Fundamental laws of the kingdom of France

The French Monarchy, of 987 (sacring of Hugues Capet) with 1789 (beginning of the Revolution), was not, strictly speaking, constitutional. However, the King was subjected to a certain number of habits, called Lois of the kingdom , then Fundamental laws starting from 1575 approximately. The king commits himself respecting them by oath, during his crowning. The king enacting in his turn of the laws, one can consider these “fundamental laws” as “what any other law must respect” (cf the Hiérarchie of the standards of Hans Kelsen).

It is the direction of the proverb " a faith, a law, a roi" , where the royal laws must initially respect the divine laws and in the second place the fundamental laws.

The object of the fundamental laws

In fact laws “tend to the conservation of the kingdom”. One can release two principal functions:

Rules of the devolution of the Crown

It is the main object of these habits: they have very as a finality to prevent that the kingdom passes in foreign hands (in particular with kings d' Angleterre, hereditary enemies of the French).

heredity : the son of the king succeeds his father. First Capétiens make crown their son of their alive. Philippe Auguste (1180 - 1223) does not consider any more this precaution necessary, the principle being quite allowed.
primogeniture : oldest of wire of the king becomes king. With died of Hugues (1026), oldest son of Robert II, this last makes crown his oldest son Henri, the future Henri I {{er}}.
the masculinity : the girls are isolated succession. The reason first of this rule is the will to prevent that the kingdom, constituting a dowry, does not pass between foreign hands. The Salic law is a reinterpretation a posteriori of a civil law very old of the Francs saliens, refreshed in VIIIe century by the Carolingians under the name of lex salica carolina . These are these manuscripts that the experts of XIVe and XVe centuries consult to transform the law, legal tool, in an ideological instrument intended for exalter the franque nation and the line of its kings. The chronicler Richard Lescot the redécouvre in 1358 in the library of Saint-Denis; it will be used to justify a posteriori the exclusion of the women to the succession of the throne of France, devoted in 1317 and 1328 (succession of Jean I {{er}} and of Charles IV). Two proverbs of it are drawn: " the kingdom of France could not fall from lance out of stopper rod " (the lance being a male attribute and the stopper rod, a feminine attribute) and " Nemo AD alium transfers potest quam ipse habet " (one cannot transmit any more rights that one has some, therefore a woman cannot transmit death taxes which it does not have). First was released at the time of the succession of Jean Ier in 1317; the throne is transferred not to his/her half-sister Jeanne but to her uncle, Philippe V Length. The second, it, are released in 1419, when the king of England Henri V, at the end of the Guerre One hundred Year old, wants to put his son Henri VI on the throne of France, by drawing aside Charles VII. Its claims are based on the fact that the mother of its son was Catherine de Valois, girl of Charles VI of France. However, being a woman, it could not transmit rights to the succession of the Crown which it did not have. Other explanations were thereafter advanced: on the one hand, functions of priest imposed by the sacring (Pierre Jouvenel of Ursins written: " King de France devoted is nobody ecclesiastic " , but also: " It is virile office which to be a king de France "), in addition, the wars which were to carry out the king against his vassal rebels.
male collaterality : in the event of male absence of heir, the Crown is allocated to the more male close relative of the king. In 1589, Henri III and Henri de Bourbon, the future Henri IV, were first cousins by their mothers but only parents with the 21e degree according to the male collaterality.
the unavailability of the Crown : the king can neither designate his successor, nor to give up the Crown or to abdicate. She was in particular pointed out to break the will of Louis XIV, which incorporated its two legitimated sons the duke of Maine and the count of Toulouse in the succession with the throne if there would be no more other going down.
the continuity of the Crown (or instantaneity of the Crown): as soon as the king dies, its successor is king at once. Two proverbs are the consequence: “The King died; live the King! ”, pronounced for the first time in 1498 with died of Charles VIII. The principle was added according to which “the King never dies”; the Chancellor thus carried never mourning, since justice could be suspended at no time.
catholicity : the king must be catholic. If this rule seemed a long time obvious, it is the problem of the succession of Henri III which made it formulate clearly (edict of Union). Henri IV was the new king by the preceding rules but was Protestant. It is the stop of the president of the Parlement of Paris Lemaistre in 1593 which put all these fundamental laws on the same plan which sliced. Henri IV abjured (July 25th 1593), was crowned with Chartres (February 27th 1594), which enabled him to be a king with the eyes of the people.
the last principle is that of the French nationality of the King. One finds it at the time of the succession of Charles IV (Philippe VI is king because Edouard III, in addition to being excluded by the principle from masculinity in his second meaning, is king d' Angleterre, therefore of foreign nationality). A chronicler writes that the barons chose Philippe de Valois because it “had been born from the kingdom and so much had friends and allies”. In the same way, the continuator of the chronicler Benedictine Guillaume de Nangis writes that “those of the Kingdom of France could not readily suffer to be subjected to the sovereignty of the English”. Thereafter, at the time of the General states of 1593, the candidature of Isabelle, girl of Philippe II of Spain, is pushed back in the name of this principle, allowing Henri IV to impose itself.

The argument of the right feodo-vassalic was also suggested in 1328: vassal cannot reach the crown of France. The king of England being vassal of king de France, it cannot succeed to him.

The separation of the three orders

Before being the classes of the people who exert them, the three orders correspond to a distinction of the capacities religious, military and economic whose origins are former to the kingdom of France and Christianity, since, in its Commentaires on the wars of Gaules , Jules César noted the existence of a sacerdotal class (druids and vates) and of a warlike class (knights) as in Rome. King is neither first of ecclesiastic (sacring is not sacrament) neither first among noble, nor first of craftsmen (even if the kings learned a manual trade), it does not belong to any of the three orders which it must maintain in a report/ratio of justice, commes functions separate and hierarchical in dignity.

The limitation of the royal capacities to the public domain

The royal acts, edicts, ordinances, declarations, only relate almost exclusively to the matter of the public law, i.e. the organization of the jurisdictions and the administrations, the codes of civil procedure and criminal, the statute of the orders, the courses, the cities, of the parishes and the professions, the currency, the convocations of the courses, the nomination of large officers (governors, etc.), liftings of troops or gendarmes, treaties, etc. The source of the private law remains the jurisprudence of the Parliaments which apply local habits (they are the statutes of people on one arise territorial), which has the role of jurisdiction of last degree, and which episodically makes of it the syntèse by stops of payment which make the synthesis of a question. The acts of administration relate only to the public domain, i.e. the field of the crown, the seas, the rivers, the ways royal, the royal foundations, etc. The king cannot intervene in the private field (" Coalman is Master at lui") or to take again concessions or rights legitimately had without a justified court order (confiscation, expropriation, etc…).

The protection of the subjects

obligation of the assent by the people with the lifting of all new tax , by the meeting of General states ;
obligation to respect the privileges (of Latin privi : deprived, particular and lex, legis : the law), of the people (noble of sword or dress and priests) and of the cities (middle-class), like any other custom or habit;
the inalienability of the goods of the Crown , corollary of unavailability: the king cannot have freely (sale, gift, etc) the goods of the Crown and in particular most invaluable of them, the kingdom. The law was released in 1419 by Jean de Terrevermeille, in order to prohibit by advance any clause of treaty favorable to the king of England at the time of the third part of the Guerre One hundred Year old. She is recalled to François I {{er}} after the disaster of Pavia (1525): having been captured by Charles Quint, it, for own way of ransom, had had to sign a treaty yielding the Burgundy to him. Of return in France, it made it break by the Parlement of Paris, with the title which any suspension of the territory could not be made without the assent of the interested population (which, in fact, refused).

Random links: