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Early Modern France
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-Comte, Flanders, Navarre, Roussillon, 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 (Reunion), the Far East and portions of Africa.
The administrative and legal system in France in this period is generally called the Ancien Regime (see below).
Demographics
The Black Death had killed an estimated one-third of the population of France from its appearance in 1348. The concurrent Hundred Years' War slowed recovery. It would be the early sixteenth century before the population recovered to mid-fourteenth century levels. 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 Oil 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-Cotterets, 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 Provencal) and other inhabitants spoke Breton, Catalan, Basque, Flemish, and Franco-provencal. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various langues d'oil 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
o Louis XI
o Charles VIII
o Louis XII
o Francis I
o Henry II and Catherine de Medici
o Francis II
o Charles IX
o Henry III
* House of Bourbon
o Henry IV
o the Regency of Marie de Medici
o Louis XIII and his minister Cardinal Richelieu
o the Regency of Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin
o Louis XIV
o the Regence of Philip II of Orleans
o Louis XV
o Louis XVI
French Renaissance
For the cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century, see 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.
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