country into the great centralized state which we call France. The
Hundred Years' War had finally freed the western duchies and counties
from English control. Just before the opening of the sixteenth century
the wily and tactful Louis XI (1461-1483) had rounded out French
territories: on the east he had occupied the powerful duchy of
Burgundy; on the west and on the southeast he had possessed himself of
most of the great inheritance of the Angevin branch of his own family,
including Anjou, and Provence east of the Rhone; and on the south the
French frontier had been carried to the Pyrenees. Finally, Louis's son,
Charles VIII (1483-1498), by marrying the heiress of Brittany, had
absorbed that western duchy into France.

[Sidenote: Steady Growth of Royal Power in France]

Meanwhile, centralized political institutions had been taking slow but
tenacious root in the country. Of course, many local institutions and
customs survived in the various states which had been gradually added
to France, but the king was now recognized from Flanders to Spain and
from the Rhone to the Ocean as the source of law, justice, and order.
There was a uniform royal coinage and a standing army under the king's
command. The monarchs had struggled valiantly against the disruptive
tendencies of feudalism; they had been aided by the commoners or middle
class; and the proof of their success was their comparative freedom
from political checks. The Estates-General, to which French commoners
had been admitted in 1302, resembled in certain externals the English
Parliament,--for example, in comprising representatives of the clergy,
nobles, and commons,--but it had never had final say in levying taxes
or in authorizing expenditures or in trying royal officers. And unlike
England, there was in France no live tradition of popular participation
in government and no written guarantee of personal liberty.