A European Informational Website
learn more
France in the Middle Ages covers an area roughly corresponding to modern day France, from the death of Charlemagne in 814 to the middle of the 15th century. The Middle Ages in France were marked by (1) the Viking invasions and the piecemeal dismantling of the Carolingian Empire by local powers, (2) the elaboration of the seigneurial economic system and the feudal system of rights and obligations between lords and vassals, (3) the growth of the region controlled by the House of Capet and their struggles with the expanding Norman and Angevin regions, (4) a period of artistic and literary outpouring from the 12th to the early 14th centuries, (5) the rise of the Valois dynasty, the protracted dynastic crisis of the Hundred Years' War with the Kingdom of England and the catastrophic Black Death epidemic, and (6) the expansion of the French nation in the 15th century and the creation of a sense of French identity.