The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth-century France

by Jeffrey Ravel

In the tradition of The Return of Martin Guerre, a dramatic tale of false identity, murder, and bigamy that riveted France during the reign of Louis XIV

From the historian Jeffrey Ravel comes a scandalous tale of imposture that sheds new light on French politics and culture in the pivotal but underexamined period leading up to the Enlightenment.
In the waning days of the seventeenth century, a French nobleman named Louis de la Pivardicre returned from the Nine Years War and, for mysterious reasons, gave up his aristocratic life to marry the daughter of an innkeeper in a remote village. But several years later, struggling financially, he returned to his first wife in search of money. She turned him away, and he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. This led to a murder investigation and the arrest of Pivardicre’s first wife and her alleged lover, a local prior. Stranger yet, Pivardicre finally did come out of hiding but was believed by many to be an impostor conjured up in order to clear the wife of murder charges.
The case became a cause célcbre across France, an obsession among everyone from the peasantry to the courts, from the Comédie-Française to Louis XIV himself. It was finally left to a brilliant young jurist, Henri-François d’Aguesseau, to separate fact from fiction and set France on a path to a new and enlightened view of justice.
Masterfully researched and vividly recounted, The Would-Be Commoner charts the monumental shift from passion to reason in the twilight years of the Sun King.

Genres: History, France, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 2008

About the author

Ravel is currently working on a history of French playing cards and political regimes from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Currently he co-directs the Comédie-Française Registers Project, a collaborative venture between the Bibiliothèque-musée of the Comédie Française theater troupe, MIT, Harvard University, the University of Victoria, the Sorbonne, the Université de Paris-Nanterre and the Université de Rouen . His newest Digital Humanities initiative is the Visualizing Maritime History Project.

In 2018-2019 he will be the First Vice President of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; in 2019-2020 he will serve as the Society’s President. Ravel is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the MIT Museum, and chairs the Museum’s Collections Committee. He is a Co-Director of MIT’s Beaver Press, located in Barker Library. Since April 2015, he has been the Faculty Lead for the MIT-Nepal Initiative.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story has everything. A nobleman decides to slip out of his life and marry an innkeeper's daughter on his way home from war. His first wife is accused of his murder, a conviction that seems sure until a witness arrives in Paris with the best sort of proof of her innocence...

What a story. Ravel is a gifted writer and really did a great job of bringing all these character and the circus surrounding them to life.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only an interesting tale, but I feel like I could carry on an intelligent conversation about 17th Cen. French law now. Very cool. :)

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly, I skimmed some pages and skipped others in order to “finish reading” this book club selection. The most exciting thing about this book is its title. There’s too much extraneous information for my taste about other similar occurrences during this time period in France, the late 1600’s and very early 1700’s. Copies of art works related to the times and events described added some interest.

[Mad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dense at times, but an interesting case. The author did a decent job of providing enough context to anchor the investigation and trial in the politics and societal mentality of the period.

[Sarah Spell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have just read the Wikipedia article

[Larry Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-researched, as expected, and well-written, but not sufficiently engaging in its telling to maintain interest for 231 pages. By the end I found myself wondering why such an apparently arcane story recommended itself to the historian/author, a point he answered on the last page. (I might have found it more interesting to have had the last page information in the introduction, but who am I?)

The story is illustrative of life and law in 17th century France, and for that reason deserving of three stars. As a compelling mystery it suffered from a lack of record on which to build narrative. The author did his best within the constraints of the facts.

A detour into a play contemporary to and based on the story seemed to take away from the story itself (or lengthen it to fill the needs of publishing) and ... oh, just see my parenthetical note in paragraph one.

Unusual story with good historical perspective. Unfortunately not compelling.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This academic well researched account of Louis de la Pivarliere, a 17th century nobalman whose identity was questioned after he took up the life of a commoner, is interesting and amazingly easy to follow. The logical construction of details and background information sheds new light for me of the poverty of some regions of France at the same time as abundance in others.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read! Would recommend to anyone interested in pre-revolutionary French history or fascinating true life mysteries. Thought the writing was great too - so compelling, I was up reading in the middle of the night.

[Oneashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting anthropological facts about seventeenth-century France and murder! Yes sir, may I have another?

[Laura]

Another Christmas gift.... waiting to be read. :)

[Suzie Diver · Rating 3 out of 5]

An average read. Not awful, but no surprises or fascinating prose either. Good use of archival sources without major leaps in interpretation.