families, such as the house of Armagnac, were treated
with frightful severity. But his was not wanton
violence. He acted on a regular system of depressing
the lawless nobility and increasing the royal authority,
by bringing the power of the cities forward, by trusting
for protection to the standing army, chiefly of hired
Scots, Swiss, and Italians, and by saving money.
By this means he was able to purchase the counties
of Roussillon and Perpignan from the King of Aragon,
thus making the Pyrenees his frontier, and on several
occasions he made his treasury fight his battles instead
of the swords of his knights. He lived in the
castle of Plessis les Tours, guarded by the utmost
art of fortification, and filled with hired Scottish
archers of his guard, whom he preferred as defenders
to his own nobles. He was exceedingly unpopular
with his nobles; but the statesman and historian,
Philip de Comines, who had gone over to him from Charles
of Burgundy, viewed him as the best and ablest of
kings. He did much to promote trade and manufacture,
improved the cities, fostered the university, and
was in truth the first king since Philip Augustus
who had any real sense of statesmanship. But though
the burghers throve under him, and the lawless nobles
were depressed, the state of the peasants was not
improved; feudal rights pressed heavily on them, and
they were little better than savages, ground down by
burthens imposed by their lords.
6. Provence and Brittany.—Louis had
added much to the French monarchy. He had won
back Artois; he had seized the duchy and county of
Burgundy; he had bought Roussillon. His last acquisition
was the county of Provence. The second Angevin
family, beginning with Louis, the son of King John,
had never succeeded in gaining a footing in Naples,
though they bore the royal title. They held,
however, the imperial fief of Provence, and Louis
XI., whose mother had been of this family, obtained
from her two brothers, Rene and Charles, that Provence
should be bequeathed to him instead of passing to
Rene’s grandson, the Duke of Lorraine.
The Kings of France were thenceforth Counts of Provence;
and though the county was not viewed as part of the
kingdom, it was practically one with it. A yet
greater acquisition was made soon after Louis’s
death in 1483. The great Celtic duchy of Brittany
fell to a female, Anne of Brittany, and the address
of Louis’s daughter, the Lady of Beaujeu, who
was regent of the realm, prevailed to secure the hand
of the heiress for her brother, Charles VIII.
Thus the crown of France had by purchase, conquest,
or inheritance, obtained all the great feudal states
that made up the country between the English Channel
and the Pyrenees; but each still remained a separate
state, with different laws and customs, and a separate
parliament in each to register laws, and to act as
a court of justice.
THE ITALIAN WARS.
