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HUNTING

HUNTING. Early modern Europe was a settled agricultural and commercial society. As such, hunting played a secondary or negligible role in supplying the nutritional needs of all but a handful of Europeans. Yet hunting had a symbolic importance in European society out of proportion to its economic importance because it was closely linked to the culture of monarchy. In most of Europe, hunting was a privilege restricted to the nobility. In general, the noble monopoly of hunting derived from seignorial control over the forests in which hunting took place. In some lands, such as England, the king exercised exclusive seignorial jurisdiction over all forests; in other lands, such as France, seignorial jurisdiction over forests came with jurisdiction over the neighboring villages and so could be "owned" by anyone. Such control enabled kings and aristocrats to restrict hunting to a very narrow social stratum. Even some nobles were prevented from participating in the hunt.

Most of the social history of hunting revolves around the justifications for and enforcement of noble monopoly. Non-nobles sometimes chafed at being prevented from hunting for sport, but they were more frequently troubled by the fact that the noble monopoly on hunting for sport prohibited commoners from hunting for food or stopping wild animals from damaging their crops. Conflicts over hunting were, therefore, part of a larger negotiation over relations of power between nobles and peasants. The three main types of hunting—hunting vermin, hunting for food, and hunting for sport—touched on different aspects of those relations.

ERADICATING VERMIN

Hunting vermin, animals that posed a threat to crops or livestock, was the least contested area of hunting in the early modern era. Common people were allowed, even encouraged, to destroy vermin and they were eager to do so. The main kinds of vermin hunted in early modern Europe were stoats, otters, foxes, and wolves.

The treatment of wolves is most emblematic of early modern European attitudes toward vermin. Throughout Europe, rulers or their officials offered bounties for wolf hides or other evidence of the destruction of wolves. Criminals were sometimes permitted to pay off fines or debts by supplying wolf pelts. Wolves were to be killed whenever and by whatever means. They were feared not just for the threat they posed to livestock, but also (though with how much justification remains an open question) as a threat to humans. The policy of wolf eradication was very successful in some parts of Europe. Already by 1560, wolves were extinct in England. The last confirmed killing of a wolf in Scotland took place in 1691. Wolves were extinct in Ireland by 1770. On the other hand, wolves continued to survive on the Continent throughout the early modern era.

Initially, foxes were treated in the same manner as wolves. But in the eighteenth century, hunting foxes began to take on the character of sport hunting rather than vermin hunting. Until that time, the prime small game animal for "coursing" had been the hare. Aristocrats discovered that foxes made a very good target for coursing hounds. So, they began to foster the stability of fox populations by building fox shelters and even importing foxes from other regions; thus there was a continuing source of sporting pleasure. It was not until the nineteenth century that foxhunting lost its significance as a means of controlling vermin and became the main sporting pastime of the English aristocracy.

HUNTING FOR FOOD

Game animals played a larger and more diverse role in the diet in the early modern era than they would in later centuries. Wild boar and venison, sometimes killed by the king himself, were a regular feature of royal feasts. Since the royal table could be amply supplied with meats by domesticated animals, these dishes were more important symbolically than nutritionally. For example, Francis I (ruled 1515–1547) of France sent venison pasties (a type of meat pie) from a deer he had personally hunted as a gesture of good will to Henry VIII (ruled 1509–1547) of England. For commoners, there were few restrictions on catching marginally edible fare such as badgers or starlings, but they were usually barred from hunting prime edible game animals such as wild boar and deer. Some resorted to poaching to provide meat for their diet or to sell at market.

Poaching was illegal in early modern Europe, but it was not uncommon. Forest account books show numerous fines for illegal capture or killing of game. In rare cases, poaching was a capital offense, but in most of Europe, the most widespread punishment was a stiff fine. Some cases of poaching were clearly as much symbolic protest acts as efforts to get something to eat. In seventeenth-century England, it was not at all rare for gentry to poach on the lands of their neighbors. Most historians assume that forest officials were often bribed to look the other way. Perhaps the best-known effort to suppress poaching was the Black Act in England in 1724, which, among other things, made deer-stalking in royal forests a capital crime. The numbers of animals taken in the areas affected by the Black Act were small. It is impossible to say how frequently poachers were caught in early modern Europe and, by extension, how important game was for the livelihoods of villagers in the vicinity of forests.

HUNTING FOR SPORT

Hunting explicitly for sport had been a noble, and especially a royal, prerogative since ancient times. It was considered an important test of bravery and skill with arms that would carry over into battle. The early modern era continued practices that had been prevalent in the Middle Ages. Hunting adapted readily to gunpowder weapons, though crossbows and longbows, and even swords or knives, remained common weapons even into the seventeenth century. Though early modern royalty continued to keep falcons as they had in the Middle Ages, the most prominent form of sport hunting in the early modern era was coursing with hounds. The dog became the prized adjunct to the hunt. Hunting literature, such as George Gascoigne's The Noble Art of Venery and Hunting (1575), proliferated in the early modern era. Much of it was written for or dedicated to notable royal hunters. Tales of kings or noblemen finishing off an enraged animal that charged the hunters, endangering their lives, became a trope of royal propaganda.

The early modern era was suffused with a casual cruelty toward animals. Hunting for sport partook of some of that same casual cruelty. It was common to round up wild animals, sometimes in large numbers, and herd them to a place where the hunters could easily slaughter them. Contemporary depictions of the hunt often show the hunters standing behind a blind or shooting stand while drivers chased dozens of animals in front of their waiting guns.

Certain creatures were especially prized for their ability to create an exciting chase. The three animals most frequently prized for their coursing were red deer, fallow deer, and hares. For the latter, the sport was primarily to watch the chasing hounds in action. Hares were fast and nimble and so made for an exciting spectacle. The hunter did not shoot the animal, but instead allowed the dogs to tear the animal to pieces once it had been caught. Deer, on the other hand, could be flushed out using hounds, but the object was for the hunter to shoot them. Red deer stags were the most prized target because they combined a noble bearing with an exciting chase. Wild boar were less prized for the chase, but remained a fit target because they were dangerous when cornered.

The royal or noble hunt was, in part, a performance—a demonstration of mastery over nature as a justification for monarchical authority. Sometimes, the hunt would be a small affair, with the king or nobleman and a few intimates; other times it would be a large public occasion with hundreds of participants and spectators. The hunt encouraged ritual gestures that reinforced the sense that it was an expression of royal majesty. For example, when James I of England (ruled 1603–1625) successfully shot a red deer in an aristocratic hunting party, he would personally slit the throat of the dying animal to begin dressing it; he then would insist that all of the members of the shooting party smear the blood of the animal on their faces. Since the king shed the animal's blood, this gesture brought royal favor to the participants. Though hunting was primarily a masculine activity, women also participated as spectators and hunters. Elizabeth I of England (ruled 1558–1603), for example, hunted avidly. On one occasion her hunt consisted of repeatedly firing a crossbow into a paddock filled with deer, killing three or four of them. The slaughter was accompanied by tunes played by the queen's musicians and a singing nymph who placed the crossbow into her hands.

A literature of forest management arose alongside the literature on the aristocratic virtues of hunting. Royal gamekeepers made sure that royal forests were continuously stocked, just as demesne officials made sure that royal demesnes were planted and harvested. Indeed, sometimes deer had to be imported to maintain population levels. One hundred head were sent from Haughton Forest to Windsor Forest in 1711, for example. In densely populated parts of Europe, game reserves were walled or fenced off to keep game in and poachers out. Palaces served as hunting lodges for the king.

The burdens that fell on peasants who lived in or near forests were connected to forest management. Peasants were usually prohibited from owning hunting dogs of their own. Instead, some were required to board the king's or a nobleman's dogs and make them available whenever the owner wanted to hunt, with only part of the costs defrayed by the owner. Peasants might also be called on to perform corvée ('unpaid labor') during the hunt as beaters or carters of slaughtered animals. It was often galling for peasants forced to perform such services to watch as the hunters ran their horses through the fields, destroying the peasants' own crops. There are innumerable supplications seeking to modify the obligations to perform such duties and protect the crops during the hunt. The frequency of such supplications underscores how little they changed hunters' behavior.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, there was a small groundswell of antihunting sentiment, primarily amongst religious thinkers. Hunting for sport was considered wasteful, an indulgence in luxury. These criticisms did not merge with the criticisms by peasants of the damage caused to their own crops by the hunt, so there was never any sustained effort to change hunting practice during the era, just a small decline in the numbers of aristocrats who enjoyed the sport. Nevertheless, hunting retained its aristocratic character at the end of the eighteenth century and would only be opened to commoners with the French Revolution.

See also Aristocracy and Gentry; Class, Status, and Order; Enclosure; Food and Drink; Forests and Woodlands; Games and Play; Sports.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berry, Edward. Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study. Cambridge, U.K., 2001.

Eckardt, Hans Wilhelm. Herrschaftliche Jagd, bäuerliche Not und bürgerliche Kritik. Göttingen, 1976.

Manning, Roger B. Hunters and Poachers: A Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485–1640. Oxford and New York, 1993.

Salvadori, Philippe. La chasse sous l'ancien régime. Paris, 1996.

Schindler, Norbert. Wilderer im Zeitalter der französischen Revolution: Ein Kapitel alpiner Sozialgeschichte. Munich, 2001.

Thompson, E. P. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. New York, 1975.

JOHN THEIBAULT