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The French Renaissance Monarchy as Seen through the Estates General1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

J. Russell Major
J. Russell Major*
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

The Estates General played but a small role in the development of the French monarchy. So little did it accomplish that at first glance a serious study of its history hardly seems necessary except to explain why it failed. This negative approach may be justified, but I think the greatest value to be achieved by the study of the French Estates General and other representative institutions during the Renaissance lies in the insight it gives into the nature of the monarchy of that great age. Just as Neale has used the English Parliament as a vehicle for studying Elizabethan government and society and Namier that of Georgian England, so the Estates General provides an opportunity to interpret the government of Renaissance France.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 9 , 1962 , pp. 113 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1962

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Footnotes

1

This paper was read before a meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies at Princeton on 14 April 1961. I am indebted to my colleague Dr. Douglas A. Unfug and to Professor Herbert H. Rowen of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for reading and criticizing the manuscript.

References

1 This paper was read before a meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies at Princeton on 14 April 1961. I am indebted to my colleague Dr. Douglas A. Unfug and to Professor Herbert H. Rowen of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for reading and criticizing the manuscript.

2 These conclusions are based largely on Russell Major, J., The Deputies to the Estates General of Renaissance France (Wisconsin, 1960)Google Scholar; and Representative Institutions in Renaissance France, 1421-1559 (Wisconsin, 1960). They differ to a considerable degree from even the most recent studies on the Renaissance monarchy. See F. Chabod, ‘Y a-t-il un état de la Renaissance’, Actes du colloque sur la Renaissance organisé par la société d'histoire moderne, 30 juin-juillet 1956 (Paris, 1958), pp. 55-78; H. R. Trevor-Roper, ‘The General Crisis of the 17th Century’, Past and Present XVI (1959), 31-64; and Vives, J. V., ‘Estructura administrativa estatal en los siglos XVI y XVII’, XIe Congrès international des sciences historiques, rapports, IV, histoire moderne (Uppsala, 1960), pp. 1–24 Google Scholar.

3 Most historians have seen a difference between the medieval and the Renaissance monarchy, but few have drawn a dividing line between the Renaissance monarchy and that of the old regime. See Hartung, F. and Mousnier, R., ‘Quelques problemes concernant la monarchic absolue’, Relazioni del X congresso intemazionale di scienze storiche, IV, storia moderna (Florence, 1955), pp. 1–55 Google Scholar. Recent research, however, supports the interpretation that the seventeenth century was one of crisis and produced many changes. E. J. Hobsbawm has shown that there was a general economic crisis in the seventeenth century. See his “The General Crisis of the European Economy in the 17th Century’, Past and Present V (1954), 33-53; and VI (1954), 44-65. In his Histoire générate des civilisations, ed. Maurice Crouzet (Paris, 1954), IV, Mousnier himself accepted the idea that there was a crisis and in his ‘Etat et commissaire. Recherches sur la creation des intendants de province (1634-1648)’, Forschungen zur Stoat und Verjassung. Festgabe für Fritz Hartung (Berlin, 1958), pp. 325-344, he showed how the Thirty Years’ War affected the development of the bureaucracy. It is my belief that the economic crisis and the Thirty Years’ War brought the French Renaissance monarchy to an end and led to changes as important as those brought on by the Hundred Years’ War and the economic crisis of 1330-1450. The Wars of Religion may have led to significant changes in political thought, but this should not blind us to the fact that few important changes in the army or in other institutions resulted, and that the bureaucracy was altered only by the establishment of the droit annuel.

4 Major, Representative Institutions … , pp. 3-13.

5 Major, The Deputies … . For decisions by the king in council against royal officials or for pro-League candidates see especially pp. 21, 25-26, 30-33, 49, 50-51, 62, 82-83, 85-86, 111-112.

6 Major, Representative Institutions … , pp. 4-7, 21-32. The acceptance of decentralization was a characteristic of nearly all the Renaissance monarchies and was undoubtedly made advisable by the size of the states and the provincialism of the people, but as these conditions also existed in the previous period it is possible that the aesthetic outlook of the age was a factor. In his Waning of the Middle Ages (New York, 1949), Johan Huizinga has shown that the love of detail and the acceptance of infinite variations at the cost of the unity of the whole characterized the work of the artist and the writer of the fifteenth century. May not the king in council have been likewise affected? In a similar manner the triumph of science and rationalism in the seventeenth century may be related to the desire for uniformity and order that characterized the monarchy of Louis xrv. For a pioneering work in this field see King, James E., Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV, 1661-1683 (Baltimore, 1949)Google Scholar.

7 Mousnier, Histoire générate des civilisations, IV, 99. The central theme of Trevor-Roper's, Chabod's, and to a lesser extent Vives’ interpretation of the Renaissance monarchy is the growth of the bureaucracy (see footnote 2). The bureaucracy did grow during the Renaissance, but not to the extent that it could have become as important a bulwark of the monarchy as we have been led to believe.

8 Doucet, Roger, Les Institutions de la France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1948), 1, 109.Google Scholar

9 Major, The Deputies … , p. 42.

10 Ibid., esp. pp. 4-6, 119-131.

11 Major, Representative Institutions … , pp. 9-10. The organization of the French army changed during the course of the sixteenth century, but the generalizations cited above continued to hold true. See Doucet, II, 608-651. There is also evidence that by the close of the fifteenth century improved fortifications had mitigated the earlier advantage artillery had given to the offense: Hale, J. R., ‘International Relations in the West: Diplomacy and War’, The New Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge, 1957), I, 281–282 Google Scholar; and ‘Armies, Navies, and the Art of War’, The New Cambridge Modem History (Cambridge, 1958), II, 491-494. This development favored the nobility and towns at the expense of the king.

12 The revival of the aristocracy now seems to have been a general phenomenon during the sixteenth century. It has long been recognized that the nobility strengthened its position in Prussia, Poland, and most of eastern Europe during the Renaissance. In his ‘Rise of the Gentry, 1558-1640’, Economic History Rev. XI (1941), 1-38, R. H. Tawney has argued that the English gentry—the economic and social counterpart of the lower nobility on the continent—improved its position. Hugh R. Trevor-Roper has recently challenged this interpretation, but with only partial success. See especially his ‘The Gentry, 1540-1640’, Economic History Rev., Supplement, 1954. Fernand Braudel finds a ‘seigneurial reaction’ in the Mediterranean world between 1450 and 1550 in his La Méditerranée et la monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949), pp. 624-637. Some Italian cities fell into the hands of the aristocracy and the aristocratic revival found its expression in literature: P. Coles, ‘The Crisis of Renaissance Society: Genoa, 1488-1507', Past and Present xi (1957), 17-47; and Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (New York, 1957), n, 144-172.

13 Major, Representative Institutions … , pp. 10-12, 51-52; Doucet, II, 462-463; Jehan Masselin, Journal des états généraux de France tenus à Tours en 1484,56.. A. Bernier (Paris, 1835), pp. 348-349; Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Histoire de France, ed. Lavisse (Paris, 1911), IV, pt. 11, 406.

14 This interpretation is based primarily on Paul Raveau, L'Agriculture et les classes paysannes dans le Haut-Poitou au XVe siècle (Paris, 1926). It was accepted by Marc Bloch, Les caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française (Paris, 1955), I, 126-131; and Henri Sée, Histoire économique de la France (Paris, 1948), 1, 125-134.

15 Braudel, pp. 624-637; Louis Merle, Le Métaire et l'évolution agraire de la Gâtine poitevine de la fin du moyen âge à la révolution (Paris, 1958), esp. pp. 1-95; I. Cloulas, ‘Les Aliénations du temporel ecclésiastique sous Charles XI et Henri III (1563-1587)’, Revue d'histoire de I'église de France XLIV (1958), 5-56; Victor Carrière, Introduction aux études d'histoire ecclésiastique locale (Paris, 1936), III, 423-426. Even if the nobility as a class improved its financial status, many individual nobles must have suffered because the absence of primogeniture often led estates to be divided among many heirs (Bloch, supplément by Robert Auvergne, 11, 159-160). For the attempt by some noble families to avoid this fate see Robert Boutruche, La Crise d'une société; seigneurs et paysans du Bordelais pendant laguerre de cent ans (Paris, 1947), pp. 285-294, 386-395.

16 Major, The Deputies … , esp. pp. 137-138.

17 E. Perroy comments on the efforts of the great nobles to place their supporters in the royal bureaucracy and on their relations with the lesser nobility in ‘Feudalism or Principalities in Fifteenth Century France’, London University Institute of Historical Research Bulletin XX (1943-1944), 181-185; but he finds no evidence of indentures such as those described by William H. Dunham Jr. in Lord Hastings’ Indentured Retainers, 1461-1483 (New Haven, 1955). On the relation between the great nobles and lesser nobles see Lucien Romier, Le Royaume de Catherine de Médicis (Paris, 1922), 1, 208-230. On the relation between the great nobles and the royal bureaucracy see Roland Mousnier, La Vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII (Rouen, 1945), esp. pp. 64-66, 287-311, 577-611.

18 André Bossuat, Le Bailliage royal de Montferrand, 1425-1556 (Paris, 1957), provides interesting examples of the activities of royal officials.

19 Major, The Deputies … , pp. 85-86.

20 For numerous examples of the activities of the local royal officials in regard to the towns see Major, The Deputies … .

21 Documents on the elections to the Estates General reveal that the bourgeois oligarchy dominated most of the towns, but in return were challenged by the local royal officials. See Major, The Deputies … , esp. pp. 123-127.

22 Braudel, pp. 619-624; Major, Representative Institutions … , pp. n-13.

23 A study of when and how the nobility and bureaucracy came to escape taxation is badly needed. On clerical taxation see Doucet, II, 831-846; and Carrière, III, 249-286, 396-434.

24 Major, The Deputies … , esp. p. 124.

25 Major, Representative Institutions … , esp. pp. 14-20, 52-53