grew into the most powerful, united king-
dom in Europe. Henry and his successor
Louis XIII built new roads and canals, pro-
moted the growth of textiles and other in-
dustries in the north, reformed and im-
proved French agriculture, and built the
French army and navy into a military force
second to none in the western world. The
Bourbons, through a system of their in-
tendants, dominated the French nobles
and extended their absolute control over
the kingdom’s many counties, duchies, and
the semi-independent domains of the no-
bility. Under Louis XIV, France fought sev-
eral wars for more territory in the north
and east; but when the king revoked the
Edict of Nantes in 1685 an exodus of Prot-
estants from northern France took place,
weakening the kingdom’s productive in-
dustries.
In 1700, when the king of Spain died
without an heir, Louis contested the throne
of Spain with the Habsburg dynasty of
Austria. England, the Netherlands, and
Austria formed a coalition against the am-
bitious French. A War of the Spanish Suc-
cession lasted until 1714, when Louis fi-
nally succeeded in placing his grandson on
the throne of Spain, at the cost of nearly
emptying the French treasury. At his death
Louis had reigned longer than any other
king in the history of Europe. Under his
great-grandson, Louis XV, France lost sev-
eral major wars in Europe and North
America, further damaging the kingdom’s
finances and leading to the widespread un-
rest that brought about the French Revo-
lution.
SEEALSO: France; Henry IV
Bracciolini, Poggio ............................
(1380–1459)
A leading humanist and scholar of the Ital-
ian Renaissance, Poggio Bracciolini was
born Giovanni Francesco Poggio Braccio-
lini in the village of Terranuova, in Tus-
cany. A scholar of Latin and Greek, he
could write and speak in both of these lan-
guages. He was an expert copyist and a
tireless collector of ancient manuscripts,
bringing hundreds of unknown works to
light for the first time, and inspiring a gen-
eration of scholars to make their own re-
searches into the writing and philosophies
of the ancients. As a young man he jour-
neyed to Rome, where he became a papal
secretary, serving first with Boniface IX.
He traveled with the popes, in whose ser-
vice he had access to the libraries of mon-
asteries and churches where many books
had been stored for centuries. While the
popes were embroiled in the Great Schism
that divided the Catholic Church between
the rival popes and their supporters in Avi-
gnon and Rome, Bracciolini brought to
light important discourses of the Roman
orator Cicero. He painstakingly copied
down hundreds of damaged fragments and
manuscripts, including books of Vitruvius,
Marcus Quintilian, Titus Petronius, Titus
Maccias Plautus, and other Latin authors
who had been completely unknown dur-
ing the Middle Ages.
In 1452 Bracciolini left the service of
the popes and returned to Florence. He
had earned a reputation as a speaker and a
writer of panegyrics (praise for the dead),
as a translator, and a writer of essays on
customs and morals, includingOn the Vi-
cissitudes of Fortune, On Nobility, andOn
Marriage in Old Age. He was also known
for satires and obscene fables written in
beautifully expressive Latin, collected un-
der the titleFacetiae,aswellasinvectives,
or essays that criticized members of the
clergy for their hypocrisy and vice. He
translated the works of ancient Greeks, in-
cluding Xenophon, into Latin, then theBracciolini, Poggio