A Tale of Two Murders: Passion and Power in Seventeenth-Century France (review)

The best micro-histories manage to convey the texture of a vanished culture and to define and amplify the basic issues, concerns, and imperatives that infused the society in which the highlighted events unfolded. Farr's engrossing study, A Tale of Two Murders, delivers those insights in spades. The book examines a horrific double murder that took place in Dijon in 1638. The event shocked contemporaries because of its unexpectedness and brutality, but also because of the status of the victims and of the suspected perpetrator. Both the alleged killer, Philippe Giroux, and the primary target of the crime, Pierre Baillet, came from the highest reaches of Burgundy's robe nobility. Giroux was a président in the parlement at Dijon (one of only eight such high courts in all of France), and Baillet was a président in the Chambre des Comptes, a distinguished "sovereign" court devoted to royal finances. Accompanied by his valet, Philibert Neugot, Baillet visited the home of his cousin Giroux on the evening of 6 September; both men then disappeared. The weight of the evidence collected in the months and years following their disappearance strongly suggests that Giroux—assisted by two of his servants—planned and executed the assassination of his kinsman.

Farr unpacks the details of this fascinating case—the hostilities between Baillet and Giroux, the act of murder and its subsequent cover-up, the investigation into the crime, the amazing sequence of twists and turns that affected both the witnesses' testimony, and the eventual verdict of the trial judges (who had known Giroux as an esteemed colleague and major power broker). Farr's point is "to show the reader how power worked" in seventeenth-century France (ix). Students of the seventeenth century will learn much from Farr's sensitive analysis of the social, political, and institutional relationships that influenced, defined, and—to twenty-first century eyes—largely explain the manner in which the entire event unfolded from 1638 to the mid-1640s. By exposing the intricate interplay of honor, patronage, passion, and politics in this strange but exemplary case, Farr skillfully demonstrates how "the law became a public tool for family vengeance and private interest" in the age of Louis XIII (201).

Specialists will appreciate the depictions of power in a society still lacking a clear distinction between public and private, but this book should also appeal to a wide audience of non-specialists. Farr's examination of the sordid underbelly of elite culture is oddly resonant for any observer of contemporary American politics, and the seemingly organic connections between power, privilege, and corruption that he reveals will suggest new approaches to the study of elites in other times and places. The bizarre and sinister world shown to be percolating beneath the surface of Dijon's polite society—involving adulterous passions, infanticide, poisoning, mass perjury, widespread disregard for the law, and the machinations of a likely serial killer—is worthy of a David Lynch film, and the dark atmosphere that the book evokes raises intriguing and disturbing questions about the relationships between power, status, and morality.

The lurid details and the unexpected twists hold one's attention, but Farr also adopts a narrative style, and displays a methodological temperament, that adds to the pleasure of the reading experience. Like any good narrator, Farr tries to let the story speak for itself, but the story involves so many layers of double dealing and deception, and introduces so many sources of uncertainty, that Farr ultimately uses the competing narratives surrounding this case to call into question the very possibility of ascertaining historical "truth." Without becoming overtly theoretical, he connects the "management of perceptions" that characterized the exercise of influence and authority...