How France became a centralized kingdom
The phrase “the centralization of the French state” can mean too many things, and historians have used it in too many ways. The older constitutionalist historiography of the late 19th and early 20th century — Émile Perrot, Paul Viollet, the early work of Maurice Bloch — treated the centralization of the French state as a long, continuous process that began in the reign of Philip Augustus and was completed in the reign of Louis XIV. The newer scholarship has been more careful. Joseph Strayer’s On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (1970) and Charles Tilly’s Coercion, Capital, and European States (1990) re-framed the question in the longer terms of fiscal-military development. The specific political moment that the phrase is best applied to, however, is the period from the Treaty of Arras of 1435 to the death of Louis XI in 1483. In that half-century the French kings reconstructed the institutions of the central state — the army, the tax system, the royal courts, the provincial administration — in a form that was recognisably early modern. The reconstruction was not, of course, the work of a single hand: it was the work of the king, the council, the chanceries, the parlements, the bailliages and sénéchaussées, and the great officers of the crown. This article treats the institutional reconstruction of the French state in the years 1435–1483.
From disaster to recovery, 1429–1445
The French state that emerged in the late fifteenth century was not the state that had collapsed in the late fourteenth. The state of Charles V, the legendary “Charles the Wise” who died at Vincennes in September 1380, was a federation of great territorial princes held together by a sophisticated system of royal officers, royal taxation, and royal justice. The state of Charles V had survived the madness of Charles VI (r. 1380–1422) and the disasters of the Hundred Years’ War, but only just. The defeat of the French nobility at Agincourt on 25 October 1415, the death of Charles V’s brothers at the battles of Nicopolis (1396) and Agincourt, the murder of the duke of Burgundy in 1419, the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, the long English occupation of Paris and the Île-de-France, and the English conquest of Normandy (1417–1419) were the disasters of the period. The French state, in 1422, was reduced to a set of territories south of the Loire, with a mad king, a regent (the duke of Bedford for Henry VI of England), and a small group of great officers.
The recovery began, conventionally, with the appearance of Joan of Arc at Chinon in February 1429, the lifting of the siege of Orléans on 8 May 1429, the coronation of Charles VII at Reims on 17 July 1429, and the long and difficult campaign that culminated in the recapture of Paris in 1436. The recovery was consolidated by the Treaty of Arras of 21 September 1435, by which Charles VII reconciled with Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and by which the English were excluded from the French succession. The Treaty of Arras was the political basis of the new French state. It was the moment at which the great territorial princes, the dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, and Orléans, the counts of Foix and Armagnac, accepted the personal rule of the French king.
The standing army: the companies of the ordonnance
The first of the great institutional reforms of Charles VII was the creation of the compagnies d’ordonnance by the Ordinance of 2 November 1445. The Ordinance divided the kingdom into fifteen compagnies of 100 lances fournies each — a lance was a small unit, comprising a man-at-arms and a set of archers, crossbowmen, and varlets. The total was 1,500 lances — perhaps 7,500 men, a relatively small force, but the first standing army in western Europe. The compagnies d’ordonnance were a salaried, professional, and disciplined force. The king was to be the only paymaster, and the men were to be recruited by the great officers of the crown (the constable, the marshals) from the lesser nobility. The compagnies were housed in the garrisons of the kingdom, in a system of fortified towns and castles that the Ordinance also established.
The Ordinance of 1445 was the work of Bureau de la Rivière and of the young Bureau brothers, Jean and Pierre Bureau, the king’s most trusted officials in the 1440s. The most important point about the compagnies d’ordonnance is that they were, in the technical sense, the first standing army in western Europe. The English kings had raised armies by contract and indenture, the Burgundian dukes had had their own compagnies in the 1430s, but the French compagnies d’ordonnance were a permanent, salaried, and disciplined force, raised by the king and answerable to the king. They were, as Philippe Contamine argued in Guerre, État et société à la fin du Moyen Âge (1972), the basis of the new French state. They were also, in the longer term, the model for the standing armies of the early modern European state.
The fiscal-military state: the taille and the aides
The second of the great institutional reforms was the establishment of the taille as a permanent direct tax on the peasantry. The taille had been collected on an ad hoc basis since the 14th century; the Ordinance of 1439 made it a permanent tax. The Ordinance of 1439 was, in form, a military ordinance: it required the parishes of each élection to maintain a certain number of men-at-arms in the compagnies d’ordonnance. In substance, however, the Ordinance of 1439 was a fiscal ordinance: it was the basis of the new fiscal system that would, in the long run, be the basis of the French nation-state.
The taille was the most important of the new taxes. The other great taxes were the aides (the indirect taxes on the sale of wine, beer, and other goods) and the gabelle (the tax on salt). The aides had been granted by the Estates General of 1355, the Grand Ordonnance of December 1355, in the context of the long crisis of the reign of John II; the gabelle was a fiscal innovation of the late 14th century that became, in the course of the 15th century, a permanent tax in the pays de l’élection. The taille, the aides, and the gabelle were the three great taxes of the new French state. They were collected by the élus (the elected officials of the élections) and by the généraux des finances (the great officers of the royal treasury). They were administered by the parlement of Paris and by the chambre des comptes.
The fiscal system of Charles VII was, in the technical sense, the most important in western Europe. The taille yielded, in the late 15th century, perhaps 2 million livres tournois a year; the aides and the gabelle added another 1.5 million. The total revenue of the French crown in the late 15th century was, in the calculation of John Bell Henneman, perhaps 4.5 million livres tournois, a sum that was considerably larger than the revenues of any other western European state. The system was the basis of the new French state; it was also, in the longer term, the basis of the French nation-state of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The royal courts and the provincial administration
The third of the great institutional reforms was the development of the parlement of Paris and the establishment of the bailliage system. The parlement of Paris was, in the late 15th century, the supreme court of the kingdom. It had been established in the 13th century, and it had been reorganised in the 14th and 15th centuries. The parlement was a court of last resort, and it had, in the late 15th century, a significant political role. The parlement also had a legislative function: it registered the king’s edicts and gave them the force of law. The lit de justice — the formal session of the parlement at which the king presided — was the constitutional moment at which the king, the princes, and the great officers of the crown met in the formal presence of the sovereign. Sarah Hanley’s The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France (1983) is the indispensable modern study.
The bailliage system was the administrative system of the kingdom. The baillis and sénéchaux were the great officers of the crown in the provinces; they had, in the late 15th century, a wide range of judicial, fiscal, and military functions. The bailliage system was supplemented, in the late 15th century, by the system of gouvernements — the great military commands of the kingdom, each of which was to be held by a prince of the blood or a great officer of the crown. The gouvernements were the basis of the new provincial administration, and they were, in the longer term, the basis of the French nation-state. The system was, in the calculation of James B. Collins’s The State in Early Modern France (1995, 2nd ed. 2009), the basis of the early modern French state.
From apanages to crown provinces: the annexation of Burgundy
The fourth of the great institutional reforms was the annexation of the apanages. The apanages were the great territorial principalities that had been granted to the younger sons of the French king, and they were, in the 14th and 15th centuries, the basis of the great territorial dynasties. The duchy of Burgundy, granted to Philip the Bold in 1363, had been the most important of the apanages; the duchy of Orléans, granted to Louis, the brother of Charles VI, was the second most important. The system of apanages was, in the long run, incompatible with the centralised state. The apanages were abolished, in effect, by the deaths of Charles the Bold in 1477 and of Louis of Orléans in 1515. The duchy of Burgundy was annexed to the French crown in 1477; the duchy of Orléans was annexed in 1515; the duchy of Bourbon was annexed in 1523. The annexation of the apanages was, in the calculation of Robert Harding’s Anatomy of a Power Elite (1978), the end of the old feudal system of the French state.
The political work of the period 1435–1483 was, in sum, the construction of the new French state. The standing army, the fiscal system, the royal courts, the provincial administration, and the annexation of the apanages were the five great institutional reforms. The reforms were the work of Charles VII and Louis XI, and they were carried through by a small but remarkably able group of royal officials — Bureau de la Rivière, the Bureau brothers, Jacques Cœur, the famous argentier of Charles VII, who was ruined in 1451 by a charge of peculation that was politically motivated. The reforms were, in the longer term, the basis of the early modern French state.
Reading the French state
The historiography of the late medieval French state has been transformed in the past half-century. The older constitutionalist historiography, the work of Marcelin Defourneaux, Pierre Goubert, and the early Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, treated the centralization of the French state as a long, continuous process. The newer scholarship, the work of Joseph Strayer, Charles Tilly, and the contributors to the Cambridge History of Medieval France (2018), has been more attentive to the specific political and economic circumstances that produced it. The specific political moment that the phrase “the centralization of the French state” is best applied to, however, is the period from 1435 to 1483. The standard modern study in English is now Peter Lewis’s Later Medieval France: The Polity (1968), which is a balanced and useful synthesis. The specific question of the fiscal-military state has been treated by John Bell Henneman in Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI (1996) and by James B. Collins in The State in Early Modern France (1995, 2nd ed. 2009). The centralization of the French state, in the long run, was a long and difficult process, and it was the work of a particular political moment.
References and further reading
- Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, 1970).
- Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford, 1990).
- James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995; 2nd ed. 2009).
- Peter Lewis, Later Medieval France: The Polity (London, 1968).
- Philippe Contamine, Guerre, État et société à la fin du Moyen Âge: Études sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494 (Paris, 1972).