Economic recovery
France’s new found strength after the war with England was sustained by an economic revival, a European phenomenon of which the state was the beneficiary, not the creator. At the time all the indicators, demographic, agricultural and commercial, were rising, thus creating a ‘process of steady growth which, without doubt, reached its peak under Louis XII’. Was this genuine growth, or merely a return to the level already reached at the beginning of the fourteenth century? The point is debatable, but as centuries go, growth was certainly the chief characteristic of the ‘wonderful sixteenth century’ which began about 1460.
To consider the demographic upturn first. Despite the considerable progress made by research in this field, it is difficult to pinpoint accurately stages in its development. However, three periods may be discerned: a definite revival from 1450 to 1470, a spectacular boom between 1470 and 1500 and, after that date, a steadier advance until the first check in the 1520s. In short, this was a population returning to the level of 15 million, and achieving unparalleled influence in western Europe.
In agricultural matters the line on the graph unmistakably follows that for population growth, except that the recovery of land abandoned during the period of stagnation in general preceded the spectacular demographic surge. Production increased rapidly, particularly that of cereals which, according to the yield of the tithe, doubled between 1450 and 1500. Later there was to be a slowing down of this process, but agricultural revenues continued to increase thanks to prices which were starting to rise. After 1520, the frequent recurrence of shortages showed that the Malthusian ceiling had been reached. All in all, although the rise achieved in wages was sustained, it was cultivation by peasant families that was the first to profit from the state’s lack of financial appetite and favourable economic circumstances; small landowners and the nobility also reaped the benefits of these conditions.
The revival of trade did not follow quite the same pattern. First to recover was widespread merchant activity, the sort that supplied the weekly markets and small seasonal fairs. The network of these was re-established and increased; 13 per cent of royal letters patent addressed to towns, both large and small, in the fifteenth century concerned new fairs. Large-scale maritime commerce and long-distance trade picked up later and more slowly. The fairs at Lyons set up by Louis XI to rival those of Geneva became important only after 1465, the Channel and Atlantic ports after 1475; but Marseilles, acting for the Languedoc, now in full decline, not before the end of the century. A complete recovery of large-scale trade was not seen until the first two decades of the sixteenth century.
Rural communities
The rural lordship, ‘the unique legal and stable framework of the recovery’, took full advantage of this favourable economic situation. For example, the revenues of the county of Tancarville, in Normandy, doubled between 1450 and 1520.
There were, broadly speaking, two kinds of lordship. First, the countless small ones, reduced to their principal dwelling place and farm (metairie) which enjoyed a number of traditional rights; these were owned largely by the lowest ranks of the nobility (ecuyers) who remained, in their way of life, very close to the peasantry, unable to keep up appearances at musters of the arriere-ban, yet very proud of their noble blood. In particular after 1450, these lordships were those which came into the hands of the bourgeoisie from the neighbouring towns.
Lordships of importance were those which administered justice (hautejustice) and, even more so, those bearing a title, beginning with the chatellenies, ‘the best possible investment for a noble servant of the king’, not on account of their profits, which scarcely ever topped 4 or 5 per cent, but for the honour and security which they provided. From his fortified chateau the lord ensured that justice prevailed on his estates; he maintained law and order, policed markets and guaranteed the authenticity of contracts. For country people, the chatellenie was, as a rule, the only place where administrative and judicial authority was exercised.
The state did not interfere with these lordships, but it did overshadow them as the supreme court of appeal, and circumvented them in the matter of tax collection and in the recruitment of francs-archers. In these cases, it dealt directly with the parish whose nature was thereby altered, becoming a secular district and an organised community of inhabitants, as it already was in an ecclesiastical guise. Henceforth, in every village, an elite grew up, recruiting from among its members attorneys, seignorial officers, tax assessors and farmers, and collectors of the taille. With the state in support, this elite, forming a kind of French ‘yeomanry’ which had been reinvigorated by the economic recovery, was capable of providing a counterbalance to the ecclesiastical and seignorial authorities. In this way, albeit diffidently, the peasantry gained access to political existence and experience.
Towns and trade
As regards the merchant economy, the role played by the state with its partner, the bourgeoisie (‘the class that manages the nation’), had long been crucial. Louis XI has been hailed as the king of the merchant class, a view which, today, appears far-fetched. It is undeniably true, however, that economic thinking was gradually asserting itself; it can be traced by analysing the themes in certain ordonnances from the time of Louis XI to Chancellor Duprat’s speech to the towns in 1517. Such thinking inspired numerous measures taken with a view to opening up the kingdom to large-scale trade: for instance, customs protection was employed to reserve the production of silk goods, and other profitable articles, for the manufacturing merchants of the kingdom. Other measures, too, were designed to produce a favourable exchange rate: the export of precious metals was banned and the use of foreign currency forbidden. All this, however, constituted neither a body of doctrine nor a coherent economic policy.
The truth was that, in important commercial affairs, the French kingdom was dominated by forces outside its boundaries. The success of the new fairs at Lyons, both before and after their brief eclipse between 1484 and 1494, the annexation of Marseilles in 1481 and the revived vitality of Paris and the Channel ports renewed the significance of the axis formed by the Rhone, Saone and Seine to the detriment of the hopes once nurtured by Bourges and Tours. However, on closer inspection, the hub of this activity is revealed as having been either the Bank of Lyons, controlled by Italians or Germans, or the trade carried by Castilians and Portuguese in and out of the western ports. The backwardness of France at the capitalist level was clear. That is perhaps why Louis XII and Francis I were so intent upon dominating Milan and Genoa, since the other financial capitals, with Antwerp top of the list, were completely beyond their grasp.
At no time during these years were there, in France, great businessmen capable of exerting weighty influence upon the state. The successors of Jacques Coeur were but pale imitations, merely indispensable intermediaries between the treasury and the Bank of Lyons. There was unbroken continuity from Jean de Beaune to his son, Jacques, who became lord of Semblangay. They were not businessmen, but the first ‘financiers’ in the history of the monarchy, whose authority rested largely on the penury of the state. The downfall of such men in 1523, followed by the execution of Semblangay in 1527, changed nothing, except that it opened the door a little wider to the Italians.
The strength of French merchants was not to be found at this level, but rather in the ‘silent trade’ which gave such a boost to the work of artisans. This was one reason for the robust health of the urban economy, which was able to alleviate in part the first signs of weakness in rural areas during the 1520s. Merchants grew in number, but not in political importance, owing to a lack of a national market and to a decline of their position on the social scale. Other than in Lyons, they were not pre-eminent among urban elites, being overshadowed by royal officers and lawyers. In the same way there was a sense of hierarchy among the 300 or so bonnes villes which, for the most part, held sway within the small cell of which each formed the nucleus. It was, though, thanks to this local ascendancy, largely political in nature, that the state was able to act out its predatory role to the detriment of the country’s rural districts.
Social dynamism: political society
It should come as no surprise that, in a renascent France, it was not the spirit of enterprise, but service to the king or Church which opened the door to rapid social advance. Royal favour was the prize sought by the ambitious. It gave access to the court, an artificial environment long vilified by moralists, yet exerting a fascination which nothing could obscure. The panegyrist of the Chevalier sans reproche shows the young Louis de la Tremoille disregarding the traditional warnings of his father, and setting out for the court of Louis XI. Two separate establishments were to be found in this place of blandishment: the royal household and the council, the one being where those close to the king and, after Anne of Brittany, to the queen might be found; the other constituting those responsible for the day-to-day government and administration of the kingdom. It was an ill-defined milieu, but one which, for a long time, had spawned the sovereign courts, already constituting genuine bodies of civil servants. It is still misleading to try to compare the old nobility (noblesse d’epete) with the new (noblesse de robe), the aristocracy of the court with the parvenus of the council. In the Dialogue de noblesse, Symphorien Champier most aptly wrote: ‘We have three types of nobility: the first is theological and spiritual, the second is a product of nature, the third is political and civil’ (‘Nous avons trois manieres de noblesse: la premiere est theologique et spirituelle, la seconde naturelle, la troisieme polictique et civile’). In other words, the nobility was ever the breeding ground that nurtured the governing elite of the country, whether a man belonged to it by birth or destiny. Even under Louis XI, the princes always made up a quarter of the complement of the council, the nobility, taken together, providing two-thirds.
Within the multitude of nobles, the ‘political and civil’ appeared as an oligarchic structure. Recruited by recommendation dependent upon the whims of clientage, it functioned within a closed circuit, thanks both to its ability to secure secular and ecclesiastical offices and to the king’s largesse, which yielded prodigious fortunes to its members. Yet this nobility did not constitute a wholly united body, being divided from those born to serve in the royal council or by the particular outlook of those who were to man the sovereign courts.
If the apex of the political nobility’s world was the court, then its base was rooted in the depths of civil society. There, in the heart of the chatellenies or the bonnes villes, it was possible to acquire a modicum of local power, and thence place a network of associations which allowed a man to obtain the king’s favour. It was, however, a precarious situation, since disgrace could strike at any moment, bringing with it secular excommunication. Hence it was vitally necessary for members of the serving oligarchy, whatever their background, to reinforce their position by the acquisition of rich lordships which conferred stability and power, or of ecclesiastical benefices and offices in the sovereign courts which procured similar guarantees. The system worked well once the war between the king and the princes was over, and once loss of the king’s good graces was no longer synonymous with losing one’s life, at least if one were well born. Although convicted of lese-majeste in 1504, Pierre de Rohan, marshal of Gie, was able to enjoy his estates in honourable retirement, whereas some twenty years later the financier, Semblancay, ended up on the gallows.