ABSTRACT

Although very widespread in France, there was nothing uniquely French about this regime. Its precise frontiers would be impossible to trace without the help of much more detailed studies. Roughly speaking, it reigned supreme in the whole of France north of the Loire, except in the tablelands of Caux and the enclosed areas of the west, and was equally dominant in both Burgundies. This French zone, however, was itself only a part of a much greater area which covered much of England, almost the whole of Germany and even took in large tracts of the Russian and Polish plains. The question of origins, to which we shall have to return, must be looked at in a European context. What was peculiar to the regime in its French setting was its co-existence with two other regimes, to which we must now turn.