Defunct
153-653: Under the French Ancien Régime , a parlement ( French pronunciation: [paʁləmɑ̃] ) was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France . In 1789, France had 13 parlements , the original and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris . Though both the modern French term parlement (for the legislature) and the English word " parliament " derive from this French term,
306-552: A lettre de jussion to force them to act. By the 16th century, the parlement judges were of the opinion that their role included active participation in the legislative process, which brought them into increasing conflict with the ever increasing monarchical absolutism of the Ancien Régime, as the lit de justice evolved during the 16th century from a constitutional forum to a royal weapon, used to force registration of edicts. The transmission of judicial offices had also been
459-686: A Papal fief 36. Imperial Free City of Mulhouse 37. Savoy , a Sardinian fief (parl. in Chambéry 1537–59) 38. Nice , a Sardinian fief 39. Montbéliard , a fief of Württemberg 40. (not indicated) Trois-Évêchés ( Metz , Toul and Verdun ) 41. (not indicated) Dombes ( Trévoux ) 42. (not indicated) Navarre ( Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port ) 43. (not indicated) Soule ( Mauléon ) 44. (not indicated) Bigorre ( Tarbes ) 45. (not indicated) Beaujolais ( Beaujeu ) 46. (not indicated) Bresse ( Bourg ) 47. (not indicated) Perche ( Mortagne-au-Perche ) In an attempt to reform
612-592: A feudal country to a centralised early modern state. Internationally, Philip's ambitions made him highly influential in European affairs, and for much of his reign he sought to place his relatives on foreign thrones. Princes from his house ruled in Hungary , and he tried and failed to make another relative the Holy Roman Emperor . The most notable conflicts of Philip's reign include a dispute with
765-643: A "royal theocracy". At daybreak on Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of Templars in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later tortured into admitting heresy in the Order. The Templars were supposedly answerable only to the Pope, but Philip used his influence over Clement V , who was largely his pawn, to disband the organization. Pope Clement did attempt to hold proper trials, but Philip used
918-413: A battle with the withdrawing French or angering the young Philip, who had friendly relations with Aragon through his mother. Philip married Queen Joan I of Navarre (1271–1305) on 16 August 1284. The two were affectionate and devoted to each other and Philip refused to remarry after Joan's death in 1305, despite the great political and financial rewards of doing so. The primary administrative benefit of
1071-413: A case, the parlement's powers were suspended for the duration of this royal session. King Louis XIV moved to centralize authority into his own hands, imposing certain restrictions on the parlements: in 1665, he ordained that a lit de justice could be held without the king having to appear in person; in 1667, he limited the number of remonstrances to only one. In 1671–1673, however, the parlements resisted
1224-579: A combination of aggression, annexation and quasilegal means, he set about extending his gains to stabilize and strengthen France's frontiers, culminating in the brief War of the Reunions (1683–1684). The resulting Truce of Ratisbon guaranteed France's new borders for 20 years, but Louis XIV's subsequent actions, notably his revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, led to the deterioration of his military and political dominance. Louis XIV's decision to cross
1377-527: A common practice in France since the late Middle Ages; tenure on the court was generally bought from the royal authority; and such official positions could be made hereditary by paying a tax to the King called la paulette . Assembled in the parlements, the largely hereditary members, the provincial nobles of the robe were the strongest decentralizing force in a France that was more multifarious in its legal systems, taxation, and custom than it might have seemed under
1530-535: A decisive French victory. Consequently, in 1305, Philip forced the Flemish to accept a harsh peace treaty which exacted heavy reparations and penalties and added to the royal territory the rich cloth cities of Lille , Douai , and Bethune, sites of major cloth fairs. Béthune , first of the Flemish cities to yield, was granted to Mahaut, Countess of Artois , whose two daughters, to secure her fidelity, were married to Philip's two sons. Philip had various contacts with
1683-459: A dramatic disappearance of silver in France. Currency depreciation provided the crown with 1.419 million LP from November 1296 to Christmas 1299, more than enough to cover war costs of 1.066 million LP in the same period. The resulting inflation damaged the real incomes of the creditors such as the aristocracy and the Church, who received a weaker currency in return for the loans they had issued in
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#17327650139811836-568: A few smaller German princes and dukes in Italy. Extensive back-and-forth fighting took place in the Netherlands, but the dimensions of the war once again changed when both Emperor Leopold and his son and successor, Joseph, died. That left Archduke Charles, the second son of Leopold, younger brother to Joseph , as the Alliance candidate for both king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Since such
1989-525: A hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for. That same day, by sunset, a stake was erected on a small island in the Seine , the Ile des Juifs , near the palace garden. There de Molay and de Charney were slowly burned to death, refusing all offers of pardon for retraction, and bearing their torment with a composure which won for them the reputation of martyrs among
2142-410: A horse; she was pregnant with her fifth child at the time and had not yet been crowned queen beside her husband. A few months later, one of Philip's younger brothers, Robert, also died. Philip's father was finally crowned king at Rheims on 15 August 1271. Six days later, he married again; Philip's stepmother was Marie, daughter of the duke of Brabant. In May 1276, Philip's elder brother Louis died, and
2295-471: A measure of self-governance and control over taxation within their jurisdiction). Over time, some parlements, especially the one in Paris, gradually acquired the habit of using their right of remonstrance to refuse to register legislation, which they adjudged as either untimely or contrary to the local customary law (and there were 300 customary law jurisdictions), until the king held a lit de justice or sent
2448-526: A new tax based on the dixième , the vingtième , was enacted to reduce the royal deficit and continued for the rest of the ancien régime . Another key source of state financing was through charging fees for state positions (such as most members of parlements, magistrates, maître des requêtes and financial officers). Many of the fees were quite high, but some of the offices conferred nobility and could be financially advantageous. The use of offices to seek profit had become standard practice as early as
2601-443: A new tax would replace the corvée, and that this tax would apply to all, introducing equality as a principle – dared to remind the king: The personal service of the clergy is to fulfill all the functions relating to education and religious observances and to contribute to the relief of the unfortunate through its alms. The noble dedicates his blood to the defense of the state and assists the sovereign with his counsel. The last class of
2754-469: A peace program that was agreed to by Fleury, and the two powers formed an alliance. The Dutch Republic was much reduced in power and so agreed with Britain's idea of peace. In Vienna, the Holy Roman Empire's Habsburg emperors bickered with the new Bourbon king of Spain, Philip V, over Habsburg control of most of Italy, but relations with France were undramatic. In the mid-15th century, France
2907-516: A retribution for his destruction of the Templars, and Clement was described as shedding tears of remorse on his deathbed for three great crimes, namely the poisoning of Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor , and the ruin of the Templars and Beguines . Within fourteen years the throne passed rapidly through Philip's sons, who died relatively young, and without producing male heirs. By 1328, his male line
3060-503: A scaffold in front of Notre Dame, Jacques de Molay, Templar Grand Master, Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy, Hugues de Peraud , Visitor of France, and Godefroi de Gonneville , Master of Aquitaine, were brought forth from the jail in which for nearly seven years they had lain, to receive the sentence agreed upon by the cardinals, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and some other prelates whom they had called in. Considering
3213-623: A session of the Parlement of Paris in 1766 known as the Flagellation Session , Louis XV asserted that sovereign power resided in his person only. In the years immediately before the start of the French Revolution in 1789, their extreme concern to preserve Ancien Régime institutions of noble privilege prevented France from carrying out many simple reforms, especially in the area of taxation, even when those reforms had
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#17327650139813366-410: A sign of submission in his capacity as the duke of Aquitaine. In return, Philip would forgive Edward and restore Gascony after a grace period. In the matter of the marriage, Philip drove a hard bargain based partially on the difference in age between Edward and Margaret; it was agreed that the province of Gascony would be retained by Philip in return for agreeing to the marriage. The date of the wedding
3519-566: A sixtieth of the official charge, which permitted the titleholder to be free of the forty-day rule. The paulette and the venality of offices became key concerns in the parliamentarian revolts of the 1640s called the Fronde . The state also demanded a "free gift", which the church collected from holders of ecclesiastic offices through taxes called the décime (roughly a twentieth of the official charge, created under Francis I). State finances also relied heavily on borrowing, both private (from
3672-551: A special situation, such as war, justified it. Furthermore, the issue of coins with a lower content of silver was needed to maintain circulation, in a context where the inflation of silver produced a severe scarcity of currency due to the ongoing commercial revolution. After bringing the Flemish War to a victorious conclusion in 1305, Philip on 8 June 1306 ordered the silver content of new coinage to be raised back to its 1285 level of 3.96 grams of silver per livre . To harmonize
3825-611: A strict charter. When Philip levied taxes on the French clergy of one half their annual income, he caused an uproar within the Catholic Church and the papacy, prompting Pope Boniface VIII to issue the bull Clericis Laicos (1296), forbidding the transference of any church property to the French Crown. Philip retaliated by forbidding the removal of bullion from France. By 1297, Boniface agreed to Philip's taxation of
3978-399: A stronger currency. The indebted lower classes did not benefit from the devaluation, as the high inflation ate into the purchasing power of their money. The result was social unrest. By 22 August 1303 this practice led to a two-thirds loss in the value of the livres, sous and deniers in circulation. The defeat at the battle of Golden Spurs in 1302 was a crushing blow to French finance:
4131-515: A union between Spain and the Holy Roman Empire would be too powerful in the eyes of Charles VI's allies, most of the allies quickly concluded a separate peace with France. After another year of fruitless campaigning, Charles VI did the same and abandoned his desire to become the king of Spain. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht resolved all these issues. France gave up Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Louis XIV's grandson became King Philip V of Spain and kept all of his overseas colonies but renounced any rights to
4284-657: A vast sum of money. Domestically, his reign was marked by struggles with the Jews and the Knights Templar . In heavy debt to both groups, Philip saw them as a " state within the state " and a recurring threat to royal power. In 1306 Philip expelled the Jews from France, followed by the total destruction of the Knights Templar in 1307. To further strengthen the monarchy, Philip tried to tax and impose state control over
4437-514: A weakened Papacy, and finally, the substitution of royal officials for officers of the Temple in the financial management of French government. Recent studies emphasize the political and religious motivations of Philip the Fair and his ministers (especially Guillaume de Nogaret ). It seems that, with the "discovery" and repression of the "Templars' heresy", the Capetian monarchy claimed for itself
4590-399: Is derived from the verb parler ('to speak') + suffix -(e)ment , and originally meant a "speaking". It is attested with the meaning of "deliberating assembly" as early as c. 1165 , and passed into English with this meaning. The meaning then became more specialized in French during the 13th century, to refer to the " curia regis in judicial session; sovereign court of justice" until
4743-424: Is neither man nor beast. He is a statue." Philip, seeking to reduce the wealth and power of the nobility and clergy , relied instead on skilful civil servants, such as Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerrand de Marigny , to govern the kingdom . The king, who sought an uncontested monarchy, compelled his vassals by wars and restricted their feudal privileges, paving the way for the transformation of France from
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4896-451: The fermiers généraux ('farmers-general"). The taille was only one of a number of taxes. There also existed the taillon (a tax for military purposes), a national salt tax (the gabelle ), national tariffs (the aides ) on various products (wine, beer, oil and other goods), local tariffs on speciality products (the douane ) or levied on products entering the city (the octroi ) or sold at fairs and local taxes. Finally,
5049-465: The généralités of the Renaissance went through a variety of reforms. In 1577, Henry III established 5 treasurers ( trésoriers généraux ) in each généralité who formed a bureau of finances. In the 17th century, oversight of the généralités was subsumed by the intendants of finance, justice and police. The expression généralité and intendance became roughly synonymous. Until
5202-433: The pays d'élection , the pays d'état and the pays d'imposition . In the pays d'élection (the longest-held possessions of the French crown; some of the provinces had held the equivalent autonomy of a pays d'état but had lost it through the effects of royal reforms) the assessment and collection of taxes were trusted to elected officials (at least originally, since later on those positions were bought), and
5355-609: The gabelle or salt tax. Southern France was governed by written law adapted from the Roman legal system , but northern France used common law , codified in 1453 into a written form. The representative of the king in his provinces and cities was the gouverneur . Royal officers chosen from the highest nobility, provincial and city governors (oversight of provinces and cities was frequently combined) were predominantly military positions in charge of defense and policing. Provincial governors, also called lieutenants généraux , also had
5508-659: The Catholic Church in France , leading to a violent dispute with Pope Boniface VIII . The ensuing conflict saw the pope's residence at Anagni attacked in September 1303 by French forces with the support of the Colonna family . Pope Boniface was captured and held hostage for several days. This eventually led to the Avignon Papacy of 1309 to 1376. His final year saw a scandal amongst the royal family, known as
5661-477: The Constitutional Council of France created in 1958) and 2010 (by exception, before any court) is usually traced to that hostility towards "government by judges". Ancien R%C3%A9gime Defunct The ancien régime ( / ˌ ɒ̃ s j æ̃ r eɪ ˈ ʒ iː m / ; French: [ɑ̃sjɛ̃ ʁeʒim] ; lit. ' old rule ' ) was the political and social system of
5814-791: The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). A member of the House of Capet , Philip was born in 1268 in the medieval fortress of Fontainebleau ( Seine-et-Marne ) to the future Philip III, the Bold , and his first wife, Isabella of Aragon . His father was the heir apparent of France, being the eldest son of King Louis IX . In August 1270, when Philip was two years old, his grandfather died while on Crusade, his father became king, and his elder brother Louis became heir apparent. Only five months later, in January 1271, Philip's mother died after falling from
5967-505: The Kingdom of France that the French Revolution overturned through its abolition in 1790 of the feudal system of the French nobility and in 1792 through its execution of the king and declaration of a republic . "Ancien régime" is now a common metaphor for "a system or mode no longer prevailing". The administrative and social structures of the ancien régime in France evolved across years of state-building, legislative acts (like
6120-533: The Kingdom of Navarra ; there were also foreign enclaves like the Comtat Venaissin . In addition, certain provinces within France were ostensibly the personal fiefs of noble families. Notably the Bourbonnais , Forez and Auvergne were held by the House of Bourbon until the provinces were forcibly integrated into the royal domain in 1527 after the fall of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon . From
6273-956: The Mongol power in the Middle East, including reception at the embassy of the Uyghur monk Rabban Bar Sauma , originally from the Yuan dynasty of China . Bar Sauma presented an offer of a Franco-Mongol alliance with Arghun of the Mongol Ilkhanate in Baghdad. Arghun was seeking to join forces between the Mongols and the Europeans, against their common enemy the Muslim Mamluks . In return, Arghun offered to return Jerusalem to
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6426-722: The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts ), and internal conflicts. The attempts of the Valois Dynasty to reform and re-establish control over the scattered political centres of the country were hindered by the Wars of Religion from 1562 to 1598. During the Bourbon Dynasty , much of the reigns of Henry IV ( r. 1589–1610 ) and Louis XIII ( r. 1610–1643 ) and the early years of Louis XIV ( r. 1643–1715 ) focused on administrative centralization. Despite
6579-612: The Parlement and the Court of Auditors , a move, under a certain historical reading, towards modernity. As the Duke of Aquitaine , English King Edward I was a vassal to Philip and had to pay him homage . Following the Fall of Acre in 1291, however, the former allies started to show dissent. In 1293, following feuding between English and French sailors that led to several seized ships and
6732-465: The Pyrenees was poor but had a degree of strategic importance. When in 1328 the Capetian line went extinct, the new Valois king, Philip VI, attempted to permanently annex the lands to France, compensating the lawful claimant, Joan II of Navarre , senior heir of Philip IV, with lands elsewhere in France. However, pressure from Joan II's family led to Phillip VI surrendering the land to Joan in 1329, and
6885-735: The Rhine in September 1688 was designed to extend his influence and to pressure the Holy Roman Empire into accepting his territorial and dynastic claims, but Leopold I and the German princes resolved to resist, and the States General and William III brought the Dutch and the English into the war against France. Louis XIV faced a powerful coalition aimed at curtailing his ambitions. The main fighting took place around France's borders in
7038-591: The Sovereign Council of Navarre and Béarn and the Sovereign Court of Lorraine and Barrois ). As noted by James Stephen : There was, however, no substantial difference between the various supreme provincial judicatures of France, except such as resulted from the inflexible varieties of their various local circumstances. From 1770 to 1774 the Chancellor of France , Maupeou , tried to abolish
7191-740: The Spanish Netherlands , the Rhineland , the Duchy of Savoy , and Catalonia . The fighting generally favoured Louis XIV's armies, but by 1696, France was in the grip of an economic crisis. The maritime powers (England and the Dutch Republic) were also financially exhausted, and when Savoy defected from the alliance, all of the parties were keen for a negotiated settlement. By the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), Louis XIV retained
7344-460: The Tour de Nesle affair , in which King Philip's three daughters-in-law were accused of adultery . His three sons were successively kings of France : Louis X , Philip V , and Charles IV . Their rapid successive deaths without surviving sons of their own would compromise the future of the French royal house, which had until then seemed secure, precipitating a succession crisis that eventually led to
7497-832: The "515". These representations are centered around Capaneo, referring to the myth of the Seven against Thebes , and are related to the Beast from the Sea in the Revelation of St. John , whose seventh head, like the Giant, is also killed. Such a scheme is related to the transposition of the Revelation in the history, according to the ideas of Joachim of Fiore . Philip is the title character in Le Roi de fer (1955), translated as The Iron King ,
7650-444: The 12th and the 13th centuries. A law in 1467 made these offices irrevocable except through the death, resignation or forfeiture of the title holder, and the offices, once bought, tended to become hereditary charges that were passed on within families with a fee for transfer of title. In an effort to increase revenue, the state often turned to the creation of new offices. Before it was made illegal in 1521, it had been possible to leave
7803-401: The 15 months which followed this battle saw a depreciation of the currency by 37%, and new decrees were issued forbidding the export of gold and silver abroad. The royal government had to order officials and subjects to provide all or half, respectively, of their silver vessels for minting into coins. New taxes were levied to pay for the deficit. As people attempted to move their wealth out of
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#17327650139817956-411: The 1750s. After 1715, during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI , the parlements repeatedly challenged the crown for control over policy, especially regarding taxes and religion. Furthermore, the parlements had taken the habit of passing arrêts de règlement , which were laws or regulatory decrees that applied within their jurisdiction for the application of royal edicts or of customary practices. At
8109-407: The 17th century all demanded great sums, which needed to be raised by taxes, such as the land tax ( taille ) and the tax on salt ( gabelle ), and by contributions of men and service from the nobility. One key to the centralization was the replacing of personal patronage systems, which had been organised around the king and other nobles, by institutional systems that were constructed around
8262-412: The Ancien Régime parlements were not legislative bodies and the modern and ancient terminology are not interchangeable. Parlements were judicial organizations consisting of a dozen or more appellate judges, or about 1,100 judges nationwide. They were the courts of final appeal of the judicial system, and typically wielded power over a wide range of subjects, particularly taxation. Laws and edicts issued by
8415-507: The Aragonese War were still being paid back in 1306. To cover the deficit, Pope Nicholas IV in 1289 granted Philip permission to collect a tithe of 152,000 LP ( livres parisis ) from the Church lands in France. With revenues of 1.52 million LP, the church in France had greater fiscal resources than the royal government, whose ordinary revenues in 1289 amounted to 595,318 LP and overall revenues to 1.2 million LP. By November 1290,
8568-538: The Christians, once it was re-captured from the Muslims. Philip seemingly responded positively to the request of the embassy by sending one of his noblemen, Gobert de Helleville , to accompany Bar Sauma back to Mongol lands. There was further correspondence between Arghun and Philip in 1288 and 1289, outlining potential military cooperation. However, Philip never actually pursued such military plans. In April 1305,
8721-705: The Crown were not official in their respective jurisdictions until the parlements gave their assent by publishing them. The members of the parlements were aristocrats, called nobles of the robe , who had bought or inherited their offices, and were independent of the King. Sovereign councils ( conseils souverains ) with analogous attributes, more rarely called high councils ( conseils supérieurs ) or in one instance sovereign court ( cour souveraine ), were created in new territories (notably in New France ). Some of these were eventually replaced by parlements (e.g.
8874-430: The Dutchman Piet Hein . English mariners nevertheless seriously pursued the opportunities for privateering and trade in Spain's colonies. As he neared his death, Charles II bequeathed his throne to the Bourbon candidate, the future Philip V of Spain. Philip's grandfather, Louis XIV, eagerly endorsed the choice and made unilateral aggressive moves to safeguard the viability of his family's new possessions, such as moving
9027-408: The English over King Edward I 's duchy in southwestern France and a war with the County of Flanders , who had rebelled against French royal authority and humiliated Philip at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302. The war with the Flemish resulted in Philip's ultimate victory , after which he received a significant portion of Flemish cities, which were added to the crown lands along with
9180-426: The French Revolution, several other parlements would be steadily created all over France ( see § List of parlements and sovereign councils of the Kingdom of France , below ); these locations were provincial capitals of those provinces with strong historical traditions of independence before they were annexed to France (in some of these regions, provincial States-General also continued to meet and legislate with
9333-408: The French army into the Spanish Netherlands and securing exclusive trading rights for the French in Spanish America . However, a coalition of enemies opposed to that rapid expansion of French power quickly formed, and a major European war broke out from 1701 to 1714. To France's enemies, the notion of France gaining enormous strength by taking over Spain and all its European and overseas possessions
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#17327650139819486-399: The French throne itself, leading to the Hundred Years' War . Philip suffered a major setback when an army of 2,500 noble men-at-arms (knights and squires) and 4,000 infantry he sent to suppress an uprising in Flanders was defeated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk on 11 July 1302. Philip reacted with energy two years later at the Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle , which ended in
9639-464: The French throne. Spain lost its European holdings outside the homeland itself. The former members of the alliance also profited from the war. The Dutch maintained their independence in the face of French aggression. The Habsburgs picked up territory north of Austria and in Italy, including the Spanish Netherlands and Naples. However, the greatest beneficiary of the war was Great Britain , since in addition to extensive extra-European territorial gains at
9792-400: The Fronde and other major internal conflicts violently contested additional centralization. The drive for centralization related directly to questions of royal finances and the ability to wage war. The internal conflicts and dynastic crises of the 16th and the 17th centuries between Catholics and Protestants, the Habsburgs ' internal family conflict, and the territorial expansion of France in
9945-438: The Jewish mints to put the revaluation to effect, Philip ordered the expulsion of the Jews on 22 July 1306 and confiscated their property on 23 August, collecting at least 140,000 LP with this measure. With the Jews gone, Philip appointed royal guardians to collect the loans made by the Jews, and the money was passed to the Crown. After Philip, his son Louis X of France , in 1315, invited Jews back with an offer of 12 years under
10098-454: The Parlement of Paris addressed to Louis XVI in March 1776, in which the Second Estate , the nobility, resisted the beginning of certain reforms that would remove their privileges, notably their exemption from taxes. The objections were made in reaction to the essay, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses ("Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth") by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot . The Second Estate reacted to
10251-411: The Parlement of Paris in order to strengthen the Crown. However, when King Louis XV died in 1774, the parlements were reinstated. The parlements spearheaded the aristocracy's resistance to the absolutism and centralization of the Crown, but they worked primarily for the benefit of their own class, the French nobility. Alfred Cobban argues that the parlements were the chief obstacles to any reform before
10404-427: The Revolution, as well as the most formidable enemies of the French Crown. He concludes that the Parlement of Paris, though no more in fact than a small, selfish, proud and venal oligarchy, regarded itself, and was regarded by public opinion, as the guardian of the constitutional liberties of France. In November 1789, early in the French Revolution , all the parlements were suspended. The Old French word parlement
10557-402: The Third Estate's ability to advance. The reforms proposed by Turgot and argued against in the protests of the Parlement of Paris conflicted with the Second Estates' interests to keep their hereditary privileges, and was the first step toward reform that seeped into the political arena. Turgot's reforms were unpopular among the commoners as well, who saw the parlements as their best defense against
10710-424: The ability to convoke provincial parlements , provincial estates and municipal bodies. The title gouverneur first appeared under Charles VI . The Ordinance of Blois in 1579 reduced their number to 12, and an ordinance of 1779 increased their number to 39 (18 first-class governors and 21 second-class governors). Although in principle, they were the king's representatives, and their charges could be revoked at
10863-429: The apparent unifying rule of its kings. Nevertheless, the Parlement of Paris had the largest jurisdiction of all the parlements, covering the major part of northern and central France, and was simply known as "the parlement". The Parlement of Paris played a major role in stimulating the nobility to resist the expansion of royal power by military force during the Fronde , 1648–1649. In the end, King Louis XIV won out and
11016-409: The assessment of the tax was established by local councils and the tax was generally " real " and so was attached to non-noble lands (nobles with such lands were required to pay taxes on them). Pays d'imposition were recently conquered lands that had their own local historical institutions (they were similar to the pays d'état under which they are sometimes grouped), but taxation was overseen by
11169-570: The books, were rarely applied after 1750. Ultimately, judicial torture and cruel methods of executions were abolished in 1788 by King Louis XVI . The parlements were abolished by the National Constituent Assembly on 6 September 1790. The behavior of the parlements is one of the reasons that since the French Revolution , French courts have been forbidden by Article 5 of the French civil code to create law and act as legislative bodies, their only mandate being to interpret
11322-456: The church benefited from a mandatory tax or tithe , the dîme . Louis XIV created several additional tax systems, including the capitation , which began in 1695 and touched every person, including nobles and the clergy although exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum and the "dixième" (1710–1717, restarted in 1733), which enacted to support the military and was a true tax on income and on property value. In 1749, under Louis XV ,
11475-549: The clergy in emergencies. In 1301, Philip had the bishop of Pamier arrested for treason. Boniface called French bishops to Rome to discuss Philip's actions. In response, Philip convoked an assembly of bishops, nobles and grand bourgeois of Paris in order to condemn the Pope. This precursor to the Estates General appeared for the first time during his reign, a measure of the professionalism and order that his ministers were introducing into government. This assembly, which
11628-590: The corvée. In practice, anyone who paid a small fee could escape the corvée, so this burden of labor fell only to the poorest in France. The Second Estate was also exempt from the gabelle , which was the unpopular tax on salt, and also the taille , a land tax paid by peasants, and the oldest form of taxation in France. The Second Estate feared that it would have to pay the tax replacing the suppressed corvée. The nobles saw this tax as especially humiliating and below them, as they took great pride in their titles and their lineage, which often included those who had died in
11781-404: The country in non-monetary form, Philip banned merchandise exports without royal approval. The king obtained another crusade tithe from the pope and returned the royal treasure to the Temple to gain the Templars as his creditors again. Despite their consequences these decisions were not considered immoral at that time, as they were the prince's accepted right, and this right could be taken far if
11934-476: The county of Flanders declared its independence from France. This conflict accelerated the financial problems incurred by the french monarch. As warfare continued and fiscal deficits persisted, Philip had no remedy but to use debasement of coinage as an alternative tool to meet his military expenditures. This measure made people wary of taking their coins to royal mints, preferring to take their silver abroad to exchange it for strong currencies, which by 1301 led to
12087-469: The crime and the social class of the victim, death could be by decapitation with a sword (for nobles), hanging (for most of the secondary crimes by commoners), the breaking wheel (for some heinous crimes by commoners). Some crimes, such as regicide , exacted even more horrific punishment, as drawing and quartering . With the spread of enlightenment ideas throughout France, most forms of judicial torture had fallen out of favor, and while they remained on
12240-408: The date that the transfer of title was to take effect open-ended. In 1534, a rule adapted from church practice made the successor's right void if the preceding office holder died within forty days of the transfer, and the office returned to the state. However, a new fee, the survivance jouissante protected against that rule. In 1604, Sully created a new tax, the paulette or "annual tax" of
12393-540: The decimation of a generation of French nobility at the Battle of the Golden Spurs forced Philip to abandon his occupation of Aquitaine. Pursuant to the terms of the interim 1299 Treaty of Montreuil , the marriage of Philip's young daughter Isabella to Edward's son Edward II was celebrated at Boulogne on 25 January 1308. Meant to further seal a lasting peace, it eventually produced an English claimant to
12546-494: The defense of France. They saw this elimination of tax privilege as the gateway for more attacks on their rights and urged Louis XVI throughout the protests of the Parlement of Paris not to enact the proposed reforms. These exemptions, as well as the right to wear a sword and their coat of arms, encouraged the idea of a natural superiority over the commoners that was common through the Second Estate, and as long as any noble
12699-584: The deficit stood at 6% of revenues. In 1291 the budget swung back into surplus only to fall into deficit again in 1292. The constant deficits led Philip to order the arrest of the Lombard merchants, who had earlier made him extensive loans on the pledge of repayment from future taxation. The Lombards' assets were seized by government agents and the crown extracted 250,000 LT by forcing the Lombards to purchase French nationality. Despite this draconian measure,
12852-614: The deficits continued to stack up in 1293. By 1295, Philip had replaced the Templars with the Florentine Franzesi bankers as his main source of finance. The Italians could raise huge loans far beyond the capacities of the Templars, and Philip came to rely on them more and more. The royal treasure was transferred from the Paris Temple to the Louvre around this time. In 1294, France and England went to war and in 1297,
13005-486: The double board, which was accused of poor oversight, made numerous administrative reforms, including the restructuring of the financial administration and increasing the number of généralités . In 1542, France was divided into 16 généralités . The number increased to 21 at the end of the 16th century and to 36 at the time of the French Revolution; the last two were created in 1784. The administration of
13158-455: The eight-year-old Philip became heir apparent. It was suspected that Louis had been poisoned, and that his stepmother, Marie of Brabant , had instigated the murder. One reason for these rumours was the fact that the queen had given birth to her own first son the month Louis died. However, both Philip and his surviving full brother Charles lived well into adulthood and raised large families of their own. The scholastic part of Philip's education
13311-817: The end of the Ancien Régime . (The sense of "legislative assembly" or "legislative body" was used in English, parliament , in the 14th century.) The first parlement in Ancien Régime France developed in the 13th century out of the King's Council (French: Conseil du roi , Latin : curia regis ), and consequently enjoyed ancient, customary consultative and deliberative prerogatives. St. Louis established only one of these crown courts, which had no fixed locality, but followed him wherever he went. [...] The "parlement" of St. Louis consisted of three high barons, three prelates, and nineteen knights, to whom were added 18 councillors or men learned in
13464-466: The end of the 13th century. As the popularity of the Crusades had decreased, support for the military orders had waned, and Philip used a disgruntled complaint against the Knights Templar as an excuse to move against the entire organization as it existed in France, in part to free himself from his debts. Other motives appear to have included concern over perceived heresy, assertion of French control over
13617-409: The entire kingdom as it was in the 14th century, but did not automatically advance in step with the Crown's ever expanding realm. In 1443, following the turmoil of the Hundred Years' War , King Charles VII of France granted Languedoc its own parlement by establishing the Parlement of Toulouse , the first parlement outside Paris; its jurisdiction extended over most of southern France. From 1443 until
13770-428: The essay with anger to convince the king that the nobility still served a very important role and still deserved the same privileges of tax exemption as well as for the preservation of the guilds and corporations put in place to restrict trade, both of which were eliminated in the reforms proposed by Turgot. In their remonstrance against the edict suppressing the corvée (March 1776), the Parlement of Paris – afraid that
13923-619: The expense of Spain and France, it established further checks to French expansion within the continent by moderately strengthening its European allies. The quarter-century after the Treaty of Utrecht was peaceful, with no major wars. The main powers exhausted themselves in warfare, and suffered many deaths, disabled veterans, ruined navies, high pension costs, heavy loans and high taxes. In 1683, indirect taxes had brought in 118,000,000 livres, but by 1714, these revenues had plunged to only 46,000,000 livres. Louis XIV, with his eagerness for warfare,
14076-454: The first novel in Les Rois maudits ( The Accursed Kings ), a series of French historical novels by Maurice Druon . The next six entries in the series follow the descendants of Philip, including both his sons Louis X and Philip V and his daughter Isabella of France . He was portrayed by Georges Marchal in the 1972 French miniseries adaptation of the series, and by Tchéky Karyo in
14229-506: The four Généraux des finances (also called général conseiller or receveur général ) oversaw the collection of taxes ( taille , aides , etc.) by tax-collecting agents ( receveurs ) and the four Trésoriers de France (Treasurers) oversaw revenues from royal lands (the " domaine royal "). Together, they were the Messieurs des finances . The four members of each board were divided by geographical districts (although
14382-530: The grandson of the powerful Louis XIV. That was a confrontation between two different styles of ancien régime : the French and Spanish style versus the Habsburg style. Spain's silver and its inability to protect its assets made it a highly-visible target for ambitious Europeans. For generations, Englishmen contemplated capturing the Spanish treasure fleet, a feat that had been accomplished only once: in 1628 by
14535-483: The great banking families in Europe) and public. The most important public source for borrowing was through the system of rentes sur l'Hôtel de Ville of Paris, a kind of government bond system offering investors annual interest. The system first came to use in 1522 under Francis I. Philip IV of France Philip IV (April–June 1268 – 29 November 1314), called Philip the Fair ( French : Philippe le Bel ),
14688-849: The inheritance of the Spanish Empire would soon embroil Louis XIV and the Grand Alliance in a final war: the War of the Spanish Succession . Spain had a number of major assets apart from its homeland. It controlled important territory in Europe and the New World. Spain's American colonies produced enormous quantities of silver, brought to Spain every few years in convoys. Spain also had many weaknesses. Its domestic economy had little business, industry or advanced craftsmanship and
14841-418: The king's will, some governors had installed themselves and their heirs as a provincial dynasty. The governors reached the height of their power from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century. Their role in provincial unrest during the civil wars led Cardinal Richelieu to create the more tractable positions of intendants of finance, policing and justice, and in the 18th century, the role of provincial governors
14994-725: The late 15th century to the late 17th century and again in the 1760s, French territory greatly expanded and it attempted to better integrate its provinces into an administrative whole. Despite centralization efforts of the kings, France remained a patchwork of local privileges and historical differences. The arbitrary power of the absolute monarchy was much limited by historic and regional particularities. Administrative (including taxation), legal ( parlement ), judicial and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives frequently overlapped (for example, French bishoprics and dioceses rarely coincided with administrative divisions). Certain provinces and cities had won special privileges, such as lower rates for
15147-495: The late 17th century, tax collectors were called receveurs . In 1680, the system of the Ferme générale was established, a franchised customs and excise operation in which individuals bought the right to collect the taille on behalf of the king, through six-year adjudications (certain taxes like the aides and the gabelle had been farmed out in this way as early as 1604). The major tax collectors in that system were known as
15300-420: The law. These lawyers, clad in long black robes, sat on benches below the high nobles; but as the nobles left to them the whole business of the court, they soon became the sole judges, and formed the nucleus of the present French Magistracy. Philippe le Bel was the first to fix this court to Paris, in 1302, officially severing it from the King's Council in 1307. The Parlement of Paris would hold sessions inside
15453-478: The law. France, through the Napoleonic Code, was at the origin of the modern system of civil law , in which precedents are not as powerful as in countries of common law . The origin of the separation of powers in the French court system, with no rule of precedent outside the interpretation of the law, no single supreme court and no constitutional review of statutes by courts until 1971 (by action, before
15606-621: The marriage was Joan's inheritance of Champagne and Brie , which were adjacent to the royal demesne in Ile-de-France, and thus effectively were united to the king's own lands, expanding his realm. The annexation of wealthy Champagne increased the royal revenues considerably, removed the autonomy of a large semi-independent fief and expanded royal territory eastward. Philip also gained Lyon for France in 1312. Navarre remained in personal union with France, beginning in 1284 under Philip and Joan, for 44 years. The Kingdom of Navarre in
15759-480: The medieval royal palace on the Île de la Cité , nowadays still the site in Paris of the Hall of Justice . The parlement also had the duty to record all royal edicts and laws. By the 15th century the Parlement of Paris had a right of "remonstrance to the king" (a formal statement of grievances), which was at first simply of an advisory nature. In the meantime, the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris had been covering
15912-611: The money, and the treasury was always short. The banking system in Paris was undeveloped, and the treasury was forced to borrow at very high interest rates. London's financial system proved strikingly competent in funding not only the British Army but also those of its allies. Queen Anne was dead, and her successor, King George I, was a Hanoverian who moved his court to London but never became fluent in English and surrounded himself with German advisors. They spent much of their time and most of their attention on Hanoverian affairs. He too
16065-531: The mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple case was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII. Being the ultimate defender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was invested with a Christ-like function that put him above the pope. What was at stake in the Templars' trial, then, was the establishment of
16218-403: The names of their accomplices : there were the question ordinaire ("ordinary questioning"), the ordinary form of torture, and the question extraordinaire ("extraordinary questioning"), with increased brutality. There was little presumption of innocence if the suspect was a mere poor commoner . The death sentence could be pronounced for a variety of crimes including mere theft ; depending on
16371-465: The nation, which cannot render such distinguished service to the state, fulfills its obligation through taxes, industry, and physical labor. The Second Estate (the nobility) consisted of approximately 1.5% of France's population, and was exempt from almost all taxes, including the Corvée Royale, which was a recent mandatory service in which the roads would be repaired and built by those subject to
16524-581: The new Mongol ruler Öljaitü sent letters to Philip, the Pope, and Edward I of England . He again offered a military collaboration between the Christian nations of Europe and the Mongols against the Mamluks. European nations attempted another Crusade but were delayed, and it never took place. On 4 April 1312, another Crusade was promulgated at the Council of Vienne . In 1313, Philip "took the cross", making
16677-551: The newly assimilated territories, but as the parlements gained in self-assurance, they started to become sources of disunity. By the end of 1789 the term Ancien Régime was commonly used in France by journalists and legislators to refer to the institutions of French life before the Revolution. It first appeared in print in English in 1794 (two years after the inauguration of the First French Republic ) and
16830-414: The nobility was humiliated. The parlements' ability to withhold their assent by formulating remonstrances against the king's edicts forced the king to react, sometimes resulting in repeated resistance by the parlements, which the king could only terminate in his favour by issuing a lettre de jussion , and, in case of continued resistance, appearing in person in the parlement: the lit de justice . In such
16983-427: The notion of " absolute monarchy " (typified by the king's right to issue orders through lettres de cachet ) and efforts to create a centralized state, ancien régime France remained a country of systemic irregularities: administrative, legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives frequently overlapped, the French nobility struggled to maintain their influence in local judiciary and state branches while
17136-430: The offences, which the culprits had confessed and confirmed, the penance imposed was in accordance with rule – that of perpetual imprisonment. The affair was supposed to be concluded when, to the dismay of the prelates and wonderment of the assembled crowd, de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney arose. They had been guilty, they said, not of the crimes imputed to them, but of basely betraying their Order to save their own lives. It
17289-450: The ordinary revenues. Some 30% of the revenues were collected from the royal demesne. The royal financial administration employed perhaps 3,000 people, of which about 1,000 were officials in the proper sense. After assuming the throne, Philip inherited a sizable debt from his father's war against Aragon. By November 1286 it reached 8 tonnes of silver to his primary financiers, the Templars, equivalent to 17% of government revenue. This debt
17442-469: The people, who reverently collected their ashes as relics. After a little over a month, Pope Clement V died of disease thought to be lupus , and in eight months Philip IV, at the age of forty-six, died in a hunting accident. This gave rise to the legend that de Molay had cited them before the tribunal of God, which became popular among the French population. Even in Germany, Philip's death was spoken of as
17595-436: The power of the monarchy. In civil trials, judges had to be paid épices (literally "spices" – fees) by the parties, to pay for legal advice taken by the judges, and the costs of their staff. Judges were not allowed to ask for, or receive, épices from the poor. Regarding criminal justice, the proceedings were markedly archaic. Judges could order suspects to be tortured in order to extract confessions or induce them to reveal
17748-419: The previously forced confessions to have many Templars burned at the stake before they could mount a proper defence. In March 1314, Philip had Jacques de Molay , the last Grand Master of the Temple, and Geoffroi de Charney , Preceptor of Normandy, burned at the stake. An account of the event goes as follows: The cardinals dallied with their duty until March 1314, ( exact day is disputed by scholars ) when, on
17901-453: The public he kept aloof, and left specific policies, especially unpopular ones, to his ministers; as such he was compared to a "useless owl" by Bishop Saisset. Others like William of Nogaret idealized him, praising him for his piety and support of the Church. His reign marks the transition to a more centralized administration, characterized by the emergence or consolidation of the King's Council ,
18054-1875: The revolution, there were 36 généralités , the last two being created in 1784. 1. Généralité of Bordeaux , ( Agen , Guyenne ) 2. Généralité of Provence , or Aix-en-Provence ( Provence ) 3. Généralité of Amiens ( Picardy ) 4. Généralité of Bourges ( Berry ) 5. Généralité of Caen ( Normandy ) 6. Généralité of Châlons ( Champagne ) 7. Généralité of Burgundy , Dijon (Burgundy) 8. Généralité of Grenoble ( Dauphiné ) 9. Généralité of Issoire , later of Riom ( Auvergne ) 10. Généralité of Lyon ( Lyonnais , Beaujolais and Forez ) 11. Généralité of Montpellier ( Languedoc ) 12. Généralité of Paris ( Île-de-France ) 13. Généralité of Poitiers ( Poitou ) 14. Généralité of Rouen ( Normandy ) 15. Généralité of Toulouse ( Languedoc ) 16. Généralité of Tours ( Touraine , Maine and Anjou ) 17. Généralité of Metz ( Trois-Évêchés ) 18. Généralité of Nantes ( Brittany ) 19. Généralité of Limoges (divided in two parts: Angoumois & Limousin – Marche ) 20. Généralité of Orléans ( Orléanais ) 21. Généralité of Moulins ( Bourbonnais ) 22. Généralité of Soissons ( Picardy ) 23. Généralité of Montauban ( Gascony ) 24. Généralité of Alençon ( Perche ) 25. Généralité of Perpignan ( Roussillon ) 26. Généralité of Besançon ( Franche-Comté ) 27. Généralité of Valenciennes ( Hainaut ) 28. Généralité of Strasbourg ( Alsace ) 29. (see 18) 30. Généralité of Lille ( Flanders ) 31. Généralité of La Rochelle ( Aunis and Saintonge ) 32. Généralité of Nancy ( Lorraine ) 33. Généralité of Trévoux ( Dombes ) 34. Généralité of Corsica , or Bastia ( Corsica ) 35. Généralité of Auch ( Gascony ) 36. Généralité of Bayonne ( Labourd ) 37. Généralité of Pau ( Béarn and Soule ) The desire for more efficient tax collection
18207-416: The royal intendant . Taxation districts had gone through a variety of mutations since the 14th century. Before the 14th century, oversight of the collection of royal taxes had fallen generally to the baillis and sénéchaux in their circumscriptions. Reforms in the 14th and the 15th centuries saw France's royal financial administration run by two financial boards, which worked in a collegial manner:
18360-453: The rulers of Navarre and France were again different individuals. After marrying Joan I of Navarre, becoming Philip I of Navarre, Philip ascended the French throne at the age of 17. He was crowned as King on 6 January 1286 in Reims. As king, Philip was determined to strengthen the monarchy at any cost. He relied, more than any of his predecessors, on a professional bureaucracy of legalists. To
18513-485: The sacking of La Rochelle , Philip summoned Edward to the French court. The English king sought to negotiate the matter via ambassadors sent to Paris, but they were turned away with a blunt refusal. Philip addressed Edward as a duke, a vassal, and nothing more, despite the international implications of the relationship between England and France. Edward next attempted to use family connections to achieve what open politics had not. He sent his brother Edmund Crouchback , who
18666-503: The so-called Babylonian Captivity of the papacy (1309–76), during which the official seat of the papacy moved to Avignon , an enclave surrounded by French territories, and was subjected to French control. Philip was substantially in debt to the Knights Templar , a monastic military order whose original role as protectors of Christian pilgrims in the Latin East had been largely replaced by banking and other commercial activities by
18819-417: The state. The appointments of intendants , representatives of royal power in the provinces, greatly undermined the local control by regional nobles. The same was true of the greater reliance that was shown by the royal court on the noblesse de robe as judges and royal counselors. The creation of regional parlements had the same initial goal of facilitating the introduction of royal power into
18972-464: The strength of the old and new currencies, the debased coinage of 1303 was devalued accordingly by two-thirds. The debtors were driven to penury by the need to repay their loans in the new, strong currency. This led to rioting in Paris on 30 December 1306, forcing Philip to briefly seek refuge in the Paris Temple, the headquarters of the Knights Templar. Perhaps seeking to control the silver of
19125-403: The support of the king. Chancellor René Nicolas de Maupeou sought to reassert royal power by suppressing the parlements in 1770. His famous attempts, known as Maupeou's Reform, resulted in a furious battle and failure. Parlements were disbanded and their members arrested. After Louis XV died, the parlements were restored. The beginning of the proposed radical changes began with the protests of
19278-463: The system, new divisions were created. The recettes générales , commonly known as généralités , were initially only taxation districts (see "state finances" below). The first 16 were created in 1542 by edict of Henry II . Their role steadily increased, and by the mid-17th century, the généralités were under the authority of an intendant and were a vehicle for the expansion of royal power in matters of justice, taxation and policing. By
19431-477: The tax was generally "personal" and so was attached to non-noble individuals. In the pays d'état ("provinces with provincial estates"), Brittany , Languedoc , Burgundy , Auvergne , Béarn , Dauphiné , Provence and portions of Gascony , such as Bigorre , Comminges and the Quatre-Vallées , recently acquired provinces that had been able to maintain a certain local autonomy in terms of taxation,
19584-497: The taxes needed to fund the Franco-Dutch War . In 1673, the king imposed additional restrictions that stripped the parlements of any influence upon new laws by ordaining that remonstrances could only be issued after registration of the edicts. After Louis' death in 1715, all the restrictions were discontinued by the regent, although some of the judges of the Parlement of Paris accepted royal bribes to restrain that body until
19737-470: The term généralité appears only in the late 15th century). The areas were named Languedoïl, Languedoc, Outre-Seine-and-Yonne, and Nomandy (the last was created in 1449, the other three earlier), with the directors of the "Languedoïl" region typically having an honorific preeminence. By 1484, the number of généralités had increased to six. In the 16th century, the kings of France, in an effort to exert more direct control over royal finances and to circumvent
19890-454: The vow to go on a Crusade in the Levant , thus responding to Pope Clement V 's call. He was, however, warned against leaving by Enguerrand de Marigny and died soon after in a hunting accident. Under Philip IV, the annual ordinary revenues of the French royal government totaled approximately 860,000 livres tournois , equivalent to 46 tonnes of silver . Overall revenues were about twice
20043-537: The whole of Alsace , but was forced to return Lorraine to its ruler and to give up any gains on the right bank of the Rhine. Also, Louis XIV accepted William III as the rightful King of England, and the Dutch acquired their barrier fortress system in the Spanish Netherlands to help secure their own borders. However, with the ailing and childless Charles II of Spain approaching his end, a new conflict over
20196-569: Was King of France from 1285 to 1314. By virtue of his marriage with Joan I of Navarre , he was also King of Navarre as Philip I from 1284 to 1305, as well as Count of Champagne . Although Philip was known to be handsome, hence the epithet le Bel , his rigid, autocratic, imposing, and inflexible personality gained him (from friend and foe alike) other nicknames, such as the Iron King (French: le Roi de fer ). His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset , bishop of Pamiers , said of him: "He
20349-454: Was Philip's cousin as well as his step-father-in-law, in attempts to negotiate with the French royal family and avert war. Additionally, Edward had by that time become betrothed by proxy to Philip's sister Margaret , and, in the event of the negotiations being successful, Edmund was to escort Margaret back to England for her wedding to Edward. An agreement was indeed reached; it stated that Edward would temporarily relinquish Gascony to Philip as
20502-552: Was accused of knowledge of the affairs. Philip had a cerebral stroke during a hunt at Pont-Sainte-Maxence ( Forest of Halatte ), and died a few weeks later, on 29 November 1314, at Fontainebleau . He is buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis . Philip was succeeded by his son Louis X . The children of Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre were: All three of Philip's sons who reached adulthood became kings of France and Navarre, and Isabella, his only surviving daughter,
20655-535: Was also put off until the formality of sequestering and regranting the French lands back to Edward was completed. But Edward, Edmund, and the English had been deceived. The French had no intention of returning the land to the English monarch. Edward kept up his part of the deal and turned over his continental estates to the French. However, Philip used the pretext that the English king had refused his summons in order to declare Edward's fiefs entirely forfeit, initiating hostilities with England. The 1294–1303 Gascon War
20808-574: Was anathema. Furthermore, the prospect of capturing Spanish territories in the New World proved very attractive. France's enemies formed a Grand Alliance, led by the Holy Roman Empire's Leopold I , which included Prussia and most of the other German states, the Dutch Republic, Portugal , Savoy (in Italy ) and England . The opposing alliance was primarily France and Spain but also included
20961-409: Was composed of clergy, nobles, and burghers, gave support to Philip. Boniface retaliated with the famous bull Unam Sanctam (1302), a declaration of papal supremacy. Philip gained victory, after having sent his agent Guillaume de Nogaret to arrest Boniface at Anagni . The pope escaped but died soon afterward. The French archbishop Bertrand de Goth was elected pope as Clement V and thus began
21114-543: Was entrusted to Guillaume d'Ercuis , his father's almoner . After the unsuccessful Aragonese Crusade against Peter III of Aragon , which ended in October 1285, Philip may have negotiated an agreement with Peter for the safe withdrawal of the Crusader army. This pact is attested to by Catalan chroniclers. Joseph Strayer points out that such a deal was probably unnecessary, as Peter had little to gain from provoking
21267-532: Was extinguished, and the throne had passed to the line of his brother, the House of Valois . In 1314, the daughters-in-law of Philip IV, Margaret of Burgundy (wife of Louis X) and Blanche of Burgundy (wife of Charles IV) were accused of adultery and their alleged lovers (Phillipe d'Aunay and Gauthier d'Aunay) tortured, flayed and executed in what has come to be known as the Tour de Nesle affair ( French : Affaire de la tour de Nesle ). A third daughter-in-law, Joan II, Countess of Burgundy (wife of Philip V),
21420-407: Was gone and replaced by a small sickly child, the last Bourbon survivor. This death had the potential to throw France into another round of warfare. Louis XV lived until the 1770s. France's main foreign policy decisionmaker was Cardinal Fleury , who recognised that France's need to rebuild and so pursued a peaceful policy. France had a poorly-designed taxation system in which tax farmers kept much of
21573-1592: Was greatly curtailed. 1. Île-de-France ( Paris ) 2. Berry ( Bourges ) 3. Orléanais ( Orléans ) 4. Normandy ( Rouen ) 5. Languedoc ( Toulouse ) 6. Lyonnais ( Lyon ) 7. Dauphiné ( Grenoble ) 8. Champagne ( Troyes ) 9. Aunis ( La Rochelle ) 10. Saintonge ( Saintes ) 11. Poitou ( Poitiers ) 12. Guyenne and Gascony ( Bordeaux ) 13. Burgundy ( Dijon ) 14. Picardy ( Amiens ) 15. Anjou ( Angers ) 16. Provence ( Aix-en-Provence ) 17. Angoumois ( Angoulême ) 18. Bourbonnais ( Moulins ) 19. Marche ( Guéret ) 20. Brittany ( Rennes , parlement briefly at Nantes ) 21. Maine ( Le Mans ) 22. Touraine ( Tours ) 23. Limousin ( Limoges ) 24. Foix ( Foix ) 25. Auvergne ( Clermont-Ferrand ) 26. Béarn ( Pau ) 27. Alsace ( Strasbourg , cons. souv. in Colmar ) 28. Artois (cons provinc. in Arras ) 29. Roussillon (cons. souv. in Perpignan ) 30. Flanders and Hainaut ( Lille , parliament first in Tournai , then in Douai ) 31. Franche-Comté ( Besançon , formerly at Dole ) 32. Lorraine ( Nancy ) 33. Corsica (off map, Ajaccio , cons. souv. in Bastia ) 34. Nivernais ( Nevers ) 35. Comtat Venaissin ( Avignon ),
21726-466: Was in possession of a fiefdom, he could collect a tax on the Third Estate called feudal dues, which would allegedly be for the Third Estate's protection (though this only applied to serfs and tenants of farmland owned by the nobility). Overall, the Second Estate had vast privileges that the Third Estate did not possess, which in effect protected the Second Estate's wealth and property, while hindering
21879-484: Was in very poor physical and mental health. As King Charles II had no children, the question of who would succeed to the Spanish throne unleashed a major war. The Vienna-based Habsburg family, to which Charles II belonged, proposed its own candidate for the throne. However, the Bourbons, the ruling family of France, instinctively opposed expansions of Habsburg power within Europe and had their own candidate : Philip ,
22032-541: Was incapable of self-modernization". The Nine Years' War (1688–97), between France and a coalition of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, Spain, England and Savoy, was fought in continental Europe and on the surrounding seas, and in Ireland, North America and India. It was the first truly global war . Louis XIV emerged from the Franco-Dutch War in 1678 as the most powerful monarch in Europe and an absolute ruler with numerous military victories. Using
22185-442: Was one of the major causes for French administrative and royal centralisation during the early modern period. The taille became a major source of royal income. Exempted were clergy and nobles (except for non-noble lands held in pays d'état , see below), officers of the crown, military personnel, magistrates, university professors and students, and certain cities ( villes franches ) such as Paris. The provinces were of three sorts,
22338-442: Was originally pejorative. Simon Schama has observed that "virtually as soon as the term was coined, 'old regime' was automatically freighted with associations of both traditionalism and senescence. It conjured up a society so encrusted with anachronisms that only a shock of great violence could free the living organism within. Institutionally torpid, economically immobile, culturally atrophied and socially stratified, this 'old regime'
22491-422: Was poor. Spain had to import practically all of its weapons and its large army was poorly trained and poorly equipped. Spain had a small navy since seamanship was a low priority for the elites. Local and regional governments and the local nobility, controlled most of the decisionmaking. The central government was quite weak, with a mediocre bureaucracy, and few able leaders. King Charles II reigned 1665 to 1700, but
22644-461: Was pure and holy; the charges were fictitious and the confessions false. Hastily the cardinals delivered them to the Prevot of Paris , and retired to deliberate on this unexpected contingency, but they were saved all trouble. When the news was carried to Philippe he was furious. A short consultation with his council only was required. The canons pronounced that a relapsed heretic was to be burned without
22797-512: Was quickly paid off, and, in 1287 and 1288, Philip's kingdom ran a budget surplus. After 1289, a decline in Saxony 's silver production, combined with Philip's wars against Aragon, England and Flanders, drove the French government to fiscal deficits. The war against Aragon, inherited from Philip's father, required the expenditure of 1.5 million LT (livres tournois) and the 1294–99 war against England over Gascony another 1.73 million LT. Loans from
22950-471: Was smaller than it is today, and numerous border provinces (such as Roussillon , Cerdagne , Conflent , Vallespir , Capcir , Calais , Béarn , Navarre , County of Foix , Flanders , Artois , Lorraine , Alsace , Trois-Évêchés , Franche-Comté , Savoy , Bresse , Bugey , Gex , Nice , Provence , Dauphiné and Brittany ) were autonomous or belonged to the Holy Roman Empire , the Crown of Aragon or
23103-611: Was the inevitable result of the competitive expansionist monarchies, but the direct campaigns between the two countries in Aquitaine and Flanders were inconclusive. Instead, the larger consequences were from the taxation undertaken to pay for them and in the alliances used. France initiated the Auld Alliance between itself and Scotland , underwriting much of the prolonged First Scottish War of Independence . Meanwhile, England assisted Flanders in its own war against France;
23256-593: Was the queen of England as consort to Edward II . Dante Alighieri often refers to Philip in La Divina Commedia , never by name but as the "mal di Francia" (plague of France). It is possible that Dante hides further the person of the king behind 7 figures: Cerbero, Pluto, Filippo Argenti ( Philippe de l'argent ), Capaneo, Gerione, Nembrot, in the Inferno, and the Giant in the Purgatorio killed by
23409-513: Was threatened by an unstable throne, since the Stuart pretenders, long supported by Louis XIV, threatened repeatedly to invade through Ireland or Scotland and had significant internal support from the Tory faction. However, Sir Robert Walpole was the dominant decision-maker from 1722 to 1740, in a role that would later be called prime minister. Walpole strongly rejected militaristic options and promoted
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