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.

This book examines the character of the governing elite of sixteenth-century Paris--a group that included some of the most important jurists, administrators, and intellectuals of the early modern French state--and investigates the strategies employed by members of this group to promote and maintain their position in the city and in the monarchy. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A major scholarly re-evaluation of the central period in the French 'wars of religion', concentrating on the reactions of France's governing groups to these wars and drawing extensively on sources not hitherto examined to illuminate the sense of crisis that existed among the French governing elite at this time.