Coming from the depths of the ages, sometimes glorious, often uncertain, constantly revived, history embraces ruptures as well as paradoxes, salutary flashes as well as the dark designs of men. To read it, to think about it, to question it, is to grasp the troubled continuity imprinted on the “long time”, on the great cycles of humanity described by Fernand Braudel, abrupt events, visionary decisions and their distant repercussions, dark or bright destinies.
The Great History of the Kings of France, published by Le Monde, is the reflection, the witness and the tool to understand the present in the light of the past. One by one, from Clovis to Charlemagne, from Philippe Auguste to Louis XI, from Louis XIV to Napoleon III, the monarchs and their close advisers – ministers, queens or favorites – become actors in a slow metamorphosis that will have shaped the country. , and the State, drawn its borders, organized its society, while orchestrating its alliances with foreign powers.
Thus, like beacons marking out nearly fourteen centuries, the sovereigns and their dynasties, who succeeded one another on a moving French territory, tell and print the identities which make a nation. And if there is “a certain cultural continuity between monarchical France and republican France”, as historian Jean-Christian Petitfils reminds us, it is by exploring each reign, in the flow of aspirations, movements and conflicting stakes, that the heritage can be measured.
To dive into the source of temporal political realities, to appreciate their scope, is to follow the tenuous thread that unites past and present, giving rise to analyzes and parallels, similarities and contrasts. Thus, through the encyclopedic approach of the protagonists of our history offered by the collection of Le Monde, can we decipher, like a tapestry that we turn over to observe its weft, the slow construction of a territory, of a nation , of a state and its history.
Fascinating architecture
From the kingdom of the Franks to the empire of Charlemagne, from the first mention of the rex franciæ – “king of France” – inaugurated by Philippe Auguste to the pragmatic and modern vision of the State established by Louis XI, rights and customs of the Middle Ages are intertwined in a modernity in constant evolution, which will nourish the house of the Bourbons then that of the Napoleon. Like the language, French history is forged in the momentum of conquests, of conflicts in reforms, of crises in prosperous periods. To read its stages is also to deconstruct the legend with which chroniclers of all eras and from all walks of life have decked out kings and queens. To explore its springs is finally to detect how, in France, women were cleverly excluded from power, as historian Joëlle Chevé reminds us.
So what does the long litany of the kings of France teach us today, if not the difficult but fascinating architecture of a plural identity, rich in others, which we call nation? Great and small history come together, revealing, through the character, the will, the governance and the very life of their protagonists, the roots of a timeless present.
