Kingdom of France

The Kingdom of France is one of the foremost powers in Europe in the 18th century. An economic and millitary juggernaut, it dominates much of European politics and spans three different continents in terms of colonies. Having secured nearly all natural borders of France, it is a nearly impenetrable country that has yet to face a serious home-land invasion since 1596.

It is currently being played by Basi.

## History

### Prehistory (before the 6th Century BC)

The oldest traces of archaic humans in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. Neanderthals occupied the region into the Upper Paleolithic era but were slowly replaced by Homo sapiens around 35,000 BCE. This period witnessed the emergence of cave painting in the Dordogneand the Pyrenees, including at the famous Lascaux site, dated to c. 18,000 BC. At the end of the Last Glacial Period (10,000 BC), the climate became milder; from approximately 7,000 BC, this part of Western Europe entered the Neolithic era, and its inhabitants became sedentary.
After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, initially working gold, copper and bronze, then later iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic, including the exceptionally dense Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC).

### Antiquity (6th Century BC - 5th Century AD)

In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaeafounded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille), on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This makes it France's oldest city. At the same time, some Gallic Celtic tribes penetrated parts of eastern and northern France, gradually spreading through the rest of the country between the 5th and 3rd century BC.

Around 390 BC, the Gallic chieftain Brennusand his troops made their way to Roman Italythrough the Alps, defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Allia, and besieged and ransomedRome. The Gallic invasion left Rome weakened, and the Gauls continued to harass the region until 345 BC when they entered into a formal peace treaty with Rome. But the Romans and the Gauls would remain adversaries for the next centuries, and the Gauls would continue to be a threat in Italy.
Around 125 BC, the south of Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who called this region Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), which over time evolved into the name Provence in French. Julius Caesarconquered the remainder of Gaul and overcame a revolt carried out by the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix in 52 BC. Gaul was divided by Augustus into Roman provinces.Many cities were founded during the Gallo-Roman period, including Lugdunum (present-day Lyon), which is considered the capital of the Gauls.
From the 250s to the 280s AD, Roman Gaul suffered a serious crisis with its fortified borders being attacked on several occasions by barbarians. Nevertheless, the situation improved in the first half of the 4th century, which was a period of revival and prosperity for Roman Gaul. In 312, Emperor Constantine Iconverted to Christianity. Subsequently, Christians who had been persecuted increased rapidly across the entire Roman Empire. But from the beginning of the 5th century, the Barbarian Invasions resumed. Teutonictribes invaded the region from present-day Germany, the Visigoths settling in the southwest, the Burgundians along the Rhine River Valley, and the Franks in the north.

### Early Middle Ages (5th-10th Century)

At the end of the Antiquity period, ancient Gaul was divided into several Germanic kingdoms and a remaining Gallo-Roman territory, known as the Kingdom of Syagrius. Simultaneously, Celtic Britons, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, settled in the western part of Armorica. As a result, the Armorican peninsula was renamed Brittany, Celtic culture was revived, and independent petty kingdoms arose in the region.

The first leader to make himself king of all the Franks was Clovis I, who began his reign in 481, routing the last forces of the Roman governors of the province in 486. Clovis claimed that he would be baptised a Christian in the event of his victory against the Visigothic Kingdom, which was said to have guaranteed the battle. Clovis regained the southwest from the Visigoths, was baptised in 508 and made himself master of what is now western Germany.

Clovis I was the first Germanic conqueror after the fall of the Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity, rather than Arianism; thus France was given the title "Eldest daughter of the Church" (*French: La fille aînée de l'Église*) by the papacy, and French kings would be called "the Most Christian Kings of France" (*Rex Christianissimus*), The Franks embraced the Christian Gallo-Roman culture, and ancient Gaul was eventually renamed *Francia* ("Land of the Franks"). The Germanic Franks adopted Romanic languages, except in northern Gaul where Roman settlements were less dense and where Germanic languages emerged. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty, but his kingdom would not survive his death. The Franks treated land purely as a private possession and divided it among their heirs, so four kingdoms emerged from that of Clovis: Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. The last Merovingian kings lost power to their mayors of the palace (head of household). One mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated an Umayyad invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours (732) and earned respect and power within the Frankish kingdoms. His son, Pepin the Short, seized the crown of Francia from the weakened Merovingians and founded the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin's son, Charlemagne, reunited the Frankish kingdoms and built a vast empire across Western and Central Europe.

Proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III and thus establishing in earnest the French government's longtime historical association with the Catholic Church, Charlemagne tried to revive the Western Roman Empire and its cultural grandeur. Charlemagne's son, Louis I (Emperor 814–840), kept the empire united; however, this Carolingian Empire would not survive his death. In 843, under the Treaty of Verdun, the empire was divided between Louis' three sons, with East Francia going to Louis the German, Middle Francia to Lothair I, and West Francia to Charles the Bald. West Francia approximated the area occupied by modern France and was its precursor.

During the 9th and 10th centuries, continually threatened by Viking invasions, France became a very decentralised state: the nobility's titles and lands became hereditary, and the authority of the king became more religious than secular and thus was less effective and constantly challenged by powerful noblemen. Thus was established feudalism in France. Over time, some of the king's vassals would grow so powerful that they often posed a threat to the king. For example, after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror added "King of England" to his titles, becoming both the vassal to (as Duke of Normandy) and the equal of (as king of England) the king of France, creating recurring tensions.

### High and Late Middle Ages

The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned King of the Franks. His descendants—the Capetians, the House of Valois and the House of Bourbon—progressively unified the country through wars and dynastic inheritance into the Kingdom of France, which was fully declared in 1190 by Philip II of France (*Philippe Auguste*). Later kings would expand their directly possessed *domaine royal* to cover over half of modern continental France by the 15th century, including most of the north, centre and west of France. During this process, the royal authority became more and more assertive, centred on a hierarchically conceived society distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners.

The French nobility played a prominent role in most Crusades to restore Christian access to the Holy Land. French knights made up the bulk of the steady flow of reinforcements throughout the 200-year span of the Crusades, in such a fashion that the Arabs uniformly referred to the crusaders as *Franj* caring little whether they came from France. The French Crusaders also imported the French language into the Levant, making French the base of the *lingua franca* (lit. "Frankish language") of the Crusader states. French knights also made up the majority in both the Hospital and the Temple orders. The latter in particular held numerous properties throughout France and by the 13th century were the principal bankers for the French crown, until Philip IV annihilated the order in 1307. The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars in the southwestern area of modern-day France. In the end, the Cathars were exterminated and the autonomous County of Toulouse was annexed into the crown lands of France.

From the 11th century, the House of Plantagenet, the rulers of the County of Anjou, succeeded in establishing its dominion over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then progressively built an "empire" that spanned from England to the Pyrenees and covering half of modern France. Tensions between the kingdom of France and the Plantagenet empire would last a hundred years, until Philip II of France conquered, between 1202 and 1214, most of the continental possessions of the empire, leaving England and Aquitaine to the Plantagenets.

Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328. Under Salic law the crown of France could not pass to a woman nor could the line of kingship pass through the female line. Accordingly, the crown passed to Philip of Valois, rather than through the female line to Edward of Plantagenet, who would soon become Edward III of England. During the reign of Philip of Valois, the French monarchy reached the height of its medieval power. However Philip's seat on the throne was contested by Edward III of England in 1337, and England and France entered the off-and-on Hundred Years' War. The boundaries changed greatly with time, but landholdings inside France by the English Kings remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders, such as Joan of Arc and La Hire, strong French counterattacks won back most English continental territories. Like the rest of Europe, France was struck by the Black Death, from which half of the 17 million population of France died.

### Wars of Religion and Aftermath (1569 - 1621)

The French Renaissance saw spectacular cultural development and the first standardisation of the French language, which would become the official language of Franceand the language of Europe's aristocracy. It also saw a long set of wars, known as the Italian Wars, between France and the House of Habsburg. French explorers such as Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain claimed lands in the Americas for France, paving the way for the expansion of the French colonial empire. The rise of Protestantism in Europe led France to a civil war known as the French Wars of Religion, where, in the most notorious incident, thousands of Huguenots were murdered in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. The Wars of Religion were ended by Henry IV's Edict of Nantes, which granted some freedom of religion to the Huguenots. Spanish troops, the terror of Western Europe, assisted the Catholic side from 1589 to 1594. In 1602, France became involved in the War of the League of Calais, defeating Spain and gaining the County of Burgundy. This era also marked the start of the French Colonial Empire, as various expeditions where sent to the new world to secure Colonial Possessions, with Nouvelle Angouleme being established in 1600. France entered a scramble for possessions in Eastern North America, alongside English, Scottish and Dutch colonies. In 1610, Henri IV was assassinated, being succeeded by Louis XIII under the regency of Mary de Medici.

France became involved in another brewing conflict as Louis XIII became betrothed to Anne, Queen of England. The marriage scared English Protestants, further riled by paranoia of an intervention by Spain or Scotland. In 1615, Louis married Anne, starting the First English Civil War. A large French army invaded England, reaching London but being defeated by a Scottish Intervention alongside English Rebels. Anne fled to Ireland, and France seized control of the Channel Islands, the British Colonies in the East Coast and took nominal control over Ireland after defeating Spanish backed rebels therein.

### Rise of Absolutism (1621-Present)

During the 1600s and 1700s French rule over Ireland was apparent in matters of foreign policy, while the two states diverged in domestic politics as Ireland established a powerful Parliamentary democracy and France turned towards absolutism. Coinciding with the War in England, a smaller revolt in support of the Regent Mary took place, being quickly crushed. One of its leaders, the Cardinal Richelieu nonetheless secured the support of Louis XIII. Richelieu and Louis XIII crushed the last serious Huguenot revolt at La Rochelle in the Anglo-French War of 1628-1629. Louis XIII also fought in conflicts against the Dutch in 1636, while remaining neutral in the unfolding Twenty Years War, but using the opportunity to annex Lorraine. Richelieu’s longest lasting legacy was, however, the establishment of "the royal monopoly of force" as French doctrine, setting the stage for the absolutism of Henry V & II and Louis XIV & II.

Louis XIII was succeeded by his son by Queen Anne, Henry V. Henry V saw himself as a great diplomat and warrior king, mostly delegating domestic matters to the Influential Cardinal Mazarin. During Henry’s reign France secured Artois from Burgundy, made peace with the Dutch, securing full control of the Eastern Seaboard. In 1647, with the Death of Anne of Ireland, Henry became sole King of Ireland, cementing French control over the country. In this time, France also reopened an alliance with the Ottoman Empire and purchased Canada off Newly Independent Scotland, before becoming embroiled in the most significant event of Henri’s reign - the Franco-Spanish War of 1654-1658. Through this conflict France secured Corsica and partitioned Genoa, but perhaps the most significant effect was a marriage with the Spanish Bourbons, ending the steadfast Hapsburg alliance encircling France (although Spain would often side with the Hapsburgs either way). Henry would be viewed in hindsight as a highly effective diplomat who greatly strengthened the French position on the world stage, but his lax approach to domestic policy would also face criticism.

Louis XIV would continue Henry V’s legacy after his ascension to the throne in 1665. His 64 year reign would mark Frances continuing ascent as a European Great power, creating one of the most powerful European Armies and an efficient Absolutist State.

One major aspect of Louis’ reign was colonial policy. Louis established the French and Irish Royal African Company, French Louisiana, though French influence declined in the Indies. Louis issued the Code Noir and Code Mixte, formalising the extent institution of slavery within the colonies. From the 16th to the 19th century, France was responsible for 11% of the transatlantic slave trade, second only to Great Britain during the 18th century. By the mid-18th century, Nantes had become the principal French slave-trading port. During Louis’ reign, French control over the eastern seaboard was significantly enhanced.

Louis’ instituted a highly effective system of absolute control, relegating the nobility to the status of courtiers in the new extravagant court at Versailles. Louis nonetheless remained tolerant of the Hugenout Population and the semi-independent political system of Ireland. By the end of Louis’ reign, France was the most populous country in Europe (not including the Holy Roman Empire) and had tremendous political, social and economic influence over the continent. The tax reforms of Colbert and military reforms lead by Tellier further cemented French power. On the other hand, the stalemated Great Scottish War saw the first sign of this influence flagging.

Louis XIV’s foreign policy was dominated by a growing resurgence in the rivalry with Austria. France entered into the Five Years War with Austria over control of Italy, which was a costly conflict but ultimately secured French influence in northern Italy and control of Savoy and Nice. This influence would be reversed as Louis’ reign progressed. After numerous crises where France appeared on the verge of war with Austria, the Great Scottish War began after Louis declared war on England in support of France’s Auld Alliance with Scotland. Scotland fell quickly but the war elsewhere was more of a stalemate, and an English invasion of Ireland was repelled. France avoided territorial losses in Europe but lost control of Haiti and Jamaica. Critical conceptions of Louis’ reign are controversial.