Grand Hunter of France

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In the Ancien Régime , the office of the Grand Hunter of France ( Grand Veneur de France ) was one of the grand offices of the household of the King of France ; The associated task was the royal hunts, especially the deer hunts, since the hunt with birds of prey and the wolf hunt were the responsibility of the grand fauconnier de France and the grand louvetier de France .

The office was in 1413 by King Charles VI. furnished at the same time as that of the Grand Fauconnier de France and the capitaine du vautrait . The Grand Veneur was responsible for a pack of around 100 hunting dogs. At the time of King Charles VIII , the master hunter commanded nine grooms (écuyers), nine hunters (veneurs), two assistants, six servants for the detection dogs and one for the dogs for fox hunting. The importance of the office grew under the kings Franz I and Heinrich II. , But it had its greatest importance under King Heinrich IV .: In the year 1596 the great hunter mastered 182 people: lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, noblemen, servants for the sniffer dogs, for the Dogs used in the hunt on horses, for the normal dogs and not to forget a doctor and a pharmacist.

In the 16th century the House of Guise provided five master hunters. The House of Rohan followed them in the 17th century with three incumbents. At the beginning of the 18th century, King Louis XIV appointed his illegitimate son Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse , who in turn passed the task on to his son Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre .

From the 16th century onwards, the master hunter was paid 1,200 livres a year, a comparatively modest sum. Here, however, "donations" of around 10,000 livres and other gratuities must be added. The value of the office can best be measured by the information that comes from Saint-Simon . Thereafter, the Duke of La Rochefoucauld sold the office in 1714 for 500,000 livres.

literature

  • Père Anselme : Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la Maison royale de France . Volume VIII. Compagnie des Libraires associés, Paris 1733, pages 683-782.
  • Philippe Salvadori: La Chasse sous l'Ancien Régime . Fayard, 1996, ISBN 2-213-59728-6 .