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The bulk of France’s population consisted of the third estate, made up of people of widely different fortunes and occupations. Seyssel in his La Monarchie de France (1519) made a useful distinction between middling people (peuple moyen) and the lesser folk (peuple menu). The former, he explained, were merchants and officers of finance and justice. The peuple menu were people principally engaged in ‘the cultivation of the land, the mechanical arts and other inferior crafts’. Seyssel believed that such people should not be ‘in too great liberty or immeasurably rich and especially not generally trained in the use of arms’, otherwise they might be tempted to rise against their betters. The third estate had its own hierarchy defined by custom and expressed in certain honorific titles, such as noble homme or honorable homme, in notarial documents, but most Frenchmen did not qualify for such titles. As one historian has written: ‘four-fifths of Francis I’s subjects fell into anonymity’.

The government of France

At a meeting of the Estates-General in 1484 Philippe Pot, representing the Burgundian nobility, described kingship as ‘the dignity, not the property, of the prince’. The crown, according to the jurists, was handed down to the nearest male kinsman of the deceased monarch. The king was not free to give it away or to bequeath it to anyone; he was only the temporary holder of a public office. Yet the concept of the king as head of the state already existed. The word ‘state’ did not come into current usage till the mid-sixteenth century, but the idea existed under the name of ‘commonwealth’ (chose publique) or ‘republic’. Although official documents distinguished between the king and the state, the interests of both were closely identified. Thus in 1517, Chancellor Duprat said: ‘The kingdom’s interest is the king’s interest, and the king’s interest is the kingdom’s interest. For it is a mystical body of which the king is the head.’ As head of state, the king was not bound to assume the obligations entered upon by his predecessors; the debts of a king could be legitimately repudiated by his successor. A corporation or individual holding privileges from the crown needed to have them confirmed at the start of a new reign. The same rule applied to office-holders.

‘The king never dies’. This adage embodied an important principle of French constitutional law: the king succeeded from the instant of his predecessor’s death. No interregnum, however brief, was deemed possible. Nor could a lawful king be denied the full exercise of his authority for reasons of age or health. If he were a minor or unfit to rule for some other reason, his authority was exercised in his name by his council, although in practice a regent was appointed. Contemporary opinion favoured the king’s nearest adult male kinsman for this role, but in the sixteenth century it was repeatedly filled by a woman: Louise of Savoy under Francis I and Catherine de’ Medici under Charles IX.

In the sixteenth century the coronation or sacre at Reims was no longer regarded as essential to the exercise of kingship, yet it remained important as a symbol of the supernatural powers of kingship and of the close alliance between church and state. The coronation service began with the oath. Standing over the Gospels, the king promised to promote peace in Christendom, to protect Christians against injury, to dispense justice fairly and mercifully, and to expel heretics from his dominions. This was followed by the anointing, the most important part of the ceremony. Thrusting his hand through slits in the king’s garment, the archbishop of Reims anointed his body with a chrism allegedly handed down from heaven by a dove at the baptism of King Clovis in 496 and used ever since to consecrate France’s kings. The anointing set the king apart from other men, giving him a quasi-sacerdotal character. Although no French king ever claimed the right to celebrate mass, he did take communion in both kinds, a privilege enjoyed only by priests.

By virtue of his anointing the king of France, who bore the title of ‘Most Christian King’, was deemed to possess thaumaturgical powers, that is to say powers of healing the sick. The only other Christian ruler to claim this power was the king of England. In time, it became restricted to the curing of scrofula, or tuberculosis of the lymph nodes on the side of the neck, a disease more repulsive than dangerous and subject to periods of remission. The king touched the victim’s sores and tumours with his bare hands, and, making the sign of the cross, said: ‘The king touches you and God cures you.’ Each victim was then given two small silver coins.

France at the end of the Middle Ages was still a largely feudal country: many towns, corporations and individuals enjoyed a degree of autonomy, regarding themselves as parties to a contract in which mutual obligations were laid down and complete submission to the king was ruled out. But a school of thought existed which advocated royal absolutism. Its chief exponents were the royal jurists, who found in Roman law the idea of absolute power vested in one man and of subjects equally subservient to him. The doctrine was backed up by the Christian concept of the king as God’s vicegerent on earth. It was claimed that he could legislate, dispense justice, revoke all lawsuits to his own court, levy taxes and create offices. He could also annul any concession detracting from his authority, and local privileges could survive only if he chose to renew them at his accession. The authority of Cicero was invoked to show that the king was entitled to sacrifice private interest to the public good.

Roman legal concepts, as elaborated by medieval commentators, were accepted in sixteenth-century France. Jurists identified the king with the Roman princeps and declared him to be emperor within his own kingdom. This simply meant that he was independent of both pope and Holy Roman Emperor in temporal matters. The idea of his absolute authority was universally accepted in French law, but he was not expected to rule absolutely without his subjects’ consent as expressed through certain institutions, notably the Parlement of Paris, which was commonly regarded as the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman Senate.

The best-known statement of the constitutionalism that prevailed in sixteenth-century France was La Monarchie de France by Claude de Seyssel, who became bishop of Marseille after long years of service to the crown as a councillor, administrator and diplomat. Like Machiavelli he was a realist, who viewed politics as a science distinct from morality and religion. Being an Aristotelian, he valued moderation in a constitution, and believed that the French kings owed their greatness to their voluntary acceptance of three constraints (freins) – religion, justice and la police – on their power. Writing of justice, Seyssel affirms that it is ‘better authorized in France than in any other country we know in all the world. This is especially owing to the parlements, which have been instituted to put a bridle on the absolute power that our kings would have wished to use.’

However absolute, the monarch needed an administrative machinery at the centre of the kingdom and in the localities, to carry out his policies. Its chief component was the king’s council, which in 1500 was still evolving. In theory its members comprised the princes of the blood, the peers of the realm and the great officers of state, but in practice admission was by royal invitation. Before 1526 the council was a large body. Between August 1484 and January 1485 there were 120 councillors, but only a small proportion of them attended with any degree of frequency. It is likely that a core of working councillors existed within the larger body. In 1502 this core consisted of only four members, of whom three belonged to the house of Amboise. Financial business was apparently dealt with separately by experts, who nevertheless continued to attend the council when non-financial matters were being discussed, The council might also divide for administrative convenience. Thus in 1494 part of the council followed Charles VIII to Italy while the rest stayed in Moulins with Pierre de Bourbon. The situation has been described as ‘one of relative informality and of response to immediate royal needs. Some councillors were specialists and the disposition of personnel in terms of location was fluid, but these were not structural arrangements within the council as an institution.’

There were many routes to membership of the council: birth, skill in law, diplomacy or administration, regional importance, ecclesiastical dignity and the influence of patrons and relatives. Councillors served at the king’s pleasure, not for life, and membership was not hereditary. Some councillors served under all three kings from 1483 to 1526, but membership was usually for shorter periods. The council was not only a point of contact between the crown, the nobility and local communities; it was also a tool which the crown used to secure the obedience of the governing classes and to arbitrate between them.

The body responsible for turning the council’s decisions into laws was the chancery, headed by the Chancellor of France. He was invariably an eminent jurist, who had served his apprenticeship in a parlement, and sometimes he was also a high-ranking churchman. His powers and duties ranged more widely than those of any other great officer of the crown. In effect, he was a kind of prime minister. As head of the royal chancery, he kept the Great seal and other seals of state. All documents emanating from the king and his council were drawn up in the chancery and sealed in the chancellor’s presence. He had to ensure that the text of each document matched the orders received, and could refuse to seal any that seemed incorrect. This power, moreover, extended to all the other chanceries in the kingdom, including those of the ‘sovereign courts’. The chancellor’s authority was, therefore, nation-wide. His influence on legislation was also crucial. He exercised it not only as a councillor but also by drafting royal edicts himself. As head of the judicial administration, he was by right entitled to preside over any sovereign court, including the parlement. He appointed judges and received their oaths of office unless they had already sworn them before the king. The chancellor attended the king’s council regularly and took the chair in the king’s absence. He helped to determine policies and explained them, if necessary, to the parlement. Now and again he served on major diplomatic missions. He was appointed for life by the king, but, if necessary, his functions could be performed by a Keeper of the Seals, who did not have his prestige or influence.

The chancery was the nearest equivalent to a modern ministry. In 1500 it had a staff of 120 which grew even larger during the sixteenth century. Unlike the ‘sovereign courts’, it continued to follow the king on his travels. Originally, all the chancery clerks drew up documents to be sealed by the great seal, but during the Middle Ages they began to specialize: the clercs du secret drafted documents emanating directly from the king; in time they became known as secretaries. Under an ordinance of 1482 notaries of the chancery were effectively granted a monopoly of drawing up and signing all royal acts, chancery letters, conciliar decisions and decrees of the ‘sovereign courts’. They were automatically ennobled and enjoyed the privilege of committimus as well as numerous tax exemptions. The quantity of documents processed by them was enormous.

Closely associated with the chancellor were the masters of requests (maîtres des requêtes de l’hôtel). There were eight of them about 1500, but their number increased rapidly thereafter. Under an edict of 1493 they were authorized to preside at the courts of the bailliages and sénéchaussées, to receive complaints against local officials and to correct abuses. They could preside at the Grand conseil and sit in the parlement, where they ranked immediately below the presidents. The masters of requests were often given temporary commissions in financial, diplomatic and judicial affairs. They were the ancestors of the intendants, who became the principal agents of royal centralization in the seventeenth century.

The Great Council (Grand conseil) was an exclusively judicial body which had taken over part of the work formerly exercised by the king’s council: it investigated complaints against royal officials, intervened in conflicts of jurisdiction between other courts and could revoke enactments that the parlement had registered. It also acted as a court of appeal and of first instance for a wide range of lawsuits. Though the Great Council’s procedure was fairly simple and relatively cheap, it had one serious disadvantage for suitors: like the king’s council, it continued to follow the king on his travels through the kingdom. It carried its records around, and suitors had to change their lawyers as it moved from place to place. Because of its closeness to the king’s person, the Great Council was more susceptible to his influence than was the parlement, and he often used it to bend the law to his interest.

The king of France was first and foremost a judge, and the earliest form of royal intervention at the local level had been the establishment of officials charged with exercising justice in his name. At the bottom of the hierarchy, but above the judges of the feudal courts, were magistrates, called prévôts, viguiers or vicomtes, whose powers were limited to the simplest cases. The basic unit of local government was the bailliage (sometimes called sénéchaussée). The kingdom comprised about 100 such units, which could vary enormously in size. By the sixteenth century, the official in charge of the bailliage, the bailli (or sénéchal), had purely honorific or military duties (for example, he summoned the feudal levy, called the ban et arrière-ban), but the tribunal of the bailliage, under the bailli’s deputy or lieutenant and his staff, was a hive of activity, bustling with barristers, solicitors, sergeants and ushers. The bailliage judged on appeal cases sent up from inferior courts and in first instance cases concerning privileged persons or cas royaux. These were crimes committed against the king’s person, rights and demesne, ranging from treason and lèse-majesté to rape and high-way robbery. In addition to their judicial competence, the bailliages had important administrative powers: they published royal statutes and issued decrees of their own.

Above the bailliages were the parlements of which there were seven in 1500: Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen and Aix-en-Provence. The oldest and most prestigious was the Parlement of Paris which had ‘gone out of court’ in the thirteenth century and was now permanently based in Paris in the old royal palace on the Ile de la Cité. Though separate from the king’s council, the parlement was still considered to be part of it: thus peers of the realm were entitled to sit in it and when the king came to the parlement, accompanied by his ministers and advisers to hold a lit de justice, the old Curia regis was in effect reconstituted for the occasion. The parlement’s view of royal absolutism differed from the king’s: while admitting that authority resided in the king’s person, it did not believe that he could treat the kingdom as he liked. He was its administrator, not its owner, and was bound to observe the so-called ‘fundamental laws’ governing the succession to the throne and preservation of the royal demesne. The parlement’s view implied a distinction between the sovereign as an ideal and the fallible creature who occupied the throne. It saw its own function as that of protecting the interests of the ideal sovereign from the errors that the human king might commit. The parlement’s magistrates liked to compare themselves to the senators of ancient Rome, an analogy resented by the king. In 1500 the Parlement of Paris consisted of five chambers: the Grand’ chambre, two Chambres des enquêtes, the Chambre des requêtes and the Tournelle criminelle, with a combined personnel of about sixty lay and clerical councillors.

Originally, the parlement’s ressort or area of jurisdiction had been the whole kingdom, but as this had been enlarged a number of provincial parlements had been created. Yet the Parlement of Paris retained control of two-thirds of the kingdom. It was responsible for the whole of France, excluding Normandy, as far south as the Lyonnais and Upper Auvergne. Within this area it judged a wide variety of cases in first instance and on appeal. But it was not just a court of law: it regulated such matters as public hygiene or the upkeep of roads, bridges and quays; it ensured that Paris received enough grain and fuel, controlled the quality, weight and price of bread, fixed wages and hours of work, punished shoddy workmanship, and intervened in academic matters. As printing came into its own, the parlement began to control the book trade. Not even the church escaped its vigilance. No papal bull could be applied to France if it had not been registered by the parlement. The court also kept an eye on the conduct of royal officials in the provinces.

Finally, the parlement played a significant role in politics by ratifying royal legislation. If it found an enactment satisfactory, this was registered and published forthwith; if not, the parlement submitted remonstrances (remontrances) to the king, either verbally or in writing, whereupon he would either modify the enactment or issue a lettre de jussion ordering the court to register the act as it stood without delay. Such a move might lead to more remonstrances and more lettres de jussion. In the end, if the parlement remained obdurate, the king would hold a lit de justice, that is to say, he would resume the authority he had delegated to the parlement by coming to the court in person and presiding over the registration of the controversial measure himself. Only the Grand’ chambre was entitled to register royal enactments or issue decrees (arrêts). Its official head was the chancellor of France, but its effective head was the First President (Premier président) of the parlement, who was assisted by three other presidents and about thirty lay and clerical councillors.

The provincial parlements developed out of the courts that had existed in the great fiefs before their absorption into the kingdom. Modelled on the Paris parlement, they exercised a similar jurisdiction within their respective areas. All claimed equality of authority and jurisdiction with the Parlement of Paris, but the latter had privileges that made it unique. Each parlement was sovereign within its own area in respect of registering royal enactments: thus a law registered by the Parlement of Paris could not be applied in Languedoc unless it had been registered by the Parlement of Toulouse.

A major figure in French local government around 1500 was the provincial governor. There were eleven governorships (gouvernements) corresponding roughly with the kingdom’s border provinces. The governors were normally recruited from princes of the blood and high nobility. Although closely identified with the person and authority of the monarch, the governor was only a commissioner who could be revoked at the king’s will. His powers, as laid out in his commission or letters of provision, were seldom clearly defined. While it was customary for his military responsibilities, such as the securing of fortresses and the supplying or disciplining of troops, to be stressed, there was also often a clause open to wide interpretation. Thus in 1515, Odet de Foix, governor of Guyenne, was instructed ‘generally to do … all that we would see and recognize as necessary for the good of ourselves and our affairs …’ which amounted to a general delegation of royal authority. But the commissions lacked uniformity: the king, it seems, was more concerned with adapting to local circumstances than establishing functional harmony among his senior provincial representatives. A governor seldom resided in his province as he was often at court or fighting for the king. The exercise of his local duties was therefore delegated to a lieutenant, who was usually a lesser nobleman or prelate. But a governor could still do much for his province, even at a distance. He could, for example, ensure that its grievances received the attention of the king’s council.

A governor’s presence at court gave him unique opportunities of patronage which he might use to build up a powerful clientele within his province. This comprised three elements: the regular army (compagnies d’ordonnance), household officers and servants, and local gentlemen. Nearly all the governors were captains of the gendarmerie – the heavily armoured cavalry – and as such controlled recruitment and promotion within its ranks. A governor also had a large private household which provided employment for local noblemen and education for their children. All of this clearly made him potentially dangerous to the crown, for he might use his personal following within his province to undermine royal authority.

The most complex and least efficient part of French government at the end of the Middle Ages was the fiscal administration. This was built essentially around two kinds of revenue: the ‘ordinary’ revenue (finances ordinaires), which the king drew from his demesne, and the ‘extraordinary’ revenue (finances extraordinaires) which he got from taxation. The ‘extraordinary’ revenue owed its name to the fact that originally it had been levied for a special purpose and for a limited time, usually in wartime. By 1500, however, it came from regular taxes levied in peace and war. The ‘ordinary’ revenue consisted not only of fixed and predictable feudal rents, but also of a wide range of variable dues owed to the king as suzerain.

The ‘extraordinary’ revenue comprised three main taxes: the taille, the gabelle and the aides. The taille was the only direct tax. It was levied annually, the amount being decided by the king’s council, and it could be supplemented by a crue or surtax. There were two sorts of taille: the taille réelle was a land tax payable by everyone irrespective of social rank, and the taille personnelle fell mainly on land owned by unprivileged commoners. The former was obviously fairer, but it was found only in a few areas, notably Provence and Languedoc. The nobility and clergy were exempt from the taille, but it does not follow that all the rest of society was liable. Many professional groups (for example, royal officials, military personnel, municipal officials, lawyers, university teachers and students) were exempt, as were a large number of towns, called villes franches, including Paris. Thus if the peasantry was taillable, the same was not true of the bourgeoisie as a whole.

The gabelle was a tax on salt. By the late Middle Ages the salt trade had become so important in France that the crown decided to take a share of the profits by controlling its sale and distribution. But royal control was strongest in the northern and central provinces (pays de grandes gabelles), which had constituted the demesne of King Charles V (1346–80). Here the salt was taken to royal warehouses (greniers à sel), where it was weighed and allowed to dry, usually for two years. It was then weighed again and taxed before the merchant who owned it was allowed to sell it. As a safeguard against illicit trading in salt, the crown introduced the system of sel par impôt, whereby every household had to purchase from a royal warehouse enough salt for its average needs. Outside the pays de grandes gabelles, the salt tax was levied in different ways: in the west of France it was a quarter or a fifth of the sale price, while in the south a tariff was levied as the salt passed through royal warehouses situated along the coast near areas of production.

The aides were duties levied on various commodities sold regularly and in large quantities. The rate of tax was one sou per livre on all merchandise sold wholesale or retail, except wine and other beverages which were taxed both ways. An important aide was the levy on livestock raised in many towns; another was the aide on wine, called vingtième et huitième. But indirect taxation was, like the taille, subject to local variations; several parts of France were exempt from the aides.

The usual method of tax collection in respect of the taille was for the leading men of a parish to elect from among themselves an assessor and a collector. The assessment, once completed, was read out in church by the local priest; a week later the parishioners paid their taxes to the collector as they left church. The assessor and collector were not inclined to be lenient, for they were liable to be imprisoned or to have their property sequestered if the sum collected fell short of the anticipated total. Indirect taxes were usually farmed by the highest bidder at an auction.

The most lucrative tax was the taille, which amounted to 2.4 million livres out of a total revenue of 4.9 million in 1515. It was followed by the aides, which brought in about a third of the taille. As for the gabelle, it was bringing in 284,000 livres (about six per cent of the total revenue).

The fiscal administration in 1500, like the tax system, had not changed since the reign of Charles VII (1422–61). It comprised two administrations corresponding with the two kinds of revenue. The Trésor, which was responsible for the ‘ordinary’ revenue, was under four trésoriers de France who had very wide powers. Each was responsible for one of four areas, called respectively Languedoïl, Languedoc, Normandy and Outre-Seine-et-Yonne. The trésoriers supervised the collection and disbursement of revenues, but did not handle them. This task was left to the receveurs ordinaires, who were each responsible for a subdivision of the bailliage. The receiver-general for all revenues from the demesne was the changeur du Trésor, who was based in Paris, but only a small proportion of the revenues actually reached him, for the crown settled many debts by means of warrants (décharges) assigned on a local treasurer. This avoided the expense and risk of transporting large amounts of cash along dangerous, bandit-infested roads, while passing on the recovery costs to the creditor.

The four généraux des finances, who had charge of the ‘extraordinary’ revenues, had virtually the same powers as the trésoriers de France, each being responsible for an area, called généralité. These were subdivided into élections, of which there were 85 in 1500, but in general there were no élections in areas which had retained their representative estates (pays d’états). The élection owed its name to the élu, an official whose main function was to carry out regular tours of inspection (chevauchées) of his district, checking its ability to pay and the trust-worthiness of his underlings.

The personnel responsible for the administration of the gabelles varied according to the different kinds of salt tax. In the pays de grandes gabelles; each royal warehouse was under a grenetier assisted by a contrôleur, elsewhere the tax was farmed out by commissioners.

On the same level as the changeur du Trésor and performing the same duties, though in respect of the ‘extraordinary’ revenue, were the four receveurs généraux des finances, one for each généralité.

The two fiscal administrations were not entirely separate, for the trésoriers de France and généraux des finances (known collectively as gens des finances) were expected to reside at court whenever they were not carrying out inspections of their respective areas. They formed a financial committee, which met regularly and independently of the king’s council, and were empowered to take certain decisions on their own. They also attended the king’s council whenever important financial matters were discussed. However, their most important duty was to draw up at the start of each year a sort of national budget (état général par estimation), based on accounts sent in by each financial district.