Francis I

R. J. Knect investigates the reign of Francis I of France.

R. J. Knecht (Author)

9780521278874, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 April 1984

516 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.5 cm, 0.716 kg

'Until Desmond Seward's Prince of the Renaissance there was no modern life in English, and until now no full-scale biography at all. The gap is superbly filled by R. J. Knecht's fresh book. Francis I is vigorous, exhaustive, and much rarer in a work of this range and scale - particularly well measured and shaped … a model of what a dense historical biography should be.' The Times

The name of Francis I and his emblem, the salamander, are familiar to the many thousands of tourists who visit the chateaux of the Loire each year. But what sort of monarch was he? Whereas in his own day he was acclaimed as 'the great king Francis', in more recent times he has generally been taken less seriously than his exact contemporaries Henry VIII of England and the Emperor Charles V. Yet his reign was no less important than theirs. It witnessed and promoted fundamental changes in France's political structure, economy, society, religion and cultural life. The king's obsession with war stimulated constitutional change. By entailing expenditures far in excess of the crown's traditional resources, it obliged him to tap new sources of wealth, to reorganise the fiscal system and to promote administrative centralisation. Economically, Francis' reign saw the completion of the recovery that had followed the Hundred Years' War. While the land was reclaimed, the population grew, town life flourished and trade expanded.

List of plates
List of figures
Preface
List of abbreviations
1. Childhood and youth
2. King of France
3. Marignano (1515)
4. The Concordat of Bologna
5. The uneasy peace (1516–1520)
6. The king and his court
7. The loss of Milan (1520–1522)
8. Penury and reform
9. Humanism and heresy
10. Treason
11. Pavia (1523–1525)
12. The regency of Louise of Savoy (1525–1526)
13. The king's return (1526–1528)
14. From Cognac to Cambrai (1526–1529)
15. The hollow peace (1530–1534)
16. Domestic problems (1530–1534)
17. Patron of the arts and 'father of letters'
18. Triumph and stalemate (1535–1537)
19. Fruitless entente (1538–1542)
20. The kingdom's wealth
21. France overseas
22. The crown and the provinces
23. The last war (1542–1546)
24. Reform and resistance
25. The growth of persecution
26. The triumph of faction
Epilogue
Note on coinage
Manuscript sources
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History [HB]