French Kingdom from Xth in the XVth century: the affirmation of the state:

I. The king governs the kingdom
The consecration ceremony of the kings of France takes place in Reims, for the memory of the Clovis baptism.
The king receives from the archbishop the crowns and the other insignias of the royal power: the sword, the gold spurs and the stick surmounted one-handed of ivory.
Then, the Royal peers choose him. They show as well as they recognize him like the most powerful among them.
This ceremony makes him a sacred person, who is placed above the other, king by the grace (= will) of God
The king detains several powers:
I. Legislative power ® to make the laws while taking edicts
II. - Ministerial power ® to apply the laws
- Judicial power ® to impose the justice (hand of justice = symbol given during the consecration)
- The right to strike coins: the valid ecu in the whole kingdom
-The right to raise the taxes: outside of the royal estate, he must convene the states (Lords, bishops, Burghers) for an exceptional lifting (case of war).
The king, to reinforce his powers, creates the bailiffs *. They represent the king in the provinces. They run the king's properties and pronounce the justice in his name. The king can send royal investigators to control them.
II - The Capetean and kingdom of France

Genealogy of the French Kings

Toward the year Thousand, kingdom of France spreads in a limits fixed by the Verdun treaty in 843. It is divided in numerous territories which some of it belongs to powerful Lords, vassals of the king of France, as the duke of Normandy, the count of Flanders…
The new king, Hugues Capet, exerts his authority over the royal territory that spreads around Paris.
Until 1180, these successors enlarge the royal territory. But, the king of England, Henri II Plantagenet (1154 - 1189), who possesses numerous territories in France, becomes a dangerous rival.
Philippe August accuses the king of England, his vassal for the lands that he detains in France, of betrayal,
Following a long war, Philippe August beats Jean without lands and his allies (count of Flanders…) in Bovines in 1214 and confiscates from him Normandy, the Anjou and the Poitou region.

I. A great king from the XIIIth century: Louis IX so-called Saint Louis (1226 - 1270)

Louis IX is for his contemporaries the model of a Christian king; anxious of giving raises the peace.
He reinforces the royal power by appointing bailiffs *.
He develops the royal justice.
He dies in Tunisia in the way back from the second crusade.
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III -The monarchy in the turmoil of the war of Hundred-years-war (1337 - 1453)
In 1328, Charles IV, son of Philippe the fair, dies without a male heir. The elder Lords designs to succeed him a German cousin, Philippe VI DE Valois.
But the king of England, grandson of Philippe the fair, is the direct heir by his mother. He pretends to be the legitimate France king. He enters in war against the king of France in 1337.
After the serious defeats of the first half conflict (Crecy in 1346), a vast part of the kingdom is controlled by the English.
The situation reverses then thanks to the ride of joan of ARC (1429 - 1431). She allows to the King Charles VII to get consecrated in Reims, then to reconquer the kingdom.