30.3 Europe: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 16/29)

NOTE: Insert Map 62. France During the Huguenot Wars 1562-92

He returned to the Catholic faith, but in 1598 issued the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Huguenots equal political rights, although not complete religious freedom. This ended the French religious-civil conflicts, often called "The Huguenot Wars". (Ref. 139 , 119 )

The large amount of space we have just devoted to the national political scene in France is not to be interpreted in a way to detract from the continued independence of certain towns. Local citizenship was of ten zealously guarded. In Marseilles it was necessary to have 10 years residence, possess property and to have married a local girl before citizenship could be granted. (Ref. 160 ) All through the feudal period in Europe, there was little or no sense of "country" or of patriotism, because each man's fidelity was given only to his immediate superior in the feudal chain. Even the word patrie , meaning "patriotism", was not used by French writers until this 16th century. (Ref. 218 ) It is of interest that amid all the national strife, we find an early example of workers revolt against management in the big printing strikes in Lyons in 1539 and 1572. There were about 100 printing presses with about 1,000 workers who thought that new technology in updated presses would result in a decrease in the number of workers. So they beat up blacklegs, distributed leaflets and took their master to court and formed their own society. In both strikes the workers gained little, but their actions certainly foreshadowed modern activities. (Ref. 292 )

Only in this century did Paris become France's largest city, with 400,000 people and it was a trade center attracting job hunters and adventurers. The all important wood for construction and burning arrived in Paris in boatloads and giant floats, some 250 feet long and maneuvering these under the arches of bridges took great skill. Charcoal came from the forest of Othe via Sens. A great carrageway was constructed for the king from Paris to Orleans. (Ref. 260 ) The French aptitude for high fashion was shown late in the century when the effeminate Henri III allegedly wore 6,000 yards of lace at the 1577 Estates General at Blois. By the end of the century the great market, Halles, had been reconstructed and restored to old levels of commercial activity, making a "renaissance" of a type. This must not be taken to mean that everywhere there was prosperity, however. In 1587 some 17,000 poverty-stricken people presented themselves under the walls of Paris. (Ref. 292 ) In some periods Parisian food supply was very inadequate and some reports state that the dying people were eating dead dogs, garbage, rats, and even children

Ambroise Pare, surgeon to four kings, has been called the "Father of Modern Surgery". In military medicine he gave up the use of the cautery and used soothing dressings. Trained only by apprenticeship to a barber and then a wound dresser, he revolutionized the treatment of wounds. He wrote the treatise "A Universal Surgery" in 1561 and published his famous Ten Books of Surgery in 1564. (Ref. 74 , 125 ) The political decline of the Valois royal family may have been due to syphilis, which had been brought back by French soldiers after a military fray against Naples, in 1494. The French army also brought typhus back from Naples during another excursion there in 1526. In another vein, it is interesting that when Henri Valois was besieging Paris, just prior to his becoming King Henri IV in 1590, Parisians used carrier pigeons to keep in touch with the outside world, a custom in use at times since the ancient Greeks. (Ref. 122 )