Journal article

Publication year: 2023

Pages: 267-300

Journal: Zeitschrift für historische Forschung

Volume number: 50

Issue number: 2

ISSN: 0340-0174

eISSN: 1865-5599

Publisher: Duncker & Humblot

Abstract: 
Throughout the ages, the practice of giving and taking hostages had been a common means of securing agreements seen as particularly precarious. While in the course of the early modern period, this securing instrument became obsolete in most contexts, the essay explores how the practice proved efficient in situations immediately associated with the conduct of war, especially in assuring the fulfilment of contribution contracts between occupied territories and the occupying foreign powers. For this purpose, the article will focus on a case from the Nine Years' War, in which the Duchy of Wurttemberg, in order to avoid the threatened massive destruction of the country, had to agree to a treaty with the invading power of France in 1693 including payment of contributions. Due to disputes between the parties about the proper interpretation of certain articles in said treaty, the hostages put up by Wurttemberg as collateral for the payment remained in French custody for more than three years. The holding of hostages nevertheless proved to be a reliable securing instrument for the French crown due to the selection of hostages. These were representatives of the estates as well as members of the higher ducal administration, all of whom were among the "Ehrbarkeit" (honourables), the bourgeois power elite of the country. The estates and the "Ehrbarkeit" had access to significant financial resources in the duchy, and the hostages were able to influence the raising of funds through their political standing and personal networks. Nevertheless, the raising and payment of the contribution sum led to considerable resistance as they were linked to a number of threat scenarios of an economic and legal nature for various Wurttemberg actors. In their correspondence, however, the hostages were able to argue that they represented the country and that its common good was therefore endangered by their continued detention. They particularly underlined the threat of a possible loss of reputation for the collective as well as for individual actors. The claim of representation was based largely on the argument that they had saved the country from destruction through their own sacrifice as hostages, so that the country and its inhabitants were now reciprocally responsible to rescue them from imprisonment. By dressing this narrative in concepts such as 'the fatherland', they played on a central discourse in the simmering disputes over competence and authority between the estates and the rulers. By adopting the landed estates' position through this rhetoric, the liberation of the hostages was elevated to a decisive and performative criterion of landed estates' assertion of standing, so that the landed estates and with them the "Ehrbarkeit" were taken to task. Whether intentional or not, the conflicts over status within Wurttemberg ultimately benefited the French crown and therefore contributed to the effectiveness of the hostage situation as a securing instrument.

Harvard Citation style: Berndt, K. (2023) "For the rescue of the poor fatherland". Conflicts over Württemberg's Contribution Hostages 1693-1696, ZEITSCHRIFT FUR HISTORISCHE FORSCHUNG, 50(2), pp. 267-300

APA Citation style: Berndt, K. (2023). "For the rescue of the poor fatherland". Conflicts over Württemberg's Contribution Hostages 1693-1696. ZEITSCHRIFT FUR HISTORISCHE FORSCHUNG. 50(2), 267-300.