1. Where did the name France came from?
=>The name France came from Franks.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06238a.htm
2. What is absolute monarchy? Tell how it ended as a system of government in France?
=>Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government where the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, thus wielding political power over the sovereign state and its subject peoples. In an absolute monarchy, the transmission of power is twofold; hereditary and marital. As absolute governor, the monarch’s authority is not legally bound or restricted by a constitution as in a limited monarchy.
The French Revolution (French: Révolution française; 1789–99) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tradition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy
a. King Louis XIII
=> Louis XIII of France was born in 1601 and died in 1643. Louis was the son of Henry IV and Marie de Medici. He was king from 1610 on, the year of his father’s assassination. His monarchy was dominated by the careers of the Duke de Luynes and Cardinal Richelieu. His monarchy saw an expansion of absolute monarchical power started by Louis XI and advanced by the likes of Francis I and Henry II. The power of the monarchy was weakened during the French Wars of Religion and Louis wanted to build on the increase in monarchical power that his father, Henry, had introduced once the war had ended.
Louis became king at the age of nine. Therefore, as a minor, France was governed by a Regent – in this case, his mother Marie de Medici. She allowed her favourites, Galigai and Concini, to do as they wished, thereby discrediting the monarchy after the exalted heights Henry IV had taken it to.
From 1614 on, Louis became more and more influenced by Charles, Duke de Luynes, who favoured an extension of royal absolutism. Both Luynes and Louis were implicated in the murder of Concini and the concocted trial that found Galigai guilty of being a witch, a decision that lead to her execution. Once both former favourites were out of his way, Luynes used his position to expand his power, but also the power of Louis.
From 1617 on, France witnessed an expansion of monarchical power at the expense of the power of the magnates. Marie de Medici was exiled to a chateau at Blois and kept out of the royal court.
Louis had married at the age of 14. His wife was Anne of Austria, the Spanish Infanta. It was an arranged marriage (it had been settled as early as 1611 in the Treaty of Fontainbleau) and it was not a happy marriage. Louis and Anne spent years living apart, and the birth of their son, the future Louis XIV, surprised many but was the result of a rare night spent together. "It was probably out of a sense of duty to his kingdom." EN Williams
Louis was a mass of contradictions. He came across as modest and reserved but he could be very cruel and ruthless – as the murder of Concini indicated. He was a very religious man who sanctioned murder. He was also a hypochondriac who always believed that he was ill yet he enjoyed leading his soldiers into battle.
Louis knew that he did not possess the ability to grasp the detail needed to run his kingdom well – hence his reliance on Luynes and Richelieu. However, both men were in favour of absolute monarchy and they formed a formidable team between 1617 and 1643; Luynes until his death in 1621 and Richelieu until the death of the king in 1643. The final decision on policy always rested with Louis.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/louis_xiii_of_france.htm
=>King Louis XIV was born at the royal chateau in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638. He was only five when he became king on the death of his father, Louis XIII. The regency, confided to his mother, Anne of Austria, was marked by a period of rebellion known as the Fronde (1648–1653, the 'first French Revolution'), led first by the nobility and later by the urban commoners. The boy felt both humiliated by arrogant nobles and threatened by the people of Paris—and would never forget it.
The King Governs Alone
In 1660, Louis XIV married Maria Theresa, Infanta of Spain. The following year, on the death of his godfather and his prime minister Cardinal Mazarin, the 23-year-old monarch announced that he himself would govern. No one believed him. Yet he insisted on convening a council on a daily basis, from which he excluded grand nobles, surrounding himself instead with ministers who owed him all.
The Century of Louis XIV'
The first twenty years of the king's personal reign were the most brilliant. With his finance minister Colbert, he carried out the administrative and financial reorganization of the kingdom, as well as the development of trade and manufacturing. With the Marquis de Louvois, he reformed the army and racked up military victories. Finally, Louis encouraged an extraordinary blossoming of culture: theatre (Molière and Racine), music (Lully), architecture, painting, sculpture, and all the sciences (founding of the royal academies). These accomplishments would be depicted on the ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors depicted below.
He planned to conquer all lands west of the Rhine River. He also gained several important territories. The Spanish War of Succession ruined the Treasury, and Louis never could raise the taxes enough to cover his love of his little wars and women. He spent more than France could afford. Not only had the building of Versailles disabled the Treasury, but his spending on his various mistresses and illegitimate children got out of hand. He fought four major ones, and his aim was to make himself supreme in Europe. He went along with the reforms dictated by the pope in regards to religion, but his main goal was to make the court of France the center of fashion and art. He did end up having some failures as well. The good that he did with the money outweighs the fact that he bankrupted the treasury because he opened up a whole new world of culture for the people of France. Louis bankrupted the Treasury of France through his wars. That is when he created Versailles, the country estate. rt in a reorganization of the Roman Catholic Church inside France.
http://staff.gps.edu/mines/Age%20of%20Absolu-%20Louis%20XIV.htm
c. Cardinal Richelieu
=> Richelieu was the Chief Minister of Louis XIII, a weak ruler who basically left the running of the country to Richelieu. Louis always backed Richelieu against his political enemies, having total trust in him.
Richelieu's main achievements were:
He broke the independent power the French aristocracy had enjoyed under previous kings, removing many of their privileges and important positions they held. For example, previously the head of the French army had been the Constable, a noble. By appointing Marshals centrally as senior military commanders in the field, Richelieu effectively bypassed the Constable, the position falling into disuse.
Many feudal rights and laws were revoked by Richelieu - individual areas, cities,and towns had enjoyed a large latitude in local affairs, often thwarting Royal power and policy.The aristocracy had often pursued independent aims, contracting alliances with foreign powers and doing much as they pleased;Richelieu ended this, subordinating local and religious interests to those of the state and its head, the King.
The Thirty Years War. Catholic successes were making the Hapsburgs, who controlled Spain, Belgium,and much of Germany too powerful; France was being encircled, so Richelieu subsidized Protestant powers fighting the Hapsburgs. However, following the destruction of the Swedish army at Nordlingen (1634) it became necessary for France to enter the war itself, thus preventing total Hapsburg domination of Europe.
Although Richelieu died in 1642, he laid the groundwork for the centralization of power in Royal hands under Louis XIV, and the defeat of the Hapsburgs in the Thirty Years War; by 1660 France had replaced Spain as the dominant European nation.
http://search.yahoo.com/fr=ans_qp_1&p=Cardinal+Richelieu++of+france
d. Mazarin
Jules Mazarin (French pronunciation: [ʒyl mazaʁɛ̃]; July 14, 1602 – March 9, 1661), born Giulio Raimondo Mazarino or Mazarini,[1] was a French-Italian[2] cardinal, diplomat, and politician, who served as the chief minister of France from 1642 until his death. Mazarin succeeded his mentor, Cardinal Richelieu. He was a noted collector of art and jewels, particularly diamonds, and he bequeathed the "Mazarin diamonds" to Louis XIV in 1661, some of which remain in the collection of the Louvre museum in Paris.[3] His personal library was the origin of the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris.
Mazarin followed Filippo I Colonna as captain of infantry in his regiment during the war in Monferrato of 1628, over the succession to Mantua. During this war he gave proofs of much diplomatic ability, and Pope Urban VIII entrusted him, in 1629, with the difficult task of putting an end to the war of the Mantuan succession.
The Emperor Ferdinand II, the duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I and Ferdinand II of Guastalla, the papal candidate for the duchy, were ranged against Louis XIII in aid of Charles Gonzaga, duc de Nevers, the opposing candidate. Urban VIII sent troops into the Valtellina, including Torquato Conti and it was Conti who was rumoured to have made favourable reports to Urban regarding Mazarin's military ability, which put Mazarin in good stead with the militaristic pope. At the time Anna Colonna, daughter of Filippo I Colonna, was married to Urban's nephew Taddeo Barberini, and the Pope now made her brother, Girolamo Colonna, archbishop of Albano and a new cardinal. The Cardinal was sent to Monferrat as papal legate, to treat of peace between France and Spain in the matter of Mantua, and insisted that Mazarin be attached to his legation as secretary.
As papal vice-legate at Avignon (1632), and nuncio extraordinary in France (1634), Mazarin was perceived as an extension of Richelieu's policy. Under Habsburg pressure, Mazarin was sent back to Avignon, where he was dismissed by Urban VIII on January 17, 1636.
Mazarin continued Richelieu's anti-Habsburg policy and laid the foundation for Louis XIV's expansionist policies. The victories of Condé and Turenne brought the French party to the bargaining table at the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War with the Treaty of Munster and Treaty of Osnabrück (Treaty of Westphalia), in which Mazarin's policies were French rather than Catholic and brought Alsace (though not Strasbourg) to France; he settled Protestant princes in secularized bishoprics and abbacies in reward for their political opposition to Austria. In 1658 he formed the League of the Rhine, which was designed to check the House of Austria in central Germany. In 1659 he made peace with Habsburg Spain in the Peace of the Pyrenees, which added to French territory Roussillon and northern Cerdanya— as French Cerdagne— in the far south as well as part of the Low Countries.
Towards Protestantism at home, Mazarin pursued a policy of promises and calculated delay to defuse the armed insurrection of the Ardèche (1653), for example, and to keep the Huguenots disarmed: for six years they believed themselves to be on the eve of recovering the protections of the Edict of Nantes, but in the end they obtained nothing.
Towards the pontificate of the successful Spanish candidate, Cardinal Pamphilj, elected pope (15 September 1644) as Innocent X (Cardinal Mazarin having arrived too late to present the French veto), there was constant friction. Mazarin protected the Barberini cardinals, nephews of the late pope, and the Bull against them was voted by the Parlement of Paris "null and abusive"; France made a show of preparing to take Avignon by force, and Innocent backed down. Mazarin was more consistently an enemy of Jansenism, in particular during the formulary controversy, more for its political implications than out of theology. On his deathbed he warned young Louis "not to tolerate the Jansenist sect, not even their name."
http://www.google.com.ph/#sclient=psy&hl=tl&q=Mazarin+of+france4. What is a General Estates in France? What is its composition? Describe each.
=>In France under the Ancient Regime, the States-General or Estates-General (French: états généraux, IPA: [eta ʒeneʁo]), was a legislative assembly (see The Estates) of the different classes (or estates) of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king. It had no true power in its own right—unlike the English parliament it was not required to approve royal taxation or legislation[1] instead it functioned as an advisory body to the king, primarily by presenting petitions from the various estates and consulting on fiscal policy[2]. The Estates-General met from intermittently until 1614 and rarely afterwards, but was not definitively dissolved until after the French Revolution[2].
It is comparable to similar institutions across Europe, such as the States-General of the Netherlands, the Parliament of England, the Estates of Parliament of Scotland, the Cortes of Spain, the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Diets (German: Landtage) of the historic states of Germany.
The effective powers of the States-General likewise varied over time. In the 14th century they were considerable. The king could not, in theory, levy general taxation. Even in the provinces attached to the domain of the Crown, he could only levy it where he had retained the haute justice over the inhabitants, but not on the subjects of lords having the haute justice. The privileged towns had generally the right of taxing themselves. To collect general taxes, the king required consent of the lay and ecclesiastical lords, and of the towns. This amounted to needing authorization from the States-General, which only granted these subsidies temporarily for fairly short periods. As a result, they were summoned frequently and their power over the Crown became considerable.
In the second half of the 14th century, however, certain royal taxes, levied throughout the Crown's domain, tended to become permanent and independent of the vote of the estates. This sprang from many causes, but from one in particular; the Crown endeavoured by transforming and changing the nature of the "feudal aid" to levy a general tax by right, on its own authority, in such cases as those in which a lord could demand feudal aid from his vassals. For instance, it was in this way that the necessary taxes were raised for twenty years to pay the ransom of King John II of France without a vote of the States-General, although they met several times during this period. Custom confined this tendency. Thus during the second half of the 15th century the chief taxes, the taille, aids and gabelle became definitely permanent for the benefit of the Crown, sometimes by the formal consent of the States-General, as in 1437 in the case of the aids.
The critical periods of the Hundred Years' War favoured the States-General, though at the price of great sacrifices. Under the reign of King John II they had controlled, from 1355 to 1358, not only the voting, but through their commissaries, the administration of and jurisdiction over the taxes. In the first half of the reign of Charles VII they had been summoned almost every year and had dutifully voted subsidies. But when the struggle was over they renounced, through weariness and a longing for peace, their most precious right, the power of the purse.
At the estates of 1484, however, after the death of Louis XI, the deputies of the three orders united their efforts in the hope of regaining the right of periodically sanctioning taxation. They voted the taille for two years only, at the same time reducing it to the amount it had reached at the end of the reign of Charles VII. They even demanded, and obtained, the promise of the Crown that they should be summoned again before the expiry of the two years. But the promise was not kept, and we do not find the States-General summoned again till 1560. There was thus a 76 year interim, during which successive kings expanded the role of the centralised state through various means.
5. Tell something about the following events in the history of France:
1. Hundred Years War
=>The Hundred Years War was a series of wars between England and France. The background of the Hundred Years War went as far back as to the reign of William the Conqueror. When William the Conqueror became king in 1066 after his victory at the Battle of Hastings, he united England with Normandy in France. William ruled both as his own.
Under Henry II, the lands owned by England in France became even larger and the kings who followed Henry found the land they owned in France too large and difficult to control. By 1327, when Edward III became king, England only controlled two areas of France - Gascony in the south and Ponthieu in the north.
In 1328, Charles IV of France died. Charles did not have any sons to take over his land and all his brothers were dead. He did have a sister called Isabella. She was the mother of Edward III and Edward believed that because of this, he should be king of France. However, the French decided that a cousin of Charles, Philip, should be crowned king.
Edward was furious but he was not in a position to do anything in the late 1320’s. By 1337 he was ready to fight for what he believed was his and he declared war on Philip. Edward was not only willing to fight for what he believed was his - the crown of France - but also he feared that Philip was a threat to his possessions in France - Gascony and Ponthieu.
Edward now had to raise an army. There were men who looked forward to fighting abroad in an army as it gave them the opportunity to plunder treasure and bring things back to England which could make them rich. However, many men were not keen on fighting as they were usually more concerned about farming. A war in the autumn could be a disaster as this was harvest time.
The feudal system meant that knights had to provide the king with soldiers when the king demanded them. However, war had moved on from the time of the Battle of Hastings and the longbow was now the most feared of weapons and not the knight on horseback. The king's officials went around England looking for skilled archers. All young men in medieval villages were expected to practice archery so there were many skilled archers to be found. It was left to a village to decide who would actually go to fight but the village as a whole would have to look after the family or families affected by someone leaving. Those who went were paid three pence a day.
Armies were very expensive. Fighting abroad made them even more expensive to run. This problem could be got around by making a local area in France, which was under your control, pay a 'tribune' to you. This would keep your costs down. In return for paying a tribune, the area concerned was given a promise that the troops there would behave themselves and would not damage homes, steal crops and kill animals. In this sense, paying a tribune was similar to buying protection.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hundred_years_war.htm
=>The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. The war was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most of the countries of Europe. Naval warfare also reached overseas and shaped the colonial formation of future nations.
The origins of the conflict and goals of the participants were complex, and no single cause can accurately be described as the main reason for the fighting. Initially, the war was fought largely as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, although disputes over the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire played a significant part. Gradually, the war developed into a more general conflict involving most of the European powers.[9][10] In this general phase, the war became more a continuation of the Bourbon–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence, and in turn led to further warfare between France and the Habsburg powers, and less specifically about religion.[11]
A major impact of the Thirty Years' War was the extensive destruction of entire regions, denuded by the foraging armies (bellum se ipsum alet). Episodes of famine and disease significantly decreased the populace of the German states, Bohemia, the Low Countries and Italy, while bankrupting most of the combatant powers. While the regiments within each army were not strictly mercenary in that they were not guns for hire that changed sides from battle to battle, the individual soldiers that made up the regiments for the most part probably were. The problem of discipline was made more difficult still by the ad hoc nature of 17th-century military financing. Armies were expected to be largely self-funding from loot taken or tribute extorted from the settlements where they operated. This encouraged a form of lawlessness that imposed often severe hardship on inhabitants of the occupied territory. Some of the quarrels that provoked the war went unresolved for a much longer time. The Thirty Years' War was ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, part of the wider Peace of Westphalia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
3. War of Spanish Successions
=> The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) was fought among several European powers, principally the Spanish loyal to Archduke Charles, the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal and the Duchy of Savoy against the Spanish loyal to Philip V, France and the Electorate of Bavaria over a possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. Such a unification would have drastically changed the European balance of power. The war was fought mostly in Europe but included Queen Anne's War in North America and it was marked by the military leadership of notable generals including the Duc de Villars, the Jacobite Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. It resulted in the recognition of Philip as King of Spain while requiring him to renounce any claim to the French throne and to cede much of the Spanish Crown's possessions to the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, Savoy and Great Britain, partitioning the Spanish Empire in Europe.
In 1700, Charles II, the last Spanish monarch of the House of Habsburg, died without issue, bequeathing his possessions to Philip, grandson of his half-sister and King Louis XIV of France. Philip thereby became Philip V of Spain and since he was also the younger son of the Dauphin of France, Philip was in the line of succession of the French throne. The specter of the multi-continental empire of Spain passing under the control of Louis XIV provoked a massive coalition of powers to oppose Philip's succession.
The war began slowly as Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor fought to protect the Austrian Habsburg claim to the Spanish inheritance. As Louis XIV began to expand his territories, other European nations (chiefly England, Portugal and the Dutch Republic) entered on the Holy Roman Empire's side to check French expansion.[5] Other states joined the coalition opposing France and Spain in an attempt to acquire new territories or to protect existing dominions. Spain was itself divided over the succession and fell into a civil war.
The war was centered in Spain and West-Central Europe (especially the Low Countries), with other important fighting in Germany and Italy. Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough distinguished themselves as military commanders in the Low Countries. The war was fought not only in Europe but also the West Indies and colonial North and South America where the conflict became known to the English colonists as Queen Anne's War. Over the course of the fighting, some 400,000 people were killed.[6]
The war was concluded by the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714). As a result, Philip V remained King of Spain but was removed from the French line of succession, averting a union of the two kingdoms. The Austrians gained most of the Spanish territories in Italy and the Netherlands. France's hegemony over continental Europe was ended and the idea of a balance of power became a part of the international order.[7] Philip quickly revived Spanish ambition; taking advantage of the power vacuum caused by Louis XIV's death in 1715, Philip announced he would claim the French crown if the infant Louis XV died and attempted to reclaim Spanish territory in Italy, precipitating the War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1717.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession
4. French Revolution
=>The French Revolution (French: Révolution française; 1789–99) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tradition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.
The French Revolution began in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General in May. The first year of the Revolution witnessed members of the Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the assault on the Bastille in July, the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and an epic march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. The next few years were dominated by tensions between various liberal assemblies and a conservative monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September 1792 and King Louis XVI was executed the next year. External threats also played a dominant role in the development of the Revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars started in 1792 and ultimately featured spectacular French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine—achievements that had defied previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular sentiments radicalized the Revolution significantly, culminating in the Reign of Terror from 1793 until 1794 during which between 16,000 and 40,000 people were killed.[1] After the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799, when it was replaced by the Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte.
The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. The growth of republics and liberal democracies, the spread of secularism, the development of modern ideologies and the invention of total war[2] all mark their birth during the Revolution. Subsequent events that can be traced to the Revolution include the Napoleonic Wars, two separate restorations of the monarchy and two additional revolutions as modern France took shape. In the following century, France would be governed at one point or another as a republic, constitutional monarchy and two different empires (the First and Second).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
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