Early modern France in the context of "Medieval France"

The Kingdom of France is the historiographical name or umbrella term given to various political entities of France in the medieval and early modern period. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe from the High Middle Ages to 1848 during its dissolution. It was also an early colonial power, with colonies in Asia and Africa, and the largest being New France in North America geographically centred on the Great Lakes.

The Kingdom of France was descended directly from the western Frankish realm of the Carolingian Empire, which was ceded to Charles the Bald with the Treaty of Verdun (843). A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty. The territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum ('king of the Franks') well into the High Middle Ages. The first king calling himself rex Francie ('King of France') was Philip II, in 1190, and officially from 1204. From then, France was continuously ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines under the Valois and Bourbon until the monarchy was abolished in 1792 during the French Revolution. The Kingdom of France was also ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Navarre over two time periods, 1284–1328 and 1572–1620, after which the institutions of Navarre were abolished and it was fully annexed by France (though the King of France continued to use the title "King of Navarre" through the end of the monarchy).

The Louisiana Purchase (French: Vente de la Louisiane, lit. 'Sale of Louisiana') was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River's drainage basin west of the river. In return for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile ($7/km), the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi (2,140,000 km; 530,000,000 acres) now in the Central United States. However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers.

The Kingdom of France had controlled the Louisiana territory from 1682 until it was ceded to Spain in 1762. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul of the French Republic, regained ownership of Louisiana in exchange for territories in Tuscany as part of a broader effort to re-establish a French colonial empire in North America. However, France's failure to suppress a revolt in Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, coupled with the prospect of renewed warfare with the United Kingdom, prompted Napoleon to consider selling Louisiana to the United States.

Louisiana (Spanish: Luisiana, [la lwiˈsjana]) was a province of New Spain from 1762 to 1801. It was primarily located in the center of North America encompassing the western basin of the Mississippi River plus New Orleans. The area had originally been claimed and controlled by France, which had named it La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV in 1682. Spain secretly acquired the territory from France near the end of the Seven Years' War by the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762). The actual transfer of authority was a slow process, and after Spain finally attempted to fully replace French authorities in New Orleans in 1767, French residents staged an uprising which the new Spanish colonial governor did not suppress until 1769. Spain also took possession of the trading post of St. Louis and all of Upper Louisiana in the late 1760s, though there was little Spanish presence in the wide expanses of what they called the "Illinois Country".

New Orleans was the main port of entry for Spanish supplies sent to American forces during the American Revolution, and Spain and the new United States disputed the borders of Louisiana and navigation rights on the Mississippi River for the duration of Spain's rule in the colony. New Orleans was devastated by large fires in 1788 and 1794 which destroyed most of the original wooden buildings in what is today the French Quarter. New construction was done in the Spanish style with stone walls and slate roofs, and new public buildings constructed during the city's Spanish period include several still standing today such as the St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo, and the Presbytere.

During the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of France was a decentralised, feudal monarchy. In Brittany, Normandy, Lorraine, Provence, East Burgundy and Catalonia (the latter now a part of Spain), as well as Aquitaine, the authority of the French king was barely felt. France in the Middle Ages (roughly, from the 10th century to the middle of the 15th century) was marked by the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and West Francia (843–987); the expansion of royal control by the House of Capet (987–1328), including their struggles with the virtually independent principalities (duchies and counties, such as the Norman and Angevin regions), and the creation and extension of administrative and state control (notably under Philip II Augustus and Louis IX) in the 13th century; and the rise of the House of Valois (1328–1589), including the protracted dynastic crisis against the House of Plantagenet and their Angevin Empire, culminating in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) (compounded by the catastrophic Black Death in 1348), which laid the seeds for a more centralised and expanded state in the early modern period and the creation of a sense of French identity.

Up to the 12th century, the territory experienced an elaboration and extension of the seigneurial economic system (including the attachment of peasants to the land through serfdom); the extension of the feudal system of political rights and obligations between lords and vassals; the so-called "feudal revolution" of the 11th century during which ever smaller lords took control of local lands in many regions; and the appropriation by regional/local seigneurs of various administrative, fiscal and judicial rights for themselves. From the 13th century on, the state slowly regained control of a number of these lost powers. The crises of the 13th and 14th centuries led to the convening of an advisory assembly, the Estates General, and also to an effective end to serfdom. During the 70-year reign of Louis XIV, absolutist policies from Paris tightly constrained the regional nobility, centralising political power at Versailles.

The Supreme Court of Louisiana (French: Cour suprême de Louisiane; Spanish: Corte Suprema de Luisiana) is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The Supreme Court, and Louisiana state law, are historically based in the colonial governments of France and Spain during the 18th century. The current Supreme Court traces its roots back to these beginnings.

A gendarme was a heavy cavalryman of noble birth, primarily serving in the French army from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. Heirs to the knights of French medieval feudal armies, French gendarmes enjoyed like their forefathers a great reputation and were regarded as the finest European heavy cavalry force until the decline of chivalric ideals largely due to the ever-evolving developments in gunpowder technology. They provided the King of France with a potent regular force of armored lancers which, when properly employed, dominated late medieval and early modern battlefields. Their symbolic demise is generally considered to be the Battle of Pavia, which saw the gendarmes suffer a disastrous defeat and inversely confirmed the rise of the Spanish Tercios as the new dominant military force, leading to the preeminence of the House of Habsburg in 16th century Europe.

West Florida (Spanish: Florida Occidental) was a region on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico that underwent several boundary and sovereignty changes during its history. Great Britain established West and East Florida in 1763 out of land acquired from France and Spain after the Seven Years' War. As its name suggests, it was formed out of the western part of former Spanish Florida (East Florida formed the eastern part, with the Apalachicola River as the border), along with land taken from French Louisiana. Pensacola became West Florida's capital. The colony included about two thirds of what is now the Florida panhandle, as well as parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

As the newly acquired territory was too large to govern from one administrative center, the British divided it into two new colonies separated by the Apalachicola River. British West Florida included the part of former Spanish Florida, which lay west of the Apalachicola, as well as parts of former French Louisiana. Its government was based in Pensacola. West Florida thus encompassed all territory between the Mississippi and Apalachicola Rivers, with a northern boundary which shifted several times over the subsequent years.

The Italian War of 1521–1526, sometimes known as the Four Years' War, (French: Sixième guerre d'Italie) was a part of the Italian Wars. The war pitted Francis I of France and the Republic of Venice against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Henry VIII of England, and the Papal States. It arose from animosity over the election of Charles as Emperor in 1519–1520 and from Pope Leo X's need to ally with Charles against Martin Luther.

The war broke out across Western Europe late in 1521, when a French–Navarrese expedition attempted to reconquer Navarre while a French army invaded the Low Countries. A Spanish army drove the Navarrese forces back into the Pyrenees, and other Imperial forces attacked northern France, where they were stopped in turn.