France in the sixteenth century

Was France in the sixteenth century as beautiful as Fernand Braudel has described it? Or was it actually a century of "blood and iron" as Henry Hiller saw it? The truth is that the history of France in the sixteenth century embodies both of these interpretations. The glories of the French Renaissance, the great prosperity of the early decades, and the conquest of Calais and the Three Bishoprics of Lorraine all existed in counterpoint to the Italian wars, the wars with the Habsburgs, the French Wars of Religion, and the severe economic depression of the last decades of the era. France in the Sixteenth Century is certain to become an indispensable classic for scholars and students of French history.