Early Modern French Noble Identity and the Equestrian “Airs above the Ground”

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the traditional French nobility—that is, the long-established hereditary nobility, often referred to as the sword or warrior nobility—experienced a variety of military, political, social, and cultural changes in its circumstances.1 During this period, many of the elements that previously had defined noblesse were being disputed, displaced, or simply rendered obsolete. In order to survive, the nobility was forced—slowly but no less inevitably—to adjust its own belief system regarding the components of noble identity. One of the few commonalties between the old definition of nobility and the new one was the nobility’s longstanding relationship with horses.