J. H. Shennan - Government and Society in France: 1461-1661

The Nature of Royal Authority

The First Estate

The Second Estate

The Third Estate

The Political Organization of the Estates

The Kings Army

The Kings Councillors

Judicial Organization

Financial Organization

The Governors

A Seventeenth Century Crisis?

Conclusion

DOCUMENTS

A. Power and its Limitations

(i) The Monarchy

(ii) The Three Estates

B. The Government of the Kingdom

(i) The Subjects Role

(ii) The Kings Men

Two distinguished historians of the ancien regime, commenting in 1955 upon the nature of the French state in the three centuries preceding the Revolution, have argued that a notion of absolutism existed from which the idea of despotism was excluded. According to this notion, though the kings power was in the last resort unrestricted, it was customarily circumscribed by the tradition of French kingship, and any royal attempt at evading these inherited limitations would savour of arbitrariness (Doc. 1). This concept at once draws attention to those twin aspects of French history which together provide the necessary basis for an understanding of the period before 1789: the special nature of royal authority and the continuity of the monarchical tradition. The monarchy is the focussing lens through which French government and society should be viewed; it gave impetus to political action and point to social aspirations. This was true in Louis XIVs reign no less than in Louis XTs two hundred years before; indeed, it was scarcely less true in the days of Saint Louis some two centuries earlier still.

F. IIartung and R. Mousnier, Quelques problmes concemant la monarchic absolue, in Rapport pur leXe congrs international des sciences histortques, Rome 1955, P. 12.

The abiding prestige of the French king, his ability to dominate the political scene, stemmed in the first place from his basic function, the obligation to provide justice for his subjects. Upon the royal seal of Hugh Capet, the first of the Capetians, the king was depicted as a judge, and that remained the essential role of his Valois and Bourbon successors. At their coronation each of them swore to govern justly and mercifully and the identification of the role of political sovereign with that of supreme judge inspired a legalistic concept of government which was as deeply felt in the seventeenth century as it had been in the fifteenth (Doc. 2). The kings right to administer the kingdom and to wield supreme executive power depended upon his prior right to dispense justice. He could and did empower his officials and counsellors not only to collect taxes, supervise the waging of wars and deal with a thousand and one administrative matters, but also to judge on his behalf. It was even considered that problems of foreign policy had to be resolved by verdict of the royal judge. This institution more than any other could remind the king of his primary obligation to rule justly. For to rule justly implied respect for the law, and the laws of the kingdom and the countless civil and criminal judgments based upon these laws were enshrined in the