A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume III Part 8

For the time that I knew him he was not cruel; but he became so before his death, and that was a bad omen for a long existence. He was very sumptuous in dress and in all other matters, and a little too much so.

He showed very great honor to amba.s.sadors and foreign folks; they were right well feasted and entertained by him. He was desirous of great glory, and it was that more than ought else that brought him into his wars; he would have been right glad to be like to those ancient princes of whom there has been so much talk after their death; he was as bold a man as any that reigned in his day. . . . After the long felicity and great riches of this house of Burgundy, and after three great princes, good and wise, who had lasted six score years and more in good sense and virtue, G.o.d gave this people the Duke Charles, who kept them constantly in great war, travail, and expense, and almost as much in winter as in summer. Many rich and comfortable folks were dead or ruined in prison during these wars. The great losses began in front of Neuss, and continued through three or four battles up to the hour of his death; and at that hour all the strength of his country was sapped; and dead, or ruined, or captive, were all who could or would have defended the dominions and the honor of his house. Thus it seems that this loss was an equal set-off to the time of their felicity. "Please G.o.d to forgive Duke Charles his sins!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Corpse of Charles the Rash Discovered----236]

To this pious wish of Commynes, after so judicious a sketch, we may add another: Please G.o.d that people may no more suffer themselves to be taken captive by the corrupting and ruinous pleasures procured for them by their masters' grand but wicked or foolish enterprises, and may learn to give to the men who govern them a glory in proportion to the wisdom and justice of their deeds, and by no means to the noise they make and the risks they sow broadcast around them!

The news of the death of Charles the Rash was for Louis XI. an unexpected and unhoped-for blessing, and one in which he could scarcely believe.

The news reached him on the 9th of January, at the castle of Plessis-les- Tours, by the medium of a courier sent to him by George de la Tremoille, Sire de Craon, commanding his troops on the frontier of Lorraine.

"Insomuch as this house of Burgundy was greater and more powerful than the others," says Commynes, "was the pleasure great for the king more than all the others together; it was the joy of seeing himself set above all those he hated, and above his princ.i.p.al foes; it might well seem to him that he would never in his life meet any to gainsay him in his kingdom, or in the neighborhood near him." He replied the same day to Sire de Craon, "Sir Count, my good friend, I have received your letters, and the good news you have brought to my knowledge, for which I thank you as much as I am able. Now is the time for you to employ all your five natural wits to put the duchy and countship of Burgundy in my hands. And, to that end, place yourself with your band and the governor of Champagne, if so be that the Duke of Burgundy is dead, within the said country, and take care, for the dear love you bear me, that you maintain amongst the men of war the best order, just as if you were inside Paris; and make known to them that I am minded to treat them and keep them better than any in my kingdom; and that, in respect of our G.o.d-daughter, I have an intention of completing the marriage that I have already had in contemplation between my lord the _dauphin_ and her. Sir Count, I consider it understood that you will not enter the said country, or make mention of that which is written above, unless the Duke of Burgundy be dead. And, in any case, I pray you to serve me in accordance with the confidence I have in you. And adieu!"

Beneath the discreet reserve inspired by a remnant of doubt concerning the death of his enemy, this letter contained the essence of Louis XI.'s grand and very natural stroke of policy. Charles the Rash had left only a daughter, Mary of Burgundy, sole heiress of all his dominions. To annex this magnificent heritage to the crown of France by the marriage of the heiress with the _dauphin_ who was one day to be Charles VIII., was clearly for the best interests of the nation as well as of the French kingship, and such had, accordingly, been Louis XI.'s first idea. "When the Duke of Burgundy was still alive," says Commynes, "many a time spoke the king to me of what he would do if the duke should happen to die; and he spoke most reasonably, saying that he would try to make a match between his son (who is now our king) and the said duke's daughter (who was afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Austria); and if she were not minded to hear of it for that my lord, the _dauphin_, was much younger than she, he would essay to get her married to some younger lord of this realm, for to keep her and her subjects in amity, and to recover without dispute that which he claimed as his; and still was the said lord on this subject a week before he knew of the said duke's death. . . . Howbeit it seems that the king our master took not hold of matters by the end by which he should have taken hold for to come out triumphant, and to add to his crown all those great lordships, either by sound t.i.tle or by marriage, as easily he might have done."

Commynes does not explain or specify clearly the mistake with which he reproaches his master. Louis XI., in spite of his sound sense and correct appreciation, generally, of the political interests of France and of his crown, allowed himself on this great occasion to be swayed by secondary considerations and personal questions. His son's marriage with the heiress of Burgundy might cause some embarra.s.sment in his relations with Edward IV., King of England, to whom he had promised the _dauphin_ as a husband for his daughter Elizabeth, who was already sometimes called, in England, the Dauphiness. In 1477, at the death of the duke her father, Mary of Burgundy was twenty years old, and Charles, the _dauphin_, was barely eight. There was another question, a point of feudal law, as to whether Burgundy, properly so called, was a fief which women could inherit, or a fief which, in default of a male heir, must lapse to the suzerain. Several of the Flemish towns which belonged to the Duke of Burgundy were weary of his wars and his violence, and showed an inclination to pa.s.s over to the sway of the King of France. All these facts offered pretexts, opportunities, and chances of success for that course of egotistical pretension and cunning intrigue in which Louis delighted and felt confident of his ability; and into it he plunged after the death of Charles the Rash. Though he still spoke of his desire of marrying his son, the _dauphin_, to Mary of Burgundy, it was no longer his dominant and ever-present idea. Instead of taking pains to win the good will and the heart of Mary herself, he labored with his usual zeal and address to dispute her rights, to despoil her brusquely of one or another town in her dominions, to tamper with her servants, or excite against them the wrath of the populace. Two of the most devoted and most able amongst them, Hugonet, chancellor of Burgundy, and Sire d'Humbercourt, were the victims of Louis XI.'s hostile manoeuvres and of blind hatred on the part of the Ghentese; and all the Princess Mary's pa.s.sionate entreaties were powerless both with the king and with the Flemings to save them from the scaffold. And so Mary, alternately threatened or duped, attacked in her just rights or outraged in her affections, being driven to extremity, exhibited a resolution never to become the daughter of a prince unworthy of the confidence she, poor orphan, had placed in the spiritual tie which marked him out as her protector. "I understand," said she, "that my father had arranged my marriage with the emperor's son; I have no mind for any other." Louis in his alarm tried all sorts of means, seductive and violent, to prevent such a reverse. He went in person amongst the Walloon and Flemish provinces belonging to Mary. "That I come into this country," said he to the inhabitants of Quesnoy, "is for nothing but the interests of Mdlle.

de Burgundy, my well-beloved cousin and G.o.d-daughter. . . . Of her wicked advisers some would have her espouse the son of the Duke of Cleves; but he is a prince of far too little l.u.s.tre for so ill.u.s.trious a princess; I know that he has a bad sore on his leg; he is a drunkard, like all Germans, and, after drinking, he will break his gla.s.s over her head, and beat her. Others would ally her with the English, the kingdom's old enemies, who all lead bad lives: there are some who would give her for her husband the emperor's son, but those princes of the imperial house are the most avaricious in the world; they will carry off Mdlle. de Burgundy to Germany, a strange land and a coa.r.s.e, where she will know no consolation, whilst your land of Hainault will be left without any lord to govern and defend it. If my fair cousin were well advised, she would espouse the _dauphin_; you speak French, you Walloon people; you want a prince of France, not a German. As for me, I esteem the folks of Hainault more than any nation in the world; there is none more n.o.ble, and in my sight a hind of Hainault is worth more than a grand gentleman of any other country." At the very time that he was using such flattering language to the good folks of Hainault, he was writing to the Count de Dampmartin, whom he had charged with the repression of insurrection in the country-parts of Ghent and Bruges, "Sir Grand Master, I send you some mowers to cut down the crop you wot off; put them, I pray you, to work, and spare not some casks of wine to set them drinking, and to make them drunk. I pray you, my friend, let there be no need to return a second time to do the mowing, for you are as much crown-officer as I am, and, if I am king, you are grand master." Dampmartin executed the king's orders without scruple; and at the season of harvest the Flemish country-places were devastated. "Little birds of heaven," cries the Flemish chronicler Molinet, "ye who are wont to haunt our fields and rejoice our hearts with your amorous notes, now seek out other countries; get ye hence from our tillages, for the king of the mowers of France hath done worse to us than do the tempests."

All the efforts of Louis XI., his winning speeches, and his ruinous deeds, did not succeed in averting the serious check he dreaded. On the 18th of August, 1477, seven months after the battle of Nancy and the death of Charles the Rash, Arch-duke Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick III., arrived at Ghent to wed Mary of Burgundy. "The moment he caught sight of his betrothed," say the Flemish chroniclers, "they both bent down to the ground and turned as pale as death--a sign of mutual love according to some, an omen of unhappiness according to others."

Next day, August 19, the marriage was celebrated with great simplicity in the chapel of the Hotel de Ville; and Maximilian swore to respect the privileges of Ghent. A few days afterwards he renewed the same oath at Bruges, in the midst of decorations bearing the modest device, "Most glorious prince, defend us lest we perish" (Gloriosissime princeps, defende nos ne pereamus). Not only did Louis XI. thus fail in his first wise design of incorporating with France, by means of a marriage between his son the _dauphin_ and Princess Mary, the heritage of the Dukes of Burgundy, but he suffered the heiress and a great part of the heritage to pa.s.s into the hands of the son of the German emperor; and thereby he paved the way for that determined rivalry between the houses of France and Austria, which was a source of so many dangers and woes to both states during three centuries. It is said that in 1745, when Louis XV., after the battle of Fontenoy, entered Bruges cathedral, he remarked, as he gazed on the tombs of the Austro-Burgundian princes, "There is the origin of all our wars." In vain, when the marriage of Maximilian and Mary was completed, did Louis XI. attempt to struggle against his new and dangerous neighbor; his campaigns in the Flemish provinces, in 1478 and 1479, had no great result; he lost, on the 7th of August, 1479, the battle of Guinegate, between St. Omer and Therouanne; and before long, tired of war, which was not his favorite theatre for the display of his abilities, he ended by concluding with Maximilian a truce at first, and then a peace, which in spite of some conditionals favorable to France, left the princ.i.p.al and the fatal consequences of the Austro-Burgundian marriage to take full effect. This event marked the stoppage of that great, national policy which had prevailed during the first part of Louis XI.'s reign. Joan of Arc and Charles VII. had driven the English from France; and for sixteen years Louis XI. had, by fighting and gradually destroying the great va.s.sals who made alliance with them, prevented them from regaining a footing there. That was work as salutary as it was glorious for the nation and the French kingship. At the death of Charles the Rash, the work was accomplished; Louis XI. was the only power left in France, without any great peril from without, and without any great rival within; but he then fell under the sway of mistaken ideas and a vicious spirit. The infinite resources of his mind, the agreeableness of his conversation, his perseverance combined with the pliancy of his will, the services he was rendering France, the successes he in the long ruin frequently obtained, and his ready apparent resignation under his reverses, for a while made up for or palliated his faults, his falsehoods, his perfidies, his iniquities; but when evil is predominant at the bottom of a man's soul, he cannot do without youth and success; he cannot make head against age and decay, reverse of fortune and the approach of death; and so Louis XI. when old in years, master-power still though beaten in his last game of policy, appeared to all as he really was and as he had been prediscerned to be by only such eminent observers as Commynes, that is, a crooked, swindling, utterly selfish, vindictive, cruel man. Not only did he hunt down implacably the men who, after having served him, had betrayed or deserted him; he revelled in the vengeance he took and the sufferings he inflicted on them. He had raised to the highest rank both in state and church the son of a cobbler, or, according to others, of a tailor, one John de Balue, born in 1421, at the market-town of Angles, in Poitou. After having chosen him, as an intelligent and a clever young priest, for his secretary and almoner, Louis made him successively clerical councillor in the parliament of Paris, then Bishop of Evreux, and afterwards cardinal; and he employed him in his most private affairs. It was a hobby of his thus to make the fortunes of men born in the lowest stations, hoping that, since they would owe everything to him, they would never depend on any but him. It is scarcely credible that so keen and contemptuous a judge of human nature could have reckoned on dependence as a pledge of fidelity. And in this case Louis was, at any rate, mistaken; Balue was a traitor to him, and in 1468, at the very time of the incident at Peronne, he was secretly in the service of Duke Charles of Burgundy, and betrayed to him the interests and secrets of his master and benefactor. In 1469 Louis obtained material proof of the treachery; and he immediately had Balue arrested and put on his trial. The cardinal confessed everything, asking only to see the king. Louis gave him an interview on the way from Amboise to Notre-Dame de Clery; and they were observed, it is said, conversing for two hours, as they walked together on the road. The trial and condemnation of a cardinal by a civil tribunal was a serious business with the court of Rome. The king sent commissioners to Pope Paul II.: the pope complained of the procedure, but amicably and without persistence. The cardinal was in prison at Loches; and Louis resolved to leave him there forever, without any more fuss. But at the same time that, out of regard for the dignity of cardinal, which he had himself requested of the pope for the culprit, he dispensed with the legal condemnation to capital punishment, he was bent upon satisfying his vengeance, and upon making Balue suffer in person for his crime. He therefore had him confined in a cage, "eight feet broad," says Commynes, "and only one foot higher than a man's stature, covered with iron plates outside and inside, and fitted with terrible bars." There is still to be seen in Loches castle, under the name of the Balue cage, that instrument of prison-torture which the cardinal, it is said, himself invented. In it he pa.s.sed eleven years, and it was not until 1480 that he was let out, at the solicitation of Pope Sixtus IV., to whom Louis XI., being old and ill, thought he could not possibly refuse this favor. He remembered, perhaps, at that time how that, sixteen years before, in writing to his lieutenant-general in Poitou to hand over to Balue, Bishop of Evreux, the property of a certain abbey, he said, "He is a devilish good bishop just now; I know not what he will be here-after."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Balue Cage----245]

He was still more pitiless towards a man more formidable and less subordinate, both in character and origin, than Cardinal Balue. Louis of Luxembourg, Count of St. Pol, had been from his youth up engaged in the wars and intrigues of the sovereigns and great feudal lords of Western Europe--France, England, Germany, Burgundy, Brittany, and Lorraine. From 1433 to 1475 he served and betrayed them all in turn, seeking and obtaining favors, incurring and braving rancor, at one time on one side and at another time on another, acting as constable of France and as diplomatic agent for the Duke of Burgundy, raising troops and taking towns for Louis XI., for Charles the Rash, for Edward IV., for the German emperor, and trying nearly always to keep for himself what he had taken on another's account. The truth is, that he was constantly occupied with the idea of making for himself an independent dominion, and becoming a great sovereign. "He was," says Duclos, "powerful from his possessions, a great captain, more ambitious than politic, and, from his ingrat.i.tude and his perfidies, worthy of his tragic end." His various patrons grew tired at last of being incessantly taken up with and then abandoned, served and then betrayed; and they mutually interchanged proofs of the desertions and treasons to which they had been victims. In 1475 Louis of Luxembourg saw a storm threatening; and he made application for a safe-conduct to Charles the Rash, who had been the friend of his youth.

"Tell him," replied Charles to the messenger, "that he has forfeited his paper and his hope as well;" and he gave orders to detain him. As soon as Louis XI. knew whither the constable had retired, he demanded of the Duke of Burgundy to give him up, as had been agreed between them. "I have need," said he, "for my heavy business, of a head like his;" and he added, with a ghastly smile, "it is only the head I want; the body may stay where it is." On the 24th of November, 1475, the constable was, accordingly, given up to the king; and on the 27th, was brought to Paris.

His trial, begun forthwith, was soon over; he himself acknowledged the greater part of what was imputed to him; and on the 19th of December he was brought up from the Bastille before the parliament. "My lord of St.

Pol," said the chancellor to him, "you have always pa.s.sed for being the firmest lord in the realm; you must not belie yourself to-day, when you have more need than ever of firmness and courage;" and he read to him the decree which sentenced him to lose his head that very day on the Place de Greve. "That is a mighty hard sentence," said the constable; "I pray G.o.d that I may see Him to-day." And he underwent execution with serene and pious firmness. He was of an epoch when the most criminal enterprises did not always preclude piety. Louis XI. did not look after the constable's accomplices. "He flew at the heads," says Duclos, "and was set on making great examples; he was convinced that n.o.ble blood, when it is guilty, should be shed rather than common blood. Nevertheless there was considered to be something indecent in the cession by the king to the Duke of Burgundy of the constable's possessions. It seemed like the price of the blood of an unhappy man, who, being rightfully sacrificed only to justice and public tranquillity, appeared to be so to vengeance, ambition, and avarice."

In August, 1477, the battle of Nancy had been fought; Charles the Rash had been killed; and the line of the Dukes of Burgundy had been extinguished. Louis XI. remained master of the battle-field on which the great risks and great scenes of his life had been pa.s.sed through. It seemed as if he ought to fear nothing now, and that the day for clemency had come. But such was not the king's opinion; two cruel pa.s.sions, suspicion and vengeance, had taken possession of his soul; he remained convinced, not without reason, that nearly all the great feudal lords who had been his foes were continuing to conspire against him, and that he ought not, on his side, ever to cease from striving against thorn. The trial of the constable, St. Pol, had confirmed all his suspicions; he had discovered thereby traces and almost proofs of a design for a long time past conceived and pursued by the constable and his a.s.sociates--the design of seizing the king, keeping him prisoner, and setting his son, the _dauphin_, on the throne, with a regency composed of a council of lords. Amongst the declared or presumed adherents of this project, the king had found James d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, the companion and friend of his youth; for his father, the Count of Pardiac, had been governor to Louis, at that time _dauphin_. Louis, on becoming king, had loaded James d'Armagnac with favors; had raised his countship of Nemours to a duchy-peerage of France; had married him to Louise of Anjou, daughter of the Count of Maine and niece of King Rend. The new Duke of Nemours entered, nevertheless, into the League of Common Weal against the king. Having been included, in 1465, with the other chiefs of the league in the treaty of Conflans, and reconciled with the king, the Duke of Nemours made oath to him, in the Sainte-Chapelle, to always be to him a good, faithful, and loyal subject, and thereby obtained the governorship of Paris and Ile-de-France. But, in 1469, he took part in the revolt of his cousin, Count John d'Armagnac, who was supposed to be in communication with the English; and having been vanquished by the Count de Dampmartin, he had need of a fresh pardon from the king, which he obtained on renouncing the privileges of the peerage if he should offend again. He then withdrew within his own domains, and there lived in tranquillity and popularity, but still keeping up secret relations with his old a.s.sociates, especially with the Duke of Burgundy and the constable of St. Pol. In 1476, during the Duke of Burgundy's first campaign against the Swiss, the more or less active partic.i.p.ation of the Duke of Nemours with the king's enemies appeared to Louis so grave, that he gave orders to his son-in-law, Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu, to go and besiege him in his castle of Carlat, in Auvergne. The Duke of Nemours was taken prisoner there and carried off to Vienne, in Dauphiny, where the king then happened to be. In spite of the prisoner's entreaties, Louis absolutely refused to see him, and had him confined in the tower of Pierre-Encise. The Duke of Nemours was so disquieted at his position and the king's wrath, that his wife, Louise of Anjou, who was in her confinement at Carlat, had a fit of terror and died there; and he himself, shut up at Pierre-Encise, in a dark and damp dungeon, found his hair turn white in a few days. He was not mistaken about the gravity of the danger. Louis was both alarmed at these incessantly renewed conspiracies of the great lords and vexed at the futility of his pardons.

He was determined to intimidate his enemies by a grand example, and avenge his kingly self-respect by bringing his power home to the ingrates who made no account of his indulgence. He ordered that the Duke of Nemours should be removed from Pierre-Encise to Paris, and put in the Bastille, where he arrived on the 4th of August, 1476, and that commissioners should set about his trial. The king complained of the gentleness with which the prisoner had been treated on arrival, and wrote to one of the commissioners, "It seems to me that you have but one thing to do; that is, to find out what guarantees the Duke of Nemours had given the constable of being at one with him in making the Duke of Burgundy regent, putting me to death, seizing my lord the _dauphin_, and taking the authority and government of the realm. He must he made to speak clearly on this point, and must get h.e.l.l (be put to the torture) in good earnest. I am not pleased at what you tell me as to the irons having been taken off his legs, as to his being let out from his cage, and as to his being taken to the ma.s.s to which the women go. Whatever the chancellor or others may say, take care that he budge not from his cage, that he be never let out save to give him h.e.l.l (torture him), and that he suffer h.e.l.l (torture) in his own chamber." The Duke of Nemours protested against the choice of commissioners, and claimed, as a peer of the realm, his right to be tried by the parliament. When put to the torture he ended by saying, "I wish to conceal nothing from the king; I will tell him the truth as to all I know." "My most dread and sovereign lord," he himself wrote to Louis, "I have been so misdoing towards you and towards G.o.d that I quite see that I am undone unless your grace and pity be extended to me; the which, accordingly, most humbly and in great bitterness and contrition of heart, I do beseech you to bestow upon me liberally;" and he put the simple signature, "Poor James." "He confessed that he had been cognizant of the constable's designs; but he added that, whilst thanking him for the kind offers made to himself, and whilst testifying his desire that the lords might at last get their guarantees, he had declared what great obligations and great oaths he was under to the king, against the which he would not go; he, moreover, had told the constable he had no money at the moment to dispose of, no relative to whom he was inclined to trust himself or whom he could exert himself to win over, not even M. d'Albret, his cousin." In such confessions there was enough to stop upright and fair judges from the infliction of capital punishment, but not enough to rea.s.sure and move the heart of Louis XI.

On the chancellor's representations he consented to have the business sent before the parliament; but the peers of the realm were not invited to it. The king summoned the parliament to Noyon, to be nearer his own residence; and he ordered that the trial should be brought to a conclusion in that town, and that the original commissioners who had commenced proceedings, as well as thirteen other magistrates and officers of the king denoted by their posts, should sit with the lords of the parliament, and deliberate with them.

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 p.r.o.nounced 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 inc.u.mbent 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 pa.s.sed across his mind as to Dampmartin under circ.u.mstances critical for both of them, the king wrote to him, "Sir Grand Master, I have received your letters, and I do a.s.sure 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 va.s.sals, the favor he showed the middle cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 superst.i.tions, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XI. at his Devotions----255]

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 a.s.sumed, the superst.i.tions 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 inst.i.tuted, 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 pa.s.ser-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 mult.i.tude 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 amba.s.sadors from the estates of Flanders and from Maximilian, who then for the first time a.s.sumed the t.i.tle 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 amba.s.sadors 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 emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy.

a.s.suredly 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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, d.u.c.h.ess of Brittany.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Views of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours----258]

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 Sat.u.r.day 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 enn.o.bled 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 a.s.suredly all is over with you; think of your soul; there is no help for it.' 'I have hope in G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XI----260]

On Sat.u.r.day, 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 l.u.s.tre; 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 doc.u.ments. We reproduce here the two judgments, the agreement of which is remarkable:--

"G.o.d," 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 a.s.sent to Duclos'

last word--he was a king.

CHAPTER XXVI.----THE WARS OF ITALY.-- CHARLES VIII.-- 1483-1498.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES VIII.----263]

Louis XI. had by the queen his wife, Charlotte of Savoy, six children; three of them survived him: Charles VIII., his successor; Anne, his eldest daughter, who had espoused Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and Joan, whom he had married to the Duke of Orleans, who became Louis XII.

At their father's death, Charles was thirteen; Anne twenty-two or twenty-three; and Joan nineteen. According to Charles V.'s decree, which had fixed fourteen as the age for the king's majority, Charles VIII., on his accession, was very nearly a major; but Louis XI., with good reason, considered him very far from capable of reigning as yet. On the other hand, he had a very high opinion of his daughter Anne, and it was to her far more than to Sire de Beaujeu, her husband, that, six days before his death, and by his last instructions, he intrusted the guardian-ship of his son, to whom he already gave the t.i.tle of King, and the government of the realm. They were oral instructions not set forth in or confirmed by any regular testament; but the words of Louis XI. had great weight, even after his death. Opposition to his last wishes was not wanting. Louis, Duke of Orleans, was a natural claimant to the regency; but Anne de Beaujeu, immediately and without consulting anybody, took up the position which had been intrusted to her by her father, and the fact was accepted without ceasing to be questioned. Louis XI. had not been mistaken in his choice; there was none more fitted than his daughter Anne to continue his policy under the reign and in the name of his successor; "a shrewd and clever woman, if ever there was one," says Brantome, "and the true image in everything of King Louis, her father."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Anne de Beaujeu----264]