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The Early Modern State

Professor Major, in what he describes as the last book he will write on French history, has set himself the task of producing a new synthesis to replace the discredited idea of early modern absolutism. Unable to consider all aspects of government and society over two hundred years in sufficient depth, he has elected to demonstrate his hypothesis by studying two main themes. First he charts the relationship between the crown and the various kinds of representative assembly, a topic on which he is already the acknowledged expert, and secondly he considers the changes in the social structure and economic fortunes of the nobility. He draws upon his own researches and upon those of other scholars with whom he agrees, commendably wasting very few words in refuting arguments that he finds unacceptable. Major's conclusions about the sixteenth century stand in direct opposition to the views of historians who have tried to trace the growth of absolutism, or the "rise of the modern state," from the reign of Francis I or even earlier. In this new account, the monarchy of Francis is shown to have been weak, with a small army and a smaller bureaucracy. Far from promoting centralization, the hallmark of absolutism, the king continued the decentralization of his predecessors, creating more provincial estates and parlements as well as selling offices. To Major, the Renaissance monarchy was based on consent, and representative bodies were therefore consulted on the levying of taxes and on important legislation. During the so-called wars of religion, even more power was exercised in the provinces with little or no reference to the crown. In the early seventeenth century he finds only two men who sought to increase royal power at the expense of the consultative bodies on which the Renaissance state depended. One was Sully, but his designs were curtailed by the cautious Henri IV and reversed by the ministers of the regency. The second was Marillac, but his fall from power also brought that policy to an end because the traditionalist Richelieu would have none of it. Thus the Renaissance idea of government by consent was still alive when the young Louis XIV inherited the throne.