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The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France. R. Knecht J.
Читать онлайн.Название The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France
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isbn 9780007393381
Автор произведения R. Knecht J.
Издательство HarperCollins
The character of a town was determined by its main activity. Trade was important to all of them, but some were also administrative, intellectual and ecclesiastical centres. Seven had parlements; about 90 were capitals of bailliages and sénéchaussées, 15 (Paris, Toulouse, Montpellier, Orléans, Cahors, Angers, Aix, Poitiers, Valence, Caen, Nantes, Bourges, Bordeaux, Angoulême and Issoire) had universities, and about 110 were archiepiscopal or episcopal sees. Virtually the only industrial towns were Amiens, where the making of cloth kept half the population employed, and Tours, where silk was important.
By 1500 the walled towns, commonly described as ‘good towns’ (bonnes villes) to distinguish them from the large villages or villes champêtres, were active politically. In 1482, King Louis XI asked the people of Amiens to endorse a treaty, giving as his reason ‘the need to secure the consent and ratification of the men of the estates and communities of the bonnes villes of our kingdom’. The towns have been described as a fourth power in the kingdom along with the king, the church and the nobility. The crown and the towns worked together as allies, while watching each other closely.
The walls of many towns had fallen into disrepair by the thirteenth century and, consequently, many had been taken by the English during the Hundred Years War. To protect themselves, many towns by 1500 had repaired their walls at their own cost and the process continued in the sixteenth century. In order to qualify as a bonne ville a town needed not only a curtain wall, but also human and material resources with which to defend itself. In the words of Claude de Seyssel, writing in 1510: ‘a bonne ville or place forte that is well supplied, well equipped with guns and with all things necessary to sustain a siege and nourish a garrison and relief force is the safeguard of an entire kingdom.’ A recent survey has traced the remains of 1700 places-fortes in France dating from before 1500.
The topography of Paris was determined by the River Seine, which divided it into three parts: the Cité on the island in the middle of the river; the Ville on the right bank and the Université on the left bank. The city was encircled by medieval walls, but only the left bank remained within the wall built in the twelfth century by King Philip Augustus. The right bank had outstripped it long ago, and was now hemmed in by a fourteenth-century wall. Beyond the walls lay suburbs or faubourgs, the most important having grown around the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The area within the walls was small and densely built up, the inhabitants crammed into narrow houses of two or three storeys. All the streets, except a few axial ones, were narrow and virtually impassable to wheeled traffic. They also stank because of the ordure that was thrown into them. Among the few open spaces were the Cemetery of the Innocents and the Place de Grève, both on the right bank. Two bridges linked the Ville to the Cité: the Pont-au-Change, a wooden bridge built in 1296 which was lined with shops owned by goldsmiths, jewellers and money-changers, and the Pont Notre-Dame, which collapsed in 1499 and was rebuilt. Two bridges linked the Cité to the left bank – the Petit Pont and Pont Saint-Michel. In addition to being a thriving business community, the Cité was also a judicial and ecclesiastical centre. At the eastern end of the island stood the cathedral of Notre-Dame. Close by were the fortified bishop’s palace and a gated close of 37 canons’ houses. At the opposite end of the island stood the Palais or old royal palace, now occupied by the parlement, which was the highest court of law, and other sovereign courts. Its business attracted a vast number of councillors, barristers, procurators, solicitors, ushers and so on, in addition to the many litigants and people who came to shop at the stalls set up by tradesmen within the palace. Also on the island was the Hôtel-Dieu, the city’s main hospital.
The Ville was the business quarter of Paris. It comprised the markets of the Halles, expensive shops in the rue Saint-Denis and mixed commerce around the rue Saint-Martin. Many streets were organized by trades. The Place de Grève, in addition to being a port, was the place where the militia assembled and the site of civic ceremonies and public executions. On the square’s east side stood the Maison aux Piliers, the seat of the municipal government or Bureau de la Ville. Other important secular buildings in the Ville were the Louvre, a medieval fortress with a tall central keep, and the Châtelet, seat of the prévôt of Paris and his staff. The palace of the Tournelles was the only royal residence within the capital that was still used by the king and his court.
The University of Paris, which had been founded in the twelfth century, was best known for its faculties of theology and arts. It also had faculties of canon law and medicine. In the fifteenth century its reputation declined and it ceased to attract as many foreign students as in the past. While degrees were conferred by the faculties, teaching was done in fifty or so colleges. The most famous were the Sorbonne and the colleges of Navarre, Cardinal Lemoine, Sainte-Barbe and Montaigu. Not all students lived in them; many lodged in ‘digs’ some of which were run by their tutors. For physical exercise the students could use the Pré-aux-Clercs, a large meadow just outside the Porte de Nesle.
The rise in population, growth of urbanization and a general rise in the standard of living were mainly responsible for an economic boom that lasted from the 1460s until the 1520s. France was fortunate in being largely self-sufficient in respect of basic necessities. Grain was her chief product. Though she sometimes had to import foreign grain, this was only in times of famine; normally she produced enough for her own needs and exported any surplus. Wine consumption increased hugely during the sixteenth century, as shown by the rapid expansion of vineyards around Paris, Orléans, Reims and Lyon, by the yield from duties on wine and by the multiplication of taverns. Then as now, wine was produced not only for the home market, but for export. Several major vineyards were developed along the Atlantic coast around Bordeaux, La Rochelle and in the Basse-Loire. England and the Netherlands were the best customers.
Salt, like wine, was produced for markets at home and abroad. From marshes along the Mediterranean coast, it was sent up the Rhône and Saône to south-east France, Burgundy, Switzerland and Savoy. Another group of salt marshes along the Atlantic coast supplied a much wider area, including northern France, England, the Netherlands and Baltic states.
Metalware, especially of iron or steel, was not widely used in late medieval France. Agricultural and industrial tools were still usually made of wood. Apart from a few basic iron pots, the greatest demand was for nails and pins. For non-ferrous metals, France depended largely on foreign imports: copper, brass and tinplate from Germany, pewter and lead from England and steel from Italy.
As trade developed in France around the close of the Middle Ages, no fewer than 344 markets and fairs were set up under royal licence between 1483 and 1500. A fair was given privileges designed to attract foreign merchants: for example, foreign money was allowed to circulate freely, the goods of aliens were guaranteed against seizure and distraint, and the droit d’aubaine, whereby an alien’s inheritance was liable to forfeiture by the crown, was set aside. Some fairs were exempted from entry or exit dues and sometimes special judges were appointed to hear the suits of merchants, thereby sparing them the delays of ordinary justice.
By 1500 most big towns and many smaller ones had fairs. The most famous were the four annual fairs of Lyon, which drew many foreigners, especially Italians, Germans and Swiss. They were also important to the history of banking. Though banks had existed in France since the thirteenth century, they only became important as agencies of credit and exchange in the fifteenth century. They fixed themselves in Lyon because of the large amount of business transacted there, and threw out branches in other trading centres. The use of bills of exchange eliminated the need to carry large amounts of cash, and the fairs of Lyon became a regular clearing house for the settlement of accounts. At the same time, bankers took money on deposit, lent it at interest and negotiated letters of credit.
French overseas trade had recovered from the stagnation it had suffered during