Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 88–97, 109–115; and Edda Frankot, “Of Laws of Ships and Shipmen”: Medieval Maritime Law and its Practice in Urban Northern Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 27–52.

41. The count and bibliographical references here are taken only from the expanded, 1661 edition. On jettison: UCM 1661, 15–22, 35–47, 117–18. On the law of wreck, UCM 1661, 94–102, 108–16, 120–35. Cleirac's version of the Judgments of Oléron counts 47 articles. It is derived from Garcie, Le grant routtier. But unlike Garcie, Cleirac failed to note that the Judgments' last section, the one concerning the law of wreck and jettison, did not belong to the original compilation: Pardessus, Collection de lois maritimes, 1:312–20.

42. In contending that Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204) rather than her son Richard, Duke of Guyenne and King of England as Richard I, sponsored the drafting of the Judgments of Oléron, Cleirac (UCM 1647, 3; and UCM 1661, 2) borrowed from Morisot (Orbis maritimi, 457 [book II, ch. 18]) and refuted John Selden (Mare clausum seu de domino maris libri duo [The Closed Sea, or, Two Books on the Sovereignty of the Sea] [London: W. Stanesbeius pro R. Meighen, 1635], 254–55 [book II, ch. XXIV]).

43. With a touch of irony, Cleirac notes that the type of packaging, more than the jettison sequence, accounted for what came to shore more or less intact and what was lost: Cleirac, UCM 1647, 41–42; and UCM 1661, 40–41.

44. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 22; and UCM 1661, 21.

45. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 244, 275–76, 301–2; and UCM 1661, 239–40, 267–68, 288–89.

46. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 301–3; and UCM 1661, 289–91.

47. Brittany resented this and other encroachments in its autonomy. In the 1580s, a Huguenot writer and defender of the royal prerogatives over the office of the admiral and the law of wreck could still list the duke of Brittany as a “sovereign” ruler alongside the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of Spain, England, and Portugal: Lancelot-Voisin La Popelliniere, L'amiral de France et par occasion, de celuy des autres nations, tant vieiles que nouuelles (The Admiral of France and, in Passing, the Admiral of Other Nations, both Old and New) (Paris: Chez Thomas Perier, 1584), 72.

48. Compare Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert, Recueil général, 12: 854. In the version of the 1543 edict ratified by the parlement of Paris and in later ones of 1576 and 1584, the period to claim the recovered goods was restricted to 2 months. Cleirac explains that the parlement of Bordeaux observed the term of 1 year and 1 day even if royal decrees only allowed for a span of 2 months. His account is largely derivative of a treatise by a nobleman from Brittany, de la Thoisse, but also cites specific norms not included in it: the 1543 decree (art. 11–12), the 1584 decree (art. 20–21), and the Coutume de Normandie au titre de Varech (art. 597 ff) (Customs of Normandy with Regard to Wrecks). The word “varech” (originally a term to indicate seaweed) is an archaic synonym for “brit” and referred to anything that the sea returns to the shore after a storm: Cleirac, UCM 1647, 440; and UCM 1661, 412. Christophle du Bois-Gelin sieur de la Thoisse, Traité des droits royaux de bris et de brefs ou seaux, leur causes, effets, origine, & autres singlaritez concernantes ceste matiere (Treatise on the Royal Rights over Wrecks, their Causes, Effects, Origin, and Other Singularities Concerning this Subject) (Dinan: Iulien Aubiniere, 1595), 43–73.

49. Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la république (The Six Books of the Commonwealth) (Paris: Chez Iacques du Puys, 1576), 215 (book 1, ch. XI).

50. Archivo General de Simancas, Spain (hereafter AGS), Secretaría de Estado (Francia) (hereafter SEF), K.1443, no. 106: Diego de Irarraga to Count Duque Olivares (Bordeaux, 15 June 1627).

51. Mercure de France, January 18, 1627, transcribed in Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 21–22.

52. The negotiations conducted by various royal envoys (including de Fortia, Le Plessis, and Servien) with the governor of Guyenne and the coastal lords are documented throughout vol. 2 of Pierre Grillon, ed., Les papiers de Richelieu: Section politique intérieure, correspondance et papiers d’État (Richelieu’s Papers: Section on Domestic Politics, Correspondence, and Various Papers Concerning the State), 6 vols. (Paris: Pedone, 1975–1997). Servien replaced Fortia in April 1627 and was nominated intendant of the region the following year. He proceeded to have a stellar career. In June 1630 he was appointed président of the parlement of Bordeaux, but soon after he was called back to Paris as secretary of war and later to other important posts. As a leading French diplomat and close collaborator of Cardinal Mazarin, he negotiated the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 (ibid., 2:225–26).

53. Ibid., 2:107–8.

54. The governor resented Richelieu's intrusion and maintained that the king had relinquished his portion of the local rights over wreckages to the feudal lords of Candalle, in the region of Aquitaine. Richelieu was displeased with the young royal commissioner Fortia for having taken cognizance of the papers submitted by d’Épernon and replaced him with the more experienced Servien. Eventually, d’Épernon conceded that all sequestered goods be put under the administration of two burghers of Bordeaux. See Girard, Histoire de la vie du duc d'Espernon, 425–26; and The History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, 446–47. In his study of Richelieu's economic policies, Hauser cites a letter of May 16, 1627 with which the cardinal transferred his prerogatives as grand master to the procureur général of Bordeaux with the request that the city's parlement ratify the order: Hauser, La pensée et l'action économiques du cardinal de Richelieu, 26–27. The letter assumes new meaning in light of Richelieu's clash with d’Épernon.

55. The king of Spain wrote to his peer in Paris to invite him to follow closely the recognizance of the coasts of Guyenne and informed him that two Spanish envoys had been dispatched to the region: Jordan de Freytas and Diego de Irarraga. Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Paris, Correspondence politique: Espagne, 15, fol. 67r. Spain later appointed an extraordinary ambassador, Don Ambrogio Spinola Doria (1569–1630), First Marquis de los Balbases, a Genoese aristocrat and former commander of the army in Flanders, to travel to Paris and negotiate the release of all salvaged goods and pieces of artillery.

56. AGS, SEF, K.1434, no. 53: report from the Council of State to the king (Madrid, February 27, 1627).

57. In the Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, a collection of documents written by him and his aides, the shipwreck is described with grandiloquence as metaphorical evidence that Spanish maritime power had chosen to pay homage to the nascent commercial power of France, but the transfer of Richelieu's rights over the wreckages is recognized in more prosaic terms as a bargain. Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu: Publiés d'après des manuscrits originaux pour la Société de l'histoire de France sous les auspices de l'Académie française (The Memoirs of Cardinal Richelieu, Published on the Basis of Original Manuscripts by the Society for the History of France and under the Auspices of the French Academy), 10 vols. (Paris: Librairie Renouard, H. Laurens successeur, 1907–1931), 7:25. According to an anonymous commentator of Richelieu's Political Testament, the negotiations that followed the 1627 shipwreck left the cardinal with meager economic gains and a sense of sourness: Observations historiques sur le testament du Cardinal de Richelieu (Historical Observations on the Testament of Cardinal Richelieu) (Amsterdam: Janssons a Waesberge, 1738), 203.

58. AGS, SEF, K.1481, no. 28: letter of the Marquis de Mirabel, Spanish Ambassador in Paris, to the king of Spain (Paris, March 11, 1628). On Mirabel's embassy in Paris, see Michel Devèze, L'Espagne de Philippe IV (1621–1665) (Philip IV's Spain [1621–1665]), 2 vols. (Paris: Société d’édition d'enseignement supérieur, 1970), 1:128–40.

59. D'Épernon's prerogatives “se fundan mas en su poder absoluto que en leyes ni derechos justos de Francia porque ninguno de los platicos de mar, de los letrados de mar, delos letrados que ha communicado dizen aya razon para ello y que lo es el dar sus haziendas aquienes perteneze como es notara aviendo las pedido en tempo competente. Este Rey ni sus ministros no tienen authordad para forçar al de Pernon y es de creer que por cortesia no le obligaremos … Vm.es bien platico del pays y conoze la gente y assi juzgara que tengo razon de dudar de la utilidad que sacaremos de nuestro travajo.” (“are rooted more in his absolute power than in the just laws of France, because none of the sea captains, none of the maritime lawyers, none of the lawyers with whom he has consulted say that there is any grounds for it [i.e., for him to keep the goods] and that what is reasonable is for him to give the goods to those to whom they belong, as is well known, since those people have requested the goods within the appropriate time. Neither this king nor his ministers have the authority to force d’Épernon, and it is presumable that, out of courtesy, we will not compel him… Your Majesty is well acquainted with that country and knows its people and so will judge that I have reason to doubt the benefit that we might gain from our troubles.”) AGS, SEF, K.1443, no. 108: Marquis de Mirabel to Diego de Irarraga (Paris, June 20, 1627).

60. AGS, SEF, K.1443, no. 105: Diego de Irarraga to Juan de Villale (Bordeaux, June 15, 1627). In another letter, Irarraga writes that Spanish officials are so despised by the people (“tan odiados del pueblo”) that they can hardly leave their homes; AGS, SEF, 107: Irarraga to Juan de Villale (Bordeaux, June 20, 1627).

61. AGS, SEF, K.1443, no. 105: Irarraga to Juan de Villale (Bordeaux, June 15, 1627). Perhaps to downplay the duke's infringement, d'Épernon's biographer maintains that little more than 7,000 or 8,000 small rough diamonds of modest value were recovered and dutifully placed in the hands of the merchants administering the salvaged goods. Girard, Histoire de la vie du duc d'Espernon, 426; The History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, 447.

62. James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580–1640 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 136. The entire book is the most informative on the subject.

63. Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 53–57, 261 n. 3.

64. Only one diamond on board was a gift to the Spanish queen from the king of Bijapur: Blot and Lizé, Le naufrage, 19. In Boyajian's estimation, diamonds and other precious stones made up on average 14% of the declared value of the cargos returning from India on board Portuguese vessels from 1580 to 1640, and in 1630 “Lisbon's principal New Christian merchant families yet controlled about 80 percent of registered private cargo” (as opposed to the cargo that belonged to the royal monopoly); Boyajian, Portuguese Trade, 44, 206. Jean-Yves Blot calls Portuguese New Christians “the most secret protagonists, and possibly the most powerful ones,” of the 1627 naval disaster (“Postface,” 184).

65. James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Bankers at the Court of Spain, 1626–1650 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983), 205. In order to entice conversos, Olivares offered them several guarantees, including the assurance that the capital they lent to the crown would be shielded from the Inquisition; Boyajian, Portuguese Trade, 213. Soon after, however, the king and the Inquisition put strains on these guarantees.

66. AGS, SEF, K.1445, no. 57: Irarraga to his king (La Rochelle, June 10, 1628); AGS, SEF, K.1481, no. 74: Irarraga to his king (La Rochelle, July 29, 1628); ADG, C.3877, fols. 44v–45r; and ADG, C.3904, fols 55r-v, 57r-v, 116. The intermediation of “the Portuguese merchants who reside in Bordeaux” is also mentioned in a report of the Council of State to the Spanish king dated July 8, 1628: AGS, SEF, K.1434, no. 60. Lopez often claimed to be a Morisco, and as such he is represented in a letter sent by Jordan de Freytas to his king from Bordeaux on September 29, 1627: AGS, SEF, K.1435, no. 68; however, French documents identify him as Jewish. See Françoise Hildesheimer, “Une créature de Richelieu: Alphonse Lopez, le ‘Seigneur Hebreo’” (“A Creature of Richelieu: Alphonse Lopez, the ‘Jewish Sir’”), in Les Juifs au regard de l'histoire: Mélanges en l'honneur de Bernhard Blumenkranz (Jews in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Bernard Blumenkranz) (Paris: Picard, 1985), 293–99; and Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Maroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 116–19.

67. Theodore Godefroy's manuscript, “Du droit de naufrage et que c'est un droit royal,” (“On the Law of Wreck, which is a Royal Right”) is in the Archives Nationales, Paris, AB XIX, 3192, dossier 3. More papers by Godefroy are preserved in the library of the Institut de France. See also Bercé, “L'affaire des caraques échouées,” 22 and especially Thomson, Erik M., “Commerce, Law and Erudite Culture: The Mechanics of Théodore Godefroy's Service to Cardinal Richelieu,” Journal of the History of Ideas 68 (2007): 407–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. I cite from the translation of Richelieu's words in ibid., 418.

69. Godefroy's younger brother, Jacques (1587–1652), a jurist of international stature who did not abandon the family's Calvinist persuasion and remained in his native Geneva, published a commentary on the law of wreck in Roman law that may be owing to Théodore's influence: Jacques Godefroy, De imperio maris deque jure naufragii (On the Sovereignty of the Sea and the Law of Wreck) (Geneva: Stamp. Ioannis Antonis & Samuelis de Tournes, 1637). Cleirac cites from it, although he does not appear to be aware of Théodore's unpublished work.

70. Another close aide of the cardinal and later Governor of New France, Jean de Lauson, urged Richelieu to implement a new code of commercial and maritime law. He held a manuscript copy of the Judgments of Oléron, which he regarded as an ideal blueprint for such code because it had the added advantage of being French. In spite of the material that he had accumulated on the subject and against Lauson's advice, in the end, Richelieu did not implement a new code of commercial and maritime law: Thomson, “Chancellor Oxenstierna, Cardinal Richelieu, and Commerce,” 565–70. Instead, the cardinal took an easier route: he worked tirelessly to make sure that only friendly governors be appointed in the strategic provinces of coastal France: James, The Navy and Government, 72.

71. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 98; and UCM 1661, 94.

72. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 100–101; and UCM 1661, 96–97.

73. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 98; and UCM 1661, 94–95. On the “cruelty and unnatural” quality of the ancient law of wreck, see also Cleirac, UCM 1647, 122; and UCM 1661, 120. On the French positive law of wreck, see articles XV and XVI of the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty in UCM 1647, 438–42; and UCM 1661, 401–14. D’Épernon's biographer referred to the villagers who pillaged the ships that survived the 1627 tempest as “a barbarous and inhuman people”: Girard, The History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, 442; and Histoire de la vie du duc d'Espernon, 421.

74. Montesquieu (Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone, eds.), The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 386 (book 21, ch. 17). On the “barbarism” and “inhumanity” of ancient customs concerning ship wreckages, see also Valin's authoritative eighteenth-century commentary of the 1681 ordinance, Nouveau commentaire, 2:535. On the persistance of pillages by local populations in spite of laws seeking to prevent them, see also Pierrick Pourchasse, “Le naufrage, un événement conflictuel au XVIIIe siècle: L'exemple de l'Amirauté de Cornouaille (Shipwrecks, a Source of Conflict During the Eighteenth Century: The Example of the Admiralty of Cournouaille),” in Eine Grenze in Bewegung: Private und öffentliche Konfliktlösung im Handels- und Seerecht/Une frontière mouvante: Justice privée et justice publique en matières commerciales et maritimes (A Frontier on the Move: Private and Public Law in Matters of Commerce and Navigation), eds. Albrecht Cordes and Serge Dauchy (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013), 141–54.

75. Cleirac's account echoes a certain ambivalence present in his main source, de la Thoisse, who defends the law of wreck as a royal prerogative but also condemns it as a “tyrannical, unreasonable, brutal, and cruel” right that defies “Christian charity” and “natural, mutual, and reciprocal obligations” among “the community of men”: de la Thoisse, Traité des droits royaux de bris et de brefs, 58. De la Thoisse resolves this ambivalence by praising the 1543 decree and especially local norms issued by the rulers of Brittany. For example, the latter had “mitigated” this “cruelty” by offering neighboring powers to pay a tax in return for which the wrecked goods of any of their ships would not be “confiscated,” even though Spain and England had refused the offer (ibid., 68–69). Uninterested in praising Brittany, Cleirac follows de la Thoisse only in commending the process of codification.

76. In 1656, Cleirac described Us et coustumes de la mer as a work compiled for Richelieu's benefit: Usance du négoce, preface, 7.

77. Cleirac reports in full the relevant decrees issued by the Council of State on December 13, 1629 and May 7, 1644; in the second edition, he adds one of March 4, 1654. Cleirac, UCM 1647, 126–33; and UCM 1661, 125–34. He also relays the challenges met by the royal emissaries (UCM 1647, 124; and UCM 1661, 122).

78. UCM 1647, 125–26; and UCM 1661, 124.

79. Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, 579 (book II, ch. 7). Already in 1612, the Italian jurist and émigré Alberico Gentili, an early theorist of the freedom of the sea, had condemned as “unjust” the French and English law of wreck, which permitted residents of coastal areas to confiscate goods that came ashore: Gentili (Thomas Erskine Holland, ed.), De iure belli libri tres (Three Books on the Law of War) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1877), 87 (book 1, ch. 19). In England, in the 1620s the crown sought to claim half of any recovered wreckage for itself: David D. Hebb, “Profiting from Misfortune: Corruption and the Admiralty under the Early Stuarts,” in Politics, Religion and Popularity: Early Stuart Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell, eds. Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust and Peter Lake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 105–11.

80. The Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (1660), book I, def. V, no. 28, in William Abbott Oldfather (trans.), revised, edited, and with an introduction by Thomas Behme, Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), 83. The condemnation of the law of wreck is expanded in Jean Barbeyrac's rendering of Pufendorf's arguments in Discourse on the Benefits Conferred by the Laws: Samuel Pufendorf (trans. Andrew Tooke, eds. Ian Hunter, and David Saunders), The Whole Duty of Man According to the Law of Nature with Jean Barbeyrac (trans. David Saunders), Two Discourses and a Commentary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 477–81.

81. Loccenius, Sveciæ regni jus maritimum, 214–39 (book I, ch. 7, no. 10).

82. David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (London: E. Arnold, 1983), xvi.

83. Alan James, “Les amirautés à l’époque de Richelieu” (“The Admiralties at the Time of Richelieu”), in Pouvoirs et littoraux du XVe au XXe siècle: Actes du colloque international de Lorient, 24, 25, 26 septembre 1998 (Powers and Littorals from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Centuries: Proceedings of the International Conference at Lorient, 24–26 September 1998), eds. Gérard Le Bouëdec and François Chappé, with Christophe Cérino (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes; Lorient: Université Bretagne Sud, 2000), 145–50.

84. Cleirac stressed that other European sovereigns did not share this power, which was already visible in France in sixteenth-century ordinances that ordered the inhabitants of the coastal regions up to half a league from the shore to obey to the admiral in times of war and peace: UCM 1647, 543; and UCM 1661, 547.

85. Statius (ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey), Thebaid, Loeb Classical Library 207 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2004), 40–41.

86. Ordonnance de la marine d'août 1681, book IV, tit. 9, art. 26 and 27. Valin cites several fourteenth-century royal concessions granting the rights over wreckages to Spanish merchants in the southwest of France as evidence that the crown had then already acquired tenure over those rights, but he also laments the persistent usurpations of those rights by coastal lords in his own days (Nouveau commentaire, 2:579–81).

87. Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), xii and passim.

88. On the rebuttal of English claims over the Channel, see Morisot, Orbis maritimi, 446–71 (book II, ch. 18–19). Cleirac (fn. 42) was an admirer of Morisot (UCM 1647, 3; and UCM 1661, 3). On the Villafranca episode and its jurisprudence, see Guillaume Calafat, “Une mer jalousée: Juridictions maritimes, ports francs et régulation du commerce en Méditerranée (A Sea of Jealousy: Maritime Jurisdictions, Free Ports, and the Regulation of Commerce in the Early Modern Mediterranean) (1590–1740)” (PhD diss., Université Paris I and Università di Pisa, 2013), 215–38.