ORIGINS (of 58 front. J.-C. with 887)
Roman period
Mérovingiens
Carolingians
FEUDALITY (from 887 to 1483)
Any power of Feudality
Feudal royalty
Decline of Feudality
One Hundred Years old war
Ruin Feudality
MONARCHY (of 1483 to 1789)
Wars of Italy
Wars against the house of Austria
Wars of religion
Apogee of monarchical France
Decline of monarchy
THE REVOLUTION
Ruin Ancien Régime
The Republic
Empire
Arrest of Charles the Bad one. King de Navarre Charles the Bad one, which had claims with the crown of France like grandson of Louis XC by his Jeanne mother, intrigued with the noble ones of Normandy against king Jean, and pushed the perfidy until exciting the young Charles dolphin against his father. Jean, determined to get rid of such a dangerous enemy before walking against the English, suddenly even surprised it in Rouen at the dolphin, per hour when they were with table: "That nobody moves, if it holds with the life", exclaimed it while raising its sword, then seizing king de Navarre by the arm: "Let us go, upright, traitor, you are not worthy to sit you with the table of my son", and it made it throw in prison in spite of the tears of the dolphin, then it made decapitate under its eyes four of the guests (August 1356). First guns. The first guns made more noise than of evil: composed of welded and ringed iron blades, they closed imperfectly, and the gas leakages decreased protée, ruined the parts, burned serving them: it was not rare that the part burst; the king of Scotland Jacques II was killed by the explosion of one bombards. Such an artillery had not very fast evolutions; the guns, which one was to make very long because of the mediocrity of the powder, were trailed on rollers by oxen, and to put them out of battery, they had to be drawn up on building sites and scaffolding; the load was long and complicated; the parts took care by the cylinder head, but it was by this only reason that one could not drill them, and the gun taking care by the mouth was to be regarded later as a wonder. Fights of the Thirty. The combat of the Thirty is one of the most memorable facts of the One Hundred Years old war Thirty French knights ordered by heroic Beaumanoir, and thirty English knights gave each other appointment in the moor of Semi-Way, close to Ploërmel, then, with a given signal, melted au.galop the ones against the others, and fought body with body "as well, said Froissart, as if all had been Rolands and Oliviers." Finally the victory remained with the French: of the sixty champions, thirteen had died, nine English and four French; none the survivors was without wound and only one horse remained upright (March 27, 1351). Also it in proverb of saying in connection with a keen fight passed: "One fought as with the combat of the Thirty" a granite column, high on the place of the combat, perpetuates the names of the inhabitants there. Battle of Poitiers. Prince Noir, who had only ten thousand men against fifty thousand, had cut off himself from a slope planted from vines and half-compartment of hedges, absolutely impracticable with the cavalry; one could attack it only face by a sunken lane and narrow; to engage there, it was to run to a disaster. The knights however sprang there, carried by their ebullient heat, but, stopped by a barricade of carriages, overpowered by a hail of arrows and loaded in side, they turned back with haste, and threw the disorder in the remainder of the army. Jean, after having defended oneself a long time with his young person Philippe son, gave his sword to a French who was useful in the English army: two thousand knights were made prisoners with the king; eleven thousand men, the flower of the knighthood, remained lying on the battle field (Sept. 1356). |
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Jean the Good succeeds his father in 1350. King chivalrous, brave and brilliance, but friendly of the luxury and the pleasure, it quickly exhausts the treasure by its prodigalities, changes the course of the currencies and increases the taxes. The States General, that it is forced to convene twice to alleviate dissatisfactions (in 1351 and 1355), ask that the tax be paid by all, without distinction of class, that the expenditure is regularly controlled, and that the States General meet periodically. At the same time the war starts again. The king of England, Edouard III, unloads in Calais and devastation Artois; his son the prince of Wales, or Prince Noir, share of Bordeaux, devastate Languedoc and the provinces of the center; its ally Charles the Bad one, king de Navarre, unloads in Cherbourg and invades Normandy. Jean walks against Prince Noir with a much higher army in a number and meets it in Maupertuis, close to Poitiers, but the temerity of the nobility brings a new disaster, and the king is made prisoner (1356). |
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