Volume III Part 6 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXV.----LOUIS XI. (1461-1483.)

Louis XI. was thirty-eight years old, and had been living for five years in voluntary exile at the castle of Genappe, in Hainault, beyond the dominions of the king his father, and within those of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, when, on the 23d of July, 1461, the day after Charles VII.'s death, he learned that he was King of France. He started at once to return to his own country, and take possession of his kingdom. He arrived at Rheims on the 14th of August, was solemnly crowned there on the 18th, in presence of the two courts of France and Burgundy, and on the 30th made his entry into Paris, within which he had not set foot for six and twenty years. In 1482, twenty-one years afterwards, he, sick and almost dying in his turn at his castle of Plessis-les-Tours, went, nevertheless, to Amboise, where his son the _dauphin_, who was about to become Charles VIII., and whom he had not seen for several years, was living. ”I do expressly enjoin upon you,” said the father to the son, ”as my last counsel and my last instructions, not to change a single one of the chief officers of the crown. When my father. King Charles VII., went to G.o.d, and I myself came to the throne, I disappointed [i.e., deprived of their appointments] all the good and notable knights of the kingdom who had aided and served my said father in conquering Normandy and Guienne, in driving the English out of the kingdom, and in restoring it to peace and good order, for so I found it, and right rich also.

Therefrom much mischief came to me, for thence I had the war called the Common Weal, which all but cost me my crown.”

With the experience and paternal care of an old man, whom the near prospect of death rendered perfectly disinterested, wholly selfish as his own life had been, Louis's heart was bent upon saving his son from the first error which he himself had committed on mounting the throne.

”Gentlemen,” said Dunois on rising from table at the funeral-banquet held at the abbey of St. Denis in honor of the obsequies of King Charles VII., ”we have lost our master; let each look after himself.” The old warrior foresaw that the new reign would not be like that which had just ended.

Charles VII. had been a prince of indolent disposition, more inclined to pleasure than ambition, whom the long and severe trials of his life had moulded to government without his having any pa.s.sion for governing, and who had become in a quiet way a wise and powerful king, without any eager desire to be incessantly and everywhere chief actor and master. His son Louis, on the contrary, was completely possessed with a craving for doing, talking, agitating, domineering, and reaching, no matter by what means, the different and manifold ends he proposed to himself. Anything but prepossessing in appearance, supported on long and thin shanks, vulgar in looks and often designedly ill-dressed, and undignified in his manners though haughty in mind, he was powerful by the sheer force of a mind marvellously lively, subtle, unerring, ready, and inventive, and of a character indefatigably active, and pursuing success as a pa.s.sion without any scruple or embarra.s.sment in the employment of means. His contemporaries, after observing his reign for some time, gave him the name of the universal spider, so relentlessly did he labor to weave a web of which he himself occupied the centre and extended the filaments in all directions.

As soon as he was king, he indulged himself with that first piece of vindictive satisfaction of which he was in his last moments obliged to acknowledge the mistake. At Rheims, at the time of his coronation, the aged and judicious Duke Philip of Burgundy had begged him to forgive all those who had offended him. Louis promised to do so, with the exception, however, of seven persons whom he did not name. They were the most faithful and most able advisers of the king his father, those who had best served Charles VII. even in his embroilments with the _dauphin_, his conspiring and rebellious son, viz., Anthony de Chabannes, Count of Dampmartin, Peter de Breze, Andrew de Laval, Juvenal des Ursins, &c.

Some lost their places, and were even, for a while, subjected to persecution; the others, remaining still at court, received there many marks of the king's disfavor. On the other hand, Louis made a show of treating graciously the men who had most incurred and deserved disgrace at his father's hands, notably the Duke of Alencon and the Count of Armagnac. Nor was it only in respect of persons that he departed from paternal tradition; he rejected it openly in the case of one of the most important acts of Charles VII.'s reign, the Pragmatic Sanction, issued by that prince at Bourses, in 1438, touching the internal regulations of the Church of France and its relations towards the papacy. The popes, and especially Pius II., Louis XI.'s contemporary, had constantly and vigorously protested against that act. Barely four months after his accession, on the 27th of November, 1461, Louis, in order to gain favor with the pope, abrogated the Pragmatic Sanction, and informed the pope of the fact in a letter full of devotion. There was great joy at Rome, and the pope replied to the king's letter in the strongest terms of grat.i.tude and commendation. But Louis's courtesy had not been so disinterested as it was prompt. He had hoped that Pius II. would abandon the cause of Ferdinand of Arragon, a claimant to the throne of Naples, and would uphold that of his rival, the French prince, John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, whose champion Louis had declared himself. He bade his amba.s.sador at Rome to remind the pope of the royal hopes. ”You know,”

said the amba.s.sador to Pius II., ”it is only on this condition that the king my master abolished the Pragmatic; he was pleased to desire that in his kingdom full obedience should be rendered to you; he demands, on the other hand, that you should be pleased to be a friend to France; otherwise I have orders to bid all the French cardinals withdraw, and you cannot doubt but that they will obey.” But Pius II. was more proud than Louis XI. dared to be imperious. He answered, ”We are under very great obligations to the King of France, but that gives him no right to exact from us things contrary to justice and to our honor; we have sent aid to Ferdinand by virtue of the treaties we have with him; let the king your master compel the Duke of Anjou to lay down arms and prosecute his rights by course of justice, and if Ferdinand refuse to submit thereto we will declare against him; but we cannot promise more. If the French who are at our court wish to withdraw, the gates are open to them.” The king, a little ashamed at the fruitlessness of his concession and of his threat, had for an instant some desire to re-establish the Pragmatic Sanction, for which the parliament of Paris had taken up the cudgels; but, all considered, he thought it better to put up in silence with his rebuff, and pay the penalty for a rash concession, than to get involved with the court of Rome in a struggle of which he could not measure the gravity; and he contented himself with letting the parliament maintain in principle and partially keep up the Pragmatic. This was his first apprentices.h.i.+p in that outward resignation and patience, amidst his own mistakes, of which he was destined to be called upon more than once in the course of his life to make a humble but skilful use.

At the same time that at the pinnacle of government and in his court Louis was thus making his power felt, and was engaging a new set of servants, he was zealously endeavoring to win over, everywhere, the middle cla.s.ses and the populace. He left Rouen in the hands of its own inhabitants; in Guienne, in Auvergne, at Tours, he gave the burgesses authority to a.s.semble, and his orders to the royal agents were, ”Whatever is done see that it be answered for unto us by two of the most notable burgesses of the princ.i.p.al cities.” At Rheims the rumor ran that under King Louis there would be no more tax or talliage. When deputations went before him to complain of the weight of imposts, he would say, ”I thank you, my dear and good friends, for making such remonstrances to me; I have nothing more at heart than to put an end to all sorts of exactions, and to re-establish my kingdom in its ancient liberties. I have just been pa.s.sing five years in the countries of my uncle of Burgundy; and there I saw good cities mighty rich and full of inhabitants, and folks well clad, well housed, well off, lacking nothing; the commerce there is great, and the communes there have fine privileges.

When I came into my own kingdom I saw, on the contrary, houses in ruins, fields without tillage, men and women in rags, faces pinched and pale.

It is a great pity, and my soul is filled with sorrow at it. All my desire is to apply a remedy thereto, and, with G.o.d's help, we will bring it to pa.s.s.” The good folks departed, charmed with such familiarity, so prodigal of hope; but facts before long gave the lie to words. ”When the time came for renewing at Rheims the claim for local taxes, the people showed opposition, and all the papers were burned in the open street.

The king employed stratagem. In order not to encounter overt resistance, he caused a large number of his folks to disguise themselves as tillers or artisans; and so entering the town, they were masters of it before the people could think of defending themselves. The ringleaders of the rebellion were drawn and quartered, and about a hundred persons were beheaded or hanged. At Angers, at Alencon, and at Aurillac, there were similar outbursts similarly punished.” From that moment it was easy to prognosticate that with the new king familiarity would not prevent severity, or even cruelty. According to the requirements of the crisis Louis had no more hesitation about violating than about making promises; and, all the while that he was seeking after popularity, he intended to make his power felt at any price.

How could he have done without heavy imposts and submission on the part of the tax-payers? For it was not only at home in his own kingdom that he desired to be chief actor and master. He pushed his ambition and his activity abroad into divers European states. In Italy he had his own claimant to the throne of Naples in opposition to the King of Arragon's.

In Spain the Kings of Arragon and of Castile were in a state of rivalry and war. A sedition broke out in Catalonia. Louis XI. lent the King of Arragon three hundred and fifty thousand golden crowns to help him in raising eleven hundred lances, and reducing the rebels. Civil war was devastating England. The houses of York and Lancaster were disputing the crown. Louis XI. kept up relations with both sides; and without embroiling himself with the Duke of York, who became Edward IV., he received at Chinon the heroic Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., and lent twenty thousand pounds sterling to that prince, then disthroned, who undertook either to repay them within a year or to hand over Calais, when he was re-established upon his throne, to the King of France. In the same way John II., King of Arragon, had put Roussillon and Cerdagne into the hands of Louis XI., as a security for the loan of three hundred and fifty thousand crowns he had borrowed. Amidst all the plans and enterprises of his personal ambition Louis was seriously concerned for the greatness of France; but he drew upon her resources, and compromised her far beyond what was compatible with her real interests, by mixing himself up, at every opportunity and by every sort of intrigue, with the affairs and quarrels of the kings and peoples around him.

In France itself he had quite enough of questions to be solved and perils to be surmounted to absorb and satisfy the most vigilant and most active of men. Four princes of very unequal power, but all eager for independence and preponderance, viz., Charles, Duke of Berry, his brother; Francis II., Duke of Brittany; Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, his uncle; and John, Duke of Bourbon, his brother-in-law, were va.s.sals whom he found very troublesome, and ever on the point of becoming dangerous. It was not long before he had a proof of it. In 1463, two years after Louis's accession, the Duke of Burgundy sent one of his most trusty servants, John of Croy, Sire de Chimay, to complain of certain royal acts, contrary, he said, to the treaty of Arras, which, in 1435, had regulated the relations between Burgundy and the crown. The envoy had great difficulty in getting audience of the king, who would not even listen for more than a single moment, and that as he was going out of his room, when, almost without heeding, he said abruptly, ”What manner of man, then, is this Duke of Burgundy? Is he of other metal than the other lords of the realm?” ”Yes, sir,” replied Chimay, ”he is of other metal; for he protected you and maintained you against the will of your father King Charles, and against the opinion of all those who were opposed to you in the kingdom, which no other prince or lord would have dared to do.” Louis went back into his room without a word. ”How dared you speak so to the king,” said Dunois to Chimay. ”Had I been fifty leagues away from here,” said the Burgundian, ”and had I thought that the king had an idea only of addressing such words to me, I would have come back express to speak to him as I have spoken.” The Duke of Brittany was less puissant and less proudly served than the Duke of Burgundy; but, being vain and inconsiderate, he was incessantly attempting to exalt himself above his condition of va.s.sal, and to raise his duchy into a sovereignty, and when his pretensions were rejected he entered, at one time with the King of England and at another with the Duke of Burgundy and the malcontents of France, upon intrigues which amounted very nearly to treason against the king his suzerain. Charles, Louis's younger brother, was a soft and mediocre but jealous and timidly ambitious prince; he remembered, moreover, the preference and the wishes manifested on his account by Charles VII., their common father, on his death-bed, and he considered his position as Duke of Berry very inferior to the hopes he believed himself ent.i.tled to nourish. Duke John of Bourbon, on espousing a sister of Louis XI., had flattered himself that this marriage and the remembrance of the valor he had displayed, in 1450, at the battle of Formigny, would be worth to him at least the sword of constable; but Louis had refused to give it him. When all these great malcontents saw Louis's popularity on the decline, and the king engaged abroad in divers political designs full of onerousness or embarra.s.sment, they considered the moment to have come, and, at the end of 1464, formed together an alliance ”for to remonstrate with the king,” says Commynes, ”upon the bad order and injustice he kept up in his kingdom, considering themselves strong enough to force him if he would not mend his ways; and this war was called the common weal, because it was undertaken under color of being for the _common weal_ of the kingdom, the which was soon converted into private weal.” The aged Duke of Burgundy, sensible and weary as he was, gave only a hesitating and slack adherence to the league; but his son Charles, Count of Charolais, entered into it pa.s.sionately, and the father was no more in a condition to resist his son than he was inclined to follow him. The number of the declared malcontents increased rapidly; and the chiefs received at Paris itself, in the church of Notre Dame, the adhesion and the signatures of those who wished to join them. They all wore, for recognition's sake, a band of red silk round their waists, and, ”there were more than five hundred,” says Oliver de la Marche, a confidential servant of the Count of Charolais, ”princes as well as knights, dames, damsels, and esquires, who were well acquainted with this alliance without the king's knowing anything as yet about it.”

It is difficult to believe the chronicler's last a.s.sertion. Louis XI., it is true, was more distrustful than far-sighted, and, though he placed but little reliance in his advisers and servants, he had so much confidence in himself, his own sagacity, and his own ability, that he easily deluded himself about the perils of his position; but the facts which have just been set forth were too serious and too patent to have escaped his notice. However that may be, he had no sooner obtained a clear insight into the league of the princes than he set to work with his usual activity and knowledge of the world to checkmate it. To rally together his own partisans and to separate his foes, such was the twofold end he pursued, at first with some success. In a meeting of the princes which was held at Tours, and in which friends and enemies were still mingled together, he used language which could not fail to meet their views. ”He was powerless,” he said, ”to remedy the evils of the kingdom without the love and fealty of the princes of the blood and the other lords; they were the pillars of the state; without their help one man alone could not bear the weight of the crown.” Many of those present declared their fealty. ”You are our king, our sovereign lord,” said King Rene, Duke of Anjou; ”we thank you for the kind, gracious, and honest words you have just used to us. I say to you, on behalf of all our lords here present, that we will serve you in respect of and against every one, according as it may please you to order us.” Louis, by a manifesto, addressed himself also to the good towns and to all his kingdom. He deplored therein the enticements which had been suffered to draw away ”his brother, the Duke of Berry and other princes, churchmen, and n.o.bles, who would never have consented to this league if they had borne in mind the horrible calamities of the kingdom, and especially the English, those ancient enemies, who might well come down again upon it as heretofore . . . . They proclaim,” said he, ”that they will abolish the imposts; that is what has always been declared by the seditious and rebellious; but, instead of relieving, they ruin the poor people. Had I been willing to augment their pay, and permit them to trample their va.s.sals under foot as in time past, they would never have given a thought to the common weal. They pretend that they desire to establish order everywhere, and yet they cannot endure it anywhere; whilst I, without drawing from my people more than was drawn by the late king, pay my men-at-arms well, and keep them in a good state of discipline.”

Louis, in his latter words, was a little too boastful. He had very much augmented the imposts without a.s.sembling the estates, and without caring for the old public liberties. If he frequently repressed local tyranny on the part of the lords, he did not deny himself the practice of it.

Amongst other tastes, he was pa.s.sionately fond of the chase; and, wherever he lived, he put it down amongst his neighbors, n.o.ble or other, without any regard for rights of lords.h.i.+p. Hounds, hawking birds, nets, snares, all the implements of hunting were forbidden. He even went so far, it is said, on one occasion, as to have two gentlemen's ears cut off for killing a hare on their own property. Nevertheless, the publication of his manifesto did him good service. Auvergne, Dauphiny, Languedoc, Lyon and Bordeaux turned a deaf ear to all temptations from the league of princes. Paris, above all, remained faithful to the king. Orders were given at the Hotel de Ville that the princ.i.p.al gates of the city should be walled up, and that there should be a night watch on the ramparts; and the burgesses were warned to lay in provision of arms and victual.

Marshal Joachim Rouault, lord of Gamaches, arrived at Paris on the 30th of June, 1465, at the head of a body of men-at-arms, to protect the city against the Count of Charolais, who was coming up; and the king himself, not content with despatching four of his chief officers to thank the Parisians for their loyal zeal, wrote to them that he would send the queen to lie in at Paris, ”the city he loved most in the world.”

Louis would have been glad to have nothing to do but to negotiate and talk. Though he was personally brave, he did not like war and its unforeseen issues. He belonged to the cla.s.s of ambitious despots who prefer stratagem to force. But the very ablest speeches and artifices, even if they do not remain entirely fruitless, are not sufficient to reduce matters promptly to order when great interests are threatened, pa.s.sions violently excited, and factions let loose in the arena. Between the League of the Common Neal and Louis XI. there was a question too great to be, at the very outset, settled peacefully. It was feudalism in decline at grips with the kings.h.i.+p, which had been growing greater and greater for two centuries. The lords did not trust the king's promises; and one amongst those lords was too powerful to yield without a fight.

At the beginning Louis had, in Auvergne and in Berry, some successes, which decided a few of the rebels, the most insignificant, to accept truces and enter upon parleys; but the great princes, the Dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, and Berry, waxed more and more angry. The aged Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good himself, sobered and wearied as he was, threw himself pa.s.sionately into the struggle. ”Go,” said he to his son, Count Charles of Charolais, ”maintain thine honor well, and, if thou have need of a hundred thousand more men to deliver thee from difficulty, I myself will lead them to thee.” Charles marched promptly on Paris.

Louis, on his side, moved thither, with the design and in the hope of getting in there without fighting. But the Burgundians, posted at St.

Denis and the environs, barred his approach. His seneschal, Peter de Breze, advised him to first attack the Bretons, who were advancing to join the Burgundians. Louis, looking at him somewhat mistrustfully, said, ”You, too, Sir Seneschal, have signed this League of the Common Weal.” ”Ay, sir,” answered Brez, with a laugh, ”they have my signature, but you have myself.” ”Would you be afraid to try conclusions with the Burgundians?” continued the king. ”Nay, verily,” replied the seneschal; ”I will let that be seen in the first battle.” Louis continued his march on Paris. The two armies met at Montlhery, on the 16th of July, 1465.

Breze, who commanded the king's advance-guard, immediately went into action, and was one of the first to be killed. Louis came up to his a.s.sistance with troops in rather loose order; the affair became hot and general; the French for a moment wavered, and a rumor ran through the ranks that the king had just been killed.

”No, my friends,” said Louis, taking off his helmet, ”no, I am not dead; defend your king with good courage.” The wavering was transferred to the Burgundians. Count Charles himself was so closely pressed that a French man-at-arms laid his hand on him, saying, ”Yield you, my lord; I know you well; let not yourself be slain.” ”A rescue!” cried Charles; ”I'll not leave you, my friends, unless by death: I am here to live and die with you.” He was wounded by a sword-thrust which entered his neck between his helmet and his breastplate, badly fastened. Disorder set in on both sides, without either's being certain how things were, or being able to consider itself victorious. Night came on; and French and Burgundians encamped before Montlhery. The Count of Charolais sat down on two heaps of straw, and had his wound dressed. Around him were the stripped corpses of the slain. As they were being moved to make room for him, a poor wounded creature, somewhat revived by the motion, recovered consciousness and asked for a drink. The count made them pour down his throat a drop of his own mixture, for he never drank wine. The wounded man came completely to himself, and recovered. It was one of the archers of his guard. Next day news was brought to Charles that the Bretons were coming up, with their own duke, the Duke of Berry, and Count Dunois at their head. He went as far as Etampes to meet them, and informed them of what had just happened. The Duke of Berry was very much distressed; it was a great pity, he said, that so many people had been killed; he heartily wished that the war had never been begun. ”Did you hear,” said the Count of Charolais to his servants, ”how yonder fellow talks? He is upset at the sight of seven or eight hundred wounded men going about the town, folks who are nothing to him, and whom he does not even know; he would be still more upset if the matter touched him nearly; he is just the sort of fellow to readily make his own terms and leave us stuck in the mud; we must secure other friends.” And he forthwith made one of his people post off to England, to draw closer the alliance between Burgundy and Edward IV.

Louis, meanwhile, after pa.s.sing a day at Corbeil, had once more, on the 18th of July, entered Paris, the object of his chief solicitude. He dismounted at his lieutenant's, the Sire de Meinn's, and asked for some supper. Several persons, burgesses and their wives, took supper with him. He excited their lively interest by describing to them the battle of Montlhery, the danger he had run there, and the scenes which had been enacted, adopting at one time a pathetic and at another a bantering tone, and exciting by turns the emotion and the laughter of his audience. In three days, he said, he would return to fight his enemies, in order to finish the war; but he had not enough of men-at-arms, and all had not at that moment such good spirits as he. He pa.s.sed a fortnight in Paris, devoting himself solely to the task of winning the hearts of the Parisians, reducing imposts, giving audience to everybody, lending a favorable ear to every opinion offered him, making no inquiry as to who had been more or less faithful to him, showing clemency without appearing to be aware of it, and not punis.h.i.+ng with severity even those who had served as guides to the Burgundians in the pillaging of the villages around Paris. A crier of the Chatelet, who had gone crying about the streets the day on which the Burgundians attacked the gate of St. Denis, was sentenced only to a month's imprisonment, bread and water, and a flogging. He was marched through the city in a night-man's cart; and the king, meeting the procession, called out, as he pa.s.sed, to the executioner, ”Strike hard, and spare not that ribald; he has well deserved it.”

Meanwhile the Burgundians were approaching Paris and pressing it more closely every day. Their different allies in the League were coming up with troops to join them, including even some of those who, after having suffered reverses in Auvergne, had concluded truces with the king. The forces scattered around Paris amounted, it is said, to fifty thousand men, and occupied Charenton, Conflans, St. Maur, and St. Denis, making ready for a serious attack upon the place. Louis, notwithstanding his firm persuasion that things always went ill wherever he was not present in person, left Paris for Rouen, to call out and bring up the regulars and reserves of Normandy. In his absence, interviews and parleys took place between besiegers and besieged. The former, found partisans amongst the inhabitants of Paris, in the Hotel de Ville itself. The Count de Dunois made capital of all the grievances of the League against the king's government, and declared that, if the city refused to receive the princes, the authors of this refusal would have to answer for whatever misery, loss, and damage might come of it; and, in spite of all efforts on the part of the king's officers and friends, some wavering was manifested in certain quarters. But there arrived from Normandy considerable re-enforcements, announcing the early return of the king.

And, in fact, he entered Paris on the 28th of August, the ma.s.s of the people testifying their joy and singing ”Noel.” Louis made as if he knew nothing of what had happened in his absence, and gave n.o.body a black look; only four or five burgesses, too much compromised by their relations with the besiegers, were banished to Orleans. Sharp skirmishes were frequent all round the place; there was cannonading on both sides; and some b.a.l.l.s from Paris came tumbling about the quarters of the Count of Charolais, and killed a few of his people before his very door. But Louis did not care to risk a battle. He was much impressed by the enemy's strength, and by the weakness of which glimpses had been seen in Paris during his absence. Whilst his men-of-war were fighting here and there, he opened negotiations. Local and temporary truces were accepted, and agents of the king had conferences with others from the chiefs of the League. The princes showed so exacting a spirit that there was no treating on such conditions; and Louis determined to see whether he could not succeed better than his agents. He had an interview of two hours'

duration in front of the St. Anthony gate, with the Count of St. Poi, a confidant of the Count of Charolais. On his return he found before the gate some burgesses waiting for news.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XI. and Burgesses waiting for News----193]

”Well, my friends,” said he, ”the Burgundians will not give you so much trouble any more as they have given you in the past.” ”That is all very well, sir,” replied an attorney of the Chatelet, ”but meanwhile they eat our grapes and gather our vintage without any hinderance.” ”Still,” said the king, ”that is better than if they were to come and drink your wine in your cellars.” The month of September pa.s.sed thus in parleys without result. Bad news came from Rouen; the League had a party in that city.

Louis felt that the Count of Charolais was the real head of the opposition, and the only one with whom anything definite could he arrived at. He resolved to make a direct attempt upon him; for he had confidence in the influence he could obtain over people when he chatted and treated in person with them. One day he got aboard of a little boat with five of his officers, and went over to the left bank of the Seine. There the Count of Charolais was awaiting him. ”Will you insure me, brother?” said the king, as he stepped ash.o.r.e. ”Yes, my lord, as a brother,” said the count. The king embraced him and went on; ”I quite see, brother, that you are a gentleman and of the house of France.” ”How so, my lord?”