France
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Française (French Republic) Capital: Paris Population projection, 2020: 65·72m. GNI per capita, 2014: (PPP$) 38,056 HDI/world rank, 2014: 0·888/22 Internet domain extension: .fr KEY HISTORICAL EVENTS The Dordogne has evidence of Mousterian industry from 40,000 BC and of Cro-Magnon man of the Upper Paleolithic period. With the end of the Ice Age, agricultural settlement appeared around 7000 BC. By the beginning of the 8th century BC, Celtic tribes from Central Europe were inhabiting the Rhône valley of Gaul (now France) while the Greeks were building cities such as Massalia (Marseille) along the southern coast. The Romans crossed the Alps into southern France in 121 BC and Gaul was conquered by Julius Caesar in 52 BC. The country benefited from protected trade routes and from Roman infrastructure, speech and government. Roman rule was consolidated by the reign of Augustus at the end of the 1st century AD. But the Empire was threatened by Germanic (‘barbarian’) incursions from the north and east. Many of these tribes were assimilated as foederati (treaty nations) into the Gallo-Roman Empire but they assumed authority in their domains as Roman government receded in the 4th and 5th centuries. After the repulse of Attila and his Huns in 451, the Salian Franks emerged as the strongest of the Germanic tribes—their leader, Merovius, was the progenitor of the Merovingian dynasty that ruled France until the beginning of the 8th century. On the death of Merovius’s grandson, Clovis, the kingdom was divided between his three sons. The Merovingians remained in power for two centuries but their rule, weakened by internecine
Rising Power The reign of Louis XI (1461–83) saw a change from a medieval social system to a more modern state. Provincial governments were set up in major cities and nobles wielding independent power were crushed. In 1494 Charles VIII, encouraged to pursue his claim to the crown of Naples by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, invaded Italy. The speed of his advance shocked the Italian cities into an alliance to expel his army. The appearance of Spanish power in Naples began the Habsburg-Valois wars that used Italy as a battlefield until the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. François I is considered the first Renaissance French king. He patronized some of Italy’s greatest artists, commissioning palaces such as the Château de Chambord and rebuilding the Louvre and Château de Fontainebleau. To finance his cultural interests and his military failures in Italy—he was captured by Spanish forces at the Battle of Pavia in 1525—François imposed huge tax rises, severely straining the French economy. From 1562–98 the Wars of Religion raged in France between the Protestant Huguenots and the Spanish-supported Catholic League. The civil war reached its peak with the 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which 20,000 Huguenots were 466
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killed, before ending with Henry of Navarre’s conversion to Catholicism. He did not abandon his Huguenot roots, however, and the 1598 Edict of Nantes guaranteed Protestants political
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