A History of France

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Louis XI I entered the centuries of monarchy. I was about to undertake this study when an accident made me reflect deeply. One day, passing through Reims, I examined in great detail the magnificent cathedral, the splendid church of the Coronation.

say that in Spain where the French and English were waging war, the latter dying of hunger, the French fed them. I will not go beyond that: it is God’s choice.The book can be divided into 2 parts; The first part covers the dark & medieval ages from Clovis I, the Capetian dynasty, the House of Valois up-to Napoleon III with 16 Louises in between. The second half covers the French Revolution, Civil Wars and the 2 World wars till the liberation of France from Nazi occupation in 1944. good king, Louis XI, held me up for a very long time. My entire fifteenth century came forth from records and documents. The extremely vast work of Legrand nonetheless requires verification of his often very inexact transcriptions against the originals (Gaignières, etc.), a labor requiring great patience. have told the facts quite plainly. From the time the English lost their mainstay, the Duke of Burgundy, they became quite weak. On the contrary, the French, rallying their armed forces of the South, became extremely strong. But this produced no harmony. The charming personality of this young peasant girl, with her tender, emotional, and joyous heart (heroic gaiety burst forth in all her answers), became a center and she united everything. She acted effectively because she had no art, no magic, no enchantments, no miracles. All her power is humanity. She has no wings, this poor angel; she is the common people, she is weak, she is us, she is everyone.

voices, voices of conscience, which Joan of Arc carries with her into battles, into prisons, against the English, against the Church. There the world is changed. The passive resignation of Christians (so useful to tyrants) is superseded by the heroic tenderness which takes our afflictions to heart, which wants to set God’s justice here below, a justice that acts, that fights, that saves and heals. The big question in the book is whether the Enlightenment period meant the same for different genders, social classes and Europeans vs non-Europeans. is a small image of a great thing. It is precisely art at its moment of conception. Such is the essential condition of artistic creativity. It is love, but also a smile. It is this loving smile that creates. more complicated, more terrifying, was the problem I had set for myself as an historian: the resurrection of life in its integrity, not superficially, but in its interior and organic depth. No prudent man would have dreamed of it. Fortunately, that I was not.

of the past was an essentially prophetic task, a vision of universal justice. The dead would receive their reward of eternity by surviving in the consciousness of the present. The historian’s sacred duty was to restore the glories of the past to inspire readers to construct the image of an ideal future. The new France is a society and political system that appears to be in a crisis as a result of globalization, international terrorism, racial tension and a loss of trust and confidence in the political leaders. possessed annals, but no history at all. Eminent men had studied her, especially from the political point of view. None of them entered into the infinite details of the diverse products of her activity (religious, economic, artistic, etc.). None of them had yet embraced the living unity of the innate and geographic elements which formed her. I was the first to perceive her as a soul and as a person.

was my faith at least, and that act of faith, whatever my weaknesses, took effect. History’s immense movement started to heave before my eyes. All those various forces, both of nature and of art, sought each other out, took their places, at first awkwardly. The limbs of the great body, peoples, races, regions, assembled themselves from the sea to the Rhine, to the Rhône, to the Alps, and the centuries marched from Gaul to France. An excellent and thought-provoking introduction to the history of France. Concisely and accessibly written, it skilfully interweaves long-term social, cultural and even climatic factors with the more familiar narrative of wars, revolutions and coups d’état. In particular, and in a highly stimulating way, it shows just how much the shape of today’s France, both geographical and political, owes to sheer chance' - Munro Price, Professor of Modern European History, University of Bradford Carla believes that a new cultural world where women were free from corporate privilege, aristocratic salons, and patriarchal censorship, was achieved through The French Revolution. again I am compelled to state it: I was alone. There hardly existed anything other than political history, government decrees and records, to a slight extent those of institutions. No one took into account that which accompanies, explains, and in part establishes that political history—social, economic, industrial conditions, those of literature and of ideas.With characteristic deftness of touch, Norwich brings each character vividly to life and skillfully weaves their stories together . . . a genuinely inspired idea for a book, and Norwich executes it with typical aplomb.” ―Tracy Borman, BBC History Magazine