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Scholars of early modern France have traditionally perceived an alliance between the kings and the bourgeoisie leading to an absolute, centralized monarchy, perhaps as early as the reign of Francis I (1515-47). In this book historian J. Russell Major draws on 45 years of research to dispute this view, offering both a synthesis of existing scholarship and a fresh interpretation of the complex chain of events that set the stage for the politics of the French Revolution. Renaissance monarchs, Major contends, had neither the army nor the bureaucracy to create an absolute monarchy; they were strong only if they won the support of the nobility and other vocal elements of the population. At first they enjoyed this support, but the Wars of religion revealed their inherent weakness. Major describes the struggle between such statesmen as Bellievre, Sully, Marillac, and Richelieu to impose their concept of reform and includes an account of how Louis XIV created an absolute monarchy by catering to the interests of the nobility and other provincial leaders. It was this "carrot" approach, accompanied by the threat of the "stick," that undergirded his absolutism. Major concludes that the rise of absolutism was not accompanied, as has often been asserted, by the decline of the nobility. Rather, nobles were able to adapt to changing conditions that included the decline of feudalism, the invention of gunpowder, and inflation. In doing so, they remained the dominant class, whose support kings found it necessary to seek.