France
Overview
France in 1300 was at the top of its form. Its armies were the most renowned in the West, it was the largest and richest kingdom in Christendom, and its king at the time, Philip IV, was one of its greatest.
But hard times were ahead. Over the next 130 years or so, the French would lose well over a third of the nation to the English, would lose still other portions to local rulers and outright bandits, and very nearly would lose the crown itself. It experienced civil wars and endured the reign of a mad king.
In the seventy years that followed, however, most all that had been lost would be recovered. By 1500, France was once again one of the dominant players in Europe.
War
The Hundred Years War dominates French history during this period even more than it dominates English history, for the war was largely fought on the Continent. With the ending of the war, there were a couple of significant rebellions, but no more wars until the French invaded Italy in 1498. In addition, a conflict with Burgundy in the later 1400s teetered constantly on the edge of war.
As with England, the chronic warfare forced changes in royal administration, both in financial areas and in how armies were raised and organized. The French found rather different solutions than did the English, for the Estates General never achieved the influence that Parliament did in either area. In France, it was the monarch who was the dominant force.
The Monarchy
France was free of the succession crises that plagued England. And while the French barons did try more than once to gain the kind of independent power enjoyed by the German barons, they were not as successful. Especially by the reign of the Valois kings of the late 1400s, the French crown was undisputed in prestige and power. An ancillary development here was the steady acquisition of land and titles by the Valois kings, which not only added to the power of the central monarchy but also removed centers of potentially rival powers.
Society and Economy
Despite decades of war, and despite the ravages of plague, the French economy continued to be solid and strong. It was based squarely on agriculture, though, not on commerce. While other areas of Europe were experiencing dramatic fortunes (and misfortunes) from trade, France was the great agricultural center of Europe. Even the fairs of Champagne were in decline, and only Lyon was a financial center. While this meant that France did not enjoy the great wealth of Venice or Augsburg, neither did it suffer through cycles of financial collapse.
As stability marks French economy, so it marks French society. France did not see the rise of a gentry class as in England; the French nobility became more and more entrenched in its position of privilege. The larger towns did indeed see a developing order of bourgeois, but these never gained influence beyond their own city walls. The French peasantry complained of the new taxes, but revolts (rural or urban) were few in comparison with Italy or the Low Countries or England.
Culture
As elsewhere, the late Middle Ages in France saw the development of vernacular culture—of people writing literature in their native language. While there were examples from before 1300, the late Middle Ages is the first real flowering of the vernacular. Historians, such as Jean Froissart or Philippe de Commynes; poets, such as Guillaume de Machaut or Christine de Pizan; and ordinary works of extraordinary beauty, such as the Book of Hours done by the Limoges brothers for the Duc de Berry; all these and more testify to a vigorous French culture as yet untouched by the influence of the Italian Renaissance.