Chapter X: The Reign of Louis Xi: the Triumph of the Crown (2)

The assault was useless; discouragement had taken hold of the people of Liège; the bravest of them had perished. It was a Sunday; the people who were left were not expecting an attack. “The cloth was laid in every house; all were preparing to sit down to dinner.” The Burgundians advanced through deserted streets; Louis marched quietly, surrounded by his men and crying, “Long live Burgundy!” The duke came back to join him and together they went to thank God in the cathedral of St. Lambert. It was the only church preserved from the fury and pillaging of the Burgundians; at noon there was nothing more left to take, either in the houses or churches. Louis heaped Charles with congratulations and compliments. The duke was charmed and mollified. The next day as they were conversing together: “My brother,” said the king to the duke, “if you have any further need of my assistance, do not spare me; but if you have nothing further for me to do, it is fitting that I return to Paris in order to proclaim in my court of parliament the arrangement we have agreed upon; otherwise it runs the risk of becoming invalid; you know that that is the custom of France. Next summer we must meet again: you will come to your duchy of Burgundy; I shall go to visit you, and we will pass a month together joyously in making good cheer.” Charles answered nothing, sent for the treaty which they had concluded shortly before at Péronne, and gave the king his choice of confirming or abandoning it, excusing himself in veiled terms for having thus forced him and led him about. The king appeared to be satisfied with the treaty, and the 2nd of November, 1468, the second day after the capture of Liège, he left for France. The duke accompanied him half a league out from the city. As they were on the point of taking leave of each other, the king said to him: “If perchance my brother Charles, who is in Brittany, is not pleased with the partition I have made him, out of love for you, what do you want me to do?” “If he does not want to take it,” answered the duke, “do you take measures to satisfy him; I will leave the matter to you two.” Louis asked for nothing more; he returned home free and confident in his own powers, “after having passed the three hardest weeks of his life.”[i]

_The Return of Louis to France_

To appreciate the import of the promises which Charles had exacted from the king, it must be recalled that Champagne and Brie, which Louis promised to transfer to his brother, were geographically so situated as to separate--or unite--the duchy of Burgundy and the northern possessions of Charles the Bold. Hence Charles’ interest in having this territory controlled by his friend, the king’s brother, rather than by his enemy, the king. Quite as obviously, Louis’ interests were opposed to such an arrangement, and of course he had no intention of fulfilling his agreement. But he wished to avoid fulfilment in the most diplomatic manner possible. This he accomplished by persuading his weak-minded brother to take the territory of Guienne instead of that specified in the compact with Charles. Thus Louis’ brother was separated by all France from the duke of Burgundy instead of being his nearest neighbour; and Champagne continued a barrier, not a bridge, between the Burgundian possessions. So in the end the diplomacy of Louis stood him in good stead, notwithstanding his momentary discomfiture.[a]

Louis’ bearing was far from proud when he recrossed the frontier. He had received two great checks from the Burgundian power; in 1465 a check of power, in 1468 a check of honour. Had it been only a question of honour Louis might have easily consoled himself; but, aside from honour, his reputation as an able ruler came into question. It was that which made him ill from shame. He knew his contemporaries. The treason to and the sacrifice of Liège troubled him less than his blunder at Péronne. It was not so much indignation as mockery that he dreaded. Paris received from him an order to neither speak, write, paint, or sing anything of the detested name of “Monseigneur de Bourgoyne,” and an order was sent out that all birds, magpies, crows, starlings, who were making the streets resound with allusions to the king’s discomfiture at Péronne, should be delivered to a commissioner of the king.[j] At least so runs the story.

When Louis arrived in Paris strange discoveries awaited him. He intercepted letters from his favourite the cardinal. He found that his friend and gossip was the friend and gossip also of the duke of Burgundy, the adviser of all that had happened at Péronne, especially of his forced presence at the siege, the degrading clauses of the final treaty, and the general harshness of his treatment. He found at the same time that the cardinal was in correspondence with his brother Charles, late leader of the league, who was still in resistance to his authority; and, in short, that he was betrayed in every point. The king was offended at the perjury of his subject, but the man was a thousand times more angry at the error in his judgment. The son of the tailor, in the red stockings, had outwitted the son of St. Louis with the crown on his head. La Balue, though prince of the church and bishop of a diocese, was imprisoned in an iron cage, about eight feet square, and kept like a wild beast in his den for eleven years in the castle of Loches. All that can be said in extenuation of this pitiless proceeding was that the man was the disgrace of his order and his country, and that the instrument of his torture (as the natural justice of mankind is so prone to make out in other instances) was of his own invention.

There were some institutions, as well as individuals, which it was now Louis’ purpose to get within his power. Edward III of England, reposing upon the laurels of Crécy, had founded the order of the Garter in 1349. John of France, in rapid imitation, as we have already seen, founded the order of the Star. Philip of Burgundy had founded the order of the Golden Fleece in 1429, and the principles of all these lordly confederations were derived from the ideas of chivalry which the romances had spread among the people. They were to be brotherhoods of noble knights, bound together by the bonds of mutual honour; they were to succour the weak, bridle the strong, and pay honour, as they fantastically expressed it, by purity of life and courage of conduct, to God and their ladies. But the Garter was a foreign badge; the Golden Fleece was a symbol of his subject and liegeman; the Star had fallen into disrepute from its promiscuous distribution among the favourites of the crown; and Louis XI determined on instituting an order of chivalry himself.

It was to be select in its membership, limited in its number, generous in its professions, and he fondly hoped the Garter and Fleece would soon sink into insignificance compared to the order of St. Michael. The first brethren were named from the highest families in France; the remaining great feudatories, who had preserved some relics of their hereditary independence, were fixed upon to wear this mark of the suzerain’s friendship. But when they came to read the oaths of admission, they found that the order of St. Michael was in reality a bond of stronger obligation than the feudal laws had ever enjoined. It was a solemn association for the prevention of disobedience to the sovereign. The members were to swear submission in all things to the chief of the order; they were to enter into no agreements with each other, or anyone else, without the king’s consent; they were to submit to such punishment, in case of breach of the rules, as the order might appoint; and, in short, the brotherhood of noble knights sank, in the degrading treatment of its founder, into a confederation of spies. Armed with this new weapon, the king tried its effect on the duke of Brittany, who was discontented with many things that had occurred. If he accepted, he would be bound by the statutes; if he refused, it would be an insult to the dignity of the king. The duke temporised, and consulted the duke of Burgundy. The fiery Charles saw through the design, and swore to defend his neighbour in case of a quarrel with the crown. Louis, nothing daunted, sent the collar of the order to Burgundy himself. Burgundy refused it, and Louis’ object was gained. He discovered who was bold or strong enough to stand out against him, and the war began. Not openly--it was not yet time to make it a matter of national honour--but the angry subject and hostile king were perfectly aware of each other’s designs.

_Edward IV of England aids Charles the Bold_

[Sidenote: [1469-1470 A.D.]]

Their animosity first broke out in the sides they chose in the great struggle then going on in England, called the Wars of the Roses. Edward of York, representing the direct line of Edward III, had taken arms against the feeble and dissolute Henry VI of the Lancastrian house. Margaret of Anjou had mingled in the fray, and embittered it. We know how fortune alternately swayed to the red and the white of the emblematic flowers. Warwick, who is known in English history as the “king-maker,” had just established Edward IV on the throne, and then failed, when he had quarrelled with the monarch he had set up, in restoring Henry. While preparing an expedition for this purpose in France, he had fitted out privateers, who enriched themselves equally on the English and Flemish traders, and then found refuge in the French harbours. Charles of Burgundy complained; Louis retorted with accusations of his having aided the new king of England in his attacks on the coasts of Normandy, and of having accepted the English order of the Garter, though he had refused his own St. Michael. He summoned the vassal to appear before his parliament in Paris, and the vassal threw the summoners into prison. Louis saw the game now in his hands. He had put his enemy legally in the wrong, and, moreover, he had all the counsellors, and favourites, and warriors, by whom Charles was surrounded, in his pay. We need not, however, waste much pity on the duke. He was nearly in the same situation with regard to the courtiers and officers of the king. When the armies lay face to face, and famine had almost placed the Burgundians in Louis’ hands, Charles sent a flag of truce with a statement and proofs of the infidelity of half the princes and feudatories who commanded the royal troops. Charles of France, now duke of Guienne, was at the head of the deceivers, and was anxious to gain Charles’ good-will, in hopes of obtaining the hand of his daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy. Battle, with traitors commanding both the armies, would have been madness, and Louis agreed to a truce. Bitterer thoughts than ever, about the pride and falsehood of the nobility, rankled in that ignoble heart. Another incident soon occurred that brought affairs to a crisis. One of his spies, being in the castle of the count de Foix, saw a mass of torn papers in a corner of his room, which had previously been occupied by a messenger of the duke of Burgundy. The man gathered up the fragments, saw a name or two that excited his attention, pasted them all together, and was enabled to present to the king a bond of firm alliance, and the signatures of enemies whom he might well have trembled to see united against him--Edward of England, triumphant at the battle of Barnet, where his enemy Warwick was slain, and now firmly established on the English throne; the duke of Burgundy, Nicholas of Lorraine, the duke of Brittany, and, above all, Charles of France, duke of Guienne. These were all to be on him at once, and, as one of the papers said, were to set so many greyhounds at his heels that he could not know where to fly for safety.

[Sidenote: [1470-1471 A.D.]]

Louis, however, was more of the fox than the hare. He doubled on his pursuers, and tempted the duke of Burgundy with the promise of restoring him some towns on the Somme, and letting him have his full revenge on his former favourite, the constable Saint-Pol, who had betrayed him to the king. Charles, on the other hand, was to let Louis do as he chose with the dukes of Brittany and Guienne.[f] The duke of Guienne, indeed, was not likely to be an annoyance much longer to his brother the king, for he was seized of a mortal malady, presumably consumption. He died May 24th, 1472, at Bordeaux. There was a rumour current that he had been poisoned along with his mistress the lady of Monsoreau, by the abbé of St. Jean d’Angély, at the instance of Louis himself. The story of a peach, cut with a poisoned knife and shared by the lovers, became famous. There were many suspicious circumstances, and very likely the king may have watched the progress of his brother’s illness “with ill-disguised hope” as Martin[j] suggests; but the fact that the duke had suspected no one during his long illness and had named Louis as his executor may perhaps justify us in giving the king the benefit of the doubt for the nonce. “Examples of fratricide are all too common in this sinister century,” says Martin; but he adds, half doubtingly, that “the best justification of the king appears to lie in the long illness of his brother. A man poisoned with fruit does not survive eight months.” In any case, the death of the duke removed one of the most important obstacles to Louis’ plans for the centralisation of power and the ultimate autocracy of the crown.[a]

[Sidenote: [1471-1474 A.D.]]

Now, then, there was to be war to the knife carried on by the crown against the nobility. Burgundy was bought off by promises and gifts; England was soothed by concessions. But within the boundaries of France itself, no limit was put to the vengeance and cruelty of the king. He arrested the duke of Alençon in full peace, and immured him in a dungeon in Paris. He sent an army into the territories of the count d’Armagnac, and a detachment of it burst into his house, and murdered him in his bed. They also forced his wife, who was pregnant, to drink a mixture which produced immediate death. His brother was thrown into the Bastille, and kept in a cave below the level of the Seine, so that the water penetrated the floor. The wretched prisoner lived for eleven years in this manner, without shoes or proper clothing; and when released at the end of that time, on the accession of Charles VIII, was found to have fallen into a state of fatuity. A short cessation in this career of murder and revenge was produced by a new combination against Louis’ life and crown. French honour and patriotism had now fallen so low that the princes and great vassals, in order to get revenge upon their oppressor, agreed to assign the crown of France to Edward IV of England. He was to be crowned at Rheims, and already he bestowed rewards upon his adherents as if he were in possession of the kingdom. The treaty united many contending factions, with but one object in common--the destruction of him whom all now knew to be their destroyer.

_Gold and Diplomacy make Louis the Victor_

Burgundy and Brittany and Saint-Pol forgot their animosities, and signed the bond. But Louis detected the plot. The old plans were tried, and succeeded. Promises scattered the confederates, and they became distrustful of each other. Edward had disembarked in France at the head of an English army. Louis sent for great bags of coined money from Paris, and signed several papers, with the names in blank, bestowing salaries and pensions for distribution among the English council. He disguised a common lackey as a herald, and sent him to an interview with the invader. The lackey was as clever and subservient as if he had been bred an ambassador, and won over the luxurious king. Louis flattered his ambition and bribed his avarice. He called him “king of England and France, and lord of Ireland,” contenting himself with the title of “king of the French.” He gave him 60,000 crowns on condition of withdrawing his forces at once, and promised him 50,000 crowns a year so long as they both lived. Edward was so captivated by the arts and liberality of Louis that he agreed to visit him at Paris. But Louis repented of the invitation he had given, and put him off, for fear he should grow too fond of that most fascinating of towns. “It is better,” he said, “the sea should be between us”; and to attain this object no expense was spared. Gifts were heaped upon the officers, and all the public-houses were made free to the retiring army. The English pocketed the money, and marched from pothouse to pothouse with the greatest satisfaction.

[Sidenote: [1474-1476 A.D.]]

At last it was reported to Louis that his invaders were safe home, and he resolved to make use of his victory. The fate of the constable Saint-Pol was sealed. Conscious of his approaching doom, he threw himself on the protection of his former friend, the duke of Burgundy. Charles hated him for his falsehood, but could not reject a suppliant. He told him to take shelter in St. Quentin. Louis, however, was at his heels with twenty thousand men. He fled, and Charles, rash in promise but infirm of purpose, forgot his chivalry, and surrendered him on the threat of hostilities against himself. He was tried for treason at Paris, and condemned to lose his head on the place de Grève. Thousands of the brave and noble have spilt their blood since that time in the great square which faces the Hôtel-de-Ville, and allows a last view of the towers of Notre Dame; but this is the first occasion in which a prince, a near ally of the throne,--for he had married a sister of the queen,--was exposed to the sword of the headsman for a crime against the crown. The supremacy of the king’s will was now so well established that there was no further use for secret assassination. A public execution struck more awe into the populace, and kept the nobility in more subjection, than a stab in the dark or a poisoned peach. Tristan l’Hermite, almost equally with Louis, was from henceforward the acknowledged governor of France. But as long as Charles the Bold preserved his independent attitude in Burgundy, the discontented had always a refuge from the justice of the king.

_Last Deeds of Charles the Bold_

Fortunately at this time the overweening Burgundian became engaged in controversy with the strong-armed highlanders of Switzerland. They had offended him, by refusing compensation for some injury they had done to one of his adherents. To be resisted by a set of republican shepherds was too much for the knightly pride of the most touchy prince in Christendom. A great army was raised, and poured down upon the town of Granson. The inhabitants were put to the sword or drowned in the Lake of Neuchâtel. All the cantons were irritated at the shameless deed, and rushed to rescue or revenge. Charles met them in a narrow defile at the head of his horsemen, who could not act on such unequal ground. The first rank fell back upon the second, the second carried confusion into the rear. The quick-footed Swiss still pressed on, and at last a complete panic seized the Burgundian host. Charles himself spurred out of the confusion, and galloped as far as his horse could go. Never had the eyes of the mountaineers rested on such wealth and splendour as met them in the tents of the discomfited army--silken curtains, golden vessels, barrels of money, and armour of the finest polish. A jewel was taken by a soldier from the private chest of the duke, sold to a priest for a florin, sold by him for five shillings, and is now considered the greatest ornament of the French crown, and one of the richest stones in Europe. Louis did not know how to proceed in these astonishing circumstances. He had signed a treaty to maintain the peace towards the duke, and yet could not resist showing his approbation of the Swiss. With the Swiss also he had signed a treaty, by which he was bound to give them aid in men and money whenever they were attacked. He compromised the two obligations by abstaining from assaulting the Burgundian, and from sending assistance to the Swiss. He could not fulfil both stipulations, and it was more economical to execute neither. He gave the mountaineers, however, unmistakable evidence of his sympathy in their cause; and when Charles, in the same year, came forth at the head of another powerful army, Louis encouraged the cantons to resist. The same thing as before occurred, with only the variation of place. Morat was a repetition of Granson. The slaughter of the defeated Burgundians was so great that, till the latter end of the eighteenth century, a vast monument was still to be seen upon the field of battle, built up of the bones of the slain, and called the Bone-Hill of Morat.

[Sidenote: [1476-1477 A.D.]]

The battle of Nancy followed in 1477, and raised the Swiss to the summit of military fame, besides weakening Burgundy so as to render it forever powerless against France. In the midst of winter, ill-provided, and doubtful of the issue themselves, the hosts of Burgundy moved on, and laid siege to the town of Nancy. Charles was no longer the impetuous warrior he had been. He was broken in spirit, and at times almost mad with disappointment and chagrin. He had even summoned to command his army an adventurer from Italy, of the name of Campobasso. Campobasso was, as might be expected, a correspondent of Louis, and had offered to place Charles in his hands.

But Louis played, of course, a double game with the deceiver and his dupe. To show how generous he was, he warned the duke of the insincerity of his general, feeling well assured that his advice would be attributed to dishonourable motives; and accordingly it was thought a weak invention of the enemy, and Campobasso was more trusted than before. Again the Swiss battalions, aided by the forces of René of Lorraine, began to appear. In the midst of a great storm, and in a hard frost, Charles resolved to attack them. Campobasso sent over an offer of his treachery to the gallant mountaineers; but they despised a traitor, and scorned the disgrace of having such an auxiliary. He therefore retired to the rear of the Burgundian line, to intercept the fugitives, and enrich himself with their ransom. There were few fugitives, however, to ransom; for, as the horses slipped upon the icy plain, the victory was easier than at either Granson or Morat. The earth was heaped with corpses, and among them, after a long search, was found the body of the fiery duke, fixed in the snow, and so disfigured that he was only recognised by a scar on his face and the length of his nails, which he had allowed to grow, as a sign of mourning, ever since his calamities began. Not deserving of a very favourable epithet, this harsh and arrogant potentate closed a life of violence with a death of defeat.

But now all men’s eyes were turned with earnest expectation to the first move in the great drama of intrigue and policy which his demise was certain to produce. His daughter had been the great card which he had held in his hands for many years. Lady of Hainault and Flanders, and all the Low Countries, she was a bait which none of the princes could resist.

MARY OF BURGUNDY

Charles had silenced enemies and gathered friends, by a mere hint of the bestowal of Mary’s hand. He had played it against the name of king, and promised it to the son of Frederick the emperor, if that successor of the Roman cæsars would consent to convert his ducal coronet into a royal crown. The treaties and arrangements, and all the preparations for the betrothal and the creation, would be amusing, if they did not show how low morality and honour had fallen in those days. The emperor said, “Let the young people marry, and I will name you king.” But the duke, who gave no credit, said, “Make me king, and I will give your son my daughter.” Neither would trust the other. The emperor hurried off by stealth from the place of meeting, when he found the duke had summoned an increase to his escort; and Charles, vowing vengeance, and fearful of ridicule, packed up the royal crown he had brought with him beside the sceptre and mantle, and took his way to his states with no higher rank than when he came. Other expectations had been equally disappointed, and now, in the year 1477, Mary was an orphan twenty years of age, handsome and well-informed, with a portion in her own right which would make any man she chose a sovereign prince, or double the grandeur of the greatest potentate. When Louis heard of the father’s death, his first thought was, of course, to secure the daughter’s succession. He knelt to all his saints in gratitude for the defeat of his rival, walked on a pilgrimage of grace to a church in Anjou, and vowed silver banisters to the tomb of St. Martin of Tours. Having purified his mind by these religious exercises, he sent a peremptory demand for the restoration of the two Burgundies to the crown, as they lapsed for want of male heirs.

Of this there could be no doubt with respect to the duchy, which had been conveyed by John to Philip the Bold; but the county of the same name was capable of feminine holding, and if Mary had been in a condition to assert her claims, might have refused obedience to the king. Mary, however, was lonely in the midst of all that wealth. She had no disinterested guardian to apply to, and made only a feeble protest when the parliament of Burgundy, purchased or intimidated, recognised its feudal obligation, and transferred its allegiance to the French crown. Holland, however, and Flanders, and Artois, and large territories in Germany, and the disputed cities on the Somme, belonged to her still. If she had given her hand to some gallant soldier who would have defended her states, she might have aroused the chivalrous feelings of all the gentlemen in Europe on her behalf. But this she did not try, knowing too well, perhaps, that chivalrous feelings were limited to books of fiction.

The encumbered heiress wrote in her despair to Louis himself. Louis was her godfather, and she had no other friend. She sent four trusty counsellors to lay her case before him. She begged his protection, and made a confidential request that he would conduct all his correspondence with her through no one but these trusted friends. “You want, of course, to know what I intend to do,” said Louis, when he had read the letter on the day of audience; and the four envoys bowed. “I will marry my godchild Mary to my son, the dauphin. I will rule her states in their joint names, till she is old enough to do homage. I will take possession of the male fief at once, and if anyone opposes my decisions, I have forces enough to make my will obeyed.” There was no circumlocution here, and the ambassadors were silent with surprise. The dauphin was a sickly boy of eight years old, and their young mistress, as we have seen, was in the flower of her age. The king, in return for the visit of the Burgundian envoys, sent an envoy of his own. His barber was a quick-witted, unprincipled adventurer, of the name of Oliver le Daim. He had come originally from Ghent, and was, of course, master of the Flemish tongue. This was the dignified emissary whom France despatched to the highest princess in Europe. He covered his original baseness with a pinchbeck title, and the barber took his northward way under the name of the count of Meulan. But the count of Meulan smelt dreadfully of the shop. He never could get the shaving-basin out of his countrymen’s sight; and at his first reception he behaved so unlike a royal ambassador that he was hissed by the audience, not without allusions to the propriety of throwing him out of the window. He was hustled downstairs, and was glad to slip out of his house and out of the town in the darkness of the night, and make his way back to his employer without having presented his letters of recall.

[Sidenote: [1477-1478 A.D.]]

Louis was delighted, for, while these things were going on at Ghent, he had succeeded with the messengers of poor Mary, and did not care if they had hanged the barber-ambassador on a lamp-post in the street. The trusty counsellors, won over by his address and protestations, surrendered Artois to his honourable keeping; and on their return were executed by the states of Flanders, in spite of the prayers and intercession of the princess. The accusation was not for having betrayed their mistress, but for having constituted themselves members of the council of Four, in whom Mary had told Louis she put all her confidence. She had told nobody else, and declared the innocence of her hapless friends. But Louis, with his usual generosity, had forwarded the letter in which his goddaughter made the fatal avowal, and the discovery was almost fatal to herself. The states were republican in tendency, and resolved to submit as little as possible to the governance of a woman. They tormented her with their advice and wearied her with their reclamations, till she fortunately escaped their further importunities by persuading them to consent to her marriage with Maximilian, the son of the emperor, the man to whom her father had resolved to give her in return for the title of king. Louis was quieted for a time by the fear of offending the emperor, but carried on more fiercely than ever his war against feudalism, as represented by the great nobility at home. Burgundy was gone--Artois was his own--Normandy had long been attached to the crown.

The duke of Brittany, uneasy at the rapid extirpation of his brethren, intrigued with England; but Louis intercepted the letters, convicted him by his own handwriting, and forced him to a treaty which rendered him utterly dependent. The duke had seen that a cloud was gathering from the increased religious fervour visible in the king. When a murder or a treachery was on hand, his activity in visiting shrines and vowing church ornaments became remarkable. People trembled when they saw the meanly dressed, slouch-gaited, sallow-faced old man travelling from altar to altar, and sticking his bonnet full of little images of saints, and pouring out flatteries and adulations to the statues of the Virgin. A tale of blood was sure to follow; and in 1478 the wildest expectations of Paris were surpassed by the horror of one of his executions. There had been no such cold-blooded monster since the days of Tiberius. The duke de Nemours was representative of the great house of Armagnac, and was married to a princess of Anjou, first cousin of the king. A headstrong, discontented, and ambitious man, he had joined in the league of the Public Weal, and in many of the intrigues against the monarch since that time. Louis had taken no notice till he could secure his revenge. But two years before this, he had got him in his power, and kept the unfortunate man in chains. He was now tried for treason and condemned and executed.[f] In after times it was related that the king had placed the children of the culprit beneath the scaffold, that a father’s blood might bathe their innocent heads. But this is only a fable of later invention that marks the reaction against the memory of Louis XI. “What is more certain and equally odious, however,” says Michelet,[o] “is that one of the judges who were to receive the goods of the condemned, feeling insecure of the heritage unless he had the natural heir in his power, demanded to be given custody of the eldest son of Nemours. The king had the barbarity to deliver up the child, who promptly disappeared.” Moreover, the king suspended from office three counsellors who had not favoured the death penalty.[j]

WAR WITH MAXIMILIAN

[Sidenote: [1478-1479 A.D.]]

Louis’ pilgrimages and prayers must have increased in frequency shortly after this, for a tremendous thought had come into his head, and it would require a vast amount of saintly aid to make it tolerable to his subjects. This was no less than the trial for felony and treason of the deceased duke of Burgundy. A court was called, the culprit was summoned, barristers were appointed to support the accusation; his whole life was inquired into, his faults pointed out, and malicious antiquarians ascended to the actions of his ancestors; and the murder of the duke of Orleans, in the reign of Charles VI, was urged as an aggravation of his crimes. After so much eloquence and such convincing proofs, the verdict could not be doubtful. The duke of Burgundy was sure to be found guilty of the crimes laid to his charge, and his estates forfeited to the crown. Maximilian, the husband of Mary, took the alarm. He begged his father the emperor to interfere. He was afraid that action would follow the judgment, and tried at least to delay the sentence. The diet of the states of Germany was about to meet, and might take up the cause of their chiefs. Louis therefore allowed the trial to expire, and had merely the satisfaction of showing that a grand vassal was not safe from his insults and vengeance even after death. Yet the daughter and son-in-law of the insulted potentate could not be expected to remain satisfied under so insolent a proceeding. Maximilian collected his forces, and declared war against the king of France.[f]

By uniting all his forces, Maximilian had assembled, at St. Omer, an army of about 27,400. On Sunday, the 25th of July, 1479, he reached Arques, waiting there three days, and on the Thursday following, the 29th of July, attacked and invested Thérouanne. The belief in his numerical superiority, the desire to retrieve his repulses in Burgundy, and perhaps also the absence of the king, whom he knew to be occupied in Dijon, decided him to take the initiative. Besides, he could only keep his army together for a limited period. This was certainly the moment to try his fortune.

It was really not until Saturday afternoon, the 7th of August, that the principal action took place. Des Querdes, with six hundred picked men, tried to surround the Flemish on his right. The Flemish men-at-arms hastened to defend the spot attacked. Soon the whole of the cavalry was engaged, and the struggle became serious. But the Flemish, separated from their infantry, were forced to give in and began to flee towards Aire, Thérouanne, and St. Omer. The French thought they had won the battle. Encouraged by this success Des Querdes hotly pursued the fugitives, urged on by the hope of capturing rich prizes. “Philip de Raverstein,” says the chronicle, “was wearing a mantle of cloth of gold, so that, mistaking him for Duke Maximilian himself, they pursued him to the gates of Aire, but paid dearly for their mistake.”

The battle was far from being over, as Des Querdes imagined. Very few men-at-arms remained to support the French infantry, and Maximilian’s hope revived. He redoubled his efforts, aided by the Flemish soldiers and German crossbows. The French archers, already seeing that all exertions to break the enemy’s lines were fruitless, began to slacken their efforts and their discouragement was obvious. Just then, the lord de St. André arrived with the garrison from Thérouanne. He could still, in this critical moment, hope for victory. But instead of making for the thick of the combat the new arrivals threw themselves upon the enemy’s baggage and provisions, counting upon a rich spoil. The lords of Romont and Nassau, seeing the archers busy pillaging, fell upon them. In this tumult they threw them into disorder. Then Maximilian, whilst his cavalry was escaping, himself caused confusion in the ranks of the French by pursuing them with the small number of knights which he could still command, and remained master of the battle-field. But he was thus obliged to raise the siege of Thérouanne, and could only continue the campaign two months later.

Louis XI was much upset when he heard of this defeat. Perhaps he regretted the absence of his experienced and proven chief, who had defended his frontier so well. Comines,[c] who was then returning from his mission in Italy, has preserved for us the portrait of the king: “I thought the king our master grown older and beginning to break up. However, he conducts his affairs with great common sense. I was with him when he received the news of the battle. He was very downcast, for he is not accustomed to defeat; it even seemed as if everything always happened to suit his pleasure. His common sense helped him in this hour of trouble. At first, he feared that his advantages had been lost; but when he knew the truth, he was patient and decided to act so that such things should not be undertaken without his knowledge again.”

As soon as Louis XI was aware of how the men-at-arms, thinking only of making many prisoners, had lost a battle all but won, he ordered that all the prisoners and spoil should be collected, sold at auction, and the money equally divided amongst them all. This was returning to the times of Achilles, to the natural equality of the Homeric ages--an equality too often forgotten in barbarous centuries. Forbidding prisoners to be ransomed on the battle-field was already a great step gained; but again, the chiefs, sure under this system of having prisoners at a cheap rate after the battle, thought less of making any during the combat.

[Sidenote: [1479-1483 A.D.]]

But the archduke, in his turn, had to endure some annoyances. The naval campaign had been disastrous for him. Through the care and perseverance of William de Casenove, known as the vice-admiral Coulon, France was in possession of her first real fleet. For several years past, vessels were being unceasingly constructed, their forms perfected, and their size and strength increased. From henceforth, great battles could be waged upon the sea, even against the strongest. Herring fishing had, for a long time, been one of the principal resources of wealth, and a precious means of existence to the northern nations. The French admiral, taking advantage of the fact that the fishermen of Zealand and Holland were bringing into port the fruit of their labours, went to meet them, attacked them boldly, and brought nearly their entire fleet into the Norman ports. In vain did the Dutch equip other vessels to serve as escorts to the fishing boats. Coulon attacked and dispersed them and brought back more prisoners. Thus the archduke and his followers were cut off at one and the same time both from the cereals of Prussia and from the fish they depended upon.[k]

The defeat of Guinegate humbled the hopes of Louis. The war was no longer prosecuted with vigour. Even the death of Mary of Burgundy, which soon after took place, afforded him no opportunity of adding to his usurpations. A treaty, called the Treaty of Arras, was concluded between him and Maximilian, in December, 1482. Its stipulations were that the dauphin Charles should espouse Margaret of Austria, Maximilian’s daughter; and that France should acquire, as her dowry, the county of Artois, and that of Burgundy (or Franche-Comté), with other territories; those possessions reverting to Austria in case no heirs came of the marriage. Independently of these cessions, Louis acquired the duchy or province proper of Burgundy, as well as that of Picardy, as his share of the spoils of Charles the Bold. About the same time, on the death of the good king René, he inherited Provence and Anjou. René II of Lorraine made some efforts to establish a claim, but in vain. Good fortune never crowned political craft more completely than in the instance of Louis XI. That monarch had now brought all his favourite schemes to their completion: his nobles were humbled; his great rival was destroyed.[l]

LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF LOUIS

In 1480 Louis XI had a first attack of apoplexy at the château de Montils-les-Tours, called Le Plessis because it had a fortress with many enclosures. Other attacks followed this one and warned him that his end was approaching. He undertook in 1482 the pilgrimage of St. Claude, but the progress of his malady obliged him to retire to Plessis, which he never left. Here he lingered for eighteen months, seen by no one, having in attendance only a small number of officers and servants, and seeking vainly to quiet by religious devotions his customary restlessness. His illness, while subduing his physical forces, only served to increase the activity of his spirit. The more he felt his power waning the more he wished to make others feel it and he became more tyrannical in proportion to his weakness.

Meanwhile he lived in this seclusion in perpetual suspicion of everyone--not only the princes of the family, but even of the most obscure members of the household, though they had been chosen most carefully. His castle was a prison, well guarded, where he was bound, following the expression of Comines, by strange chains and enclosures, in fear of conspirators. Jealous of his power up to the last hour, “he had himself arrayed in rich vestments, such as had never been the custom before.” His isolation was such that he rarely saw even the dauphin, who was brought up far from him, in the château d’Amboise. Little by little his state of weakness effaced the king and left only the man. During this period he returned to himself, and perhaps to new thoughts; for he wished the relief of his people and a peace of six months at least. This was, also, the time of his terrors and superstitions, which have been so much exaggerated, for he retained his clearness of mind and gave proof of it even in the last days of his life. At times the king awoke in him, and made those around him feel that he was master; and he was more jealous than ever of his authority, suffering no one under any circumstances to question it.

He overwhelmed the church with donations in order to obtain acquittal of his offences, just as the ancient Merovingian kings thought to expiate their crimes on their death-beds at a similar price. He surrounded himself with priests whose prayers he desired; he brought from Calabria the famous Francis of Paula (Paola), founder of the order of Minims, for which order he had built a monastery at Plessis. His doctor, Jacques Cottier, took a scandalous part in these liberal actions. He seemed to ask of heaven not so much the salvation of the soul as the prolongation of life. Many hold that this long agony, these physical and moral sufferings, were an expiation. Comines sees in it “a punishment which God had sent upon him in this world that he might suffer less in the next, and that those who succeeded him might have more pity on the people and punish them less than he had.” He died the 30th of August, 1483, in his sixty-first year.

The opinions expressed by contemporaries on this king, whose character was so remarkable and strange, were various, but of uniform severity. Comines, whose opinion might be subject to question, as he was his minister, his confidant, and almost his accomplice, has praised but little his prodigious activity, his genius for intriguing, and his singular aptitude for the carrying on of dark schemes in all directions. John de Troyes, although recognising that the power of the country had been strengthened, the kingdom brought more into unity, and new provinces acquired, blames most strongly the means employed, the dilapidation of the finances, the ruin of the people, the excess of arbitrariness, and the injury to the morals of the public. If public opinion was mute during this reign, it does not follow that it was favourable to the king. Of course the evidence that has been preserved is too slight to be able to make a positive assertion, but the theatre and popular verse of the period show the fault-finding spirit that existed.

In truth, Louis XI left the kingdom overwhelmed with burdens, the people unhappy, the prisons full, and discontent everywhere. He is reproached with always having had a large army and never having carried on a brilliant war; with not having respected the liberty of the church; with having ceaselessly violated justice; with having preferably employed corrupt agents who were justly detested; with having acted without definite plans; with being humble in misfortune and insolent in success, commencing enterprises which were never finished. He, however, knew so well how to be master; to bring the will of others into subjection to his own; to inspire in the world, and especially in those who approached him, the sentiments of obedience, fear, and almost admiration for his political genius; in fact, he had so well filled the position of king and of prince that, even after his death and when a strong reaction had set in against his reign, a certain terror continued to be attached to his name. It would seem that no one dared oppose him; Comines himself, who has drawn his portrait with such a master hand, has in this respect a singular discretion.[e]

Guizot, after quoting Comines[c] and Duclos,[m] adds: “I am more exacting than Comines and Duclos; I cannot consent to apply to Louis XI the words “liberal,” “virtuous,” “good”; he had neither greatness of soul, uprightness of character, nor kindness of heart; he was neither a great king nor a good king; but I hold to the last word of Duclos, ‘He was a king.’”[i]

“He was a king.” That verdict, at least, no one will dispute; and for a concluding estimate of the character of his kingship, we perhaps cannot do better than to quote the judicious words of Martin:

MARTIN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XI

[Sidenote: [1461-1483 A.D.]]

Utility was Louis’ sole rule; he never comprehended what power there is in justice. In everything he preferred, sometimes to his own disadvantage, the crooked line to the straight line, stratagem to force, suavity to courage, although when necessary he had the stubborn courage of an indomitable will. He was the incarnate reaction against the Middle Ages, against its morals and its ideality as well as its errors, against its liberties as well as its anarchy. The very devoutness of Louis, the only inconsistency in a character which would otherwise have been incredible, had no more of the grand, austere fanaticism of earlier days; it was a materialistic fetichism that went back beyond the Middle Ages to the time when the barbarian kings gave the saints of heaven half the credit for their enterprises and their aims. Except for this weakness Louis XI was the most illustrious disciple of that policy of which the contemporary Italian despots gave the example and the theory of which Macchiavelli was later to set forth and give his name to. The usurper of the duchy of Milan, the famous Francesco Sforza, had been Louis XI’s master and model. Italian education invaded France earlier in politics than in fine arts.

There was one essential distinction between Louis and his masters. He was like them in his means, but different in his end. These tyrants on the other side of the Alps had only a personal, or at best a family end, while Louis pursued a common end. He was the head of a real political society, the head of a nation. On this point, and on this alone, he had a conscience. He had a strong instinct for the future and wished to leave behind a work that would endure after him. This bad man was not a bad Frenchman.

His reign, so troublous, so oppressive, so unhappy for the people, had accomplished wonderful things for the unity of the French nation. It gave to France, Picardy from the sources of the Oise to Burgundy, Provence, Anjou, Maine, Barrois, and Roussillon; and at least a provisional title to Artois and Franche-Comté. It upheld the power of France to the Pyrenees on the west, to the Jura on the east, and to the maritime Alps, and it powerfully advanced the important work of establishing natural frontiers. It had subordinated the power of great and petty lords alike and had placed under the control of the crown a great military force. It had favoured the development of the middle classes and of the industrial and commercial forces of the country. But if the growth of national power under him was immense, if social progress was in certain respects incontestable, it is equally certain that despotism made a like progress. The instruments of autocracy were fortified and perfected by him, and under him the religion of force and of strategy, “the religion of success” as Michelet terms it, everywhere dethroned the religion of duty and of right; nor is it possible to stifle morality everywhere in the political world without profoundly altering the ethics of private life. The aurora of a brilliant intellectual dawn was now appearing above the horizon; active minds turn eagerly towards the new light; but France was not in a healthy moral condition to receive the new lessons of the Renaissance.[j]

LOUIS’ INFLUENCE ON CIVILISATION

It must not be overlooked, however, that Louis had a powerful influence upon his time in other directions than that of mere statecraft. His mind was ever receptive to any novelty that did not contradict his authority. He favoured literature and science; in particular the healing art made progress under the valetudinarian king. In surgery there was at least one great conquest; the operation of lithotomy was performed for the first time under the authorisation of the king, upon a condemned criminal, who recovered and was granted his life. Louis also came to some extent under the influence of the learned Greeks, who after the overthrow of Constantinople, in 1453, scattered over western Europe. Several of these were received at the French court. The king took a certain interest also in the famous discussion between the nominalists and the realists which so long distracted the philosophical world. Acting, it is supposed, under the advice of his confessor, Louis in 1474 took the part of the nominalists and prohibited the works of Ockam, Buridan, and other realists; though three years later the prohibition was removed. Louis showed himself equally receptive in regard to the new art of printing. As early as 1469 three exponents of the wonderful new method of book-making appeared in Paris in answer to the summons of William Fichet, rector of the university, and began their work with the royal sanction. Before the close of Louis’ reign many books had been printed in Paris as well as in several of the other large cities of France. The chronicles of St. Denis were published in 1476, together with numerous other religious and classical works. A translation of the Bible appeared in 1477. From this time books multiplied so rapidly that the contemporary poets assure us with hyperbolic enthusiasm that more books are produced from day to day than formerly could be written in an entire year.[a][j]

The catholicity of interest which enabled Louis thus in the midst of his political activities to become to so considerable an extent a patron of the sciences and arts, furnishes conclusive evidence of the fulness of his mental equipment. It remains to call attention to an even more important contribution made by Louis to the amenities of civilisation. This was in the matter of the establishment of government posts. Here he was an innovator not merely for France but for the modern world; and there have been those enthusiasts who would claim for this feat a place among the three greatest achievements of the fifteenth century--the other two being the invention of printing and the discovery of America. Whatever may be thought of this estimate, there is no question that the creation of the postal service was a most important innovation, and it seems equally little in question that Louis XI was the innovator.[a][n]

_Establishment of Posts in France_