ABSTRACT
In 2007 the newly elected French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, declared ‘François Mitterrand travelled for his own amusement . . . Not me. I’ve been President for four months. There’s no time to lose. I must meet, with all haste, as many leaders as possible.’ 1 Travel was essential to his perception of the exercise of power, where he would personally represent his country and its diplomatic aims. Like a monarch, he was trailed by an impressive entourage and a throng of reporting journalists. In the Ancien Régime, travel, or its notable absence, was equally important in the exercise of French royal power. This was as true for Merovingian kings who ‘ritually journeyed’ around their realm, as for the Capetians. 2 By the medieval period, travel by rulers became necessary for international relations where frontier meetings sealed alliances. However, as Colette Beaune and Albert Babeau have shown, political murders hindered travel: indeed, Louis XI (r.1461–83) and Edward IV of England (r.1461–83) were forced to embrace through a primitive security grill at Pecquigny in 1475. 3 As such, the early modern period saw ambassadors more commonly take the place and the risks of travelling royals. For Lucien Bély, they were the ‘travellers for the prince’. 4 Given that it was dangerous to travel, this chapter will consider the foreign journeys undertaken by sixteenth-century Valois monarchs, exploring how they generated change, ideas and images which extended royal authority, rather than threatening its survival. Of course, travel for conquest extended dynastic power, whether by upholding inherited claims to territories or meeting relatives, but this chapter will also demonstrate that it indirectly strengthened the state and shaped royal identity.
