France in the Sixteenth Century - Tapa dura

Both the golden age of the Renaissance state and the catastrophic era of the Wars of Religion, this fascinating period in French history has been oddly neglected by English-language historians. Professor Baumgartner's book fills a major gap in the textbook market: an accessible, fully current account which covers the principal political, economic and cultural themes from Francois I's successful centralization of the state, through France's near prostration under the Catholic-Huguenot civil war, and ending with the accession of Henri IV.

Was France in the sixteenth century as beautiful as Fernand Braudel has described it? Or was it actually a century of "blood and iron" as Henry Hiller saw it? The truth is that the history of France in the sixteenth century embodies both of these interpretations. The glories of the French Renaissance, the great prosperity of the early decades, and the conquest of Calais and the Three Bishoprics of Lorraine all existed in counterpoint to the Italian wars, the wars with the Habsburgs, the French Wars of Religion, and the severe economic depression of the last decades of the era. France in the Sixteenth Century is certain to become an indispensable classic for scholars and students of French history.