[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":36},["ShallowReactive",2],{"hreflang:/en/zoom/p7ch4z16-domestic-policy-government-economy-and-society":3,"zoom:p7ch4z16:en":7},{"fr":4,"en":5,"es":6},"/zoom/p7ch4z16-politique-interieure-gouvernement-economie-et-societe","/en/zoom/p7ch4z16-domestic-policy-government-economy-and-society","/es/zoom/p7ch4z16-politica-interior-gobierno-economia-y-sociedad",{"period":8,"chapter":26,"zoom":29},{"id":9,"title":10,"titleEn":10,"titleEs":11,"range":12,"rangeEn":12,"rangeEs":12,"covers":13},"p7","Renaissance","Renacimiento","1461 → 1610",[14,17,20,23],{"filename":15,"url":16},"British_-_Field_of_the_Cloth_of_Gold_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/British_-_Field_of_the_Cloth_of_Gold_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg?width=1600",{"filename":18,"url":19},"Marignan-1515-francois1er.jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Marignan-1515-francois1er.jpg?width=1600",{"filename":21,"url":22},"ChateauDeChambord.jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/ChateauDeChambord.jpg?width=1600",{"filename":24,"url":25},"Henri_IV_Toschi_(format_original).jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Henri_IV_Toschi_(format_original).jpg?width=1600",{"id":27,"title":28},"p7ch4","Francis I: The Knight King and the French Renaissance (1515–1547)",{"id":30,"title":31,"chapterId":27,"html":32,"hasEn":33,"isFallback":34,"seoDescription":35},"p7ch4z16","Domestic Policy: Government, Economy and Society","\u003Cp>Under the reign of Francis I, France underwent significant transformations in its political, economic and social organisation, with a strengthening of royal authority and growing economic challenges.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>💰 Economic and Demographic Situation\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>At the start of the reign, France had around eighteen million inhabitants — making it, by far, the most populous unified country in Europe — of whom eighty-five per cent lived off the land. Agriculture, however, remained of low productivity: barely five quintals per hectare for cereals, which regularly exposed the kingdom to shortages. Some horticultural progress nevertheless enriched the countryside — the introduction of carrots, beetroot, artichokes, melons, cauliflowers or mulberry trees, within a system of mixed farming that remained the dominant model — while the towns, for their part, grew in step with the development of crafts, trades and domestic commerce.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Louis XII had left his successor a France in relatively good economic health, his monarchy having managed to consolidate its authority against the feudal lords — to the point, it was said, of worrying about the already spendthrift tendencies of his young successor. This worry proved well founded: between sumptuous building projects and incessant wars, Francis I’s spending ended up appreciably worsening the kingdom’s financial situation, in a paradox that ran through the whole reign — the crown’s authority grew stronger while its finances, for their part, grew weaker.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>👑 The Government of Francis I\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>Francis I laid, without quite realising it, the foundations of the absolutism that Louis XIV would practise a century later: the jurist \u003Cstrong>Charles du Moulin\u003C/strong> theorised royal supremacy at the time, asserting that the king alone held \u003Cem>imperium\u003C/em>, that supreme power which cannot be shared. Around him revolved a considerable itinerant court — between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people according to estimates — the true beating heart of power, which moved with the king between his various châteaux. The government was organised around several councils — the Grand Conseil, for the general affairs of the kingdom, the Conseil des parties, or Privy Council, for judicial matters, and the Conseil étroit, for the state’s most important decisions — but it was the king himself who remained the supreme arbiter, raising up and disgracing his favourites, ministers and advisers as he pleased.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>In the early years, Francis I kept in office several of Louis XII’s great servants — La Palice and Gaspard I de Coligny remained in favour, the number of marshals rose to four, La Trémoille retained high military responsibilities, and \u003Cstrong>Florimond Robertet\u003C/strong> remained what was already called the “father of the secretaries of state.” He also surrounded himself with newcomers: Artus Gouffier de Boissy, former governor of the young king, who became Grand Master; Guillaume Gouffier de Bonnivet, appointed Admiral of France as early as 1517; \u003Cstrong>Antoine Duprat\u003C/strong>, a magistrate of bourgeois origin who became Chancellor of France; and, until his betrayal, \u003Cstrong>Charles III of Bourbon\u003C/strong> as Constable. His mother, \u003Cstrong>Louise of Savoy\u003C/strong>, raised to the rank of duchess, sat on the Privy Council and would be appointed regent twice during the king’s absences — her influence over the kingdom’s affairs was never negligible. Among the favourites of the reign’s later years, \u003Cstrong>Anne de Montmorency\u003C/strong> held a place apart, enjoying royal favour until 1541 as first gentleman of the king’s chamber, while Claude d’Annebault, Admiral of France, and Cardinal de Tournon, in charge of carrying out financial decisions, completed this circle of leading advisers.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>⛪ The King’s Relationship to Religion\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>Regarded as a good Catholic, Francis I followed an assiduous religious practice: he prayed each morning in his chamber, attended Mass after the Council of Affairs, took communion regularly — doubtless less devout than his sister Marguerite de Navarre, but a sincere believer. On his return from Italy in 1516, he went on pilgrimage to the Sainte-Baume, in Provence, to the tomb of Mary Magdalene, and later still he would go on foot, surrounded by his courtiers, to pay homage to the Holy Shroud kept at Chambéry.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>In the early years of the reign, under the influence of his sister Marguerite, who leaned towards evangelism, the king protected the members of the Meaux circle persecuted by the Sorbonne, and even went so far as to appoint, on her advice, Lefèvre d’Étaples as tutor to his own son Charles. This climate of relative tolerance eroded from 1528 onward, when the Church of France undertook repressive action against reformers, ordered to recant on pain of punishment — an evolution favoured by Cardinals Antoine Duprat and François de Tournon, whose influence counterbalanced Marguerite’s. The king himself showed himself implacable in the face of iconoclastic vandalism, personally taking part in ceremonies organised to make amends for acts committed against holy images, and the Affair of the Placards, in 1534, further accelerated the persecution of Protestants.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It was against this hardened backdrop that the darkest episode of the reign took place, in 1545: the \u003Cstrong>massacre of the Waldensians\u003C/strong> of the Luberon, who had rallied to Calvin’s teachings, in the villages of Cabrières, Mérindol and Lourmarin. An edict of the Parlement of Aix had ordered their suppression as early as 1540, but Francis I, who at the time needed the support of these populations against Charles V, had at first temporised, going so far as to send them letters of pardon. It was Charles V’s withdrawal that changed the situation: on 1 January 1545, the Mérindol edict was carried out, a veritable crusade was launched against the Waldensians of Provence, the galleys of Paulin de La Garde brought in troops from Piedmont, and Jean Maynier, president of the Parlement of Aix, together with Joseph d’Agoult, Baron of Ollières, led a repression of such violence that it moved even Charles V himself. Secret agreements, tied to the Treaty of Crépy-en-Laonnois, moreover obliged France to take part in eradicating the Protestant threat — without this preventing Francis I, in a famously glaring contradiction, from simultaneously continuing to support the Protestant princes of Germany against the emperor.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>📜 The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539)\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>In 1539, signed at the château of Villers-Cotterêts and drafted by Chancellor \u003Cstrong>Guillaume Poyet\u003C/strong>, an ordinance came to durably transform the kingdom’s administration: French now became the sole official language of administration and justice, replacing Latin in all official documents, in a gesture of linguistic unification of the kingdom. The text also required priests to register births and keep up-to-date baptismal registers — the birth certificate, in short, of the future French civil registry. Beyond its considerable and lasting linguistic impact, this ordinance concretely strengthened the state’s administrative control over its population, unifying practices and tightening centralisation around royal power.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>💰 Financial Policy\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The building of châteaux — Chambord, Fontainebleau, and so many others — and the sustained military effort against Charles V dug a genuine chasm in the royal treasury. To meet this, Francis I multiplied fiscal measures: the taille, that tax paid by the peasantry, more than doubled under his reign, while the gabelle, the salt tax, simply tripled; the customs system became widespread, with an extension of internal tolls on imports and exports. Notably, the king never convened the Estates General — a break with the practice of most of his predecessors, which left him considerable fiscal latitude, exercised without formal consultation.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>His economic policy was also accompanied by a certain protectionism: customs duties protected the fledgling Lyon silk industry, while the export of foodstuffs was taxed for fear of domestic shortages. Administratively, the system of collecting the gabelle through tax farming expanded, improving tax collection, and above all, in 1523, the creation of the \u003Cstrong>Trésor de l’Épargne\u003C/strong> — a single fund bringing together the kingdom’s ten general revenue offices — rationalised the whole of the state’s finances, reducing errors and duplication while better adapting levies to actual needs.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>For lack of sufficient resources, the king also resorted to more original expedients: selling precious stones from the Crown Jewels, alienating royal domains, and above all developing the \u003Cstrong>sale of offices\u003C/strong>, which allowed both bourgeois and wealthy nobles to gain access, for a fee, to high positions — notarial offices, the secretariat of the Paris Chancellery — a system that would in the long run weaken royal administration but which, in the immediate term, replenished the coffers. On 21 May 1539, the Edict of Châteaurenard even instituted, on the model of the Italian “blancques,” the first state lottery in French history. These financial practices were not without scandal: Jacques de Beaune, principal superintendent of finances since 1518, was arrested in 1527 for embezzlement, accused of having diverted funds intended for the Italian campaign of 1524, and ended up executed at the gallows of Montfaucon — even though his trial revealed, after the fact, that he also appeared to be one of the king’s principal creditors, while other, less prominent creditors escaped any prosecution.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🗺️ Fiefdoms United to the Crown\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The reign also saw the crown enriched with several territories. The county of Angoulême, raised to a duchy for Louise of Savoy, reverted to the crown in 1531, on her death. The treason of the Constable of Bourbon, in 1523, led to the confiscation of his Duchy of Bourbonnais along with the counties of Auvergne, Clermont, Forez, Beaujolais, La Marche, Mercœur and Montpensier — a confiscation definitively ratified in 1530. In 1525 came the addition of the Duchy of Alençon and the counties of Perche, Armagnac and Rouergue, then, in 1531, the Dauphiné of Auvergne.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>The most symbolic acquisition, however, remains that of \u003Cstrong>Brittany\u003C/strong>. The union of the duchy with France, begun as early as 1491 by the marriage of Anne of Brittany, was still, at the death of Louis XII in 1515, only a personal union and not a real one. Francis I married Claude of France, daughter of Anne of Brittany, in 1514, but remained only its usufructuary, without becoming its owner — Louis XII having taken care to reserve the rights of Renée of France; Claude died in 1524 without the question being resolved. The king entrusted the administration of the duchy to Antoine Duprat, sent there as early as 1514 and who became Chancellor of Brittany in 1518, a period of peace and relative prosperity, barely troubled by a few English incursions, such as the one on Morlaix in 1522. It was in 1532, on the coming of age of the duke-dauphin, that the matter was finally settled: gathered at Vannes at the start of August, the Estates of Brittany were asked for a perpetual union in exchange for respect for their privileges, the king’s lieutenant René de Montejean not hesitating to threaten force in case of refusal, despite the protest of Nantes deputies such as Julien Le Bosec and Jean Moteil. A compromise was found — abandonment of Breton sovereignty, but retention of an autonomous administration — and on \u003Cstrong>13 August 1532\u003C/strong>, the edict of union definitively attached Brittany to the crown of France, moving it from the status of principality to that of a simple royal possession; the very next day, 14 August, the king’s son was crowned at Rennes under the title of Francis III of Brittany. Claude of France’s dowry, for its part, brought the crown the county of Blois, the Soissonnais, the lordships of Coucy and Aste, as well as the county of Montfort.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>On balance, the reign’s foreign conquests remained modest: the initial conquest of the Milanese, the temporary acquisitions of Savoy and Piedmont, and the failure of the claims to Naples — a reign, in the end, rather poor in lasting foreign conquests, largely offset, domestically, by the territorial enlargement of the kingdom itself.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>⚰️ Final Years and Death\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>From the end of the 1530s, the king’s health declined markedly: considerable weight gain was accompanied by a fistula — an abscess located between the anus and the testicles, then called an “abscess of the genitals” — which forced him to give up horseback riding for a litter, while his condition worsened year by year, up to a fever that became almost continuous. On \u003Cstrong>31 March 1547\u003C/strong>, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Francis I died at the château of Rambouillet, at the age of fifty-two, attended by his almoner Pierre Duchâtel. The paleopathological diagnosis drawn up from the autopsy report suggests septicaemia developing from the vesico-perineal fistula, complicated by severe ascending nephritis. His second son, Henry II, succeeded him and broadly continued his father’s policy.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Even in his agony, the king remained capable of governing: he had his son brought to his bedside to pass on to him what would come to be called his political testament, thereby ensuring an organised transfer of power. The painter François Clouet, finally, sketched in red chalk the face of the aged king, in view of the making, according to custom, of a wax funerary effigy.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🧠 Key Takeaways\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cul>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>1515\u003C/strong>: France had around 18 million inhabitants, the most populous country in Europe\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>Government\u003C/strong>: royal councils (Grand Conseil, Privy Council, Conseil étroit), the king’s personal authority, theoretical foundations of absolutism laid by Charles du Moulin\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>1523\u003C/strong>: creation of the Trésor de l’Épargne, centralisation of royal finances\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>1539\u003C/strong>: Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, French becomes the official language, early beginnings of civil registry; creation of the first state lottery\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>1532\u003C/strong>: definitive union of Brittany with the crown of France\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>1545\u003C/strong>: massacre of the Waldensians of the Luberon, the darkest episode of the reign\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>31 March 1547\u003C/strong>: death of Francis I at Rambouillet, succession by Henry II\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>A reign that durably strengthened royal authority and administration, at the cost of drained finances and religious contradictions never resolved\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Next zoom\u003C/strong>: International relations and the diplomacy of Francis I.\u003C/p>\n",true,false,"Under the reign of Francis I, France underwent significant transformations in its political, economic and social organisation, with a strengthening of royal",1786625737901]