Provinces of France


was organized into provinces until March 4, 1790, when the establishment of the department system superseded provinces. The provinces of France were roughly equivalent to the historic counties of England. They came into their final form over the course of many hundreds of years, as many dozens of semi-independent fiefs and former independent countries came to be incorporated into the French royal domain. Because of the haphazard manner in which the provinces evolved, each had its own sets of feudal traditions, laws, taxation systems, courts, etc., and the system represented an impediment to effective administration of the entire country from Paris. During the early years of the French Revolution, in an attempt to centralize the administration of the whole country, and to remove the influence of the French nobility over the country, the entirety of the province system was abolished and replaced by the system of departments in use today.
In some cases, several modern regions or departments share names with the historic provinces, and their borders may cover roughly the same territory.

List of former provinces of France

The list below shows the major provinces of France at the time of their dissolution during the French Revolution. Capital cities are shown in parentheses. Bold indicates a city that was also the seat of a judicial and quasi-legislative body called either a parlement or a conseil souverain. In some cases, this body met in a different city from the capital.
  1. Île-de-France
  2. Berry
  3. Orléanais
  4. Normandy
  5. Languedoc
  6. Lyonnais
  7. Dauphiné
  8. Champagne
  9. Aunis
  10. Saintonge
  11. Poitou
  12. Guyenne and Gascony
  13. Burgundy
  14. Picardy
  15. Anjou
  16. Provence
  17. Angoumois
  18. Bourbonnais
  19. Marche
  20. Brittany
  21. Maine
  22. Touraine
  23. Limousin
  24. Foix
  25. Auvergne
  26. Béarn
  27. Alsace
  28. Artois
  29. Roussillon
  30. Flanders and Hainaut
  31. Franche-Comté
  32. Lorraine and Barrois ; Trois-Évêchés : Metz, Toul and Verdun
  33. Corsica
  34. Nivernais
Areas that were not part of the Kingdom of France, though they are currently parts of Metropolitan France:

Arms

Partial display of historical provincial arms:
Alençon15. Anjou28. Artois2. Berry13. Burgundy20. Brittany8.Champagne7. Dauphiné24. Foix
12. GasconyGévaudan32. Lorraine21. Maine19. Marche4. Normandy37. Savoy22. TouraineValois