Chapter XXV: Louis XI. (1461-1483.) (4)

In spite of so many arbitrary precautions and violations of justice, the will of Louis XI. met, even in a parliament thus distorted, with some resistance. Three of the commissioners added to the court abstained from taking any part in the proceedings; three of the councillors pronounced against the penalty of death; and the king's own son-in-law, Sire de Beaujeu, who presided, confined himself to collecting the votes without delivering an opinion, and to announcing the decision. It was to the effect that "James d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, was guilty of high treason, and, as such, deprived of all honors, dignities, and prerogatives, and sentenced to be beheaded and executed according to justice." Furthermore the court declared all his possessions confiscated and lapsed to the king. The sentence, determined upon at Noyon on the 10th of July, 1477, was made known to the Duke of Nemours on the 4th of August, in the Bastille, and carried out, the same day, in front of the market-place. A disgusting detail, reproduced by several modern writers, has almost been received into history. Louis XI., it is said, ordered the children of the Duke of Nemours to be placed under the scaffold, and be sprinkled with their father's blood. None of his contemporaries, even the most hostile to Louis XI., and even amongst those who, at the states- general held in 1484, one of them after his death, raised their voices against the trial of the Duke of Nemours, and in favor of his children, has made any mention of this pretended atrocity. Amongst the men who have reigned and governed ably, Louis XI. is one of those who could be most justly taxed with cruel indifference when cruelty might be useful to him; but the more ground there is for severe judgment upon the chieftains of nations, the stronger is the interdict against overstepping the limit justified and authorized by facts.

The same rule of historical equity makes it incumbent upon us to remark that, in spite of his feelings of suspicion and revenge, Louis XI. could perfectly well appreciate the men of honor in whom he was able to have confidence, and would actually confide in them even contrary to ordinary probabilities. He numbered amongst his most distinguished servants three men who had begun by serving his enemies, and whom he conquered, so to speak, by his penetration and his firm mental grasp of policy. The first was Philip of Chabannes, Count de Dampmartin, an able and faithful military leader under Charles VII., so suspected by Louis XI. at his accession, that, when weary of living in apprehension and retirement he came, in 1463, and presented himself to the king, who was on his way to Bordeaux, "Ask you justice or mercy?" demanded Louis. "Justice, sir," was the answer. "Very well, then," replied the king, "I banish you forever from the kingdom." And he issued an order to that effect, at the same time giving Dampmartin a large sum to supply the wants of exile. It is credible that Louis already knew the worth of the man, and wished in this way to render their reconciliation more easy. Three years afterwards, in 1466, he restored to Dampmartin his possessions together with express marks of royal favor, and twelve years later, in 1478, in spite of certain gusts of doubt and disquietude which had passed across his mind as to Dampmartin under circumstances critical for both of them, the king wrote to him, "Sir Grand Master, I have received your letters, and I do assure you, by the faith of my body, that I am right joyous that you provided so well for your affair at Quesnoy, for one would have said that you and the rest of the old ones were no longer any good in an affair of war, and we and the rest of the young ones would have gotten the honor for ourselves. Search, I pray you, to the very roots the case of those who would have betrayed us, and punish them so well that they shall never do you harm. I have always told you that you have no need to ask me for leave to go and do your business, for I am sure that you would not abandon mine without having provided for everything. Wherefore, I put myself in your hands, and you can go away without leave. All goes well; and I am much better pleased at your holding your own so well than if you had risked a loss of two to one. And so, farewell!" In 1465, another man of war, Odet d'Aydie, Lord of Lescun in Warn, had commanded at Montlhery the troops of the Dukes of Berry and Brittany against Louis XI.; and, in 1469, the king, who had found means of making his acquaintance, and who "was wiser," says Commynes, "in the conduct of such treaties than any other prince of his time," resolved to employ him in his difficult relations with his brother Charles, then Duke of Guienne, "promising him that he and his servants, and he especially, should profit thereby." Three years afterwards, in 1472, Louis made Lescun Count of Comminges, "wherein he showed good judgment," adds Commynes, "saying that no peril would come of putting in his hands that which he did put, for never, during those past dissensions, had the said Lescun a mind to have any communication with the English, or to consent that the places of Normandy should be handed over to them;" and to the end of his life Louis XI. kept up the confidence which Lescun had inspired by his judicious fidelity in the case of this great question. There is no need to make any addition to the name of Philip de Commynes, the most precious of the politic conquests made by Louis in the matter of eminent counsellors, to whom he remained as faithful as they were themselves faithful and useful to him. The _Memoires of Commynes_ are the most striking proof of the rare and unfettered political intellect placed by the future historian at the king's service, and of the estimation in which the king had wit enough to hold it.

Louis XI. rendered to France, four centuries ago, during a reign of twenty-two years, three great services, the traces and influence of which exist to this day. He prosecuted steadily the work of Joan of Arc and Charles VII., the expulsion of a foreign kingship and the triumph of national independence and national dignity. By means of the provinces which he successively won, wholly or partly, Burgundy, Franche-Comte, Artois, Provence, Anjou, Roussillon, and Barrois, he caused France to make a great stride towards territorial unity within her natural boundaries. By the defeat he inflicted on the great vassals, the favor he showed the middle classes, and the use he had the sense to make of this new social force, he contributed powerfully to the formation of the French nation, and to its unity under a national government. Feudal society had not an idea of how to form itself into a nation, or discipline its forces under one head; Louis XI. proved its political weakness, determined its fall, and labored to place in its stead France and monarchy. Herein are the great facts of his reign, and the proofs of his superior mind.

But side by side with these powerful symptoms of a new regimen appeared also the vices of which that regimen contained the germ, and those of the man himself who was laboring to found it. Feudal society, perceiving itself to be threatened, at one time attacked Louis XI. with passion, at another entered into violent disputes against him; and Louis, in order to struggle with it, employed all the practices, at one time crafty and at another violent, that belong to absolute power. Craft usually predominated in his proceedings, violence being often too perilous for him to risk it; he did not consider himself in a condition to say brazen-facedly, "Might before right;" but he disregarded right in the case of his adversaries, and he did not deny himself any artifice, any lie, any baseness, however specious, in order to trick them or ruin them secretly, when he did not feel himself in a position to crush them at a blow. "The end justifies the means"--that was his maxim; and the end, in his case, was sometimes a great and legitimate political object, nothing less than the dominant interest of France, but far more often his own personal interest, something necessary to his own success or his own gratification. No loftiness, no greatness of soul, was natural to him; and the more experience of life he had, the more he became selfish and devoid of moral sense and of sympathy with other men, whether rivals, tools, or subjects. All found out before long, not only how little account he made of them, but also what cruel pleasure he sometimes took in making them conscious of his disdain and his power. He was "familiar," but not by no means "vulgar;" he was in conversation able and agreeable, with a mixture, however, of petulance and indiscretion, even when he was meditating some perfidy; and "there is much need," he used to say, "that my tongue should sometimes serve me; it has hurt me often enough." The most puerile superstitions, as well as those most akin to a blind piety, found their way into his mind. When he received any bad news, he would cast aside forever the dress he was wearing when the news came; and of death he had a dread which was carried to the extent of pusillanimity and ridiculousness. "Whilst he was every day," says M. de Barante, "becoming more suspicious, more absolute, more terrible to his children, to the princes of the blood, to his old servants, and to his wisest counsellors, there was one man who, without any fear of his wrath, treated him with brutal rudeness. This was James Cattier, his doctor. When the king would sometimes complain of it before certain confidential servants, 'I know very well,' Cattier would say, that some fine morning you'll send me where you've sent so many others; but, 'sdeath, you'll not live a week after!'" Then the king would coax him, overwhelm him with caresses, raise his salary to ten thousand crowns a month, make him a present of rich lordships; and he ended by making him premier president of the Court of Exchequer. All churches and all sanctuaries of any small celebrity were recipients of his oblations, and it was not the salvation of his soul, but life and health, that he asked for in return. One day there was being repeated, on his account and in his presence, an orison to St. Eutropius, who was implored to grant health to the soul and health to the body. "The latter will be enough," said the king; "it is not right to bother the saint for too many things at once." He showed great devotion for images which had received benediction, and often had one of them sewn upon his hat. Hawkers used to come and bring them to him; and one day he gave a hundred and sixty livres to a pedler who had in his pack one that had received benediction at Aix-la-Chapelle.

Whatever may have been, in the middle ages, the taste and the custom in respect of such practices, they were regarded with less respect in the fifteenth than in the twelfth century, and many people scoffed at the trust that Louis XI. placed in them, or doubted his sincerity.

Whether they were sincere or assumed, the superstitions of Louis XI. did not prevent him from appreciating and promoting the progress of civilization, towards which the fifteenth century saw the first real general impulse. He favored the free development of industry and trade; he protected printing, in its infancy, and scientific studies, especially the study of medicine; by his authorization, it is said, the operation for the stone was tried, for the first time in France, upon a criminal under sentence of death, who recovered, and was pardoned; and he welcomed the philological scholars who were at this time laboring to diffuse through Western Europe the works of Greek and Roman antiquity. He instituted, at first for his own and before long for the public service, post-horses and the letter-post within his kingdom. Towards intellectual and social movement he had not the mistrust and antipathy of an old, one-grooved, worn-out, unproductive despotism; his kingly despotism was new, and, one might almost say, innovational, for it sprang and was growing up from the ruins of feudal rights and liberties which had inevitably ended in monarchy. But despotism's good services are short-lived; it has no need to last long before it generates iniquity and tyranny; and that of Louis XI., in the latter part of his reign, bore its natural, unavoidable fruits. "His mistrust," says M. de Barante, "became horrible, and almost insane; every year he had surrounded his castle of Plessis with more walls, ditches, and rails. On the towers were iron sheds, a shelter from arrows, and even artillery. More than eighteen hundred of those planks bristling with nails, called caltrops, were distributed over the yonder side of the ditch. There were every day four hundred crossbow-men on duty, with orders to fire on whosoever approached. Every suspected passer-by was seized, and carried off to Tristan l'Hermite, the provost-marshal. No great proofs were required for a swing on the gibbet, or for the inside of a sack and a plunge in the Loire. . . . Men who, like Sire de Commynes, had been the king's servants, and who had lived in his confidence, had no doubt but that he had committed cruelties and perpetrated the blackest treachery; still they asked themselves whether there had not been a necessity, and whether he had not, in the first instance, been the object of criminal machinations against which he had to defend himself. . . . But, throughout the kingdom, the multitude of his subjects who had not received kindnesses from him, nor lived in familiarity with him, nor known of the ability displayed in his plans, nor enjoyed the wit of his conversation, judged only by that which came out before their eyes; the imposts had been made much heavier, without any consent on the part of the states-general; the talliages, which under Charles VII. brought in only eighteen hundred thousand livres, rose, under Louis XI., to thirty-seven hundred thousand; the kingdom was ruined, and the people were at the last extremity of misery; the prisons were full; none was secure of life or property; the greatest in the land, and even the princes of the blood, were not safe in their own houses.

An unexpected event occurred at this time to give a little more heart to Louis XI., who was now very ill, and to mingle with his gloomy broodings a gleam of future prospects. Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Rash, died at Bruges on the 27th of March, 1482, leaving to her husband, Maximilian of Austria, a daughter, hardly three years of age, Princess Marguerite by name, heiress to the Burgundian-Flemish dominions which had not come into the possession of the King of France. Louis, as soon as he heard the news, conceived the idea and the hope of making up for the reverse he had experienced five years previously through the marriage of Mary of Burgundy. He would arrange espousals between his son, the _dauphin_, Charles, thirteen years old, and the infant princess left by Mary, and thus recover for the crown of France the beautiful domains he had allowed to slip from him. A negotiation was opened at once on the subject between Louis, Maximilian, and the estates of Flanders, and, on the 23d of December, 1482, it resulted in a treaty, concluded at Arras, which arranged for the marriage, and regulated the mutual conditions. In January, 1483, the ambassadors from the estates of Flanders and from Maximilian, who then for the first time assumed the title of archduke, came to France for the ratification of the treaty. Having been first received with great marks of satisfaction at Paris, they repaired to Plessis-les-Tours. Great was their surprise at seeing this melancholy abode, this sort of prison, into which "there was no admittance save after so many formalities and precautions." When they had waited a while, they were introduced, in the evening, into a room badly lighted. In a dark corner was the king, seated in an arm-chair. They moved towards him; and then, in a weak and trembling voice, but still, as it seemed, in a bantering tone, Louis asked pardon of the Abbot of St. Peter of Ghent and of the other ambassadors for not being able to rise and greet them. After having heard what they had to say, and having held a short conversation with them, he sent for the Gospels for to make oath. He excused himself for being obliged to take the holy volume in his left hand, for his right was paralyzed and his arm supported in a sling. Then, holding the volume of the Gospels, he raised it up painfully, and placing upon it the elbow of his right arm, he made oath. Thus appeared in the eyes of the Flemings that king who had done them so much harm, and who was obtaining of them so good a treaty by the fear with which he inspired them, all dying as he was.

On the 2d of June following, the infant princess, Marguerite of Austria, was brought by a solemn embassy to Paris first, and then, on the 23d of June, to Amboise, where her betrothal to the _dauphin_, Charles, was celebrated. Louis XI. did not feel fit for removal to Amboise; and he would not even receive at Plessis-les-Tours the new Flemish embassy. Assuredly neither the king nor any of the actors in this regal scene foresaw that this marriage, which they with reason looked upon as a triumph of French policy, would never be consummated; that, at the request of the court of France, the pope would annul the betrothal; and that, nine years after its celebration, in 1492, the Austrian princess, after having been brought up at Amboise under the guardianship of the Duchess of Bourbon, Anne, eldest daughter of Louis XI., would be sent back to her father, Emperor Maximilian, by her affianced, Charles VIII., then King of France, who preferred to become the husband of a French princess with a French province for dowry, Anne, Duchess of Brittany.

It was in March, 1481, that Louis XI. had his first attack of that apoplexy, which, after several repeated strokes, reduced him to such a state of weakness that in June, 1483, he felt himself and declared himself not in a fit state to be present at his son's betrothal. Two months afterwards, on the 25th of August, St. Louis's day, he had a fresh stroke, and lost all consciousness and speech. He soon recovered them; but remained so weak that he could not raise his hand to his mouth, and, under the conviction that he was a dead man, he sent for his son-in-law, Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and "Go," said he, "to Amboise, to the king, my son; I have intrusted him as well as the government of the kingdom to your charge and my daughter's care. You know all I have enjoined upon him; watch and see that it be observed. Let him show favor and confidence towards those who have done me good service and whom I have named to him. You know, too, of whom he should beware, and who must not be suffered to come near him." He sent for the chancellor from Paris, and bade him go and take the seals to the king. "Go to the king," he said to the captains of his guards, to his archers, to his huntsmen, to all his household. "His speech never failed him after it had come back to him," says Commynes, "nor his senses; he was constantly saying something of great sense and never in all his illness, which lasted from Monday to Saturday evening, did he complain, as do all sorts of folk when they feel ill. . . . "Notwithstanding all those commands he recovered heart," adds Commynes, "and had good hope of escaping." In conversation at odd times with some of his servants, and even with Commynes himself, he had begged them, whenever they saw that he was very ill, not to mention that cruel word death; he had even made a covenant with them, that they should say no more to him than, "Don't talk much," which would be sufficient warning. But his doctor, James Coettier, and his barber, Oliver the Devil, whom he had ennobled and enriched under the name of Oliver le Daim, did not treat him with so much indulgence. "They notified his death to him in brief and harsh terms," says Commynes; "'Sir, we must do our duty; have no longer hope in your holy man of Calabria or in other matters, for assuredly all is over with you; think of your soul; there is no help for it.' 'I have hope in God that He will aid me,' answered Louis, coldly; 'peradventure I am not so ill as you think.'

"He endured with manly virtue so cruel a sentence," says Commynes, "and everything, even to death, more than any man I ever saw die; he spoke as coolly as if he had never been ill." He gave minute orders about his funeral, sepulchre, and tomb. He would be laid at Notre-Dame de Clery, and not, like his ancestors, at St. Denis; his statue was to be gilt bronze, kneeling, face to the altar, head uncovered, and hands clasped within his hat, as was his ordinary custom. Not having died on the battle-field and sword in hand, he would be dressed in hunting-garb, with jack-boots, a hunting-horn, slung over his shoulder, his hound lying beside him, his order of St. Michael round his neck, and his sword at his side. As to the likeness, he asked to be represented, not as he was in his latter days, bald, bow-backed, and wasted, but as he was in his youth and in the vigor of his age, face pretty full, nose aquiline, hair long, and falling down behind to his shoulders. After having taken all these pains about himself after his death, he gave his chief remaining thoughts to France and his son. "Orders must be sent," said he, "to M. d'Esquerdes [Philip de Crevecoeur, Baron d'Esquerdes, a distinguished warrior, who, after the death of Charles the Rash, had, through the agency of Commynes, gone over to the service of Louis XI., and was in command of his army] to attempt no doings as to Calais. We had thought to drive out the English from this the last corner they hold in the kingdom; but such matters are too weighty; all that business ends with me. M. d'Esquerdes must give up such designs, and come and guard my son without budging from his side for at least six months. Let an end be put, also, to all our disputes with Brittany, and let this Duke Francis be allowed to live in peace without any more causing him trouble or fear. This is the way in which we, must now deal with all our neighbors. Five or six good years of peace are needful for the kingdom. My poor people have suffered too much; they are in great desolation. If God had been pleased to grant me life, I should have put it all to rights; it was my thought and my desire, let my son be strictly charged to remain at peace, especially whilst he is so young. At a later time, when he is older, and when the kingdom is in good case, he shall do as he pleases about it."

On Saturday, August 30, 1483, between seven and eight in the evening, Louis XI. expired, saying, "Our Lady of Embrun, my good mistress, have pity upon me; the mercies of the Lord will I sing forever (misericordias Domini in ceternum cantabo)."

"It was a great cause of joy throughout the kingdom," says M. de Barante with truth, in his _Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne_: "this moment had been impatiently waited for as a deliverance, and as the ending of so many woes and fears. For a long time past no King of France had been so heavy on his people or so hated by them."

This was certainly just, and at the same time ungrateful.

Louis XI. had rendered France great service, but in a manner void of frankness, dignity, or lustre; he had made the contemporary generation pay dearly for it by reason of the spectacle he presented of trickery, perfidy, and vindictive cruelty, and by his arbitrary and tyrannical exercise of kingly power. People are not content to have useful service; they must admire or love; and Louis XI. inspired France with neither of those sentiments. He has had the good fortune to be described and appraised, in his own day too, by the most distinguished and independent of his councillors, Philip de Commynes, and, three centuries afterwards, by one of the most thoughtful and the soundest intellects amongst the philosophers of the eighteenth century, Duclos, who, moreover, had the advantage of being historiographer of France, and of having studied the history of that reign in authentic documents. We reproduce here the two judgments, the agreement of which is remarkable:--

"God," says Commynes, "had created our king more wise, liberal, and full of manly virtue than the princes who reigned with him and in his day, and who were his enemies and neighbors. In all there was good and evil, for they were men; but without flattery, in him were more things appertaining to the office of king than in any of the rest. I saw them nearly all, and knew what they could do."

"Louis XI.," says Duclos, "was far from being without reproach; few princes have deserved so much; but it may be said that he was equally celebrated for his vices and his virtues, and that, everything being put in the balance, he was a king."

We will be more exacting than Commynes and Duclos; we will not consent to apply to Louis XI. the words liberal, virtuous, and virtue; he had nor greatness of soul, nor uprightness of character, nor kindness of heart; he was neither a great king nor a good king; but we may assent to Duclos' last word--he was a king.