3.3.4 Conclusion: The French Legal Order at the Dawn of Black Slavery: French Freedom as a National Principle

Between 1500 and 1650, the French legal order came into contact with slavery various times, and it developed a tradition of a French freedom principle over time.

One origin of the French freedom principle can easily be discarded: Louis X was talking about serfs, not slaves, in his 1315 ordonnance, and he was not even planning to free all of them.

The true roots of the French freedom principle can be found in the transformation of municipal town charters which reiterated principles of extinctive prescription for serfs after one year and one day, and which were subsequently used to declare slaves free. This was most relevant in French cities close to the Spanish border such as Toulouse, as these cities were on the fault line between a Spanish government which tolerated and regulated slavery, and France, where the institution had simply perished away without ever being formally abolished. However, the principle’s roots were only as strong as the cities’ leverage would allow, as the French king had no qualms to abolish it temporarily for the purpose of good relations with the rulers of Aragon.

During the course of the sixteenth century, the principle was picked up by scholars, courts and the public at large, and elevated to a national principle of French law. Be it because of the Spanish-Habsburg rivalry or due to Barbary encounters, the municipal principle of the fifteenth century had become well entrenched in the sixteenth century, solidified by the influential works of writers such as Bodin and Loisel.

Two things do have to be borne in mind. First, we have been able to find the French freedom idea expressed in a variety of settings, but not in any royal legislation. Though writers and sovereign courts might have had much influence, confirmation from the highest authority in French law, the King, was lacking.¹³⁰ Second, it is clear that the idea of the freedom principle was gradually built up over time. Whilst Loisel still posited a link between slavery and baptism, this qualification would disappear towards the end of the seventeenth century. The various discussed cases and even Louis X’s 1315 ordinance were slowly moulded to create a coherent idea of an unconditional freedom principle, as the idea that France conferred freedom to everyone entering her territory became an essential feature of French thought.¹³¹