"The Magazine of All Their Pillaging": Armies as Sites of Second-hand Exchanges during the French Wars of Religion

Arms and armor emerge as highly visible objects in the second-hand exchanges in army encampments of the religious wars. Weapons could be treated as commodities, as sources for mechanical parts, as resources for raw materials, as credit instruments or as art objects. The second-hand trade in arms was thus as integral to the political culture and the system of war finance as it was to the practice of warfare. The armies of the French Wars of Religion represented vitally important but ephemeral sites of second-hand exchanges for these weapons.