History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 1

by Henry Martyn Baird

Meantime France was fast becoming more homogeneous than it had ever been since the fall of the Roman power. As often as the lines of the great feudal families became extinct, or these families were induced or compelled to renounce their pretensions, their fiefs were given in appanage to younger branches of the royal house, or were more closely united to the domains of the crown, and entrusted to governors of the king's appointment.[10] In either case the actual control of affairs was placed in the hands of officers whose highest ambition was to reproduce in the provincial capital the growing elegance of the great city on the Seine where the royal court had fixed its ordinary abode. The provinces, consequently, began to assimilate more and more to Paris, and this not merely in manners, but in forms of speech and even in pronunciation. The rude patois, since it grated upon the cultivated ear, was banished from polite society, and, if not consigned to oblivion, was relegated to the more ignorant and remoter districts. Learning held its seat in Paris, and the scholars who returned to their homes after a sojourn in its academic halls were careful to avoid creating doubts respecting the thoroughness of their training by the use of any dialect but that spoken in the neighborhood of the university. As the idiom of Paris asserted its supremacy over the rest of France, a new tie was constituted, binding together provinces diverse in origin and history.

The nobles flock to Paris.

The spirit of obedience pervading all classes of the population contributed much to the national strength. The great nobles had lost their excessive privileges. They no longer attempted, in the seclusion of their ancestral estates, to rival the magnificence or defy the authority of the king. They began to prefer the capital to the freer retreat of their castles. During the reign of Francis the First, and still more during the reign of his immediate successors, costly palaces for the accommodation of princely and ducal families were reared in the neighborhood of the Louvre.[11] It was currently reported that more than one fortune had been squandered in the hazardous experiment of maintaining a pomp befitting the courtier. Ultimately the poorer grandees were driven to the adoption of the wise precaution of spending only a quarter of the year in the enticing but dangerous vicinity of the throne.[12]

The cities.

The cities, also, whose extensive privileges had constituted one of the most striking features of the political system of mediæval Europe, had been shorn of their exorbitant claims founded upon royal charters or prescriptive usage. The kings of France, in particular, had favored the growth of the municipalities, in order to secure their assistance in the reduction of refractory vassals. Flourishing trading communities had sprung up on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and of the ocean, and on the banks of the navigable rivers emptying into them. These corporations had secured a degree of independence proportioned, for the most part, to the weakness of their neighbors. The policy of the crown had been, while generously conferring privileges of great importance upon the cities lying within the royal domain, to make still more lavish concessions in favor of the municipalities upon or contiguous to the lands of the great feudatories.[13]

The capital.

No sooner, however, did the humiliation of the landed nobility render it superfluous to conciliate the good-will of the proud and opulent citizens, than the readiest means were sought for reducing them to the level of ordinary subjects. Paris especially, once almost a republic, had of late learned submission and docility.[14] By the change, however, the capital had lost neither wealth nor inhabitants, being described as very rich and populous, covering a vast area, and wholly given up to trade.[15] In the absence of an accurate census, the number of its inhabitants was variously stated at from 300,000 souls to nearly thrice as many; but all accounts agreed in placing Paris among the foremost cities of the civilized world.[16]

Military resources.

With the military resources at his command, the king had the means of rendering himself formidable abroad and secure at home. The French cavalry, consisting of gentlemen whose duty and honorable distinction it was to follow the monarch in every expedition, still sustained the reputation for the impetuous ardor and the irresistible weight of its charges which it had won during the Middle Ages. If it had encountered unexpected rebuffs on the fields of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the chivalry of France had been too successful in other engagements to lose courage and enthusiasm. The nobles, both old and young, were still ready at any time to flock to their prince's standard when unfurled for an incursion into Naples or the Milanese. Never had they displayed more alacrity or self-sacrificing devotion than when young Francis the First set out upon his campaigns in Italy.[17] The French infantry was less trustworthy. The troops raised in Normandy, Brittany, and Languedoc were reported to be but poorly trained to military exercises; but the foot-soldiers supplied by some of the frontier provinces were sturdy and efficient, and the gallant conduct of the Gascons at the disastrous battle of St. Quentin was the subject of universal admiration.[18]

Foreign mercenary troops.