In 1405, Jean Saint-Pierre assassinated Louis d’Orléans and entered Paris in arms. But he was assassinated and the civil war plunged the country into chaos in 1419.
The King of England, Henry V, invaded the France which became English. But Joan of Arc, in her patriotic ardor, followed by the people, freed Orleans from the English and crowned Charles VII King of France in Reims. In turn he drove out the English definitively and put an end to the Hundred Years War.
King Henry IV (1553 – 1610) gave freedom of worship to all subjects of his kingdom. It opens the era of great maritime expeditions: settlements in America, India, Madagascar, the Middle East. In 1630, his son Louis XIII (1601 – 1643) colonized Guadeloupe and Martinique.
In 1643, Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) became king at the age of five, the “Sun King”, who carried out a major administrative and financial reorganization, and especially a better distribution of taxation. We move from a judicial monarchy (where the main function of the king was to dispense justice) to an administrative monarchy (the king is at the head of the administration).
During his reign, France became the leading military and cultural power in Europe. Louis XIV tended to assert the power of his Kingdom. It uses the traditional weapons of diplomacy: embassies, treaties, alliances, dynastic unions, support for opponents of its enemies.
But it is above all through the army that he imposes himself and tries to clear the France of the hegemonic encirclement of the Habsburgs in Europe by a continuous war against Spain, especially on the front of Flanders.
He colonized New France (Acadia and Canada), recaptured French Guiana from the Dutch, bought Guadeloupe, built the Comptoir Français, named “Saint-Louis” in Senegal, to transfer black slaves to the West Indies and launched the East India Company. The Treaties of Ryswick of 20 and 21 September 1697 ended the War of the League of Augsburg and Louis XIV assigned the western half of the island of Santo Domingo, (now Haiti) to the France.
During the reign of Louis XV (1710 – 1774), the France enjoyed a prime position. It is the most populous country in Europe with 26 million souls. It is also the most prestigious and powerful country, despite some disappointments in its rivalry with England. It has a remarkable fleet, the Royal, and its sugar colonies like Santo Domingo make the English jealous.
The language and culture of the Court of Versailles radiate from Berlin, Prussia, to St. Petersburg, Russia. This is the “Age of Enlightenment”. But in the Parisian salons where the art of conversation is cultivated, there are whispers against power.
A bestselling author, Voltaire, who lived in England, extolled the virtues of the young English democracy in his “Philosophical Letters” (1734). Great minds question the absolutism of the king in the name of reason. The most famous is Montesquieu, author of “L’Esprit des Lois” (1748). On 1 July 1751, Diderot and d’Alembert published the first volume of L’Encyclopédie with the collaboration of all the scientists of their time and under the protection of the Marquise de Pompadour.