Ancien régime
Despite the notion of "absolute monarchy" (typified by the king's right to issue orders through lettres de cachet) and efforts to create a centralized state, ancien régime France remained a country of systemic irregularities: administrative, legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives frequently overlapped, the French nobility struggled to maintain their influence in local judiciary and state branches while the Fronde and other major internal conflicts violently contested additional centralization.
[8] The Nine Years' War (1688–97), between France and a coalition of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, Spain, England and Savoy, was fought in continental Europe and on the surrounding seas, and in Ireland, North America and India.
The resulting Truce of Ratisbon guaranteed France's new borders for 20 years, but Louis XIV's subsequent actions, notably his revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, led to the deterioration of his military and political dominance.
Louis XIV's decision to cross the Rhine in September 1688 was designed to extend his influence and to pressure the Holy Roman Empire into accepting his territorial and dynastic claims, but Leopold I and the German princes resolved to resist, and the States General and William III brought the Dutch and the English into the war against France.
By the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), Louis XIV retained the whole of Alsace, but was forced to return Lorraine to its ruler and to give up any gains on the right bank of the Rhine.
Also, Louis XIV accepted William III as the rightful King of England, and the Dutch acquired their barrier fortress system in the Spanish Netherlands to help secure their own borders.
France's enemies formed a Grand Alliance, led by the Holy Roman Empire's Leopold I, which included Prussia and most of the other German states, the Dutch Republic, Portugal, Savoy (in Italy) and England.
However, the greatest beneficiary of the war was Great Britain, since in addition to extensive extra-European territorial gains at the expense of Spain and France, it established further checks to French expansion within the continent by moderately strengthening its European allies.
[19] In the mid-15th century, France was smaller than it is today,[20][b] and numerous border provinces (such as Roussillon, Cerdagne, Conflent, Vallespir, Capcir, Calais, Béarn, Navarre, County of Foix, Flanders, Artois, Lorraine, Alsace, Trois-Évêchés, Franche-Comté, Savoy, Bresse, Bugey, Gex, Nice, Provence, Dauphiné and Brittany) were autonomous or belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, the Crown of Aragon or the Kingdom of Navarra; there were also foreign enclaves like the Comtat Venaissin.
Généralité of Pau (Béarn and Soule) The desire for more efficient tax collection was one of the major causes for French administrative and royal centralisation during the early modern period.
Exempted were clergy and nobles (except for non-noble lands held in pays d'état, see below), officers of the crown, military personnel, magistrates, university professors and students, and certain cities (villes franches) such as Paris.
In 1680, the system of the Ferme générale was established, a franchised customs and excise operation in which individuals bought the right to collect the taille on behalf of the king, through six-year adjudications (certain taxes like the aides and the gabelle had been farmed out in this way as early as 1604).
The state also demanded a "free gift", which the church collected from holders of ecclesiastic offices through taxes called the décime (roughly a twentieth of the official charge, created under Francis I).
Bailliages and présidiaux were also the first court for certain crimes called cas royaux which had formerly been under the supervision of the local seigneurs: sacrilege, lèse-majesté, kidnapping, rape, heresy, alteration of money, sedition, insurrection and the illegal carrying of arms.
One of the established principles of the French monarchy was that the king could not act without the advice of his counsel, and the formula "le roi en son conseil" expressed that deliberative aspect.
Francis I was sometimes criticised for relying too heavily on a small number of advisors, and Henry II, Catherine de Medici and their sons found themselves frequently unable to negotiate between the opposing Guise and Montmorency families in their counsel.
At the death of Louis XIV, the Regent Philippe II, Duke of Orléans abandoned several of the above administrative structures, most notably the Secretaries of State, which were replaced by councils.
A refusal by the parlement to register the edicts (frequently concerning fiscal matters) allowed the king to impose its registration through a royal assize ("lit de justice").
In 1500, France had 14 archbishoprics (Lyon, Rouen, Tours, Sens, Bourges, Bordeaux, Auch, Toulouse, Narbonne, Aix-en-Provence, Embrun, Vienne, Arles and Rheims) and 100 bishoprics.
From the end of the Wars of Religion to the French Revolution, Menat, a Cluniac abbey dating back to 1107, ruled over the Sioule Valley in the northwest region of the Clermont diocese.
Protestantism in France was considered to be a grave threat to national unity, as the Huguenot minority felt a closer affinity with German and Dutch Calvinists than with its fellow Frenchmen.
In 1620, the Huguenots proclaimed a constitution for the "Republic of the Reformed Churches of France", and Prime Minister Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) invoked the full powers of the state and captured La Rochelle after a long siege in 1628.
That proved disastrous to the Huguenots and costly for France by precipitating civil bloodshed, ruining commerce and resulting in the illegal flight from the country of about 180,000 Protestants, many of whom became intellectuals, doctors and business leaders in England, Scotland, the Netherlands Prussia and South Africa; also, 4000 went to the American colonies.
However, Louis XVI, his ministers, and the widespread French nobility had become immensely unpopular because the peasants and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie were burdened with ruinously high taxes, which were levied to support wealthy aristocrats and their sumptuous lifestyles.
Aristocrats were confronted by the rising ambitions of merchants, tradesmen and prosperous farmers allied with aggrieved peasants, wage-earners and intellectuals influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers.
As the revolution proceeded, power devolved from the monarchy and privileged-by-birth to more representative political bodies, like legislative assemblies, but conflicts among formerly allied republican groups caused considerable discord and bloodshed.
A growing number of French people had absorbed the ideas of "equality" and "freedom of the individual" as presented by Voltaire, Diderot, Turgot, and other philosophers and social theorists of the Enlightenment.
After a time, many people in France began to attack the democratic deficit of their own government, push for freedom of speech, challenge the Roman Catholic Church and decry the prerogatives of the nobles.
")That affection was caused by the perceived decline in culture and values after the revolution, in which the aristocracy lost much of its economic and political power to what was seen as a rich, coarse and materialistic bourgeoisie.
The historian Alexis de Tocqueville argued against that defining narrative in his classic study L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, which highlighted the continuities in French institutions before and after the revolution.
