How is one to define the revival of France after her decisive victory over England in 1453? The current view is familiar enough. France witnessed not only the recovery of lost territory but also a crucial advance towards territorial cohesion and monarchical absolutism. This approach, which owes its inspiration to a view of history based on the glorification of the nation-state, is not without its points. Yet it requires re-examination in the light of recent investigation and reinterpretation. In the past half-century the perspectives of French historians and others regarding the history of that country have altered considerably. No longer may we see the end of the reign of Louis XI (1483) or even that of Charles VIII (1498) as marking the end of the ‘fifteenth’ century or, indeed, the end of the Middle Ages. This long span of years cannot be left in the relative obscurity ‘between two worlds’, medieval and modern, into which it has tended to fall in the past. While the wars undertaken in Italy must have an interest of their own, they should also be seen as part of a wider movement to create the unity of France in the face of the power of the great feudal principalities. The role of Louis XII, in particular, needs re-emphasising.
Nor is the time-scale alone worth reviewing. The perspective, too, requires reconsideration. The position of the great nobility is now better understood, while the recovery of France after the war against England is no longer seen as an inevitable royal victory but rather the story of how a fragile monarchy (for that is what it was in the mid-fifteenth century) overcame the power of the princely polyarchy. How that was achieved will be described in this chapter. It involved the use of, and the encouragement given to, institutions, military, financial and legal; the establishment of links between the crown and local societies, urban and rural; the development of political ideas and doctrines, and the expression of those ideas (particularly the ideas of power) through the language of signs and symbolism. Finally, it demanded a particular vision of the past, deeply influenced by humanism, upon which the present could be built. History and tradition, much of it myth, were to be transformed into political assets helping to create a sense of national identity in the present.