ABSTRACT
This was the century of France. By the end of it, French language, culture, manners and dress had permeated the richer levels of the whole European community. French wars and diplomacy dominated western political affairs, and influenced eastern ones too. The French treasury seemed to have inexhaustible supplies of money with which the king and his ministers could buy the dependence of other states and fight wars largely of their own choosing. They spent it too on the splendour of the court and the patronage, direct or indirect, of literature and art. The glory may not have been apparent to the peasant starving in a year of famine, or the beggar in the streets of Paris, or the soldier plundering the ruins of a frontier town. The legend that grew in the great days of Versailles makes it easy to forget both how little there was to show for the victories and how unstable the French state had been before the effective rule of Louis XIV began. The political history of France in the seventeenth century is sharply divided by the chaotic years of the Fronde. Before it royal and ministerial governments struggled continually and with no decisive success to prevent the breakdown of the state. Far from being an example of steady progress towards the absolutist ideal, the France of Richelieu and Mazarin showed how narrow the division was between order and anarchy. It is this long period of uncertainty that we shall examine first.
