1584 [Transcriber's note: "d." has been used here as a substitute for the "dagger" symbol (Unicode U+2020) that signifies the person's year of death.] Geographically, France was nearly the same four hundred years ago as it is today, save that the eastern {184} frontier was somewhat farther west.

The line then ran west of the three Bishoprics, Verdun, Metz and Toul, west of Franche Comte, just east of Lyons and again west of Savoy and Nice.
Politically, France was then one of a group of semi-popular, semi-autocratic monarchies.

The rights of the people were asserted by the States General which met from time to time, usually at much longer intervals than the German Diets or the English Parliaments, and by the Parlements of the various provinces.

These latter were rather high courts of justice than legislative assemblies, but their right to register new laws gave them a considerable amount of authority.

The Parlement of Paris was the most conspicuous and perhaps the most powerful.
[Sidenote: Concordat, 1516] The power of the monarch, resting primarily on the support of the bourgeois class, was greatly augmented by the Concordat of 1516, which made the monarch almost the supreme head of the Gallican church.