Has the highest power in France. The vicissitudes of fortune: the wealth tax is being reformed in France. Cycling race Tour de France

France (French France), officially the French Republic (French Republique française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]) is a state in Western Europe. The capital is the city of Paris. The name of the country comes from the ethnonym of the Germanic tribe of the Franks, despite the fact that the majority of the population of France is of mixed Gallo-Roman origin and speaks a Romance language.

Population: 64.7 million people (January 2010), including about 90 percent French citizens. Believers are predominantly Catholics (over 76 percent). The legislative body is a bicameral parliament (Senate and National Assembly). Administrative division: 27 regions (22 metropolitan and 5 overseas regions), including 101 departments (96 metropolitan and 5 overseas departments).

	The flag of France (French drapeau tricolore or drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge, drapeau français, less commonly le tricolore, in military jargon - les couleurs) is national emblem France in accordance with Article 2 of the French Constitution of 1958. It consists of three vertical stripes of equal size: blue - at the pole edge, white - in the middle, and red - at the free edge of the panel. The ratio of the width of the flag to its length is 2:3. Introduced into use on May 20, 1794.
Origin of flowers. The blue banner had been in use since the time of Clovis I, the first Frankish king, and was associated with the color of the vestments of Saint Martin of Tours, the patron saint of France. According to legend, the saint shared his cloak (blue) with a beggar near Amiens, and Clovis, after accepting Christianity around 498, changed the white banner to a blue one in his honor. White color from 1638 to 1790 was the color of the royal flag and some naval banners. From 1814 to 1830, it was also the color of the royal army banners. The white color symbolizes France and everything that is associated with the divine order, with God (hence the choice of this color as the main emblem of the kingdom - according to the official doctrine, the king’s power was of divine origin). During the reign of Hugh Capet and his descendants, the kings of France had a red oriflamme in honor of St. Dionysius, since he was the legendary founder of the abbey, which since the time of Dagobert I was especially revered.
	The current emblem became a symbol of France after 1953, although it has no legal status as an official symbol. The emblem consists of: a pelta ending with a lion's head on one side and an eagle on the other, with the monogram "RF" meaning "République Française" (French Republic); an olive branch symbolizing peace; an oak branch symbolizing wisdom; fasces, which are a symbol of justice. Since 2003, all public administrations have used the Marianne logo against the background of the French flag. Many other official documents (such as the cover of a passport) display the unofficial coat of arms of France.
Emblem of France

Political system

France is a sovereign unitary democratic republic. The current Constitution, adopted on October 4, 1958, regulates the functioning of the authorities of the Fifth Republic: it establishes a republican presidential-parliamentary form of government (Constitution of the French Republic, section 2). The head of state is the president, elected for 5 years. The head of government is the prime minister. The Council of Ministers is appointed by the President in consultation with the Prime Minister. Legislative power belongs to a bicameral parliament elected by universal suffrage. The Constitution of the French Republic has been revised several times under the following articles:
Presidential elections based on universal direct suffrage (1962),
introduction of a new section of the Constitution on criminal liability of government members (1993),
introduction of a single session of parliament and expansion of the powers of the referendum (1995),
adoption of provisional measures regarding the status of New Caledonia (1998),
creation of the Economic and Monetary Union, equal access of men and women to elected mandates and elective functions, recognition of the legal law of the International Criminal Court (1999),
reduction of the presidential mandate (2000),
reform on the criminal liability of the head of state, enshrining the abolition of the death penalty in the Constitution, reform on the autonomy of New Caledonia (2007),
reform to update the state structure and establish a balance in the distribution of powers (2008).

There is also a Constitutional Council in France, which consists of 9 members and exercises control over the correctness of elections and the constitutionality of laws amending the Constitution, as well as laws submitted to it for consideration.

Legislature

Legislative power in France belongs to Parliament, which includes two chambers - the Senate and the National Assembly. The Senate of the Republic, whose members are elected by indirect universal suffrage, consists of 321 senators (348 since 2011), 305 of whom represent the metropolis, 9 overseas territories, 5 French Community territories and 12 French citizens living abroad. Senators are elected to six-year terms (from 2003, and until 2003 - 9 years) by an electoral college consisting of members of the National Assembly, general councilors and delegates from municipal councils, with the Senate being renewed by half every three years. The last Senate elections took place in September 2008. Following the elections held in September 2008, the 343 members of the Senate are distributed as follows:
Faction "Union for the Popular Movement" (UMP):151
Socialist faction: 116
Faction "Centrist Union": 29
Communist, Republican and Civil faction: 23
Faction "European Democratic and Social Union": 17

According to the results of the elections on June 10 and 17, 2007, the National Assembly has 577 deputies, distributed as follows:
Faction "Union for the People's Movement" (UMP): 314 (plus 6 joiners)
Socialist Radical and Civil Faction: 186 (plus 18 affiliated)
Left Democratic and Republican faction: 24
New Centrist faction: 20 (plus 2 joiners)
Not a member of any faction: 7

The National Assembly, whose deputies are elected on the basis of direct universal suffrage for a term of 5 years, consists of 577 deputies, 555 of whom represent the mother country, and 22 represent the overseas territories. Members of the National Assembly are elected by direct universal suffrage for a five-year term. The last elections of deputies to the National Assembly took place in June 2007. In addition to their function of monitoring the activities of the government, both chambers develop and pass laws. In case of disagreement, the final decision rests with the National Assembly.

Executive branch

In the Fifth Republic, the Prime Minister is responsible for current domestic and economic policies, and also has the right to issue general decrees. He is considered responsible for government policy (Article 20). The Prime Minister directs the government and enforces laws (Article 21). The Prime Minister has his own website: www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr.

The Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Republic. The approval of his candidacy by the National Assembly is not required, since the National Assembly has the right to declare a vote of no confidence in the government at any time. Typically, the prime minister represents the party that has the majority of seats in the National Assembly. The Prime Minister draws up a list of his cabinet ministers and submits it to the President for approval.

The Prime Minister initiates the adoption of laws in the National Assembly and ensures their implementation, and he is also responsible for national defense. The Prime Minister countersigns acts of the President and replaces him as chairman in the councils and committees specified in Article 15 of the Constitution. Since May 17, 2007, the government has been headed by François Fillon (member of the Union for a Popular Movement party).

Judicial branch

The French judicial system is regulated in Section VIII of the Constitution “On the Judicial Power”. The president of the country is the guarantor of the independence of the judiciary, the status of judges is established by organic law, and the judges themselves are irremovable.

French justice is based on the principles of collegiality, professionalism, and independence, which are ensured by a number of guarantees. The 1977 law established that the costs of administering justice in civil and administrative cases are borne by the state. This rule does not apply to criminal justice. Also important principles are equality before justice and the neutrality of judges, public consideration of the case and the possibility of double consideration of the case. The law also provides for the possibility of cassation appeal.

The French judicial system is multi-level and can be divided into two branches - the judicial system itself and the system of administrative courts. The lowest level in the system of courts of general jurisdiction is occupied by petty tribunals. Cases in such a tribunal are heard personally by a judge. However, each of them has several magistrates. The Tribunal of Small Instance considers cases with insignificant amounts, and the decisions of such courts are not subject to appeal.

In criminal cases, this court is called the police tribunal. These tribunals are divided into divisions: civil and correctional courts. The Court of Appeal always makes decisions collectively. The civil law part of the court of appeal consists of two chambers: civil and social cases. There is also a Chamber of Commerce. One of the functions of the indictment chamber is the function of a disciplinary court in relation to judicial police officers (officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, military gendarmerie, etc.). There is also a gendarmerie department for minors. Each department has a jury trial. In addition, France has special judicial bodies: commercial courts and military courts. At the top of the system is the Court of Cassation. In France, there is a separate branch of administrative justice. The prosecutor's office is represented by prosecutors at courts of various levels. The Prosecutor General and his deputies are located at the Court of Appeal. The Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Cassation includes the Prosecutor General, his first deputy and deputies, who are subordinate to the Minister of Justice.

Local government

The system of local governments in France is built in accordance with the administrative-territorial division. It is represented by communes, departments and regions where elected bodies exist.

The commune has about 36 thousand people and is governed by a municipal council and a mayor, who is the executive authority. The council manages the affairs of the commune, makes decisions on issues affecting the interests of its citizens on all social issues: manages property, creates the necessary social services.

The department is the main unit of the administrative-territorial division of France. The departments are divided into domestic (96) and overseas departments. The responsibility of the Departmental Council includes the adoption of the local budget and control over its implementation, the organization of departmental services, and property management. The executive body of the department is the chairman of the general council.

The largest unit in administrative division a country is a region. Economic and social committees and a regional borrowing committee have been established in each region. The region has its own accounting chamber. The regional council elects its chairman, who is the executive authority in the region.

Armed forces and police

In general, France is one of the few countries whose armed forces have almost the full range of modern weapons and military equipment of their own production - from small arms to nuclear attack aircraft carriers.

France is a nuclear weapons country. The official position of the French government has always been the creation of a "limited nuclear arsenal at the minimum necessary level." Today this level is four nuclear submarines and about a hundred aircraft with nuclear missiles.

The republic has a contract system of service and there is no military obligation. The military personnel, which includes all units, is about 270 thousand people. At the same time, according to the reform launched by the President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, 24% of employees, mostly in administrative positions, should be dismissed from the army.

Foreign policy and international relations

Currently, France is one of the most important actors in world politics; it can undoubtedly be called a “great power” of the modern world, and this assumption is based on the following principles:
France independently determines its foreign policy. Political independence is based on military force(primarily on nuclear weapons);
France influences international political decision-making through international organizations (due to its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, leading role in the EU, etc.);
France is trying to play the role of a world ideological leader (declaring itself the “standard bearer” of the principles of the French Revolution in world politics and a defender of human rights throughout the world);
The special role of France in certain regions of the world (primarily in Africa);
France remains a center of cultural attraction for a significant part of the world community.

France is one of the founding countries of the European Union (since 1957) and now plays an active role in determining its policies.

The headquarters of organizations such as UNESCO (Paris), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Paris), Interpol (Lyon), and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) (Sèvres) are located in France.

France is a member of many world and regional international organizations:
United Nations since 1945;
permanent member of the UN Security Council (that is, has the right of veto);
member of the WTO (since 1995, before that member of the GATT);
member of the Group of Ten since 1964;
the initiating country in the Secretariat of the Pacific Community;
Member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
member of the Indian Ocean Commission;
Associate Member of the Association of Caribbean States;
Founder and leading member of La Francophonie since 1986;
in the Council of Europe since 1949;
OSCE member;
member of the Big Eight.

Among the main directions of French foreign policy are the following:
activities within the European Union;
politics in the Mediterranean region (North Africa and the Middle East);
establishing bilateral relations with individual countries;
implementation of policies within the organization of Francophonie;
activities in NATO.

Activities in NATO

France was a member of NATO (since 1949), but under President de Gaulle in 1966 it withdrew from the military part of the alliance in order to be able to pursue its own independent security policy. During the tenure of President Chirac, France's actual participation in NATO defense structures increased. After N. Sarkozy became president on May 16, 2007, France returned to the military structure of the Alliance on April 4, 2009. France's full return to the military structure is due to NATO's support for European defense initiatives - the EU's European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), as part of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The return of France to NATO is not a whim of N. Sarkozy, but a response to the changed world situation. France's policy towards NATO, starting with F. Mitterrand, has been consistent.

France took an active part in resolving the Georgian-Ossetian conflict that escalated in August 2008. At the meeting of the presidents of Russia and France - Dmitry Medvedev and Nicolas Sarkozy - during negotiations in Moscow on August 12, 2008, a plan for resolving the military conflict, called the Medvedev-Sarkozy Plan, was signed.

Administrative division

France is divided into 27 regions (régions), of which 22 are on the European continent, one (Corsica) is on the island of Corsica, and another five are overseas. Regions do not have legal autonomy, but can set their own taxes and approve the budget. The 27 regions are divided into 101 departments (départements), which consist of 342 districts (arrondissements) and 4,039 cantons (cantons). The basis of France are 36,682 communes. The division into departments and communes is comparable to the division of Russia into regions and districts. The department of Paris consists of a single commune. Each of the five overseas regions (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Reunion, Mayotte) consists of a single department. The region of Corsica (including 2 departments) has a special status as an administrative-territorial entity, different from other regions of the metropolis (continental France). It has independent governing bodies that are not subordinate to the center. In 2003, a referendum on the unification of the two departments of Corsica failed. All these regions are part of the European Union.

It can also be said that the French Republic includes: 1. Metropolis (divided into 22 regions and 96 departments). 2. 5 overseas departments (DOM): Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guiana, Reunion, Mayotte. 3. 5 overseas territories (TOM): French Polynesia, the islands of Valis and Futuna, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin. 4. 3 territories with a special status: New Caledonia, Clipperton, French Southern and Antarctic Lands.

Story

Ancient World and Middle Ages

France in the prehistoric period was the site of the oldest sites of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. During the Neolithic era, several prehistoric cultures rich in monuments existed in France. Prehistoric Brittany was culturally connected with neighboring Britain, and a large number of megaliths were discovered on its territory. During the late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, the territory of France was inhabited by the Celtic tribes of the Gauls, and the southwest of modern France by the Iberians, tribes of unknown origin. As a result of a gradual conquest, which was completed in the 1st century. BC e. As a result of the Gallic War of Julius Caesar, the modern territory of France became part of the Roman Empire as the province of Gaul. The population was Romanized and by the 5th century spoke vernacular Latin, which became the basis of modern French.

In 486, Gaul was conquered by the Franks under the leadership of Clovis. Thus, the Frankish state was established, and Clovis became the first king of the Merovingian dynasty. In the 7th century, the king's power weakened significantly, and the real power in the state was wielded by the majordomos, one of whom, Charles Martel, managed to defeat the Arab army in the Battle of Poitiers in 732 and prevent the Arab conquest of Western Europe. Charles Martell's son, Pepin the Short, became the first king of the Carolingian dynasty, and under Pepin's son, Charlemagne, the Frankish state reached its greatest prosperity in history and occupied most of the territory of what is now Western and Southern Europe. After the death of Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pious, his empire was divided into three parts. In 843, according to the Treaty of Verdun, the West Frankish Kingdom was formed, led by Charles the Bald. It occupied approximately the territory of modern France; in the 10th century the country began to be called France.

Subsequently, the central government weakened significantly. In the 9th century, France was regularly subjected to Viking raids; in 886, the latter besieged Paris. In 911, the Vikings founded the Duchy of Normandy in northern France. By the end of the 10th century, the country was almost completely fragmented, and the kings had no real power outside their feudal domains (Paris and Orleans). The Carolingian dynasty was replaced in 987 by the Capetian dynasty, named after its first king, Hugo Capet. The Capetian reign is notable for the Crusades, religious wars in France itself (first in 1170 by the Waldensian movement, and in 1209-1229 - the Albigensian Wars), the convening of parliament - the States General - for the first time in 1302, as well as the Avignon capture of the popes, when the Pope was arrested in 1303 by King Philip IV the Fair, and the popes were forced to remain in Avignon until 1378. In 1328, the Capetians were replaced by a side branch of the dynasty known as the Valois dynasty. In 1337, the Hundred Years' War with England began, in which at first the British were successful, managing to capture a significant part of the territory of France, but in the end, especially after the appearance of Joan of Arc, a turning point came in the war, and in 1453 the British capitulated.

The period of the reign of Louis XI (1461-1483) saw the actual end of the feudal fragmentation of France and the transformation of the country into an absolute monarchy. Subsequently, France constantly sought to play a prominent role in Europe. Thus, from 1494 to 1559, she fought the Italian Wars with Spain for control of Italy. At the end of the 16th century, Calvinist Protestantism became widespread in predominantly Catholic France (Protestants in France were called Huguenots). This caused religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, which peaked in 1572 with the St. Bartholomew Night in Paris - the massacre of Protestants. In 1589, the Valois dynasty came to an end, and Henry IV became the founder of the new Bourbon dynasty.

Modern times and revolution

In 1598, Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes, ending the war with the Protestants and giving them broad powers so that they formed a “state within a state” with their own fortresses, troops and local government structures. From 1618 to 1648, France participated in the Thirty Years' War (formally it fought only from 1635 - this is the so-called Swedish-French period of the war). From 1624 until his death in 1642, the country was effectively ruled by King Louis XIII's minister, Cardinal Richelieu. He resumed wars with the Protestants and managed to inflict military defeat on them and destroy their government structures. In 1643, Louis XIII died, and his five-year-old son Louis XIV became king, who ruled until 1715 and managed to outlive his son and grandson. In 1648-1653 there was an uprising of the urban strata and the noble opposition, dissatisfied with the rule of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria and the minister Cardinal Mazarin, who continued the policies of Richelieu and the Fronde. After the suppression of the uprising, the absolute monarchy was restored in France. During the reign of Louis XIV - the “Sun King” - France participated in several wars in Europe: 1635-1659. - war with Spain, 1672-1678. — Dutch War, 1688-1697. - War of the Palatinate Succession (War of the League of Augsburg) and 1701-1713. - War of the Spanish Succession.
In 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, which led to the flight of Protestants to neighboring countries and the deterioration of the economic situation of France.
In 1715, after the death of Louis XIV, his great-grandson Louis XV ascended to the French throne, ruling until 1774.
1789 - The Great French Revolution.
1792 - First Republic.
1793-1794 - Jacobin terror.
1795 - capture of the Netherlands.
1797 - capture of Venice.
1798-1801 - Egyptian expedition.
1799-1814 - reign of Napoleon (proclaimed emperor in 1804; First Empire). In the years 1800-1812, Napoleon, through campaigns of conquest, created a pan-European empire, and his relatives or proteges ruled in Italy, Spain and other countries. After the defeat in Russia (see Patriotic War of 1812) and the next unification of the anti-Napoleonic coalition, Napoleon's power collapsed.
1815 - Battle of Waterloo.
1814-1830 - the period of the Restoration, based on the dualistic monarchy of Louis XVIII (1814/1815-1824) and Charles X (1824-1830).
1830 - July Monarchy. The revolution overthrows Charles X, power passes to Prince Louis-Philippe of Orleans, and the financial aristocracy comes to power.
1848-1852 - Second Republic.
1852-1870 - reign of Napoleon III - Second Empire.
1870-1940 - The Third Republic, proclaimed after the capture of Napoleon III near Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In 1879 - 80 the Workers' Party was created. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Socialist Party of France (under the leadership of J. Guesde, P. Lafargue and others) and the French Socialist Party (under the leadership of J. Jaurès) were formed, which united in 1905 (the French section of the workers' international, SFIO). By the end of the 19th century, the formation of the French colonial empire, which included vast possessions in Africa and Asia, was largely completed.
1870—1871 — Franco-Prussian War
1871 - Paris Commune (March - May 1871).
1914-1918 - France participated in the First World War as part of the Entente.
1939-1945 - World War II
1940 - Compiegne Armistice 1940 with Germany (surrender of France)
1940-1944 - German occupation of northern France, Vichy regime in southern France.
1944 - liberation of France by troops of the anti-Hitler coalition and the Resistance movement.
1946-1958 - Fourth Republic.

Fifth Republic

In 1958, the Constitution of the Fifth Republic was adopted, expanding the rights of the executive branch. Charles de Gaulle, General of the Liberation, hero of the First and Second World Wars, was elected President of the Republic. By 1960, amid the collapse of the colonial system, most of the French colonies in Africa won independence. In 1962, after a bloody war, Algeria gained independence. Pro-French Algerians moved to France, where they formed a rapidly growing Muslim minority.

Mass unrest of youth and students (the May events in France 1968), caused by the aggravation of economic and social contradictions, as well as a general strike, led to an acute political crisis; President Charles de Gaulle, founder of the Fifth Republic, resigned (1969) and died on November 9, 1970, a year later.

In general, the post-war development of France was characterized by the accelerated development of industry and agriculture, the encouragement of national capital, economic and socio-cultural expansion into former African and Asian colonies, active integration within the European Union, the development of science and culture, strengthening social support measures, and opposition to “Americanization.” » culture.

Foreign policy under President De Gaulle was characterized by a desire for independence and the “restoration of the greatness of France.” In 1960, after successful tests of its own nuclear weapons, the country joined the “nuclear club”; in 1966, France left the NATO military structure (it returned only during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy); Charles De Gaulle did not support the European integration processes.

Gaullist Georges Pompidou was elected as the second president of the Fifth Republic in 1969, and from 1962 to 1968. served as prime minister.

In 1974, after the death of Pompidou, he was replaced by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a politician of liberal and pro-European views, founder of the centrist party Union for French Democracy.

From 1981 to 1995, the presidency was held by the socialist Francois Mitterrand.

From May 17, 1995 to May 16, 2007, Jacques Chirac was president, re-elected in 2002. He is a neo-Gaullist politician. Under him, in 2000, a referendum was held on the issue of reducing the presidential term in the country from 7 to 5 years. Despite the very low turnout (about 30% of the population), the majority ultimately voted in favor of reducing the sentence (73%).

Due to the growing number of people from African countries in France, the problem of migrants, many of whom are Muslims, has worsened: 10% of the French population are non-indigenous Muslims (mostly from Algeria). On the one hand, this causes an increase in the popularity of far-right (xenophobic) organizations among native French people, on the other hand, France is becoming an arena of riots and terrorist attacks. North African immigration dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The slowdown in the rate of natural population growth and the shortage of labor in France against the backdrop of economic growth made it necessary to attract foreign labor. The main areas of employment of immigrant labor are construction (20%), industries using flow-conveyor production (29%) and the service and trade sectors (48.8%). Due to low professional training, people from North Africa often become unemployed. In 1996, the average unemployment rate among foreigners from the Maghreb countries reached 32%. Currently, immigrants from the Maghreb countries make up more than 2% of the French population and are located mainly in three regions of the country, centered in Paris, Lyon and Marseille.

On May 16, 2007, the candidate from the Union for a Popular Movement party, Nicolas Sarkozy, who came from a Jewish family that emigrated to France from Hungary, became the President of France.

On July 21, 2008, the French Parliament narrowly supported the draft constitutional reform proposed by President Sarkozy. The current constitutional reform has become the most significant since the existence of the Fifth Republic, amending 47 of the 89 articles of the 1958 document. The bill included three parts: strengthening the role of parliament, updating the institution of executive power and providing citizens with new rights.

The most important changes:

- the president can serve no more than two consecutive terms;
— parliament acquires the right to veto some decisions of the president;
— government control over the activities of parliamentary committees is limited;
— in this case, the president receives the right to speak annually before parliament (this has been prohibited since 1875 in order to maintain the separation between the two powers);
— a referendum is envisaged on the issue of new members joining the EU.

The adoption of the new law caused active controversy. Critics of the project point out that the president will still receive the main benefits. Sarkozy is already being called the “hyper-president” and even the new “monarch” of France.

In March 2010, regional elections were held in France. Following two rounds of voting, 1,880 regional council councilors were elected. Elections took place in all 26 regions of the country, including 4 overseas. The current regional elections have already been dubbed a test of strength before the 2012 presidential elections.

The opposition coalition “Left Union” (UG) led by the “Socialist Party” (PS) won the elections. The coalition also includes the parties “Europe-Ecology” and “Left Front”. In the first round they scored 29%, 12% and 6% respectively, while the presidential party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) received only 26%. According to the results of the second round, the “Left Union” received 54% of the votes, thus, out of 22 European regions of France, preference was given to it in 21. Sarkozy's party retained only the Alsace region.

The success of the far-right National Front, which received a total of about 2 million votes in the second round, that is, 9.17%, was also quite unexpected. The party made it to the second round of voting in 12 regions of the country, respectively, in each of them it received an average of 18% of the votes. Jean-Marie Le Pen himself, who headed the party list in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, achieved the best result in the history of his party here, gaining 22.87% of the votes and securing 21 of 123 deputy seats in the local council for his supporters. In the north of France, in the North-Pas-de-Calais region, 22.20% of voters cast their votes for the National Front, whose local list was headed by the daughter of party leader Marine Le Pen, which guaranteed the FN 18 of 113 seats in the regional council

Population

The population of France numbered 63.8 million inhabitants in 2008, and in January 2010 - 65.4 million people. 62.8 million people live on the continental territory. In terms of population, the state ranks 20th among 193 UN member countries. The population density in France is 116 people/km². According to this indicator, the country ranks 14th among EU countries. The total fertility rate in France is one of the highest in Europe - 2.01 children per woman of reproductive age. There are 57 urban settlements in France with a population of more than 100,000 people. The largest of them (as of 2005): Paris - 9.6 million people; Lille - 1.7 million people; Marseille - 1.3 million people; Toulouse - 1 million people.

As of 2006, 10.1% of the population are of foreign origin (that is, they were not French citizens at the time of birth), of which 4.3% received French citizenship.

National composition

The French political lexicon does not use the concept of “national minority” or even “nationality” in the sense in which this word was understood in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. In the French lexicon, the word “nationality”, “nationalité” means exclusively “citizenship”, and the adjective “national, national”, “national, nationale” means belonging to the state - the French Republic, since the Republic comes from the nation, that is, the people to which it belongs state, national sovereignty, which is enshrined in Article 3 of the Constitution of the French Republic. Similarly, in the United States of America, for example, there are citizens of only one nationality - Americans, if you do not take into account foreigners living in the country legally or illegally for one reason or another. Thus, all French citizens are included in one category of official statistics: “French”.

Soviet encyclopedias provide data for 1975 on the ethnic composition of the country, without, however, providing a description of assessment methods: about 90% of the population were ethnic French. National minorities include Alsatians and Lorraineers (about 1.4 million people), Bretons (1.25 million people), Jews (about 500 thousand people), Flemings (300 thousand people), Catalans (250 thousand . people), Basques (140 thousand people) and Corsicans (280 thousand people).
Alsatians speak an Alemannic dialect German language, Lorraineers in his Frankish dialects. The literary language for most Alsatians is German. Most Alsatians are Catholics; among the rural residents there are Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists).
The Bretons speak the Breton language, a Celtic group of the Indo-European family, which has four dialects: Treguieres, Cornish, Vannes and Leonard. It formed the basis of the literary language. Breton is spoken by about 200 thousand people in western Brittany. In eastern Brittany, the dialect of French is Gallo. But the main idea is not language, but general history, origin, special geographical origin, and therefore special economic activities. Brittany is the center of development of Celtic culture.
The Flemings live in the north of the country, in the so-called French Flanders. They speak southern Dutch. By religious affiliation they are mainly Catholics. Corsicans (self-name “Corsi”) inhabit the island of Corsica. They speak French. In everyday life, two Italian dialects are used: Chismontan and Oltremontan. They profess Catholicism.
Basques (self-name Euskaldunak - “Basque-speaking”) in France inhabit the regions of Labourg, Soule and Lower Navarre; in Spain - the provinces of Vizcaya, Guipuzcoa, Alava, Navarre. Basque is isolated, and it is also divided into dialects. The official languages ​​spoken are French and Spanish. The Basques profess Catholicism.

Welfare

The French minimum hourly wage (SMIC) is set and revised by the government. For 2010, it is 8.86 €/hour, which corresponds to 1343.77 €/month (the conversion of hourly wages into monthly wages is carried out by INSEE based on a 35-hour working week).

Approximately 10% of wages in France are at the SMIC level (for temporary jobs this share is 23%). At the same time, the total annual income of approximately half of working French people is at the SMIC level.

The distribution of wages across the country is uneven: in terms of average wages, the Paris region is in the lead by a strong margin - 27 thousand euros per year, average wages in other regions are 18-20 thousand euros per year.

Family income is assessed per unit of consumption (UC) - the first adult in the family is considered one, the rest of the family members under 14 years old are considered 0.3, 14 years and above - 0.5. Only 10% of French families have an income level of over 35,700 €/MU, 1% - over 84,500 €/MU, 0.1% - over 225,800 €/MU, 0.01% - 687,900 €/MU.

Religion

France is a secular country, freedom of conscience is provided for by constitutional law. Here the doctrine of secularism (laїcité) was born and developed; in accordance with the law of 1905, the state was strictly separated from all religious organizations. The secular character of the republic is perceived as an identity. When the French nation ceases to be so united, then issues of a religious nature are perceived quite painfully.

According to surveys conducted in 2005, 34% of French citizens said they “believe in the existence of God,” 27% responded that they “believed in the existence of supernatural forces,” and 33% said they were atheists and did not believe in the existence of such forces.

According to a survey conducted in January 2007, 51% of French people consider themselves Catholics, 31% identify themselves as agnostics and/or atheists, 10% said they belong to other religious movements or have no opinion on this matter, 6-8% - Muslims, 3% - Protestants, 1% - Jews. According to Le Monde, 5 million people in France sympathize with Buddhism, but the religion is practiced by about 600,000 people. Of these, 65% practice Zen Buddhism.

Languages

The official language of the state is French, which is spoken by most of the population. Belongs to the Indo-European family of languages ​​(Romance group, Gallo-Romance subgroup). It developed from folk Latin and went further from it than any other Romance language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet. Modern French comes from the so-called Langue d'Oil, a dialect of northern France, as opposed to Langue d'Oc, which was spoken in the south in the province of the same name. The separation between these two varieties of French was due to the way the word "yes" was pronounced. Currently, Langue d'Oil has almost replaced Langue d'Oc. Although to this day various dialects of the French language are used in France. In 1994, a language law (Tubon Law) was passed. It not only consolidated the French language as the language of the republic, but also protected the language from being displaced by foreign words and borrowings.

Physiographic characteristics

Geographical position

Most of France is located in Western Europe, its mainland borders on Belgium in the north, Luxembourg and in the northeast, Switzerland in the east, Monaco and Italy in the southeast, Spain in the southwest and Andorra. France is washed by four bodies of water (the English Channel, the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea). In the west and north, the country is washed by the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay and the English Channel), in the south by the Mediterranean Sea (Gulf of Lyon and the Ligurian Sea). The length of the sea borders is 5,500 kilometers. France is the largest country in Western Europe by territory: it occupies almost one-fifth of the territory of the European Union and has vast maritime spaces (the exclusive economic zone extends over an area of ​​11 million sq. km).

The state also includes the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea and more than twenty overseas departments and dependent territories. The total area of ​​the country is 550 thousand km² (643.4 thousand km² including overseas territories and departments).

Relief and geological structure

In the north and west of the country there are flat areas and low mountains. Plains make up 2/3 of the total territory. The main mountain ranges are: the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Jura, the Ardennes, the Massif Central and the Vosges. The Paris Basin is surrounded by the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Vosges and the Ardennes. Around Paris there is a system of concentric ledges of ridges, separated by narrow strips of plains. The Garonne Lowland, located in southwestern France at the foot of the Pyrenees, is a flat region with fertile soils. The Landes, a triangular wedge-shaped area southwest of the lower Garonne, has less fertile soils and is covered with coniferous forests. The Rhône-Saône graben in southeastern France forms a narrow passage between the Alps to the east and the French Massif Central to the west. It consists of a series of small depressions separated by highly dissected uplifted areas.

IN central regions and in the east - medium-high mountains (Massif Central, Vosges, Jura). The Central Massif, located between the basins of the Loire, Garonne and Rhone rivers, is the largest massif resulting from the destruction of the ancient Hercynian mountains. Like other ancient mountain regions of France, it rose during the Alpine era, with the softer rocks in the Alps folded into folds and the denser rocks of the massif broken by cracks and faults. Deep molten rocks rose through such disturbed zones, which was accompanied by volcanic eruptions. In the modern era, these volcanoes have lost their activity. However, many extinct volcanoes and other volcanic landforms remain on the surface of the massif. The Vosges, which separates the fertile Rhine Valley in Alsace from the rest of France, is only 40 km wide. The smoothed and forested surfaces of these mountains rise above the deep valleys. A similar landscape prevails in the north of the country in the Ardennes. The Jura Mountains, along which the border with Switzerland runs, are located between Geneva and Basel. They have a folded structure, composed of limestone, lower and less dissected compared to the Alps, but they were formed in the same era and have a close geological connection with the Alps.

In the southwest, along the border with Spain, lies the Pyrenees mountain range. During the Ice Age, the Pyrenees were not subject to powerful glaciation. There are no large glaciers and lakes, picturesque valleys and jagged ridges characteristic of the Alps. Due to the considerable altitude and inaccessibility of the passes, communications between Spain and France are very limited.

In the southeast, the Alps partially form the border of France with Switzerland (up to Lake Geneva) and extend slightly into southeastern France up to the Rhone. In the high mountains, rivers carved out deep valleys, and the glaciers that occupied these valleys during the Ice Age widened and deepened them. Here is also the highest point in France - the highest mountain in Western Europe - Mount Mont Blanc, 4807 m.

Climate

The climate on the European territory of France is temperate maritime, turning into temperate continental in the east, and subtropical on the southern coast. In total, three types of climate can be distinguished: oceanic (in the west), Mediterranean (in the south), continental (in the center and in the east). Summer is quite hot and dry - the average temperature in July reaches + 23-25 ​​degrees, while the winter months are characterized by rain at an air temperature of + 7-8 ° C.

The main share of precipitation occurs in the period from January to April, and its total amount fluctuates between 600-1000 mm. On the western slopes of the mountains this figure can reach more than 2000 mm.

Water resources

All rivers of France, with the exception of some overseas territories, belong to the Atlantic Ocean basin, and most of them originate in the Massif Central, the Alps and the Pyrenees. The country's largest waterways:
The Seine (775 km) is a flat river that forms a widely branched system with large right tributaries the Marne and Oise, and a left tributary Ion. The Seine drains the Paris Basin and empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Le Havre. It is characterized by an even distribution of flow throughout the year, which is favorable for navigation, and is connected by canals with other rivers.
The Garonne (650 km) originates in the Spanish Pyrenees, flows through Toulouse and Bordeaux, and when it flows into the ocean it forms a vast estuary - the Gironde. Main tributaries: Tarn, Lot and Dordogne.
Rhone (812 km) - the deepest river in France, begins in the Swiss Alps from the Rhone glacier, flows through Lake Geneva. Near Lyon, the Saône River flows into it. Other major tributaries are the Durance and Isère. The Rhône is characterized by fast turbulent flow and has great hydroelectric potential. A number of hydroelectric power stations have been built on this river.
The Loire (1020 km) is the longest river in France, beginning in the Massif Central. It receives many tributaries, the main of which are the Allier, Cher, Indre and Vienne. The Loire rises in the French Massif Central, crosses the southern part of the Paris Basin and flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Nantes. The water level in this river fluctuates greatly, so there are frequent floods.

A system of canals connects the country's main rivers, including the Rhine, which partly runs along the country's eastern border and is one of the most important inland routes in Europe. Rivers and canals are of great importance to the French economy.

Flora and fauna

Forests occupy 27% of the country's territory. Walnut, birch, oak, spruce and cork trees grow in the northern and western regions of the country. On the Mediterranean coast there are palm trees and citrus fruits. Among the representatives of the fauna, deer and fox stand out. Roe deer live in alpine regions, and wild boar survive in remote forests. It is also home to a large number of different species of birds, including migratory ones. Reptiles are rare, and among snakes there is only one poisonous one - the common viper. The coastal sea waters are home to many species of fish: herring, cod, tuna, sardine, mackerel, flounder and silver hake.

Protected areas

The French national park system consists of nine parks located both in European France and in its overseas territories. The parks are managed by the government agency Management national parks France. They occupy 2% of the territory of European France, and are visited by 7 million people a year.

In France, there is also a structure of regional natural parks, introduced by law on March 1, 1967. Regional nature parks are created by agreement between local authorities and the central government, and their territory is reviewed every 10 years. As of 2009, there are 49 regional natural parks in France.

Economy

France is a highly developed industrial-agrarian country and occupies one of the leading places in the world in terms of industrial production. Gross domestic product stands at 1.9 trillion euros ($2.6 trillion) in 2009. GDP per capita in the same year was 30,691 euros ($42,747). The IMF predicts that France's GDP will increase by 21% by 2015. France is the 6th economic power in the world after the USA, and. With a metropolitan area of ​​551,602 km² and a population of 64 million inhabitants, including overseas territories, France is considered a "large" country. And its economic weight allows it to play one of the key roles in the international arena. France enjoys its natural advantages, ranging from its central geographical location in Europe to its access to the main trade routes of Western Europe: the Mediterranean Sea, the English Channel, and the Atlantic.

In this regard, the European Common Market, established in 1957, has been a beneficial factor for the development of French enterprises, although former colonies and overseas territories continue to be significant commercial partners.

Industry

Iron and uranium ores and bauxite are being mined. The leading branches of the manufacturing industry are mechanical engineering, including automotive, electrical and electronic (TVs, washing machines, etc.), aviation, shipbuilding (tankers, sea ferries) and machine tool building. France is one of the world's largest producers of chemical and petrochemical products (including caustic soda, synthetic rubber, plastics, mineral fertilizers, pharmaceutical products and others), ferrous and non-ferrous (aluminium, lead and zinc) metals. French clothing, shoes, jewelry, perfumes and cosmetics, cognacs, and cheeses (about 400 varieties are produced) are very famous on the world market.

Agriculture

France is one of Europe's largest producers of agricultural products and occupies one of the leading places in the world in the number of cattle, pigs, poultry and the production of milk, eggs, and meat. Agriculture accounts for approximately 4% of GDP and 6% of the country's working population. France's agricultural products account for 25% of EU production. Agricultural land covers an area of ​​48 million hectares, representing 82% of the metropolitan area. A characteristic feature of the socio-economic structure is the fairly small size of farms. The average land area is 28 hectares, which exceeds the corresponding indicators of many EU countries. There is great fragmentation in land ownership. More than half of the farms exist on the land of the owners. Large farms are the leading force in production. 52% of agricultural land falls on farms larger than 50 hectares, which account for 16.8% of the total. They provide over 2/3 of production, occupying a dominant position in the production of almost all branches of agriculture. The main branch of agriculture is animal husbandry for meat and dairy production. Grain farming predominates in crop production; The main crops are wheat, barley, corn. Winemaking (leading place in the world in wine production), vegetable growing and horticulture are developed; floriculture; fishing and oyster farming. Agricultural products: wheat, cereals, sugar beets, potatoes, wine grapes; beef, dairy products; fish. Agriculture is highly industrialized. In terms of technology and the use of chemical fertilizers, it is second only to the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Technical equipment and improved agricultural cultivation of farms led to an increase in the country's level of self-sufficiency in agricultural products. For grains and sugar it exceeds 200%, for butter, eggs, and meat - over 100%.

Winemaking

Only Italy competes with France in wine production. Each province grows its own grape varieties and produces its own wines. Dry wines predominate. Such wines are usually named by grape variety - Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc. Blended wines, that is, made from a mixture of grape varieties, are named by location. In France, champagne, Anjou, Bordeaux and Burgundy wines are especially famous.

Another famous drink is cognac. This is a type of brandy or grape vodka. There are other varieties, such as Armagnac. In France, it is customary to call cognac only the drink that is produced in the vicinity of the city of Cognac. Cognac is usually not eaten with anything; occasionally gourmets will add black radish to the aftertaste.

Another strong drink popular in Normandy is Calvados.

Energy and mining

Every year France consumes about 220 million tons of various types of fuel, with nuclear power plants playing a significant role in energy production, generating three quarters of the electricity produced (58 power units with a total capacity of 63.13 GW as of June 1, 2011). The largest electricity producer in France is the historical monopoly Électricité de France (EDF).

France's hydroelectric network is the largest in Europe. There are about 500 hydroelectric power stations on its territory. France's hydroelectric stations generate 20,000 MW of power.

Forests make up more than 30% of the territory, placing France in third place after Sweden and Finland in terms of area among the countries of the European Union. Since 1945, the forest area in France has increased by 46% and has doubled in the last 200 years. In France there are 136 species of trees, which is very rare for a European country. The number of large animals is also increasing here: over the past 20 years, the number of deer has doubled, and the number of roe deer has tripled.

France has significant reserves of iron ore, uranium ores, bauxite, potassium and rock salts, coal, zinc, copper, lead, nickel, oil, and wood. The main coal mining regions are Lorraine (9 million tons) and the coalfields of the Massif Central. Since 1979, coal imports have exceeded its production. Currently, the largest suppliers of this type of fuel are the USA, Australia and South Africa. The main consumers of oil and petroleum products are transport and thermal power plants, while France imports oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Great Britain, Norway, Russia, Algeria and a number of other countries. Gas production does not exceed 3 billion cubic meters. m. One of the largest gas fields in France - Lac in the Pyrenees - has been mostly depleted. The main gas suppliers are Norway, Algeria, Russia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Nigeria and Belgium. Gaz de France is one of the largest gas companies in Europe. The company's main activities are exploration, production, marketing and distribution of natural gas. To save and increase natural wealth France, the state created:

— 7 national parks (for example, Parc national de la Vanoise, Parc national de la Guadeloupe, Parc National des Pyrénées, etc.),

— 156 nature reserves,

— 516 biotope protection zones,

- 429 sites under Coast Guard protection,

— 43 natural regional parks, covering more than 12% of the entire territory of France.

France allocated 47.7 billion euros for environmental protection in 2006, which amounts to 755 euros per inhabitant. Recycling of wastewater and waste accounts for 3/4 of this waste. France participates in many international agreements and conventions, including those developed by the United Nations on climate, biodiversity and desertification.

Transport

Railway connection
Rail transport in France is very developed. Local and night trains, including TGV (“Trains à Grande Vitesse” - high speed trains) connect the capital with all major cities of the country, as well as with neighboring European countries. The speed of these trains is 320 km/h. France's railway network is 29,370 kilometers long, making it the longest railway network in Western Europe. There are rail connections with all neighboring countries except Andorra.

Metro in France is available in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse, Rennes. In Rouen there is a partially underground high-speed tram. In addition to the metro system, Paris has a network of RER (Reseau Express Regional), connected to both the metro system and the commuter train network.
Road transport
The road network covers the entire territory of the country quite densely. Total length highways 951500 km.

The main roads in France are divided into the following groups:
Highways - the name of the road is made up of the letter A followed by the road number. The permissible speed is 130 km/h, the mandatory presence of gas stations every 50 km, a concrete dividing strip, no traffic lights or pedestrian crossings.
National roads - prefix N. Permissible speed - 90 km/h (if there is a concrete median - 110 km/h).
Departmental roads - prefix D. Permissible speed - 90 km/h.

In cities, the permissible speed is 50 km/h. The use of seat belts is mandatory. Children under 10 years old must be transported in special seats.

Aviation transport
There are about 475 airports in France. 295 of them have paved or concrete runways, and the remaining 180 are unpaved (2008 data). The largest French airport is Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, located in the suburbs of Paris. The national French air carrier Air France operates flights to almost every country in the world.

Trade and services

Exports: engineering products, including transport equipment (about 14% of the value), cars (7%), agricultural and food products (17%; one of the leading European exporters), chemicals and semi-finished products, etc.

Tourism

However, income from international tourism is much higher in the United States ($81.7 billion) than in France ($42.3 billion), which is explained by the shorter stay of tourists in France: those who come to Europe tend to visit neighboring, no less attractive countries. In addition, the French tourist is more family than business, which also explains the lower spending of tourists in France.

In 2010, about 76.8 million people visited France—an absolute record. The external balance of French tourism is positive: in 2000, tourism income amounted to 32.78 billion euros, while French tourists traveling abroad spent only 17.53 billion euros.

What undoubtedly attracts visitors to France is the wide variety of landscapes, long lines of ocean and sea coasts, a temperate climate, many different monuments, as well as the prestige of French culture, cuisine and lifestyle.

Culture and art

France has a huge cultural heritage. It is rich, diverse, reflecting wide regional differences, as well as the influence of waves of immigration from different eras. France gave civilization great mathematicians, numerous philosophers, writers, artists, the Age of Enlightenment, the language of diplomacy, a certain universal concept of man and much more. French has been one of the major international languages ​​for many centuries, and largely retains this role to this day. For long periods of its history, France was the main cultural center, spreading its achievements throughout the world. In many areas, such as fashion or cinema, it still maintains a leading position in the world. The headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is located in Paris.

Architecture

On the territory of France, significant monuments of both ancient architecture, primarily in Nîmes, and the Romanesque style, which became most widespread in the 11th century, have been preserved. Characteristic representatives of the latter are, for example, the cathedrals of the Basilica of Saint Saturnin in Toulouse, the largest Romanesque church in Europe, and the Church of Notre-Dame-la-Grand in Poitiers. However, medieval French architecture is primarily known for its Gothic structures. The Gothic style arose in France in the middle of the 12th century; the first Gothic cathedral was the Basilica of Saint-Denis (1137-1144). The most significant works of the Gothic style in France are considered to be the cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens and Reims, but in general there are a huge number of monuments of the Gothic style left in France, from chapels to huge cathedrals. In the 15th century, the period of the so-called “flaming Gothic” began, from which only isolated examples have reached us, such as the Saint-Jacques Tower in Paris or one of the portals of Rouen Cathedral. In the 16th century, starting with the reign of Francis I, the Renaissance began in French architecture, well represented by the castles in the Loire Valley - Chambord, Chenonceau, Cheverny, Blois, Azay-le-Rideau and others - as well as the Fontainebleau Palace.

The 17th century is the heyday of Baroque architecture, characterized by the creation of large palace and park ensembles, such as Versailles and the Luxembourg Gardens, and huge domed buildings, such as the Val de Grace or the Invalides. Baroque was replaced by classicism in the 18th century. The first examples of urban planning, with straight streets and perspectives, and the organization of urban space, such as the Champs Elysees in Paris, date back to this era. Examples of the architecture of classicism proper include many Parisian monuments, for example, the Pantheon (former church of Saint-Geneviève) or the Church of the Madeleine. Classicism gradually turns into Empire style, the style of the first third of the 19th century, the standard of which in France is the arch on Place Carrousel. In the 1850-1860s, a complete redevelopment of Paris was carried out, as a result of which it took on a modern look, with boulevards, squares and straight streets. In 1887-1889, the Eiffel Tower was erected, which, although it met with significant rejection from its contemporaries, is currently considered one of the symbols of Paris. In the 20th century, modernism spread throughout the world, in the architecture of which France no longer played a leading role, but in France, nevertheless, excellent examples of the style were created, such as the church in Ronchamp, built by Le Corbusier, or built according to a specially designed plan of the business district of Paris La Défense with the Grand Arch.

art

Although France produced wonderful examples of medieval art (sculpture of Gothic cathedrals, paintings by Jean Fouquet, book miniatures, the pinnacle of which is considered to be the Magnificent Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry by the Limburg brothers) and Renaissance art (Limoges enamels, paintings by François Clouet, the Fontainebleau school) and the 17th century (Georges de La Tour ), French art was always in the shadow of other countries, primarily Italy and the Netherlands. In the 17th century, the greatest French masters (painters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, sculptor Pierre Puget) spent a significant part of their lives in Italy, which was considered at that time the center of world art. The first style of painting to emerge in France was the Rococo style in the 18th century, the largest representatives of which were Antoine Watteau and Francois Boucher. In the second half of the 18th century, French painting, having passed through Chardin's still lifes and Greuze's portraits of women, came to classicism, which dominated French academic art until the 1860s. The main representatives of this trend were Jacques Louis David and Dominique Ingres.

At the same time, pan-European artistic movements developed in France that significantly diverged from the official academic direction: romanticism (Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix), orientalism (Jean-Leon Gerome), the realistic landscape of the “Barbizon School”, the most prominent representatives of which were Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot, realism (Gustave Courbet, partly Honoré Daumier), symbolism (Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau). However, only in the 1860s did French art make a qualitative breakthrough, which brought France to the undisputed leadership in world art and allowed it to maintain this leadership until the Second World War. This breakthrough is associated primarily with the work of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, and then with the Impressionists, the most notable of whom were Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, as well as Gustave Caillebotte.

At the same time, other outstanding figures were the sculptor Auguste Rodin and Odilon Redon, who did not belong to any movements. Paul Cézanne, who initially joined the Impressionists, soon moved away from them and began working in a style later called post-impressionism. Post-impressionism also includes the work of such major artists as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as new artistic movements that constantly emerged in France at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, which then spread throughout Europe, influencing other art schools. These are pointillism (Georges Seurat and Paul Signac), the Nabi group (Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard), Fauvism (Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Raoul Dufy), cubism (early works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque). French art also responded to the main trends of the avant-garde, such as expressionism (Georges Rouault, Chaim Soutine), the stand-out painting of Marc Chagall or the surrealist works of Yves Tanguy. After the German occupation in World War II, France lost its leadership in world art.

Literature

The earliest surviving works of literature in Old French date back to the end of the 9th century, but the flowering of French medieval literature began in the 12th century. Epic (The Song of Roland), allegorical (The Romance of the Rose) and satirical (The Romance of the Fox) poems, chivalric literature, primarily Tristan and Isolde and the works of Chrétien de Troyes, and the poetry of the Trouvères were created. At the same time, in Southern France in the 12th century, the poetry of the troubadours, who wrote in the Old Provençal language, reached its peak. The most outstanding poet of medieval France was Francois Villon.

Rabelais' proto-novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel" marked the divide in French literature between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The greatest master of Renaissance prose not only in France, but also on a pan-European scale, was Michel Montaigne in his Essays. Pierre Ronsard and the Pleiades poets tried to “ennoble” the French language on the model of Latin. The development of the literary heritage of antiquity reached a new level in the 17th century, with the advent of the era of classicism. French philosophers (Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld) and grand siècle playwrights (Cornel, Racine and Molière), and, to a lesser extent, prose writers (Charles Perrault) and poets (Jean de La Fontaine) gained pan-European fame.

During the Age of Enlightenment, French educational literature continued to dictate the literary tastes of Europe, although its popularity was not durable. Among the most significant monuments of French literature of the 18th century are three novels: “Manon Lescaut”, “Dangerous Liaisons”, “Candide”. The rational-impersonal poetry of that time is now practically never republished.

After the Great French Revolution comes the era of romanticism, beginning in France with the work of Chateaubriand, the Marquis de Sade and Madame de Staël. The traditions of classicism turned out to be very tenacious, and French romanticism reached its peak relatively late - in the middle of the century in the work of Victor Hugo and several less significant figures - Lamartine, de Vigny and Musset. The ideologist of French romanticism was the critic Sainte-Beuve, and his most popular works remain the historical adventure novels of Alexandre Dumas.

Since the 1830s, the realistic trend has become increasingly noticeable in French literature, towards which the “poet of feelings” Stendhal and the concisely laconic Mérimée evolved. The largest figures of French realism are considered Honore de Balzac (The Human Comedy) and Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), although the latter defined himself as a neo-romantic (Salammbô). Under the influence of Madame Bovary, the “Flaubert school” was formed, generally defined as naturalism and represented by the names of Zola, Maupassant, the Goncourt brothers and the satirist Daudet.

In parallel with naturalism, a completely different literary direction is developing. The literary group of Parnassians, represented in particular by Théophile Gautier, set as its task the creation of “art for art’s sake.” Adjacent to the Parnassians is the first of the “damned poets,” Charles Baudelaire, the author of the epoch-making collection “Flowers of Evil,” which built a bridge from the era of “frantic” romanticism (Nerval) to the pre-decadent symbolism of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé.

During the 20th century, fourteen French writers were awarded the Nobel Prize. The most striking monument of French modernism is Marcel Proust’s “flow novel” In Search of Lost Time, which grew out of the teachings of Henri Bergson. The influential publisher of the Nouvelle Revue Française magazine, Andre Gide, also took the position of modernism. The work of Anatole France and Romain Rolland evolved towards socio-satirical issues, while Francois Mauriac and Paul Claudel tried to comprehend the place of religion in the modern world.

In the poetry of the early 20th century, Apollinaire’s experimentation was accompanied by a revival of interest in “Racine” verse (Paul Valéry). In the pre-war years, surrealism became the dominant direction of the avant-garde (Cocteau, Breton, Aragon, Eluard). In the post-war period, surrealism was replaced by existentialism (the stories of Camus), with which the dramaturgy of the “theater of the absurd” (Ionesco and Beckett) is associated. The largest phenomena of the postmodern era were the “new novel” (ideologist Robbe-Grillet) and the group of language experimenters ULIPO (Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec).

In addition to authors who wrote in French, major representatives of other literatures, such as the Argentinean Cortazar, worked in France, especially in the 20th century. After the October Revolution, Paris became one of the centers of Russian emigration. Here, in different time Such significant Russian writers and poets worked as, for example, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Marina Tsvetaeva or Konstantin Balmont. Many, like Gaito Gazdanov, became established writers in France. Many foreigners, like Beckett and Ionesco, began to write in French.

Music

French music has been known since the time of Charlemagne, but world-class composers: Jean Baptiste Lully, Louis Couperin, Jean Philippe Rameau - appeared only in the Baroque era. The heyday of French classical music came in the 19th century. The era of Romanticism is represented in France by the works of Hector Berlioz, primarily his symphonic music. In the middle of the century, such famous composers as Camille Saint-Saens, Gabriel Fauré and Cesar Frank wrote their works, and at the end of the 19th century a new direction of classical music developed in France - impressionism, associated with the names of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. In the 20th century, classical music in France developed in the general mainstream of world music. Famous composers, including Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, are formally grouped together as the Six, although their work has little in common. The work of Olivier Messiaen cannot be attributed to any direction of music at all. In the 1970s, the technique of “spectral music”, which later spread throughout the world, was born in France, in which music is written taking into account its sound spectrum.

In the 1920s, jazz spread in France, the largest representative of which was Stéphane Grappelli. French pop music developed along a different path than English-language pop music. Thus, the rhythm of the song often follows the rhythm of the French language (this genre is designated as chanson). In chanson, the emphasis can be placed on both the words of the song and the music. In this genre of extraordinary popularity in the middle of the 20th century. reached Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour. Many chansonniers themselves wrote poems for songs, such as Georges Brassens. In many regions of France, folk music is being revived. As a rule, folk groups perform compositions from the early 20th century, using piano and accordion.

In the second half of the 20th century. In France, ordinary pop music also became widespread, the performers of which were, for example, Mireille Mathieu, Dalida, Joe Dassin, Patricia Kaas, Mylene Farmer, Lara Fabian, Lemarchal Gregory.

The French have made a particularly significant contribution to electronic music. Jean-Michel Jarre's Space and Rockets projects were among the pioneers of this genre. In early French electronica, the synthesizer played a central role, as did science fiction and space aesthetics. In the 1990s, other electronic genres developed in France, such as trip-hop (Air, Télépopmusik), new age (Era), house (Daft Punk), etc.

Rock music in France is not as popular as in northern Europe, but the genre is well represented on the French scene. Among the patriarchs of French rock of the 1960s and 70s, it is worth noting the progressive Art Zoyd, Gong, Magma. The key bands of the 80s are post-punks Noir Désir, metallers Shakin' Street and Mystery Blue. The most successful groups of the last decade are metallers Anorexia Nervosa and rapcore performers Pleymo. The latter are also associated with the hip-hop scene of France. This “street” style is very popular among the non-indigenous population, Arab and African immigrants. Some performers from immigrant families have achieved mass fame, for example K. Maro, Diam's, MC Solaar, Stromae. On June 21, Music Day is widely celebrated in France.

Theater

The tradition of theatrical performances in France dates back to the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, theatrical performances in cities were tightly controlled by guilds; Thus, the guild "Les Confrères de la Passion" had a monopoly on mystery plays in Paris, and at the end of the 16th century - on all theatrical performances in general. The Guild rented premises for the theater. In addition to public theaters, performances were given in private homes. Women could participate in performances, but all actors were excommunicated. In the 17th century, theatrical performances were finally divided into comedies and tragedies; Italian commedia dell'arte was also popular. Permanent theaters appeared; in 1689, two of them were united by decree of Louis XIV, forming the Comédie Française. It is currently the only French repertory theater funded by the government. Traveling troupes of actors spread across the provinces. At the end of the 17th century, French theater was completely dominated by classicism, with the concept of the unity of place, time and action. This concept ceased to be dominant only in the 19th century, with the emergence of romanticism, and then realism and decadent movements. Sarah Bernhardt is considered the most famous French dramatic actress of the 19th century. In the 20th century, French theater was exposed to avant-garde movements, and later was strongly influenced by Brecht. In 1964, Ariane Mnouchkine and Philippe Léotard created the Théâtre du Soleil to bridge the gap between actors, playwrights and audiences.

There is a strong circus school in France; in particular, in the 1970s, the so-called “new circus” arose here (at the same time as the UK, Australia and the USA), a type of theatrical performance in which a plot or theme is conveyed to the audience using circus techniques.

Cinema

Despite the fact that France was the place where cinema was invented at the end of the 19th century, the modern appearance of French cinema was formed after the Second World War, after understanding the legacy of the war and the German occupation. After a series of anti-fascist films, an important turn of French cinema to humanism took place. After the war, the best film adaptations of French classics gained worldwide fame: “The Abode of Parma” (1948), “The Red and the Black” (1954), “Therese Raquin” (1953). Back in the late 1950s, A. Rene’s innovative film “Hiroshima, my love” (1959) played a very important role in the development of French cinema. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, brilliant actors gained fame: Gerard Philip, Bourville, Jean Marais, Marie Cazares, Louis de Funes, Serge Reggiani and others.

At the peak of the “new wave” of French cinema, more than 150 new directors appeared in a short period of time, among whom the leading places were taken by Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Claude Lelouch, Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle. Then came the still famous musical films directed by Jacques Demy - “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964) and “The Girls from Rochefort” (1967). As a result, France has become one of the centers of world cinema, attracting the best filmmakers from around the world. Directors such as Bertolucci, Angelopoulos or Ioseliani made films entirely or partly produced in France, and many foreign actors starred in French films.

In the 1960s-1970s, a whole galaxy of actors appeared in French cinema, among whom the most famous were Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Gerard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Annie Girardot. French comedians Pierre Richard and Coluche became popular.

Modern French cinema is a rather sophisticated film in which the psychology and drama of the plot are combined with some piquancy and artistic beauty of filming. The style is determined by fashion directors Luc Besson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Francois Ozon, Philippe Garrel. Popular actors are Jean Reno, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Marceau, Christian Clavier, Matthew Kassovitz, Louis Garrel. The French government actively promotes the development and export of national cinema.

Since 1946, International Film Festivals have been held in Cannes. In 1976, the annual national film award “Cesar” was established.

Freemasonry

In continental Europe, Freemasonry is most numerous in France, both in the number of members of Masonic lodges and in the number of Grand Lodges in one country. It is represented by all directions of all obediences existing in the world. The number of Freemasons in France is more than 200,000 people. Traditionally, the most represented in France are the liberal lodges, such as the Grand Orient of France, the Order of the Right of Man, the Grand Female Lodge of France, the Grand Mixed Lodge of France, the Grand Female Lodge of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim, the Grand Symbolic Lodge of France of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim. The direction of regular Freemasonry in France is represented by the following Grand Lodges: Grand Lodge of France, Grand National Lodge of France, Grand Traditional Symbolic Lodge of the Opera. Many prominent figures in France were Freemasons, leaving their mark on the history of the country and influencing its development. Members of the Masonic lodges were: Voltaire, Hugo, Jaurès, Blanqui, Rouget de Lisle, Briand, Andre Citroen and many, many more...

Mariana. One of the emblems of French Freemasonry. (1879)

Education and science

Education in France is compulsory from 6 to 16 years of age. The basic principles of French education: freedom of teaching (public and private institutions), free education, neutrality of education, laïcité of education.

Higher education

Higher education is only available with a bachelor's degree. System higher education France is distinguished by a wide variety of universities and disciplines offered. Most higher education institutions are public and report to the French Ministry of Education. Historically, two types of higher education institutions have developed in France:
universities
"Great Schools"

Universities train teachers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists.

"Higher Schools"

They train highly professional specialists in the fields of engineering, management, economics, military affairs, education and culture. You can enter higher school after two or three years of study in preparatory classes in your chosen field. Students who have completed the first two years of higher education at the university with honors can also enter “higher schools” without competition, but the number of places for them is quite limited (no more than 10%). After preparatory classes, students undergo one or more competitions for admission to “higher schools.” Usually one competition brings together several schools.

For “higher schools” teaching engineering sciences, there are six competitions for admission:
Ecole Polytechnique;
ENS;
Mines-Ponts;
Centrale-Supelec;
CCP;
e3a.

“Higher schools” are actually opposed to the state system of higher university education in France and are very difficult to comparatively classify at the international level. Studying at the “Superior Schools” is considered much more prestigious in France than at universities (which bear some of the imprint of a second-class system, since they do not involve any selection for admission and function on the principle of free enrollment and free education). Unlike universities, higher schools must pass difficult entrance exams with great competition for applicants. It is much more difficult to enter “Higher Schools,” but the professional prospects upon completion are incomparably better: graduates are not only guaranteed full employment, but most often the most prestigious and lucrative jobs in the public and private sectors.

Students of some Schools, such as ENAC (National School of Civil Aviation), receive scholarships as future civil servants. Created on the initiative of government authorities and private entrepreneurs to train specialists in specific areas of economic activity or employees of government bodies. Thus, higher pedagogical schools train teachers, the Polytechnic School and the Saint-Cyr School train military specialists, and the National Historical and Archival School trains archivists and custodians of national property. Five Catholic institutes are also classified as higher schools. The Higher Schools program usually has two cycles. The first two-year preparatory cycle can be completed both on the basis of the Big School itself and on the basis of some elite lyceums. At the end of the second cycle, the student receives a Big School diploma. Upon completion of training, graduates are required to work in the public service for 6-10 years, thus reimbursing the state expenses spent on their training. In addition, there are many special schools under departmental subordination.

A special place among all educational and training institutions, and even among Les Grandes Ecoles, is occupied by the National School of Administration under the Prime Minister of France - ENA. ENA ranks first not so much in terms of the level of education (it is clearly surpassed in international recognition by the Polytechnic School), but in terms of the prospects for career growth and life success it offers. Students and graduates of the school are called “enarques” (French énarque). The vast majority of French ENA graduates (about six thousand since 1945) have become leading government politicians, heads of French institutions, parliamentarians, senior officials, diplomats and members of international organizations, judges of the highest courts, lawyers of the Council of State, administrative and financial controllers of the highest rank, managers and top management of the largest state and international firms and banks, funds mass media and communications. The ENA gave France two presidents, seven prime ministers, a large number of ministers, prefects, senators and deputies of the National Assembly. The Soviet equivalents of the ENA could be considered the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee, the Diplomatic Academy of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Academy of National Economy under the Council of Ministers of the USSR combined. The modern Russian equivalent of ENA is the Russian Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation, the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation and the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry combined.

The science

In France there is major center scientific research - CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique - national center for scientific research).
In the field of nuclear energy, the scientific center CEA (Comissariat à l'énergie atomique) stands out.
In the field of space exploration and space instrument design, CNES (Centre national d'études spatiales) is the largest scientific center in France. CNES engineers also developed several projects together with Soviet engineers.

France is actively involved in European scientific projects, for example, in the Galileo satellite navigation system project or in the Envisat project, a satellite that studies the Earth's climate.

mass media

Television and radio broadcasting

In 1995, 95% of French households had a television in their home.

Several public (France-2, France-3, France-5, Arté - the latter jointly with Germany) and private (TF1, Canal+ (pay channel), M6) television companies operate in the UHF range.

With the advent of digital terrestrial television in 2005, the range of available free channels has expanded. Since 2009, a gradual abandonment of analogue television has begun, the complete shutdown of which in France is planned for 2013.

Many thematic state radio stations broadcast on FM: France Inter, France Info (news), France Bleu (local news), France Culture (culture), France Musique (classical music, jazz), FIP (music), Le Mouv" ( youth rock radio station) and others.

France has a radio station, Radio France internationale (RFI), with an audience of 44 million people and broadcasting in 13 languages.

In 2009, it is planned to determine the conditions for the transition of radio stations to digital broadcasting with the goal of completely abandoning analogue technologies by 2011. Songs on French radio should occupy at least 40% of the time.

Magazines and newspapers

Popular magazines include Paris Match (illustrated weekly news magazine), Femme actuelle, Elle and Marie-France (magazines for women), L'Express, Le Point and Le Nouvel Observateur ( newsweeklies), “Télé7 jours” (television programs and news).

Among daily newspapers of national importance, the largest circulations are Le Figaro, Le Parisien, Le Monde, France Soir and La Libération. The most popular specialized magazines are L’Equipe (sports) and Les Echos (business news).

Since the early 2000s, free daily press, financed by advertising, has become widespread: 20 minutes (the leader in the French press in terms of readership), Direct Matin, the international newspaper Metro, as well as many local publications.

There are also many regional daily newspapers, the most famous of which is Ouest-France, which has a circulation of 797 thousand copies, almost twice the circulation of any national daily newspaper.

Sport

Olympic Games

French athletes have been participating in the Olympic Games since 1896. In addition, the competitions of the Summer Olympic Games were held twice in Paris - in 1900 and 1924, and the Winter Olympics. Olympic Games were held three times in three different cities - in Chamonix (1920), Grenoble (1968) and Albertville (1992).

Football

The French national football team won the World Cup in 1998 and the European Championship in 1984 and 2000.

Cycling race Tour de France

Since 1903, France has hosted the most prestigious cycling race in the world, the Tour de France. The race, starting in June, consists of 21 stages, each lasting one day.

Holidays

The main holidays are Christmas (December 25), New Year, Easter, Bastille Day (July 14).

In May 1958, amid a military mutiny in Algeria, parliament called General de Gaulle to power and gave his government emergency powers. The government hastily prepared a draft of a new constitution, which in September 1958 was approved in a referendum by 79.2% of the votes of its participants and came into force in October 1958.

Constitution1958 The authors of the 1958 Constitution, which was considered “tailored exactly to de Gaulle’s measurements,” proceeded from the need for a radical revision of the principles that underlay the political system of the Third and Fourth Republics. First of all, it was supposed to stabilize the political system through “greater balance” of all types of power and strengthening the independence of the executive branch from the political maneuvers of various parties. The executive and legislative powers were to be clearly separated, having as their source only the “mandate of the people” (i.e. elections). However, the institution of the head of state should have become an even more effective means of strengthening the system of power. Rising above all authorities and not imposing himself as the day-to-day head of government and leader of the parliamentary majority, the president had to express the highest will of the state on issues of paramount importance. Thus, one of the most important tasks of this body was to guarantee the stability of the executive branch in unfavorable political and economic conditions.

These ideas were clearly implemented in the text of the new fundamental law. Evidence of this is the very structure of the constitution, built according to the president-government-parliament scheme. The president became the central link of the entire political system. He was assigned the role of the “highest arbiter”, called upon to ensure the normal functioning of state bodies, as well as the continuity of the state (Article 5). Therefore, the president was not politically responsible to any body (except in cases of high treason) and was not controlled by anyone. At the same time, to fulfill his role, he was endowed with both broad permanent prerogatives and powers of an exceptional nature.

First of all, the president appointed the head of government, and, at his proposal, the remaining members of the cabinet, and also accepted their resignation. He chaired government meetings, the Council and Committee of National Defense, and the Supreme Council of Magistracy. He was given the powers of the head of the armed forces, the right of appointment to senior civilian and military positions.

The President was endowed with significant powers not only in... executive, but also in the legislative sphere: he had the right to sign and promulgate laws, to demand from parliament a new discussion of the law or its individual articles; the right to challenge a bill adopted by parliament and submit it to the Constitutional Council (court) for a conclusion on its compliance with the constitution; the right to submit certain types of bills to a referendum, bypassing parliament; the right to address parliament with messages that are not subject to discussion; the right to pass ordinances that have the force of law. The president also received the right to dissolve the lower house of parliament (Article 12), which is not typical for purely presidential republics. He represented France in international relations and was endowed with significant prerogatives in the field of foreign policy.

In addition to these powers, the President under Art. 16 received the right to take emergency measures at its discretion in conditions where “the establishment of the Republic, the independence of the Nation, the integrity of its territory or the fulfillment of its international obligations are seriously or immediately threatened, and the normal functioning of the public authorities created in accordance with the Constitution is disrupted” .

At the same time, a number of guarantees were provided against the establishment of a one-man dictatorship of the president (automatic convening of parliament, requesting the opinion of the Constitutional Council, etc.). However, the president’s activities during the state of emergency were not controlled by anyone. In accordance with Art. 19 The president exercised his most important powers: appointing the government, dissolving the chamber, enacting exceptional powers, submitting bills to a referendum and a number of others alone, without countersigning from the prime minister and the relevant ministers. The remaining acts of the president required ministerial support, and thus the prime minister bore political responsibility for them before parliament.

The 1958 Constitution abandoned the previous political practice of electing the president by parliament. From now on he was to be elected by an electoral college, of which members of parliament constituted an insignificant part. Later, indirect presidential elections were replaced by direct ones.

The second place in the state mechanism of the Fifth Republic was given to the government. In its most general form, its competence was enshrined in Art. 20 of the Constitution: the government must determine and implement the “policy of the nation”, manage the administration and the armed forces. The Prime Minister, whose powers are defined in more detail, must direct the activities of the government, be responsible for the defense of the country, enforce laws, issue regulations as a regulatory authority, and make appointments to military and civilian positions.

Thus, the highest executive power, according to the constitution, was not clearly distributed between the president and the prime minister, but it was assumed that the prime minister, having a certain autonomy, exercises day-to-day management of domestic policy. The specific forms of interaction between the president and the prime minister depended on the coordination of their actions under the strategic supremacy of the president and, mainly, on the alignment of party and political forces.

The 1958 Constitution placed parliament in last place among the highest state bodies. It consisted of two chambers - the National Assembly and the Senate, which were practically equal. The National Assembly was directly elected. The Senate, elected by indirect voting by electoral colleges, was supposed to provide representation for the territorial units of the republic and for the French living outside France. The special “restraining” powers of the Senate, which has veto power over draft constitutional amendments, could become a brake on the passage of important bills.

A special section of the Constitution was devoted to the relationship between parliament and the government, which clearly established the dominant role of the government. A carefully designed functional division of “powers”, detailed regulation of the activities, structures and procedures of parliamentary meetings were aimed at creating a system of “rationalized” parliamentarism instead of the parliamentary models of the Third and Fourth Republics.

Acts of parliament could regulate a strictly defined and relatively small range of issues (the structure and principles of organization of the state apparatus, rights and freedoms, citizenship, taxes, basic principles of civil, criminal, labor law, etc.). On these issues, the government could also issue regulations that have the force of law (ordinances), but only with the permission of parliament. The possibility of this kind of delegation by parliament of its powers was directly provided for in the Constitution, and subsequent practice reinforced this provision. All other issues had to be resolved administratively, by the regulatory power of the cabinet, that is, by decrees.

The government also had significant powers to control the legislative process. First of all, it essentially determined the agenda of the parliament. Government bills were to be considered first. The government could also use a number of means to reject amendments to the bill introduced by parliamentarians and hold a vote without discussion (Articles 40, 41, 44, 45, etc.). For the adoption of a financial bill, for example, parliament was given a certain deadline. If the budget law was not adopted within this period, it could be put into effect by government decree.

The 1958 Constitution established the government's responsibility to Parliament. However, the adoption of a “resolution of censure”, which would oblige the government to resign, was subject to numerous conditions (Article 49). The government could be denied confidence only by an absolute majority of votes, and if the initiators of the resolution did not gather such a majority, they lost the right to introduce a new one during the same parliamentary session.

Thus, although the system of bodies, according to the 1958 Constitution, had the attributes of a parliamentary republic (responsibility of the government to parliament, ministerial binding of acts of the president, etc.), the most significant powers in determining and implementing public policy were transferred to the president. The extensive prerogatives of the French President, provided for by the constitution, had no analogue even in the presidential republics. The regime of the Fifth Republic began in theory to be called a mixed “presidential-parliamentary” or “indirect presidential” regime, becoming an example of a kind of hybrid, but in fact a new, independent form of government, which in political science received the name “semi-presidential republic”.

The judiciary, according to the 1958 Constitution, was proclaimed the “guardian of personal freedom.” The Constitutional Council occupied a special position among the courts, which concentrated in its hands control over the constitutionality of normative acts and, despite the absence of a direct indication of this, the right to interpret the fundamental law. A classic example of a system of specialized courts is the existence in France of administrative justice bodies headed by the Council of State.

The jurisdiction of administrative courts includes resolving issues of compliance with the law of acts and actions of executive bodies and officials, in practice - from municipal decisions to presidential acts. Otherwise, traditional forms of judicial system are still preserved and operate with minor modernization in the 1970s. (Judicial Code 1978).

The 1958 Constitution regulated the system of local government very sparingly. At the same time, the French (continental) model of local government has become a role model in most countries of the world. It combines in a certain way direct local government administration and local self-government, with agents of the state administration supervising the activities of local representative bodies. At the same time, lower levels of the system are subordinate to higher ones. In this area, the 1958 Constitution followed the widespread theory according to which there are “natural” administrative-territorial units (village, city, etc.), which can and should form their own bodies of self-government, and “artificial” formations, i.e. created acts of the central government (region, etc.), in which management is carried out only by representatives of the central government. According to the constitution, the local collectives of the republic are communes, departments, and overseas territories, which are freely governed by elected councils (Article 72). The grassroots unit was the commune (village or city), whose residents elect their own body of self-government - the municipal council. General councils are elected in departments. The region has become an “artificial formation” without representative bodies. The functions of local administration in departments and regions were assigned to prefects and sub-prefects, who are local representatives of the center.

Development of the French political system in the 60s-80s XX century The main trend in the development of the political system of the Fifth Republic in the first decades of its existence was the further strengthening of presidential power and its personalization. The president became in practice not only the head of state, but also the head of government, and at the same time any opposition from the legislative branch was weakened.

A significant role in this evolution of presidential power was played by the constitutional reform of 1962, carried out by de Gaulle through a referendum, which changed the procedure for electing the president. From now on, the election of the president was to take place by universal suffrage.

The real meaning of the reform was to contrast the head of state, as the direct and only chosen one of the people, with the National Assembly elected in the same way.

In addition, the further strengthening of presidential power was associated with the ability of the head of state to rely on the parliamentary majority, since in the 60s and 70s. the president invariably acted as the leader of the Gaullist party. Having the support of the majority in parliament, he actually headed the government, pushing aside its formal head - the prime minister. The complete dependence of the prime minister and the government on the will of the president, the actual responsibility of the government to the head of state due to the coincidence of the presidential and parliamentary majorities became a characteristic feature of the Fifth Republic at this time. The center for making government decisions became mainly the personal office of the president, the ramified apparatus of the Elysee Palace, free from any political responsibility. A noticeable trend in the development of the regime of the Fifth Republic in the 60-70s. There was also a centralization of the judicial and police apparatus. Extraordinary bodies of political justice were created, the powers of the police and prefects were expanded.

At the same time, certain progress was also noted in strengthening guarantees of individual rights. In 1971, the Constitutional Council recognized the preamble to the 1958 Constitution (with references to human rights in the 1789 Declaration and the 1946 Constitution) as part of the “constitutional block” and obliged public authorities to respect the provisions of this preamble as constitutional principles. In addition, since 1971, the Constitutional Council has declared a number of provisions defining the principles of the legal status of the individual (the so-called Judicial Charter of Human Rights).

Serious changes in the balance of socio-political forces in France appeared in the period 1973-1976. when the Gaullist party lost its absolute majority of seats in parliament and ceded the most important government posts to representatives of other right-wing and centrist groups. Simultaneously with the change in the social base and the fall of the Gaullist party, the influence of leftist forces increased. In 1972, the reformed Socialist Party (FSP) and the French Communist Party signed a joint Program for a Democratic Government of Popular Unity. The program provided for socio-economic and political transformations in the country, restoration of the role and prestige of parliament, etc. The confrontation between two party blocs - the coalition of left forces, on the one hand, and the center-right coalition (OPR-SFD) - on the other, was called "bipolarization" political life, becoming a defining feature of the development of the French political system.

“Bipolarization” opened up the immediate possibility of a left bloc coming to power, as well as changes in the relationship between the authorities. The president and the government could henceforth become representatives of opposing factions, and their actual role directly depended on their connection with the party-parliamentary majority.

In 1981, the Socialist Party managed to win the presidency, gaining an absolute majority of seats in parliament, and form a government. Having retained the main provisions of the 1958 Constitution concerning the central apparatus of the Fifth Republic, the Socialist government at the same time adopted a law on the decentralization of local government, abolishing the traditional position of prefect (later restored), and introduced, albeit in a truncated form, a proportional electoral system. Local authorities gained greater independence in financial and other management matters. In accordance with the laws of 1983, the subordination of lower self-government bodies to higher ones was limited to certain areas of activity (education, healthcare, etc.), and the administrative control of the center over local self-government bodies was somewhat softened. The right to elect representative bodies (self-government) was granted to the regions.

Period 1986-1988 became unique in that, in addition to a certain revaluation of the role of the state, the Fifth Republic for the first time experienced the innovation of “separate government” - the coexistence of a socialist president and a center-right government, based on political blocs opposed to each other. The second such period of “coexistence” lasted from 1993 to 1995, and since 1997, on the contrary, the socialist government “coexists” with the Gaullist president.

Political events of the 80-90s. showed that, despite all the difficulties and vicissitudes of party rivalry, the primacy of presidential power in all areas of public life has remained unchanged. It is no coincidence that the most common assessments of the Fifth Republic are such characteristics as “super-presidential republic” or “ultra-presidential regime”. At the same time, parliament is an arena of party rivalry, and in conditions of political polarization, the head of state is even more interested than before in supporting the parliamentary majority, and in order to most effectively implement its policies, a party or a bloc of parties must win not only presidential, but also parliamentary elections. If we talk about the implementation by parliament of its main function - legislative, then here it still acts mainly as a “registration chamber”, since, according to the 1958 Constitution, its own sphere of legislative powers is significantly limited, and day-to-day parliamentary control (issues ministers) together with the government's responsibility to parliament do not play a big practical role in France.

Regardless of the alignment of the main political forces, at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. the state in France remained a significant regulatory force in the economy and social relations. Periodically carried out nationalization and privatization of sectors of the economy as a whole have preserved the ratio of the public and private sectors. A feature of privatization in France when transferring ineffective sectors of the economy and state-owned objects is the retention of large blocks of shares in these objects in state ownership, the use of government bonds or auctions.

Integration processes on a pan-European scale play a significant role in the development of the French political system. Thus, in 1992, the French Constitution was supplemented with a section on “European Union”; a tendency towards recognizing the supremacy of “communitarian law” (the law of the European Union) over national law began to appear more and more clearly.

France, like England, was in the 17th century. one of the largest and most developed countries in Western Europe. But the process of maturation of a new, capitalist way of life in the depths of feudal society had a number of significant features in France compared to England. These features, in turn arising from the economic uniqueness of French feudalism, explain why in France the bourgeois revolution occurred almost 150 years later than in England.

Feudal system. The situation of the peasantry

In France in the 17th century. Feudal ownership of the main means of production - land - was still preserved. The overwhelming majority of the land consisted of “fiefs” (fiefs), that is, the owners formally “kept” it from higher lords: from the king - dukes and marquises, from them - counts and barons, etc., although there were no contributions or services in favor of a superior lord, as in the old days, it was no longer supposed.

The economic essence of this system boiled down to the fact that land ownership was a monopoly of a narrow ruling stratum.

The most eminent feudal lords owned vast territories, some entire regions of France. The church - prelates and monasteries - was a major land owner. The ordinary nobility also owned significant hereditary estates.

Peasant yard. Engraving by P. Lepautre

Typically, the feudal lord retained a smaller part of the cultivated land as his direct possession, and transferred the other, larger part to the peasant holders. Approximately half of all land in France - in different provinces from 30 to 60% - was held by peasants. The main form of peasant land use in France in the 17th-18th centuries. was a census. On the land that remained in the direct possession of the feudal lord (domain), French lords, unlike English or Eastern European feudal landowners, as a rule, did not conduct their own farming. The absence of lordly plowing, with the exception of a few areas, was a characteristic feature of the agrarian system of France. The French lord rented out his domain in small plots to peasants either from a share of the harvest (sharecropping) or for a fixed rent. The lease agreement was concluded for various periods, sometimes for 1-3 years, sometimes for nine years, that is, for three periods of three-field crop rotation, sometimes for an even longer period, for the entire life of the tenant, for the life of several generations. After the expiration of the established period, the plot returned to the disposal of the lord, while the censorship, on the contrary, according to customary law, could never be annexed by the lord to his immediate domain, and, therefore, if the censitary regularly made payments, he could be sure that the plot he cultivated forever remains in the hands of him and his descendants.

The exploitation of small independent producers - peasant-censitaries and peasant-tenants for a term - was the main source of livelihood for the nobility, clergy, and court. In France in the 17th century. the system of feudal production relations was at that highest and final stage of its development when the monetary form of feudal rent dominates. Although some remnants of corvée and quitrents in kind still remained, the overwhelming majority of peasant duties were cash payments. However, the spread of commodity-money relations in itself did not yet lead to capitalism, although it created some conditions for its emergence.

The peasants were legally personally free, land-dependent holders. True, in the eastern and partly in northern regions France still retained a small stratum of serfs (servants and “people of the dead hand” who did not have the full right to transfer property by inheritance). But the typical and predominant phenomenon was the personal freedom of the peasant. The peasant could freely move, enter into any property transactions, leave and receive an inheritance. However, this legal form concealed his actual dependence. The French peasant holder was subject to seigneurial jurisdiction, medieval seigneurial monopolies (banalities) and bore certain personal duties. The census was not his unconditional property, but only possession, conditioned by the payment of the qualification to the lord and submission to all the rights of the lord. The French tenant was also essentially a feudal non-hereditary holder who paid the lord a feudal rent in the form of rent. The tenant was also often subject to some form of extra-economic coercion on the part of the landowner.

As already mentioned, the bulk of peasant duties were expressed in money. Not only were the qualifications and rent a fixed sum of money, but also corvee, tithes - all these ancient feudal duties had long ago, in fact, to one degree or another turned into cash payments; even if it was a question of a certain part of the harvest, then very often its value was calculated at current market prices and the amount was paid in money. And yet, a subsistence economy remained an essential feature of this agrarian system: the reproduction of the peasant economy was generally accomplished without the help of the market, and the peasant bought relatively little on the market for his consumption. He sold, that is, converted into money, only that part of his product that he had to give in the form of duties and taxes; therefore, French industry did not have a mass buyer in the form of peasants. The narrowness of the domestic market in France in the 17th century. represented one of the most significant obstacles to industrial development. The agricultural technology itself was extremely primitive. A homemade wooden plow, hoe and spade were the main agricultural tools. The peasant dressed in homespun, roughly dyed cloth, and put on wooden shoes (clogs). His dwelling, as a rule, was a wooden hut, often a half-dugout without windows or chimneys, with a clay floor, a thatched roof and miserable furnishings; Livestock and poultry were also usually placed together with people or behind a partition in a peasant house. Only a relatively small layer of wealthy peasants lived in better conditions. The French peasantry was noticeably differentiated in property terms. Contemporaries divided it into two main groups: “plowmen,” i.e., independent peasants, and “workers,” no longer employed so much in agriculture as in handicrafts.

A group of peasant huts made up a village, which had communal rights to some land. Several villages made up a church-administrative unit - a parish. Economically and legally, the village was connected with a fortified castle or with a rural estate of a lord. Peasants brought a significant share of their payments here.

Clergy and nobility. Usury capital in the village

The French nobility sought, in addition to direct seigneurial exactions, other sources of exploitation of the peasants. The younger sons of noble families often received clergy. Thanks to the privileges of the French (Gallican) church, appointment to ecclesiastical offices was the right of the king, and he used this right to support the nobility. All the highest church positions - archbishops, bishops, abbots - were distributed to the French nobility, being an important source of income for them; the top of the first estate (clergy) and the second estate (nobility) were therefore connected in France by the closest family ties. The income of the church was made up not only from what the church lands themselves provided, but also from tithes (usually also translated into money), which were collected for the benefit of the church from all peasant farms. Church tithes were one of the largest feudal exactions from peasant holdings.

The bulk of the younger sons of the nobility and impoverished nobles flocked to the army, where they occupied command positions and received high salaries; some privileged types of troops (musketeers, etc.) consisted entirely of nobles who lived on royal salaries.

Finally, the aristocratic part of the nobility, leaving or even selling their rural estates and castles, which provided insufficient income, settled in Paris, turning into royal courtiers. Proudly refusing official service, as well as commerce, the nobles willingly accepted from the king purely decorative court positions with fabulous salaries, all sorts of posts not related to the cost of labor - sinecures, huge personal pensions or one-time generous royal gifts and benefits.

Where did the king get the funds to pay for the military and court nobility? First of all, from taxes collected from the same peasant farms. Direct and indirect royal taxes were nothing more than a modified form of feudal duties. Collected from all over the country, this part of the peasant surplus product was sent to the royal treasury, from where it flowed in golden streams into the pockets of the nobles.

Thus, four groups of feudal lords lived at the expense of the peasantry: rural nobles, clergy, military nobility and court aristocracy.

In a French village of the 17th century. Usury was extremely widespread. A peasant, borrowing money in a difficult moment (most often from a city dweller, sometimes from a rich man in the village), gave his land to the moneylender as collateral and was then forced to pay annual interest on the loan. Such payment of interest, which often continued throughout life and was even inherited by the peasant’s children, created regular additional land rent - the so-called supertax. Often two or three excess qualifications accumulated on the census. Without changing the feudal mode of production, usurious capital clung tightly to the countryside, further worsening the situation of the peasant already oppressed by feudal exactions.

From an economic point of view, the entire sum of the various duties and payments of French peasants can be considered as a single mass of surplus product extracted from the peasantry. This surplus product was divided into four unequal parts: a) seigneurial rent, b) church rent (tithe), c) state taxes, d) constituted rent, as contemporaries called the above-mentioned supertax in favor of the usurer. The proportion in which the total mass of surplus product was distributed among these four categories of exploiters was the subject of intense struggle between them, which explains a lot in the socio-political history of France at that time. The total volume of this aggregate feudal money rent depended to a large extent on the sale by the peasant of his agricultural products on the city market, which in turn was determined by the nature and pace of development of French industry.

Capitalist way of life. Urban craft. Manufactory

If capitalist relations penetrated into French agriculture, it was not in the form of a bourgeois degeneration of the estate, as in England, but in the form of the development of bourgeois relations among the peasantry itself: inter-peasant leasing, the use of hired labor from landless and land-poor neighbors, and the emergence of a rural bourgeoisie. However, all these were nothing more than the rudimentary elements of capitalism in agriculture. A large peasant farm of an entrepreneurial type is a very rare phenomenon in the French countryside, not only in the 17th, but also in the 18th century.

Capitalism was introduced much more widely into the countryside through the handicraft industry. Peasants turned to handicrafts because the sale of agricultural products did not always give them enough money to pay the entire amount of feudal duties and taxes. It was necessary to make up for the lack of money with non-agricultural extra income - by producing yarn, all kinds of woolen and linen fabrics, lace, pottery, etc. for city buyers. At the same time, the buyer was to a certain extent exploited in addition to the producers in their favor, no longer by feudal, but by capitalist methods, since the artisan acquired, at least in a hidden and undeveloped form, the traits of a hired worker. Often, peasants, in turn, had “workers” who worked in their house all year round along with members of their family, usually not for money, but for in-kind allowance. Naturally, individual artisanal peasants, under favorable conditions, themselves became accomplices in the capitalist exploitation of their workers.

Rural industry, concentrated primarily around towns, represented an early form of capitalist dispersed manufacturing. In higher forms we find manufacture in cities. Despite the fact that the French city in the 17th century. still largely retained its medieval nature and medieval appearance, urban craft had already undergone a significant degeneration. Craft guilds survived more as a fiscal and administrative organization. They slowed down the development of urban production, but were already powerless to prevent the economic differentiation of artisans. Some masters became poorer and even became hired workers, others grew richer, gave out orders to others or expanded their workshops, using an increasing number of “companions” (apprentices) and students, under whose medieval names it is easy to discern hired workers. A workshop employing 10-20 workers was by no means uncommon in a French city in the 17th century. This is already the beginning of a centralized manufacture. There were also enterprises with several dozen workers. But a truly large centralized manufactory in the middle of the 17th century. was even more rare. Nevertheless, it was in the 17th century, especially in the second half, that a number of large enterprises, the so-called royal manufactories, were created in France.

The upper strata of the urban population were called the bourgeoisie in France, part of which in the 17th century. was already a bourgeoisie in the modern sense of the word. The lowest strata of the urban population were the plebeians. It consisted of: a) the impoverished part of the master craftsmen, b) “companions”-apprentices, manufacturing workers and other pre-proletarian elements, c) the declassed poor, which included people who flocked from the countryside and found work in the city as day laborers, porters, laborers, or those who simply lived by begging.

Journeymen have long been organized by profession into secret unions - companionship. Strikes against master masters occurred in France during the second half of the 17th century. more and more often, indicating the growth of class contradictions in the conditions of the beginning of the development of capitalism. In 1697, in Darnetal (near Rouen), about 3-4 thousand cloth workers did not resume work for a whole month. At the same time, the famous economist Boisguillebert wrote: “A spirit of indignation reigns everywhere... In industrial cities you see how 700-800 workers in any branch of production immediately and simultaneously leave, quitting their jobs, because they wanted to reduce their daily wages by one sou.” "

The source of the formation of the working class in France, as in England, was largely the pauperized rural population. The process of primitive accumulation took place in the 17th-18th centuries. and in France, although at a slower pace. The dispossession of the peasantry in France took the form of the sale of peasant plots for arrears, in the form of the seizure of communal lands by the nobles (triages), etc. Crowds of vagabonds and beggars accumulated in the cities of France back in the 16th century, moving from one province to another. In the middle of the 17th century. Parisian tramps even founded their so-called kingdom of tramps. The French government, seriously concerned about the growth of declassed elements, issued, like the English government, laws against paupers. “In France, where expropriation was accomplished in a different way, the English poor law corresponds to the Ordinance of Moulins of 1571 and the Edict of 1656.” ( ), wrote Marx. In general, if the process of dispossession and pauperization of part of the peasantry had a smaller scope in France and differed significantly from the English path, then the “bloody legislation against the expropriated” here and there were very similar. “English and French legislation,” says Marx, “are developing in parallel and are identical in content” ( K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 727, note.).

Bourgeoisie

Large merchants played a particularly prominent role in the life of the large coastal ports of France: Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Saint-Malo, Dieppe, where a significant share of the products of French rural and urban industry, and partly agriculture (for example, wine) flocked for export. The most significant exports were to Spain and, through Spanish merchants, to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, as well as to Italy and the Levant. By the middle of the 17th century. France also had its own colonial markets in Canada, Guiana and the Antilles. From there, in turn, as well as through the Levant, through the Netherlands and other routes, colonial goods arrived in France. However, France had to withstand competition in foreign markets from Holland, then England, which offered cheaper goods than feudal-absolutist France.

As for the domestic market in France in the 17th century, here the dominance of feudalism especially significantly constrained and delayed the development of exchange. Since the bulk of the population was the peasantry suppressed by feudal exactions, who bought negligibly little, although they sold a lot, industry had to work mainly for the royal court and for those classes of the population in which money was concentrated, i.e., the nobility and bourgeoisie. Hence the uniqueness of the French manufacture - the production of mainly military products (equipment, uniforms for the army and navy) and especially luxury goods (velvet, satin, brocade and other expensive fabrics, carpets, lace, stylish furniture, jewelry, gilded leather, fine glass, earthenware, mirrors, perfumes), i.e. expensive and rare goods, designed for a very limited circle of consumers. There was no basis for mass capitalist production, especially since the needs of the urban population were predominantly satisfied by the old small craft. Capital was cramped in industry and trade without a wide domestic market.

The oppression of the feudal system was even more clearly manifested in the colossal taxation of industry and trade. Part of the profits of city industry and trade - through the fiscal apparatus and the royal treasury - was systematically transformed into the income of the nobles (courtiers and military) and went to strengthen the noble state. That is why, not only on the foreign, but also on the domestic market, more expensive French goods could not compete with Dutch or English ones. Moreover, all bourgeois accumulation was constantly under threat and direct feudal expropriation. In the village, the tag (direct tax) was levied not only in proportion to property, but also in the order of mutual responsibility, so that within the boundaries of a parish or corporation, the rich paid for the arrears of the poor, and in case of refusal was subject to confiscation of property. Fask found many pretexts for a real hunt for the “well-to-do” in the countryside and in the city; It was enough to find fault with the master for failure to comply with certain petty mandatory instructions on the quality of products - and the treasury received a large fine from him, or even all his property. In a word, as long as the accumulated wealth remained in the sphere of industry or trade, the capital owner was threatened with bankruptcy, strangulation by taxes, and deprivation of property. Added to the fiscal oppression was the fact that if in England a nobleman did not hesitate to engage in trade and industry and in this case did not lose his social position, then in France the situation was different: the government deprived such a nobleman of the main noble privilege - exemption from taxes, and society considered to have actually dropped out of the noble class, industry and trade were considered the occupation of the ignoble, the Roturiers.

It is understandable, therefore, that a significant part of bourgeois savings was continuously transferred to areas where capital was freer from taxes and from social restrictions.

Firstly, the bourgeoisie used their capital to purchase noble domains and entire seigneuries. In the vicinity of some large cities, for example Dijon, almost all the land in the 17th century. was in the hands of new owners, and in Dijon itself there was almost no prominent bourgeois who was not also a landowner. At the same time, the new owners usually did not invest capital in production and did not rebuild traditional forms of agriculture, but simply became recipients of feudal rent. Sometimes they bought feudal titles along with the land, trying with all their might and as quickly as possible to adopt the “noble way of life.”

Secondly, the bourgeoisie bought state and municipal positions. Almost all positions in the gigantic bureaucratic machine of France were sold, not only for life, but also for hereditary ownership. This was a unique form of government loan, the interest on which was paid in the form of salaries or income from sold positions. It often happened that a merchant or manufacturer curtailed his business in order to acquire a position for his son. Officials, “people of the mantle,” were exempt, like the nobles, from taxes and even received the title of nobility for holding the highest administrative and judicial positions.

Thirdly, the bourgeois lent their accumulated money on credit: either to the peasants - against the security of the census, or to the secular and spiritual feudal lords and the state - against the security of seigneurial rent, church tithes or state taxes. Most of these credit transactions can be called buyouts. Their forms were extremely diverse. Some rich man in the village, having accumulated money, gave it to his own lord for the right to take for his own benefit, for a year or several years, all the income according to the mill triviality, that is, he bought out the master's mill, to which all peasants were obliged to transport grain. In the same way, the urban bourgeoisie often bought from the lord a separate item of income or wholesale all the income from the lord and then ran the business as an authorized lord. The church's tithe collection was purchased. The largest capital was used to farm out state taxes, especially indirect taxes (excise taxes). Companies of “financiers” contributed large sums of cash in advance to the treasury and received the right to collect any tax or a whole group of taxes for their benefit; they acted on behalf of the state, using the entire administrative and police state apparatus, but also had their own staff of employees and gendarmes. Of course, the farmer returned the deposited amount with high interest. Some “financiers” managed to accumulate huge capital in this way. The French bourgeoisie also lent money to the state by purchasing interest-bearing securities of government loans.

French absolutism

The French state of the 17th century, built on the principle of the absolute power of the king, by its class nature was a dictatorship of the nobility. The main purpose of the absolutist state was to protect the feudal system, the feudal economic basis from all anti-feudal forces.

The main anti-feudal force was the peasantry. The strength of peasant resistance grew throughout the late Middle Ages, and only a centralized coercive body, the state, was able to successfully resist it. The urban plebeians were an important ally of the peasants. But only the joining of the bourgeoisie to the popular masses and leadership on its part could turn the spontaneous struggle of anti-feudal forces into a revolution. The most important task of absolutism was to prevent the formation of such a bloc of the bourgeoisie, peasantry and plebeians. The royal absolutist government, on the one hand, through some patronage, distracted the bourgeoisie from an alliance with popular anti-feudal forces, and on the other hand, mercilessly suppressed the protests of the peasantry and plebeians.

But from the fact of the patronage of the bourgeoisie by absolutism, it does not at all follow that those bourgeois historians are right who claim that absolutism was a two-class, “noble-bourgeois” state, or even simply “bourgeois”. Absolutism really emerged in that era when the potential power of the bourgeoisie (subject to its alliance with the people) began to be compared to a certain extent with the power of the nobility, and the royal power at a certain period pursued a policy that was unconditionally friendly towards the bourgeoisie. However, as Engels emphasized, absolutism was only an “apparent” mediator between the nobility and the bourgeoisie ( See F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, K. Marx). Absolutism actively sought to attract the bourgeoisie to the side of the noble state, thereby splitting the bourgeoisie from its democratic allies, diverting it from the struggle against feudalism to the path of adaptation to feudalism. Richelieu also explained that those who have invested their money in the existing political regime will not contribute to its overthrow, which is why it is important to provide the bourgeoisie with the opportunity to profitably invest capital in positions and farming.

The officials, the “people of the robe,” constituted, as it were, an aristocracy in relation to the bourgeois class from whose ranks they came. Also in the system of armed police forces of absolutism in the 17th century. the urban bourgeoisie, which received weapons to everyone and was organized in cities into the “bourgeois guard,” occupied an important place; at critical moments of popular uprisings, although sometimes not without serious hesitation, she eventually succumbed to the calls of her “elder brothers”, the magistrates, and fought “loyally” for the existing order, against the “rebels” of the common people.

The French feudal nobility, with the exception of its individual representatives, was a faithful support of absolutism. Consequently, the bourgeoisie, having taken the path of opposition, would be forced to go with the people alone, and the movement would inevitably acquire a democratic character. But for such a policy of the French bourgeoisie in the 17th century. There were no objective conditions yet. This was the reason that the “bourgeois guard” usually succumbed to the influence of the nobler part of the bourgeoisie and took up arms in defense of the feudal-absolutist order.

Absolutism also needed the bourgeoisie because it needed money both to distribute to the nobles and to increase its own political power. In the 17th century, as a rule, armies were mercenary, and the real strength of royal power within France and beyond its borders depended primarily on the state of finances, i.e., the amounts collected in the form of taxes, and it was only possible to collect more taxes from the country subject to growth of money circulation. Therefore, the state, whose task was to protect feudalism, itself had to spur the development of the bourgeoisie and patronize trade and industry. In order to constantly and in an ever-increasing volume cut off the “well-off” for the benefit of the fiscal, it was necessary that these “well-off” were not transferred, that the petty bourgeoisie turned into the middle bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie into the big bourgeoisie, etc. Otherwise, the state would have to take away an ever-increasing share of the total surplus product of the peasants, therefore, to take away part of the income from the noble class itself, if only to protect its common interests. The transfer of the center of gravity of taxation to the city by absolutism and at the same time the patronage of the bourgeoisie ultimately corresponded to the interests of the same nobility.

Of course, the growth of royal power infringed on the rights and independence of each individual lord. But common class interests forced them, despite all private conflicts and manifestations of discontent, to rally around royal power in the 17th century - the time of consolidation of the French nobility.

Individual offended nobles led from time to time opposition political movements directed against the government, but the nobles pursued purely personal goals (obtaining pensions, gubernatorial positions, one or another clergy, etc.). Sometimes nobles, in the name of the same selfish goals, entered into a temporary alliance even with movements of the popular, especially plebeian, opposition.

Under Louis XIV there was no widespread feudal opposition to absolutism. The methods by which individual aristocrats defended their personal demands were often old-fashioned feudal (including up to “declaring war” on the king or leaving for another sovereign), but the goals they pursued had nothing to do with the actual limitation of royal power or new the fragmentation of France. In political conflicts of the 17th century. It was not the desire of the aristocracy as an integral social group to change the political system that was manifested, but only the desire of individual nobles to occupy a better position under a given political system.

For the feudal collapse of France in the 17th century. there were no real prerequisites, this threat became a thing of the past, and therefore absolutism in the 17th century. no longer opposed feudal separatism as a national force. The feudal, noble nature of the French monarchy, the position of the king as the head and banner of the entire class of nobility as a whole, appeared precisely under Louis XIV more clearly and vividly than ever before.

Formation of the French nation

Based on the development of capitalism, the French nation gradually took shape. This process began in the 15th-16th centuries, but it still cannot be considered completed in the 17th century.

Some of the characteristics of a nation as a historically established community of people took shape in the pre-capitalist period. Thus, the community of territory was evident in France long before the appearance of any rudiments of capitalism. But such features as a common language or a common mental makeup, a common culture cannot be considered fully established and characteristic of the life of the French even in the 17th century. The French language still retained deep traces of medieval diversity, the disunity of North and South; in mental makeup and culture, the Gascon, Provençal, Burgundian, Picardy, Norman or Auvergnant were different types; sometimes they themselves called each other different “peoples” and “nationalities.” But the linguistic and cultural community of the French progressed very quickly just during the 17th century, when the unification and streamlining of spelling and norms of the literary language were carried out, when the role of Paris as an all-French cultural center increased gigantically.

In particular, such an important feature of a nation as a community of economic life remained immature. France 17th century was cut off by internal customs borders. Individual provinces were economically and administratively separated from each other. In official government documents, this or that province was also referred to as “country” (“land”). And this was not just a relic in the field of terminology. The domestic market was poorly developed, and, naturally, the bourgeoisie could not play the role of a force cementing the emerging nation. However, the development of the economic community of France has advanced significantly. This immediately manifested itself in the attempt of the French bourgeoisie to act as the head of the nation and on behalf of the nation in the political arena, although at first this attempt was still unsuccessful.

2. Beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. The Fronde and its consequences

Louis XIII died in 1643. The heir to the throne, Louis XIV, was not yet five years old. His mother Anna of Austria was appointed regent under him, and her favorite, Cardinal Richelieu's successor as first minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin, became the de facto ruler. A visionary and energetic statesman, a successor to Richelieu's policies, Mazarin ruled France without limit for 18 years (1643-1661). The regency began, as usually happened earlier during periods of minority of kings, with increased claims of the highest nobility, especially the “princes of the blood” (the king’s uncle - Gaston of Orleans, the princes of Condé and Conti, etc.), for a share in the division of state property. Mazarin was forced to limit the appetites of these nobles, as well as moderate the generosity of Anne of Austria towards them, since participation in the Thirty Years' War and the fight against internal opposition had exhausted the financial resources of France. The palace “conspiracy of the nobles” led by the Duke of Beaufort, which had the goal of eliminating Mazarin and ending the war with the empire, was easily suppressed. The nobles became silent for a while. But a much more formidable opposition was growing in the country. Peasant-plebeian uprisings acquired enormous proportions even under Richelieu, especially in 1635. Mazarin in 1643-1645. had to deal with a new wave of uprisings. Large military forces had to be sent to the southwestern provinces of France, in particular to the Rouergue region, against the rebel peasants. At the same time, Mazarin, seeking new sources of income to end the war, introduced a number of taxes that caused discontent among wide circles of the bourgeoisie, especially the Parisian one, and threw it into the opposition camp. Moreover, by demanding an additional tax from members of parliament for recognition of the heredity of their positions, he affected the property rights of the “people of the robe” in their positions and thereby deprived absolutism of the support of influential judicial officials. Only the “financiers” prospered even more than before. The “people of the robe”, led by members of the Parisian parliament, irritated by Mazarin’s policies and also inspired by the news of the successes of the English parliament in the war with the king, temporarily entered into an alliance with wide circles of the discontented bourgeoisie, on the path of breaking with absolutism, on the path of a bloc with the people anti-feudal forces.

Fronde

Thus began a serious crisis of the feudal-absolutist system, known as the Fronde (1648-1653). The history of the Fronde is divided into two stages: the “old” or “parliamentary” Fronde of 1648-1649. and the “new” or “Fronde of the Princes” - 1650-1653.

At the first stage, the Parisian parliament put forward a reform program somewhat reminiscent of the program of the English Long Parliament. It provided for the limitation of royal absolutism and contained clauses that reflected the interests not only of the parliamentary “people of the robe”, but also the demands of broad circles of the bourgeoisie and the aspirations of the popular masses (the introduction of taxes only with the consent of parliament, the prohibition of arrest without charge, etc.). Thanks to this, parliament received the broadest support in the country. Referring to the decisions of parliament, peasants everywhere stopped paying taxes, and at the same time in some places the performance of seigneurial duties, and pursued the tax agents with weapons.

Mazarin attempted to decapitate the movement and arrested two popular leaders of parliament. In response to this, on August 26-27, 1648, a massive armed uprising broke out in Paris - 1,200 barricades appeared in one night. This was already a significant performance of the revolutionary people, which made the court tremble. During these stormy days of barricade fighting, the Parisian bourgeoisie fought against the royal troops shoulder to shoulder with the poor. Eventually the government had to release those arrested. After some time, it issued a declaration accepting most of the demands of the Paris parliament.

But secretly Mazarin was preparing for a counteroffensive. In order to free the French army from participating in hostilities outside the country, he tried with all his might to speed up the signing of the Peace of Westphalia, even to the detriment of the interests of France. Soon after the signing of peace, the court and government unexpectedly fled from Paris to Ruelle. While outside the rebellious capital, Mazarin renounced all his promises to parliament and the people. The civil war began. Royal troops besieged Paris in December 1648. The Parisians turned their bourgeois guard into a broad popular militia and fought courageously for more than three months. Some provinces - Guienne, Normandy, Poitou, etc. - actively supported them. Villages armed themselves for the war against the Mazarinists, and peasants here and there, particularly in the vicinity of Paris, came into conflict with the royal troops and gendarmes.

During the siege of Paris, a fissure soon arose between the bourgeoisie and the people, which began to quickly widen. The hungry Parisian poor rebelled against grain speculators and demanded the confiscation of their property for defense needs. From the provinces, the Paris parliament received information about the increased activity of the masses. The Parisian press, with its radicalism and attacks on the existing order, frightened law-abiding parliamentary officials. They were especially impressed by the news received in February 1649 about the execution of King Charles I in England. In addition, some Parisian leaflets directly called for dealing with Anne of Austria and Louis XIV according to the English example. Posters on the walls of houses and street speakers called for the establishment of a republic in France. Even Mazarin feared that events in France might follow the English path. But it was precisely the prospect of deepening the class struggle that frightened the leading circles of the bourgeoisie, led by the Paris parliament.

Parliament entered into secret negotiations with the court. On March 15, 1649, a peace treaty was unexpectedly announced, which was essentially the capitulation of parliament. The court solemnly entered Paris. The Parliamentary Fronde is over. This was not a suppression of the outbreak of bourgeois opposition by government forces: the bourgeoisie itself refused to continue the struggle and laid down its arms.

Thus, the history of the parliamentary Fronde of 1648-1649. clearly demonstrated that in the middle of the 17th century. in France there was already a noticeable discrepancy between the new productive forces and the old, feudal relations of production, but this discrepancy could still only give rise to individual revolutionary movements, to give rise to individual revolutionary ideas, but not a revolution.

The “new” noble Fronde of 1650-1653, a distorted echo of the “old”, was an attempt by a handful of nobles to use the indignation of the people abandoned by the bourgeoisie, which had not yet cooled down in Paris and other cities, for their private quarrels with Mazarin. However, some radical elements of the French bourgeoisie tried to be active during the years of the new Fronde. The events in Bordeaux were especially characteristic in this regard. There it came to the establishment of a semblance of a republican democratic government; the leaders of the movement were in close relations with the English Levellers and borrowed their ideas for their program documents, including the demand for universal suffrage. But this was only an isolated episode.

In the village, the Fronde of the Princes did not risk playing with fire; on the contrary, detachments of the Frondeurs in all provinces carried out monstrous reprisals against the peasantry; in this regard, they did a common cause with the Mazarin government. The internecine war ended with the court reaching an agreement with the rebellious nobles one by one, giving some rich pensions, others lucrative governorships, and others honorary titles. Mazarin, twice forced to leave Paris and France and twice returning to the capital, eventually strengthened his political position and became more powerful than ever before.

Some demands of the feudal Fronde reflected not only the private interests of the nobles, but also the sentiments of wider circles of the noble class. Their essence: a) to destroy the “usurpation” of royal power by the first minister (which always gave rise to the struggle of factions at court and, therefore, interfered with the consolidation of the nobility); b) reduce the rights and influence of parliaments and the entire bureaucracy in general; c) wrest from the hands of tax farmers and “financiers” in general that gigantic share of the surplus product that they captured, and thus resolve the financial problem without infringing on the income of the court and military nobility; d) increase the share of the peasant surplus product received by the rural nobles, transferring state taxation to a greater extent than before to trade and industry; e) prohibit the practice of Protestantism, which caused a split among the nobility and gave another reason for the bourgeoisie and the people to disobey the authorities.

This noble program later became the program of the entire reign of Louis XIV. Intoxicated by victory, absolutism after the Fronde began to take less into account the bourgeoisie as a potential social force and succumbed more strongly to the reactionary sentiments of the feudal nobility. At first, the implementation of these noble demands led to the “brilliant age” of the “Sun King” (as the court flatterers of Louis XIV were called) in France, but later it accelerated the death of the French monarchy.

Already during the reign of Mazarin, in the coming years after the Fronde, these noble principles began to be put into practice, but at first rather restrainedly. On the one hand, the international situation still remained extremely tense: France had to continue the war with Spain. To defeat Spain, he had to agree to an alliance with Cromwell’s England, although Mazarin secretly dreamed of something completely different - an intervention in England to restore the Stuarts. On the other hand, inside France, exhausted to the limit by the end of the 50s, new opposition actions were brewing, intertwined with the remnants of the Fronde. Plebeian movements did not stop in cities in different regions of France. In the provinces, unauthorized congresses (assemblies) of individual groups of nobility took place, which the government sometimes had to disperse by force. The nobles sometimes took on the role of armed “protectors” of their peasants from soldiers and fiscal agents, actually increasing, under this pretext, the size of peasant payments and duties in their favor. In 1658, a large and hardly suppressed peasant uprising broke out in the vicinity of Orleans, nicknamed the “War of the Sabotiers” (clogs are wooden peasant shoes). By the way, this event was one of the reasons that forced Mazarin to abandon completing the defeat of Spain and hasten to conclude the Pyrenees Peace of 1659.

The French military forces were completely liberated. There was no need to use them to interfere in English affairs, because after the death of Cromwell, the Stuart restoration took place in England in 1860 - Charles II ascended the throne, completely devoted to France, in which he spent almost all the years of his emigration. Finally, French absolutism, which had reached its greatest power, could also reap the fruits of internal victories. It was possible to widely satisfy the wishes and demands of the ruling class - the nobles.

3. Absolutism of Louis XIV. Colbertism

Features of the absolutism of Louis XIV

In 1661 Mazarin died. Louis XIV was then 22 years old; during his lifetime, Mazarin completely suppressed him with his authority and energy. Now Louis XIV immediately came to the fore and remained in the foreground for 54 years, so that his personality in the eyes of noble and bourgeois historians often seems to obscure the history of France of this period, called the “century of Louis XIV” (1661 -1715). However, the main character was not the king, but the noble class of France. After the lessons of the Fronde, the nobility sought to strengthen the dictatorship. The court of Louis XIV breathed hatred towards the memory of the Fronde. In order to no longer be in Paris, in the “nest of rebellion,” the court retired to the magnificent city-palace of Versailles, built 18 km from Paris. Louis XIV himself could not forget the painful impressions of his adolescence throughout his long life.

Bourgeois historiography traditionally divides the reign of Louis XIV into two fundamentally dissimilar halves: a period of progressive policies, which allegedly resulted in prosperity, and a period of reactionary policies, which resulted in decline; The borderline is considered to be 1683-1685. In fact, both the domestic and foreign policies of Louis XIV were generally consistent throughout his reign. Its main task was to implement the noble program of a centralized dictatorship, fulfilling the desires of the noble class more completely than before.

After the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV declared that from now on he would “himself be his first minister,” and, in fact, he, in contrast to his father Louis XIII, tried not to let power out of his hands. From now on, court conspiracies and aristocratic rebellions could not be justified by the fact that they were directed not against the king, but against the first minister. But if in this way the class of feudal lords became politically more united and at first the authority of the monarch rose in society to unprecedented heights, then the other side of the coin was soon revealed: in the person of the first minister, the lightning rod for political criticism and popular hatred disappeared. Louis XIV was called “great” and “godlike,” but he, the first of the French kings, began to be ridiculed and castigated in the illegal press for all the vices of the regime.

Of the old institutions that, to some extent, carried out the connection between the noble state and the top of the bourgeoisie back in the first half of the 17th century, parliaments played a major role in France as the highest judicial chambers, which achieved a number of important privileges. Throughout the 60s, Louis XIV step by step deprived parliaments, and especially the Parisian parliament, of their former political position. In 1668, he appeared in parliament and with his own hand tore out all the sheets relating to the Fronde period from the book of minutes. It was at this moment that, according to legend, he uttered his famous words, addressing parliamentary officials: “Did you think, gentlemen, that you are the state? The state is me." The political influence of the "people of the mantle" was paralyzed. Many government positions held by people from the bourgeoisie were abolished.

Louis XIV pushed back representatives of the bourgeoisie from some of their positions in the ranks of the feudal class. For example, the elevation of many Roturiers to the rank of nobility was annulled, and an investigation was also carried out on the ground into the legality of all feudal titles and rights, because the Roturiers often simply appropriated them to themselves without appearing.

In connection with the general pressure on the top of the third estate, there is also an attack on the “financiers”. In 1661, Louis XIV ordered the arrest of the surintendent of finance Fouquet. The investigation revealed gigantic thefts of public funds. Following Fouquet, many large and small “financiers” associated with him ended up in the dock and in the Bastille. According to one contemporary, this grandiose “squeezing of sponges” made it possible not only to cover the national debt, but also to fill the royal coffers. In addition, some government debts were arbitrarily canceled and interest rates on government loans were reduced. Such measures, of course, initially significantly increased the financial resources of the state and its power, but in the end they undermined the credit of the bourgeoisie.

Colbertism

Among Mazarin's former assistants, Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) especially emerged after his death. Since 1665 he held the title of Comptroller General of Finance. This somewhat vague position did not yet formally raise him above other ministers, but since the state of finances became the most important state issue at that time, Colbert acquired a leading position in the government. The son of a wealthy merchant, who rose step by step through the ranks, Colbert was devoted to the interests of the feudal-absolutist system. His whole life was subordinated to the search for a solution to a contradictory puzzling problem: to increase state revenues in conditions when the monarchy's credit from the bourgeoisie was falling, and the incomes of the nobility were increasing.

The seigneurial reaction in the countryside, which began under Mazarin and was expressed in the lords increasing feudal payments and duties, continued in full swing under Colbert. In the 60s, intendants reported from different provinces about a huge increase in the total volume of duties and taxes collected by the lords from the peasants. Colbert's brother reported from Brittany that in recent years the lords had increased payments to the peasants several times; according to him, the owners of even the smallest seigneuries have recently arrogated to themselves the right of court and use it for monstrous extortion. This was the general picture. In order to ensure that the policy of the noble state did not come into conflict with these aspirations of the nobility, Colbert reduced the royal tax levies on the peasants: taglia, which continuously increased in the 17th century. and which gave the state 50 million livres a year at the end of the 50s, under Colbert was reduced by more than a third, which made it possible to increase seigneurial rent in a corresponding proportion. True, there are mobile court sessions on site (Grands Jours). In the name of the king, individual cases of abuse and usurpation of overly presumptuous lords were investigated. The central government tried to act as a “protector” of the peasants. But in the end, the treasury now received less from the peasants than before, and the lords took more from them than before. This opportunity to consolidate the fruits of the seigneurial reaction was the most valuable gift that the French nobility received from the absolutism of Louis XIV.

Colbert transferred the corresponding share of state taxation to trade and industry, that is, to that sector of the national economy that was actually inaccessible to seigneurial exploitation. Having reduced the tax, he increased indirect taxes several times (for example, the excise tax on wine), which fell more on the townspeople than on the peasants. In order to increase state revenues from taxation of the bourgeoisie, a policy of patronage and encouragement of the developing capitalist industry was pursued, but this was carried out to such an extent “in a noble manner” that, in general, the French bourgeoisie of the 17th century, although it took advantage of this encouragement, did not at all experience any grateful feelings towards its initiator. She hated Colbert and rejoiced when he died.

The main focus of Colbertism (as well as any mercantilist economic policy) was aimed at achieving an active balance in foreign trade.

To prevent the French nobles from spending money on foreign goods, Colbert in every possible way encouraged the production in France of mirrors and lace according to the Venetian model, stockings - according to English, cloth - according to Dutch, copper products - according to German. Something was done to facilitate the sale of French-made goods in France itself by eliminating part of the internal customs, lowering tariffs, and significantly improving highways and river routes. In 1666 - 1681 The Languedoc Canal was dug, connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. On the contrary, the acquisition of foreign goods was extremely difficult by special laws against foreign luxury goods, especially by customs tariffs, which were so increased in 1667 that the import of foreign goods into France became almost impossible.

Colbert took a number of measures to develop French industry. At the same time, he focused most of his attention on large enterprises, being indifferent to scattered manufacture. But large, centralized manufactories were few in number. They were not viable at first, requiring subsidies and patronage from the state. Nevertheless, these large manufactories were the most progressive result of Colbert’s activities, since they prepared the technical basis for the further development of capitalist industry. Some of the manufactories founded under Colbert were grandiose enterprises for their time, such as the famous cloth factory of the Dutchman Van Robe in Abbeville, near Amiens, which at one time employed over 6 thousand people. Large manufactories played a major role in supplying the huge royal army in the wars of the second half of the 17th and early 18th centuries.

In order to maintain and develop the export of goods from France, Colbert created monopoly trading companies (East Indies, West Indies, Levantine, etc.), and contributed to the construction of a large commercial (as well as military) fleet, which France almost did not have before him. It is not without reason that he is considered one of the founders of the French colonial empire. In India, under Colbert, Pondicherry and some other points were captured as a base for the spread of French influence, which, however, encountered insurmountable rivalry from other powers (England and Holland). In Africa, the French occupied Madagascar and many other points. In North America, a vast colony was founded on the Mississippi River - Louisiana, and intensive colonization of Canada and the Antilles continued. However, in reality, all this contributed little to the growth of French exports. Privileged trading companies languished, despite the huge government funds invested in them, and produced little profit. Their activities were constrained by the lack of conditions for free capitalist enterprise.

Popular uprisings

In the end, the source of income for the royal power, as well as for the ruling class, remained the immense exploitation of the working masses of France. In the “brilliant age of Louis XIV,” the overwhelming majority of the people were in severe poverty, as evidenced by the frequent years of famine that terribly devastated the French countryside under Louis XIV, and mass epidemics - both the fruit of appalling poverty. A severe famine year was 1662, when entire villages died out; later, such hunger strikes were repeated periodically, the winters of 1693/94 and 1709/10 were especially difficult.

The people did not passively submit to their fate. During the famine years, riots broke out in villages and cities directed against grain speculators, millers, local moneylenders, etc. But mainly the protest of the peasantry and plebeians was expressed in their refusal to pay unaffordable state taxes. Some villages and parishes managed at times to stubbornly evade paying the tag; It happened that when financial officials approached, the population of the villages completely fled into the forests or mountains. In the end, the authorities forced them to pay by force. Collecting taxes with the help of detachments of soldiers was not the exception, but rather the rule. An internal war, although invisible, continued unceasingly in France.

From time to time, peasant and urban plebeian movements turned into major popular uprisings. So, in 1662 At the same time, plebeian uprisings took place in many cities (Orléans, Bourges, Amboise, Montpellier, etc.) and peasant uprisings in different provinces, of which a particularly significant one was in the province of Boulogne, known as the “poor people’s war.” The rebel peasants waged long-term military operations here against numerous royal troops until they were defeated in the battle of Eklia; many were killed in battle, and for 1,200 prisoners, Colbert demanded harsh punishments from the court to “give a terrifying lesson” to the population of all France. Kelbert and Louis XIVI adhered to this principle when suppressing numerous other local unrest. If Richelieu only occasionally turned to “exemplary punishment” for the rebels, Colbert demanded it in all cases.

The next largest uprising broke out in 1664 in the province of Gascony. It is known as the “Odnjo uprising”, named after the leader - the poor nobleman Bernard Odzho, who led a guerrilla war of rebel peasants for many months in a vast mountainous area in South-Western France. Regular military units acted against the rebels, committing terrible atrocities in cities and villages suspected of helping the partisans. In 1666 -1669. The same guerrilla peasant war took place in the province neighboring Spain - Roussillon.

In 1670, a popular uprising swept Languedoc. Here, too, the peasants were led by a military leader from the nobility, Antoine de Roure, who took the title of “Generalissimo of the oppressed people.” Rebel troops occupied several cities, including Privas and Obena. They dealt not only with financial officials, but also with nobles, the clergy, and also with everyone who held any position or had wealth. “The time has come,” said one of their proclamations, “for the prophecy to be fulfilled that the clay pots will break the iron pots.” “Curse the nobles and priests, they are all our enemies; “We must exterminate the bloodsuckers of the people,” they proclaimed.

Local authorities mobilized all available military forces, including all the nobles of the province, but could not cope with the uprising. In France and even abroad they followed the course of events in Languedoc with excitement. According to one chronicle, “it was, as it were, the first act of a tragedy which Provence, Guienne, Dauphiné, and almost the whole kingdom looked on with a kind of pleasure, perhaps intending to take an example from this catastrophe.” The Venetian ambassador reported from Paris: “We can expect important changes in European affairs if this uprising is not quickly suppressed.” Since France was not at that moment engaged in an external war, Louis XIV and his minister of war Louvois were able to send a significant army to Languedoc, including all the royal musketeers. This army finally defeated the troops of Antoine de Roure, then perpetrating a terrible massacre throughout the rebellious region.

A few years later, in 1674-1675, when the military forces of France were already tied up in military operations outside the country, even more formidable uprisings began in different provinces. True, thanks to the reforms in the army carried out by Louvois, even during hostilities it was possible to maintain a reserve for internal purposes. According to Colbert, “the king always maintains an army of 20 thousand people on 20 leagues in the vicinity of Paris to be sent to any provinces where an uprising would arise, in order to suppress it with thunder and brilliance and give all the people a lesson in due obedience to his majesty.” However, uprisings arose simultaneously in different and, moreover, often in the most remote provinces, and this reserve was clearly not enough. In 1675, uprisings swept through the provinces of Guyenne, Poitou, Brittany, Maine, Normandy, Bourbonnais, Dauphiné, Languedoc, Béarn, not to mention many cities in other parts of France. The movement acquired especially large proportions in Guienne and Brittany.

In the capital of Guienne, Bordeaux, the urban plebeians, uniting with the peasants who rushed into the city, demanded the abolition of all new taxes. This time the bourgeois guard was inactive: “what seems most dangerous to me,” one official reported to Paris, “is that the bourgeoisie is by no means better disposed than the people.” Therefore, the government was forced to retreat, taxes were abolished, and only many months later a large army was sent to Bordeaux to severely punish the rebellious city; After this, the city citadel was rebuilt in such a way that artillery could now keep all city squares and main streets under fire.

In Brittany, the uprising swept the cities (Rennes, Nantes, etc.) and in particular; village. The peasants formed a large army, led by the impoverished notary Lebalp. Peasants destroyed noble castles and attacked the rich bourgeoisie in the cities; The most extreme of the rebels proposed exterminating all the nobles “to the last man.” The demand for “community of property” was also put forward. In a more moderate program, set out in a special “Code” (“Peasant Code”), the main requirement was the liberation of peasants from almost all seigneurial duties, duties and payments, as well as from most state taxes. Local authorities were forced to negotiate with the rebels until large military units arrived from the front. After this, severe terror began in Brittany. Along the roads there were hundreds of gallows with corpses to intimidate the local population.

There were no major uprisings in the 1980s. The small urban and peasant uprisings that arose were brutally suppressed by the military forces freed after the conclusion of the Nimwegen Peace. However, in the 90s, the class struggle flared up again, taking place at the beginning of the 18th century. (during the War of the Spanish Succession) in some places the character of a new peasant war.

Revolt of the Camisards

The uprising of the Camisards was of particular importance ( This name comes from the Latin word camisa - shirt; the rebels wore white shirts over their clothing during their attacks (hence camisade - surprise night attack).), which broke out in 1702 in the province of Languedoc, in the region of the Cevennes Mountains. The participants in the uprising - peasants and the working population of Languedoc cities - were Huguenots. Government persecution of the Huguenots was one of the reasons for the Camisards' uprising. But the religious beliefs of the Camisards were only an ideological shell of class antagonism. The main reason for the uprising was the severe feudal exploitation of the peasants and the increase in state taxes, which disproportionately burdened the working masses of the urban and rural population France, especially at the time in question. The uprising of the Camisards was one of those popular movements that undermined the foundations of the feudal-absolutist system and contributed to the formation of the great revolutionary tradition of the French people. The armed struggle of the Camisards with government troops lasted about two years. A third of the vast province of Languedoc was for a long time in the hands of the rebels, who took 30 noble castles from battle and destroyed about 200 Catholic churches.

In the fall of 1704, a 25,000-strong royal army, reinforced by volunteer detachments of nobles, suppressed the uprising. The most severe repressions were brought down on the entire rebel region. Nevertheless, in 1705-1709. popular unrest resumed.

Apparatus of absolutist power

The military forces that the absolutist state could counter the onslaught of anti-feudal movements consisted of two elements: the armed bourgeoisie in the cities (bourgeois guard) and the regular army. One intendant wrote to Colbert that the population in his province is submissive when they know that there are troops there, and when they are not there they become violent.

All military forces in the province were under the command of the governor. Governors, as representatives primarily of local military power, served as an important link in the centralized military machine. Centralization was the main strategic advantage of the government, because popular movements, even at the moments of their greatest growth, were spontaneous and local in nature.

There was also a centralization of all other components of the state apparatus - judicial bodies, administration, etc. Cities finally lost their self-government under Louis XIV, and municipalities from elected bodies turned into administrative bodies appointed from the center. The principle of centralization was especially clearly expressed in the invasion of the provincial administration by intendants sent from the capital. The intendants, having functions, fiscal, judicial, police, administrative, and military, significantly infringed on other authorities, and sometimes entered into conflict with them; into open conflicts. Already under Colbert, intendants and their assistants - subdelegates - were the main representatives of local authorities. The intendants communicated directly with the Parisian central government. The affairs of individual provinces were dealt with by members of the Supreme Royal Council - ministers or secretaries of state. The closest connection with the intendants was the general controller of finance, who looked at the intendants primarily as agents of the state fiscal.

The central government in the second half of the 17th century. consisted, on the one hand, of royal councils - the Supreme Council, the Financial Council, Dispatches, etc., and on the other hand, of a number of secretaries of state, each of which had its own apparatus of officials - the beginning of later specialized departments. Although the councils had great rights and the king himself was present every day at meetings of one or two councils, in essence their role declined, gradually being reduced to coordinating the functions of various departments. The main role in deciding affairs was played by secretaries of state, who regularly submitted personal reports to the king, who was the final authority in the entire central bureaucratic system.

The very principle of the king’s “personal” management in practice led to inevitable delays in resolving matters, to pettiness and actual lack of control, to various machinations of the courtiers behind the king’s back, etc.

Foreign policy

France's participation in the Thirty Years' War was still to a certain extent defensive in nature. France then entered the anti-Habsburg coalition primarily because the Habsburg powers (the Empire and Spain) threatened to surround it with a ring of their possessions, as in the time of Charles V, and ultimately put it in a dependent position. On the contrary, after the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia, France's foreign policy increasingly acquired aggressive, aggressive features. Louis XIV himself begins to claim the role that the German emperor recently claimed - the role of an “all-European” monarch. In his political speeches, he emphasizes that his power goes back to a more ancient and extensive power than the Ottonian empire, namely the empire of Charlemagne. He is running for election as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. On one monument, he ordered the Elbe to be depicted allegorically as the eastern border of his possessions.

Absolutist France sought first of all to subjugate West Germany. Another target of her aggressive policy was the Spanish (Southern) Netherlands and Holland. Louis XIV tried to bring England under his control through financial and diplomatic support of the Stuarts. French absolutism tried to seize Spain with its European and overseas possessions under the pretext of the rights of the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish inheritance.

Although these claims were not ultimately realized, absolutist France undoubtedly played a role in the second half of the 17th century. the role of hegemon in Western Europe and put pressure on all its neighbors.

Even at the conclusion of the Pyrenees Peace of 1659, which took Roussillon, most of Artois, etc., from Spain, Mazarin included in it a special clause that was later used as a pretext for new claims by France to Spanish possessions: the daughter of the Spanish king Philip IV, Maria Theresa, was extradited married Louis XIV. Thus, in the event of the suppression of the male line of the Spanish Habsburgs, the French Bourbons would receive rights to the Spanish throne or at least part of the Spanish inheritance. To fend off this threat, the Spanish government achieved Maria Theresa's renunciation of her rights to the Spanish crown, but at the same time undertook to pay Louis XIV a huge dowry of 500 thousand gold ecus. The far-sighted Mazarin understood that this amount would be beyond the reach of the Spanish budget and thus France could either demand territorial compensation or invalidate Maria Theresa’s abdication of the Spanish crown. And so it happened. After the death of Philip IV in 1665, the French government demanded the Southern Netherlands from his inheritance in return for the unpaid dowry. In view of the refusal of the Spanish government, French absolutism decided to take its share of the “inheritance” by force. In 1667, the Franco-Spanish War began, nicknamed the “devolutionary” (from the word “devolution” from the Flemish inheritance law). Economically extremely tempting prey for France - Flanders and Brabant - the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands seemed militarily completely defenseless: they did not have their own army, and the Spanish fleet was in such a pitiful state that it could not deliver Spanish troops to the Netherlands. But unexpectedly for the government of Louis XIV, France's recent allies in the anti-Habsburg struggle - Holland, Sweden, and England - came to the aid of Spain. They were all alarmed by France's aggressiveness. The Dutch were outraged by the high French customs tariff of 1667, which undermined their trade, and were afraid of finding themselves in close proximity to warlike feudal-absolutist France if it captured the Southern Netherlands. The Dutch bourgeoisie therefore chose to enter into an alliance with its age-old blood enemy, the Spanish monarchy, and managed to draw Sweden and England into the coalition as well. The formation of this coalition was also helped by the fact that the English parliament, dissatisfied with the policies of Charles II Stuart, forced him to sharply change course, interrupt the war with Holland and enter into an alliance with her against France.

Thus, it turned out that the War of Devolution was diplomatically poorly prepared by the French government, and although French troops managed to quickly occupy part of Flanders, as well as Franche-Comté and were ready to march to Spain and Germany, Louis XIV had to hastily end the war the very next day. 1668 According to the Achaean Peace, France retained only part of Flanders (a number of cities, including Lille).

But French diplomacy immediately began preparing for a new war. First of all, it was necessary to split the anti-French coalition. There was no hope for rapprochement with Holland - the “nation of shopkeepers”, in the words of the irritated Louis XIV: trade and political contradictions with it were too acute. But England and Sweden were returned to an alliance with France by generous cash subsidies.

In 1672, the French army, led by first-class commanders Turenne and Condé, attacked the Southern Netherlands and Holland. Having captured a number of strong fortresses, French troops invaded the interior of Holland. Then the Dutch command decided to break through the dams, water flooded a large area, and the French troops were forced to retreat. At the same time, France had to send part of its troops against the Austrian Habsburgs to the Palatinate (in Germany), where these troops committed terrible devastation and massacre. England in 1674-1675 abandoned the alliance with France, and the international situation for the latter began to develop unfavorably again. Nevertheless, relying on the victories achieved and the formidable reputation of the French army, the government of Louis XIV in 1678 concluded the profitable and honorable Peace of Nimwegen, according to which Spain was forced to cede Franche-Comté and several cities in the Southern Netherlands. By the way, this was the first international treaty written not in Latin, as was customary in Europe, but in French. The prestige of absolutist France in Europe was unusually high, everyone was in awe of it, petty German princes humbly curried favor with the French court.

Louis XIV's appetites grew: he was already laying claim to Northern Italy, on the crown of the German Emperor. Taking advantage of the fact that Emperor Leopold I was distracted by the fight with Turkey, Louis XIV ruled West Germany without hindrance. Special “chambers of accession”, under all sorts of legal pretexts, proclaimed the power of the French king over various points and territories of Germany, including Strasbourg; the West German princes actually submitted to the French protectorate.

Absolutist France reached its greatest power in 1684, when the emperor and the Spanish king, according to the Treaty of Regensburg, recognized all its seizures. But soon, in 1686, the League of Augsburg arose - a defensive alliance of many European states (empire, Spain, Holland, Sweden, etc.) to repel further territorial claims of France. The coup d'etat of 1688 ensured that England also joined this coalition, since the main organizer of the League of Augsburg, the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange, became at the same time the English king.

By this time, absolutist France had begun a new aggression by invading the Palatinate. Members of the League of Augsburg, in accordance with the accepted commitment, opposed France, and a great European war began on several fronts on land and sea. Despite many enemies, the French remained generally victorious in the land war on the Rhine and in the Netherlands, in Italy and Spain, although the English fleet inflicted several heavy defeats on them at sea. The Peace of Ryswick of 1697 restored, with minor changes, the situation that had existed before the war.

By concluding the Peace of Ryswick, Louis XIV was confident that he would soon reward himself with large acquisitions from the Spanish inheritance. The last representative of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs, Charles II, died without male offspring. Besides the Bourbons, only the Austrian Habsburgs could lay claim to this inheritance. As a result of the intrigues of French diplomacy, Charles II, before his death (1700), bequeathed all his possessions to the French pretender, but still not to the son of Louis XIV, but to his second grandson, Philip of Anjou, and with the condition that the Spanish and French crowns would never unite in one hand. However, Louis XIV did not intend to actually observe this clause. As soon as his grandson, under the name of Philip V, was proclaimed King of Spain in Madrid, Louis XIV began to rule Spain and the Spanish colonies in his name. He was credited with saying: “There are no more Pyrenees!” The demands of England and Holland to be granted trade privileges in the Spanish colonies, as well as in the French possessions in India, were rejected by France. Then England and Holland supported the claims of Emperor Leopold I to the Spanish throne. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) began, which was fought by France against a coalition of almost all Western European powers. This war brought heavy defeats to France. French troops were driven out of Germany, Spain, and Holland. The loss of border towns, the invasion of France by coalition troops, uncultivated, neglected arable land, the decline of manufactures and trade, unemployment, general impoverishment of the people, epidemic diseases and famine, financial ruin - such was the situation in which the reign of Louis XIV, glorified by reactionary historians, ended. The “Salvation Peace” was signed with England and Holland in April 1713 in Utrecht, with the empire in 1714 in Rastatt. The Spanish throne remained with Philip V, but he and his descendants forever lost the right to the French crown. England asserted its maritime dominance, preserving the trade and strategic bases it had captured (Gibraltar and the island of Minorca), and received “assiento,” i.e., a monopoly on the import of black slaves from Africa to the Spanish colonies in America. Newfoundland and Acadia passed to England, becoming strongholds for the further penetration of the British into Canada. The Austrian Habsburgs received the Spanish Netherlands, the Duchy of Milan, Mantua, the Kingdom of Naples and the island of Sardinia.

As a result of the War of the Spanish Succession, France actually lost the hegemony in Europe that it had had since the end of the Thirty Years' War. The war exposed the internal weakness and rot of the feudal-absolutist regime behind the magnificent façade of the reign of the “Sun King” - Louis XIV.

4. Development of socio-political thought and culture

The feudal system was defended not only by the state machine, but also by the entire system of views of the ruling noble class.

At the same time, new economic needs, ripening in the depths of the old society, gave rise to attempts to refute the entire old ideological system, to contrast old ideas with new, more progressive and advanced views. In the 17th century ideological conflicts in France had not yet assumed such an open and decisive character as in the next century, but they were of great importance in the preparation of the militant bourgeois ideology of the 18th century.

Catholicism in its criticism

The Catholic Church in France in the 16th century. was still the most important instrument for protecting the feudal order. If the whole life of a common man proceeded, on the one hand, under the control of a numerous local bureaucracy, then, on the other hand, the same peasant, and partly the city dweller, were under the vigilant supervision and influence of the church, which educated the masses in the spirit of subordination to their masters and the royal authorities.

The inviolability and indisputability of the authority of the Catholic faith were, however, to a certain extent undermined by the existence in France of a second religion in the form of Protestantism, Huguenotism, legalized by the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The presence in the country of two religions allowed by law opened a crack for skepticism and weakened the power of Catholicism. Therefore, in 1661, Louis XIV began a series of measures aimed at completely eliminating Huguenotism. Oppression and lack of rights forced some Huguenots to convert to Catholicism, others to flee France. Since it was mainly bourgeois and artisans who emigrated, this caused great damage to French industry. In 1685, the Huguenots were dealt the final blow: the Edict of Nantes was completely revoked. However, this policy of religious intolerance did little to strengthen the power of Catholicism over the minds of the French. Huguenot writers from abroad disseminated their messages and writings, in which they castigated with great force both absolutism and Catholicism.

In general, the influence of the church on the minds of French society was noticeably declining. The fairly frequent instances of “blasphemy” that took place during popular movements, that is, a hostile attitude towards a religious cult, indicated that the germs of atheism had appeared among the French people. Different circles of society reacted differently to this obvious fact of the crisis of religion. The Catholic Church, the Jesuits, the court, and the nobility tried to cause a “Catholic revival,” to renew the spiritual power of Catholicism, using, in particular, such a method of influencing the psyche of the masses as religious charity. The noble “Society of the Holy Gifts,” which fought with all means, like the Jesuits, against unbelief and the decline of “piety,” created a network of new religious organizations among the common people. One part of the clergy, supported by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, sought to revive the religious feeling of the people through the renewal of Catholicism. This trend - the Jansenists (followers of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen), grouped around the Port-Royal monastery near Paris, was especially sharply pointed against the Jesuits. But the Jansenists did not gain any widespread influence among the people, remaining a kind of aristocratic sect. At the same time, the most advanced French philosophers of the 17th century - Gassendi, Bayle and others, without yet openly breaking with religion, already focused their attention on the justification of materialism and religious skepticism, that is, they justified and indirectly justified unbelief.

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a Huguenot emigrant, became famous for criticizing religious intolerance and promoting religious skepticism, which found its most vivid expression in his famous Dictionary Historical and Critical, which is the first encyclopedia of modern times.

Bernard Fontenelle (1657-1757) throughout his long life was an ardent propagandist of science, a fighter against ignorance and superstition. His popular works like "Conversations on the Many Worlds", written with great wit and literary brilliance, in many ways anticipate the educational ideas of the encyclopedists, and his philosophical works, directed against idealistic views in natural science, prepared the victory of mechanistic materialism in the scientific literature of the Enlightenment.

Finally, from the depths of the people came the village priest Jean Meslier (1664-1729), who managed at the beginning of the 18th century. to give a complete philosophical system of atheism and materialism.

The struggle between absolutist and anti-absolutist doctrines

The ruling class of feudal lords tried to put forward their official political program as a counterbalance to the bourgeois opposition ideologists. The absolutist doctrine is most clearly developed in the writings of Louis XIV himself. According to his teachings, subjects are obliged to obey the king as if they were god, for the power of the king, as it were, personifies the power of god before other people. It is not only the right, but also the duty of the king to severely suppress any resistance, any sign of disobedience. The first, even the most insignificant concessions to the “common people” are already a sign of political weakness. The people will never be satisfied with concessions, and therefore the king, as soon as he takes the path of concessions, will already find himself on an inclined plane, which sooner or later will lead him to disaster. Consequently, Louis XIV argued, only the unlimited power of the king and the absolute lack of rights of his subjects ensure the strength and greatness of the state.

Bishop Bossuet substantiated the absolutist doctrine somewhat differently, more veiledly, with the help of theological argumentation, in his book “Politics Extracted from Holy Scripture.”

Objecting to the ideologists of absolutism, the anonymous author of the pamphlet “Sighs of Enslaved France,” published in Holland in 1689 (there is an assumption that the author of this pamphlet was the Huguenot publicist Jurieux), wrote that the French people “retain in their hearts the desire to throw off the yoke, and this is the seed of rebellion. In order for the people to reconcile themselves with violence against them, they are preached about the power of kings. But no matter how they preach, no matter how they tell the people that everything is permitted to sovereigns, that they should be obeyed like God, that the people have no other means against their violence except to pray and resort to God - in the depths of their souls no one understands this believes."

The impotence of absolutist propaganda, obvious to many thinking contemporaries, gave rise to theories that in one form or another recognized the importance of the people. Advanced thinkers of the 17th century. Claude Joly (1607-1700) and Pierre Jurieux (1637-1710) developed the theory of popular sovereignty. When men were in the state of nature, they wrote, there was no power of man over man; royal power arose from a contract between kings and the people, and the people have the right, through their representatives, to limit the actions of the king. Some thoughts of Jurier, the ideological leader of French Protestants, anticipate Rousseau's theory of the social contract.

The absolutist doctrine asserted that all the property of the French was ultimately the property of the king and that he had the right to take it whenever he needed by taxes. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie developed, in contrast to the absolutist doctrine, the doctrine of the sanctity and inviolability of private property.

However, some representatives of the nobility, concerned about the signs of an impending catastrophe, also opposed the absolutist doctrine. These authors differed from the absolutist doctrine in their assessment of the internal political situation in France. Louis XIV believed back in the 60s that after the suppression of the Fronde in France there was not and could not be any serious public resistance to absolutism. But already at the end of the 17th century. it was impossible not to see that, on the contrary, the absolute monarchy barely copes with the opposition - hence the noble criticism of absolutism from the standpoint of saving the foundations of the existing order - either through concessions to new trends (Vauban, Boulainvilliers, Fenelon) or through a backward movement to feudal antiquity (Duke Saint- Simon).

Another group of authors represented the bourgeois opposition to absolutism. Their criticism contains immeasurably more genuine ideological innovation, free-thinking, and daring, but still they are far from revolutionaries; the ideas hidden in popular movements are reflected by them in a clearly softened and truncated form. For example, the author of “Sighs of Enslaved France” cruelly castigates the absolutism of Louis XIV, but ultimately only because absolutism will inevitably give rise to a popular revolution like the English one, with “cutting off the king’s head” and “licentiousness”; To avoid this “misfortune”, the author calls, before it is too late, to eliminate absolutism and form a constitutional monarchy from above, through a bloodless coup, like the English class compromise of 1688.

Literature and art

Second half of the 17th century. - an outstanding period in the development of French culture. It is characterized primarily by the rise that the progressive social forces of the country experienced in connection with its economic and social development.

The absolute monarchy sought to subordinate the entire cultural life of the country to its control. To this end, the government began to create academies. Following the example of the French Academy, the Academy of Inscriptions was organized in 1663, and then in 1666 the Academy of Sciences. In 1663, a new charter for the Academy of Painting and Sculpture was approved, and in 1671, the Academy of Architecture was established. The king awarded pensions and bonuses to writers and artists, took them under his protection, and turned them into a kind of civil servants. For this they were supposed to glorify the power and greatness of absolutist France and entertain the king and his courtiers. The royal court was called upon to become a trendsetter of artistic taste.

In 1661, Louis XIV began grandiose construction at Versailles. A royal palace was erected here (builders L. Levo and J. Hardouin-Mansart) and a huge park with numerous alleys, ponds, statues and fountains was laid out under the leadership of the remarkable gardener-architect A. Le Nôtre (1613-1700). The most prominent French architects, artists and sculptors, gardeners and furniture makers were involved in the decoration of Versailles. The best engineers and technicians, thousands of workers and artisans took part in its construction. The construction and maintenance of Versailles, which grew into a symbol of the greatness of the absolute monarchy, cost enormous amounts of money.

In the design of Versailles, especially in its interior decoration, there was a lot of ostentatious and bulky pomp, which so impressed Louis XIV in general in art. However, in this largest creation of palace architecture of the 17th century. many of the strengths of French artistic culture of that time were also embodied. This is evidenced by the logical harmony, strict internal proportionality of the entire grandiose ensemble as a whole. This is especially clearly evidenced by the layout of the park, which enchants with its open spaces, endless aerial distances and purity of proportions.

In the second half of the 17th century, many other monumental architectural structures with high aesthetic merit were created in France. The most outstanding of them: the Invalides, the construction of which began in 1670, the Observatory building, the majestic eastern facade of the Louvre (architect Claude Perrault), the Val de Grae church, erected under the leadership of one of the most significant French architects of this time - Francois Mansart ( 1598-1666). In 1672, the opera house and the Royal Academy of Music were created. It was headed by an outstanding violinist and composer, one of the founders of French opera and the author of music for a number of Moliere's comedies - Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687). Lully, the king's favorite, was given a monopoly on the creation of musical accompaniment, dramatic works and the staging of opera performances. In 1680, all the theater troupes of Paris merged into one privileged drama theater, called the Comedie Francaise, which still exists today.

As for the fine arts, the pedantic tutelage of the Academy played a negative role here. It fettered the creative pursuits of artists, from whom they demanded unquestioning submission to certain supposedly unchangeable and universally binding aesthetic canons. During the reign of Louis XIV, with rare exceptions (the outstanding landscape painter Claude Lorrain, 1600-1682, and the master of psychologically deep and harsh portraits Philippe de Champagne, 1602 - 1674), an outwardly spectacular, but cold academic classicism reigned. Its most prominent representatives are Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), the king's first artist, head of the Academy of Arts and director of decorative works at Versailles, as well as his rival and successor as director of the Academy, Pierre Mignard (1612-1695). The masters of solemn, ceremonial portraits, Hyasinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) and Nicolas Largilliere (1656-1746), also gained wide fame at the end of the 17th century.

Of the major figures in French art of that time, the sculptor Pierre Puget (1622-1694), gifted with a powerful creative temperament and wild imagination, managed to maintain the greatest independence in relation to the court and the Academy. Painting, inspired by the spirit of humanism and realistic aspirations, was destined to be revived only at the beginning of the 18th century. in the works of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). This artist opens a completely new page in the history of progressive French art.

In French literature of the second half of the 17th century, there are generally the same trends that were clearly identified already at the beginning of the century. At the same time, certain shifts are occurring in the balance of forces between them.

Reactionary tendencies are cultivated by writers who continue the traditions of so-called pretentious (cute) literature. True, in new historical conditions the appearance of precision literature changes somewhat. Writers of this trend are now abandoning the extremes of whimsical originality and mastering a whole series of rules of classicist doctrine. Towards the precision of the second half of the 17th century. The term “court classicism” can rightfully be applied. However, the essence of this literary movement remains the same.

Precious writers continue to work in traditional genres familiar to them: lyricism (Benserad, Madame Desoulières) and drama. The most famous representatives of the latter are Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), the younger brother of Pierre Corneille, and Philippe Quinault (1635-1688). They knew how to achieve success by catering to the tastes of aristocratic audiences. The genre of gallant tragedy was now becoming increasingly popular. Precious playwrights entertained the aristocratic public and ordinary people dazzled by the splendor of high society, presenting in a sophisticated dramatic form the topical incidents of court life, glorifying the adventurous adventures of the eminent inhabitants of Versailles.

The taste for literary pursuits became more and more widespread among the aristocratic community. However, only a few works acquired truly historical significance. They are created by representatives of more advanced circles of the nobility who were in opposition to the policies of Louis XIV. These are, first of all, Duke François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) and his friend Marie de Lafayette (1634-1693).

In his collection of aphorisms and maxims “Maxims” (1665), La Rochefoucauld expressed many bitter and fair truths about the aristocratic society of his time. He convincingly revealed its emptiness, showing that the driving force behind the behavior of its members was selfishness. But La Rochefoucauld's worldview was painted in pessimistic tones. Convinced of the depravity of human nature, he believed that only force and coercion could protect his contemporary society from anarchy, and thereby came to an indirect justification of the absolutist order.

Both La Rochefoucauld’s “Maxims,” and the novel “The Princess of Cleves” by de Lafayette, and the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné (1626-1696), who maintained a close friendly relationship with these writers, are written in an unusually clear, crystal clear and expressive language and are excellent examples of French prose . The journalistic works of the famous mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) also played a significant role in the development of modern French prose. A major event in the literary and social life of the country was, in particular, his “Letters from a Provincial” (1656). By creating this collection of caustic and brilliantly shaped pamphlets, Pascal, who was a staunch supporter of the Jansenist movement, dealt a powerful blow to the Jesuits.

Two other prominent representatives of French classicism are Nicolas Boileau and Jean Racine. Both of them also came into contact with Jansenism to one degree or another. At the same time, their creativity goes far beyond the ideological aspirations of this movement.

Boileau (1636-1711) was the son of a judicial official. The creative path he traversed is complex and tortuous. He made his debut in literature in the 60s with his bold, witty and very sharp in tone “Satires”. In them, he allowed himself ironic statements about religion and caustic attacks against government officials, including Colbert himself. However, from 1668 a turn was indicated in Boileau's work. Boileau draws closer to Jansenist circles and at the same time seeks paths leading to the royal court.

Boileau emphasized the educational significance of art and called for imitation of nature ennobled and purified by reason. Glorifying reason as the source of artistic knowledge of life, and common sense, he condemned as harmful extremes both the conventions of precise aesthetics and attempts to penetrate too deeply into the realistic contradictions of the surrounding reality. Boileau accomplished the task he had set himself with great skill. His “Poetic Art” is written in striking verse, replete with catchphrases, apt, easy-to-remember formulas, which then firmly entered into everyday literary speech.

The childhood and teenage years of the remarkable playwright Racine (1639-1699), who came from the circles of the judicial nobility, were spent within the walls of various educational institutions run by Jansenists. The harsh Jansenist upbringing, imbued with an ascetic spirit, left a deep imprint on Racine’s consciousness. However, since 1663, Racine, against the will of his mentors, devoted himself entirely to literary activity. The most significant tragedies created by Racine in the 60s and 70s put him among the greatest writers in France.

Racine's tragedies are transparent and clear in their construction. By shifting the center of gravity to the depiction of the spiritual world of the heroes, Racine avoids complicated, confusing intrigue. Strict classicist requirements, such as, for example, the rule of three unities, did not constrain him. On the contrary, they encouraged him to strive for an even simpler composition. Racine was an outstanding master of verse, distinguished in his works by exceptional musicality and harmony. At the same time, behind the outwardly balanced form of Racine's tragedies, there is hidden intensity of passions, the depiction of acutely dramatic conflicts, and exceptionally rich ideological content.

Racine's creative heritage is not equal. The writer at times created works whose content reflected loyal sentiments and dazzled by the splendor of the Versailles court (such, for example, as the tragedies “Alexander the Great” and “Iphigenia”). However, in the playwright’s greatest works, critical and humanistic tendencies come to the fore. They depict crowned princes, whom unlimited autocratic power inexorably pushes towards arbitrariness and violence (“Andromache” and “Britannicus”). Racine, with soulful poetic power, reproduced the spiritual tragedy of people who, striving to fulfill their public duty, trample on their personal happiness (“Berenice”). Racine created a monumental image of a man in whose consciousness, over the muddy instincts and passions perceived from a vicious environment, the uncontrollable desire for light, reason, and justice ultimately triumphs (Phaedra). With particular nakedness and directness, the writer's progressive social aspirations found expression in his last tragedy, Atalia (Athaliah) (1691), permeated with tyrant-fighting ideas.

Racine's dramaturgy represents, in comparison with Corneille's work, a new stage in the development of classic tragedy. If Corneille, in powerful images inspired by the spirit of heroism, sang primarily the process of strengthening a single, centralized state, then in the works of Racine, the moral condemnation of royal tyranny and the soullessness of court life often comes to the fore. These leading ideological motives of Racine's drama reflected the mood of the advanced circles of French society in the second half of the 17th century. That is why the aristocratic camp hated and persecuted the great playwright.

However, with the greatest strength and scope, advanced social aspirations were embodied in writers whose work at times went beyond the boundaries of classicism, acquiring realistic features: Moliere and Lafautin.

Both Moliere and La Fontaine were followers of a different direction of philosophical thought than that to which Racine and Boileau adhered. From the very beginning of his creative career, Moliere acts as a staunch supporter of the materialist philosopher Gassendi. La Fontaine, at the height of his literary activity, also became an active adherent of Gassendi's teachings. Both Moliere and Lafontaine, writers much more progressive in their worldview than Boileau, made extensive use of the inexhaustible treasury of folk art in their work. Boileau spoke disdainfully and condescendingly about folklore. Folk farcical dramaturgy was the most important source of inspiration for Moliere. The fabulist La Fontaine, along with ancient poetry, used the national literary tradition, and not only short stories and poetry of the Renaissance, but also the richest deposits of medieval French folklore. It was precisely the desire to rely on the folk wisdom accumulated over centuries, to reflect the aspirations and aspirations of ordinary people, that gave such revealing power to the satire of Moliere and La Fontaine.

The creative activity of the founder of French national comedy, Jean Baptiste Moliere (1622-1673), was a continuous, fierce struggle against reactionary forces. The premieres of Moliere's most significant works turned into a kind of battles that the great playwright gave to the reactionary camp, causing furious resistance and persecution from the latter. Molière struck simultaneously at both the false, prestigious “culture” and the petty-bourgeois inertia. He castigated scholastics and pedants. Beginning with “The School for Wives” (1662), the exposure of obscurantism instilled by the Catholic Church and criticism of religious morality take one of the first places in Moliere’s work. These ideological trends reach their peak in Tartuffe. In “Don Juan” (1665), Moliere very clearly reveals the striking contradictions of contemporary French reality. He creates an image of an enlightened, but at the same time cynical and immoral aristocrat, amazing in its versatility and power of typification. In The Misanthrope (1666), the great playwright with exceptional psychological skill depicts the spiritual drama of a leading man of his time. Alcest is deeply outraged by the vices of the ruling system. But he remains alone and is therefore deprived of the opportunity to find a path to active struggle. In the second half of the 60s, satire on those contemporary bourgeois who sought an alliance with the nobility and thereby strengthened its dominance came to the fore in Moliere's drama. Finally, in “The Miser” and “The Imaginary Invalid,” Moliere, with inimitable comedic skill, ridiculed the selfishness of people who believed in the omnipotence of money, in their ability to buy everything, including health and life.

Moliere won the right to national recognition for French comedy. Having turned it into a means of posing the most important problems of modern social life, Moliere enriched and expanded its inherent means of artistic expression.

Moliere's artistic heritage had a profound influence on the subsequent development of French comedy. The immediate successors of the realistic behests of Moliere the comedian were Regnard (1655-1709) and Lesage (1668-1747).

Moliere's great merits are not only as a playwright, but also as a theatrical figure. Moliere himself was a brilliant comedian, gifted with a bright personality. With his directorial work, Moliere laid a solid foundation for the realistic school of acting in France.

The greatest poetic achievement of Jean La Fontaine (1621-1695) was the second volume of his “Fables,” published by him in 1678. In this book, he was no longer inclined to contemplatively interpret the vices he depicted as the result of some eternal flaws and shortcomings of human nature. His satire was now acquiring greater emotionality and, at the same time, social acuity and realistic concreteness. La Fontaine's understanding of contemporary French reality is increasingly expressed in a direct, easily decipherable by the reader comparison of an absolute monarchy and an aristocratic society with a kingdom of bloodthirsty and insatiable beasts of prey. La Fontaine's attacks on the church and his skeptical statements about religion occupy a significant place. Over time, La Fontaine's struggle with the power of the church acquires an increasingly deeper philosophical justification in his fables, combined with the direct popularization of the materialist teachings of Gassendi.

In La Fontaine's fables, the whole of France of the second half of the 17th century passes before the reader's eyes. At the same time, the further Lafontaine went in satirically exposing the ruling circles, the more consistently and sharply he opposed them as bearers of true humanity to people from the people, oppressed workers (for example, in the fables “The Shoemaker and the Farmer”, “The Peasant from the Danube”, “The Merchant”) , nobleman, shepherd and son of the king”, etc.).

The fables of the 70s clearly reveal the amazing artistic talent of the fabulist: his inherent mastery of compressed, laconic composition, the ability to draw memorable characters with a few precisely selected details, the exceptional wealth of poetic vocabulary, and masterly command of free verse. The fables show that La Fontaine was not only an observant storyteller who brilliantly wielded the weapon of irony, but also a wonderful lyricist.

Among the leading representatives of French literature of the second half of the 17th century. also belonged to Antoine Furetière (1620-1688). Furetiere's largest work, The Bourgeois Novel (1666), is an important milestone in the development of the realistic novel. In this work, which depicted in a critical light the way of life of ordinary Parisian bourgeois, Furetiere strives to create typical characters determined by the social environment.

A significant fact in cultural life France became the “General Dictionary” of the French language prepared by Furetiere. Furetiere consciously contrasted his lexicographic principles with the views of the French Academy. He consistently introduced into his work a huge number of scientific and technical terms, as well as colloquial expressions that were thrown out of use by academic purists. Furetier's initiative, advanced in nature, met with rebuff from the Academy, which expelled the writer from its membership and began to persecute him.

Performance in the Park of Versailles. Scene from Moliere's comedy "The Imaginary Invalid". Engraving by P. Lepautre 1676

The most prominent French prose writer of the late 17th century. is Jean La Bruyère (1645-1696). His creative activity falls at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, that is, during the period when not only oppositional political thought, but also advanced fiction experienced an obvious rise. In his famous book “Characters or Manners of this Century” (first edition - 1688), La Bruyère depicted the glaring social contrasts of the absolutist France of his time. Along with satirical images of representatives of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, La Bruyère reproduced with unprecedented force a stunning picture of poverty and deprivation of the French peasantry. Determining his attitude to the surrounding reality, La Bruyère at times rose to the idea of ​​the need for unity with the oppressed people of the people. Anticipating the Enlightenment, he came to the conclusion that only a decisive change in the environment can contribute to the flourishing of the human personality. However, La Bruyère was not consistent in his views. At times he was overcome by pessimistic thoughts about the inevitability of reconciliation with the vices of the existing system. The artistic features of “Characters” are not without contradictions. On the one hand, here are presented “portraits” of characters in the style of classicism, representing various abstract human characters and social conditions. On the other hand, it is not difficult to discern in this work the origins of a new literary genre - the realistic essay.

The social crisis of the 90s was clearly reflected in the novel by Archbishop Fenelon (1651-1715) “The Adventures of Telemachus” (1699). The author presented his ethical and political views in the form of an entertaining story about the travels of the son of the ancient Greek hero Ulysses (Odysseus) Telemacus and his tutor Mentor. Resorting to allegories, he developed a critique of the absolute monarchy, pointed out the deprivations of the people, and outlined a utopian picture of social reforms.

A significant event in the literary struggle of the end of the century was the dispute between the “ancients” and the “moderns”. The greatest French writers of that time: Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine and La Bruyère joined the camp of the “ancients” who defended the superiority of ancient literature over modern literature. Their reverence for antiquity allowed them to indirectly express their deep dissatisfaction with the existing order. The leaders of the “modern” ones were Charles Perrault (1628-1703), the author of a well-known collection of folk tales, and the previously mentioned Fontenelle. The “moderns” smoked the incense of the absolute monarchy. However, in their theory of cultural progress there were also the beginnings of some ideas of the early Enlightenment. The dispute between the “ancient” and the “modern,” which had a wide pan-European resonance, marked the end of one period and the beginning of another in the development of culture.

The development of realistic and democratic tendencies in advanced French literature of the second half of the 17th century. raised serious concerns among the government. For a long time, the royal power tried to patronize the most prominent representatives of French literature and even, to the extent possible, provide them with support - however, only under certain conditions and only to certain, very limited limits. The king did not allow the Catholic party to destroy Moliere. At the same time, Don Juan was immediately removed from the repertoire after the premiere, and the production of Tartuffe was allowed only five years after the play was written. In 1677, after the production of Phaedra, the king, on the advice of his entourage, elevated Racine to the honorary rank of historiographer and thereby actually deprived the writer of the opportunity to engage in literary work for a long time. The production of Atalia was banned. After Racine submitted a memo to the monarch in which he dared to criticize the royal policy, he immediately fell into disgrace. However, the king did not try to attract Lafontaine and Furetiere to his court at all, it seemed so inappropriate to him. On the eve of the repeal of the Edict of Nantes, the court began to openly support the reactionary representatives of the Catholic “renaissance.”

With its greatest achievements, French literature of the second half of the 17th century. was by no means obliged to absolutism. By exposing the social ills of absolutist France, advanced French writers contributed to the growth of self-awareness in democratic circles and acted as worthy predecessors of the figures of the coming Enlightenment.

The 15th century was a transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age, and this transition took place painfully and extremely painfully. The historical role of this century was determined by many important events that took place in it. From the end of the Hundred Years' War to the discoveries of Vasco Da Gama and Columbus, Europe lived in a state of movement from the feudal past to new horizons of development. Wars played a special role. In the 15th century, only in France there were such major military conflicts as the Hundred Years' War, the uprising of the "flayers", the War of the Breton Succession, the Burgundian Wars, the capture of Roussillon by Louis XI, the annexation of Brittany by Charles VIII, the Italian campaign of 1494 - 1495. The army becomes a permanent component of the state, a faithful support for the ruler and a reliable instrument for implementing his policies. Due to long wars and significant changes in the political arena of France.

The French army in the second half of the 15th century became one of the most combat-ready armies in Europe. Including different types of troops, it nevertheless had fairly high mobility.

The most important consequences were:

· Development of new branches of troops, such as light cavalry and artillery.

· Returning the leading role to the infantry on the battlefield.

· Decline of medieval chivalry.

· Development of light cavalry.

· The growing role of mercenary contingents in the armies of European rulers, who, however, sought their complete subjugation.

· Development of new tactical skills in conducting military operations.

It was all this that led to the fact that at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, many European states came to the idea of ​​​​creating a standing army, consisting of strictly regulated military units. In France, the prerequisites for this arose during the reign of Charles VII and were expressed in the creation of an ordinance army, which, however, was only an integral part of the disparate armed forces. During the times of Louis I and Charles VIII, the French army was a fairly regulated structure. The main task for the French kings during this period was the fight against decentralizing forces within the state, including in the army as one of its constituent parts. However, despite the efforts made, only the rulers of the 16th and 17th centuries managed to finally solve this problem.

Absolute monarchy in France 16th - 17th century

The time of establishment of the absolute monarchy in France was the 16th - first half of the 17th century. France completed its territorial unification in the 16th century. With the annexation of the duchies of Burgundy and Brittany and the county of Provence to the royal domain, the French state basically acquired the geographical contours that existed throughout the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries. In terms of territory and population (20 million people), France had no equal in Western Europe. The unification of the country created favorable conditions for its further economic development and political consolidation.

The absolute monarchy in France is an interesting and important page in the history of Europe. But absolutism in France is of interest not only in terms of simple knowledge of historical events; it deserves deeper attention as a phenomenon that has absorbed features characteristic of absolutism European countries and which took a classical form in France. Indicators of this process were the concentration in the hands of the monarch-king of legislative and executive power and its legal formalization. On the territory of France, a single legal space was created, from which local seigneurial law was displaced, as well as the role of the old (pre-existing) authorities.

Understanding the cause-and-effect relationships of the period of absolutism allows us to draw conclusions to assess the development of current society. An era distant from us warns that too much power cannot be concentrated in the hands of one person, because no matter how noble goals this is justified, in the end it will certainly lead to the victory of evil over good, to the infringement of individual rights, and the inhibition of the progress of society.

History of France XVI - first half of the XVII centuries. filled with important events from which the edifice of absolutism was built brick by brick. These events are divided into three periods:

1) 1500 - late 1550s. - the emergence of elements of capitalism, the formation of an absolute monarchy, long-term external wars (the so-called “Italian”);

2) early 60s. - civil wars, economic decline;

3) 1595-1648 - the triumph of the absolute monarchy in France, the further development of capitalist relations, France's participation in the Thirty Years' War.

A key period during which the prospects for the development of France as a state of classical absolutism were determined, which gave it in the 17th century. political hegemony in Europe, and in the 18th century, which made it the center of the Enlightenment, was the first third of the 17th century.

This is the time of the activity of the first minister of France - Cardinal Richelieu - the main architect of the building of the absolute monarchy. Richelieu left a wealth of documentary material to his descendants: memoirs, edicts, declarations, instructions to officials and other writings that give an idea of ​​the life of contemporary France.

The emergence of absolutism in France was an inevitable result of the formation of the capitalist system and the beginning of the decomposition of feudalism and the formation of absolutism. The transition to absolutism, although it was accompanied by a further strengthening of the king’s autocracy, was of interest to the broadest strata of French society in the 16th-17th centuries. Absolutism was necessary for the nobility and clergy, because for them, due to growing economic difficulties and political pressure from the third estate, the strengthening and centralization of state power became the only opportunity to preserve their extensive class privileges for some time. The growing bourgeoisie was also interested in absolutism, which could not yet lay claim to political power, but needed royal protection from the feudal freemen, which again stirred up in the 16th century in connection with the Reformation and religious wars. The establishment of peace, justice and public order was the cherished dream of the bulk of the French peasantry, who pinned their hopes for a better future on a strong and merciful royal power.

Absolutism in France developed during the long struggle of the kings to unite the scattered feudal provinces into a single state. They saw their task not only in annexing this or that region to their domain, but also in actually subordinating it to their power. Throughout the country, the French kings had supreme and indivisible power. At their own discretion, they formed the Royal Council, from which, over time, councils for individual branches of management were separated - foreign and internal affairs, finance, etc.

At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. ministries arose. The local administration was headed by governors (later intendants) and royal courts. A special place among them was occupied by the courts of higher instance, called parliaments in France. Unlike English ones, parliaments in France were not legislative, but judicial and administrative institutions. In total, there were about a dozen parliaments in France - in Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Rennes, Metz and others major cities. They considered the most important court cases concerning the king, princes of the blood, and senior officials. They could also appeal against the verdicts of local courts in matters of lesser importance. In addition to purely judicial powers, parliaments had the right to criticize the actions of the royal administration. Chief among them was the Parisian Parliament. In addition to the usual functions, he had the right to register royal edicts, after which they acquired legal force.

Even in the Middle Ages, French kings willingly hired educated and efficient commoners into public service. In order to replenish the state treasury, they sold government positions. This led to an extraordinary growth in the bureaucracy, the number of which increased from 8 thousand at the beginning of the 16th century. up to 46 thousand in the middle of the 17th century. When wealthy commoners bought government positions, they also received letters of nobility along with them. A “nobility of the robe” arose, which differed from the clan nobility, the so-called “nobility of the sword,” which consisted of the descendants of medieval knights and considered military service to be their only honorable occupation.

The “nobility of the robe” in France was new in origin, but not at all in the nature of its occupation. Unlike the English new nobility, it did not engage in active economic activity. In the middle of the 17th century. The “nobility of the robe”, no less zealously than the old clan nobility, spoke out in defense of class privileges.

As the bureaucratic apparatus grew, class meetings lost their importance. The States General, which arose back in the 14th century, was not convened after 1615 until 1789. Provincial assemblies were limited in their rights and by the middle of the 18th century. survived only in some provinces.

French absolutism relied on a powerful bureaucratic apparatus. However, this apparatus itself, thanks to the unique method of formation, as well as the privileges that officials achieved for themselves, turned into an independent force. He not only served as a support for the king, but also significantly limited his power. This was one of the guarantees against the transformation of absolutism into despotism, that is, against lawlessness and arbitrariness of royal power. At the same time, this made the task of reforming the bureaucratic apparatus itself more difficult.

The religious wars of the second half of the 16th century, during which the royal power was challenged by both the Huguenots and the Catholic League, sharply slowed down and even reversed the process of the formation of absolutism. The French kings had to struggle with the consequences of these wars - the willfulness of the clan nobility and the administrative autonomy of Protestants - for a century.

By the beginning of the 17th century. the foundations of the national-state unity of France were laid, which, paradoxically, was also facilitated by religious wars. France of the second half of the 16th - early 17th centuries. - this is a gigantic boiling cauldron in which the historically important process of formation of the French nation took place, which gradually realized its commonality and the need to protect its interests from private and religious egoism, from economic and political disunity. For many years of military operations, continuous movements of troops and population movements from one region of France to another contributed, in particular, to the mixing of dialects and dialects into a single French language.

With the end of the civil wars of the 16th century. a new upswing has begun for France. Economically, it was characterized by a more rapid development of capitalist relations; politically, it represented a big step forward towards the complete triumph of the feudal-absolutist order. Already during the reign of Henry IV, the main features of the new period emerged.

At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. In France, the “price revolution” ended, which greatly contributed to the economic recovery in the devastated country. The end of the civil war and the restoration of the outside world again mobilized the capital of the bourgeoisie, which had been dormant during the period of devastation. The process of primitive accumulation resumed with renewed vigor, especially since ruin and poverty during civil strife contributed to the expropriation of the masses. Henry IV understood that the peasantry had to recover somewhat in order to become solvent again, so he slightly reduced government spending. This made it possible to lower the direct tax on peasants, free them from paying arrears accumulated during the civil wars, and prohibit the sale of farmers' livestock and tools for debts. However, at the same time, indirect taxes were significantly increased, which fell heavily on the rural and urban working masses.

The streamlining of public finances was also facilitated by the fact that the Minister of Finance Sully reduced the willfulness of tax farmers and “financiers”, forcing them to accept conditions that were unfavorable for them when paying off previous debts and when registering new farm-outs.

Civil wars 1614-1620 ended in victory for the royal army. The progressive forces of France - the bourgeoisie and the popular masses - played a decisive role in this, supporting absolutism in its struggle against the feudal nobility and separatist tendencies.

In the 17th century The aristocracy twice tried to weaken royal power and restore feudal liberties. This first happened after the death of King Henry IV, when Henry IV's young son Louis XIII became king. During the regency of his mother Marie de Medici, state power turned out to be a toy in the hands of her powerful favorites. Only in the 20-30s, Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), who was appointed first minister, managed to curb the aristocratic freemen and forced the nobility to faithfully serve the king.

But the aristocratic opposition again raised its head after the death of Louis XIII in 1643. During the regency of Anne of Austria, the mother of the young Louis XIV, a social movement developed in France, which went down in history under the name Fronde (literally - “sling”). There is a parliamentary Fronde (1648-1649), which relied on the Paris Parliament, as well as the Fronde of Princes (1650-1653), that is, the closest relatives of the king, who bore the title of princes of the blood. Defending the ancient “liberties” and customs of the kingdom, the Parisian parliament led the movement of broad sections of the urban population against heavy taxes, abuses of royal officials, wastefulness of the government, etc. In August 1648, the Parisians rebelled and for several months defended the capital from the government troops besieging it.

After the government managed to break the opposition of the Paris Parliament, the Fronde of Princes began. The hatred of the family nobility was aroused by Cardinal Mazarin, who after the death of Richelieu took the position of first minister and tried to pursue the line of his predecessor to strengthen royal power.

By the beginning of the 16th century, France had become a single state, in the form of an absolute monarchy.

Absolutism is characterized by the fact that all legislative, executive and judicial power was concentrated in the hands of the hereditary head of state - the king. The entire centralized state mechanism was subordinate to him: the army, the police, the administrative apparatus, the court. The French of all classes, including nobles, were subjects of the king, obliged to obey unquestioningly. At the same time, the absolute monarchy consistently defended the class interests of the nobility.

The feudal lords also understood that in conditions of intensified class struggle, suppression of the peasantry was possible only with the help of strict state absolutism. During the heyday of the absolute monarchy, a socio-political balance between two main exploiting classes was established in the country - the privileged nobility with government posts and the growing bourgeoisie.

The first minister of Louis XIII, Richelieu, played a significant role in the formation of the existing system in France. In the period from 1624-1642. He, exerting enormous influence on the king, practically ruled the country. At the same time, his policy defended the interests of the nobility, in which Richelieu saw the strengthening of absolutism. Under Louis XIV (second half of the 17th - early 18th centuries), French absolutism reached the highest stage of its development. From the 16th century to the first half of the 17th century, the absolute monarchy certainly played a progressive role in the development of the French state, as it restrained the split of the country and promoted the growth of capitalist industry and trade. During this period, the construction of new manufactories was encouraged, high customs duties were established on imported goods, and colonies were founded.

 

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