ABSTRACT
France, according to Vauban’s meticulous report of 1707, was then a country of some 19 million inhabitants of whom over 0.75 million lived in Paris. That is an acceptable figure within a margin of some 2 million either way, allowing not only for his errors (which seem roughly to cancel one another out) but also for the periodic sharp drops, following the great mortalities which contained a rising trend within bounds set by the conditions of a still primitive rural economy. France might be more accurately described as several countries united under one crown. The Englishman in particular should beware comparison between his shire and the French province and think rather of so many Irelands, Wales or Scotlands; at least when he looks beyond the central and northern parts of the mosaic of provinces of which France was composed. Throughout the centuries of accretion and consolidation through marriage, diplomacy and war, France had been influenced by the cultures both of the north and of the Mediterranean: Flemish and German, Italian and, recently and pervasively, through her soldiers, merchants and priests, Spanish. In the outcome Mediterranean France was wholly different in ecology, laws and culture from the rest. High hills, dense forests and sequestered valleys created, in the Massif Central, another world apart: favourable terrain for feudal bullying and tax evasion. In the eastern provinces laws and customs which strongly favoured the seigneurs reflected the lax rule of the dukes of Burgundy. Even Normandy, relatively near the centre, exhibited a separatism that still recalled centuries of association with England. Celtic Brittany had not been finally secured until 1532. More than a million of Louis XIV’s subjects were Frenchmen of even more recent standing when he assumed personal rule in 1661; half a million more were to be added during his reign, like the inhabitants of Franche-Comté and other frontier districts affected by the ‘reunions’.
