France 1500

1

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, SaoÐ'? ne and RhoÐ'? ne

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, DauphineÐ'Ò'

and Provence, being east of the RhoÐ'? ne, were still not regarded as integral

parts of the French kingdom: the king was obeyed as Ð''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'oıÐ'Ёl, 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'Ambe`s 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'oıÐ'Ёl 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'oıÐ'Ёl

2 france in 1500

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'oıÐ'Ёl 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.

The law was another area lacking national unity. Each province, each

pays and often each locality had its own set of customs. Broadly speaking,

Roman law prevailed in the south while customary law existed in the north,

but patches of customary law existed in the south, while Roman law penetrated

the north to a limited extent. For a long time customs were fixed

only by practice, which made for flexibility but also uncertainty; so from

the twelfth century onwards charters were drawn up listing the customs of

individual lordships or towns. The first serious attempt to codify customs

was made by Charles VII, but no real progress was made till Charles VIII

set up a commission in 1495. It was under Louis XII, however, that codifi-

cation really got under way.

The surface area of France in 1500 was far smaller than it is today:

459,000 square kilometres as against 550,986. Yet it must have seemed

enormous to people living at the time, given the slowness of their communications.

The speed of road travel may be assessed by consulting the guidebook

published by Charles Estienne in 1553. One could cover 15 or 16

leagues in a day where the terrain was flat, 14 where it rose gently and

only 11 to 13 where it rose steeply. Thus it took normally two days to

travel from Paris to Amiens, six from Paris to Limoges, seven and a half

from Paris to Bordeaux, six to eight from Paris to Lyon and ten to fourteen

from Paris to Marseille.

The social and political implications of distance were far-reaching.

Fernand Braudel has suggested that it made for a fragmented society in

which villages, towns, pays, even provinces Ð''existed in sheltered cocoons,

having almost no contact with one another'. Yet the immobility of French

life