The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France
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Copyright
Fourth Estate
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
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Published by Fontana Press 1996
Copyright © R. J. Knecht 1996
R. J. Knecht asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Dedication
In memory of Germaine Ganier
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
General Editor’s Introduction
A Note on Coinage and Measures
Map of France (1494)
Map of France (1585–98)
PREFACE
1 France in 1500
2 The minority of Charles VIII and the Breton marriage (1483–94)
3 Charles VIII and the Italian Wars (1494–8)
4 Louis XII, ‘Father of the people’ (1498–1515)
5 The church in crisis
6 Francis I: The first decade (1515–25)
7 The New Learning and heresy (1483–1525)
8 Defeat, captivity and restoration (1525–7)
9 War and peace (1527–38)
10 The court and patronage of Francis I
11 Francis I: The last decade (1537–47)
12 The absolutism of Francis I
13 Henry II, the victor of Metz (1547–52)
14 The arts and literature under Henry II
15 Henry II: The tragic peace (1553–9)
16 France overseas
17 The mid-century crisis
18 The failure of conciliation (1559–62)
19 The First Civil War (1562–3)
20 The fragile peace (1563–6)
21 The Second and Third Civil Wars (1566–70)
22 The St Bartholomew’s day massacres (1572)
23 Literary responses
24 Fraternal discord (1573–83)
25 Henry III and his court
26 The Catholic League (1584–92)
27 The triumph of Henry IV (1593–1610)
CONCLUSION
Bibliography and Rtiferences
Glossary
Genealogies
Index
About the Author
The Fontana History Series
About the Publisher
General Editor’s Introduction
If one stands by the west wall of the church at Penmarc’h, by the Atlantic coast in south-west Brittany, one sees how this building was intended to be on a grand scale. Founded in 1508, it was to be paid for by the shipbuilders and shipowners of the parish, a testimony to their wealth as well as to their faith. The heads of three of them are depicted on the wall. Penmarc’h was then one of the most important and flourishing ports of France, sending ships south to Portugal and north to Britain, trading in fish and wine. It was natural that carvings of ships, fish, seagulls and sailors should decorate the church walls. But the great tower which was to crown the west wall was never completed. No statues were erected. Penmarc’h’s prosperity rapidly disappeared as the discovery of Newfoundland brought activity to the Normandy coast and as larger ships, some as large as 300 tons, took over the trade. The flat-bottomed boats of Penmarc’h, which were beached on the sand and on the river-beds, could not compete. Penmarc’h fell into obscurity, its only fame being its legends. A sad song tells how at night its people used to set up decoy lights to lure ships on to the rocks. One night they wrecked a ship only to discover that it had on board their own children, who drowned before their eyes.
Penmarc’h tells us about France in the early modern period. We see how people in a distant part of the country successfully organized an inland as well as an external trade, supplying fish and seaweed as well as wine. We see how they could move rapidly from prosperity to poverty. Penmarc’h had its own town council to look after its affairs. In 1508 their ambition was to build a monumental church which would rival that of Quimper. They used to meet in the south porch and discuss all matters that concerned their locality, a practice that was encouraged by the senior clergy. The cult of saints was very specific. The church was dedicated to St Nonna, who had been archbishop of Armagh in the sixth century, and nearby, within Penmarc’h, the sixteenth-century chapel of Kerity was dedicated to the obscure St Thumette, who was a follower of St Ursuline and was beheaded. Penmarc’h was by no means isolated from the rest of France. In 1595, Fontenelle and his followers broke into the church by the north door and massacred some 3000 people who had taken refuge there. Fonetenelle was an adventurer, fighting against Henry IV. Thus Penmarc’h was acquainted with the Wars of Religion.
Sixteenth-century France has to be seen in the context of the world beyond its borders. But Michelet meant more than this when, lecturing at the collège de France in 1841, he said that at the beginning of the sixteenth century France discovered that she was essential to Europe. There could be no Europe without France. France was always young and modern, and by the middle of the century was the most populous country in Europe. Towards the end of the previous century observers had lamented the desolation of a deserted countryside; now everything changed. By the 1550s it was said in Languedoc that men were multiplying like mice in a barn. But this large population was encircled by foreign countries. The powerful Charles V, master of territories that surrounded France, sought to reduce her power and to seize Burgundy, the country of his ancestors. France could not accept these limitations imposed by the Habsburgs. For some eighteen years, from 1541 to 1559, France was at war with Charles V and his successor Philip II. National sentiment grew and by the time of Ronsard’s poetry, the evocation of the strength and virtues of France had become one of the great themes of its literature. This at a time when the French language was becoming the language of medicine, science and history.
This was the time, too, when the Venetian ambassadors reported that while France was not necessarily the richest or the most powerful of countries, it was the easiest to govern. The strength of France lay in its unity and the obedience of its inhabitants, who had given all power to the throne. Professor Knecht shows how such a judgement was far from being accurate. But the most famous work of the Savoyard bishop Claude de Seyssel was entitled La Monarchie de France. The power of kings did increase. The monarch was the agent who would preserve the harmony of the kingdom. A series of kings who ruled majestically and responsibly acquired a reserve and a stock of power that even the most foolish ruler could not exhaust. Yet central government retained its uncertainties, as when Henry II was killed while jousting, or Henry IV, in August 1589, found himself without subjects, without an administration, without money, obliged to undertake the conquest of his kingdom. Central government retained its limitations, since while the territorial unity of the country made progress, certain provinces retained their institutions along with their traditions.
The court was large and populous, even when it was itinerant. Sometimes as many as 16,000 required accommodation and the chateaux of Chambord, Fontainebleau and the Louvre were constructed. Francis I was the reflective patron of the arts; Henry II became the great bibliophile of his time; and Henry IV imposed a sense of order and design on the construction of Paris, replacing the restlessness of earlier design and ornament.
The Wars of Religion made for a dramatic revision of nationalism. France was torn apart, and even though the Protestants rallied to the royalism of Navarre and allied with their Catholic associates, the relations of church and state could never be the same again. Francis I protected the humanists – Calvin had dedicated the Latin edition of his Christian Institutes to him – but he could not tolerate those who attacked the mass.
Thus the history of Renaissance France is rich and varied. Henry IV is supposed to have said, once he had accepted the Catholic faith in 1593, ‘France and I both need time to draw breath.’ That he might well have said it is understandable. There are those students of French history who are loyal to certain individuals, such as Clovis, or St Louis or Joan of Arc. Others prefer the Age of Classicism or the Age of the Enlightenment. Still others believe that French history only began with the Revolution of 1789. But Renaissance France is perhaps the richest period in French history. We are fortunate that Professor Knecht, the biographer of Francis I and a great expert on these years, is our guide. In studying this history we are only following the precepts of Francis I himself, who in 1527 told Jacques Colin how he wished his subjects to read history books and learn from the past.
DOUGLAS JOHNSON, November 1995
A Note on Coinage and Measures
Two types of money existed side by side in sixteenth-century France: money of account and actual coin. Royal accounts were kept in the former; actual transactions carried out in the latter. The principal money of account was the livre tournois (sometimes called the franc) which was subdivided in sous (or sols) and deniers. One livre = 20 sous; 1 sou = 12 deniers. This was the French equivalent of the English system of pounds, shillings and pence. The livre tournois was worth about two English shillings.
Actual coin was either gold, silver or billon: e.g. the écu au soleil was gold, the teston silver and the douzain billon. From 1500 to 1546 gold coins constituted on average two-thirds of the total annual coinage of the royal mints; thereafter till the end of the century that average fell to 17 per cent. Rulers who did not have enough coin at their disposal were naturally tempted to devalue the money of account and also to debase the precious-metal content of the coinage itself. Francis I’s successors resorted with mounting frequency to devaluation. Thus the gold écu which was valued at 40 sous in 1516, was set at 46 sous in 1550, 50 sous in 1561 and 60 sous in 1575. Over the same period, the value of the teston rose from 10 sous to 14 sous. In addition to royal coins, provincial and foreign coins circulated in France.
France had no unified system of weights and measures in the sixteenth century. Each region had its own. In Paris the setier of grain = 156 litres. Twelve setiers = 1 muid.
Map of France (1494)
Map of France (1585–98)
Preface
The title of this book requires a gloss. ‘Rise’ may be construed as a move towards political order, economic prosperity and social contentment; ‘fall’ as a lapse into political confusion, economic depression and social unrest. France in the sixteenth century experienced both conditions. This book attempts to describe and, I hope, to explain this duality in the period often called ‘the Renaissance’. Fixing the chronological limits has not been easy, for history can never be strictly compartmentalized. The division traditionally drawn between the Middle Ages and modern times is nothing more than an academic convenience; historically it makes no sense. French institutions in the sixteenth century were rooted in the Middle Ages. The significance which historians have traditionally attached to the year 1494 as ending the Middle Ages has little validity. It was then that King Charles VIII invaded Italy, setting in train a series of French wars in the peninsula which lasted on and off until the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. I have chosen to begin my story with Charles VIII’s accession in 1483. Ideally, I should have traced the origins of the ‘rise’ back to the formative reign of Louis XI, often regarded as the founder of French national unity, but this would have lengthened the book too much. As for the ‘fall’, I might have ended with the assassination of the last Valois king in 1589. Henry IV’s reign that followed is often taken to mark the recovery of France, but there is a strong case for thinking that the real recovery did not start till 1651, after the Fronde.
In the early sixteenth century France seemed set to become the most powerful nation in Europe, yet by 1600 she had sunk to one of the lowest points in her history. Half a century of more or less continual civil conflict, allegedly over religion, had brought desolation and despair to her inhabitants. Her economy had been almost destroyed, her society was in disarray and her political system was on the brink of collapse. The very origins of a monarchy, which had once been revered as God’s lieutenancy on earth, were being questioned. Much of the interest that springs from studying sixteenth-century France resides in probing the causes of her precipitous decline. Was religion the only cause of dissension among her people, or were they responding to other factors? Why was a monarchy which had seemed so strong under Francis I and Henry II reduced to little more than an impotent figurehead? These are merely two questions among many that the reader might care to ponder. I hope to provide some answers, but the subject is vast and controversial.
The past cannot change, but history does. The last fifty years have seen considerable changes in historical thinking, particularly in France, where the Annales school has turned away from ‘the history of events’ (histoire évènementielle) to that of a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of the past. This has led to a greater preoccupation with socio-economic issues, mentalités and other aspects of human activity which historians traditionally had overlooked or not seen as their concern. Recently, however, there has been a reaction. A new school of historians, less doctrinaire than their elders, have returned to the ‘history of events’ with a sharpened awareness of its complexities. The massacre of St Bartholomew’s day, for example, is no longer seen simply as the slaughter of Protestants by Catholics. The sociology of denominational violence as well as its psychological context have come under close scrutiny.
This book along with its companions in the series adheres to a chronological, not a thematic, plan, for the reader needs to be made aware of the sequence of events. However, I have tried, wherever possible, to feed analysis into the narrative, taking into account modern research. For example, the nature and effectiveness of the French monarchy has become controversial. Was it ‘absolute’, as the kings often claimed, or was it subject to limitations? The crucial importance of finance at a time when the technology of war was making unprecedented demands on the traditional resources of the state is now recognized. The French Reformation is no longer seen simply as a German import; its indigenous roots have been brought to light. We also know far more about the problems posed for the crown by the upsurge of religious dissent and about the policies by which it hoped to solve them. Religion was once dismissed as a cause of the civil wars that bear its name. It was alleged that the nobility used religion as a cover for their internecine greed. Modern research has demonstrated that religion was indeed a major source of conflict, and also an important component of popular culture, which until recently was virtually a closed book. Those pages have now been opened, and historians are better able to probe the thoughts of ordinary French men and women during the Renaissance. The psychology of denominational conflict, as reflected in a vast pamphlet literature, has been exhaustively analysed. The Wars of Religion also provided a fertile soil for political thinkers. While some upheld the doctrine of absolutism, others championed resistance to a monarchy they viewed as ungodly and therefore tyrannical. Under the cumulative impact of persecution, Protestants, who had for long adhered to the Pauline doctrine of obedience to ‘the powers that be’, turned into revolutionaries willing to condone even tyrannicide.
During the past half-century French historians have been more interested in looking at French society and mentalités than at political events. Two great pioneering works by E. Le Roy Ladurie (Les Paysans de Languedoc) and Jean Jacquart (La Crise rurale en Ile-de-France, 1550–1670) have revolutionized knowledge of the countryside and its inhabitants who made up the bulk of the population. We know far more now about the economic difficulties they had to face and also about the impact on their lives of natural disasters and war. The towns too have received much attention lately. Their social structure has been examined as well as their administrative, economic and religious role. Demographic historians have considered the reasons for the growth of towns during the century. Notarial registers have yielded information about humble Frenchmen who, one might have assumed, had vanished without trace. Scholars now know that the Parisian League, which was once identified with the rabble, was far from proletarian. Another major source of interest has been the nobility. The old notion of a complete economic collapse of the class under the mounting pressure of inflation has been exploded, while the importance of clientage as a bond between great and lesser nobles has been stressed. So has the importance of provincial governors in either buttressing the crown’s authority or undermining it. The careers and fortunes of several individual noblemen have recently been the subject of detailed studies. Another welcome development of recent years has been the use which art historians have made of history. No longer are they content to judge style without reference to the historical context. Patronage and iconography are now seen as crucially important to the study of Renaissance art. A royal château was designed for use, not merely as decoration.
In the course of writing this history I have incurred debts to many scholars. Among them are Bernard Barbiche, Joseph Bergin, Richard Bonney, Monique Chatenet, Denis Crouzet, Robert Descimon, Mark Greengrass, Philippe Hamon, Jean Jacquart, Anne-Marie Lecoq, Nicole Lemaitre, David Nicholls, David Parker, David Parrott, David Potter, and Penny Roberts. John Bourne and W. Scott Lucas have guided me through the mysterious world of the computer. My copy-editor, Betty Palmer, has been a model of efficiency and tact. They all have my warmest thanks, as does my old friend and colleague Douglas Johnson, who kindly invited me to contribute to this series and for his helpful advice as general editor. I am also deeply grateful to Philip Gwyn Jones of HarperCollins for his patience and generosity. My biggest debt, as always, is to my wife, Maureen, without whose tolerance this book could never have been written.
Note
The names of French kings are given in French before their accession and in English thereafter: e.g. François d’Angoulême becomes Francis I, Henri duc d’Orléans becomes Henry II and Henri de Navarre becomes Henry IV.
BIRMINGHAM, February 1996
ONE France in 1500
At the beginning of the sixteenth century France was still only partially developed as a nation. She still lacked well-defined borders, a common language and a unified legal system. The eastern frontier, in so far as it existed at all, followed roughly the rivers Scheldt, Meuse, Saône and Rhône from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. People living west of this line were vassals of the French king; those to the east owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor. French suzerainty over Artois and Flanders was purely nominal, effective control of these areas having passed to the house of Burgundy. Further east, the frontier cut across the duchy of Bar whose ruler, the duke of Lorraine, did homage for half the territory to the king of France and for the other half to the emperor. In the south, Dauphiné and Provence, being east of the Rhône, were still not regarded as integral parts of the French kingdom: the king was obeyed as ‘Dauphin’ in the one, and as count in the other. The south-west border more or less followed the Pyrenees, avoiding Roussillon, which belonged to the kingdom of Aragon, and the small kingdom of Navarre, ruled by the house of Albret. Within France, there were three foreign enclaves: Calais belonged to England, the Comtat-Venaissin to the Holy See and the principality of Orange to the house of Chalon. Some great fiefs also survived, including the duchies of Brittany and Bourbon.
France also lacked a common language. Modern French is descended from langue d’oïl, a dialect spoken in northern France during the medieval period; in the south, langue d’oc or occitan was used. The linguistic frontier ran from the Bec d’Ambès in the west to the col du Lautaret in the east, passing through Limoges, the Cantal and Annonay. South of this line, even educated people used the local idiom or Latin; langue d’oïl was spoken by feudal magnates when addressing the king. After 1450, as the French crown asserted its authority following the expulsion of the English, langue d’oïl began to make deep inroads in the south-west. The parlements of Toulouse, Bordeaux and Aix used it, and noblemen from the south who took up offices at court adopted it. They continued to speak it when they returned home, passing the habit to their servants. By 1500 the southward expansion of langue d’oïl was gathering pace, at least among the upper classes, but the linguistic unity of France still lay far in the future. Nor was the divide simply between north and south. Within each linguistic half there were whole families of provincial patois, not to mention such peripheral languages as Breton, Basque or Flemish.