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Early Modern France is the portion of French history that falls in the early modern period from the mid 15th century to the end of the 18th century (or from the French Renaissance to the eve of the French Revolution). During this period France evolved from a feudal country to an increasingly centralized state (albeit with many regional differences) organized around a powerful absolute monarchy which relied on the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings and the explicit support of the established Church.
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Early Modern France and the French
Geography
During this period, France expanded to nearly its modern territorial form through the acquisition of Picardy, Burgundy, Anjou, Maine, Provence, Brittany, Franche-Comté, Flanders, Navarre the Duchy of Lorraine, Alsace and Corsica. Only the Duchy of Savoy, the city of Nice and some other small papal (like Avignon) and foreign possessions would be acquired later. France also embarked on exploration, colonization and mercantile exchanges with the Americas (New France, Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Guyane), India (Pondichery), the Indian ocean (Réunion), the Far East and portions of Africa.
The administrative and legal system in France in this period is generally called the Ancien Régime (see below).
Demographics
The population of France went through a rapid expansion after the Black Death epidemic of the 14th century. With an estimated population of 17 million in 1400, 20 million in the 1600s, and 28 million in 1789, until 1795 France was the most populated country in Europe (above even Russia and twice the size of Britain and Holland) and the third most populous country in the world, behind only China and India (see Demographics of France). These demographic changes also lead to a massive increase in urban populations, although on the whole France remained a profoundly rural country. Paris was one of the most populated cities in Europe (estimated at 400,000 inhabitants in 1550; 650,000 at the end of the 18th century). Other major French cities include Lyons, Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille. These centuries saw a number of periods of epidemics and crop failures due to wars and climatic changes (historians speak of the period 1550-1850 as the "Little Ice Age"): in 1693-1694, France lost 6% of its population; in the extremely harsh winter of 1709, France lost 3.5% of its population (in the past 300 years, no period has been so proportionally deadly for the French, both World Wars included).
Language
Linguistically, the differences in France were extreme. Before the Renaissance, the language spoken in the north of France was a collection of different dialects called Oïl languages. By the 16th century there had developed a generalized form of French (called Middle French) which would be the basis of the standardized "modern" French of the 17th and 18th century (in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, Francis I made French alone the language for legal and juridical acts). Nevertheless, in 1790, perhaps 50% of the French population did not speak or understand this modern French; the southern half of the country continued to speak one of the Occitan languages (such as Provençal) and other inhabitants spoke Breton, Catalan, Basque, Flemish, and Franco-provençal. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various langues d'oïl continued to be spoken in rural communities. France would only become a linguistically unified country by the end of the 19th century.
History of Early Modern France
The Early Modern period in French history spans the following reigns:
- Valois Dynasty
- House of Bourbon
- Henry IV
- the Regency of Marie de Medici
- Louis XIII and his minister Cardinal Richelieu
- the Regency of Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin
- Louis XIV
- the Régence of Philip II of Orleans
- Louis XV
- Louis XVI
French Renaissance
- Main article: French Renaissance
Despite the beginnings of rapid demographic and economic recovery after the Black Death of the 14th century, the gains of the previous half-century were to be jeopardised by a further protracted series of conflicts, this time in Italy (1494a href="1559.html" title="1559">1559), where French efforts to gain dominance ended in the increased power of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors of Germany.
Barely were the Italian Wars over, when France was plunged into a domestic crisis with far-reaching consequences. Despite the conclusion of a Concordat between France and the Papacy (1516), granting the crown unrivalled power in senior ecclesiastical appointments, France was deeply affected by the Protestant Reformation's attempt to break the unity of Roman Catholic Europe. A growing urban-based Protestant minority (later dubbed Huguenots) faced ever harsher repression under the rule of King Henry II. After Henry II's unfortunate death in a joust, the country was ruled by his widow Catherine de Medici and her sons Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Renewed Catholic reaction headed by the powerful dukes of Guise culminated in a massacre of Huguenots (1562), starting the first of the French Wars of Religion, during which English, German and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant and Catholic forces.
- Main article: French Wars of Religion
The conflict was ended by the assassination of both Henry of Guise (1588) and Henry III (1589), the accession of the Protestant king of Navarre as Henry IV (first king of the Bourbon dynasty) and his subsequent abandonment of Protestantism (1593), his acceptance by most of the Catholic establishment (1594) and by the Pope (1595), and his issue of the toleration decree known as the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed freedom of private worship and civil equality.
France in the 17th and 18th centuries
France's pacification under Henry IV laid much of the ground for the beginnings of France's rise to European hegemony, although at his death in 1610, the Regency of his wife Marie de Medici suffered from internal conflicts with the noble families.
Henry IV's son Louis XIII and his minister (1624a href="1642.html" title="1642">1642) Cardinal Richelieu, elaborated a policy against Spain and the German emperor during the Thirty Years' War (1618a href="1648.html" title="1648">1648) which had broken out among the lands of Germany's Holy Roman Empire. An English-backed Huguenot rebellion (1625a href="1628.html" title="1628">1628) defeated, France intervened directly (1635) in the wider European conflict following her ally (Protestant) Sweden's failure to build upon initial success.
After the death of both king and cardinal, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) secured universal acceptance of Germany's political and religious fragmentation, but the Regency of Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin experienced a civil uprising known as the Fronde (1648-1653) which expanded into a Franco-Spanish War (1653-1659). The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) formalised France's seizure (1642) of the Spanish territory of Roussillon after the crushing of the ephemeral Catalan Republic and ushered a short period of peace.
During the reign of Louis XIV (1643a href="1715.html" title="1715">1715), France was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Richelieu's successor (1642a href="1661.html" title="1661">1661) Cardinal Mazarin and the economic policies (1661a href="1683.html" title="1683">1683) of Colbert. Renewed war (1667a href="1668.html" title="1668">1668 and 1672a href="1678.html" title="1678">1678) brought further territorial gains (Artois and western Flanders and the free county of Burgundy, left to the Empire in 1482), but at the cost of the increasingly concerted opposition of rival powers.
Following the seizure of the (then separate) English, Irish and Scottish thrones by the Dutch prince William of Orange in 1688, the anti-French "Grand Alliance" of 1689 inaugurated more than a century of intermittent European conflict in which Britain would play an ever more important role, seeking in particular to keep France out of the Netherlands (the Dutch provinces and the future Belgium, then under Spanish rule).
After the war of 1689a href="1697.html" title="1697">1697 gained France only Haiti (lost to a slave revolt a century later), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701a href="1713.html" title="1713">1713) ended with the undoing of Louis's dreams of a Franco-Spanish Bourbon empire: the two conflicts strained French resources already weakened by disastrous harvests in the 1690s and in 1709, as well as by the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes and the consequent loss of Huguenot support and manpower.
Administrative map of ancien régime FranceThe reign (1715a href="1774.html" title="1774">1774) of Louis XV saw an initial return to peace and prosperity under the regency (1715a href="1723.html" title="1723">1723) of Philip II, Duke of Orléans, whose policies were largely continued (1726a href="1743.html" title="1743">1743) by Cardinal Fleury, prime minister in all but name, renewed war with the Empire (1733a href="1735.html" title="1735">1735 and 1740a href="1748.html" title="1748">1748) being fought largely in the East. But alliance with the traditional Habsburg enemy (the "Diplomatic Revolution" of 1756) against the rising power of Britain and Prussia led to costly failure in the Seven Years' War (1756a href="1763.html" title="1763">1763).
On the eve of the French Revolution of 1789, France was a predominantly rural country ruled by an absolute monarch and the aristocracy under the now-called ancien régime, very backwards in many ways (for instance, torture was considered an appropriate means of extracting confessions in criminal trials; there was no freedom of religion, except that Protestantism was tolerated). The ideas of the Enlightenment had however begun to permeate the educated classes of society.
Political Structure of the Ancien Régime
| Ancien Régime |
|---|
| Structure |
| Estates of the realm |
| Parlements |
| French nobility |
| Taille |
| Gabelle |
| Seigneurial system |
The political structure of the early modern period in France is often referred to as the Ancien Régime. It was the result of centuries of nation-building, legislative acts (like the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts), internal conflicts and civil wars. Much of the medieval political centralization of France had been lost in the Hundred Years War and the Valois Dynasty's attempts at re-establishing control over the scattered political centers of the country were hindered by the Wars of Religion. Much of the reigns of Henry IV, Louis XIII and the early years of Louis XIV were shaped by powerful internal conflicts which protested against this centralization.
The need for centralization was directly linked to the question of royal finances and the ability to wage war. The internal conflicts and dynastic crises of the 16th and 17th centuries (the Wars of Religion, the conflict with the Habsburgs) and the territorial expansion of France in the 17th century demanded great sums which needed to be raised through taxes, such as the taille and the gabelle and by contributions of men and service from the nobility.
One key to this centralization was the replacing of personal "clientel" systems organized around the king and other nobles by institutional systems around the state. The creation of the Intendants -- representatives of royal power in the provinces -- would do much to undermine local control by regional nobles. The same was true with the greater reliance shown by the royal court on the "noblesse de robe" as judges and royal counselors. The creation of regional parlements had initially the same goal of facilitating the introduction of royal power into newly assimilated territories, but as the parlements gained in self-assurance, they began to be sources of disunity.
Despite efforts by the kings to create a centralized state, France in this period remained a patchwork of local privileges and historical differences. The south of France was governed by written law adapted from the Roman legal system, the north of France by common law (in 1453 these common laws were codified into a written form). Administrative (including taxation), legal (parlement), judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives overlapped. Certain provinces and cities had won special privileges (such as lower rates in the gabelle or salt tax). The French nobility struggled to maintain their own rights in the matters of local government and justice. Many of these irregularities would continue until the French Revolution imposed a radical suppression of administrative incoherence.
The Economy of Early Modern France
Figures sited in the following section are given in livre tournois, the standard "money of account" used in the period.
The Renaissance Economy
This section is a Economy of the "Grand Siècle"
Louis XIV's glory was irrevocably linked to two great projects -- military conquest and the building of Versailles -- both of which required enormous sums of money (from 1664-1690, 81 million livres were spent on the château, 11 million livres alone for the year 1685; the vast sums needed for its construction were often in competition with military expenditures). Louis XIV's economic policy was largely the creation of his minister of finances, Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
Colbert's mercantile system used protectionism and state sponsored manufacturing to attract foreign money to France by the production of luxury goods. The state established new industries (the royal tapestry works at Beauvais, French quarries for marble), took over established industries (the Gobelins tapistry works), protected inventors, invited workmen from foreign countries (Venetian glass and Flemish cloth manufacturing), and prohibited French workmen from emigrating. To maintain the character of French goods in foreign markets, Colbert had the quality and measure of each article fixed by law, and severly punished breaches of the regulations.
Unable to abolish the duties on the passage of goods from province to province, Colbert did what he could to induce the provinces to equalize them. His régime improved roads and canals. To encourage trade with the Levant, Senegal, Guinea and other places for the importing of coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper, and sugar, Colbert granted privileges to companies like the important French East India Company (founded in 1664), but none of these ventures proved successful. Colbert achieved a lasting legacy in his establishment of the French royal navy; he reconstructed the works and arsenal of Toulon, founded the port and arsenal of Rochefort, and the naval schools of Rochefort, Dieppe and Saint-Malo. He fortified, with some assistance from Vauban, many ports including those of Calais, Dunkirk, Brest and Le Havre.
Colbert's economic policies were a key element in Louis XIV's creation of a centralized and fortified state and in the promotion of French glory, including the construction of Versailles, but they had many failures: they were overly restrictive on workers, discouraged inventiveness and had unreasonably high tarifs.
The Revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 created additional economic problems: of the more than 200,000 Huguenot refugees who fled France (to Prussia, Switzerland, England, Ireland, United Provinces, Denmark, and eventually America), many were highly educated skilled artisans and business owners (tapistries, weaving, silver smiths, plate making) who took their skills, businesses (and in some cases their Catholic workers) with them. The expansion of French as a European lingua franca in the 18th century and the modernization of the Prussian army have also been cred to them.
The wars and the weather at the end of the century brought the economy to the brink: in 1683 the national deficit was 16 million livres; from 1700-1706 it was 750 million livres; from 1708-1715 the deficit reached 1,1 trillion livres. To increase tax revenues, the taille was augmented, as too the price of official posts in the administration and judicial system. With the borders guarded, international trade was severly hindered. The economic plight of the vast majority of the French population -- predominantly simple farmers -- was extremely precarious, and the effects of the "Little Ice Age" made themselves felt in deady cold winters and crop failures from the 1680s on (as stated above, in 1693-1694, France lost 6% of its population; in the extremely harsh winter of 1709, France lost 3.5% of its population). Unwilling to sell or transport their much needed grain to the army, many peasants rebeled or attacked grain convoys, but they were repressed by the state. Meanwhile, wealthy families with stocks of grains survived relatively unscathed; in 1689 and again in 1709, in a gesture of solidarity with his suffering people, Louis XIV had his royal dinnerware and other objects of gold and silver melted down.
The 18th Century Economy
French Exploration and Colonies
Literature
- French Renaissance literature
- French literature of the 17th century
- French literature of the 18th century