The pacification imposed by the kings on all classes of the population allowed a rapid resumption of economic activities. Charles VII did a lot to ensure that the peasants resume their crops, rebuild their villages, and return the abandoned lands to production. Thus, under Louis XI, traditional industries appeared to be reawakened, alongside other new industries favored in a special way by the king, such as the silk industry and the exploitation of mines. The fairs were restored with the hope of rebuilding the old organs of commercial life; new criteria were then introduced by Louis XI with commercial agreements between state and state, with the organization of commercial companies. Pure merchants such as Jacques Coeur and Jean de Baune rose to great power in the government: the first with his central house in Montpellier and branches in various cities of France and other Mediterranean countries tried to renew the old commercial relations with the Levant. Marseilles also regained importance in Mediterranean trade; Everywhere, then, with special concessions, attempts were made to attract foreign merchants: Lombards and Tuscans reappeared in Lyon, Paris, in the cities of the north, as well as the Hanseatic, Flemish, Castilian and Portuguese. It is true, however, that the economic reconstruction of France could not in so few decades restore the power and prosperity of the century. XIII.
According to zipcodesexplorer.com, Charles VII and Louis XI made great efforts to reaffirm the old prestige of France in Europe; nor did he expect to have completely rejected the English or tamed feudality. Since England still mistress of Calais, it always represented a sure enemy for the future and the Duchy of Burgundy with its aspirations to enlargements on the Rhine seriously threatened the kingdom, the need was felt to renew alliances, to resume the old web of friendships. and relationships. Lively was the activity of Charles VII in Lorraine and Alsace. Having established good agreements with the emperor Frederick III, the king sent an army of adventurers in 1444, who won the forces of the Swiss leagues in Basel and then signed a pact of friendship with them; he hastened to take the protection of the Duke of Lorraine against the cities that opposed him and thus put garrison in Verdun and Toul; he made an alliance with the archbishops of Trier and Cologne, with the elector palatine and the duke of Saxony. In Italy the French influence almost disappeared, reappeared and energetic: the protectorate over Genoa was re-established, the expansionist ambitions of the Dukes of Savoy were severely restrained, forced to abandon the Valentinois occupied when the king was in Bourges; authority over the papacy reaffirmed, which owed the cessation of the Basel schism to France; in Milan the Sforza family, like the Visconti already, placed themselves under French protection. Thus the whole peninsula realized that the Hundred Years War had ceased and that the hegemonic policy of Philip VI was resuming. More insistent,
Louis XI’s ambition to exploit the internal struggles of Aragon to set foot south of the Pyrenees was more open: in 1462 he began to send aid to King John II in struggle with the Catalans; disinterested in his ally, he occupied Roussillon and Cerdagne on his own and for a long time nurtured the hope of annexing all of Catalonia. The whole foreign policy of the French monarchy, from the Treaty of Arras of 1435, was dominated by the Burgundy problem. If Philip the Good, satisfied with having inflicted on the king the humiliation of having to recognize himself guilty of the murder of John Without Fear, had contented himself with reigning with magnificence, respected and honored by France still engaged in the struggle with the English, his son Charles the Bold developed a policy of conquest aimed at taking over the entire Rhine valley so as to isolate the monarchy of France from Germany; his diplomatic activity throughout Europe tried to undermine and overthrow the French influence by forcing Louis XI to a continuous effort to counter the blows of the adversary. In the Franco-Burgundian conflict, other powers also took part such as the Germanic Empire, the Swiss leagues, Savoy; the skill of French diplomacy was shown above all in preventing the reconstitution of the Burgundy alliance with England. Louis XI saw the most serious danger disappear with the death of Charles the Bold in the battle with the Swiss under the walls of Nancy (1477), but he could not prevent Flanders from passing into the hands of the Habsburgs, heralds of new future conflicts. The death of Louis XI (1483) marks the end of a historical period for France that can be said to be dedicated to national renewal. The monarchy, mistress of all the forces of the state, the nation proud of having won the test of foreign invasion and civil war, now represented a new France, ready to assert its claims to European supremacy with greater energy and conscience.
