French History (15th-18th Centuries)

15th century 16th century
17th century 18th century

15th century

The kingdom was liberated and unified during this time. In the reign of Charles VII (1422-1461) the Hundred Years' War ended. The reign of Louis XI (d. 1483) witnessed the struggle with the house of Burgundy. In 1482 Picardy and Burgundy came under the crown. On the death of René of Anjou, Anjou, Maine and Provence were annexed. Charles VIII (d. 1498; expedition to Italy 1494-1495) was married to Anne of Brittany (d. 1514). After Charles' death she married Louis XII (d. 1515; wars with Italy 1499-1513).

A religious revival heralded the Reformation. In 1482 St Francis of Paula, an Italian monk, founded a new Order, the Minims. The theatre took on a new importance (c. 1425-1450, mystery plays by Eustache Marcade and Arnoul Gréban). Leading poets were: Charles, Duke of Orléans (Ballades, c. 1450); René of Anjou (the Coeur d'Amour Epris, composed in 1457); François Villon (Testament; Ballade des Pendus [Villon's Epitaph], c. 1462). Story writers (Antoine de la Sale, d. after 1469) and court writers (Philippe de Commynes, d. 1511; Jean Le Maire, d. 1525) were linked with such artists as J. Perreal and M. Colombe. Printers worked in Avignon (Waldvoghel of Prague), Paris (in the Sorbonne) and Lyon; in 1504 H. Estienne founded his printing house in Paris. The Greek Jean Lascaris, in France from 1494 to 1503, worked with Guillaume Budé to organise the Royal Library. The Flemish musician Joannes Ockeghem (d. c. 1496) was in the service of Charles VII, Louis XI and Charles VIII. Josquin des Prés (d. 1521), who worked for Louis XII, after having been with the Sforza family, the Pope and the Este family in Italy, was the greatest French polyphonic composer.

16th century

The reigns of François I (1515-1547), patron of the arts and literature, and of Henry II (d. 1559). 1560-1598, religious wars tore the country apart under Charles IX (d. 1574), Henry III (d. 1589). Henry IV (d. 1610), who had to reconquer his kingdom, restored prosperity to France through industry and the arts. Religious life was upset by the Reformation. The Edict of Nantes (1598) permitted the practice of the reformed religion. Culture developed; humanism was predominant (Guillaume Budé) favoured by François I, who founded the Collège de France (1530) and the Royal Library at Fontainebleau. Poetry triumphed at court under Marguerite of Navarre (d. 1519); and in the Platonic circles of Lyon. The Pleiades (1549), a movement inspired by antiquity in the rules it gave to French poetry, was represented by Du Bellay and Ronsard (1524; 1585). Prose: Rabelais went to Rome (1533-1548) where he studied the ruins; Montaigne (1533-1592). The theatre lost its religious character; mystery plays were forbidden (1548). The Italian players were in Paris in 1572.

Archeology was born in France. The High Constable Montmorency bought antiques in Italy about 1550 and had the Romano-Gallic remains in Languedoc preserved. Artistic scholarship: J. Martin and Jean Goujon, first French editions of Vitruvius (1547). Treatises on architecture by P. Delorme (1561 and 1567), J. Bullant (1564), du Cerceau (1559 and 1576-1579).

The academy of poetry and music (under Henry III: Académie du Palais, at the Louvre) was founded in 1570.

17th century

On the death of Henry IV (1610) the task of restoring the monarchy was continued after Marie de' Medici's regency (1610-17) by Richelieu (1624-1642), who rendered the Protestant party powerless, intervened in the Thirty Years' War (1635), during which Lorraine was occupied, assured France's hold over Alsace, Artois and Roussillon, and made Louis XIII (1610-1643) an absolute monarch.

Mazarin (1643-1661), during the regency of Anne of Austria and the minority of Louis XIV (born in 1638), put an end to the two Frondes (16481652), made peace with the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) and negotiated the king's marriage with the Spanish Infanta.

During the personal rule of Louis XIV, from 1661 to 1685, after Le Tellier, Lionne and Fouquet, Colbert, from 1661 to 1683, played a vital part in finance, agriculture and the arts. He boosted the colonial power (Louisiana, West and East India Companies) thus opening the way for exotic influence; by protecting industry and commerce from foreign importations, he gave a new impetus to French work. Vauban invented a new system of fortifications. On the death of Philip IV of Spain, Louis XIV laid claim to the Netherlands; his army, commanded by Condé and Turenne, subjugated Lille (1667), conquered Franche-Comté (1668). The advance was stopped by the Triple Alliance which led to the Peace of Aachen (1668). Louis XIV next invaded Holland in 1672, but the first coalition, brought about by William of Orange (1673), led to the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678-1679) by which FrancheComté and Flanders were ceded to France; Strasbourg was annexed in 1681.

But the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) resulted in the exodus of an active and creative section of the population and turned the Protestant countries against Louis XIV. After the wars of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) and of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) French domination over western Europe weakened in favour of England.

18th century

At the death of Louis XIV in 1715 Philip of Orléans, his nephew, became regent. The Scottish economist John Law was put in charge of finance. To fill the sadly depleted exchequer Law established the use of paper money, which turned out to be a disastrous experiment (1720). The Polish Succession War (Treaty of Vienna, 1735-1738, through which the French crown ultimately acquired the Duchy of Lorraine), the War of the Austrian Succession (Treaty of Aachen, 1748) and the Seven Years' War (Treaty of Paris, 1763, confirming the ruin of the French colonial empire to the benefit of England) were less onerous than the wars of the l7th century, but financial difficulties in a rapidly expanding economy made reforms necessary. Louis XV tried in 1749 to institute equal taxation for all by exacting a twentieth. This resulted in a revolt of the privileged, the ` tax war ', and the dissolution of the parlement.

The accession of Louis XVI (1774) roused hopes that the reforms would be carried out under the ministry of Turgot (Baron de Laune), a champion of liberalism and a friend of the physiocrats and philosophers of the time. After the failure first of Turgot and then of Jacques Necker, Louis was obliged to summon the States General at Versailles on 5th May 1789. The distressed condition of the populace, particularly in Paris, the ineptitude of king and court, the symbolic capture of the Bastille and the unrest in the provinces made the role of the National Constituent Assembly pre-eminent. The Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), and by the Constitution of 1791 absolute monarchy was abolished and legislative power was invested in an assembly. The National Convention (September 1792 - October 1795) founded the Republic, condemned Louis XVI to death, legislated public instruction, imposed the metric system, standardised weights and measures and united the five academies to form the Institute. Popular revolutionary vandalism, however, could not be checked. The Terror raged until the execution of Robespierre on 28th July (10th Thermidor) 1794. The Directory (October 1795 - November 1799) was beset with financial and internal difficulties, but it triumphed at the Treaty of Campo Formio thanks to the military genius of General Napoleon Bonaparte (Italian campaign). Returning from the Egyptian campaign Bonaparte took power by the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire (9th November) 1799.

The growth in overall population (18,000,000 in 1715; 26,000,000 in 1789), the beginnings of industrialised production and of modern finance, the introduction of English techniques into metallurgy, the foundation of Creusot, centre of heavy industry, the establishing of the Bourse (Stock Exchange) in 1724 and the backward state of agriculture contributed to the growth of urban population.

Religion was no longer pre-eminent; the bad example of the Regency, the libertinage of the court, the mockery of Voltaire and the materialistic scepticism of the encyclopedists led up to the fanatical atheism of the revolutionaries.


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