royal legislation and parliamentary decisions. In the early modern period, laws in France gradually went through unification, rationalization, and centralization. After the Hundred Years War, French kings began to assert authority over the kingdom in a quest of institutional centralization. Through the creation of a centralized absolute monarchy, an administrative and judicial system under the king also emerged by the second half of the fifteenth century. Royal legislation also greatly increased beginning in the 15th century. The Ordinance of Montils-les-Tours (1454) was an important juncture in this period, as it ordered the official recording and homologation of customary law. Customs would be compiled by local practitioners and approved by local assemblies of the three estates, with disagreements resolved by the central court. At the time, the wholesale adoption of Roman law and the ius commune would be unrealistic, as the king’s authority was insufficient to impose a unified legal system in all French provinces. In the process of recording, local customs were sometimes simplified or reformed. By the 16th century, around sixty general customs were recorded and given official status, disqualifying any unrecorded customs from having official status. Roman law remained as a reserve, to be used for argumentation and to supplement customary law. Accompanying the process of centralization and mercantilism, the king effectively initiated processes of codification in the mid 17th century. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Minister of Finance and later also Secretary of the Navy in charge of the colonial empire and trade, was main architect of the codes. The first of such codes is the 1667 Ordinance of Civil Procedure (officially known as the Ordonnance pour la reformation de la justice), which established clear and uniform procedural rules, replacing previous rules in all royal jurisdictions and in the colonies. The 1667 Ordinance is the main inspiration of the Code de procedure civile passed in 1806 under Napoleon. Other codes include the 1670 Criminal Ordinance, the 1673 Ordinance for Overland Trade (Code Marchand), and the 1681 Ordinance for Maritime Trade (Code de la Marine). Ordinances would later be drawn up on Donations (1731), Wills (1735), Falsifications (1737), and Trustees (1747), but a unified code of private law would not be passed until 1804, under Napoleon and after the French Revolution. Under King Louis XV, there would be a constant struggle between royal legislation, traditional conceptions of the law of the Realm (customs and Roman law), and parliamentary arrêts de