Table of Contents

Contents: Preface; Introduction: Religion and economic motivation: some French insights on an old controversy; The Renaissance: François Hotman and Jean Bodin: the dilemma of 16th-century French constitutionalism; The legacy of Jean Bodin: absolutism, populism or constitutionalism?; Clovis and Constantine: the uses of history in 16th-century Gallicanism; The Grand Siècle: Stoicism and Roman example: Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England; Precept, example and truth: Degory Wheare and the ars historica; The three faces of Henri, Duc de Rohan; Descartes and Pascal; Retz and La Rochefoucauld;The Enlightenment: Voltaire and the Massacre of St Bartholomew; Turgot and Condorcet: progress, reform and revolution; The Abbé Raynal,1713-1796: an intellectual odyssey; Liberty by degrees: Raynal and Diderot on the British constitution; Renaissance jurists and ’enlightened’ magistrates: perspectives on feudalism in 18th-century France; Constitutions old and new: Henrion de Pansey before and after the French Revolution; The Romantics: The French Romantics and the Renaissance; The French Romantics on comparative revolution; The historical novel and the French Romantics; Oliver Cromwell and the French romantics; Index.