Lords of France: Roads to the Enlightenment

The Messenger said:

Strangely enough, I was glad to know that this war was over. After your last section, I was starting to believe that your invasion of the Netherlands (and afterwards, the invasion of Austria) was a bit of an exaggeration. And why didn't you force Austria into making a Dutch independent nation? Well, I just hope for their magical appearance in the game.

Now that Austria is in this chaos, France may rebuild itself.

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The issue is that the Dutch nation has cores on all of the Netherlands, which means that they can essentially never be released (it's like 160 warscore). I'd much rather that the Netherlands have the cores of the original Republic, and then get an event which gives them cores on the Hapsburg Netherlands.

Rifal said:

It is possible to release the Netherlands (if its in the Peace options). The good old Send demand, save game, load as Austria, accept deal, Save, Load as France. Although it is generally considered cheating but if it makes sense stroy wise im ( and im sure quite a few others) are willing too look the other way.

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As if I haven't been cheating already <.<

But if I kept on playing (I'm writing the 'last' entry for now), then I'd probably try to release the Netherlands around 1600, as a part of a story of continual and worsening Dutch rebellions. But right now the Netherlands are still Catholic so I don't see where the Dutch revolts would come from.

When Louis XI first created the Royal Bureaucracy, the group, all together, amounted to a little less than 1,000 men. Considering that the French government was also responsible for the 40,000 soldiers under her banner at the time, this was a relatively small number. But by the reign of Henri II, this number of governmental bureaucrats (which included the bureaucrats of the central government, the provincial tax assessors, and the representatives of the Central government in the provinces) had grown to 10,000, going up to 20,000 bureaucrats in 1540. Furthermore, these organizations were starting to fall to centrifugal forces: though the Provincial governors were supposed to serve the central government, the fact that they were only in any province for 5 years meant that they often localized themselves, acting in the interest of their provinces rather than the government of Paris.

Furthermore, the old Parliamentes were gaining an increasing amount of power during the reign of Henri II: since there were only 5 parliaments which served large areas (Nord, which represented Paris, Normandy, Flandres, and Brittany; Occitan, which served Gascogne, Toulouse, and Langdoc; Provencal, which served Provence, Auvergne, Lyons, and Dauphin; and Central, which served Bourbonnais and the Burgundian territories), these parliamentes were soon large enough to both serve local interests and agitate for increased power in the central government.

Lastly, the reign of Henri II found an increasing interaction between domestic and foreign affairs: much of France's foreign policy came through trade at the time. So Henri needed a man who could manage all of these ministries (Foreign, Interior, Royal). He found this man in Robert du Bosquet.


Du Bosquet's life was a series of firsts. The son of Franco-Italian traders (Bosquet comes from the Italian Bosco, meaning tree grove) who lived in Paris, du Bosquet was one of the first commoners to be accepted into the Carmelite School of Paris, learning how to read and write at an early age. This made du Bosquet one of the last Frenchmen to be taught in such a manner, as most of the Carmelite schools were shut down after Jean Cauvin's missionary work ended up converting many of the Parisian intellectual scene. Du Bosquet was one of those converted Parisian intellectuals: he chose in 1525 to join the new University of the Cathars, an alternative school of higher education located just north of Paris aimed at distilling a sense of Neocatharist piety and historicism into its students. Similar to the Universite de la Pon, students were required to present an early form of dissertation in order to graduate. Du Bosquet's dissertation was on the History of Usury in Catholicism, showing that even with a ban on usury by Catholics, the practicality of interest rates drew even the most pious of merchants into practices of usury.

After this, du Bosquet ended up working in the provincial government of Rochelle. Rochelle, being the center of Neocatharism in France, had adopted a highly tolerant attitude to the new heresy, allowing Hugenot aldermen, policemen, and counselors. Working for the assistant to the Provincial Governor (a far more permanent position than that of the governor), du Bosquet saw, firsthand, the paradoxical nature of French governance, and in 1530 he distinguished himself enough that he was invited into the central government.

This was a massive rarity, and came partially out of Henri's goal of putting a fear of heresy into the Papacy in order to negotiate for more freedoms. But du Bosquet was such a fantastic minister than he soon found himself on the Conseil as the Royal Minister. Du Bosquet's astounding skill at organizing the French bureaucracy made him one of Henri II's closest advisers, and a highly controvercial figure: not only was he a "new man" who had only been made a nobleman after his entrance into the bureaucracy, he was an out-and-out Hugenot. But his competence, and his unswerving loyalty to the French crown did him well. During the Remy Bourbon affair (if you recall, the future Louis XII was caught funnelling French state funds to Neapolitan revolters. What i failed to note was the compliance of the highest levels of government in Bourbon's activities), the Ministers of Justice, the Treasury, the Foreign Minister, and the Minister of the Interior were all found complicit in the plot by policemen under du Bosquet's pay.

As Henri considered who to appoint to these positions, du Bosquet came to him with a convincing argument: most of the problems which confronted the French government were intersectionary problems, which required the response of multiple ministries. A 'weaker form of a monarch' would be needed to manage the government, while the Monarch himself would continue the job of managing the people. Du Bosquet convinced Henri, and in 1540 he created the First Ministry, which incorporated every other ministry besides the Army, the Navy, the Colonial Office, and the Foreign Ministry (although the Foreign and Treasury Ministries would move in and out of the First Ministry's purview over the next several centuries), and made himself the First Minister, the second most powerful position in France.


His reforms included making provincial governors permanent positions (which could still be fired by the government), allowing appointed governors more time to enact their chosen policies, a large increase in royal patronage for the arts (specifically architecture, which led to the branch of Royal Architects who would design the Flemish Stronghold system that Matthias attacked in the War of Savoy), and the creation of the Northwest Passage Company, which funded the exploration and colonization of Canada during Louis XII's reign. But du Bosquet's most important creation, on both on a personal level a national level, was the Advancement of Education Act. Du Bosquet, as I said, was one of the last members of the first generation to have a unified education. The Catharist schools, even if they only taught basic literacy, had added immesurably to French culture and the French economy by 1500. Du Bosquet wanted to create a system of state schools which would teach literacy and some level of French history to young boys.


This achievement came in 1447, and stirred up a huge controversy at the time. Enemies of the government were quick to attack what they percieved as a Hugenot taking control of the education of French children, and when Louis XII ascended to the throne he stripped du Bosquet of his ministerial positions (enacting a 'personal rule' over the government), and assigning du Bosquet as ambassador to the City of Frankfurt, the only government in Europe which was completely Neocatharist.

The War of Savoy led to the end of Louis' personal rule, for 3 reasons: firstly, the Foreign Ministry and the Colonial Office, which were aptly piloted by Simon de Saint Omer and Firmin d'Estrees during this time. But in War of Savoy led to the death of de Saint Omer when his ship was attacked by English privateers, and the selection of d'Estrees as the governor of Canada. But moreover, the sudden unpopularity of France in the international scene required a personal touch by the King, who no longer wanted the tedious, thankless job of reforming the French government. And yet Louis knew that this was one his best opportunity to take control for himself, and so he gave du Bosquet the First Ministership back, with the requirement that he convert to Catholicism. Du Bosquet agreed to this proposition, and (rather than run the First Ministry on his own) appointed von Faulkenburg the minister of the treasury, and de Bonneuil to the position of Minister of the Interior. These three men had remarkably similar qualities. All were 'new men', who were recently ennobled, and all of the men were consummate Parisians. Together, they had far more power than any group or voting bloc in the counseil to that point, and are widely considered the first courtly faction in France.


The three ministers tirelessly worked to integrate the French people into one large group, irrespective of religion (all of the politiques had known the Governor of Gascogne personally, and even the Hugenot von Faulkenburg (and the exHugenot du Bosquet) saw a need to end France's sectarian violence. But the want to integrate France spanned larger than simply weakening interreligious rivalries: de Bonneuil spent most of his time abolishing the legal traditions of the provinces, replacing them with a simplified legal system based on Justinian's Code. Other legislative acts included a more comprehensive Education Act, the conscription of Flemish militiamen to defend the strongholds that had been built in the area, and, most importantly, the abolition of both the General and Provincial Estates.

The General Estates, also called the House of the High Lords, had existed as a legislative body to represent the wishes of the great lords of France. But now, the only major French vassals with any independence were the two foreign duchies of Lorraine and Milan. By this point the Estates were mostly a representation of French instability and the perennial inability of the French government to pass policy: during the Estates meeting of 1562, when Louis attempted to raise an indirect tax which would effect the nobility, the rancorous response led to Louis withdrawing the tax bill and a widespread anti-royalist feeling which led to the revolts of Rochelle, Nantes, and Lyons in the later parts of the war. The provincial estates (or parliamentes) weren't much better.

Following the War of Savoy, Louis and the politique faction knew that they had very little time to act. Du Bosquet and his staff (as well as de Bonneuil and his secretaries) worked through many nights to successfully draft the King's Act of 1566. During the Estates meeting, the last meeting, the King reserved the first piece of legislation for himself. Louis gave a speech about the dangerous time in France and about his obvious skill in defeating the enemies of France while dignitaries handed out the legislation the King was asking for. The legislation was as follows

-The General Estates and the Commonwealth shall be abolished, with the King of France reinstating his position as the sole sovereign of France and her territories and protectorates
-In the place of the General Estates, 10 more provincial estates will be created, to protect the subjects of the French King

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By creating several provincial estates (including the parliamente of Flandres, the parliamente of Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, Gascogne, Breton, and several others), Louis planned to weaken the powers of the provincial parliamentes greatly, while retaining their utility as courts of justice &c. The legislation created a massive rancor. What right did the King have to this kind of power? Did he not realize that he was legislating a coup against the French state?

Louis' response was off the cuff, but in this one sentence he had completely changed the direction of French governance. "Mon droit de ce pouvoir? Il provient de ma force, et de Dieu. Notre grand royaume est déjà en proie à un grand nombre de factions, je ne vois aucune nécessité d'exacerber ces tendances. Et l'état? L'état c'est moi." (My right to this power? It comes from my Strength, and from God. Our great Kingdom is already beset by a great many factions, I see no need to exacerbate those trends. And the state? I am the state.)

With those words he shattered opposition to his claims. The legislation passed, by a small degree, and the High Lords retreated to their manors: French absolutism had been born.

With complete power, Louis and the politique faction moved quickly to win the French subjects over to the new regime. The abolition of a tax on towns (I got an even that moved me 2 towards free subjects), and the chartering of hundreds of new state owned luxury workshops (After getting the money from the Austrians I was able to pay off my last loan and get a new one, which let me build 'artisan workshops' in 6 provinces) not only made Louis seem a champion of the common man, it began the creation of a leadership cult around the Illuminated Despot. An example of the popularity of Louis was the adoption, by the upper classes, of powdered wigs. Louis XII had lost most of the hair on his right side due to burns incurred during the Assault on Antwerp, so he had to wear a wig in order to keep up appearances. At first, the members of the politique faction adopting the wig in solidarity with their ruler, but soon the wig (shoulder length, as was the fashion at the time) became popular through all of urban France. By 1600 the wig was a staple of European fashion.

The War of Savoy created a sea change in French-European relations. Where the Bourbon regime was once seen as an upstart which would die off and be reabsorbed into the Empire, after the War Louis was taken far more seriously throughout the continent. Where France could only count the Italian League among her allies in the 1550s, in 1568 Louis got a message from the King of Spain, requesting an alliance against the senior Austrian Hapsburgs. The Franco-Spanish alliance was an alliance founded on fallacious grounds--Fernando II saw an alliance with France as a means to put down his senior cousins and assume the mantle of Holy Roman Emperor and senior Hapsburg, but regardless the alliance proved fruitful against enemies as diverse as the Kings of England and Portugal, the Archduchy of Austria, and the Padishah of the Ottoman Empire.


The colonies of Louisville and Neuveau France exploded during Louis' early reign. Du Bosquet's creation of the Northwest Passage Company had been relatively ignored by Henri II (who was concerned, upmost, with saving money), but under Louis the Company sent 750 colonists to the St.Omer River Valley in 1550 alone. During the 1550s, funds incurred by sending Frenchmen to the colonies took up most of the government's moneys, with something between 200 and 300 colonists leaving per year (with the exceptions of 1550 and 1570, when Louis sent massive groups of colonists to newly discovered areas).

Du Bosquet's settlement plans were far ahead of their time, and allowed New France to expand at a far faster rate than New England (New Spain and Brasilia aren't really comparable to the French or English colonies at this time, as New Spain expanded primarily via conquest and Brasilia depended on slaves imported from Africa for her massive population growth). Du Bosquet abolished all limits of noble privileges within the bounds of New France--noblemen would be allowed to own capital--and determined a series of proposed settlements which colonists would have to move to. This meant that a baron or a viscount would often travel to Canada with their servants, establishing their own plantation (tree plantations and 'beaver farms'--which expanded for hundreds of miles and involved French frontiersmen developing positive relations with local Indians and trading French manufactures for beaver pelts--were the most popular kinds of settlement during this period) in a focused area.

This meant that New Canada was also far more urbanized than any other colony at the time, with the average settlement containing 500 souls by 1570. It also meant that the settlements arranged themselves as semi-independent neofeudal manors, which only relied on the mainland for the occasional manufactured good. But lastly, it meant that French Canada expanded at a tremendous rate during the 1550s. Du Bosquet placed the 'proposed settlement sites' at strategic areas around the mouth of the St.Omer river, knowing that any settlements by a foreign power close to the river could endanger the whole colony. This fear of colonial insecurity led to a rapid colonization of the Canadian coast--by 1570, after the second wave of immigrants, New France had gone as far south as new Maine and as far north as Labrador.


In Germany, the politique faction and Louis himself strongly supported the Protestant princes, for different reasons. The politiques, many of whom were moderate Hugenots, could see in themselves the plight of the German princes, who were oppressed by the staunchly Catholic Emperor, the Catholic Hanseatic States, and the whole institution of the Catholic Church in northern Europe (Pope Urbanus VII called for general insurrections against the Protestant princes in 1560; this marked the beginning of the Counter-Reformation and the prelude to the Wars of Religion which would wrack the Empire for more than half a century). Louis saw an opportunity to further weaken Emperor Matthias, whose willingness to fight the Heretics was only matched by his people's unwillingness to enter another War.


The League of Stettin was formed by the three major Protestant Dukes at the time--Philip of Thuringia, Johann of Prussia, and Joachim of Pommerania--and was created in the late 1550s to protect the Protestant princes against Catholic aggression. It was only during the War of Savoy that they felt the ability to flex their muscles: the Northern War against Denmark and Brandenburg, the first belligerent act by the league, forced the upper nobility of Brandenburg to convert to Phillipism (the peasants and townsmen of Brandenburg were already thoroughly Protestant) and placed Brandenburg as a vassal under the Absolute Duchy of Prussia. The war, which was conducted in a short period of time and led to absolute victory, made the League a force to be reckoned with, as more and more states joined it. By 1566, the League had the membership of nearly every protestant German state, and had moved from an inter-Imperial League against Hapsburg aggression to a challenger to the Holy Roman Empire in its own right.

This horrified Emperor Matthias. If the League of Stettin were allowed to break free of the Empire, what of the Italian League? And without Northern Germany or Italy, the Empire was essentially delegated to southern Germany and the Netherlands, and Matthias would be remembered as the worst Emperor in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. All of these concerns and more drifted through his head before, in 1568, Matthias decided to attack the League preemptively.


This was probably a good decision: even though Austria was tired from her 6 year war against France, the League was already in talks with Stockholm and England about membership, which would give the League a large assortment of highly trained soldiers as well as total naval dominance. Still, the early war against the League went very poorly. Austrian soldiers were of exceedingly poor quality at the start of the war, and the divided loyalties of many Imperial soldiers at this point led to poor performance until Matthias required that all Imperial soldiers be Catholic. This poor performance resulted in the successful invasion of the Lowlands by the Protestants in 1569 and of France-Comte and Breisegnau by Swiss soldiers in 1570.

But all of this success by the Protestants was met with concern by Fernando I. Though Fernando disliked the inferior geopolitical position that Spain was forced in via her relation with Austria, he was a deeply pious man and didn't want to see a new Heathen Empire (which he could not rule). So, in 1571, Fernando thrust Spain into the War of the League of Stettin, sending his troops north via the old Imperial road to fight the Swiss and personally leading a landing on Stettin. The addition of Spanish soldiers brought the War back in Catholic favor, and Spanish troops forcibly converted the County of Mecklemburg (and burned any and all Protestant Cathedrals found there), which had had one of the most elite armies within the League, the duchy of Wurttemburg, and the city of Frankfurt in the year 1573 alone.


The success of the Catholic powers in turn concerned the anti-Imperial powers. England and Sweden worried about a Catholic Empire which would be able to completely ostracize them from European culture and trade, and France, Poland, and the Italian League worried about the repercussions of a greatly expanded Empire. This led, at first, to huge amounts of subsidies which traveled out of Paris, London, Florence, Stockholm and Warsaw and into the pockets of the League (not to mention the French support of Dutch revolters--Louis' doing of course). But in 1575 it became obvious that extensive funding of League operations wasn't enough--the League had already lost some of her strongest members (Mecklemburg in 1573, Wurttemburg in 1574, and Prussia-Brandenburg attained a treaty in which the Emperor accepted Duke Johann's rule over Brandenburg in exchange for peace), and Stettin had been occupied by Spanish soldiers for years.

It was obvious to Louis that he needed to act. That, once again, France would have to cast aside her allies in pursuit of her true interests, and steer headway into danger. Luckily, France possessed better generals, better soldiers, and a more enthusiastic populace in 1575 than it did in 1560, and Louis himself was as keen as ever. His statement of war, sent around the Kingdom to round up conscripts, remains one of the most quoted political documents in French history.


The term 'illuminated path' has often been been mistranslated in French into 'road to Enlightenment', and the concept in France of many Roads to Enlightenment and modernity became the foundation for a great many later philosophical trends. And so, at the dawn of the entrance of France into the Wars of Religion, I will leave you with a map of France territories, provinces, and protectorates as of the year 1575.

And with that gargantuan effort, I'm putting this AAR in an intermission. I don't precisely know when I'll resume it, likely sometime in the Fall but there will definitely be an entry over Winter break. I figured that now is a perfect time to leave off--we're at a cliff hanger, but we've also seen the birth of Absolutism in France, the words "l'etat c'est moi", a massive expansion in New France, and a France that's far richer now than ever before (I'm at 104 ducats a month, mainly because I got a 'colonial CoT' event which I promptly fully monopolized). Furthermore, we're at the entrance of France into the wars of religion against her Catholic 'allies', which is one of the most distinguished French actions in this time period. But on a personal note, I'm happy to have both exceeded the quantity (and I hope the quality) of my previous AAR, and I'm happy that I've had a bunch of awesome and supportive readers. It's been a crazy couple of weeks (my schedule wrt this aar would generally be, wake up at 7, check responses, go to work at 8 and think of ideas for the next entry/write some stuff to myself if I found the time, go home at 3:30 and start writing, then finish writing at 1 AM and go to bed for the next day), but I hope that you guys have as much fun reading this entries as I've had writing them.

Derahan said:

Just gotta say, this is indeed a good AAR, after the first chapter i was hooked and i can only say a very good work indeed.

Oh and you've won this week's AAR Showcase

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As I said, it's a huge honor. Your AAR was one of the 3 that read over the month of may, staying up until 5 in the morning to read the next page. So it's really awesome to know that you're reading my AAR.

Rifal said:

Yeas, that does indeed make a massive amount of sense. Also Grats on the award.

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If I were to extrapolate though, I could see Protestantism spreading to Southern Netherlands because they've been occupied for most of the war at 1575 (at which point I stopped, I've learned from Lords of Prussia not to play too far past the point that I'm writing). This would lead to a Dutch Netherlands in the south and a Hapsburg Netherlands in the North.

dragonizer said:

Do what you have to. To make the story and congrats on the award.

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Thank you! I posted way back in the 2nd or 3rd page about Collingwood's idea of history as reconstruction, but I found it a lot easier to write the sections after thinking out roughly a paragraph's worth of information about individual actors. That way I could get 'in the mind' of that actor and construct realistic actions from that actor. But thank you (& everyone else) so much for your support in this AAR, it's been amazingly helpful.

loki100 said:

Indeed, another great post and a good (cliffhanging) break point.

I'm really impressed at your dominance of early colonial actions, but I fear for your ability to hold it in the case of a new war with GB

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I don't know, for some reason England has only taken Delaware and South Carolina

The Messenger said:

This AAR is getting better and better by the day! And congrats on your AAR Showcase - it just proves that the quality of this work of art is admirable, so don't worry.

Too bad that this is going to end temporarily. May I just ask out of curiosity, when is this Winter break? Are you talking about Christmas break?

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Yes. Although as I said I may post short items every so often--it's easier when my girlfriend pointed out a couple of art databases (one can only find so many 15th-16th century paintings of battles on Google).

robw963 said:

I'm just starting to read this AAR Merrick Chance'...but I just have to chime in and say how LUSH this is...really great stuff. I'll looking forward to catching up so I can contribute something more meaningful than just "attaboy" *subscribed*

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Thank you for the subscription! I imagine you'll have some time to get up to speed and even an attaboy is welcome!

The Forty Years War, which was already ongoing when Louis XII entered it in 1575, was the single great event of the later 16^th century. Starting as a conflict between the Emperor and the League of Stettin, the war swiftly spiraled out of control, becoming a bloodbath the likes of which Europe wouldn’t see again until World War 2.


While it was fought primarily in Germany, the War had theatres in the Netherlands, Hungary, the Caribbean, Africa, India, Scandinavia, and Italy. But it wasn’t only an international struggle—Europe’s wars of religion were fought within England, Spain, Austria and France. Furthermore, it would be a huge mistake to characterize the war as merely a struggle between set actors—the War occurred at the end of a feudal era of international relations, where multiple organizations within Kingdoms acted as policy-makers. As such, while France and Spain fought together in the Caribbean during the War of Hispaniola, French and Spanish troops did battle several times in Switzerland and Southern Germany and France and Spanish Protestant churches sent massive funds across the Pyrenees, leading to the French and Spanish Wars of Religion which occurred in the 1590s. And while France was notionally allied with the Protestant princes, hard line Catholic factions in the French army burned their fair share of Protestant Rhenish towns throughout the War.


The burning of towns brings me to another point about the Forty Years War: while the war was fought over the hearts and minds of Germany, the war was fought as a war of extermination. Austrian, French, and Swedish troops would forcibly convert towns by murdering those of opposing denominations, and the wholesale destruction of cities occurred multiple times (such as Mecklenburg in 1573, Nuremburg in 1578, and Strassburg in 1601). By the end of the War, the population of Germany had gone down 40%, while the number of German town s had been cut by more than half. Overall, we can estimate that the war killed 2 million in total, of which 750,000 were Germans.


While singular histories of the Forty Years War have been attempted, the war is too broad, too complicated, and involved too many groups to sum up in chronological order in as small a space as these short entries. Instead, I will devote a series of entries to particular fronts of the War in which France played a part. This makes the war far easier to understand, because while the alliances of the War shifted depending on the area that the War was being fought in (for instance, England and France were allies with regards to Germany, but fought against each other in the colonies), the ‘sides’ of the War become basically static when one narrows their scope to particular theatres.


Lastly, a remark on the general dynamics of the war: as I said earlier, the Forty Years War was fought as a war of extermination against the ideological enemies of the Emperor and the League. This produced a constant attrition on the armies of the Great Powers. All across the world, the War turned into a series of minor confrontations between rival militias, some of whom had no motive other than attaining profit by pillage and kidnapping. Battles weren’t fought by massive armies for the control of rivers, cities, or other strategic points; rather they were fought by bands of less than a 100 men for villages, hills, or access to water. Disease was widely used as a weapon, especially by the French. Capitan Tully became infamous when he poured the bodies of the slain into the water source of the city of Utrecht, which led to a disease which killed several thousand.


This is not a time of humanistic or enlightened thinking. It is not a glorious series of battles. Men and women were born, lived, and died, without knowing peace or plenty. Literacy plummeted, as printing presses were destroyed as spreaders of heresy. Culture was abandoned as intellectuals were murdered or forced into destitution. This is the Forty Years War.