(1423–1483). The eldest son of Charles VII, Louis XI was raised in isolation from his father, and their subsequent animosity made Louis XI a political force long before he ascended the throne. Charged with the defense of Languedoc in 1439, he fell under the influence of rebellious nobles and joined the Praguerie. He was soon forgiven, but the continuing animosity between Louis and Charles seems to have increased after the death of Louis’s wife, Margaret of Scotland, in 1445 and Louis retired to his apanage of the Dauphiné in 1447. There he began an apprenticeship for the throne by reforming provincial government. A disobedient remarriage to Charlotte of Savoy completed the family breach, and Louis fled the realm in 1456.
Louis began his reign in 1461 by ambitiously seeking to expand his authority both abroad, through the invasion of Catalonia, and at home, with his vengeful dismissal of his father’s advisers and foolish rejection of previous allies. He barely survived the subsequent Guerre du Bien Publique and the indecisive Battle of Montlhéry in July 1465, but the rest of the reign was marked by a remarkable ability to learn from his mistakes. Henceforth, Louis handled his domestic adversaries by isolating and destroying each in turn and sought international success through diplomacy rather than war.
By judicious gifts and appointments, Louis reconciled himself to his father’s advisers, Dunois and Chabannes and such dangerous peers as the duke of Bourbon. He isolated his brother Charles of France by the award of the apanage of Guyenne. Louis supported first the Lancastrians and then the Yorkists to prevent English intervention in France, subsidized Swiss resistance to Burgundy, and supported Angevin ventures in Italy to secure the southwest. The birth of a son in 1470 (the future Charles VIII), the death of his brother Charles in 1472, the destruction of remaining Armagnac strongholds in 1473, the execution of the count of Saint-Pol in 1475—all these combined to secure Louis’s domestic authority.
Thereafter, Louis concentrated on Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who, at Péronne in 1468, had humiliated him by extorting a guarantee of the independence of Flanders. Charles’s death in 1477 was Louis’s greatest stroke of good fortune. The remaining years of the reign were devoted to the acquisition of Burgundian territories. In these same years, Louis’s annexation of Anjou and inheritance of Maine and Provence virtually completed the territorial unification of modern France before his death.
Louis’s successes came as a fulfillment of his predecessors’ policies. Ugly and socially isolated from his peers, Louis’s rejection of medieval courtly behavior, dress, and ritual later endeared him to 19th-century romantics but in his own day alienated many whose help he needed. Louis was not some sort of “New Monarch” but rather an idiosyncratic medieval king whose breaches with convention often proved self-defeating and whose greatest successes came through the traditional means of diplomacy and warfare made possible by the military and fiscal reforms of his less colorful father.
Bittmann, Karl. Ludwig XI. und Karl der Kuhne: Die Memoiren des Phillipe des Commynes als historische Quelle. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1964.
Champion, Pierre. Louis XI. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1929.
Kendall, Paul M. Louis XI: The Universal Spider. New York: Norton, 1970.
Lewis, Peter S. Later Medieval France: The Polity. New York: St. Martin, 1968.
Tyrell, Joseph M. Louis XI. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
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