The Monarchy as the Historical Basis of the French State
France would not have become one of the great European states if it had not had a great monarchy. As we have already seen in previous chapters, it was France’s early kings who shaped what is even today the world’s most centralized and homogeneous state.
Since then, France has demonstrated an impressive institutional continuity, which explains, in part, it is still today one of Europe’s most singular and powerful countries. Let us reexamine some of the most notable features of this remarkable history.13.2.1 From Clovis I to Charlemagne
When we look all the way back to the era of the Germanic invasions, just a short time after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Merovingian King Clovis I (481-511), already stands out as a notable historical figure. After the collapse of the Visigoth kingdom of Tolosa, when Clovis defeated Alaric II in 507 at Vouille, in just a few years he would become the most powerful Germanic leader of his time.
However, Clovis would also write the first institutional chapter in the history of the French monarchy, thanks to his being baptized by St. Remigius (Shanzer 1998, 29-57).[659] [660] During the sixth and seventh centuries, Clovis’ descendants were so disastrous that they would go down in history as the “do-nothing kings” (rois faineants). At the beginning of the eighth century, however, one of the court’s high-ranking officials, Charles Martel, brought prestige back to the Frankish kings after scoring a decisive victory near Poitiers in the year 732, against Muslim invaders who had hitherto seemed unstoppable.
Charles Martel was remembered and celebrated as the savior of Christianity, while his son Pepin the Short (751-768), capitalized upon his father’s name to overthrow Childeric III, the last of the Merovingian sovereigns. Accessing the throne of the “Carolingian” kings (the term proceeding from the Latinized name of Charles Martel: Carolus) was possible because Pepin was savvy enough to forge an alliance with the papacy, which ever since Gregory I (590-604), had established itself as the maximum religious authority in what was essentially an entirely Catholic Christendom.
Pepin the Short was anointed as the legitimate king of the Franks with papal authorization, in exchange for which his troops intervened militarily in Italy to defend the papacy against its enemies. After him his successors, all the way down until 1830, were made legitimate sovereigns by means of the ceremony of anointment. The idea, then, that France’s kings ruled by divine right was deeply rooted in its history. Thus, it was no great surprise that France should become the Church’s “eldest daughter” (Fille ainee de l’ Eglise) and the king of France its “very Christian Majesty” (Sa Majeste Tres Chretienne)?The alliance between the papacy and the Frankish kings would reach its zenith with the coronation on December 24, 800 of Pepin the Short’s son, Charlemagne, as the new Emperor of the West. This empire, however, would prove fleeting, as it was shattered in year 843, when Charlemagne’s three grandsons split his empire up at Verdun. The imperial title thus drifted from the Frankish Dynasty, in the year 962, falling into the hands of a German nobleman, Otto I, Duke of Saxony, founder of the (Sacred German) Holy Roman Empire.
13.2.2 A Hereditary, Sovereign and Territorial Monarchy
13.2.2.1 The Establishment of the Hereditary Principle
The “Germanization” of the medieval Christian Empire led to the breaking off of the Frankish kingdom under Hugh Capet (987-996), the first king who managed to bestow his throne upon his descendants via inheritance in what was an essential step in the institutional consolidation of the monarchy.[661]
13.2.2.2 Sovereignty vs. Feudal Bonds
Hugh Capet’s descendants, however, saw their power undercut by the profound “feudalization” of Frankish society, at least until Abbot Suger (1080-1151), championed the idea that the king occupied the apex of the feudal pyramid.[662] The next step would be taken by the jurists of France’s Louis IX in the thirteenth century, when they developed the concept of royal “sovereignty”, which posited that the king stood above and beyond any vassal ties.
13.2.2.3 “France” Appears
Hugh Capet and his descendants bore the title “King of the Franks” until Philip II Augustus (1179-1223), the seventh king of the Capet Dynasty, replaced this title with that of “King of France”. No longer was the king to rule over a specific people, but rather a territory and all its inhabitants, a crucial initial step in the development of the identification between monarch and kingdom.
13.2.2.4 Rex Est Imperator in Regno Suo
The kings of France, however, would still need to gain their independence from the papacy, a feat achieved by Philip IV the Fair (1285-1314), who successfully secured a series of powers in his confrontation with Pope Boniface VIII. To achieve this, the king had to summon representatives of his kingdom, convoking the first assembly of the estates in French history: the Estates General of 1302. With the political support of the three estates (nobility, clergy and the third state, the citizens) and the technical-legal counsel of the jurists, the king of France became an emperor in his kingdom. By basing his authority upon the ceremony of “anointment” he, at the same time, reaffirmed before the Pope the principle of his divine right and the implication that his legitimacy proceeded directly from God and did not require papal intervention.
13.2.3 The Hundred Years' War and the Bolstering
of Monarchical Prestige and Power
The prestige and power of the French kings was considerably eroded as a result of the Hundred Years War. There were periods over the course of this interminable conflict when most French territory was actually held by the king of England, specifically during two the darkest and most dramatic reigns of Philip VI (13281350) and Charles VI, the Mad (1380-1422).
The failed military efforts of the French nobility were buoyed by the appearance of Joan of Arc (1412-1431), who, in a surprising development, received the control of an army and managed to take Orleans, allowing Charles VII to be crowned at Reims.[663] This monarch, who until then the English had contemptuously dubbed the “King of Bourges”, initiated a remarkable comeback in which, in just a few years, he scored a definitive military victory against England in this protracted clash.
The end of the One Hundred Years’ War had important constitutional consequences for the kings of both England and France. In the former the defeat would finally allow Parliament to trump regal prerogative, while in France the effect was the opposite, the kings seeing their institutional prestige augmented by the victory. In fact, the power of the king of France was consolidated in the mid fifteenth century by the crucial reform measures introduced by Charles VII (1422-1461), such as the establishment of permanent taxes[664] that allowed him, among other things, to maintain a stable professional army at the service of the monarchy for the first time.
13.2.4 The Era of Absolutism: Louis XIV's Monarchy as a Landmark Reign
The kings of France managed to forge one of Europe’s most powerful states during the Modern Age thanks to monarchs like Louis XI (1461-1483) and Francis I (1515-1547), of the House of Valois. After the grim period marked by the Wars of Religion (1562-1598), the monarchy grew more stable and strong with the first monarch of the House of Bourbon, Henry IV (1589-1610), who would be succeeded by charismatic kings such as Louis XIII (1610-1643)—especially during the period in which the government was in the hands of Cardinal Richelieu (1630- 1642)—and, above all, Louis XIV (1643-1715). The latter’s prolonged reign (72 years, with Louis personally ruling for 54 of them, beginning in 1661) marks without any doubt the zenith of French prestige and power in the Europe of the Ancien Regime.
During the reign of Louis XIV, France superseded Spain as the premier European power upon the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). This historic pact, coming 2 years before the king was even of legal age, established France as Europe’s hegemonic power. Louis XIV would go on to exercise his powers an absolute monarch, assisted by strong advisors whose counsel he heeded, though all final decisions rested with him. In addition, his plans were generally well executed because he almost invariably managed to surround himself with very competent aides (Swann 2001, 139-168).
Under Louis XIV, as we know, for the first time, the French monarchy combined the old medieval conception of the king-judge (roi justicier) with the idea that the sovereign ought also be a legislator to reform the traditional order (roi legislateur) (Gouron 1991, 101-114). To achieve this, he called upon excellent ministers, including the notable Jean Baptiste Colbert, who became the main figure shaping the French state between 1661 and his death in 1683. As Minister of Finance, he not only reconstructed the government and reformed the royal tax administration, but also promoted commerce and imposed an economic doctrine in which the state gave direction to and nurtured economic activity. His policies, thus, served to shore up French prestige and influence throughout Europe, allowing the country to enjoy its grand siecle in the eighteenth century—a crucial development from the point of view of constitutional history, as the French monarchy provided the model which most European sovereigns would come to emulate.
13.3