Chapter II (2)

Chabannes was, consequently, one of the earliest victims on the accession of Louis to the throne. Deprived of his office of grand master of France, he took flight, but he soon returned, and claimed a fair trial. The king refused to admit the claim, and ordered him to quit the kingdom; an order which he obeyed. While he was absent, his property was confiscated, and he was summoned to appear, and answer the charges against him. Confiding in his innocence, he complied with the summons; but he was found guilty of high treason, and condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to banishment by Louis; who, however, changed his mind as to the punishment, and shut him up in the Bastile.

In the Bastile Chabannes remained for four years. On the breaking out of the war, the parties in which called their confederacy the League of the Public Good, he contrived to escape; and, on his way to join the malecontents, he made himself master of the towns of St. Fargeau and St. Maurice. He was one of those who benefited by the treaty of Conflans, which terminated this war. His sentence was annulled, and his estates were restored to him.

It is a singular circumstance that, with respect to Chabannes, Louis passed at once from the extreme of hatred and suspicion, to that of kindness and confidence. He not only restored his estates, but he added to their number. At a later date, when he instituted the order of St. Michael, Chabannes was one of the first whom he nominated. Favours conferred by a gloomy and unprincipled tyrant cast a doubt on the character of the receiver, even when it has been hitherto unstained, which was not the case with the new knight. The nomination gave occasion to a severe sarcasm from the duke of Britanny. Louis having sent to him the collar of the order, the duke declined it, assigning as a reason, that “he did not choose to draw in the same collar with Chabannes.”

Chabannes was not ungrateful for the benefits bestowed on him. When, strangely deviating from his accustomed wariness, Louis involved himself in the dilemma which Sir Walter Scott has so admirably described in Quentin Durward, Chabannes did him the most essential and opportune service, and received his warmest thanks for it. He was afterwards employed in various important expeditions, all of which he brought to a successful issue. In his old age, he withdrew from the court, but, in 1485, Charles VIII. conferred on him the government of the Isle of France and Paris. Chabannes did not long enjoy this new honour; he died in 1488.

The war, caused by the League of the Public Good, which restored liberty and fortune to Chabannes, deprived his enemy, the count de Melun, not only of both, but of life also. When we are told that Melun was so addicted to pleasure, luxury and sloth, as to have acquired the name of the Sardanapalus of his times, we can form no very flattering estimate of his character. Yet he stood high in the good graces of Louis XI., and participated largely in the spoils of Chabannes. In his capacity of governor of Paris and the Bastile, he was also entrusted with the custody of that nobleman. It was not till after the battle of Montlhéri that Louis began to suspect him. The monarch had, indeed, some excuse for suspicion. Melun had at least been criminally negligent, in a post which demanded the utmost vigilance. He had prevented a sally from the city during the battle, which might have turned the scale in the king’s favour, and he had been ignorant of, or winked at, a correspondence carried on with the chiefs of the League by some of the disaffected citizens. These indications of treachery were strengthened by two circumstances; some of the cannon of the Bastile had been spiked, and the gates of the fortress, on the side next the country, had been left open while the besiegers were making an attack. The escape of Chabannes might also afford a reason for doubting his keeper’s fidelity. Louis, however, was, at this moment, too closely pressed by his numerous enemies to enter into an investigation of the subject; and he, therefore, only dismissed the governor.

Melun retired to his estates, and imagined that the storm was blown over. He was mistaken. As soon as Louis had disembarrassed himself, he instituted a rigid enquiry into the conduct of his disgraced favourite. One of the most active in pushing it on was a man who was indebted to the count for his rise in life; the cardinal Balue, of whom further mention is about to be made. The result of the enquiry was, a charge of having maintained a secret correspondence with the heads of the League, especially with the duke of Britanny. Melun was in consequence arrested, and conveyed to Chateau Galliard, in Normandy, by the provost Tristan l’Hermite, of infamous memory.

The trial was commenced without delay, and, as he refused to confess to any crime, he was put to the torture. With respect to his correspondence with the chiefs of the League, he avowed it, but pleaded that it had the king’s sanction. It is probable that this was really the case. Many motives might have induced the king to allow of his officer corresponding with the enemy. But Louis had now resolved upon the destruction of Melun; and, as he never scrupled at falsehood when he had any point to gain by it, he denied that he had given the permission. By adding that he had long had cause to be dissatisfied with the prisoner, he gave a broad hint as to what kind of verdict he desired. The judges, as in duty bound, pronounced Melun guilty, and he was consigned to the scaffold. His execution took place in 1468. Of his confiscated property, a considerable portion was bestowed on Chabannes.

It is said, that the executioner having only wounded him at the first stroke, Melun raised his head from the block, and declared, that he had not deserved death, but that, since the king willed it, he was satisfied. If this be true, we must own that tame submission to the injustice of a despot was never more strikingly displayed.

Had Melun lived but a little longer, he might have triumphed in the downfall and punishment of his ungrateful enemy, the cardinal, which took place in 1469. John Balue, the person in question, born in Poitou in 1421, was the son of either a miller or a tailor. He had, perhaps, as many vices, and as few virtues, as any person upon record. Ingratitude, in particular, seems to have been deeply rooted into the nature of this unworthy prelate. Towards the bishops of Poictiers and Angers, who had early patronized and confided in him, and the count de Melun, by whom he was introduced to the monarch, he acted with unparalleled baseness. His sovereign fared no better than his other benefactors. Louis XI. had rapidly raised him to the highest offices in the state, and had loaded him with ecclesiastical preferment, yet the traitor betrayed him.

While his power lasted, there was no department of the government with which Balue did not interfere. This trait in the character of the cardinal called forth a pleasant sarcasm from Chabannes, who could not see with patience his own province invaded. Balue having one day reviewed some regiments, Chabannes gravely requested the king’s permission to visit the cardinal’s bishopric of Evreux, for the purpose of examining clerical candidates, and conferring ordination on them. “What do you mean?” said Louis. “Why, surely, sire,” replied Chabannes, “I am as fit to ordain priests, as the bishop of Evreux is to review an army.”

It required, however, something more than a joke to shake the confidence which the monarch placed in the cardinal. That something more was not slow in coming. Since the treaties of Conflans and Peronne, it had been a main object of Louis to dissociate his brother, the duke of Berry, from his dangerous adviser the duke of Burgundy; and, as one means towards effecting this, he strove hard to induce him to accept, as an appanage, the duchy of Guienne and the government of Rochelle, instead of the provinces of Champagne and Brie, which, by the treaty of Peronne, he had been compelled to confirm to his brother. Louis was undoubtedly justified in wishing to accomplish this object, as there was little chance that peace would be preserved if the duke of Berry became an immediate neighbour of the duke of Burgundy. Nor was the equivalent which the king offered for Champagne and Brie an inadequate one, but much the contrary. On this occasion, the king suffered the penalty to which all deceivers are subjected, that of not being trusted. Could the duke of Berry have put faith in his brother, he no doubt would have accepted Guienne.

It was with no less surprise than indignation that the king discovered, by intercepted letters, that all his efforts, not only in this case but in others, had been counteracted by the man on whom he most relied. The cardinal, and his friend and agent William d’Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, were in close correspondence with his enemies. It was to revenge himself for the king having failed in his promise, to procure him a cardinal’s hat, that d’Haraucourt entered into the plot against him. It would seem that nothing short of madness could have prompted the cardinal to peril his liberty and fortune, perhaps his life, by his treasonable proceeding. But here again the king was whipped by his own vices. Balue perceived or imagined that his influence was declining, he was convinced that it would wholly expire whenever his services were no longer necessary to the monarch—Louis being, in his opinion, incapable of personal attachment—and he therefore resolved to place him in such a situation, by making the king’s foes formidable, that those services should be always indispensable. On his being interrogated, he avowed, with a shameless candour, that, for this purpose, he had betrayed the secrets of the state to the Burgundian duke, encouraged the duke of Berry to refuse the proposed exchange, advised the calamitous interview and disgraceful treaty of Peronne, and recommended to Charles of Burgundy to compel the king to accompany him on the expedition against the revolted citizens of Liege.

There was treason enough here to forfeit a hundred heads, had they grown on laic shoulders. But, as far as regarded the final penalty of the law, their ecclesiastical character proved a shield to the cardinal and his associate. The king desired the pope to nominate apostolical commissioners to try the criminals; the pope, on the other hand, contended that they must be judged by the consistory, and that the decision of their fate must be left to him. A long negotiation ensued between the spiritual and temporal sovereigns, and, as neither would concede, the offenders were never brought to trial at all.

It cannot, however, be said that the cardinal and the bishop escaped unscarred. If Louis could not take their lives, he could at least render their lives a burthen, and this was a power which he was not backward in exercising. In the province of Touraine, between twenty and thirty miles to the southward of Tours, stood the castle of Loches, one of the sepulchres in which Louis buried his living victims. It was there that, at a later period, Ludovico Sforza lingered out the last years of his existence. Loches was well provided with oubliettes, dungeons, chains of enormous weight, facetiously called the king’s little daughters, iron cages, and all other means of torturing the body and mind. Thither Balue was sent, and there he passed eleven lonely years, in an iron cage, which was only eight feet square. His fate resembled that of Perillus—for to the cardinal himself is attributed the invention of these cages. Perhaps the only praise which he ever deserved was gained at the castle of Loches; the praise of having preserved his courage unshaken throughout the whole of his tedious captivity. Balue was released in 1480, went to Rome, where he was received with open arms, was sent as legate to France, and died, in 1491, bishop of Albano, and legate of the March of Ancona.

His confederate, d’Haraucourt, was still more severely punished. The Bastile was his place of confinement, and there a cage, of unusual strength, was constructed in one of the towers, expressly for his abode. The cage was formed of massy beams, bolted together with iron, occupied nineteen carpenters for twenty days in framing it, and was so heavy, that the vault, which was to support it, was obliged to be rebuilt in a more substantial manner. Within its narrow and gloomy limits, d’Haraucourt was immured for no less than fifteen years. It was not till after the death of Louis the eleventh, that the prisoner was set at liberty. He died, at a very advanced age, in the year 1500.

While d’Haraucourt was wasting away life in his cage, there was another prisoner in the Bastile, who was enduring far worse misery, and was far more worthy of compassion, because, though he was himself guiltless, he suffered the penalty of another’s crimes. When, in 1473, the restless and unprincipled John, count of Armagnac, was slain at Lectoure, by the royal troops, his brother Charles, who had taken no part in the contest, was arrested by order of Louis the eleventh, sent to the Concièrgerie, and put to the torture. He was on the point of proving his innocence, when he was removed to the Bastile, and secluded from all access of friends. L’Huillier, the governor, treated him with a cold-blooded barbarity which was worthy of a man who held office under Louis. There was nothing that cruelty could suggest that was not practised on the unfortunate Charles. The agonies of the captive were protracted for a period of fourteen years, during all which time he inhabited a dreary and noisome dungeon, in which water almost continually dropped upon him, and he could not move without wading though slimy mud. He was liberated, and his property was restored, by Charles the eighth. The boon, however, came too late to be of any avail. His reason was shaken by what he had undergone; he languished for a few years, and died in 1497.

Less compassion is due to the next inhabitant of the Bastile who appears upon the scene. Faithful to no party, he fell regretted by none. Louis de Luxembourg, count of St. Pol, who was born in 1418, succeeded to the possessions of his father, when he was only fifteen. He did not receive his moral education in schools where humanity and honour were to be learned. His uncle and guardian, count de Ligni, was well qualified to brutalise his youthful mind. It was de Ligni that basely sold the heroine Joan of Arc to the English, for ten thousand livres. In one of his campaigns he took his nephew with him, that the boy might kill some of the prisoners, in order to accustom him to scenes of blood. Louis is said to have proved an apt scholar, and to have taken delight in the performance of his murderous task.

At his outset in life, St. Pol, like most of his family, was a warm partisan of the English party. Circumstances, however, having compelled him to visit the court of Charles the seventh, he met with so flattering a reception that he deserted his party, and devoted himself to that monarch. With the dauphin (who was afterwards Louis the eleventh) he contracted as close a friendship as can subsist between two such characters. St. Pol distinguished himself, in the service of his new master, on various occasions, particularly at the sieges of the Norman fortresses.

Though St. Pol had given up the English party, he did not break off his old connection with the Burgundian prince. He fought for him against the insurgent citizens of Ghent, and he even joined in the League of the Public Good, as it was ludicrously styled, and led the vanguard of the count de Charolais, at the battle of Montlhéri. At the peace of Conflans, Louis, in the hope of winning him over from the Burgundian interest, promoted him to be constable of France; and soon after, with the same view, he gave him the hand of Mary of Savoy, the queen’s sister, and granted him a wide extent of territory.

These favours did not produce the desired effect. St. Pol seems to have had little gratitude in his nature; and, in this case, he perhaps thought that there was none due for what was rather a bribe than a free gift. As he imagined that his safety consisted in preventing a good understanding between the king and the duke of Burgundy, he was constantly intriguing to keep them at variance, and he alternately betrayed them. His intrigues being discovered, the two princes, during one of their short periods of amity, entered into a compact, by which they declared him their common enemy. The duke of Burgundy promised, that if the constable fell into his hands, he would surrender him to the king within eight days. For this he was to be rewarded by the restoration of St. Quentin, Amiens, and other towns on the Somme. This agreement was of course kept a profound secret.

What St. Pol had already done was sufficient to seal his fate; but he roused the anger of Louis still farther, by an act of personal disrespect, and by leaguing with Edward the fourth of England for the invasion of France. It was not, however, till he had got rid of Edward by a treaty, and had artfully contrived to irritate the duke of Burgundy still more against St. Pol, that Louis seriously prepared for taking vengeance on the offender. The negotiation between Edward and Louis had already alarmed the constable, and, to conciliate the latter, he had offered to attack the English. This offer Louis communicated to Edward, who, indignant at the treachery of his recent confederate, sent the letters which he had received from him to the French monarch. Louis was thus furnished with decisive proofs. To the overtures of St. Pol he replied in ambiguous words, the real meaning of which was soon made evident: “I am overwhelmed by so many affairs,” said the Machiavelian monarch, “that I have great need of a good head like yours to get through them.”

The preparations of the king at length made St. Pol fully aware of his danger. Hesitating as to the measure which in this emergency he ought to adopt, he for a moment half resolved to stand on his defence; but reflection on the superior resources of his enemy persuaded him that he had no chance of success from arms. Yet, had he boldly appealed to the sword, he might, perhaps, have saved his life, or at least have met with an honourable death. He preferred throwing himself on the duke of Burgundy, whom he tempted by offering him his strong towns, as the price of protection. Louis demanded that he should be given up to him; and after some qualms of conscience as to sacrificing a suppliant, who was also his cousin, Charles of Burgundy complied with the demand. St. Pol was conveyed to the Bastile. The French monarch gave him his choice, either to make a full confession, or to be tried in the customary manner. The latter alternative was chosen by the prisoner, who knew not that his letters, to Edward and the duke of Burgundy, were in the king’s hands, and therefore believed that there was not legal evidence to warrant his conviction. His judges sentenced him to lose his head, and he was executed on the 19th of December, 1475.

The last captive in the Bastile, during the reign of Louis the Eleventh, or rather the last of whom any record remains—for there were doubtless numbers of the nameless throng—was an Armagnac; a name which seems to have been fatal to its owners. We have seen one Armagnac torn in pieces by the populace, another treacherously slain after the surrender of his stronghold, a third losing his reason in a dungeon, and we are now to witness the leading of a fourth to the scaffold, under circumstances the most horrible.

James of Armagnac, duke of Nemours, was the son of the Count de la Marche, who was the governor of the youthful dauphin. When the pupil of the count ascended the throne, he gave his cousin Louisa in marriage to James of Armagnac, and conferred on him the dukedom of Nemours, with all the rights and privileges of the peerage; an honour which had never before been enjoyed by any other than princes of the royal family. Nemours, nevertheless, joined the League of the Public Good. Louis, as we have seen, was obliged to succumb to the League; and, by the consequent peace of Conflans, James of Armagnac obtained the government of Paris and the Isle of France.

Little more than three years elapsed before Nemours was again engaged in intrigues against the monarch. But the time was gone by when revolt could lead to promotion. Louis had strengthened his authority, and he was not disposed to see it set at nought. He, however, pardoned him; but it was on condition that any future offence should render him liable to punishment for the past, and that he should then be deprived of his privilege of peerage, and be tried as a private individual.

In the course of a few years Nemours once more, and finally, brought down the wrath of the monarch on his head. He was accused of treason, and Beaujeu was despatched to besiege him in the town of Carlat, to which the duke had retired. Carlat was supposed to be impregnable, and it was provisioned for two or three years. Nemours, nevertheless, surrendered without resistance, on condition that his life should be spared; Beaujeu guaranteed this condition, as did likewise Louis le Graville, lord of Montaigu, and Bonfile le Juge, who enjoyed the royal confidence. The wife of the duke, who was confined in child-bed, died of grief and terror, on seeing her husband become a prisoner.

Nemours was conveyed, first, to Pierre-Encise, whence he was removed to the Bastile; where he was subjected to the harshest usage. All his supplications to the king, during two years’ abode in the Bastile, were unavailing; or rather, indeed, seem to have tended to irritate him. The duke had, undoubtedly, been a turbulent subject; but nothing can palliate the infamy of the king’s conduct, after he had Nemours in his power. It is difficult to account for the inveteracy of his hatred. There was no conceivable violation of justice of which he was not guilty. To have broken the pledge solemnly given by his general was little compared with what followed. Such of the judges as seemed inclined to show mercy were threatened and displaced; others were tempted by being promised to share in the spoils of the prisoner; the place where the court held its sittings was more than once arbitrarily changed; and the decent formalities of the law, as well as its essential principles, were contemptuously discarded. No wonder that Nemours was condemned to death.

But now a scene opens which casts all the rest into shade, and at which nature shudders. Nothing was omitted that could render death terrible to the duke. The chamber where he confessed to the priest was hung with black; the horse which took him to execution was covered with a housing of the same hue. He was already agonised by the thought that his children, who were little more than infants, were reduced to beggary—but this was not enough. A scaffold was expressly constructed for him to suffer on, with wide openings between the planks, and underneath, clad in white, their heads naked, and their hands bound, were placed his children, that they might be drenched with their parent’s blood. It was on the 4th of August, 1477, that this horrible tragedy was acted.

Did the brutal vindictiveness of the monarch end here? It did not. The guiltless children, of whom the youngest was only five years old, were taken back to the Bastile, and plunged into a loathsome dungeon, where they had scarcely the power of moving. There they remained, for five years, till the accession of Charles the eighth opened their prison door. A part of the confiscated property of their father was subsequently restored to them by Charles. The health of two of them was so broken that they did not long survive. The youngest inherited the title of Nemours, rose to be viceroy of Naples, and fell at the battle of Cerignoles, in 1503.