Was France feudal right before the French Revolution?

by rdfporcazzo

It's not a simple yes or no question that came to my mind. I would appreciate a good soul clarifying this for me:

• I was taught that feudalism took place in France before the absolutism, and absolutism before the French Revolution.

• A friend of mine disagreed with this view, and said feudalism ended only in its abolition right before the French Revolution. That's the base for his argument:

One of the central events of the French Revolution was to abolish feudalism, and the old rules, taxes and privileges left over from the age of feudalism. The National Constituent Assembly, acting on the night of 4 August 1789, announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely."

So these are my questions actually:

  1. A political system can be both absolutist and feudal? If yes, what are some examples?

  2. When was the vassalage abolished in France? Can a country be feudal without vassalage?

  3. Should we say that France before the French Revolution was not feudal but with some remnants from the feudalism age or it was feudal with an absolute monarch? Are there some examples of remnants from the feudalism in a republican system?

  4. Conclusion: after all, was France feudal before the night of 4 August 1789 or not?

Asinus_Docet

It's actually quite simple to answer this question for we often mix up "droit feodal" (feudalism) and "droit seigneurial" (estate customs).

Feudalism was what linked lords together around a suzerain (the king, a duke, the Emperor, etc.) as vassals. That "system" encountered growing problems from the 14th to the 15th century. It fell out of order, so to speak, and was gradually replaced by a centralized administration. The great lords of the realm fought against it and it gave way to the well-known Frondes. However, even before Louis XIV definetely put an end to them, absolutism reigned supreme and there was no way back from it. The king of France had a permanent and professional army since 1445, it won him is own realm and many victories against his European counterparts. Dukes, counts and lords became a full part of the administrative machine and feudalism just vanished.

In 1789, however, they called feudalism what was actually estate or demesne customs. Those customs defined the relationship between a lord and the people living on his land. We're talking here about the famous "mortemain, aubaine" and other lordly privileges that grieved the French peasantry on the top of the regular taxes. This is what the Assemblée Nationale abolished, not feudalism per se for it'd been dead for over a few centuries. They called it feudalism, but it was not. They mixed up their terminology, maybe on purpose, for feudalism referred to the Middle Ages and that was deemed as properly backwards since the Lumières trashed it as the "Gothic era" (a barbarian period named after the most barbaric people, the Goths). Why do we still say, in French, that something is "moyenâgeux" when we want to speak ill of it? Because anything medieval was "bad" and feudalism was properly medieval, it was in the way of progress. You couldn't go against the notion of "seigneur" as easily though for the king (originally) was to remain in place and noblemen, who pleaded for the adoption of human rights such as La Fayette, didn't expect nor wished to see their heads roll (though they eventually did). Lords were not the enemy: feudalism was. Nevertheless, what was abolished was the "droit seigneurial" and not the "droit féodal" which had fallen out of use for a long time by then.

To answer your questions

  1. Yes, when a king isn't able to administrate the entirety of his realm but has conceded parts of it to noblemen. The example of the "apanages" comes to mind. Great chunks of the French kingdom (the duchy of Berry, of Burgundy, of Bourbon, of Anjou, and others) had been "gifted" by the king to his relatives for as long as they'd have direct male heirs. This saw the rise of parallel administrations within the realm and expressions such as "the Burgundian State(s)". This was around the 14th and 15th century and clearly showed the limitations of feudalism which could only collapse on the long run.
  2. I don't think vassalage was abolished per se but lords gradually lost more and more rights over their lands. As the king extended his demesne and fortified his administration, dukes, counts and lords lost the right to give justice in the name of the king (the parliaments took charge of it) or the privilege to command armies, wage war and police the land (governors had that mission--but only noblemen could become governors). Once Louis XIV invited all of French nobility to live at Versailles, they were unrooted from their lands and lost most of their local influence. Feudalism was no more.
  3. If we come to define feudalism as Max Weber puts it, we could argue that feudalism never died out and still survives somehow within the frame and on the margins of our modern democracy and bureaucratic system of power. But that'd bring the discussion too far.
  4. No.