War and government in the French provinces

by Potter, David

"Few studies of the history of provincial France have hitherto spanned the conventional medieval/early-modern divide, and David Potter's detailed examination of war and government in Picardy, a region of France hitherto neglected by historians, has much to say about the development of French absolutism. Picardy emerged as a province after the conquests effected by Louis XI between 1470 and 1477, but its character was profoundly shaped by the impact of the Habsburg-Valois Wars between 1521 and 1559. Picardy became the most exposed frontier region of the French kingdom and suffered repeated devastations, which culminated in the 1550s. Though the province had in the main no regularly organised estates and was relatively close to the centres of royal government and power, it had to be incorporated in the kingdom by inducements to its numerous nobility and urban oligarchies. Its experience of the first period of absolutism provides an enlightening contrast with that of other, more outlying