This book offers a broad-ranging survey of violence in western Europe from the Reformation to the French Revolution. Julius Ruff summarizes a huge body of research and provides readers with a clear, accessible, and engaging introduction to the topic of violence in early modern Europe. Ruff examines the role of the emerging state in controlling violence; the roots and forms of interpersonal violence; violence and its impact on women; infanticide; and rioting. His book will be of great value to students of European history, criminal justice sciences, and anthropology.

This title, first published in 1984, is a case study of crime and criminal justice in rural, southwestern France in the last century of the Old Regime. Based on extensive research in criminal court records, often the only documentary evidence of the poor and illiterate, the study is a valuable addition both to our knowledge of Old Regime society and to our understanding of its judicial institutions.

Rural, Old Regime France seethed with violence. Assault, homicide, and a violence of speech occurred frequently at all levels of society. The author's finding that royal fiscal and...