Ancien Régime

History of Early Modern Ages

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.

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.

The Early Modern period in French history spans the following reigns:

Valois Dynasty
- Louis XI
- Charles VIII
- Louis XII
- Francis I
- Henry II and Catherine de Medici
- Francis II
- Charles IX
- Henry III
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

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 (1494-1559), 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.

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 (1624-1642) Cardinal Richelieu, elaborated a policy against Spain and the German emperor during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) which had broken out among the lands of Germany's Holy Roman Empire. An English-backed Huguenot rebellion (1625-1628) 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 (1643-1715), France was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Richelieu's successor (1642-1661) Cardinal Mazarin and the economic policies (1661-1683) of Colbert. Renewed war (1667-1668 and 1672-1678) 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 1689-1697 gained France only Haiti (lost to a slave revolt a century later), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) 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.

The reign (1715-1774) of Louis XV saw an initial return to peace and prosperity under the regency (1715-1723) of Philip II, Duke of Orléans, whose policies were largely continued (1726-1743) by Cardinal Fleury, prime minister in all but name, renewed war with the Empire (1733-1735 and 1740-1748) 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 (1756-1763).

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.

French Exploration and Colonies

French colonial empires
French colonisation of the Americas