法国需要一个强化的中央权威和一个复杂的战略来保护自己免受包围。

 

在戴高乐看来，法国在一个漫长的历史过程中积累了其崇高地位的要素，这个过程始于中世纪的欧洲，当时各封建公国通过调整权力平衡来解决他们之间的分歧。

通过这种方式，法国的核心部分早在六世纪法兰克国王克洛维时期就发展成为一个中央管理的政体。

 

As de Gaulle saw it, France had accumulated the elements of its lofty stature over a long historical process beginning in medieval Europe, when feudal principalities settled their disagreements through adjustments to the balance of power. By this means, the core of France developed as a centrally governed polity as early as the sixth century under the Frankish King Clovis.

 

到了17世纪初，随着奥地利的哈布斯堡君主制在中欧和最西边的西班牙扩张，法国需要一个强化的中央权威和一个复杂的战略来保护自己免受包围。

这项任务落在了红衣主教黎塞留（Armand-Jean du Plessis）的身上，他在1624年至1642年期间担任路易十三的首席部长，是法国后来在路易十四的领导下成为欧洲杰出强国的主要设计师。

黎塞留摒弃了基于王朝忠诚或教派归属的普遍战略，而是根据 "国家理由"（raisons d'état）来指导法国的内部和外部政策：也就是说，完全根据对情况的现实判断来灵活地追求国家利益。

 

By the early seventeenth century, with the Habsburg monarchy in Austria expanding over Central Europe and as far west as Spain, France needed an enhanced central authority and a complex strategy to defend itself from encirclement. The task fell to Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, who served as chief minister to Louis XIII from 1624 to 1642 and was the principal architect of France’s later becoming the preeminent European power under Louis XIV. Rejecting the prevailing strategies based on dynastic loyalty or confessional affiliation, Richelieu instead oriented France’s internal and external policies in accord with ‘reasons of state’ (raisons d’état): that is, the flexible pursuit of the national interest based entirely on a realistic judgment of circumstances.