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CHAPTER XXV.——LOUIS XI. (1461-1483.) | 119 |
CHAPTER XXVI.——THE WARS OF ITALY.— CHARLES VIII.— 1483-1498. | 177 |
CHAPTER XXVII.——THE WARS IN ITALY.—LOUIS XII. 1498-1515. | 210 |
[Illustration: The Procession went over the Gates——16]
[Illustration: ’"Thou art betrayed."’——26]
[Illustration: Murder of the Duke of Orleans——38]
[Illustration: Death of Valentine de Milan——45]
[Illustration: John the Fearless——51]
[Illustration: Already distressed——57]
[Illustration: Charles vi. and Odette——71]
[Illustration: ’"Into the River!"’——77]
[Illustration: The Body of Charles vi. lying in State——84]
[Illustration: The Shepherdess of Domremy——90]
[Illustration: Joan of Arc in her Father’s Garden——91]
[Illustration: Herself drew out the Arrow——109]
[Illustration: Joan examined in Prison——128]
[Illustration: Philip the Good of Burgundy——144]
[Illustration: The Constable Made his Entry on Horseback——150]
[Illustration: Jacques Coeur——165]
[Illustration: Jacques Coeur’s Hostel at Bourges——169]
[Illustration: Agnes Sorel——175]
[Illustration: Louis XI. and Burgesses waiting for News——193]
[Illustration: Charles the Rash——203]
[Illustration: Louis XI. and Charles the Rash at Peronne——209]
[Illustration: Philip de Commynes——217]
[Illustration: The Corpse of Charles the Rash Discovered——236]
[Illustration: The Balue Cage——245]
[Illustration: Louis XI. at his Devotions——255]
[Illustration: Views of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours——258]
[Illustration: Louis XI——260]
[Illustration: Anne de Beaujeu——264]
[Illustration: Meeting between Charles viii, and Anne of Brittany——282]
[Illustration: Charles viii. crossing the Alps——285]
[Illustration: Charles viii——293]
[Illustration: Battle of Fornovo——303]
[Illustration: Louis XII——310]
[Illustration: Bayard——315]
[Illustration: Battle of Agnadello——334]
[Illustration: Cardinal d’Amboise——347]
[Illustration: Chaumont d’Amboise——350]
[Illustration: Bayard’s Farewell——358]
[Illustration: Gaston de Foix——364]
CHAPTER XXIII.——THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR—CHARLES VI. AND THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY.
Sully, in his Memoirs, characterizes the reign of Charles vi. as “that reign so pregnant of sinister events, the grave of good laws and good morals in France.” There is no exaggeration in these words; the sixteenth century with its St. Bartholomew and The League, the eighteenth with its reign of terror, and the nineteenth with its Commune of Paris, contain scarcely any events so sinister as those of which France was, in the reign of Charles vi., from 1380 to 1422, the theatre and the victim.
Scarcely was Charles V. laid on his bier when it was seen what a loss he was and would be to his kingdom. Discord arose in the king’s own family. In order to shorten the ever critical period of minority, Charles V. had fixed the king’s majority at the age of fourteen. His son, Charles vi., was not yet twelve, and so had two years to remain under the guardianship of his four uncles, the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon; but the last being only a maternal uncle and a less puissant prince than his paternal uncles, it was between the other three that strife began for temporary possession of the kingly power.
Though very unequal in talent and in force of character, they were all three ambitious and jealous. The eldest, the Duke of Anjou, who was energetic, despotic, and stubborn, aspired to dominion in France for the sake of making French influence subserve the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the object of his ambition. The Duke of Berry was a mediocre, restless, prodigal, and grasping prince. The Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, the most able and the most powerful of the three, had been the favorite, first of his father, King John, and then of his brother, Charles V., who had confidence in him and readily adopted his counsels. His marriage, in 1369, with the heiress to the countship of Flanders, had been vigorously opposed by the Count of Flanders, the young princess’s father, and by the Flemish communes, ever more friendly to England than to France; but the old Countess of Flanders, Marguerite of France, vexed at the ill will of the count her son, had one day said to him, as she tore open her dress before his eyes, “Since you will not yield to your mother’s wishes, I will cut off these breasts which gave suck to you, to you and to no other, and will throw them to the dogs to devour.” This singular argument had moved the Count of Flanders; he had consented to the marriage; and the Duke of Burgundy’s power had received such increment by it that on the 4th of October, 1380, when Charles vi. was crowned at Rheims, Philip the Bold, without a word said previously to any, suddenly went up and sat himself down at the young king’s side, above his eldest brother, the Duke of Anjou, thus assuming, without anybody’s daring to oppose him, the rank and the rights of premier peer of France.
He was not slow to demonstrate that his superiority in externals could not fail to establish his political preponderance. His father-in-law, Count Louis of Flanders, was in almost continual strife with the great Flemish communes, ever on the point of rising against the taxes he heaped upon them and the blows he struck at their privileges. The city of Ghent, in particular, joined complaint with menace. In 1381 the quarrel became war. The Ghentese at first experienced reverses. “Ah! if James Van Artevelde were alive!” said they. James Van Artevelde had left a son named Philip; and there was in Ghent a burgher-captain, Peter Dubois,
“By my faith,” answered the king, “I am greatly minded; go we thither; there is nothing I desire so much as to get on my harness, for I have never yet borne arms; I would fain set out to-morrow.” Amongst the prelates and lords summoned to Compiegne some spoke of the difficulties and dangers that might be encountered. “Yes, yes,” said the king, “but ‘begin nought and win nought.’” When the Flemings heard of the king’s decision they sent respectful letters to him, begging him to be their mediator with the count their lord; but the letters were received with scoffs, and the messengers were kept in prison. At this news Van Artevelde
Accordingly, in November, 1382, the King of France and his army marched into Flanders. Several towns, Cassel, Bergues, Gravelines, and Turnhout, hastily submitted to him.
There was less complete unanimity and greater alarm amongst the Flemings than their chiefs had anticipated. “Noble king,” said the inhabitants, “we place our persons and our possessions at your discretion, and to show you that we recognize you as our lawful lord, here are the captains whom Van Artevelde gave us; do with them according to your will, for it is they who have governed us.” On the 28th of November the two armies found themselves close together at Rosebecque, between Ypres and Courtrai. In the evening Van Artevelde assembled his captains at supper, and, “Comrades,” said he, “we shall to-morrow have rough work, for the King of France is here all agog for fighting. But have no fear; we are defending our good right and the liberties of Flanders. The English have not helped us; well, we shall only have the more honor. With the King of France is all the flower of his kingdom. Tell your men to slay all, and show no quarter. We must spare the King of France only; he is a child, and must be pardoned; we will take him away to Ghent, and have him taught Flemish. As for the dukes, counts, barons, and other men-at-arms, slay them all; the commons of France shall not bear us ill will; I am quite sure that they would not have a single one of them back.” At the very same moment King Charles vi. was entertaining at supper the princes his uncles, the Count of Flanders, the constable, Oliver de Clisson, the marshals, &c. They were arranging the order of battle for the morrow. Many folks blamed the Duke of Burgundy for having brought so young a king, the hope of the realm, into the perils of war. It was resolved to confide the care of him to the constable de Clisson, whilst conferring upon Sire de Coucy, for that day only, the command of the army. “Most dear lord,” said the constable to the king, “I know that there is no greater honor than to have the care of your person; but it would be great grief to my comrades not to have me with them. I say not that they
The victory of Rosebecque was a great cause for satisfaction and pride to Charles vi. and his uncle, the Duke of Burgundy. They had conquered on the field in Flanders the commonalty of Paris as well as that of Ghent; and in France there was great need of such a success, for, since the accession of the young king, the Parisians had risen with a demand for actual abolition of the taxes of which Charles V., on his death-bed,
[Illustration: The Procession went over the Gates——16]
Returning victorious from Flanders to France, Charles vi. and his uncles, everywhere brilliantly feasted on their march, went first of all for nine days to Compiegne, “to find recreation after their fatigues,” says the monk of St. Denis, “in the pleasures of the chase; afterwards, on the 10th of January, 1383, the king took back in state to the church of St. Denis the oriflamme which he had borne away on his expedition; and next day, the 11th of January, he re-entered Paris, he alone being mounted, in the midst of his army.” The burgesses went out of the city to meet him, and offer him their wonted homage, but they were curtly ordered to retrace their steps; the king and his uncles, they were informed, could not forget offences so recent. The wooden
After the chastisements came galas again, of which the king and his court were immoderately fond. Young as he was (he was but seventeen), his powerful uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, was very anxious to get him married, so as to secure his own personal influence over him. The wise Charles V., in his dying hours, had testified a desire that his son should seek alliances in Germany. A son of the reigning duke, Stephen of Bavaria, had come to serve in the French army, and the Duke of Burgundy had asked him if there were any marriageable princess of Bavaria. “My eldest brother,” answered the Bavarian, “has a very beautiful daughter, aged fourteen.” “That is just what we want,” said the Burgundian: “try and get her over here; the king is very fond of beautiful girls; if she takes his fancy, she will be Queen of France.” The Duke of Bavaria, being informed by his brother, at first showed some hesitation. “It would be a great honor,” said he, “for my daughter to be Queen of France; but it is a long way from here. If my daughter were taken to France, and then sent back to me because she was not suitable, it would cause me too much chagrin. I prefer to marry her at my leisure, and in my own neighborhood.” The matter was pressed, however, and at last the Duke of Bavaria consented. It was agreed that the Princess Isabel should go on a visit to the Duchess of Brabant, who instructed her, and had her well dressed, say the chroniclers, for in Germany they clad themselves too simply for the fashions of France. Being thus got ready, the Princess Isabel was conducted to Amiens, where the king then was, to whom her portrait had already been shown. She was presented to him, and bent the knee before him. He considered her charming. Seeing with what pleasure he looked upon her, the constable, Oliver de Clisson, said to Sire De Coney, “By my faith, she will bide with us.” The same evening, the young king said to his councillor, Bureau de la Riviere, “She pleases me: go and tell my uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, to conclude at once.” The duke, delighted, lost no time in informing the ladies of the court, who cried, “Noel!” for joy. The duke had wished the nuptials to take place at Arras; but the young king, in his impatience, was urgent for Amiens, without delay, saying that he couldn’t sleep for her. “Well, well,” replied his uncle, “you must be cured of your complaint.” On the 18th of July, 1385, the marriage was celebrated at the cathedral of Amiens, whither the Princess Isabel “was conducted in a handsome chariot, whereof the tires of the wheels were of silvern stuff.” King, uncles, and courtiers were far from a thought of the crimes and shame which would be connected in France with the name of Isabel of Bavaria. There is still more levity and imprudence in the marriages of kings than in those of their subjects.
Whilst this marriage was being celebrated, the war with England, and her new king, Richard ii., was going on, but slackly and without result. Charles vi. and his uncle of Burgundy, still full of the proud confidence inspired by their success against the Flemish and Parisian communes, resolved to strike England a heavy blow, and to go and land there with a powerful army. Immense preparations were made in France for this expedition. In September, 1386, there were collected in the port of Ecluse (Sluys) and at sea, between Sluys and Blankenberg, thirteen hundred and eighty-seven vessels, according to some, and according to others only nine hundred, large and small; and Oliver de Clisson had caused to be built at Trdguier, in Brittany, a wooden town which was to be transported to England and rebuilt after landing, “in such sort,” says Froissart, “that the lords might lodge therein and retire at night, so as to be in safety from sudden awakenings, and sleep in greater security.” Equal care was taken in the matter of supplies. “Whoever had been at that time at Bruges, or the Dam, or the Sluys would have seen how ships and vessels were being laden by torchlight, with hay in casks, biscuits in sacks, onions, peas, beans, barley, oats, candles, gaiters, shoes, boots, spurs, iron, nails, culinary utensils, and all things that can be used for the service of man.” Search was made everywhere for the various supplies, and they were very dear. “If you want us and our service,” said the Hollanders, “pay us on the nail; otherwise we will be neutral.” To the intelligent foresight shown in these preparations was added useless magnificence. “On the masts was nothing to be seen but paintings and gildings; everything was emblazoned and covered with armorial bearings. But nothing came up to the Duke of Burgundy’s ship; it was painted all over outside with blue and gold, and there were five huge banners with the arms of the duchy of Burgundy and the countships of Flanders, Artois, Rethel, and Burgundy, and everywhere the duke’s device, ‘I’m a-longing.’” The young king, too, displayed great anxiety to enter on the campaign. He liked to go aboard his ship, saying, “I am very eager to be off; I think I shall be a good sailor, for the sea does me no harm.” But everybody was not so impatient as the king, who was waiting for his uncle, the Duke of Berry, and writing to him letter after letter, urging him to come. The duke, who had no liking for the expedition, contented himself with making an answer bidding him “not to take any trouble, but to amuse himself, for the matter would probably terminate otherwise than was imagined.” The Duke of Berry at last arrived at Sluys on the 14th of October, 1386. “If it hadn’t been for you, uncle,” said the king to him, “we should have been by this time in England.” Three months had gone by; the fine season was past; the winds were becoming violent and contrary; the vessels come from Treguier with the constable to join the fleet had suffered
Such a mistake, after such a fuss, was probably not unconnected with a resolution adopted by Charles vi. some time after the abandonment of the projected expedition against England. In October, 1388, he assembled at Rheims a grand council, at which were present his two uncles, the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry [the third, the Duke of Anjou, had died in Italy, on the 20th of September, 1384, after a vain attempt to conquer the kingdom of Naples], his brother, the Duke of Orleans, his cousins, and several prelates and lords of note. The chancellor announced thereat that he had been ordered by the king to put in discussion the question, whether it were not expedient that he should henceforth take the government of his kingdom upon himself. Cardinal Ascelin de Montaigu, Bishop of Laon, the first to be interrogated upon this subject, replied that, in his opinion, the king was quite in a condition, as well as in a legal position, to take the government of his kingdom upon himself, and, without naming anybody, he referred to the king’s uncles, and especially to the Duke of Burgundy, as being no longer necessary for the government of France. Nearly all who were present were of the same opinion. The king, without further waiting, thanked his uncles for the care they had taken of his dominions and of himself, and begged them to continue their affection for him. Neither the Duke of Burgundy nor the Duke of Berry had calculated upon this resolution; they submitted, without making any objection, but not without letting a little temper leak out. The Duke of Berry even said that he and his brother would beg the king to confer with them more maturely on the subject when he returned to Paris. Hereupon the council broke up; the king’s two uncles started for their own dominions; and a few weeks afterwards the Cardinal-bishop of Laon died of a short illness. “It was
Charles vi. was not content with the satisfaction of Paris only; he wished all his realm to have cognizance of and to profit by his independence. He determined upon a visit to the centre and the south of France. Such a trip was to himself, and to the princes and cities that entertained him, a cause of enormous expense. “When the king stopped anywhere, there were wanted for his own table, and for the maintenance of his following, six oxen, eighty sheep, thirty calves, seven hundred chickens, two hundred pigeons, and many other things besides. The expenses for the king were set down at two hundred and thirty livres a day, without counting the presents which the large towns felt bound to make him.” But Charles was himself magnificent even to prodigality, and he delighted in the magnificence of which he was the object, without troubling himself about their cost to himself. Between 1389 and 1390, for about six months, he travelled through Burgundy, the banks of the Rhone, Languedoc, and the small principalities bordering on the Pyrenees. Everywhere his progress was stopped for the purpose of presenting to him petitions or expressing wishes before him. At Nimes and Montpellier, and throughout Languedoc, passionate representations were made to him touching the bad government of his two uncles, the Dukes of Anjou and Berry. “They had plundered and ruined,” he was told, “that beautiful and rich province; there were five or six talliages a year; one was no sooner over than another began; they had levied quite three millions of gold from Villeneuve-d’Avignon to Toulouse.” Charles listened with feeling, and promised to have justice done, and his father’s old councillors, who were in his train, were far from dissuading him. The Duke of Burgundy, seeing him start with them in his train, had testified his spite and disquietude to the Duke of Berry, saying, “Aha! there goes the king on a visit to Languedoc, to hold an inquiry about those who have governed it. For all his council be takes with him only La Riviere, Le Mercier, Montaigu, and Le Begue de Vilaine. What say you to that, my brother?” “The king, our nephew, is young,” answered the Duke of Berry: “if
The future is a blank, as well to the anxieties as to the hopes of men. The king’s uncles were on the point of getting back the power which they believed to be lost to them. On the 13th of June, 1392, the constable, Oliver de Clisson, was waylaid as he was returning home after a banquet given by the king at the hostel of St. Paul. The assassin was Peter de Craon, cousin of John iv., Duke of Brittany. He believed De Clisson to be dead, and left him bathed in blood at a baker’s door in the street called Culture-Sainte-Catherine. The king was just going to bed, when one of his people came and said to him, “Ah! sir, a great misfortune has happened in Paris.” “What, and to whom?” said the king. “To your constable, sir, who has just been slain.” “Slain!” cried Charles; “and by whom?” “Nobody knows; but it was close by here, in St. Catherine Street.” “Lights! quick!” said the king; “I will go and see him;” and he set off, without waiting for his following. When he entered the baker’s shop, De Clisson, grievously wounded, was just beginning to recover his senses. “Ah! constable,” said the king, “and how do you feel?” “Very poorly, dear sir.” “And who brought you to this pass?” “Peter de Craon and his accomplices; traitorously and without warning.” “Constable,” said the king, “never was anything so punished or dearly paid for as this shall be; take thought for yourself, and have no further care; it is my affair.” Orders were immediately given to seek out Peter de Craon, and hurry on his trial. He had taken refuge, first in his own castle of Sable, and afterwards with the Duke of Brittany, who kept him concealed, and replied to the king’s envoys that he did not know where he was. The king proclaimed his intention of making war on the Duke of Brittany until Peter de Craon should be discovered, and justice done to the constable. Preparations for war were begun; and the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy received orders to get ready for it, themselves and their vassals. The former, who happened to be in Paris at the time of the attack, did not care to directly oppose the king’s project; but he evaded, delayed, and predicted a serious war. According to Froissart, he had been warned, the morning before the attack, by a simple cleric, of Peter de Craon’s design; but, “It is too late in the day,” he had said; “I do not like to trouble the king to-day; to-morrow, without fail, we will see to it.” He had, however, forgotten or neglected to speak to his nephew. Neither he nor his brother, the Duke of Burgundy, there is reason to suppose, were
Charles vi.’s excitement was very strong, and endured forever. He pressed forward eagerly his preparations for war, though attempts were made to appease him. He was recommended to take care of himself; for he had been ill, and could scarcely mount his horse; and the Duke of Burgundy remonstrated with him several times on the fatigue he was incurring. “I find it better for me,” he answered, “to be on horseback, or working at my council, than to keep resting. Whoso wishes to persuade me otherwise is not of my friends, and is displeasing to me.” A letter from the Queen of Arragon gave some ground for supposing that Peter de Craon had taken refuge in Spain; and the Duke of Burgundy took advantage of it to dissuade the king from his prompt departure for the war in Brittany. “At the very least,” he said, “it was right to send to Arragon to know the truth of the matter, and to thank the queen for her courtesy.” “We are quite willing, uncle,” answered Charles: “you need not be vexed; but for my own part I hold that this traitor of a Peter de Craon is in no other prison and no other Barcelona than there is in being quite comfortable at the Duke of Brittany’s.” There was no way of deterring him from his purpose. He had got together his uncles and his troops at Le Mans; and, after passing three weeks there, he gave the word to march for Brittany. The tragic incident which at that time occurred has nowhere been more faithfully or better narrated than in M. de Barante’s History of the Dukes of Burgundy. “It was,” says he, “the beginning of August, 1392, during the hottest days of the year. The sun was blazing, especially in those sandy districts. The king was on horseback, clad in a short and tight dress called a jacket. His was of black velvet, and very oppressive. On his head he wore a cap of scarlet velvet, ornamented with a chaplet of large pearls, which the queen had given him at his departure. Behind him were two pages on horseback. In order not to incommode the king with dust, he was left to march almost alone. To the left of him were the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, some paces in front, conversing together. The Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Bourbon, Sire de Coney, and some others were also in front, forming another group. Behind were Sires de Navarre, de Bar, d’Albret, d’Artois, and many others in one pretty large troop. They rode along in this order, and had just entered the great forest of Le Mans, when all at once there started from behind a tree by the road-side a tall man, with bare head and feet, clad in a common white smock, who, dashing forward and seizing the king’s horse by the bridle, cried, ’Go no farther; thou art betrayed!’
[Illustration: ’"Thou art betrayed."’——26]
The men-at-arms hurried up immediately, and striking the hands of the fellow with the butts of their lances, made him let go the bridle. As he had the appearance of a poor madman, and nothing more, he was allowed to go without any questioning, and he followed the king for nearly half an hour, repeating the same cry from a distance. The king was much troubled at this sudden apparition; and his head, which was very weak, was quite turned by it. Nevertheless the march was continued. When the forest had been traversed, they came to a great sandy plain, where the rays of the sun were more scorching than ever. One of the king’s pages, overcome by the heat, had fallen asleep, and the lance he carried fell against his helmet, and suddenly caused a loud clash of steel.
“The king shuddered; and then he was observed, rising in his stirrups, to draw his sword, touch his horse with the spur, and make a dash, crying, ‘Forward upon these traitors! They would deliver me up to the enemy!’ Every one moved hastily aside, but not before some were wounded; it is even said that several were killed, among them a bastard of Polignac. The king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans, happened to be quite close by. ‘Fly, my nephew d’Orleans,’ shouted the Duke of Burgundy: ’my lord is beside himself. My God! let some one try and seize him!’ He was so furious that none durst risk it; and he was left to gallop hither and thither, and tire himself in pursuit of first one and then another. At last, when he was weary and bathed in sweat, his chamberlain, William de Martel, came up behind and threw his arms about him. He was surrounded, had his sword taken from him, was lifted from his horse, and laid gently on the ground, and then his jacket was unfastened. His brother and his uncles came up, but his eyes were fixed and recognized nobody, and he did not utter a word. ‘We must go back to Le Mans,’ said the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy: ‘here is an end of the trip to Brittany.’ On the way they fell in with a wagon drawn by oxen; in this they laid the King of France, having bound him for fear of a renewal of his frenzy, and so took him back, motionless and speechless, to the town.”
It was not a mere fit of delirious fever; it was the beginning of a radical mental derangement, sometimes in abeyance, or at least for some time alleviated, but bursting out again without appreciable reason, and aggravated at every fresh explosion. Charles vi. had always had a taste for masquerading. When in 1389 the young queen, Isabel of Bavaria, came to Paris to be married, the king, on the morning of her entry, said to his chamberlain, Sire de Savoisy, “Prithee, take a good horse, and I will mount behind thee; and we will dress so as not to be known and go to see my wife cone in.” Savoisy did not like it, but the king insisted; and so they went in this guise through the crowd, and got many
[Illustration: Charles vi. and Odette——71]
For thirty years, from 1392 to 1422, the crown remained on the head of this poor madman, whilst France was a victim to the bloody quarrels of the royal house, to national dismemberment, to licentiousness in morals, to civil anarchy, and to foreign conquest.
When, for the first time, in the forest of Le Mans, the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy saw their nephew in this condition, their first feeling was one of sorrow and disquietude. The Duke of Burgundy especially, who was accessible to generous and sympathetic emotions, cried out with tears, as he embraced the king, “My lord and nephew, comfort me with just one word!” But the desires and the hopes of selfish ambition reappeared before long more prominently than these honest effusions of feeling. “All!” said the Duke of Berry, “De Clisson, La Mviere, Noviant, and Vilaine have been haughty and harsh towards me; the time has come when I shall pay them out in the same coin from the same mint.” The guardianship of the king was withdrawn from his councillors, and transferred to four chamberlains chosen by his uncles. The two dukes, however, did not immediately lay hands on the government of the kingdom; the constable De Clisson and the late councillors of Charles V. remained in charge of it for some time longer; they had given enduring proofs of capacity and fidelity to the king’s service; and the two dukes did not at first openly attack them, but labored strenuously, nevertheless, to destroy them. The Duke of Burgundy one day said to Sire de Noviant, “I have been overtaken by a very pressing business, for which I require forthwith thirty thousand crowns; let me have them out of my lord’s treasury; I will restore them at another time.” Noviant answered respectfully that the council must be spoken to about it. “I wish none to know of it,” said the duke. Noviant persisted. “You will not do me this favor?” rejoined the duke; “you shall rue it before long.” It was against the constable that the wrath of the princes was chiefly directed. He was the most powerful and the richest. One day he went, with a single squire behind him, to the Duke of Burgundy’s house; and, “My lord,” said he, “many knights and squires are persecuting me to get the money which is owing to them. I know not where to find it. The chancellor and the treasurer refer me to you. Since it is you and the Duke of Berry who govern, may it please you to give me an answer.” “Clisson,” said the duke, “you
Their trial before parliament was prosecuted eagerly, especially in the case of the absent De Clisson, whom a royal decree banished from the kingdom “as a false and wicked traitor to the crown, and condemned him to ’pay a hundred thousand marks of silver, and to forfeit forever the office of constable.’” It is impossible in the present day to estimate how much legal justice there was in this decree; but, in any case, it was certainly extreme severity to so noble and valiant a warrior who had done so much for the safety and honor of France. The Dukes of Burgundy and Berry and many barons of the realm signed the decree; but the king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans, refused to have any part in it. Against the other councillors of the king the prosecution was continued, with fits and starts of determination, but in general with slowness and uncertainty. Under the influence of the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, the parliament showed an inclination towards severity; but Bureau de la Riviere had warm friends, and amongst others, the young and beautiful Duchess of Berry, to whose marriage he had greatly contributed, and John Juvenal des Ursins, provost of the tradesmen of Paris, one of the men towards whom the king and the populace felt the highest esteem and confidence. The
They exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without any great dispute between themselves—the Duke of Burgundy’s influence being predominant—or with the king, who, save certain lucid intervals, took merely a nominal part in the government. During this period no event of importance disturbed France internally. In 1393 the King of England, Richard ii., son of the Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of Charles vi., Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and in both countries there was a desire for peace. An embassy came in state to demand the hand of the princess. The ambassadors were presented, and the Earl of Northampton, marshal of England, putting one knee to the ground before her, said, “Madame, please God you shall be our sovereign lady and Queen of England.” The young girl, well tutored, answered, “If it please God and my lord and father that I should be Queen of England, I would be willingly, for I have certainly been told that I should then be a great lady.” The contract was signed on the 9th of March, 1396, with a promise that, when the princess had accomplished her twelfth year, she should be free to assent to or refuse the union; and ten days after the marriage, the king’s uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a truce, which promised—but quite in vain—to last for eight and twenty years.
About the same time Sigismund, King of Hungary, threatened with an invasion of his kingdom by the great Turkish Sultan Bajazet I., nicknamed Lightning (El Derfr), because of his rapid conquests, invoked the aid of the Christian kings of the West, and especially of the King of France. Thereupon there was a fresh outbreak of those crusades so often renewed since the end of the thirteenth century. All the knighthood of France arose for the defence of a Christian king. John, Count of Nevers, eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy, scarcely eighteen years of age, said to his comrades, “If it pleased my two lords, my lord the king and my lord and father, I would willingly head this army and this venture, for I have a desire to make myself known.” The Duke of Burgundy
Terms of ransom were concluded; and the sum total was paid through the hands of Bartholomew Pellegrini, a Genoese trader. Before the Count of Nevers and his comrades set out, Bajazet sent for them. “John,” said he to the count through an interpreter, “I know that thou art a great lord in thy country, and the son of a great lord. Thou art young. It may be that thou art abashed and grieved at what hath befallen thee in thy first essay of knighthood, and that, to retrieve thine honor, thou wilt collect a powerful army against me. I might, ere I release thee, bind thee by oath not to take arms against me, neither thyself nor thy people. But no; I will not exact this oath either from them or from thee. When thou hast returned yonder, take up arms if it please thee, and come and attack me. Thou wilt find me ever ready to receive thee in the open field, thee and thy men-at-arms.
While this tragic incident was taking place in Eastern Europe, the court of the mad king was falling a victim to rivalries, intrigues, and scandals which, towards the close of this reign, were to be the curse and the shame of France. There had grown up between Queen Isabel of Bavaria and Louis, Duke of Orleans, brother of the king, an intimacy which, throughout the city and amongst all honorable people, shocked even the least strait-laced. It was undoubtedly through the queen’s influence that Charles vi., in 1402, suddenly decided upon putting into the hands of the Duke of Orleans the entire government of the realm and the right of representing him in everything during the attacks of his malady. The Duke of Burgundy wrote at once about it to the parliament of Paris, saying, “Take counsel and pains that the interests of the king and his dominion be not governed as they now are, for, in good truth, it is a pity and a grief to hear what is told me about it.” The accusation was not grounded solely upon the personal ill-temper of the Duke of Burgundy. His nephew, the Duke of Orleans, was elegant, affable, volatile, good-natured; he had for his partisans at court all those who shared his worse than frivolous tastes and habits; and his political judgment was no better than his habits. No sooner was he invested with power than he abused it strangely; he levied upon the clergy as well as the people an enormous talliage, and the use he made of the money increased still further the wrath of the public. An Augustine monk, named James Legrand, already celebrated for his writings, had the hardihood to preach even before the court against abuses of power and licentiousness of morals. The king rose up from his own place, and went and sat down right opposite the preacher. “Yes, sir,” continued the monk, “the king your father, during his reign, did likewise lay taxes upon the people, but with the produce of them he built fortresses for the defence of the kingdom, he hurled back the enemy and took possession of their towns, and he effected a saving of treasure which made him the most powerful amongst the kings of the West. But now, there is nothing of this kind done; the height of nobility in the present day is to frequent bagnios,
John the Fearless, Count of Nevers, his son and successor in the dukedom of Burgundy, was not slow to prove that there was reason to regret his father. His expedition to Hungary, for all its bad leadership and bad fortune, had created esteem for his courage and for his firmness under reverses, but little confidence in his direction of public affairs. He was a man of violence, unscrupulous and indiscreet, full of jealousy and hatred, and capable of any deed and any risk for the gratification of his passions or his fancies. At his accession he made some popular moves; he appeared disposed to prosecute vigorously the war against England, which was going on sluggishly; he testified a certain spirit of conciliation by going to pay a visit to his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, lying ill at his castle of Beaute, near Vincennes; when the Duke of Orleans was well again, the two princes took the communion together, and dined together at their uncle’s, the Duke of Berry’s; and the Duke of Orleans invited the new Duke of Burgundy to dine with him the next Sunday. The Parisians took pleasure in observing these little matters, and in hoping for the re-establishment of harmony in the royal family. They were soon to be cruelly undeceived.
On the 23d of November, 1407, the Duke of Orleans had dined at Queen Isabel’s. He was returning about eight in the evening along Vieille Rue du Temple, singing and playing with his glove, and attended by only two squires riding one horse, and by four or five varlets on foot, carrying torches. It was a gloomy night; not a soul in the streets. When the duke was about a hundred paces from the queen’s hostel, eighteen or twenty armed men, who had lain in ambush behind a house called Image de Notre-Dame, dashed suddenly out; the squires’ horse took fright and ran away with them; and the assassins rushed upon the duke, shouting, “Death! death!” “What is all this?” said he; “I am the Duke of Orleans.” “Just what we want,” was the answer; and they hurled him down from his mule. He struggled to his knees; but the fellows struck at him heavily with axe and sword. A young man in his train made an effort to defend him, and was immediately cut down; and another, grievously wounded, had but just time to escape into a neighboring shop. A poor cobbler’s wife opened her window, and, seeing the work of assassination, shrieked, “Murder! murder!” “Hold your tongue, you strumpet!” cried some one from the street. Others shot arrows at the windows where lookers-on might be. A tall man, wearing a red cap which came down over his eyes, said in a loud voice, “Out with all lights, and away!” The assassins fled at the top of their speed, shouting, “Fire! fire!” throwing behind them foot-trippers, and by menaces causing all the lights to be put out which were being lighted here and there in the shops.
[Illustration: Murder of the Duke of Orleans——38]
The duke was quite dead. One of his squires, returning to the spot, found his body stretched on the road, and mutilated all over. He was carried to the neighboring church of Blancs-Manteaux, whither all the royal family came to render the last sad offices. The Duke of Burgundy appeared no less afflicted than the rest. “Never,” said he, “was a more wicked and traitorous murder committed in this realm.” The provost of Paris, Sire de Tignouville, set on foot an active search after the perpetrators. He was summoned before the council of princes, and the Duke of Berry asked him if he had discovered anything. “I believe,” said the provost, “that if I had leave to enter all the hostels of the king’s servants, and even of the princes, I could get on the track of the authors or accomplices of the crime.” He was authorized to enter wherever it seemed good to him. He went away to set himself to work. The Duke of Burgundy, looking troubled and growing pale, “Cousin,” said the King of Naples, Louis d’Anjou, who was present at the council, “can you know aught about it? You must tell us.” The Duke of Burgundy took him, together with his uncle, the Duke of Berry, aside, and told them that it was he himself who, tempted of the devil, had given orders for this murder. “O God!” cried the Duke of Berry, “then
But the Duke of Orleans left a widow who, in spite of his infidelities and his irregularities, was passionately attached to him. Valentine Visconti, the Duke of Milan’s daughter, whose dowry had gone to pay the ransom of King John, was at Chateau-Thierry when she heard of her husband’s murder. Hers was one of those natures, full of softness and at the same time of fire, which grief does not overwhelm, and in which a passion for vengeance is excited and fed by their despair. She started for Paris in the early part of December, 1407, during the roughest winter, it was said, ever known for several centuries, taking with her all her children. The Duke of Berry, the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Clermont, and the constable went to meet her. Herself and all her train in deep mourning, she dismounted at the hostel of St. Paul, threw herself on her knees before the king with the princes and council around him, and demanded of him justice for her husband’s cruel death. The chancellor promised justice in the name of the king, who added with his own lips, “We regard the deed relating to our own brother as done to ourself.” The compassion of all present was boundless, and so was their indignation; but it was reported that the Duke of Burgundy was getting ready to return to Paris, and with what following and for what purpose would he come? Nothing was known on that point. There was no force with
Charles vi., weak in mind and will, even independently of his attacks, signed these letters, and gave Duke John quite a kind reception, telling him, however, that “he could cancel the penalty, but not the resentment of everybody, and that it was for him to defend himself against perils which were probably imminent.” The duke answered proudly that “so long as he stood in the king’s good graces, he did not fear any man living.”
Three days after this strange audience and this declaration, Queen Isabel, but lately on terms of the closest intimacy with the Duke of Orleans, who had been murdered on his way home after dining with her, was filled with alarm, and set off suddenly for Melun, taking with her her son Louis, the dauphin, and accompanied by nearly all the princes, who, however, returned before long to Paris, being troubled by the displeasure the Duke of Burgundy testified at their departure. For more than four months, Duke John the Fearless remained absolute master of Paris, disposing of all posts, giving them to his own creatures, and putting himself on good terms with the university and the principal burgesses. A serious revolt amongst the Liigese called for his presence in Flanders. The first troops he had sent against them had been repulsed; and he felt the necessity of going thither in person. But two months after his departure from Paris, on the 26th of August, 1408, Queen Isabel returned thither from Melun, with the dauphin Louis, who for the first time rode on horseback, and with three thousand men-at-arms. She set up her establishment at the Louvre. The Parisians shouted “Noel,” as she passed along; and the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Bourbon, the Duke of Brittany, the constable, and all the great officers of the crown rallied round her. Two days afterwards, on the 28th of August, the Duchess of Orleans arrived there from Blois, in a black litter drawn by four horses caparisoned in black, and followed by a large number of mourning carriages. On the 5th of September, a state assembly was held at the Louvre. All the royal family, the princes and great officers of the crown, the presidents of the parliament, fifteen archbishops or bishops, the provost of Paris, the provost of tradesmen, and a hundred burgesses of note attended it. Thereupon Master Juvenal des Ursins, king’s advocate, announced the intention of Charles vi. in his illness to confer the government upon the queen, set forth the reasons for it, called to mind the able regency of Queen Blanche, mother of St. Louis, and produced royal letters, sealed with the great seal. Immediately the Duchess of Orleans came forward, knelt at the dauphin’s feet, demanding justice for the death of her husband, and begged that she might have a day appointed her for refuting the calumnies with which it had been sought to blacken his memory. The dauphin promised a speedy reply. On the 11th of September, accordingly, a new meeting of princes, lords, prelates, parliament, the university, and burgesses was held in the great hall of the Louvre. The Duchess of Orleans, the Duke her son, their chancellor, and the principal officers of her household were introduced, and leave was given them to proceed with the justification of the late Duke of Orleans. It had been prepared beforehand; the duchess placed the manuscript before the council, as pledging herself unreservedly to all
It had just been reported that the Duke of Burgundy had completely beaten and reduced to submission the insurgent Liegese, and that he was preparing to return to Paris with his army. Great was the consternation amongst the council of the queen and princes. They feared above everything to see the king and the dauphin in the Duke of Burgundy’s power; and it was decided to quit Paris, which had always testified a favorable disposition towards Duke John. Charles vi. was the first to depart, on the 3d of November, 1408. The queen, the dauphin, and the princes followed him two days afterwards, and at Gien they all took boat on the Loire to go to Tours. The Duke of Burgundy on his arrival at Paris, on the 28th of November, found not a soul belonging to the royal family or the court; and he felt a moment’s embarrassment. Even his audacity and lack of scruple did not go to the extent of doing without the king altogether, or even of dispensing with having him for a tool; and he had seen too much of the Parisian populace not to know how precarious and fickle was its favor. He determined to negotiate with the king’s party, and for that purpose he sent his brother-in-law the Count of Hainault, to Tours, with a brilliant train of unarmed attendants, bidden to make themselves agreeable, and not to fight.
A recent event had probably much to do with his decision. His most indomitable foe, she to whom the king and his councillors had lately granted a portion of the vengeance she was seeking to take on him, Valentine of Milan, Duchess of Orleans, died on the 4th of December, 1408, at Blois, far from satisfied with the moral reparation she had obtained in her enemy’s absence, and clearly foreseeing that against the Duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and present in person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked. For spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman’s heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear; and Valentine Visconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial. At the close of her life she had taken for device, “Nought have I more; more hold I nought” (Bien ne m ’est plus; plus ne m ’est rien); and so fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words inscribed upon the black tapestry of her chamber. In her last hours she had by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another still whom she remembered. She sent for a child, six years of age, John, a natural son of her husband by Marietta d’Enghien, wife of Sire de Cany-Dunois. “This one,” said she, “was filched from me; yet there is not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father’s death.” Twenty-five years later John was the famous Bastard of Orleans, Count Dunois, Charles VII.’s lieutenant-general, and Joan of Arc’s comrade in the work of saving the French kingship and France.
[Illustration: Death of Valentine de Milan——45]
The Duke of Burgundy’s negotiations at Tours were not fruitless. The result was, that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was concluded and an interview effected at Chartres between the duke on one side and on the other the king, the queen, the dauphin, all the royal family, the councillors of the crown, the young Duke of Orleans, his brother, and a hundred knights of their house, all met together to hear the king declare that he pardoned the Duke of Burgundy. The duke prayed “my lord of Orleans and my lords his brothers to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance;” and the princes of Orleans “assented to what the king commanded them, and forgave their cousin the Duke of Burgundy everything entirely.” On the way back from Chartres the Duke of Burgundy’s fool kept playing with a church-paten (called “peace"), and thrusting it under his cloak, saying, “See, this is a cloak of peace;” and, “Many folks,” says Juvenal des Ursins, “considered this fool pretty wise.” The Duke of Burgundy had good reason, however, for seeking this outward reconciliation; it put an end to a position too extended not to become pretty soon untenable; the peace was a cause of great joy at Paris; the king was not long coming back; and two hundred thousand persons, says the chronicle, went out to meet him, shouting, “Noel!”
But falsehood does not extinguish the facts it attempts to disguise. The hostility between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy could not fail to survive the treaty of Chartres, and cause search to be made for a man to head the struggle so soon as it could be recommenced. The hour and the man were not long waited for. In the very year of the treaty, Charles of Orleans, eldest son of the murdered duke and Valentine of Milan, lost his wife, Isabel of France, daughter of Charles vi.; and as early as the following year (1410) the princes, his uncles, made him marry Bonne d’Armagnac, daughter of Count Bernard d’Armagnac, one of the most powerful, the most able, and the most ambitious lords of Southern France. Forthwith, in concert with the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Brittany, and several other lords, Count Bernard put himself at the head of the Orleans party, and prepared to proceed against the Duke of Burgundy in the cause of dominion combined with vengeance. From 1410 to 1415 France was a prey to civil war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and to their alternate successes and reverses brought about by the unscrupulous employment of the most odious and desperate means. The Burgundians had generally the advantage in the struggle, for Paris was chiefly the centre of it, and their influence was predominant there. Their principal allies there were the butchers, the boldest and most ambitious corporation in the city. For a long time the butcher-trade of Paris had been in the hands of a score of families the number had been repeatedly reduced, and at the opening of the fifteenth century, three families, the Legoix, the St. Yons, and the Thiberts, had exercised absolute mastery in the market district, which in turn exercised mastery over nearly the whole city. “One Caboche, a flayer of beasts in the shambles of Hotel-Dieu, and Master John de Troyes, a surgeon with a talent for speaking, were their most active associates. Their company consisted of ’prentice-butchers, medical students, skinners, tailors, and every kind of lewd fellows. When anybody caused their displeasure they said, ‘Here’s an Armagnac,’ and despatched him on the spot, and plundered his house, or dragged him off to prison to pay dear for his release. The rich burgesses lived in fear and peril. More than three hundred of them went off to Melun with the provost of tradesmen, who could no longer answer for the tranquillity of the city.”
Nor was Juvenal mistaken. The opposition to the yoke of the Burgundians was daily becoming more and more earnest and general. The butchers attempted to stein the current; but the carpenters took sides against them, saying, “We will see which are the stronger in Paris, the hewers of wood or the fellers of oxen.” The parliament, the exchequer-chamber, and the Hotel-de-Ville demanded peace; and the shouts of Peace! peace! resounded in the streets. A great crowd of people assembled on the Greve; and thither the butchers came with their company of about twelve hundred persons, it is said. They began to speak against peace, but could not get a hearing. “Let those who are for it go to the right,” shouted a voice, “and those who are against it to the left!” But the adversaries of peace durst
[Illustration: John the Fearless——51]
The duke took leave of the king, said business required
his presence in
Flanders, and went off as fast as he could.
When it was known that he had gone, there was a feeling of regret and disquietude amongst the sensible and sober burgesses at Paris. What they wanted was peace; and in order to have it the adherence of the Duke of Burgundy was indispensable. Whilst he was present, there might be hope of winning him or forcing him over to it; but, whilst he was absent, headstrong as he was known to be, a renewal of war was the most probable contingency. And this result appeared certain when it was seen how the princes hostile to the Duke of Burgundy, above all, Duke Charles of Orleans, the Count of Armagnac and their partisans hastened back to Paris, and resumed their ascendency with the king and in his council. The dauphin, Louis Duke of Aquitaine, united himself by the ties of close friendship with the Duke of Orleans, and prevailed upon him to give up the mourning he had worn since his father’s murder; the two princes appeared everywhere dressed alike; the scarf of Armagnac re-placed that of Burgundy; the feelings of the populace changed as the fashion of the court; and when children sang in the streets the song but lately in vogue, “Burgundy’s duke, God give thee joy!” they were struck and hurled to the ground. Facts were before long in accordance with appearances. After a few pretences of arrangement the Duke of Burgundy took up arms and marched on Paris. Charles VI., on his side, annulled, in the presence of Parliament, all acts adverse to the Duke of Orleans and his adherents; and the king, the queen, and the dauphin bound themselves by oath not to treat with the duke of Burgundy until they had destroyed his power. At the end of March, 1414, the king’s army was set in motion; Compiegne, Soissons, and Bapaume, which held out for the Duke of Burgundy, were successively taken by assault or surrendered; the royal troops treated the people as vanquished rebels; and the four great communes of Flanders sent a deputation to the king to make protestations
Notwithstanding this stubborn way of working up the irreconcilable enmities which caused divisions in the royal family, peace was decided upon and concluded at Arras, on the 4th of September, 1414, on conditions as vague as ever, which really put no end to the causes of civil war, but permitted the king on the one hand and the Duke of Burgundy on the other, to call themselves and to wear an appearance of being reconciled. A serious event which happened abroad at that time was heavily felt in France, reawakened the spirit of nationality, and opened the eyes of all parties a little to the necessity of suspending their own selfish disagreements. Henry IV., King of England, died on the 20th of March, 1413. Having been chiefly occupied with the difficulties of his own government at home, he, without renouncing the war with France, had not prosecuted it vigorously, and had kept it in suspense or adjournment by a repetition of truces. Henry V., his son and successor, a young prince of
On returning to Paris the ambassadors, in presence of the king’s council and a numerous assembly of clergy, nobility, and people, gave an account of their embassy and advised instant preparation for war without listening to a single word of peace. “They loudly declared,” says the monk of St. Denis, “that King Henry’s letters, though they were apparently full of moderation, had lurking at the bottom of them a great deal of perfidy, and that this king, all the time that he was offering peace and union in the most honeyed terms, was thinking only how he might destroy the kingdom, and was levying troops in all quarters.” Henry V., indeed, in November, 1414, demanded of his Parliament a large subsidy, which was at once voted without any precise mention of the use to be made of it, and merely in the terms following: “For the defence of the realm of England and the security of the seas.” At the commencement of the following year, Henry resumed negotiations with France, renouncing his claims to Normandy, Anjou, and Maine; but Charles VI. and his council adhered to their former offers. On the 16th of April, 1415, Henry announced to a grand council of spiritual and temporal peers, assembled at Westminster, his determination “of setting out in person to go and, by God’s grace, recover his heritage.” He appointed one of his brothers, the Duke of Bedford, to be regent in his absence, and the peers, ecclesiastical and laical, applauded his design, promising him their sincere co-operation. Thus France, under a poor mad king and amidst civil dissensions of the most obstinate character, found the question renewed for her of French versus English king-ship and national independence versus foreign conquest.
On the 14th of August, 1415, an English fleet, having on board, together with King Henry V., six thousand men-at-arms, twenty-four thousand archers, powerful war-machines, and a multitude of artisans and “small folk,” came to land near Harfleur, not far from the mouth of the Seine. It was the most formidable expedition that had ever issued from the ports of England. The English spent several days in effecting their landing and setting up their siege-train around the walls of the city. “It would have been easy,” says the monk of St. Denis, “to
[Illustration: Already distressed——57]
When he heard of the disaster at Agincourt he was seized with profound despair at having failed in that patriotic duty; he would fain have starved himself to death, and he spent three whole days in tears, none being able to comfort him. When, four years afterwards, he became Duke of Burgundy, and during his whole life, he continued to testify his keen regret at not having fought in that cruel battle, though it should have cost him his life, and he often talked with his servants about that event of grievous memory. When his father, Duke John, received the news of the disaster at Agincourt, he also exhibited great sorrow and irritation; he had lost by it his two brothers, the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Nevers; and he sent forthwith a herald to the King of England, who was still at Calais, with orders to say, that in consequence of the death of his brother, the Duke of Brabant, who was no vassal of France, and held nothing in fief there, he, the Duke of Burgundy, did defy him mortally (fire and sword) and sent him his gauntlet. “I will not accept the gauntlet of so noble and puissant a prince as the Duke of Burgundy,” was Henry V.’s soft answer; “I am of no account compared with him. If I have had the victory over the nobles of France, it is by God’s grace. The death of the Duke of Brabant hath been an affliction to me; but I do assure thee that neither I nor my people did cause his death. Take back to thy master his gauntlet; if he will be at Boulogne on the 15th of January next, I will prove to him by the testimony of my prisoners and two of my friends, that it was the French who accomplished his brother’s destruction.”
The Duke of Burgundy, as a matter of course, let his quarrel with the King of England drop, and occupied himself for the future only in recovering his power in France. He set out on the march for Paris, proclaiming everywhere that he was assembling his army solely for the purpose of avenging the kingdom, chastising the English, and aiding the king with his counsels and his forces. The sentiment of nationality was so strongly aroused that politicians most anxious about their own personal interests, and about them alone, found themselves obliged to pay homage to it.
Unfortunately, it was, so far as Duke John was concerned, only a superficial and transitory homage. There is no repentance so rarely seen as that of selfishness in pride and power. The four years which elapsed between the battle of Agincourt and the death of John the Fearless were filled with nothing but fresh and still more tragic explosions of hatred and strife between the two factions of the Burgundians and Armagnacs, taking and losing, re-taking and re-losing, alternately, their ascendency with the king and in the government of France. When, after the battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Burgundy marched towards Paris, he heard almost simultaneously that the king was issuing a prohibition against the entry of his troops, and that his rival, the Count of Armagnac, had just arrived and been put in possession of the military power, as constable, and of the civil power, as superintendent-general of finance. The duke then returned to Burgundy, and lost no time in recommencing hostilities against the king’s government. At one time he let his troops make war on the king’s and pillage the domains of the crown; at another he entered into negotiations with the King of England, and showed a disposition to admit his claims to such and such a province, and even perhaps to the throne of France. He did not accede to the positive alliance offered him by Henry; but he employed the fear entertained of it by the king’s government as a weapon against his enemies. The Count of Armagnac, on his side, made the most relentless use of power against the Duke of Burgundy and his partisans; he pursued them everywhere, especially in Paris, with dexterous and pitiless hatred. He abolished the whole organization and the privileges of the Parisian butcherdom which had shown so favorable a leaning towards Duke John; and the system he established as a substitute was founded on excellent grounds appertaining to the interests of the people and of good order in the heart of Paris; but the violence of absolute power and of hatred robs the best measures of the credit they would deserve if they were more disinterested and dispassionate. A lively reaction set in at Paris in favor of the persecuted Burgundians; even outside of Paris several towns of importance, Rheims, Chalons, Troyes, Auxerre, Amiens, and Rouen itself, showed a favorable disposition towards the Duke of Burgundy, and made a sort of alliance with him, promising
“We, Isabel, by the grace of God Queen of France, having, by reason of my lord the king’s seclusion, the government and administration of this realm, by irrevocable grant made to us by the said my lord the king and his council, are come to Chartres in company with our cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, in order to advise and ordain whatsoever is necessary to preserve and recover the supremacy of my lord the king, on advice taken of the prud’hommes, vassals, and subjects.”
She at the same time ordered that Master Philip de Morvilliers, heretofore councillor of the Duke of Burgundy, should go to Amiens, accompanied by several clerics of note and by a registrar, and that there should be held there, by the queen’s authority, for the bailiwicks of Amiens, Vermandois, Tournai, and the countship of Ponthieu, a sovereign court of justice, in the place of that which there was at Paris. Thus, and by such a series of acts of violence and of falsehoods, the Duke of Burgundy, all the while making war on the king, surrounded himself with hollow forms of royal and legal government.
Whilst civil war was thus penetrating to the very core of the kingship, foreign war was making its way again into the kingdom. Henry V., after the battle of Agincourt, had returned to London, and had left his army to repose and reorganize after its sufferings and its losses. It was not until eighteen months afterwards, on the 1st of August, 1417, that he landed at Touques, not far from Honfleur, with fresh troops, and resumed his campaign in France. Between 1417 and 1419 he successively laid siege to nearly all the towns of importance in Normandy, to Caen, Bayeux, Falaise, Evreux, Coutances, Laigle, St. Lo, Cherbourg, &c., &c. Some he occupied after a short resistance, others were sold to him by their governors; but when, in the month of July, 1418, he undertook the siege of Rouen, he encountered there a long and serious struggle. Rouen had at that time, it is said, a population of one hundred and fifty thousand souls, which was animated by ardent patriotism. The Rouennese, on the approach of the English, had repaired their gates, their ramparts, and their moats; had demanded re-enforcements from the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy; and had ordered every person incapable of bearing arms or procuring provisions for ten months, to leave the city. Twelve thousand old men, women, and children were thus expelled, and died either
These successes of the King of England were so many reverses and perils for the Count of Armagnac. He had in his hands Paris, the king, and the dauphin; in the people’s eyes the responsibility of government and of events rested on his shoulders; and at one time he was doing nothing, at another he was unsuccessful in what he did. Whilst Henry V. was becoming master of nearly all the towns of Normandy, the constable, with the king in his army, was besieging Senlis; and he was obliged to raise the siege. The legates of Pope Martin V. had set about establishing peace between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, as well as between France and England; they had prepared, on the basis of the treaty of Arras, a new treaty, with which a great part of the country, and even of the burgesses of Paris, showed themselves well pleased; but the constable had it rejected on the ground of its being adverse to the interests of the king and of France; and his friend, the chancellor, Henry de Marle, declared that, if the king were disposed to sign it, he would have to seal it himself, for that, as for him, the chancellor, he certainly would not seal it. Bernard of Armagnac and his confidential friend, Tanneguy Duchatel, a Breton nobleman, provost of Paris, were hard and haughty. When a complaint was made to them of any violent procedure, they would answer, “What business had you there? If it were the Burgundians, you would make no complaint.” The Parisian population was becoming every day more Burgundian. In the latter days of May. 1418, a plot was contrived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in the quarter of St. Germain des Pros, stole the keys from under the bolster of his father’s bed; a troop of Burgundian men-at-arms came in, and they were immediately joined by a troop of Parisians. They spread over the city, shouting, “Our Lady of peace! Hurrah for the king! Hurrah for Burgundy! Let all who wish for peace take arms and follow us!” The people swarmed from the houses and followed them accordingly. The Armagnacs were surprised and seized with alarm. Tanneguy Duchatel, a man of prompt and resolute spirit, ran to the dauphin’s, wrapped him in his bed-clothes, and carried him off to the Bastille, where he shut him up with several of his partisans. The Count of Armagnac, towards whose house the multitude thronged, left by a back-door, and took refuge at a mason’s, where he believed himself secure. In a few hours the Burgundians were masters of Paris. Their chief, the lord of Isle-Adam, had the doors of the hostel of St. Paul broken in, and presented himself before the king. “How fares my cousin of Burgundy?” said Charles VI.; “I have not seen him for some time.” That was all he said. He was set on horseback and marched through the streets. He showed no astonishment at anything; he had all but lost memory as well as reason, and no longer knew the difference
But factions do not so soon give up either their vengeance or their hopes. On the 11th of June, 1418, hardly twelve days after Paris had fallen into the hands of the Burgundians, a body of sixteen hundred men issued from the Bastille, and rushed into the street St. Antoine, shouting, “Hurrah for the king, the dauphin, and the Count of Armagnac!” They were Tanneguy Duchatel and some of the chiefs of the Armagnacs who were attempting to regain Paris, where they had observed that the Burgundians were not numerous. Their attempt had no success, and merely gave the Burgundians the opportunity and the signal for a massacre of their enemies. The little band of Tanneguy Duchatel was instantly repulsed, hemmed in, and forced to re-enter the Bastille with a loss of four hundred men. Tanneguy saw that he could make no defence there; so he hastily made his way out, taking the dauphin with him to Melun. The massacre of the Armagnacs had already commenced on the previous evening: they were harried in the hostelries and houses; they were cut down with axes in the streets. On the night between the 12th and 13th of June a rumor spread about that there were bands of Armagnacs coming to deliver their friends in prison. “They are at the St. Germain gate,” said some. No, it is the St. Marceau gate,” said others. The mob assembled and made a furious rush upon the prison-gates. “The city and burgesses will have no peace,” was the general saying, “so long as there is one Armagnac left! Hurrah for peace! Hurrah for the Duke of Burgundy!” The provost of Paris, the lord of Isle-Adam, and the principal Burgundian chieftains, galloped up with a thousand horse, and strove to pacify these madmen, numbering, it is said, some forty thousand. They were received with a stout of, “A plague of your justice and pity! Accursed be he whosoever shall have pity on these traitors of Armagnacs. They are English; they are hounds. They had already made banners for the King of England, and would fain have planted them upon the gates of the city. They made us work for nothing, and when we asked for our due they said, ’You rascals, haven’t ye a sou to buy a cord and go hang yourselves? In the devil’s name speak no more of it; it will be no use, whatever you say.’” The provost of Paris durst not oppose such fury as this. “Do what you please,” said he. The mob ran to look for the constable Armagnac and the chancellor de Marle in the Palace-tower, in which they had been shut up,
It was not before the 14th of July that he, with Queen Isabel, came back to the city; and he came with a sincere design, if not of punishing the cut-throats, at least of putting a stop to all massacre and pillage; but there is nothing more difficult than to suppress the consequences of a mischief of which you dare not attack the cause. One Bertrand, head of one of the companies of butchers, had been elected captain of St. Denis because he had saved the abbey from the rapacity of a noble Burgundian chieftain, Hector de Saveuse. The lord, to avenge himself, had the butcher assassinated. The burgesses went to the duke to demand that the assassin should be punished; and the duke, who durst neither assent nor refuse, could only partially cloak his weakness by imputing the crime to some disorderly youngsters whom he enabled to get away. On the 20th of August an angry mob collected in front of the Chatelet, shouting out that nobody would bring the Armagnacs to justice, and that they were every day being set at liberty on payment of money. The great and little Chatelet were stormed, and the prisoners massacred. The mob would have liked to serve the Bastille the same; but the duke told the rioters that he would give the prisoners up to them if they would engage to conduct them to the Chatelet without doing them any harm, and, to win them over, he grasped the hand of their head man, who was no other than Capeluche, the city executioner. Scarcely had they arrived at the court-yard of the little Chatelet when the prisoners were massacred there without any regard for the promise made to the duke. He sent for the most distinguished burgesses, and consulted them as to what could be done to check such excesses; but they confined themselves to joining him in deploring them. He sent for the savages once more, and said to them, “You would do far better to go and lay siege to Montlhery, to drive off the king’s enemies, who have come ravaging everything up to the St. Jacques gate, and preventing the harvest from being got in.” “Readily,” they answered, “only give us leaders.” He gave them leaders, who led six thousand of them to Montlhery. As soon as they were gone Duke John had Capeluche and two of his chief accomplices brought to trial, and Capeluche was beheaded in the market-place by his own apprentice. But the gentry sent to the siege of Montlhery did not take the place; they accused their leaders of having betrayed them, and returned to be
Nevertheless, complicated, disturbed and persistently resultless situations always end by becoming irksome to those who are entangled in them, and by inspiring a desire for extrication. The King of England, in spite of his successes and his pride, determined upon sending the Earl of Warwick to Provins, where the king and the Duke of Burgundy still were: a truce was concluded between the English and the Burgundians, and it was arranged that on the 30th of May, 1419, the two kings should meet between Mantes and Melun, and hold a conference for the purpose of trying to arrive at a peace. A few days before the time, Duke John set out from Provins with the king, Queen Isabel, and Princess Catherine, and repaired first of all to Pontoise, and then to the place fixed for the interview, on the borders of the Seine, near Meulan, where two pavilions had been prepared, one for the King of France and the other for the King of England. Charles VI., being ill, remained at Pontoise. Queen Isabel, Princess Catherine, and the Duke of Burgundy arrived at the appointed spot. Henry V. was already there; he went to meet the queen, saluted her, took her hand, and embraced her and Madame Catherine as well; Duke John slightly bent his knee to the king, who raised him up and embraced him likewise. This solemn interview was succeeded
Some days before, on the 14th of May, 1419, a truce of three months had been concluded between the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy, and was to lead to a conference also between these two princes. It did not commence before the 8th of July. During this interval, Duke John had submitted for the mature deliberation of his council the question whether it were better to grant the English demands, or become reconciled to the dauphin. Amongst his official councillors opinions were divided; but, in his privacy, the lady of Giac, “whom he loved and trusted mightily,” and Philip Jossequin, who had at first been his chamber attendant, and afterwards custodian of his jewels and of his privy seal, strongly urged him to make peace with the dauphin; and the pope’s fresh legate, the Bishop of Laon, added his exhortations to these home influences. There had been fitted up at a league’s distance from Melun, on the embankment of the ponds of Vert, a summer-house of branches and leaves, hung with drapery and silken stuffs; and there the first interview between the two princes took place. The dauphin left in displeasure; he had found the Duke of Burgundy haughty and headstrong. Already the old servants of the late Duke of Orleans, impelled by their thirst for vengeance, were saying out loud that the matter should be decided by arms, when the lady of Giac went after the dauphin, who from infancy had also been very much attached to her, and she, going backwards and forwards between the two princes, was so affectionate and persuasive with both that she prevailed upon them
There was universal and sincere joy. The peace fulfilled the requirements at the same time of the public welfare and of national feeling; it was the only means of re-establishing order at home, and driving from the kingdom the foreigner who aspired to conquer it. Only the friends of the Duke of Orleans, and of the Count of Armagnac, one assassinated twelve years before, and the other massacred but lately, remained sad and angry at not having yet been able to obtain either justice or vengeance; but they maintained reserve and silence. They were not long in once more finding for mistrust and murmuring grounds or pretexts which a portion of the public showed a disposition to take up. The Duke of Burgundy had made haste to publish his ratification of the treaty of reconciliation; the dauphin had let his wait. The Parisians
Duke John hesitated, from irresolution even more than from distrust. It was a serious matter for him to commit himself more and more, by his own proper motion, against the King of England and his old allies amongst the populace of Paris. Why should he be required to go in person to seek the dauphin? It was far simpler, he said, for Charles to come to the king his father. Tanneguy Duchatel went to Troyes to tell the duke that the dauphin had come to meet him as far as Montereau, and, with the help of the lady of Giae, persuaded on his side, to Bray-sur-Seine, two leagues from Montereau. When the two princes had drawn thus near, their agents proposed that the interview should take place on the very bridge of Montereau, with the precautions and according to the forms decided on. In the duke’s household many of his most devoted servants were opposed to this interview; the place, they said, had been chosen by and would be under the ordering of the dauphin’s people, of the old servants of the Duke of Orleans and the Count of Armagnac. At the same time four successive messages came from Paris urging the duke to make the plunge; and at last he took his resolution. “It is my duty,” said he, “to risk my person in order to get at so great a blessing as peace. Whatever happens, my wish is peace. If they kill me, I shall die a martyr. Peace being made, I will take the men of my lord the dauphin to go and fight the English. He has some good men of war and some sagacious captains. Tanneguy and Barbazan are valiant knights. Then we shall see which is the better man, Jack (Hannotin) of Flanders or Henry of Lancaster.” He set out for Bray on the 10th of September, 1419, and arrived about two o’clock before Montereau. Tanneguy Duchatel came and met him there. “Well,” said the duke, “on your assurance we are come to see my lord the dauphin, supposing that he is quite willing to keep the peace between himself and us, as we also will keep it, all ready to serve him according to his wishes.” “My most dread lord,” answered Tanneguy, “have ye no fear; my lord is well pleased with you, and desires henceforth to govern himself according to your counsels. You have about him good friends who serve you well.” It was agreed that the dauphin and the duke should, each from his own side, go upon the bridge of Montereau, each with ten men-at-arms, of whom they should previously forward a list. The dauphin’s people had caused to be constructed at the two ends of the bridge strong barriers closed by a gate; about the centre of the bridge was a sort of lodge made of planks, the entrance to which was, on either side, through a pretty narrow passage; within the lodge there was no barrier in the middle to separate the two parties. Whilst Duke John and his confidants, in concert with the dauphin’s people, were regulating these material arrangements, a chamber-attendant ran in quite scared, shouting out, “My lord, look
[Illustration: ’"Into the River!"’——77]
The enmities of the Orleannese and the Armagnacs had obtained satisfaction; but they were transferred to the hearts of the Burgundians. After twelve years of public crime and misfortune the murder of Louis of Orleans had been avenged; and should not that of John of Burgundy be, in its turn? Wherever the direct power or the indirect influence of the Duke of Burgundy was predominant, there was a burst of indignation and vindictive passion. As soon as the Count of Charolais, Philip, afterwards called the Good, heard at Ghent, where he happened at that time to be, of his father’s murder, he was proclaimed Duke of Burgundy. “Michelle,” said he to his wife, sister of the dauphin, Charles, “your brother has murdered my father.” The princess burst into tears; but the new duke calmed her by saying that nothing could alter the love and confidence he felt towards her. At Troyes Queen Isabel showed more anger than any one else against her son, the dauphin; and she got a letter written by King Charles VI. to the dowager Duchess of Burgundy, begging her, her and her children, “to set in motion all their relatives, friends, and vassals to avenge Duke John.” At Paris, on the 12th of September, the next day but one after the murder, the chancellor, the parliament, the provost royal, the provost of tradesmen, and all the councillors and officers of the king assembled, “together with great number of nobles and burgesses and a great multitude of people,” who all swore “to oppose with their bodies and all their might the enterprise of the criminal breakers of the peace, and to prosecute the cause of vengeance and reparation against those who were guilty of the death and homicide of the late Duke of Burgundy.” Independently of party-passion, such was, in Northern and Eastern France, the general and spontaneous sentiment of the people. The dauphin and his councillors, in order to explain and justify their act, wrote in all directions to say that, during the interview, Duke John had answered
Of the twenty-eight articles in this treaty, five contained its essential points and fixed its character: 1st. The King of France, Charles VI., gave his daughter Catherine in marriage to Henry V., King of England. 2d. “Our son, King Henry, shall place no hinderance or trouble in the way of our holding and possessing as long as we live, and as at the present time, the crown, the kingly dignity of France, and all the revenues, proceeds, and profits which are
This substitution, in the near future, of an English for the French kingship; this relinquishment, in the present, of the government of France to the hands of an English prince nominated to become before long her king; this authority given to the English prince to prosecute in France, against the dauphin of France, a civil war; this complete abdication of all the rights and duties of the kingship, of paternity and of national independence; and, to sum up all in one word, this anti-French state-stroke accomplished by a king of France, with the co-operation of him who was the greatest amongst French lords, to the advantage of a foreign sovereign—there was surely in this enough to excite the most ardent and most legitimate national feelings. They did not show themselves promptly or with a blaze. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after so many military and civil troubles, had great weaknesses and deep-seated corruption in mind and character. Nevertheless the revulsion against the treaty of Troyes was real and serious, even in the very heart of the party attached to the Duke of Burgundy. He was obliged to lay upon several of his servants formal injunctions to swear to this peace, which seemed to them treason. He had great difficulty in winning John of Luxembourg and his brother Louis, Bishop of Therouenne, over to it. “It is your will,” said they; “we will take this oath; but if we do, we will keep it to the hour of death.” Many less powerful lords, who had lived a long while in the household of Duke John the Fearless, quitted his son, and sorrowfully returned to their own homes. They were treated as Armagnacs, but they persisted in calling themselves good and loyal Frenchmen. In the duchy of Burgundy the majority of the towns refused to take the oath to the King of England. The most decisive and the most helpful proof of this awakening of national feeling was the ease experienced by the dauphin, who was one day to be Charles
On the 22d of October, 1422, less than two months after the death of Henry V., Charles VI., King of France, died at Paris in the forty-third year of his reign. As soon as he had been buried at St. Denis, the Duke of Bedford, regent of France according to the will of Henry V., caused a herald to proclaim, “Long live Henry of Lancaster, King of England and of France!” The people’s voice made very different proclamation. It had always been said that the public evils proceeded from the state of illness into which the unhappy King Charles had fallen. The goodness he had given glimpses of in his lucid intervals had made him an object of tender pity. Some weeks yet before his death, when he had entered Paris again, the inhabitants, in the midst of their sufferings and under the harsh government of the English, had seen with joy their poor mad king coming back amongst them, and had greeted him with thousand-fold shouts of “Noel!” His body lay in state for three days, with the face uncovered, in a hall of the hostel of St. Paul, and the multitude went thither to pray for him, saying, “Ah! dear prince, never shall we have any so good as thou Wert; never shall we see thee more. Accursed be thy death! Since thou dost leave us, we shall never have aught but wars and troubles. As for thee, thou goest to thy rest; as for us, we remain in tribulation and sorrow. We seem made to fall into the same distress as the children of Israel during the captivity in Babylon.”
[Illustration: The Body of Charles VI. lying in State——84]
The people’s instinct was at the same time right and wrong. France had yet many evil days to go through and cruel trials to endure; she was, however, to be saved at last; Charles VI. was to be followed by Charles VII. and Joan of Arc.
CHAPTER XXIV.——THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.—CHARLES VII. AND JOAN OF ARC. 1422-1461.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JOAN OF ARC——85]
Whilst Charles VI. was dying at Paris, his son Charles, the dauphin, was on his way back from Saintonge to Berry, where he usually resided. On the 24th of October, 1422, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, he heard of his father’s death. For six days longer, from the 24th to the 29th of October, he took no style but that of regent, as if he were waiting to see what was going to happen elsewhere in respect of the succession to the throne. It was only when he knew that, on the 27th of October, the parliament of Paris had, not without some little hesitation and ambiguity, recognized “as King of England and of France, Henry VI., son of Henry V. lately deceased,” that the dauphin Charles assumed on the 30th of October, in his castle of Mehun-sur-Yevre, the title of king, and repaired to Bourges to inaugurate in the cathedral of that city his reign as Charles VII.
[Illustration: The Shepherdess of Domremy——90]
He was twenty years old, and had as yet done nothing to gain for himself, not to say anything of glory, the confidence and hopes of the people. He passed for an indolent and frivolous prince, abandoned to his pleasures only; one whose capacity there was nothing to foreshadow, and of whom France, outside of his own court, scarcely ever thought at all. Some days before his accession he had all but lost his life at Rochelle by the sudden breaking down of the room in the episcopal palace where he was staying; and so little did the country know of what happened to him that, a short time after the accident, messengers sent by some of his partisans had arrived at Bourges to inquire if the prince were still living. At a time when not only the crown of the kingdom, but the existence and independence of the nation, were at stake, Charles had not given any signs of being strongly moved by patriotic feelings. “He was, in person, a handsome prince, and handsome in speech with all persons, and compassionate towards poor folks,” says his contemporary Monstrelet; “but he did not readily put on his harness, and he had no heart for war if he could do without it.” On ascending the throne, this young prince, so little of the politician and so little of the knight, encountered at the head of his enemies the most able amongst the politicians and warriors of the day in the Duke of Bedford, whom his brother Henry V. had appointed regent of France, and had charged to defend on behalf of his nephew, Henry VI., a child in the cradle, the crown of France, already more than half won. Never did struggle appear more unequal or native king more inferior to foreign pretender.
Sagacious observers, however, would have easily discerned in the cause which appeared the stronger and the better supported many seeds of weakness and danger. When Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, heard at Arras, that Charles VI. was dead, it occurred to him immediately that if he attended the obsequies of the English King of France he would be obliged, French prince as he was, and cousin-german of Charles VI., to yield precedence to John, Duke of Bedford, regent of France, and uncle of the new king, Henry VI. He resolved to hold aloof, and contented himself with sending to Paris chamberlains to make his excuses and supply his place with the regent. On the 11th of November, 1422, the Duke of Bedford followed alone at the funeral of the late king of France, and alone made offering at the mass. Alone he went, but with the sword of state borne before him as regent. The people of Paris cast down their eyes with restrained wrath. “They wept,” says a contemporary, “and not without cause, for they knew not whether for a long, long while they would have any king in France.” But they did not for long confine themselves to tears. Two poets, partly in Latin and partly in French, Robert Blondel, and Alan Chartier, whilst deploring the public woes, excited the popular feeling. Conspiracies soon followed the songs. One was set on foot at Paris to deliver the city to king Charles VII., but it was stifled ruthlessly; several burgesses were beheaded, and one woman was burned. In several great provincial cities, at Troyes and at Rheims, the same ferment showed itself, and drew down the same severity. William Prieuse, superior of the Carmelites, was accused of propagating sentiments favorable to the dauphin, as the English called Charles VII. Being brought, in spite of the privileges of his gown, before John Cauchon, lieutenant of the captain of Rheims [related probably to Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who nine years afterwards was to sentence Joan of Arc to be burned], he stoutly replied, “Never was English king of France, and never shall be.” The country had no mind to believe in the conquest it was undergoing; and the Duke of Burgundy, the most puissant ally of the English, sulkily went on eluding the consequences of the anti-national alliance he had accepted.
Such being the disposition of conquerors and conquered, the war, though still carried on with great spirit, could not, and in fact did not, bring about any decisive result from 1422 to 1429. Towns were alternately taken, lost, and retaken, at one time by the French, at another by the English or Burgundians; petty encounters and even important engagements took place with vicissitudes of success and reverses on both sides. At Crevant-sur-Yonne, on the 31st of July, 1423, and at Verneuil, in Normandy, on the 17th of August, 1424, the French were beaten, and their faithful allies, the Scots, suffered considerable loss. In the latter affair, however, several
In order to put an end to this doubtful condition of events and of minds, the Duke of Bedford determined to aim a grand blow at the national party in France and at her king. After Paris and Rouen, Orleans was the most important city in the kingdom; it was as supreme on the banks of the Loire as Paris and Rouen were on those of the Seine. After having obtained from England considerable re-enforcements commanded by leaders of experience, the English commenced, in October, 1428, the siege of Orleans. The approaches to the place were occupied in force, and bastilles closely connected one with another were constructed around the walls. As a set-off, the most valiant warriors of France, La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the Marshal La Fayette threw themselves into Orleans, the garrison of which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men. Several towns, Bourges, Poitiers, and La Rochelle, sent thither money, munitions, and militia; the states-general, assembled at Chinon, voted an extraordinary aid; and Charles VII. called out the regulars and the reserves. Assaults on the one side and sorties on the other were begun with ardor. Besiegers and besieged quite felt that they were engaged in a decisive struggle. The first encounter was unfortunate for the Orleannese. In a fight called the Herring affair, they were unsuccessful in an attempt to carry off a supply of victuals and salt fish which Sir John Falstolf was bringing to the besiegers. Being a little discouraged, they offered the Duke of Burgundy to place their city in his hands, that it might not fall into those of the English; and Philip the Good accepted the offer, but the Duke of Bedford made a formal objection: “He didn’t care,” he said, “to beat the bushes for another to get the birds.” Philip in displeasure withdrew from the siege the small force of Burgundians he had sent. The English remained alone before the place, which was every day harder pressed and more strictly blockaded. The besieged were far from foreseeing what succor was preparing for them.
This very year, on the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a little village in the valley of the Meuse, between Neufchateau and Vaucouleurs, on the edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lorraine, the young daughter of simple tillers of the soil, “of good life and repute, herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied hitherto in sewing or spinning with her mother, or driving afield her parent’s sheep, and sometimes, even, when her father’s turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune,” was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree: but dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, and she
[Illustration: Joan of Arc in her Father’s Garden——91]
In a village hard by Domremy she had an uncle whose wife was near her confinement; she got herself invited to go and nurse her aunt, and thereupon she opened her heart to her uncle, repeating to him a popular saying, which had spread indeed throughout the country: “Is it not said that a woman shall ruin France, and a young maid restore it?” She pressed him to take her to Vaucouleurs to Sire Robert de Baudricourt, captain of the bailiwick, for she wished to go to the
In July, 1428, a fresh invasion of Burgundians occurred at Domremy, and redoubled the popular excitement there. Shortly afterwards, the report touching the siege of Orleans arrived there. Joan, more and more passionately possessed with her idea, returned to Vaucouleurs. “I must go,” said she to Sire de Baudricourt, “for to raise the siege of Orleans. I will go, should I have to wear off my legs to the knee.” She had returned to Vaucouleurs without taking leave of her parents. “Had I possessed,” said she, in 1431, to her judges at Rouen, “a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, and had I been a king’s daughter, I should have gone.” Baudricourt, impressed without being convinced, did not oppose her remaining at Vaucouleurs, and sent an account of this singular young girl to Duke Charles of Lorraine, at Nancy, and perhaps even, according to some chronicles, to the king’s court. Joan lodged at Vaucouleurs in a wheelwright’s house, and passed three weeks there, spinning with her hostess, and dividing her time between work and church. There was much talk in Vaucouleurs of her, and her visions, and her purpose. John of Metz [also called John of Novelompont], a knight serving with Sire de Baudricourt, desired to see her, and went to the wheelwright’s. “What do you here, my dear?” said he; “must the king be driven from his kingdom, and we become English?” “I am come hither,” answered Joan, “to speak to Robert de Baudricourt, that he may be pleased to take me or have me taken to the king; but he pays no heed to me or my words. However, I must be with the king before the middle of Lent, for none in the world, nor kings, nor dukes, nor daughter of the Scottish king can recover the kingdom of France; there is no help but in me. Assuredly I would far rather be spinning beside my poor mother, for this other is not my condition; but I must go and do the work because my Lord wills that I should do it.” “Who is your lord?” “The Lord God.” “By my faith,” said the knight, seizing Joan’s hands, “I will take you to the king, God helping. When will you set out?” “Rather now than to-morrow; rather to-morrow than later.” Vaucouleurs was full of the fame and the sayings of Joan. Another knight, Bertrand de Poulengy, offered, as John of Metz had, to be her escort, Duke Charles of Lorraine wished to see her, and sent for her to Nancy. Old and ill as he was, he had deserted the duchess his wife, a virtuous lady, and was leading anything
Charles VII. was at that time residing at Chinon, in Touraine. In order to get there Joan had nearly a hundred and fifty leagues to go, in a country occupied here and there by English and Burgundians, and everywhere a theatre of war. She took eleven days to do this journey, often marching by night, never giving up man’s dress, disquieted by no difficulty and no danger, and testifying no desire for a halt save to worship God. “Could we hear mass daily,” said she to her comrades, “we should do well.” They only consented twice, first in the abbey of St. Urban, and again in the principal church of Auxerre. As they were full of respect, though at the same time also of doubt, towards Joan, she never had to defend herself against their familiarities, but she had constantly to dissipate their disquietude touching the reality or the character of her mission. “Fear nothing,” she said to them; “God shows me the way I should go; for thereto was I born.” On arriving at the village of St. Catherine-de-Fierbois, near Chinon, she heard three masses on the same day, and had a letter written thence to the king, to announce her coming and to ask to see him; she had gone, she said, a hundred and fifty leagues to come and tell him things which would be most useful to him. Charles VII. and his councillors hesitated. The men of war did not like to believe that a little peasant-girl of Lorraine was coming to bring the king a more effectual support than their own. Nevertheless some, and the most heroic amongst them,—Dunois, La Hire, and Xaintrailles,—were moved by what was told of this young girl. The letters of Sire de Baudricourt, though full of doubt, suffered a gleam of something like a serious impression to peep out; and why should not the king receive this young girl whom the captain of Vaucouleurs had thought it a duty to send? It would soon be seen what she was and what she would do. The politicians and courtiers, especially the most trusted of them,
At the very first moment two incidents occurred to still further increase the curiosity of which she was the object. Quite close to Chinon some vagabonds, it is said, had prepared an ambuscade for the purpose of despoiling her, her and her train. She passed close by them without the least obstacle. The rumor went that at her approach they were struck motionless, and had been unable to attempt their wicked purpose. Joan was rather tall, well shaped, dark, with a look of composure, animation, and gentleness. A man-at-arms, who met her on her way, thought her pretty, and with an impious oath expressed a coarse sentiment. “Alas!” said Joan, “thou blasphemest thy God, and yet thou art so near thy death!” He drowned himself, it is said, soon after. Already popular feeling was surrounding her marvellous mission with a halo of instantaneous miracles.
[Illustration: CHINON CASTLE——95]
On her arrival at Chinon she at first lodged with an honest family near the castle. For three days longer there was a deliberation in the council as to whether the king ought to receive her. But there was bad news from Orleans. There were no more troops to send thither, and there was no money forthcoming: the king’s treasurer, it was said, had but four crowns in the chest. If Orleans were taken, the king would perhaps be reduced to seeking a refuge in Spain or in Scotland. Joan promised to set Orleans free. The Orleannese themselves were clamorous for her; Dunois kept up their spirits with the expectation of this marvellous assistance. It was decided that the king should receive her. She had assigned to her for residence an apartment in the tower of the Coudray, a block of quarters adjoining the royal mansion, and she was committed to the charge of William Bellier, an officer of the king’s household, whose wife was a woman of great piety and excellent fame. On the 9th of March, 1429, Joan was at last introduced into the king’s presence by the Count of Vendome, high steward, in the great hall on the first story, a portion of the wall and the fireplace being still visible in the present day. It was evening, candle-light; and nearly three hundred knights were present. Charles kept himself a little aloof, amidst a group of warriors and courtiers more richly dressed than he. According to some chroniclers, Joan had demanded that “she should not be deceived, and should have pointed out to her
Whether Charles VII. were or were not convinced by this interview of Joan’s divine mission, he clearly saw that many of those about him had little or no faith in it, and that other proofs were required to upset their doubts. He resolved to go to Poitiers, where his council, the parliament, and several learned members of the University of Paris were in session, and have Joan put to the strictest examination. When she learned her destination, she said, “In the name of God, I know that I shall have tough work there, but my Lord will help me. Let us go, then, for God’s sake.” On her arrival at Poitiers, on the 11th of March, 1429, she was placed in one of the most respectable families in the town, that of John Rabuteau, advocate-general in parliament. The Archbishop of Rheims, Reginald de Chartres, Chancellor of France, five bishops, the king’s councillors, several learned doctors, and amongst others Father Seguin, an austere and harsh Dominican, repaired thither to question her. When she saw them come in, she went and sat down at the end of the bench, and asked them what they wanted with her. For two hours they set themselves to the task of showing her, “by fair and gentle arguments,” that she was not entitled to belief. “Joan,” said William Aimery, professor of theology, “you ask for men-at-arms, and you say that it is God’s pleasure that the English should leave the kingdom of France, and depart to their own land; if so, there is no need of men-at-arms, for God’s pleasure alone can discomfit them, and force them to return to their homes.” “In the name of God,” answered Joan, “the men-at-arms will do battle, and God will give them victory.” Master William did not urge his point. The Dominican, Seguin, “a very sour man,” says the chronicle, asked Joan what language the voices spoke to her. “Better than yours,” answered Joan. The doctor spoke the Limousine dialect. “Do you believe in God?” he asked, ill-humoredly. “More than you do,” retorted Joan, offended. “Well,” rejoined the monk, “God forbids belief in you without some sign tending thereto: I shall not give the king advice to trust men-at-arms to you, and put them in peril on your simple word.” “In the name of God,” said Joan, “I am not come to Poitiers to show signs; take me to Orleans, and I will give you signs of what I am sent for. Let me have ever so few men-at-arms given me, and I will go to Orleans;” then, addressing another of the examiners, Master Peter of Versailles, who was afterwards Bishop of Meaux, she said, “I know nor A nor B; but in our Lord’s book there is more than in your books; I come on behalf of the King of Heaven to cause the siege of Orleans to be raised, and to take the king to Rheims, that he may be crowned and anointed there.” The examination was prolonged for a fortnight, not without symptoms of impatience on the part of Joan. At the end of it, she said to one of the doctors, John Erault, “Have you paper and ink? Write what I shall say to you.” And she dictated a form of letter which became, some weeks later, the manifesto addressed in a more developed shape by her from Orleans to the English, calling upon them to raise the siege and put a stop to the war. The chief of those piously and patriotically heroic phrases were as follows:—
“Jesu Maria,
“King of England, account to the King of Heaven for His blood royal. Give up to the Maid the keys of all the good towns you have taken by force. She is come from God to avenge the blood royal, and quite ready to make peace, if you will render proper account. If you do not so I am a war-chief; in whatsoever place I shall fall in with your folks in France, if they be not willing to obey, I shall make them get thence, whether they will or not; and if they be willing to obey, I will receive them to mercy. . . . The Maid cometh from the King of Heaven as His representative, to thrust you out of France; she doth promise and certify you that she will make therein such mighty haha [great tumult], that for a thousand years hitherto in France was never the like. . . . Duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of France, the Maid doth pray you and request you not to bring destruction on yourself; if you do not justice towards her, she will do the finest deed ever done in Christendom.
“Writ on Tuesday
in the great week.” [Easter week, March, 1429].
Subscribed: “Hearken
to the news from God and the
Maid.”
At the end of their examination, the doctors decided in Joan’s favor. Two of them, the Bishop of Castres, Gerard Machet, the king’s confessor, and Master John Erault, recognized the divine nature of her mission. She was, they said, the virgin foretold in the ancient prophecies, notably in those of Merlin; and the most exacting amongst them approved of the king’s having neither accepted nor rejected, with levity, the promises made by Joan; “after a grave inquiry there had been discovered in her,” they said, “nought but goodness, humility, devotion, honesty, simplicity. Before Orleans she professes to be going to show her sign; so she must be taken to Orleans, for to give her up without any appearance on her part of evil would be to fight against the Holy Spirit, and to become unworthy of aid from God.” After the doctors’ examination came that of the women. Three of the greatest ladies in France, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily; the Countess of Gaucourt, wife of the Governor of Orleans; and Joan de Mortemer, wife of Robert le Macon, Baron of Troves, were charged to examine Joan as to her life as a woman. They found therein nothing but truth, virtue, and modesty; “she spoke to them with such sweetness and grace,” says the chronicle, “that she drew tears from their eyes;” and she excused herself to them for the dress she wore, and for which the sternest doctors had not dreamed of reproaching her. “It is more decent,” said the Archbishop of Embrun, “to do such things in man’s dress, since they must be done along with men.” The men of intelligence at court bowed down before this village-saint, who was coming to bring to the king in his peril assistance from God; the most valiant men of war were moved by the confident outbursts of her patriotic courage; and the people everywhere welcomed her with faith and enthusiasm. Joan had as yet only just appeared, and already she was the heaven-sent interpretress of the nation’s feeling, the hope of the people of France.
Charles no longer hesitated. Joan was treated, according to her own expression in her letter to the English, “as a war-chief;” there were assigned to her a squire, a page, two heralds, a chaplain, Brother Pasquerel, of the order of the hermit-brotherhood of St. Augustin, varlets, and serving-folks. A complete suit of armor was made to fit her. Her two guides, John of Metz and Bertrand of Poulengy, had not quitted her; and the king continued them in her train. Her sword he wished to be supplied by himself; she asked for one marked with five crosses; it would be found, she said, behind the altar in the chapel of St. Catherine-de-Fierbois, where she had halted on her arrival at Chinon; and there, indeed, it was found. She had a white banner made, studded with lilies, bearing the representation of God seated upon the clouds, and holding in His hand the globe of the world. Above were the words “Jesu Maria,” and below were two angels, on their knees in adoration. Joan was fond of her sword, as she said two years afterwards at her trial, but she was forty times more fond of her banner, which was, in her eyes, the sign of her commission and the pledge of victory. On the completion of the preparations she demanded the immediate departure of the expedition. Orleans was crying for succor; Dunois was sending messenger after messenger; and Joan was in a greater hurry than anybody else.
More than a month elapsed before her anxieties were satisfied. During this interval we find Charles VII. and Joan of Arc at Chatelherault, at Poitiers, at Tours, at Florent-les-Saumur, at Chinon, and at Blois, going to and fro through all that country to push forward the expedition resolved upon, and to remove the obstacles it encountered. Through a haze of vague indications a glimpse is caught of the struggle which was commencing between the partisans and the adversaries of Joan, and in favor of or in opposition to the impulse she was communicating to the war of nationality. Charles VII.’s mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and the young Duke of Alencon, whose father had been killed at the battle of Agincourt, were at the head of Joan’s partisans. Yolande gave money and took a great deal of trouble in order to promote the expedition which was to go and succor Orleans. The Duke of Alencon, hardly twenty years of age, was the only one amongst the princes of the house of Valois who had given Joan a kind reception on her arrival, and who, together with the brave La Hire, said that he would follow her whithersoever she pleased to lead him. Joan, in her gratitude, called him the handsome duke, and exhibited towards him amity and confidence.
But, side by side with these friends, she had an adversary in the king’s favorite, George de la Tremoille, an ambitious courtier, jealous of any one who seemed within the range of the king’s favor, and opposed to a vigorous prosecution of the war, since it hampered him in the policy he wished to keep up towards the Duke of Burgundy. To the ill will of La Tremoille was added that of the majority of courtiers enlisted in the following of the powerful favorite, and that of warriors irritated at the importance acquired at their expense by a rustic and fantastic little adventuress. Here was the source of the enmities and intrigues which stood in the way of all Joan’s demands, rendered her successes more tardy, difficult, and incomplete, and were one day to cost her more dearly still.
At the end of about five weeks the expedition was in readiness. It was a heavy convoy of revictualment, protected by a body of ten or twelve thousand men, commanded by Marshal de Boussac, and numbering amongst them Xaintrailles and La Hire. The march began on the 27th of April, 1429. Joan had caused the removal of all women of bad character, and had recommended her comrades to confess. She took the communion in the open air, before their eyes; and a company of priests, headed by her chaplain, Pasquerel, led the way whilst chanting sacred hymns. Great was the surprise amongst the men-at-arms, many had words of mockery on their lips. It was the time when La Hire used to say, “If God were a soldier, He would turn robber.” Nevertheless, respect got the better of habit; the most honorable were really touched; the coarsest considered themselves bound to show restraint. On the 29th of April they arrived before Orleans. But, in consequence of the road they had followed, the Loire was between the army and the town; the expeditionary corps had to be split in two; the troops were obliged to go and feel for the bridge of Blois in order to ’cross the river; and Joan was vexed and surprised. Dunois, arrived from Orleans in a little boat, urged her to enter the town that same evening. “Are you the bastard of Orleans?” asked she, when he accosted her. “Yes; and I am rejoiced at your coming.” “Was it you who gave counsel for making me come hither by this side of the river, and not the direct way, over yonder where Talbot and the English were?” “Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest captains.” “In the name of God, the counsel of my Lord is wiser than yours; you thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves, for I am bringing you the best succor that ever had knight, or town, or city, and that is the good will of God, and succor from the King of Heaven; not assuredly for love of me, it is from God only that it proceeds.” It was a great trial for Joan to separate from her comrades, “so well prepared, penitent, and well disposed; in their company,” said she, “I should not fear the whole power of the English.” She was afraid that disorder might set in amongst
[Illustration: JOAN ENTERING ORLEANS——104]
The same day, at eight P. M., she entered the city, on horseback, completely armed, preceded by her own banner, and having beside her Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most distinguished burgesses of Orleans who had gone out to meet her. The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, carrying torches, and greeting her arrival “with joy as great as if they had seen God come down amongst them. They felt,” says the Journal of the Siege, “all of them recomforted and as it were disbesieged by the divine virtue which they had been told existed in this simple maid.” In their anxiety to approach her, to touch her, one of their lighted torches set fire to her banner. Joan disengaged herself with her horse as cleverly as it could have been done by the most skilful horseman, and herself extinguished the flame. The crowd attended her to the church whither she desired to go first of all to render thanks to God, and then to the house of John Boucher, the Duke of Orleans’s treasurer, where she was received together with her two brothers and the two gentlemen who had been her guides from Vaucouleurs. The treasurer’s wife was one of the most virtuous city dames in Orleans, and from this night forth her daughter Charlotte had Joan for her bedfellow. A splendid supper had been prepared for her; but she would merely dip some slices of bread in wine and water. Neither her enthusiasm nor her success, the two greatest tempters to pride in mankind, made any change in her modesty and simplicity.
The very day after her arrival she would have liked to go and attack the English in their bastilles, within which they kept themselves shut up. La Hire was pretty much of her opinion; but Dunois and the captains of the garrison thought they ought to await the coming of the troops which had gone to cross the Loire at Blois, and the supports which several French garrisons in the neighborhood had received orders to forward to Orleans. Joan insisted. Sire de Gamaches, one of the officers present, could not contain himself. “Since ear is given,” said he, “to the advice of a wench of low degree rather than to that of a knight like me, I will not bandy more words; when the time comes, it shall be my sword that will
Joan, whilst she was awaiting it, sent the English captains a fresh summons to withdraw conformably with the letter which she had already addressed to them from Blois, and the principal clauses of which were just now quoted here. They replied with coarse insults, calling her strumpet and cow-girl, and threatening to burn her when they caught her. She was very much moved by their insults, insomuch as to weep; but calling God to witness her innocence, she found herself comforted, and expressed it by saying, “I have had news from my Lord.” The English had detained the first herald she had sent them; and when she would have sent them a second to demand his comrade back, he was afraid. “In the name of God,” said Joan, “they will do no harm nor to thee nor to him; thou shalt tell Talbot to arm, and I too will arm; let him show himself in front of the city; if he can take me, let him burn me; if I discomfit him, let him raise the siege, and let the English get them gone to their own country.” The second herald appeared to be far from reassured; but Dunois charged him to say that the English prisoners should answer for what was done to the heralds from the Maid. The two heralds were sent back. Joan made up her mind to iterate in person to the English the warnings she had given them in her letter.
Dunois, the very day of his return to Orleans, after dinner, went to call upon Joan, and told her that he had heard on his way that Sir John Falstolf, the same who on the 12th of the previous February had beaten the French in the Herring affair, was about to arrive with re-enforcements and supplies for the besiegers. “Bastard, bastard,” said Joan, “in the name of God I command thee, as soon as thou shalt know of this Pascot’s coming, to have me warned of it, for, should he pass without my knowing of it, I promise thee that I will have thy head cut off.” Dunois assured her that she should be warned. Joan was tired with the day’s excitement; she threw herself upon her bed to sleep, but unsuccessfully; all at once she said to Sire Daulon, her esquire, “My counsel doth tell me to go against the English; but I know not whether against their bastilles or against this Fascot. I must arm.” Her esquire was beginning to arm her when she heard it shouted in the street that the enemy were at that moment doing great damage to the French. “My God,” said she, “the blood of our people is running on the ground; why was I not awakened sooner? Ah! it was ill done! . . . My arms! My arms! my horse!” Leaving behind her esquire, who was not yet armed, she went down. Her page was playing at the door: “Ah! naughty boy,” said she, “not to come and tell me that the blood of France was being shed! Come! quick! my horse!” It was brought to her; she bade them hand down to her by the window her banner, which she had left behind, and, without any further waiting, she departed and went to the Burgundy gate, whence the noise seemed to come. Seeing on her way one of the townsmen passing who was being carried off wounded, she said, “Alas! I never see a Frenchman’s blood but my hair stands up on my head!” It was some of the Orleannese themselves who, without consulting their chiefs, had made a sortie and attacked the Bastille St. Loup, the strongest held by the English on this side. The French had been repulsed, and were falling back in flight when Joan came up, and soon after her Dunois and a throng of men-at-arms who had been warned of the danger. The fugitives returned to the assault; the battle was renewed with ardor; the bastille of St. Loup, notwithstanding energetic resistance on the part of the English who manned it, was taken; and all its
[Illustration: Herself drew out the Arrow——109]
Some one proposed to her to charm the wound by means of cabalistic words; but “I would rather die,” she said, “than so sin against the will of God. I know full well that I must die some day; but I know nor where nor when nor how. If, without sin, my wound may be healed, I am right willing.” A dressing of oil and lard was applied to the wound; and she retired apart into a vineyard, and was continually in prayer. Fatigue and discouragement were overcoming the French; and the captains ordered the retreat to be sounded. Joan begged Dunois to wait a while. “My God,” said she, “we shall soon be inside. Give your people a little rest; eat and drink.” She resumed her arms and remounted her horse; her banner floated in the air; the French took fresh courage; the English, who thought Joan half dead, were seized with surprise and fear; and one of their principal leaders, Sir William Gladesdale, made up his mind to abandon the outwork which he had hitherto so well kept, and retire within the bastille itself. Joan perceived his movement. “Yield thee,” she shouted to him from afar; “yield thee to the King of Heaven! Ah! Glacidas, thou hast basely insulted me; but I have great pity on the souls of thee and thine.” The Englishman continued his retreat. Whilst he was passing over the drawbridge which reached from the out-work to the bastille, a shot from the side of Orleans broke down the bridge; Gladesdale fell into the water and was drowned, together with many of his comrades; the French got into the bastille without any fresh fighting; and Joan re-entered Orleans amidst the joy and acclamations of the people. The bells rang all through the night, and the Te Deum was chanted. The day of combat was about to be succeeded by the day of deliverance.
On the morrow, the 8th of May, 1429, at daybreak, the English leaders drew up their troops close to the very moats of the city, and seemed to offer battle to the French. Many of the Orleannese leaders would have liked to accept this challenge; but Joan got up from her bed, where she was resting because of her wound, put on a light suit of armor, and ran to the city gates. “For the love and honor of holy Sunday,” said she to the assembled warriors, “do not be the first to attack, and make to them no demand; it is God’s good will and pleasure that they be allowed to get them gone if they be minded to go away; if they attack you, defend yourselves boldly; you will be the masters.” She caused an altar to be raised; thanksgivings were sung, and mass was celebrated. “See!” said Joan; “are the English turning to you their faces, or verily their backs?” They had commenced their retreat in good order, with standards flying. “Let them go: my Lord willeth not that there be any fighting to-day; you shall have them another time.” The good words spoken by Joan were not so preventive but that many men set off to pursue the English, and cut off stragglers and baggage. Their bastilles were found to be full of victual and munitions; and they had abandoned their sick and many of their prisoners. The siege of Orleans was raised.
The day but one after this deliverance, Joan set out to go and rejoin the king, and prosecute her work at his side. She fell in with him on the 13th of May, at Tours, moved forward to meet him, with her banner in her hand and her head uncovered, and bending down over her charger’s neck, made him a deep obeisance. Charles took off his cap, held out his hand to her, and, “as it seemed to many,” says a contemporary chronicler, “he would fain have kissed her, for the joy that he felt.” But the king’s joy was not enough for Joan. She urged him to march with her against enemies who were flying, so to speak, from themselves, and to start without delay for Rheims, where he would be crowned. “I shall hardly last more than a year,” said she; “we must think about working right well this year, for there is much to do.” Hesitation was natural to Charles, even in the hour of victory. His favorite, La Tremoille, and his chancellor, the Archbishop of Rheims, opposed Joan’s entreaties with all the objections that could be devised under the inspiration of their ill will: there were neither troops nor money in hand for so great a journey; and council after council was held for the purpose of doing nothing. Joan, in her impatience, went one day to Loches, without previous notice, and tapped softly at the door of the king’s privy chamber (chambre de re-trait). He bade her enter. She fell upon her knees, saying, “Gentle dauphin, hold not so many and such long councils, but rather come to Rheims, and there assume your crown; I am much pricked to take you thither.” “Joan,” said the Bishop of Castres, Christopher d’Harcourt, the king’s confessor, “cannot you tell the king what pricketh you?” “Ah! I see,” replied Joan, with some embarrassment: “well, I will tell you. I had set me to prayer, according to my wont, and I was making complaint for that you would not believe what I said; then the voice came and said unto me, ‘Go, go, my daughter; I will be a help to thee; go.’ When this voice comes to me, I feel marvellously rejoiced; I would that it might endure forever.” She was eager and overcome.
Joan and her voices were not alone in urging the king to shake off his doubts and his indolence. In church, and court, and army, allies were not wanting to the pious and valiant maid. In a written document dated the 14th of May, six days after the siege of Orleans was raised, the most Christian doctor of the age, as Gerson was called, sifted the question whether it were possible, whether it were a duty, to believe in the Maid. “Even if (which God forbid),” said he, “she should be mistaken in her hope and ours, it would not necessarily follow that what she does comes of the evil spirit, and not of God, but that rather our ingratitude was to blame. Let the party which hath a just cause take care how, by incredulity or injustice, it rendereth useless the divine succor so miraculously manifested, for God, without any change of counsel, changeth the upshot
It was amidst this burst of patriotism, and with all these valiant comrades, that Joan recommenced the campaign on the 10th of June, 1429, quite resolved to bring the king to Rheims. To complete the deliverance of Orleans, an attack was begun upon the neighboring places, Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency. Before Jargeau, on the 12th of June, although it was Sunday, Joan had the trumpets sounded for the assault. The Duke d’Alencon thought it was too soon. “Ah!” said Joan, “be not doubtful; it is the hour pleasing to God; work ye, and God will work.” And she added, familiarly, “Art thou afeard, gentle duke? Knowest thou not that I have promised thy wife to take thee back safe and sound?” The assault began; and Joan soon had occasion to keep her promise. The Duke d’Alencon was watching the assault from an exposed spot, and Joan remarked a piece pointed at this spot. “Get you hence,” said she to the duke; “yonder is a piece which will slay you.” The Duke moved, and a moment afterwards Sire de Lude was killed at the self-same place by a shot from the said piece. Jargeau was taken. Before Beaugency a serious incident took place. The constable, De Richemont, came up with a force of twelve hundred men. When he was crossing to Loudun, Charles VII., swayed as ever by the jealous La Tremoille, had word sent to him to withdraw, and that if he advanced he would be attacked. “What I am doing in the matter,” said the constable, “is for the good of the king and the realm; if anybody comes to attack me, we shall see.” When he had joined the army before Beaugency, the Duke d’Alencon was much troubled. The king’s orders were precise, and Joan herself hesitated. But news came that Talbot and the English were approaching. “Now,” said Joan, “we must think no more of anything but helping one another.” She rode forward to meet the constable, and saluted him courteously. “Joan,” said he, “I was told that you meant to attack me; I know not whether you come from God or not; if you are from God, I fear you not at all, for God knows my good will; if you are from the devil, I fear you still less.” He remained, and Beaugency was taken. The English army came up. Sir John Falstolf had joined Talbot. Some disquietude showed itself amongst the French, so roughly handled for some time past in pitched battles. “Ah! fair constable,” said Joan to Richemont, “you are not come by my orders, but you are right welcome.” The Duke d’Alencon consulted Joan as to what was to be done. “It will be well to have horses,” was suggested by those about her. She asked her neighbors, “Have you good spurs?” “Ha!” cried they, “must we fly, then?”
“No, surely,” replied Joan: “but there will be need to ride boldly; we shall give a good account of the English, and our spurs will serve us famously in pursuing them.” The battle began on the 18th of June, at Patay, between Orleans and Chateaudun. By Joan’s advice, the French attacked. “In the name of God,” said she, “we must fight. Though the English were suspended from the clouds, we should have them, for God hath sent us to punish them. The gentle king shall have to-day the greatest victory he has ever had; my counsel hath told me they are ours.” The English lost heart, in their turn; the battle was short, and the victory brilliant; Lord Talbot and the most part of the English captains remained prisoners. “Lord Talbot,” said the Duke d’Alencon to him, “this is not what you expected this morning.” “It is the fortune of war,” answered Talbot, with the cool dignity of an old warrior. Joan’s immediate return to Orleans was a triumph; but even triumph has its embarrassments and perils. She demanded the speedy march of the army upon Rheims, that the king might be crowned there without delay; but objections were raised on all sides, the objections of the timid and those of the jealous. “By reason of Joan the Maid,” says a contemporary chronicler, “so many folks came from all parts unto the king for to serve him at their own expense, that La Tremoille and others of the council were much wroth thereat, through anxiety for their own persons.” Joan, impatient and irritated at so much hesitation and intrigue, took upon herself to act as if the decision belonged to her. On the 25th of June she wrote to the inhabitants of Tournai, “Loyal Frenchmen, I do pray and require you to be all ready to come to the coronation of the gentle King Charles, at Rheims, where we shall shortly be, and to come and meet us when ye shall learn that we are approaching.” Two days afterwards, on the 27th of June, she left Gien, where the court was, and went to take up her quarters in the open country with the troops. There was nothing for it but to follow her. On the 29th of June, the king, the court (including La Tremoille), and the army, about twelve thousand strong, set out on the march for Rheims. Other obstacles were encountered on the road. In most of the towns the inhabitants, even the royalists, feared to compromise themselves by openly pronouncing against the English and the Duke of Burgundy. Those of Auxerre demanded a truce, offering provisions, and promising to do as those of Troyes, Chalons, and Rheims should do. At Troyes the difficulty was greater still. There was in it a garrison of five or six hundred English and Burgundians, who had the burgesses under their thumbs. All attempts at accommodation failed. There was great perplexity in the royal camp; there were neither provisions enough for a long stay before Troyes, nor batteries and siege trains to carry it by force. There was talk of turning back. One of the king’s councillors, Robert
It was solemn and emotional, as are all old national traditions which recur after a forced suspension. Joan rode between Dunois and the Archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France. The air resounded with the Te Deum sung with all their hearts by clergy and crowd. “In God’s name,” said Joan to Dunois, “here is a good people and a devout when I die, I should much like it to be in these parts.” “Joan,” inquired Dunois, “know you when you will die, and in
Historians, and even contemporaries, have given much discussion to the question whether Joan of Arc, according to her first ideas, had really limited her design to the raising of the siege of Orleans and the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims. She had said so herself several times, just as she had to Dunois at Rheims on the 17th of July, 1429; but she sometimes also spoke of more vast and varied projects, as, for instance, driving the English completely out of France, and withdrawing from his long captivity Charles, Duke of Orleans. He had been a prisoner in London ever since the battle of Agincourt, and was popular in his day, as he has continued to be in French history, on the double ground of having been the father of Louis XII. and one of the most charming poets in the ancient literature of France. The Duke d’Alencon, who was so high in the regard of Joan, attributed to her more expressly this quadruple design: “She said,” according to him, “that she had four duties; to get rid of the English, to have the king anointed and crowned, to deliver Duke Charles of Orleans, and to raise the siege laid by the English to Orleans.” One is inclined to believe that Joan’s language to Dunois at Rheims in the hour of Charles VII.’s coronation more accurately expressed her first idea; the two other notions occurred to her naturally in proportion as her hopes as well as her power kept growing greater with success. But however lofty and daring her soul may have been, she had a simple and not at all a fantastic mind. She may have foreseen the complete expulsion of the English, and may have desired the deliverance of the Duke of Orleans, without having in the first instance premeditated anything more than she said to Dunois during the king’s coronation at Rheims, which was looked upon by her as the triumph of the national cause.
However that may be, when Orleans was relieved, and Charles VII. crowned, the situation, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change. She no longer manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs. She no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the same authority. She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, sometimes with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire and Dunois; never discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking upon her-self as triumphant. After the coronation, her advice was to march at once upon Paris, in order
From the 13th of September, 1429, to the 24th of May, 1430, she continued to lead the same life of efforts ever equally valiant and equally ineffectual. She failed in an attempt upon Laemir. Charite-sur-Loire, undertaken, for all that appears, with the sole design of recovering an important town in the possession of the enemy. The English evacuated Paris, and left the keeping of it to the Duke of Burgundy, no doubt to test his fidelity. On the 13th of Aprils 1430, at the expiration of the truce he had concluded, Philip the Good resumed hostilities against Charles VII. Joan of Arc once more plunged into them with her wonted zeal. Ile-de-France and Picardy became the theatre of war. Compiegne was regarded as the gate of the road between these two provinces; and the Duke of Burgundy attached much importance to holding the key of it. The authority of Charles VII. was recognized there; and a young knight of Compiegne, William de Flavy, held the command there as lieutenant of La Tremoille, who had got himself appointed captain of the town. La Tremoille attempted to treat with the Duke of Burgundy for the cession of Compiegne; but the inhabitants were strenuously opposed to it. “They were,” they said, “the king’s most humble subjects, and they desired to serve him with body and substance; but as for trusting themselves to the lord Duke of Burgundy, they could not do it; they were resolved to suffer destruction, themselves and their wives and children, rather than be exposed to the tender mercies of the said duke.” Meanwhile Joan of Arc, after several warlike expeditions in the neighborhood, re-entered Compiegne, and was received there with a popular expression of satisfaction. “She was presented,” says a local chronicler, with three hogsheads of wine, a present which was large and exceeding costly, and which showed the estimate formed of this maiden’s worth.” Joan manifested the profound distrust with which she was inspired of the Duke of Burgundy. There is no peace possible with him,” she said, “save at the point of the lance.” She had quarters at the house of the king’s attorney, Le Boucher, and shared the bed of his wife, Mary. “She often made the said Mary rise from her bed to go and warn the said attorney to be on his guard against several acts of Burgundian treachery.” At this period, again, she said she was often warned by her voices of what must happen to her; she expected to be taken prisoner before St. John’s or Midsummer-day (June 24); on what day and hour she did not know; she had received no instructions as to sorties from the place; but she had constantly been told that she would be taken, and she was distrustful of the captains who were in command there. She was, nevertheless, not the less bold and enterprising. On the 20th of May, 1430, the Duke of Burgundy came and laid siege to Compiegne. Joan was away on an expedition to Crepy in Valois, with a small band of three or four hundred brave comrades. On the 24th of May,
Was she betrayed and delivered up, as she had predicted? Did William de Flavy purposely have the drawbridge raised and the portcullis lowered before she could get back into Compiegne? He was suspected of it at the time, and many historians have indorsed the suspicion. But there is nothing to prove it. That La Tremoille, prime minister of Charles VII., and Reginald de Chartres, Archbishop of Rheims, had an antipathy to Joan of Arc, and did all they could on every occasion to compromise her and destroy
However that may be, Joan remained for six months the prisoner of John of Luxembourg, who, to make his possession of her secure, sent her, under good escort, successively to his two castles of Beaulieu and Beaurevoir, one in the Vermandois and the other in the Cambresis. Twice, in July and in October, 1430, Joan attempted, unsuccessfully, to escape. The second time she carried despair and hardihood so far as to throw herself down from the platform of her prison. She was picked up cruelly bruised, but without any fracture or wound of importance. Her fame, her youth, her virtue, her courage, made her, even in her prison and in the very family of her custodian, two warm and powerful friends. John of Luxembourg had with him his wife, Joan of Bethune, and his aunt, Joan of Luxembourg, godmother of Charles VII. They both of them took a tender interest in the prisoner; and they often went to see her, and left nothing undone to mitigate the annoyances of a prison. One thing only shocked them about her—her man’s clothes. “They offered her,” as Joan herself said, when questioned upon this subject at a later period during her trial, “a woman’s dress, or stuff to make it to her liking, and requested her to wear it; but she answered that she had not leave from our Lord, and that it was not yet time for it.” John of Luxembourg’s aunt was full of years and reverenced as a saint. Hearing that the English were tempting her nephew by the offer of a sum of money to give up his prisoner to them, she conjured him in her will, dated September 10, 1430, not to sully by such an act the honor of his name. But Count John was neither rich nor scrupulous; and pretexts were not wanting to aid his cupidity and his weakness. Joan had been taken at Compiegne on the 23d of May, in the evening; and the news arrived in Paris on the 25th of May, in the morning. On the morrow, the 26th, the registrar of the University, in the name and under the seal of the inquisition of France, wrote a citation to the Duke of Burgundy “to the end that the Maid should be delivered up to appear before the said inquisitor, and to respond to the good counsel, favor, and aid of the good doctors and masters of the University of Paris.” Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, had been the prime mover in this step. Some weeks later, on the 14th of July, seeing that no reply arrived from the Duke of Burgundy, he caused a renewal
It was not to Paris, but to Rouen, the real capital of the English in France, that Joan was taken. She arrived there on the 23d of December, 1430. On the 3d of January, 1431, an order from Henry VI., King of England, placed her in the hands of the Bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon. Some days afterwards, Count John of Luxembourg, accompanied by his brother, the English chancellor, by his esquire, and by two English lords, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, the King of England’s constable in France, entered the prison. Had John of Luxembourg come out of sheer curiosity, or to relieve himself of certain scruples by offering Joan a chance for her life? “Joan,” said he, “I am come hither to put you to ransom, and to treat for the price of your deliverance; only give us your promise here to no more bear arms against us.” “In God’s name,” answered Joan, “are you making a mock of me, captain? Ransom me! You have neither the will nor the power; no, you have neither.” The count persisted. “I know well,” said Joan, “that these English will put me to death; but were they a hundred thousand more Goddams than have already been in France, they shall never have the kingdom.”
At this patriotic burst on the heroine’s part, the Earl of Stafford half drew his dagger from the sheath as if to strike Joan, but the Earl of Warwick held him back. The visitors went out from the prison and handed over Joan to the judges.
The court of Rouen was promptly formed, but not without opposition and difficulty. Though Joan had lost somewhat of her greatness and importance by going beyond her main object, and by showing recklessness, unattended by success, on small occasions, she still remained the true, heroic representative of the feelings and wishes of the nation. When she was removed from Beaurevoir to Rouen, all the places at which she stopped were like so many luminous points for the illustration of her popularity. At Arras, a Scot showed her a portrait of her which he wore, an outward sign of the devoted worship of her lieges. At Amiens, the chancellor of the cathedral gave her audience at confession and administered to her the eucharist. At Abbeville, ladies of distinction went five leagues to pay her a visit; they were glad to have had the happiness of seeing her so firm and resigned to the will of Our Lord; they wished her all the favors of heaven, and then wept affectionately on taking leave of her. Joan, touched by their sympathy and open heartedness, said, “Ah! what a good people is this! Would to God I might be so happy, when my days are ended, as to be buried in these parts!”
When the Bishop of Beauvais, installed at Rouen, set about forming his court of justice, the majority of the members he appointed amongst the clergy or the University of Paris obeyed the summons without hesitation. Some few would have refused; but their wishes were overruled. The Abbot of Jumieges, Nicholas de Houppeville, maintained that the trial was not legal. The Bishop of Beauvais, he said, belonged to the party which declared itself hostile to the Maid; and, besides, he made himself judge in a case already decided by his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Rheims, of whom Beauvais was holden, and who had approved of Joan’s conduct. The bishop summoned before him the recalcitrant, who refused to appear, saying that he was under no official jurisdiction but that of Rouen. He was arrested and thrown into prison, by order of the bishop, whose authority he denied. There was some talk of banishing him, and even of throwing him into the river; but the influence of his brethren saved him. The sub-inquisitor himself allowed the trial in which he was to be one of the judges to begin without him; and he only put in an appearance at the express order of the inquisitor-general, and on a confidential hint that he would be in danger of his life if he persisted in his refusal. The court being thus constituted, Joan, after it had been put in possession of the evidence already collected, was cited, on the 20th of February, 1431, to appear on the morrow, the 21st, before her judges assembled in the chapel of Rouen Castle.
The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, 1431. The court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the castle, some in Joan’s very prison. On her arrival there, she had been put in an iron cage; afterwards she was kept no longer in the cage, but in a dark room in a tower of the castle, wearing irons upon her feet, fastened by a chain to a large piece of wood, and guarded night and day by four or five “soldiers of low grade.” She complained of being thus chained; but the bishop told her that her former attempts at escape demanded this precaution. “It is true,” said Joan, as truthful as heroic, “I did wish and I still wish to escape from prison, as is the right of every prisoner.” At her examination, the bishop required her to take an oath to tell the truth about everything as to which she should be questioned.” “I know not what you mean to question me about; perchance you may ask me things I would not tell you; touching my revelations, for instance, you might ask me to tell something I have sworn not to tell; thus I should be perjured, which you ought not to desire.” The bishop insisted upon an oath absolute and with-out condition. “You are too hard on me,” said Joan; I do not like to take an oath to tell the truth save as to matters which concern the faith.” The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of being held guilty of the things imputed to her.
[Illustration: Joan examined in Prison——128]
“Go on to something else,” said she. And this was the answer she made to all questions which seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be silent. Wearied and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said, “I come on God’s business, and I have nought to do here; send me back to God, from whom I come.” “Are you sure you are in God’s grace?” asked the bishop. “If I be not,” answered Joan, “please God to bring me to it; and if I be, please God to keep me in it!” The bishop himself remained dumbfounded.
There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges’ prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In order to force her from her silence or bring her to submit to the Church instead of appealing from it to God, it was proposed to employ the last means of all, torture. On the 9th of May the bishop had Joan brought into the great tower of Rouen Castle; the instruments of torture were displayed before her eyes; and the executioners were ready to fulfil their office, “for to bring her back,” said the bishop, “into the ways of truth, in order to insure the salvation of
According to the laws, ideas, and practices of the time the legal question was decided. Joan, declared heretic and rebellious by the Church, was liable to have sentence pronounced against her; but she had persisted in her statements, she had shown no submission. Although she appeared to be quite forgotten, and was quite neglected by the king whose coronation she had effected, by his councillors, and even by the brave warriors at whose side she had fought, the public exhibited a lively interest in her; accounts of the scenes which took place at her trial were inquired after with curiosity. Amongst the very judges who prosecuted her, many
The Church might be satisfied; but the King of England, his councillors and his officers, were not. It was Joan living, even though a prisoner, that they feared. They were animated towards her by the two ruthless passions of vengeance and fear. When it was known that she would escape with her life, murmurs broke out amongst the crowd of enemies present at the trial. Stones were thrown at the judges. One of the Cardinal of Winchester’s chaplains, who happened to be close to the Bishop of Beauvais, called him traitor. “You lie,” said the bishop. And the bishop was right; the chaplain did lie; the bishop had no intention of betraying his masters. The Earl of Warwick complained to him of the inadequacy of the sentence. “Never you mind, my lord,” said one of Peter Cauchon’s confidants; “we will have her up again.” After the passing of her sentence Joan had said to those about her, “Come, now, you churchmen amongst you, lead me off to your own prisons, and let me be no more in the hands of the English.” “Lead her to where you took her,” said the bishop; and she was conducted to the castle prison. She had been told by some of the judges who went to see her after her sentence, that she would have to give up her man’s dress and resume her woman’s clothing, as the Church ordained. She was rejoiced thereat; forthwith, accordingly, resumed her woman’s clothes, and had her hair properly cut, which up to that time she used to wear clipped round like a man’s. When she was taken back to prison, the man’s dress which she had worn was put in a sack in the same room in which she was confined, and she remained in custody at the said place in the hands of five Englishmen, of whom three staid by night in the room and two outside at the door. “And he who speaks [John Massieu, a priest, the same who in 1431 had been present as usher of the court at the trial in which Joan was condemned] knows for certain that at night she had her legs ironed in such sort that she could not stir from the spot. When the next Sunday morning, which was Trinity Sunday, had come, and she should have got up, according to what she herself told to him who speaks, she said to her English guards, ’Uniron me; I will get up.’ Then one of then took away her woman’s clothes; they emptied the sack in which was her man’s dress, and pitched the said dress to her, saying, ‘Get up, then,’ and they put her woman’s clothes in the same sack. And according to what she told me she only clad herself in her man’s dress after saying, ’You know it is forbidden me; I certainly will not take it.’ Nevertheless they would not allow her any other; insomuch that the dispute lasted to the hour of noon. Finally, from corporeal necessity, Joan was constrained to get up and take the dress.”
The official documents drawn up during the condemnation-trial contain quite a different account. “On the 28th of May,” it is there said, “eight of the judges who had taken part in the sentence [their names are given in the document, t. i. p. 454] betook themselves to Joan’s prison, and seeing her clad in man’s dress, ’which she had but just given up according to our order that she should resume woman’s clothes, we asked her when and for what cause she had resumed this dress, and who had prevailed on her to do so. Joan answered that it was of her own will, without any constraint from any one, and because she preferred that dress to woman’s clothes. To our question as to why she had made this change, she answered, that, being surrounded by men, man’s dress was more suitable for her than woman’s. She also said that she had resumed it because there had been made to her, but not kept, a promise that she should go to mass, receive the body of Christ, and be set free from her fetters. She added that if this promise were kept, she would be good, and would do what was the will of the Church. As we had heard some persons say that she persisted in her errors as to the pretended revelations which she had but lately renounced, we asked whether she had since Thursday last heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret; and she answered, Yes. To our question as to what the saints had said she answered, that God had testified to her by their voices great pity for the great treason she had committed in abjuring for the sake of saving her life, and that by so doing she had damned herself. She said that all she had thus done last Thursday in abjuring her visions and revelations she had done through fear of the stake, and that all her abjuration was contrary to the truth. She added that she did not herself comprehend what was contained in the form of abjuration she had been made to sign, and that she would rather do penance once for all by dying to maintain the truth than remain any longer a prisoner, being all the while a traitress to it.”
We will not stop to examine whether these two accounts, though very different, are not fundamentally reconcilable, and whether Joan resumed man’s dress of her own desire or was constrained to do so by the soldiers on guard over her, and perhaps to escape from their insults. The important points in the incident are the burst of remorse which Joan felt for her weakness and her striking retractation of the abjuration which had been wrung from her. So soon as the news was noised abroad, her enemies cried, “She has relapsed!” This was exactly what they had hoped for when, on learning that she had been sentenced only to perpetual imprisonment, they had said, “Never you mind; we will have her up again.” “Farewell, farewell, my lord,” said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan’s retractation; and in his words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the 30th, on the Vieux-Marche to hear sentence pronounced, and then undergo the punishment of the stake.
When, on the 30th of May, in the morning, the Dominican brother Martin Ladvenu was charged to announce her sentence to Joan, she gave way at first to grief and terror. “Alas!” she cried, “am I to be so horribly and cruelly treated that this my body, full pure and perfect and never defiled, must to-day be consumed and reduced to ashes! Ah! I would seven times rather be beheaded than burned!” The Bishop of Beauvais at this moment came up. “Bishop,” said Joan, “you are the cause of my death; if you had put me in the prisons of the Church and in the hands of fit and proper ecclesiastical warders, this had never happened; I appeal from you to the presence of God.” One of the doctors who had sat in judgment upon her, Peter Maurice, went to see her, and spoke to her with sympathy. “Master Peter,” said she to him, “where shall I be to-night?” “Have you not good hope in God?” asked the doctor. “O! yes,” she answered; “by the grace of God I shall be in paradise.” Being left alone with the Dominican, Martin Ladvenu, she confessed and asked to communicate. The monk applied to the Bishop of Beauvais to know what he was to do. “Tell brother Martin,” was the answer, “to give her the eucharist and all she asks for.” At nine o’clock, having resumed her woman’s dress, Joan was dragged from prison and driven to the Vieux-Marche. From seven to eight hundred soldiers escorted the car and prohibited all approach to it on the part of the crowd, which encumbered the road and the vicinities; but a man forced a passage and flung himself towards Joan. It was a canon of Rouen, Nicholas Loiseleur, whom the Bishop of Beauvais had placed near her, and who had abused the confidence she had shown him. Beside himself with despair, he wished to ask pardon of her; but the English soldiers drove him back with violence and with the epithet of traitor, and but for the intervention of the Earl of Warwick his life would have been in danger. Joan wept and prayed; and the crowd, afar off, wept and prayed with her. On arriving at the place, she listened in silence to a sermon by one of the doctors of the court, who ended by saying, “Joan, go in peace; the Church can no longer defend thee; she gives thee over to the secular arm.” The laic judges, Raoul Bouteillier, baillie of Rouen, and his lieutenant, Peter Daron, were alone qualified to pronounce sentence of death; but no time was given them. The priest Massieu was still continuing his exhortations to Joan, but “How now! priest,” was the cry from amidst the soldiery, “are you going to make us dine here?” “Away with her! Away with her!” said the baillie to the guards; and to the executioner, “Do thy duty.” When she came to the stake, Joan knelt down completely absorbed in prayer. She had begged Massieu to get her a cross; and an Englishman present made one out of a little stick, and handed it to the French heroine, who took it, kissed it, and laid it on her breast. She begged brother Isambard de la Pierre
A saint indeed in faith and in destiny. Never was human creature more heroically confident in, and devoted to, inspiration coming from God, a commission received from God. Joan of Arc sought nothing of all that happened to her and of all she did, nor exploit, nor power, nor glory. “It was not her condition,” as she used to say, to be a warrior, to get her king crowned, and to deliver her country from the foreigner. Everything came to her from on high, and she accepted everything without hesitation, without discussion, without calculation, as we should say in our times. She believed in God, and obeyed Him. God was not to her an idea, a hope, a flash of human imagination, or a problem of human science; He was the Creator of the world, the Saviour of mankind through Jesus Christ, the Being of beings, ever present, ever in action, sole legitimate sovereign of man whom He has made intelligent and free, the real and true God whom we are painfully searching for in our own day, and whom we shall never find again until we cease pretending to do without Him and putting ourselves in His place. Meanwhile one fact may be mentioned which does honor to our epoch and gives us hope for our future. Four centuries have rolled by since Joan of Arc, that modest and heroic servant of God, made a sacrifice of herself for France. For four and twenty years after her death, France
During the trial of Joan of Arc the war between France and England, without being discontinued, had been somewhat slack: the curiosity and the passions of men were concentrated upon the scenes at Rouen. After the execution of Joan the war resumed its course, though without any great events. By way of a step towards solution, the Duke of Bedford, in November, 1431, escorted to Paris King Henry VI., scarcely ten years old, and had him crowned at Notre-Dame.
Though war was going on all the while, attempts were made to negotiate; and in March, 1433, a conference was opened at Seineport, near Corbeil. Everybody in France desired peace. Philip the Good himself began to feel the necessity of it. Burgundy was almost as discontented and troubled as Ile-de-France. There was grumbling at Dijon as there was conspiracy at Paris. The English gave fresh cause for national irritation. They showed an inclination to canton themselves in Normandy, and abandon the other French provinces to the hazards and sufferings of a desultory war. Anne of Burgundy, the Duke of Bedford’s wife and Philip the Good’s sister, died. The English duke speedily married again without even giving any notice to the French prince. Every family tie between the two persons was broken; and the negotiations as well as the war remained without result.
An incident at court caused a change in the situation, and gave the government of Charles a different character. His favorite, George de la Tremoille, had become almost as unpopular amongst the royal family as in the country in general. He could not manage a war, and he frustrated attempts at peace. The Queen of Sicily, Yolande d’Aragon, her daughter, Mary d’Anjou, Queen of France, and her son, Louis, Count of Maine, who all three desired peace, set themselves to work to overthrow the favorite. In June, 1433, four young lords, one of whom, Sire de Beuil, was La Tremoille’s own nephew, introduced themselves unexpectedly into his room at the castle of Coudray, near Chinon, where Charles VII. was. La Tremoille showed an intention of resisting, and received a sword-thrust. He was made to resign all his offices, and was sent
War was continued nearly everywhere, with alternations of success and reverse which deprived none of the parties of hope without giving victory to any. Peace, however, was more and more the general desire. Scarcely had one attempt at pacification failed when another was begun. The constable De Richemont’s return to power led to fresh overtures. He was a states-man as well as a warrior; and his inclinations were known at Dijon and London, as well as at Chinon. The advisers of King Henry VI. proposed to open a conference, on the 15th of October, 1433, at Calais. They had, they said, a prisoner in England, confined there ever since the battle of Agincourt, Duke Charles of Orleans, who was sincerely desirous of peace, in spite of his family enmity towards the Duke of Burgundy. He was considered a very proper person to promote the negotiations, although he sought in poetry, which was destined to bring lustre to his name, a refuge from politics which made his life a burden. He, one day meeting the Duke of Burgundy’s two ambassadors at the Earl of Suffolk’s, Henry VI.’s prime minister, went up to them, affectionately took their hands, and, when they inquired after his health, said, “My body is well, my soul is sick; I am dying with vexation at passing my best days a prisoner, without any one to think of me.” The ambassadors said that people would be indebted to him for the benefit of peace, for he was known to be laboring for it. “My Lord of Suffolk,” said he, “can tell you that I never cease to urge it upon the king and his council; but I am as useless here as the sword never drawn from the scabbard. I must see my relatives and friends in France; they will not treat, surely, without having consulted with me. If peace depended upon me, though I were doomed to die seven days after swearing it, that would cause me no regret. however, what matters it what I say? I am not master in anything at all; next to the two kings, it is the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Brittany who have most power. Will you not come and call upon me?” he added, pressing
In March, 1435, the Duke of Burgundy went to Paris, taking with him his third wife, Isabel of Portugal, and a magnificent following. There were seen, moreover, in his train, a hundred wagons laden with artillery, armor, salted provisions, cheeses, and wines of Burgundy. There was once more joy in Paris, and the duke received the most affectionate welcome. The university was represented before him, and made him a great speech on the necessity of peace. Two days afterwards a deputation from the city dames of Paris waited upon the Duchess of Burgundy, and implored her to use her influence for the re-establishment of peace. She answered, “My good friends, it is the thing I desire most of all in the world; I pray for it night and day to the Lord our God, for I believe that we all have great need of it, and I know for certain that my lord and husband has the greatest willingness to give up to that purpose his person and his substance.” At the bottom of his soul Duke Philip’s decision was already taken. He had but lately discussed the condition of France with the constable, De Richemont, and Duke Charles of Bourbon, his brother-in-law, whom he had summoned to Nevers with that design. Being convinced of the necessity for peace, he spoke of it to the King of England’s advisers whom he found in Paris, and who dared not show absolute opposition to it. It was agreed that in the month of July a general, and, more properly speaking, a European conference should meet at Arras, that the legates of Pope Eugenius IV. should be invited to it, and that consultation should be held thereat as to the means of putting an end to the sufferings of the two kingdoms.
Towards the end of July, accordingly, whilst the war was being prosecuted with redoubled ardor on both sides at the very gates of Paris, there arrived at Arras the pope’s legates and the ambassadors of the Emperor Sigismund, of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark, and of the Dukes of Brittany and Milan. The university of Paris and many of the good towns of France, Flanders, and even Holland, had sent their deputies thither. Many bishops were there in person. The Bishop of Liege came thither with a magnificent train, mounted, says the chroniclers, on two hundred white horses. The Duke of Burgundy made his entrance on the 30th of July, escorted by three hundred archers wearing his livery. All the lords who happened to be in the city went to meet him at a league’s distance, except the cardinal-legates of the pope, who confined themselves to sending their people. Two days afterwards arrived the ambassadors of the King of France, having at their head the Duke of Bourbon and the constable De Richemont, together with several of the greatest French lords, and a retinue of four or five hundred persons. Duke Philip, forewarned of their coming, issued from the city with all the princes and lords who happened to be there. The English alone refused to accompany him, wondering at his showing such great honor to the ambassadors of their common enemy. Philip went forward a mile to meet his two brothers-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon and the Count de Richemont, embraced them affectionately, and turned back with them into Arras, amidst the joy and acclamations of the populace. Last of all arrived the Duchess of Burgundy, magnificently dressed, and bringing with her her young son, the Count of Charolais, who was hereafter to be Charles the Rash. The Duke of Bourbon, the constable De Richemont, and all the lords were on horseback around her litter; but the English, who had gone, like the others, to meet her, were unwilling, on turning back to Arras, to form a part of her retinue with the French.
Grand as was the sight, it was not superior in grandeur to the event on the eve of accomplishment. The question was whether France should remain a great nation, in full possession of itself and of its independence under a French king, or whether the King of England should, in London and with the title of King of France, have France in his possession and under his government. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was called upon to solve this problem of the future, that is to say, to decide upon the fate of his lineage and his country.
[Illustration: Philip the Good of Burgundy——144]
As soon as the conference was opened, and no matter what attempts were made to veil or adjourn the question, it was put nakedly. The English, instead of peace, began by proposing a long truce, and the marriage of Henry VI. with a daughter of King Charles. The French ambassadors refused, absolutely, to negotiate on this basis; they desired a definitive peace; and their conditions were, that the King and people of England making an end of this situation, so full of clanger for the whole royal house, and of suffering for the people. Nevertheless, the duke showed strong scruples. The treaties he had sworn to, the promises he had made, threw him into a constant fever of anxiety; he would not have any one able to say that he had in any respect forfeited his honor. He asked for three consultations, one with the Italian doctors connected with the pope’s legates, another with English doctors, and another with French doctors. He was granted all three, though they were more calculated to furnish him with arguments, each on their own side, than to dissipate his doubts, if he had any real ones. The legates ended by solemnly saying to him, “We do conjure you, by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the authority of our holy father, the pope, of the holy council assembled at Bale, and of the universal Church, to renounce that spirit of vengeance whereby you are moved against King Charles in memory of the late Duke John, your father; nothing can render you more pleasing in the eyes of God, or further augment your fame in this world.” For three days Duke Philip remained still undecided; but he heard that the Duke of Bedford, regent of France on behalf of the English, who was his brother-in-law, had just died at Rouen, on the 14th of September. He was, besides the late King of England, Henry V., the only English-man who had received promises from the duke, and who lived in intimacy with him. Ten days afterwards, on the 21th of September, the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, also died at Paris; and thus another of the principal causes of shame to the French kingship, and misfortune to France, disappeared from the stage of the world. Duke Philip felt himself more free and more at rest in his mind, if not rightfully, at any rate so far as political and worldly expedience was concerned. He declared his readiness to accept the proposals which had been communicated to him by the ambassadors of Charles VII.; and on the 21st of September, 1435, peace was signed at Arras between France and Burgundy, without any care for what England might say or do.
There was great and general joy in France. It was peace, and national reconciliation as well; Dauphinizers and Burgundians embraced in the streets; the Burgundians were delighted at being able to call themselves Frenchmen. Charles VII. convoked the states-general at Tours, to consecrate this alliance. On his knees, upon the bare stone, before the Archbishop of Crete, who had just celebrated mass, the king laid his hands
Peace was really made amongst Frenchmen; and, in spite of many internal difficulties and quarrels, it was not broken as long as Charles VII. and Duke Philip the Good were living. But the war with the English went on incessantly. They still possessed several of the finest provinces of France; and the treaty of Arras, which had weakened them very much on the Continent, had likewise made them very angry. For twenty-six years, from 1435 to 1461, hostilities continued between the two kingdoms, at one time actively and at another slackly, with occasional suspension by truce, but without any formal termination. There is no use in recounting the details of their monotonous and barren history. Governments and people often persist in maintaining their quarrels and inflicting mutual injuries by the instrumentality of events, acts, and actors that deserve nothing but oblivion. There is no intention here of dwelling upon any events or persons save such as have, for good or for evil, to its glory or its sorrow, exercised a considerable influence upon the condition and fortune of France.
The peace of Arras brought back to the service of France and her king the constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, whom the jealousy of George de la Tremoille and the distrustful indolence of Charles VII. had so long kept out of it. By a somewhat rare privilege, he was in reality, there is reason to suppose, superior to the name he has left behind him in history; and it is only justice to reproduce here the portrait given of him by one of his contemporaries who observed him closely and knew him well. “Never a man of his time,” says William Gruet, “loved justice more than he, or took more pains to do it according to his ability. Never was prince more humble, more charitable, more compassionate, more liberal, less avaricious, or more open-handed in a good fashion and without prodigality. He was a proper man, chaste and brave as prince can be; and there was none of his time of better conduct than lie in conducting a great battle, or a great siege, and all sorts of approaches in all sorts of ways. Every day, once at least in the four and twenty hours, his conversation was of war, and he took more pleasure in it than in aught else. Above all things he loved men of valor and good renown, and he more than any other loved and supported the people, and freely did good to poor mendicants and others of God’s poor.”
Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful again, confirm the truth of this portrait. His first thought and his first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king. The unhappy city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and ruin. “The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it,” says an eye-witness, “twenty-four thousand houses empty.” The Duke of Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted to supply the Parisians with bread and amusements (panem et circenses); but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy. In 1425, there was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance of Death: Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them dance. In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people. “Four blind men, armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock. They had to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another.” The constable resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital of France. In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there and plundered the church. He at once gave orders to march. The Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and would not mount. Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun to St. Denis. “You know the country?” said the constable to Marshal Isle-Adam. “Yes, my lord,” answered the other; “and by my faith, in the position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them, though you had ten thousand fighting men.” “Ah! but we will,” replied Richemont; “God will help us. Keep pressing forward to support the skirmishers.” And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English. The population of Paris, being informed of this success, were greatly moved and encouraged. One brave burgess of Paris, Michel Laillier, master of the exchequer, notified to the constable, it is said, that they were ready and quite able to open one of the gates to him, provided that an engagement were entered into in the king’s name for a general amnesty and the prevention of all disorder. The constable, on the king’s behalf, entered into the required engagement, and presented himself the next day, the 13th of April, with a picked force before the St. Michel gate. The enterprise was discovered. A man posted on the wall made signs to them with his hat, crying out, “Go to the other gate; there’s no opening this; work is going on for you in the Market-quarter.” The picked force followed the course of the ramparts up to the St. Jacques gate. “Who goes there?” demanded some burghers who had the guard
[Illustration: The Constable Made his Entry on Horseback——150]
Then he caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet throughout the streets that none of his people should be so bold, on pain of hanging, as to take up quarters in the house of any burgher against his will, or to use any reproach whatever, or do the least displeasure to any. At sight of the public joy, the English had retired to the Bastille, where the constable was disposed to besiege them. “My lord,” said the burghers to him, “they will surrender; do not reject their offer; it is so far a fine thing enough to have thus recovered Paris; often, on the contrary, many constables and many marshals have been driven out of it. Take contentedly what God hath granted you.” The burghers’ prediction was not unverified. The English sallied out of the Bastille by the gate which opened on the fields, and went and took boat in the rear of the Louvre. Next day abundance of provisions arrived in Paris; and the gates were opened to the country folks. The populace freely manifested their joy at being rid of the English. “It was plain to see,” was the saving, “that they were not in France to remain; not one of them had been seen to sow a field with corn or build a house; they destroyed their quarters without a thought of repairing them; they had not restored, peradventure, a single fireplace. There was only their regent, the Duke of Bedford, who was fond of building and making the poor people work; he would have liked peace; but the nature of those English is to be always at war with their neighbors, and accordingly they all made a bad end; thank God there have already died in France more than seventy thousand of them.”
Up to the taking of Paris by the constable the Duke of Burgundy had kept himself in reserve, and had maintained a tacit neutrality towards England; he had merely been making, without noisy demonstration, preparations for an enterprise in which he, as Count of Flanders, was very much interested. The success of Richemont inspired him with a hope, and perhaps with a jealous desire, of showing his power and his patriotism as
Thus the fortune of Burgundy was tottering whilst that of France was recovering itself. The constable’s easy occupation of Paris led the majority of the small places in the neighborhood, St. Denis, Chevreuse, Marcoussis, and Montlhery to decide either upon spontaneous surrender or allowing themselves to be taken after no great resistance. Charles VII., on his way through France to Lyon, in Dauphiny, Languedoc, Auvergne, and along the Loire, recovered several other towns, for instance, Chateau-Landon, Nemours, and Charny. He laid siege in person to Montereau, an important military post with which a recent and sinister reminiscence was connected. A great change now made itself apparent in the king’s behavior and disposition. He showed activity and vigilance, and was ready to expose himself without any care for fatigue or danger. On the day of the assault (10th of October, 1437) he went down into the trenches, remained there in water up to his waist, mounted the scaling-ladder
“If to win back poor
captive France be aught,
More honor, gentle Agnes, is thy weed,
Than ere was due to deeds of virtue wrought
By cloistered nun or pious hermit-breed.”
It is worth while perhaps to remark that in 1437 Agnes Sorel was already twenty-seven.
[Illustration: Agnes Sorel——175]
One of the best informed, most impartial, and most sensible historians of that epoch, James Duclercq, merely says on this subject, King Charles, before he had peace with Duke Philip of Burgundy, led a right holy life and said his canonical hours. But after peace was made with the duke, though the king continued to serve God, he joined himself unto a young woman who was afterwards called Fair Agnes.
Nothing is gained by ignoring good even when it is found in company with evil, and there is no intention here of disputing the share of influence exercised by Agnes Sorel upon Charles VII.’s regeneration in politics and war after the treaty of Arras. Nevertheless, in spite of the king’s successes at Montereau and during his passage through Central and Northern France, the condition of the country was still so bad in 1440, the disorder was so great, and the king so powerless to apply a remedy, that Richemont, disconsolate, was tempted to rid and disburden himself from the government of France and between the rivers [Seine and Loire, no doubt] and to go or send to the king for that purpose. But one day the prior of the Carthusians at Paris called on the constable and found him in his private chapel. “What need you, fair father?” asked Richemont. The prior answered that he wished to speak with my lord the constable. Richemont replied that it was he himself. “Pardon me, my lord,” said the prior, “I did not know you; I wish
The good prior was right. Meaux was taken; and when the constable went to tell the news at Paris the king made him “great cheer.” There was a continuance of war to the north of the Loire; and amidst many alternations of successes and reverses the national cause made great way there. Charles resolved, in 1442, to undertake an expedition to the south of the Loire, in Aquitaine, where the English were still dominant; and he was successful. He took from the English Tartas, Saint-Sever, Marmande, La Reole, Blaye, and Bourg-sur-Mer. Their ally, Count John d’Armagnac, submitted to the King of France. These successes cost Charles VII. the brave La Hire, who died at Montauban of his wounds. On returning to Normandy, where he had left Dunois, Charles, in 1443, conducted a prosperous campaign there. The English leaders were getting weary of a war without any definite issue; and they had proposals made to Charles for a truce, accompanied with a demand on the part of their young king, Henry VI., for the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, daughter of King Rena, who wore the three crowns of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, without possessing any one of the kingdoms. The truce and the marriage were concluded at Tours, in 1444. Neither of the arrangements was popular in England; the English people, who had only a far-off touch of suffering from the war, considered that their government made too many concessions to France. In France, too, there was some murmuring; the king, it was said, did not press his advantages with sufficient vigor; everybody was in a hurry to see all Aquitaine reconquered. “But a joy that was boundless and impossible to describe,” says Thomas Bazin, the most intelligent of the contemporary historians, “spread abroad
But for all their rejoicing at the peace, the French, king, lords, and commons, had war still in their hearts; national feelings were waking up afresh; the successes of late years had revived their hopes; and the civil dissensions which were at that time disturbing England let favorable chances peep out. Charles VII. and his advisers employed the leisure afforded by the truce in preparing for a renewal of the struggle. They were the first to begin it again; and from 1449 to 1451 it was pursued by the French king and nation with ever-increasing ardor, and with obstinate courage by the veteran English warriors astounded at no longer being victorious. Normandy and Aquitaine, which was beginning to be called Guyenne only, were throughout this period the constant and the chief theatre of war. Amongst the greatest number of fights and incidents which distinguished the three campaigns in those two provinces, the recapture of Rouen by Dunois in October, 1449, the battle of Formigny, won near Bayeux on the 15th of April, 1450, by the constable De Richemont, and the twofold capitulation of Bordeaux, first on the 28th of June, 1451, and next on the 9th of October, 1453, in order to submit to Charles VII., are the only events to which a place in history is due, for those were the days on which the question was solved touching the independence of the nation and the kingship in France. The Duke of Somerset and Lord Talbot were commanding in Rouen when Dunois presented himself beneath its walls, in hopes that the inhabitants would open the gates to him. Some burgesses, indeed, had him apprised of a certain point in the walls at which they might be able to favor the entry of the French. Dunois, at the same time making a feint of attacking in another quarter,
The battle of Formigny was at first very doubtful. In order to get from Valognes to Bayeux and Caen the English had to cross at the mouth of the Vire great sands which were passable only at low tide. A weak body of French under command of the Count de Clermont had orders to cut them off from this passage. The English, however, succeeded in forcing it; but just as they were taking position, with the village of Formigny to cover their rear, the constable De Richemont was seen coming up with three thousand men in fine order. The English were already strongly intrenched, when the battle began. “Let us go and look close in their faces, admiral,” said the constable to Sire de Coetivi. “I doubt whether they will leave their intrenchments,” replied the admiral. “I vow to God that with His grace they will not abide in them,” rejoined the constable; and he gave orders for the most vigorous assault. It lasted nearly three hours; the English were forced to fly at three points, and lost thirty-seven hundred men; several of their leaders were made prisoners; those who were left retired in good order; Bayeux, Avranches, Caen, Falaise, and Cherbourg fell one after the other into the hands of Charles VII.; and by the end of August, 1450, the whole of Normandy had been completely won back by France.
The conquest of Guyenne, which was undertaken immediately after that of Normandy, was at the outset more easy and more speedy. Amongst the lords of Southern France several hearty patriots, such as John of Blois, Count of Perigord, and Arnold Amanieu, Sire d’Albret, of their own accord began the strife, and on the 1st of November, 1450, inflicted a somewhat severe reverse upon the English, near Blanquefort. In the spring of the following year Charles VII. authorized the Count of Armagnac to take the field, and sent Dunois to assume the command-in-chief. An army of twenty thousand men mustered under his orders; and, in the course of May, 1451, some of the principal places of Guyenne, such as St. Emillon, Blaye, Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Libourne, and Dax were taken by assault or capitulated. Bordeaux and Bayonne held out for some weeks; but, on the 12th of June, a treaty concluded between the Bordelese and Dunois secured to the three estates of the district the liberties and privileges which they had enjoyed under English supremacy; and it was further stipulated that, if by the 24th of June the city had not been succored by English forces, the estates of Guyenne should recognize the sovereignty of King Charles. When the 24th of June came, a herald went up to one of the towers of the castle and shouted, “Succor from the King of England for them of Bordeaux!!” None replied to this appeal; so Bordeaux surrendered, and on the 29th of June Dunois took possession of it in the name of the King of France. The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the 6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar treaty. Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still had
On the night between the 16th and 17th of July, however, Talbot set out with his troops to raise the siege of Castillon. He marched all night and came suddenly in the early morning upon the French archers, quartered in an abbey, who formed the advanced guard of their army, which was strongly intrenched before the place. A panic set in amongst this small body, and some of them took to flight. “Ha! you would desert me then?” said Sire de Rouault, who was in command of them; “have I not promised you to live and die with you?” They thereupon rallied and managed to join the camp. Talbot, content for the time with this petty success, sent for a chaplain to come and say mass; and, whilst waiting
The English being beaten and Talbot dead, Castillon surrendered; and at unequal intervals Libourne, St. Emillon, Chateau-Neuf de Medoc, Blanquefort, St. Macaire, Cadillac, &c., followed the example. At the commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux alone was still holding out. The promoters of the insurrection which had been concerted with the English, amongst others Sires de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance rather in their own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the population; the king’s artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea a king’s fleet from Rochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the Gironde. “The majority of the king’s officers,” says the contemporary historian, Thomas Basin, “advised him to punish by at least the destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to their city; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused.” He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal privileges, which, however, she soon partially recovered, and to imposing upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to thirty thousand; he caused to be built at the expense of the city two fortresses, the Fort of the Ila and the Castle of Trompette, to keep in check so bold and fickle a population; and an amnesty was proclaimed for all but twenty specified persons, who were banished. On these conditions the capitulation was concluded and signed on the 17th of October; the English re-embarked; and Charles, without entering Bordeaux, returned to Touraine. The English had no longer any possession in France but Calais and Guines; the Hundred Years’ War was over.
And to whom was the glory?
Charles VII. himself decided the question. When in 1455, twenty-four years after the death of Joan of Are, he at Rome and at Rouen prosecuted her claims for restoration of character and did for her fame and her memory all that was still possible, he was but relieving his conscience from a load of ingratitude and remorse which in general weighs but lightly upon men, and especially upon kings; and he was discharging towards the Maid of Domremy the debt due by France and the French kingship when he thus proclaimed that to Joan above all they owed their deliverance and their independence. Before men and before God Charles was justified in so thinking; the moral are not the sole, but they are the most powerful forces which decide the fates of people; and Joan had roused the feelings of the soul, and given to the struggles between France and England its religious and national character. At Rheims, when she repaired thither for the king’s coronation, she said of her own banner, “It has a right to the honor, for it has been at the pains.” She, first amongst all, had a right to the glory, for she had been the first to contribute to the success.
Next to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richemont was the most effective and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France and of the king. He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous and pitiless towards his enemies, especially towards such as he despised, severe in regard to himself, dignified in his manners, never guilty of swearing himself and punishing swearing as a breach of discipline amongst the troops placed under his orders. Like a true patriot and royalist, he had more at heart his duty towards France and the king than he had his own personal interests. He was fond of war, and conducted it bravely and skilfully, without rashness, but without timidity: “Wherever the constable is,” said Charles VII., “there I am free from anxiety; he will do all that is possible!” He set his title and office of constable of France above his rank as a great lord; and when, after the death of his brother, Duke Peter II., he himself became Duke of Brittany, he always had the constable’s sword carried before him, saying, “I wish to honor in my old age a function which did me honor in my youth.” His good services were not confined to the wars of his time; he was one of the principal reformers of the military system in France by the substitution of regular troops for feudal service. He has not obtained, it is to be feared, in the history of the fifteenth century, the place which properly belongs to him.
Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and Marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette were, under Charles VII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of the king and of Fiance; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it is questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De Richemont, amongst the liberators of national independence. There are degrees of glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute it too readily and as it were by handfuls.
Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence, both brought to a melancholy termination by a conviction and a consequent ruin from which at the approach of old age he was still striving to recover by means of fresh ventures. Jacques Coeur was born at Bourges at the close of the fourteenth century. His father was a furrier, already sufficiently well established and sufficiently rich to allow of his son’s marrying, in 1418, the provost’s daughter of his own city. Some years afterwards Jacques Coeur underwent a troublesome trial for infraction of the rules touching the coinage of money; but thanks to a commutation of the penalty, graciously accorded by Charles VII., he got off with a fine, and from that time forward directed all his energies towards commerce. In 1432 a squire in the service of
[Illustration: Jacques Coeur——165]
Jacques Coeur, temporarily established at Montpellier, became a great and a celebrated merchant. In 1433 Charles VII. put into his hands the direction of the mint at Paris, and began to take his advice as to the administration of the crown’s finances. In 1440 he was appointed moneyman to the king, ennobled together with his wife and children, commissioned soon afterwards to draw up new regulations for the manufacture of cloth at Bourges, and invested on his own private account with numerous commercial privileges. He had already at this period, it was said, three hundred manufacturing hands in his employment, and he was working at the same time silver, lead, and copper mines situated in the environs of Tarare and Lyons. Between 1442 and 1446 he had one of his nephews sent as ambassador to Egypt, and obtained for the French consuls in the Levant the same advantages as were enjoyed by those of the most favored nations. Not only his favor in the eyes of the king, but his administrative and even his political appointments, went on constantly increasing. Between 1444 and 1446 the king several times named him one of his commissioners to the estates of Languedoc and for the installation of the new parliament of Toulouse. In 1446 he formed one of an embassy sent to Italy to try and acquire for France the possession of Genoa, which was harassed by civil dissensions. In 1447 he received from Charles VII. a still more important commission, to bring about an arrangement between the two popes elected, one under the name of Felix V., and the other under that of Nicholas V.; and he was successful. His immense wealth greatly contributed to his influence. M. Pierre Clement [Jacques Coeur et Charles WE, ou la France au quinzieme siecle; t. ii., pp. 1-46] has given a list of thirty-two estates and lordships which Jacques Coeur had bought either in Berry or in the neighboring provinces. He possessed, besides, four mansions and two hostels at Lyons; mansions at Beaucaire, at Beziers, at St. Pourcain, at Marseilles, and at Montpellier; and he had built, for his own residence, at Bourges, the celebrated hostel which still exists as an admirable model of Gothic and national art in the fifteenth century, attempting combination with the art of Italian renaissance.
[Illustration: Jacques Coeur’s Hostel at Bourges——169]
M. Clement, in his table of Jacques Coeur’s wealth does not count either the mines which he worked at various spots in France, nor the vast capital, unknown, which he turned to profit in his commercial enterprises; but, on the other hand, he names, with certain et ceteras, forty-two court-personages, or king’s officers, indebted to Jacques Coeur for large or small sums he had lent them. We will quote but two instances of Jacques Coeur’s financial connection, not with courtiers, however, but with the royal family and the king himself. Margaret of Scotland, wife of the dauphin, who became Louis XI., wrote with her own hand, on the 20th of July, 1445, “We, Margaret, dauphiness of Viennois, do acknowledge to have received from Master Stephen Petit, secretary of my lord the king, and receiver-general of his finances for Languedoc and Guienne, two thousand livres of Tours, to us given by my said lord, and to us advanced by the hands of Jacques Coeur, his moneyman, we being but lately in Lorraine, for to get silken stuff and sables to make robes for our person.” In 1449, when Charles VII. determined to drive the English from Normandy, his treasury was exhausted, and he had recourse to Jacques Coeur. “Sir,” said the trader to the king, “what I have is yours,” and lent him two hundred thousand crowns; “the effect of which was,” says Jacques Duclercq, “that during, this conquest, all the men-at-arms of the King of France, and all those who were in his service, were paid their wages month by month.”
An original document, dated 1450, which exists in the “cabinet des titres” of the National Library, bears upon it a receipt for sixty thousand livres from Jacques Coeur to the king’s receiver-general in Normandy, “in restitution of the like sum lent by me in ready money to the said lord in the month of August last past, on occasion of the surrendering to his authority of the towns and castle of Cherbourg, at that time held by the English, the ancient enemies of this realm.” It was probably a partial repayment of the two hundred thousand crowns lent by Jacques Coeur to the king at this juncture, according to all the contemporary chroniclers.
Enormous and unexpected wealth excites envy and suspicion at the same time that it confers influence; and the envious before long become enemies. Sullen murmurs against Jacques Coeur were raised in the king’s own circle; and the way in which he had begun to make his fortune—the coinage of questionable money—furnished some specious ground for them. There is too general an inclination amongst potentates of the earth to give an easy ear to reasons, good or bad, for dispensing with the gratitude and respect otherwise due to those who serve them. Charles VII., after having long been the patron and debtor of Jacques Coeur, all at once, in 1451, shared the suspicions aroused against him. To accusations of grave abuses and malversations in money matters
After having spent nearly three years more in prison, transported from dungeon to dungeon, Jacques Coeur, thanks to the faithful and zealous affection of a few friends, managed to escape from Beaucaire, to embark at Nice and to reach Rome, where Pope Nicholas V. welcomed him with tokens of lively interest. Nicholas died shortly afterwards, just when he was preparing an expedition against the Turks. His successor, Calixtus III., carried out his design, and equipped a fleet of sixteen galleys. This fleet required a commander of energy, resolution, and celebrity. Jacques Coeur had lived and fought with Dunois, Xaintrailles, La Hire, and the most valiant French captains; he was known and popular in Italy and the Levant; and the pope appointed him captain-general of the expedition. Charles VII.’s moneyman, ruined, convicted, and banished from France, sailed away at the head of the pope’s squadron and of some Catalan pirates to carry help against the Turks to Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos, Lemnos, and the whole Grecian archipelago. On arriving at Chios, in November, 1456, he fell ill there, and perceiving his end approaching, he wrote to his king “to commend to him his children, and to beg that, considering the great wealth and honors he had in his time enjoyed in the king’s service, it might be the king’s good pleasure to give something to his children, in order that they, even those of them who were secular, might be able to live honestly, without coming to want.” He died at Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John d’Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur’s children, “he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that island, at the centre of the choir.”
We have felt bound to represent with some detail the active and energetic life, prosperous for a long while and afterwards so grievous and hazardous up to its very last day, of this great French merchant at the close of the middle ages, who was the first to extend afar in Europe, Africa, and Asia the commercial relations of France, and, after the example of the great Italian merchants, to make an attempt to combine politics with commerce, and to promote at one and the same time the material interests of his country and the influence of his government. There can be no doubt but that Jacques Coeur was unscrupulous and frequently visionary as a man of business; but, at the same time, he was inventive, able, and bold, and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the utmost, he contributed a great deal to develop, in the ways of peace, the commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France. In his relations towards his king, Jacques Coeur was to Charles VII. a servant often over-adventurous, slippery, and compromising, but often also useful, full of resource, efficient, and devoted in the hour of difficulty. Charles VII. was to Jacques Coeur a selfish and ungrateful patron, who contemptuously deserted the man whose brains he had sucked, and ruined him pitilessly after having himself contributed to enrich him unscrupulously.
We have now reached the end of events under this long reign; all that remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles VII.’s government, and the melancholy imbroglios of his latter years with his son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able born-conspirator, who was to succeed him under the name of Louis XI.
One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon; it at the first blush appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of Northern France, or Langue d’oil, at another of Southern France, or Langue d’oc. Twenty-four such assemblies took place during this period at Bourges, at Selles in Berry, at Le Puy in Velay, at Mean-sur-Yevre, at Chinon, at Sully-sur-Loire, at Tours, at Orleans, at Nevers, at Carcassonne, and at different spots in Languedoc. It was the time of the great war between France on the one side and England and Burgundy allied on the other, the time of intrigues incessantly recurring at court, and the time likewise of carelessness and indolence on the part of Charles VII., more devoted to his pleasures than regardful of his government. He had incessant need of states-general to supply him with money and men, and support him through the difficulties of his position. But when, dating from the peace of Arras (September 21, 1435), Charles VII., having become reconciled with the Duke of Burgundy, was deliverer from civil war, and was at grips with none but England alone already half beaten by the divine inspiration, the triumph, and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, his posture and his behavior underwent a rare transformation. Without ceasing to be coldly selfish and scandalously licentious king he became practical, hard-working, statesman-like king, jealous and disposed to govern by himself, but at the same time watchful and skilful in availing himself of the able advisers who, whether it were by a happy accident or by his own choice, were grouped around him. “He had his days and hours for dealing with all sorts of men, one hour with the clergy, another with the nobles, another with foreigners, another with mechanical folks, armorers, and gunners; and in respect of all these persons he had a full remembrance of their cases and their appointed day. On Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday he worked with the chancellor, and got through all claims connected with justice. On Wednesday he first of all gave audience to the marshals, captains, and men of war. On the same day he held a council of finance, independently of another council which was also held on the same subject every Friday.” It was by such assiduous toil that Charles VII., in concert with his advisers, was able to take in hand and accomplish, in the military, financial, and judicial system of the realm, those bold and at the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country from the state of disorder, pillage, and
Let it be added, in accordance with contemporary testimony, that at the same time that he established an all but arbitrary rule in military and financial matters, Charles VII. took care that “practical justice, in the case of every individual, was promptly rendered to poor as well as rich, to small as well as great; he forbade all trafficking in the offices of the magistracy, and every time that a place became vacant in a parliament he made no nomination to it, save on the presentations of the court.”
Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were not the only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII. He attacked also ecclesiastical questions, which were at that period a subject of passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the councils of the Church and in the closets of princes. The celebrated ordinance, known by the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles VII. issued at Bourges on the 7th of July, 1438, with the concurrence of a grand national council, laic and ecclesiastical, was directed towards the carrying out, in the internal regulations of the French Church, and in the relations either of the State with the Church in France, or of the Church of France with the papacy, of reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers and interests. It would be impossible to touch here upon these difficult and delicate questions without going far beyond the limits imposed upon the writer of this history. All that can be said is, that there was no lack of a religious spirit, or of a liberal spirit, in the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and that the majority of the measures contained in it were adopted with the approbation of the greater part of the French clergy, as well as of educated laymen in France.
In whatever light it is regarded, the government of Charles VII. in the latter part of his reign brought him not only in France, but throughout Europe, a great deal of fame and power. When he had driven the English out of his kingdom, he was called Charles the Victorious; and when he had introduced into the internal regulations of the state so many important and effective reforms, he was called Charles the Well-served. “The sense he had by nature,” says his historian Chastellain, “had been increased to twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and perilous dangers, which sharpened his wits perforce.” “He is the king of kings,” was said of him by the Doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good judge of policy; “there is no doing without him.”
Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his reign, Charles VII. was, in his individual and private life, the most desolate, the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom. In 1442 and 1450 he had lost the two women who had been, respectively, the most devoted and most useful, and the most delightful and dearest to him, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and his favorite, Agnes
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 God, 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 passion 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 passion without any scruple or embarrassment 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 gratitude 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 ambassador at Rome to remind the pope of the royal hopes. “You know,” said the ambassador 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
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 classes 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 assemble, 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 principal 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 passing 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 God’s help, we will bring it to pass.” 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,
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 vassals 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
It is difficult to believe the chronicler’s last assertion. 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 nobles, 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 vassals 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 assembling 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 passionately fond of the chase; and, wherever he lived, he put it down amongst his neighbors, noble or other, without any regard for rights of lordship. 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 principal 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 class 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, passions 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 kingship, 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 passionately 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
“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 passing 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 passed 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 punishing 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 passed, 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,
[Illustration: 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 passed 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 ashore. “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?” “When I sent my ambassadors lately [in 1464] to Lille on an errand to my uncle, your father and yourself, and when my chancellor, that fool of a Morvilliers, made you such a fine speech, you sent me word by the Archbishop of Narbonne that I should repent me of the words spoken to you by that Morvilliers, and that before a year was over. Piques-Dieu, you’ve kept your promise, and
In proportion to the resignation displayed by the king was the joy of the Count of Charolais at seeing himself so near to peace. Everything was going wrong with his army; provisions were short; murmurs and dissensions were setting in; and the League of common weal was on the point of ending in a shameful catastrophe. Whilst strolling and conversing with cordiality the two princes kept advancing towards Paris. Without noticing it, they passed within the entrance of a strong palisade which the king had caused to be erected in front of the city-walls, and which marked the boundary-line. All on a sudden they stopped, both of them disconcerted. The Burgundian found himself within the hostile camp; but he kept a good countenance, and simply continued the conversation. Amongst his army, however, when
Negotiations for peace were opened forthwith. There was no difficulty about them. Louis was ready to make sacrifices as soon as be recognized the necessity for them, being quite determined, however, in his heart to recall them as soon as fortune came back to him. Two distinct treaties were concluded: one at Conflans on the 5th of October, 1465, between Louis and the Count of Charolais; and the other at St. Maur on the 29th of October, between Louis and the other princes of the League. By one or the other of the treaties the king granted nearly every demand that had been made upon him; to the Count of Charolais he gave up all the towns of importance in Picardy; to the Duke of Berry he gave the duchy of Normandy, with entire sovereignty; and the other princes, independently of the different territories that had been conceded to them, all received large sums in ready money. The conditions of peace had already been agreed to, when the Burgundians went so far as to summon, into the bargain, the strong place of Beauvais. Louis quietly complained to Charles: “If you wanted this town,” said he, “you should have asked me for it, and I would have given it to you; but peace is made, and it ought to be observed.” Charles openly disavowed the deed. When peace was proclaimed, on the 30th of October, the king went to Vincennes to receive the homage of his brother Charles for the duchy of Normandy, and that of the Count of Charolais for the lands of Picardy. The count asked the king to give up to him “for that day the castle of Vincennes for the security of all.” Louis made no objection; and the gate and apartments of the castle were guarded by the count’s own people. But the Parisians, whose favor Louis had won, were alarmed on his account.
When the treaties of Conflans and St. Maur were put before the parliament to be registered, the parliament at first refused, and the exchequer-chamber followed suit; but the king insisted in the name of necessity, and the registration took place, subject to a declaration on the part of the parliament that it was forced to obey. Louis, at bottom, was not sorry for this resistance, and himself made a secret protest against the treaties he had just signed.
At the outset of the negotiations it had been agreed that thirty-six notables, twelve prelates, twelve knights, and twelve members of the council, should assemble to inquire into the errors committed in the government of the kingdom, and to apply remedies. They were to meet on the 15th of December, and to have terminated their labors in two months at the least, and in three months and ten days at the most. The king promised on his word to abide firmly and stably by what they should decree. But this commission was nearly a year behind time in assembling, and, even when it was assembled, its labors were so slow and so futile, that the Count de Dampmartin was quite justified in writing to the Count of Charolais, become by his father’s death Duke of Burgundy, “The League of common weal has become nothing but the League of common woe.”
Scarcely were the treaties signed and the princes returned each to his own dominions when a quarrel arose between the Duke of Brittany and the new Duke of Normandy. Louis, who was watching for dissensions between his enemies, went at once to see the Duke of Brittany, and made with him a private convention for mutual security. Then, having his movements free, he suddenly entered Normandy to retake possession of it as a province which, notwithstanding the cession of it just made to his brother, the King of France could not dispense with. Evreux, Gisors, Gournay, Louviers, and even Rouen fell, without much resistance, again into his power. The Duke of Berry made a vigorous appeal for support to his late ally, the Duke of Burgundy, in order to remain master of the new duchy which had been conferred upon him under the late treaties. The Count of Charolais was at that time taking up little by little the government of the Burgundian dominions in the name of his father, the aged Duke Philip, who was ill and near his end; but, by pleading his own engagements, and especially his ever-renewed struggle with his Flemish subjects, the Liegese, the count escaped from the necessity of satisfying the Duke of Berry.
In order to be safe in the direction of Burgundy as well as that of Brittany, Louis had entered into negotiations with Edward IV., King of England, and had made him offers, perhaps even promises, which seemed to trench upon the rights ceded by the treaty of Conflans to the Duke of Burgundy, as to certain districts of Picardy. The Count of Charolais was informed of it; and in his impetuous wrath he wrote to King Louis, dubbing him simply Sir, instead of giving him, according to the usage between vassal and suzerain, the title of My most dread lord, “May it please you to wit, that some time ago I was apprised of a matter at which I cannot be too much astounded. It is with great sorrow that I name it to you, when I remember the fair expressions I have all through this year had from you, both in writing and by word of mouth. It is certain that parley has been held between your people and those of the King of England, that you have thought proper to assign to them the district of Caux and the city of Rouen; that you have promised to obtain from them Abbeville and the count-ship of Ponthieu, and that you have concluded with them certain alliances against me and my country, whilst making them large offers to my prejudice. Of what is yours, sir, you may dispose according to your pleasure; but it seems to me that you might do better than wish to take from my hands what is mine, in order to give it to the English or to any other foreign nation. I pray you, therefore, sir, if such overtures have been made by your people, to be pleased not to consent thereto in any way, but to put a stop to the whole, to the end that I may remain your most humble servant, as I desire to be.”
Louis returned no answer to this letter. He contented him-self with sending to the commission of thirty-six notables, then in session at Etampes for the purpose of considering the reform of the kingdom, a request to represent to the Count of Charolais the impropriety of such language, and to appeal for the punishment of the persons who had suggested it to him. The count made some awkward excuses, at the same time that he persisted in complaining of the king’s obstinate pretensions and underhand ways. A serious incident now happened, which for a while distracted the attention of the two rivals from their mutual recriminations. Duke Philip the Good, who had for some time past been visibly declining in body and mind, was visited at Bruges by a stroke of apoplexy, soon discovered to be fatal. His son, the Count of Charolais, was at Ghent. At the first whisper of danger he mounted his horse, and without a moment’s halt arrived at Bruges on the 15th of June, 1467, and ran to his father’s room, who had already lost speech and consciousness. “Father, father,” cried the count, on his knees and sobbing, “give me your blessing; and if I have offended you, forgive me.” “My lord,” added the Bishop of Bethlehem, the dying man’s confessor, “if you only hear us, bear witness by some sign.” The duke turned
What the people were anxiously forecasting, Louis foresaw with certainty, and took his measures accordingly. A few days after the death of Philip the Good, several of the principal Flemish cities, Ghent first and then Liege, rose against the new Duke of Burgundy in defence of their liberties, already ignored or threatened. The intrigues of Louis were not unconnected with these solicitations. He would undoubtedly have been very glad to have seen his most formidable enemy beset, at the very commencement of his ducal reign, by serious embarrassments, and obliged to let the king of France settle without trouble his differences with his brother Duke Charles of Berry, and with the Duke of Brittany. But the new Duke of Burgundy was speedily triumphant over the Flemish insurrections; and after these successes, at the close of the year 1467, he was so powerful and so unfettered in his movements, that Louis might, with good reason, fear the formation of a fresh league amongst his great neighbors in coalition against him, and perhaps even in communication with the English, who were ever ready to seek in France allies for the furtherance of their attempts to regain there the fortunes wrested from them by Joan of Arc and Charles VII. In view of such a position Louis formed a resolution, unpalatable, no doubt, to one so jealous of his own power, but indicative of intelligence and boldness; he confronted the difficulties of home government in order to prevent perils from without. The remembrance had not yet faded of the energy displayed and the services rendered in the first part of Charles VII.’s reign by the states-general; a wish was manifested for their resuscitation; and they were spoken of, even in the popular doggerel, as the most effectual remedy for the evils of the period.
“But what says Paris?”—“She is deaf and dumb.”
“Dares she not speak?”—“Nor she, nor parliament.”
“The clergy?”—“O! the clergy are kept mum.”
“Upon your oath?”—“Yes, on the sacrament.”
“The nobles, then?”—“The nobles are still worse.”
“And justice?”—“Hath nor balances nor weights.”
“Who, then, may hope to mitigate this curse?”
“Who? prithee, who?”—“Why, France’s three estates.”
“Be pleased, O prince, to grant alleviation . . .”
“To whom?”—“To the good citizen who waits . . .”
“For what?”—“The right of governing the nation . . .”
“Through whom? pray, whom?”—“Why, France’s three estates.”
In the face of the evil Louis felt no fear of the remedy. He summoned the states-general to a meeting at Tours on the 1st of April, 1468. Twenty-eight lords in person, besides representatives of several others who were unable to be there themselves, and a hundred and ninety-two deputies elected by sixty-four towns, met in session. The chancellor, Juvenal des Ursins, explained, in presence of the king, the object of the meeting: “It is to take cognizance of the differences which have arisen between the king and Sir Charles, his brother, in respect of the duchy of Normandy and the appanage of the said Sir Charles; likewise the great excesses and encroachments which the Duke of Brittany hath committed against the king by seizing his places and subjects, and making open war upon him; and thirdly, the communication which is said to be kept up by the Duke of Brittany with the English, in order to bring them down upon this country, and hand over to them the places he doth hold in Normandy. Whereupon we are of opinion that the people of the three estates should give their good advice and council.” After this official programme, the king and his councillors withdrew. The estates deliberated during seven or eight sessions, and came to an agreement “without any opposition or difficulty whatever, that as touching the duchy of Normandy it ought not to and cannot be separated from the crown in any way whatsoever, but must remain united, annexed, and conjoined thereto inseparably. Further, any arrangement of the Duke of Brittany with the English is a thing damnable, pernicious, and of most evil consequences, and one which is not to be permitted, suffered, or tolerated in any way. Lastly, if Sir Charles, the Duke of Brittany, or others, did make war on the king our sovereign lord, or have any treaty or connection with his enemies, the king is bound to proceed against them who should do so, according to what must be done in such case for the tranquillity and security of the realm . . . . And as often soever as the said cases may occur, the people of the estates have agreed and consented, do agree and consent, that, without waiting for other assemblage or congregation of the estates, the king have power to do all that comports with order and justice; the said estates promising and agreeing to serve and aid the king touching these matters, to obey him with all their might, and to live and die with him in this quarrel.”
Louis XI. himself could demand no more. Had they been more experienced and far-sighted, the states-general of 1468 would not have been disposed to resign, even temporarily, into the hands of the kingship, their rights and their part in the government of the country; but they showed patriotism and good sense in defending the integrity of the kingdom, national unity, and public order against the selfish ambition and disorderly violence of feudalism.
Fortified by their burst of attachment, Louis, by the treaty of Ancenis, signed on the 10th of September, 1468, put an end to his differences with Francis II., Duke of Brittany, who gave up his alliance with the house of Burgundy, and undertook to prevail upon Duke Charles of France to accept an arbitration for the purpose of settling, before two years were over, the question of his territorial appanage in the place of Normandy. In the meanwhile a pension of sixty thousand livres was to be paid by the crown to that prince. Thus Louis was left with the new duke, Charles of Burgundy, as the only adversary he had to face. His advisers were divided as to the course to be taken with this formidable vassal. Was he to be dealt with by war or by negotiation? Count de Dampmartin, Marshal de Rouault, and nearly all the military men earnestly advised war. “Leave it to us,” they said: “we will give the king a good account of this Duke of Burgundy. Plague upon it! what do these Burgundians mean? They have called in the English and made alliance with them in order to give us battle; they have handed over the country to fire and sword; they have driven the king from his lordship. We have suffered too much; we must have revenge; down upon them, in the name of the devil, down upon them. The king makes a sheep of himself and bargains for his wool and his skin, as if he had not wherewithal to defend himself. ’Sdeath! if we were in his place, we would rather risk the whole kingdom than let ourselves be treated in this fashion.” But the king did not like to risk the kingdom; and he had more confidence in negotiation than in war. Two of his principal advisers, the constable De St. Pol and the cardinal De la Balue, Bishop of Evreux, were of his opinion, and urged him to the top of his bent. Of them he especially made use in his more or less secret relations with the Duke of Burgundy; and he charged them to sound him with respect to a personal interview between himself and the duke. It has been very well remarked by M. de Barante, in his Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne, that “Louis had a great idea of the influence he gained over people by his wits and his language; he was always convinced that people never said what ought to be said, and that they did not set to work the right way.” It was a certain way of pleasing him to give him promise of a success which he would owe to himself alone; and the constable and the cardinal did not fail to do so. They found the Duke of Burgundy
“My lord, if it is your pleasure to come to this town of Peronne for to see us, I swear to you and promise you, by my faith and on my honor, that you may come, remain, sojourn, and go back safely to the places of Chauny and Noy on, at your pleasure, as many times as it may please you, freely and frankly, without any hinderance to you or to any of your folks from me or others in any case whatever and whatsoever may happen.”
[Illustration: Charles the Rash——203]
When this letter arrived at Noyon, extreme surprise and alarm were displayed about Louis; the interview appeared to be a mad idea; the vicegerent (vidam) of Amiens came hurrying up with a countryman who declared on his life that mylord of Burgundy wished for it only to make an attempt upon the king’s person; the king’s greatest enemies, it was said, were already, or soon would be, with the duke; and the captains vehemently reiterated their objections. But Louis held to his purpose, and started for Noyon on the 2d of October, taking with him the constable, the cardinal, his confessor, and, for all his escort, fourscore of his faithful Scots, and sixty men-at-arms. This knowing gossip, as his contemporaries called him, had fits of rashness and audacious vanity.
Duke Charles went to meet him outside the town. They embraced one another, and returned on foot to Peronne, chatting familiarly, and the king with his hand resting on the duke’s shoulder, in token of amity. Louis had quarters at the house of the chamberlain of the town; the castle of Peronne being, it was said, in too bad a state, and too ill furnished, for his reception. On the very day that the king entered Peronne, the duke’s army, commanded by the Marshal of Burgundy, arrived from the opposite side, and encamped beneath the walls. Several former servants of the king, now not on good terms with him, accompanied the Burgundian army. “As soon as the king was apprised of the arrival of these folks,” says Commynes, “he had a great fright, and sent to beg of the Duke of Burgundy
Whilst Duke Charles was thus abandoning himself to the first outburst of his wrath, King Louis remained impassive in the castle of Peronne, quite close to the great tower, wherein, about the year 925, King Charles the Simple had been confined by Herbert, Count of Vermandois, and died a prisoner in 929. None of Louis’s people had been removed from him; but the gate of the castle was strictly guarded. There was no entering. on his service, but by the wicket, and none of the duke’s people came to visit him; he had no occasion to parley, explain himself,
On the 11th of October, Duke Charles, having cooled down a little, assembled his council. The sitting lasted all the day and part of the night. Louis had sent to make an offer to swear a peace, such as, at the moment of his arrival, had been proposed to him, without any reservation or difficulty on his part. He engaged to join the duke in making war upon the Liegese and chastising them for their rebellion. He would leave as hostages his nearest relatives and his most intimate advisers. At the beginning of the council his proposals were not even listened to; there was no talk but of keeping the king a prisoner, and sending after his brother, the Prince Charles, with whom the entire government of the kingdom should be arranged; the messenger had orders to be in readiness to start at once; his horse was in the court-yard; he was only waiting for the letters which the duke was writing to Brittany. The chancellor of Burgundy and some of the wiser councillors besought the duke to reflect.
The king had come to Peronne on the faith of his safe-conduct; it would be an eternal dishonor for the house of Burgundy if he broke his word to his sovereign lord; and the conditions which the king was prepared to grant would put an end, with advantage to Burgundy, to serious and difficult business. The duke gave heed to these honest and prudent counsels; the news from Liege turned out to be less serious than the first rumors had represented; the bishop and Sire d’Humbercourt had been set at liberty. Charles retired to his chamber; and there, without thinking of undressing, he walked to and fro with long strides, threw himself upon his bed, got up again, and soliloquized out loud, addressing himself occasionally to Commynes, who lay close by him. Towards morning, though he still showed signs of irritation, his language was less threatening. “He has promised me,” said he, “to come with me to reinstate the Bishop
As soon as it was broad day, the duke entered the apartment of the castle where the king was a prisoner. His look was courteous, but his voice trembled with choler; his words were short and bitter, his manner was threatening. A little troubled at his aspect, Louis said, “Brother, I am safe, am I not, in your house and your country?” “Yes, sir,” answered the duke, “so safe that if I saw an arrow from a bow coming towards you I would throw myself in the way to protect you. But will you not be pleased to swear the treaty just as it is written?” “Yes,” said the king, “and I thank you for your good will.” “And will you not be pleased to come with me to Liege, to help me punish the treason committed against me by these Lidgese, all through you and your journey hither? The bishop is your near relative, of the house of Bourbon.” “Yes, Padues-Dieu,” replied Louis, “and I am much astounded at their wickedness. But begin we by swearing this treaty; and then I will start, with as many or as few of my people as you please.”
Forthwith was taken out from the king’s boxes the wood of the so-called true cross, which was named the cross of St. Laud, because it had been preserved in the church of St. Laud, at Angers. It was supposed to have formerly belonged to Charlemagne; and it was the relic which Louis regarded as the most sacred. The treaty was immediately signed, without any change being made in that of Conflans. The Duke of Burgundy merely engaged to use his influence with Prince Charles of France to induce him to be content with Brie and Champagne as appanage. The storm was weathered; and Louis almost rejoiced at seeing himself called upon to chastise in person the Liegese, who had made him commit such a mistake and run such a risk.
Next day the two princes set out together, Charles with his army, and Louis with his modest train increased by three hundred men-at-arms, whom he had sent for from France. On the 27th of October they arrived before Liege. Since Duke Charles’s late victories, the city had no longer any ramparts or ditches; nothing seemed easier than to get into it; but the besieged could not persuade themselves that Louis was sincerely allied with the Duke of Burgundy, and they made a sortie, shouting, “Hurrah for the king! Hurrah for France!” Great was their surprise when they saw Louis advancing in person, wearing in his hat the cross of St. Andrew of Burgundy, and shouting, “Hurrah for Burgundy!” Some even amongst the French who surrounded the king were shocked; they could not reconcile themselves to so little pride and such brazen falsehood. Louis took no heed of their temper, and never ceased to repeat, “When pride rides before, shame and hurt follow close after.” The surprise of the Liegese was transformed into indignation.
[Illustration: Louis XI. and Charles the Rash at Peronne——209]
They made a more energetic and a longer resistance than had been expected. The besiegers, confident in their strength, kept careless watch, and the sorties of the besieged became more numerous. One night Charles received notice that his men had just been attacked in a suburb which they had held, and were flying. He mounted his horse, gave orders not to awake the king, repaired by himself to the place where the fight was, put everything to rights, and came back and told the whole affair to Louis, who exhibited great joy. Another time, one dark and rainy night, there was an alarm, about midnight, of a general attack upon the whole Burgundian camp. The duke was soon up, and a moment afterwards the king arrived. There was great disorder. “The Liegese sallied by this gate,” said some; “No,” said others, “it was by that gate!” there was nothing known for certain, and there were no orders given. Charles was impetuous and brave, but he was easily disconcerted, and his servants were somewhat vexed not to see him putting a better countenance on things before the king. Louis, on the other hand, was cool and calm, giving commands firmly, and ready to assume responsibility wherever he happened to be. “Take what men you have,” said he to the constable St. Poi, who was at his side, “and go in this direction; if they are really coming upon us, they will pass that way.” It was discovered to be a false alarm. Two days afterwards there was a more serious affair. The inhabitants of a canton which was close to the city, and was called Franchemont, resolved to make a desperate effort, and go and fall suddenly upon the very spot where the two princes were quartered. One night, about ten P. M., six hundred men sallied out by one of the breaches, all men of stout hearts and well armed. The duke’s quarters were first attacked. Only twelve archers were on guard below, and they were playing at dice. Charles was in bed. Commynes put on him, as quickly as possible, his breastplate and helmet, and they went down stairs. The archers were with great difficulty defending the doorway, but help arrived, and the danger was over. The quarters of King Louis had also been attacked; but at the first sound the Scottish archers had hurried up, surrounded their master, and repulsed the attack, without caring whether their arrows killed Liegese or such Burgundians as had come up with assistance. The gallant fellows from Franchemont fell, almost to a man. The duke and his principal captains held a council the next day; and the duke was for delivering the assault. The king was not present at this council, and when he was informed of the resolution taken he was not in favor of an assault. “You see,” said he, “the courage of these people; you know how murderous and uncertain is street fighting; you will lose many brave men to no purpose. Wait two or three days, and the Liegese will infallibly
But Louis XI.’s deliverance after his quasi-captivity at Peronne, and the new treaty he had concluded with Duke Charles, were and could be only a temporary break in the struggle between these two princes, destined as they were, both by character and position, to irremediable incompatibility. They were too powerful and too different to live at peace when they were such close neighbors, and when their relations were so complicated. We find in the chronicle of George Chastelain, a Flemish burgher, and a servant on familiar terms with Duke Charles, as he had been with his father, Duke Philip, a judicious picture of this incompatibility and the causes of it. “There had been,” he says, “at all times a rancor between these two princes, and, whatever pacification might have been effected to-day, everything returned to-morrow to the old condition, and no real love could be established. They suffered from incompatibility of temperament and perpetual discordance of will; and the more they advanced in years the deeper they plunged into a state of serious difference and hopeless bitterness. The king was a man of subtlety and full of fence; he knew how to recoil for a better spring, how to affect humility and gentleness in his deep designs, how to yield and to give up in order to receive double, and how to bear and tolerate for a time his own grievances in hopes of being able at last to have his revenge. He was, therefore, very much to be feared for his practical knowledge, showing the greatest skill and penetration in the world. Duke Charles was to be feared for his great courage, which he evinced and displayed in his actions, making no account of king or emperor. Thus, whilst the king had great sense and great ability, which he used with dissimulation and suppleness in order to succeed in his views, the duke, on his side, had a great sense of another sort and to another purpose, which he displayed by a public ostentation of his pride, without any fear of putting himself in a false position.” Between 1468 and 1477, from the incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at the siege of Nancy, the history of the two princes was nothing but one constant alternation between ruptures and re-adjustments, hostilities and truces, wherein both were constantly changing their posture, their language, and their allies. It was at one time the affairs of the Duke of Brittany or those of Prince Charles of France, become Duke of Guienne; at another it was the relations with the different claimants to the throne of England, or the fate of the towns, in Picardy, handed over to the Duke of Burgundy by the treaties of Conflans and Peronne, which served as a ground or pretext for the frequent recurrences of war. In 1471 St. Quentin opened its gates to Count Louis of St. Poi, constable of France; and Duke Charles complained with threats about it to the Count of Dampmartin, who was in commend, on that frontier, of Louis XI.’s army, and had a good understanding with the constable. Dampmartin,
Between the two rivals in France, relations with England were a subject of constant manoeuvring and strife. In spite of reverses on the Continent and civil wars in their own island, the Kings of England had not abandoned their claims to the crown of France; they were still in possession of Calais; and the memory of the battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt was still a tower of strength to them. Between 1470 and 1472 the house of York had triumphed over the house of Lancaster; and Edward IV. was undisputed king. In his views touching France he found a natural ally in the Duke of Burgundy; and it was in concert with Charles that Edward was incessantly concocting and attempting plots and campaigns against Louis XI. In 1474 he, by a herald, called upon Louis to give up to him Normandy and Guienne, else, he told him, he would cross over to France with his army. “Tell your master,” answered Louis coolly, “that I should not advise him to.” Next year the herald returned to tell Louis that the King of England, on the point of embarking, called upon him to give up to him the kingdom of France. Louis had a conversation with the herald. “Your king,” said he, “is undertaking this war against his own grain at the solicitation of the Duke of Burgundy; he would do much better to live in peace with me, instead of devoting himself to allies who cannot but compromise him without doing him any service;” and he had three hundred golden crowns presented to the herald, with a promise of considerably more if peace were made. The herald, thus won over, promised, in his turn, to do all he could, saying that he believed that his master would lend a willing ear, but that, before mentioning the subject, they must wait until Edward had crossed the sea and formed some idea of the difficulties in the way of his enterprise; and he advised Louis to establish communications with my lord Howard and my lord Stanley, who had great influence with King Edward. “Whilst the king was parleying with the said herald, there were many folks in the hall,” says Commynes, “who were waiting, and had great longing to know what the king was saying to him, and what countenance he would wear when he came from within. The king, when he had made an end, called me and told me to keep the said herald talking, so that none might speak to him, and to have delivered unto him a piece of crimson velvet containing thirty ells. So did I, and the king was right joyous at that which he had got out of the said herald.”
[Illustration: Philip de Commynes——217]
It was now three years since Philip de Commynes had left the Duke of Burgundy’s service to enter that of Louis XI. In 1471 Charles had, none knows why, rashly authorized an interview between Louis and De Commynes. “The king’s speech,” says the chronicler Molinet, in the Duke of Burgundy’s service, “was so sweet and full of virtue that it entranced, siren-like, all those who gave ear to it.” “Of all princes,” says
Half a page or so can hardly be thought too much space to devote in a History of France to the task of tracing to their origin the conduct and fortunes of one of the most eminent French politicians, who, after having taken a chief part in the affairs of their country and their epoch, have dedicated themselves to the work of narrating them in a spirit of liberal and admirable comprehension both of persons and events. But we will return to Louis XI.
The King of England readily entertained the overtures announced to him by his herald. He had landed at Calais on the 22d of June, 1475, with an army of from sixteen to eighteen thousand men thirsting for conquest and pillage in France, and the Duke of Burgundy had promised to go and join him with a considerable force; but the latter, after having appeared for a moment at Calais to concert measures with his ally, returned no more, and even hesitated about admitting the English into his towns of Artois and Picardy. Edward waited for him nearly two months at Peronne, but in vain. During this time Louis continued his attempts at negotiation. He fixed his quarters at Amiens, and Edward came and encamped half a league from the town. The king sent to him, it is said, three hundred wagons laden with the best wines he could find, “the which train,” says Commynes, “was almost an army as big as the English;” at the entrance of the gate of Amiens Louis had caused to be set out two large tables “laden with all sorts of good eatables and good wines; and at each of these two tables he had caused to be seated five or six men of good family, stout and fat, to make better sport for them who had a mind to drink. When the English went into the town, wherever they put up they had nothing to pay; there were nine or ten taverns, well supplied, whither they went to eat and drink, and asked for what they pleased. And this lasted three or four days.” An agreement was soon come to as to the terms of peace. King Edward bound himself to withdraw with his army to England so soon as Louis XI. should have paid him seventy-five thousand crowns. Louis promised besides to pay annually to King Edward fifty thousand crowns, in two payments, during the time that both princes were alive. A truce for seven years was concluded; they made mutual promises to lend each other aid if they were attacked by their enemies or by their own subjects in rebellion; and Prince Charles, the eldest son of Louis XI., was to marry Elizabeth, Edward’s daughter, when both should be of marriageable age. Lastly, Queen Margaret of Anjou, who had been a prisoner in England since the death of her husband, Henry VI., was to be set at liberty, and removed to France, on renouncing all claim to the crown of England. These conditions having been formulated, it was agreed that the two kings should meet and sign them at Pecquigny, on the Somme, three leagues from Amiens. Thither, accordingly, they repaired, on the 29th of August, 1475. Edward, as he drew near, doffed “his bonnet of black velvet, whereon was a large fleur-de-lis in jewels, and bowed down to within half a foot of the ground.” Louis made an equally deep reverence, saying, “Sir my cousin, right welcome; there is no man in the world I could more desire to see than I do you, and praised be God that we are here assembled with such good intent.” The King of England answered this speech “in good French enough,” says Commynes. The
Commynes had good reason to say that the kingdom was in great peril. The intentions of Charles the Rash tended to nothing short of bringing back the English into France, in order to share it with them. He made no concealment of it. “I am so fond of the kingdom,” said he, “that I would make six of it in France.” He was passionately eager for the title of king. He had put out feelers for it in the direction of Germany, and the emperor, Frederic III., had promised it to him together with that of vicar-general of the empire, on condition that his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, married Duke Maximilian, Frederic’s son. Having been unsuccessful on the Rhine, Charles turned once more towards the Thames, and made alliance with Edward IV., King of England, with a view of renewing the English invasion of France, flattering himself, of course, that he would profit by it. To destroy the work of Joan of Arc and Charles VII.—such was the design, a criminal and a shameful one for a French prince, which was checkmated by the peace of Peequigny. Charles himself acknowledged as much when, in his wrath at this treaty, he said, “He had not sought to bring over the English into France for any need he had of them, but to enable them to recover what belonged to them;” and Louis XI. was a patriotic king when he declared that “there was nothing in the world he would not do to thrust the King of England out of the realm, and, rather than suffer the English to have a bit of territory in France, he would put everything to jeopardy and risk.”
The Duke of Burgundy, as soon as he found out that the King of France had, under the name of truce, made peace for seven years with the King of England, and that Edward IV. had recrossed the Channel with his army, saw that his attempts, so far, were a failure. Accordingly he too lost no time in signing [on the 13th of September, 1475] a truce with King Louis for nine years, and directing his ambition and aiming his blows against other quarters than Western France. Two little states, his neighbors on the east, Lorraine and Switzerland, became the object and the theatre of his passion for war. Lorraine had at that time for its duke Rene II., of the house of Anjou through his mother Yolande, a young prince who was wavering, as so many others were, between France and Burgundy. Charles suddenly entered Lorraine, took possession of several castles, had the inhabitants
In spite of the truce he had but lately concluded with Charles the Rash, the prudent Louis did not cease to keep an attentive watch upon him, and to reap advantage, against him, from the leisure secured to the King of France by his peace with the King of England and the Duke of Brittany. A late occurrence had still further strengthened his position: his brother Charles, who became Duke of Guienne, in 1469, after the treaty of Peronne, had died on the 24th of May, 1472. There were sinister rumors abroad touching his death. Louis was suspected, and even accused to the Duke of Brittany, an intimate friend of the deceased prince, of having poisoned his brother. He caused an inquiry to be instituted into the matter; but the inquiry itself was accused of being incomplete and inconclusive. “King Louis did not, possibly, cause his brother’s death,” says M. de Barante, “but nobody thought him incapable of it.” The will which Prince Charles had dictated a little before his death increased the horror inspired by such a suspicion. He manifested in it a feeling of affection and confidence towards the king his brother; he requested him to treat his servants kindly; “and if in any way,” he added, “we have ever offended our right dread and right well-beloved brother, we do beg him to be pleased to forgive us; since, for our part, if ever in any matter he hath offended us, we do affectionately pray the Divine Majesty to forgive him, and with good courage and good will do we on our part forgive him.” The Duke of Guienne at the same time appointed the king executor of his will. If we acknowledge, however, that Louis was not incapable of such a crime, it must be admitted that there is no trust-worthy proof of his guilt. At any rate his brother’s death had important results for him. Not only did it set him free from all fresh embarrassment in that direction, but it also restored to him the beautiful province of Guienne, and many a royal client. He treated the friends of Prince Charles, whether they had or had not been heretofore his own, with marked attention. He re-established at Bordeaux the parliament he had removed to Poitiers; he pardoned the towns of Pdzenas and Montignac for some late seditions; and, lastly, he took advantage of this incident to pacify and satisfy this portion of the kingdom. Of the great feudal chieftains who, in 1464, had formed against him the League of the common weal, the Duke of Burgundy was the only one left on the scene, and in a condition to put him in peril.
But though here was for the future his only real adversary, Louis XI. continued, and with reason, to regard the Duke of Burgundy as his most formidable foe, and never ceased to look about for means and allies wherewith to encounter him. He could no longer count upon the co-operation, more or less general, of the Flemings. His behavior to the Liegese after the incident at Peronne, and his share in the disaster which befell Liege, had lost him all his credit in the Flemish cities. The Flemings, besides, had been disheartened and disgusted at the idea of compromising themselves for or against their Burgundian prince. When they saw him entering upon the campaign in Lorraine and Switzerland, they themselves declared to him what he might or might not expect from them. “If he were pressed,” they said, “by the Germans or the Swiss, and had not with him enough men to make his way back freely to his own borders, he had only to let them know, and they would expose their persons and their property to go after him and fetch him back safely within his said borders, but as for making war again at his instance, they were not free to aid him any more with either men or money.” Louis XI., then, had nothing to expect from the Flemings any more; but for two years past, and so soon as he observed the commencement of hostilities between the Duke of Burgundy and the Swiss, he had paved the way for other alliances in that quarter. In 1473 he had sent “to the most high and mighty lords and most dear friends of ours, them of the league and city of Berne and of the great and little league of Germany, ambassadors charged to make proposals to them, if they would come to an understanding to be friends of friends and foes of foes” (make an offensive and defensive alliance). The proposal was brought before the diet of the cantons assembled at Lucerne. The King of France “regretted that the Duke of Burgundy would not leave the Swiss in peace; he promised that his advice and support, whether in men or in money, should not be wanting to them; he offered to each canton an annual friendly donation of two thousand livres; and he engaged not to summon their valiant warriors to take service save in case of pressing need, and unless Switzerland were herself at war.” The question was discussed with animation; the cantons were divided; some would have nothing to do with either the alliance or the money of Louis XI., of whom they spoke with great distrust and antipathy; others insisted upon the importance of being supported by the King of France in their quarrels with the Duke of Burgundy, and scornfully repudiated the fear that the influence and money of Louis would bring a taint upon the independence and the good morals of their country. The latter opinion carried the day; and, on the 2d of October, 1474, conformably with a treaty concluded, on the 10th of the previous January, between the King of France and the league of Swiss cantons, the canton of Berne made to the French legation the following
A Bernese messenger carried this announcement to the Burgundian camp before the fortress of Neuss, and delivered it into the hands of Duke Charles himself, whose only remark, as he ground his teeth, was, “Ah! Berne! Berne!” At the be-ginning of January, 1476, he left Nancy, of which he had recently gained possession, returned to Besancon, and started thence on the 6th of February to take the field with an army amounting, it is said, to thirty or forty thousand men, provided with a powerful artillery and accompanied by an immense baggage-train, wherein Charles delighted to display his riches and magnificence in contrast with the simplicity and roughness of his personal habits. At the rumor of such an armament the Swiss attempted to keep off the war from their country. “I have heard tell,” says Commynes, “by a knight of theirs, who had been sent by them to the said duke, that he told him that against them he could gain nothing, for that their country was very barren and poor; that there were no good prisoners to make, and that the spurs and the horses’ bits in his own army were worth more money than all the people of their territory could pay in ransom even if they were taken.” Charles, however, gave no heed, saw nothing in their representations but an additional reason for hurrying on his movements with confidence, and on the 19th of February arrived before Granson, a little town in the district of Vaud, where war had already begun.
Louis XI. watched all these incidents closely, keeping agents everywhere, treating secretly with everybody, with the Duke of Burgundy as well as with the Swiss, knowing perfectly well what he wanted, but holding himself ready to face anything, no matter what the event might be. When he saw that the crisis was coming, he started from Tours and went to take up his quarters at Lyons, close to the theatre of war and within an easy distance for speedy information and prompt action. Scarcely had he arrived, on the 4th of March, when he learned that, on the day but one before, Duke Charles had been tremendously beaten by the Swiss at Granson; the squadrons of his chivalry had not been able to make any impression upon the battalions of Berne, Schwitz, Soleure, and
That even the bare life was saved was a source of sorrow to Louis XI. in the very midst of his joy at the defeat. He was, nevertheless, most proper in his behavior and language towards Duke Charles, who sent to him Sire de Contay “with humble and gracious words, which was contrary to his nature and his custom,” says Commynes; “but see how an hour’s time changed him; he prayed the king to be pleased to observe loyally the truce concluded between them, he excused himself for not having appeared at the interview which was to have taken place at Auxerre, and he bound himself to be present, shortly, either there or elsewhere, according to the king’s good pleasure.” Louis promised him all he asked, “for,” adds Commynes, “it did not seem to him time, as yet, to do other-wise;” and he gave the duke the good advice “to return home and bide there quietly, rather than go on stubbornly warring with yon folks of the Alps, so poor that there was nought to gain by taking their lands, but valiant and obstinate in battle.” Louis might give this advice fearlessly, being quite certain that Charles would not follow it. The latter’s defeat at Granson had thrown him into a state of gloomy irritation. At Lausanne, where he staid for some time, he had “a great sickness, proceeding,” says Commynes, “from grief and sadness on account of this shame that he had suffered; and, to tell the
“The king,” says Commynes, “always willingly gave somewhat to him who was the first to bring him some great news, without forgetting the messenger, and he took pleasure in speaking thereof before the news came, saying, ’I will give so much to him who first brings me such and such news.’ My lord of Bouchage and I (being together) had the first message about the battle of Morat, and told it both together to the king, who gave each of us two hundred marks of silver.” Next day Louis, as prudent in the hour of joy as of reverse, wrote to Count de Dampmartin, who was in command of his troops concentrated at Senlis, with orders to hold himself in readiness for any event, but still carefully observe the truce with the Duke of Burgundy. Charles at that time was thinking but little of Louis and their truce; driven to despair by the disaster at Morat, but more dead set than ever on the struggle, he repaired from Morges to Gex, and from Gex to Salins, and summoned successively, in July and August, at Salins, at Dijon, at Brussels, and at Luxembourg the estates of his various domains, making to all of them an appeal, at the same time supplicatory and imperious, calling upon them for a fresh army with which to recommence the war with the Swiss, and fresh subsidies with which to pay it. “If ever,” said he, “you have desired to serve us and do us pleasure, see to doing and accomplishing all that is bidden you; make no default in anything whatsoever, and he henceforth in dread of the punishments which may ensue.” But there was everywhere a feeling of disgust with the service of Duke Charles; there was no more desire of serving him and no more fear of disobeying him; he encountered almost everywhere nothing but objections, complaints, and refusals, or else a silence and an inactivity which were still worse. Indignant, dismayed, and dumbfounded at such desertion, Charles retired to his castle of La Riviere, between Pontarlier and Joux, and shut himself up there for more than six weeks, without, however, giving up the attempt to collect soldiers. “Howbeit,” says Commynes, “he made but little of it; he kept himself quite solitary, and he seemed to do it from sheer obstinacy more than anything else. His natural heat was so great that he used to drink no wine, generally took barley-water in the morning and ate preserved rose-leaves to keep himself cool; but sorrow changed his complexion so much that he was obliged to drink good strong wine without water, and, to bring the blood back to his heart, burning tow was put into cupping-glasses, and they were applied thus heated to the region of the heart. Such are the passions of those who have never felt adversity, especially of proud princes who know not how to discover any remedy. The first refuge, in such a case, is to have recourse to God, to consider whether one have offended Him in aught, and to confess one’s misdeeds. After that, what does great good is to converse with some friend, and not be ashamed to show one’s grief before him, for that lightens and comforts the heart; and not at any rate to take the course the duke took of concealing himself and keeping himself solitary; he was so terrible to his own folks that none durst come forward to give him any comfort or counsel; but all left him to do as he pleased, feeling that, if they made him any remonstrance, it would be the worse for them.”
But events take no account of the fears and weaknesses of men. Charles learned before long that the Swiss were not his most threatening foes, and that he had something else to do instead of going after them amongst their mountains. During his two campaigns against them, the Duke of Lorraine, Rend II., whom he had despoiled of his dominions and driven from Nancy, had been wandering amongst neighboring princes and people in France, Germany, and Switzerland, at the courts of Louis XI. and the Emperor Frederic III., on visits to the patricians of Berne, and in the free towns of the Rhine. He was young, sprightly, amiable, and brave; he had nowhere met with great assistance, but he had been well received, and certain promises had been made him. When he saw the contest so hotly commenced between the Duke of Burgundy and the Swiss, he resolutely put himself at the service of the republican mountaineers, fought for them in their ranks, and powerfully contributed to their victory at Morat. The defeat of Charles and his retreat to his castle of La Riviere gave Rend new hopes, and gained him some credit amongst the powers which had hitherto merely testified towards him a good will of but little value; and his partisans in Lorraine recovered confidence in his for-tunes. One day, as he was at his prayers in a church, a rich widow, Madame Walther, came up to him in her mantle and hood, made him a deep reverence, and handed him a purse of gold to help him in winning back his duchy. The city of Strasbourg gave him some cannon, four hundred cavalry, and eight hundred infantry; Louis XI. lent him some money; and Rend before long found himself in a position to raise a small army and retake Epinal, Saint-Did, Vaudemont, and the majority of the small towns in Lorraine. He then went and laid siege to Nancy. The Duke of Burgundy had left there as governor John de Rubemprd, lord of Bievres, with a feeble garrison, which numbered amongst its ranks three hundred English, picked men. Sire de Bievres sent message after message to Charles, who did not even reply to him. The town was short of provisions; the garrison was dispirited; and the commander of the English was killed. Sire de Bievres, a loyal servant, but a soldier of but little energy, determined to capitulate. On the 6th of October, 1476, he evacuated the place at the head of his men, all safe in person and property. At sight of him Rend dismounted, and handsomely went forward to meet him, saying, “Sir, my good uncle, I thank you for having so courteously governed my duchy; if you find it agreeable to remain with me, you shall fare the same as myself.” “Sir,” answered Sire de Bievres, “I hope that you will not think ill of me for this war; I very much wish that my lord of Burgundy had never begun it, and I am much afraid that neither he nor I will see the end of it.”
Sire de Bievres had no idea how true a prophet he was. Almost at the very moment when he was capitulating, Duke Charles, throwing off his sombre apathy, was once more entering Lorraine with all the troops he could collect, and on the 22d of October he in his turn went and laid siege to Nancy. Duke Rend, not considering himself in a position to maintain the contest with only such forces as he had with him, determined to quit Nancy in person and go in search of re-enforcements at a distance, at the same time leaving in the town a not very numerous but a devoted garrison, which, together with the inhabitants, promised to hold out for two months. And it did hold out whilst Rend was visiting Strasbourg, Berne, Zurich, and Lucerne, presenting himself before the councils of these petty republics with, in order to please them, a tame bear behind him, which he left at the doors, and promising, thanks to Louis XI.’s agents in Switzerland, extraordinary pay. He thus obtained auxiliaries to the number of eight thousand fighting men. He had, moreover, in the very camp of the Duke of Burgundy, a secret ally, an Italian condottiere, the Count of Campo-Basso, who, either from personal hatred or on grounds of interest, was betraying the master to whom he had bound himself. The year before, he had made an offer to Louis XI. to go over to him with his troops during a battle, or to hand over to him the Duke of Burgundy, dead or alive. Louis mistrusted the traitor, and sent Charles notice of the offers made by Campo-Basso. But Charles mistrusted Louis’s information, and kept Campo-Basso in his service. A little before the battle of Morat Louis had thought better of his scruples or his doubts, and had accepted, with the compensation of a pension, the kind offices of Campo-Basso. When the war took place in Lorraine, the condottiere, whom Duke Charles had one day grossly insulted, entered into communication with Duke Rend also, and took secret measures for insuring the failure of the Burgundian attempts upon Nancy. Such was the position of the two princes and the two armies, when, on the 4th of June, 1477, Rend, having returned with re-enforcements to Lorraine, found himself confronted with Charles, who was still intent upon the siege of Nancy. The Duke of Burgundy assembled his captains. “Well!” said he, “since these drunken scoundrels are upon us, and are coming here to look for meat and drink, what ought we to do?” The majority of those present were of opinion that the right thing to do was to fall back into the duchy of Luxembourg, there to recruit the enfeebled army. “Duke Rene,” they said, “is poor; he will not be able to bear very long the expense of the war, and his allies will leave him as soon as he has no more money; wait but a little, and success is certain.” Charles flew into a passion. “My father and I,” said he, “knew how to thrash these Lorrainers; and we will make them remember it. By St. George! I will not fly before a boy, before Rend of Vaudemont, who is coming at the head of this scum. He has not so many men with him as people think; the Germans have no idea of leaving their stoves in winter. This evening we will deliver the assault against the town, and to-morrow we will give battle.”
And the next day, January the 5th, the battle did take place, in the plain of Nancy. The Duke of Burgundy assumed his armor very early in the morning. When he put on his helmet, the gilt lion, which formed the crest of it, fell off. “That is a sign from God!” said he; but, nevertheless, he went and drew up his army in line of battle. The day but one before, Campo-Basso had drawn off his troops to a considerable distance; and he presented himself before Duke Rene, having taken off his red scarf and his cross of St. Andrew, and being quite ready, he said, to give proofs of his zeal on the spot. Rene spoke about it to his Swiss captains. “We have no mind,” said they, “to have this traitor of an Italian fighting beside us; our fathers never made use of such folk or such practices in order to conquer.” And Campo-Basso held aloof. The battle began in gloomy weather, and beneath heavy flakes of snow, lasted but a short time, and was not at all murderous in the actual conflict, but the pursuit was terrible. Campo-Basso and his troops held the bridge of Bouxieres, by which the Burgundian fugitives would want to pass; and the Lorrainerss of Rend and his Swiss and German allies scoured the country, killing all with whom they fell in. Rend returned to Nancy in the midst of a population whom his victory had delivered from famine as well as war. “To show him what sufferings they had endured,” says M. de Barante, “they conceived the idea of piling up in a heap, before the door of his hostel, the heads of the horses, dogs, mules, cats, and other unclean animals which had for several weeks past been the only food of the besieged.” When the first burst of joy was over, the question was, what had become of the Duke of Burgundy; nobody had a notion; and his body was not found amongst the dead in any of the places where his most valiant and faithful warriors had fallen. The rumor ran that he was not dead; some said that one of his servants had picked him up wounded on the field of battle, and was taking care of him, none knew where; and according to others, a German lord had made him prisoner, and carried him off beyond the Rhine. “Take good heed,” said many people, “how ye comport yourselves otherwise than if he were still alive, for his vengeance would be terrible on his return.” On the evening of the day after the battle, the Count of Campo-Basso brought to Duke Rend a young Roman page who, he said, had from a distance seen his master fall, and could easily find the spot again. Under his guidance a move was made towards a pond hard by the town; and there, half buried in the slush of the pond, were some dead bodies, lying stripped. A poor washerwoman, amongst the rest, had joined in the search; she saw the glitter of a jewel in the ring upon one of the fingers of a corpse whose face was not visible; she went forward, turned the body over, and at once cried, “Ah! my prince!” There was a rush to the spot immediately. As the head was being detached from the ice to which
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 ambassadors 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, God 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 God to forgive Duke Charles his sins!”
[Illustration: The Corpse of Charles the Rash Discovered——236]
To this pious wish of Commynes, after so judicious a sketch, we may add another: Please God 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 principal 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 god-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 Duchess 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
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 embarrassment 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 pass 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 passionate 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,”
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
[Illustration: 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 ingratitude 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 passed for being the firmest lord in the realm; you must not belie yourself to-day, when you have more
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 passed 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 passions, 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 associates—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 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 pronounced 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.
The same rule of historical equity makes it incumbent 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 passed across his mind as to Dampmartin under circumstances critical for both of them, the king wrote to him, “Sir Grand Master, I have received your letters, and I do assure 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
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 vassals, the favor he showed the middle classes, 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 passion, 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 superstitions, 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
[Illustration: 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 assumed, the superstitions 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 instituted, 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 passer-by was seized, and carried off to Tristan l’Hermite, the provost-marshal.
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 ambassadors from the estates of Flanders and from Maximilian, who then for the first time assumed the title 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
On the 2d of June following, the infant princess, Marguerite of Austria, was brought by a solemn embassy 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 embassy. Assuredly 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 Duchess 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, Duchess of Brittany.
[Illustration: 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,
“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
[Illustration: Louis XI——260]
On Saturday, 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 lustre; 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 documents. We reproduce here the two judgments, the agreement of which is remarkable:—
“God,” 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 assent to Duclos’ last word—he was a king.
[Illustration: 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 title 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.”
[Illustration: Anne de Beaujeu——264]
She began by acts of intelligent discretion. She tried, not to subdue by force the rivals and malcontents, but to put them in the wrong in the eyes of the public, and to cause embarrassment to themselves by treating them with fearless favor. Her brother-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon, was vexed at being only in appearance and name the head of his own house; and she made him constable of France and lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The friends of Duke Louis of Orleans, amongst others
Anne’s discretion was soon put to a great trial. A general cry was raised for the convocation of the states-general. The ambitious hoped thus to open a road to power; the public looked forward to it for a return to legalized government. No doubt Anne would have preferred to remain more free and less responsible in the exercise of her authority; for it was still very far from the time when national assemblies could be considered as a permanent power and a regular means of government. But Anne and her advisers did not waver; they were too wise and too weak to oppose a great public wish. The states-general were convoked at Tours for the 5th of January, 1484. On the 15th they met in the great hall of the arch-bishop’s palace. Around the king’s throne sat two hundred and fifty deputies, whom the successive arrivals of absentees raised to two hundred and eighty-four. “France in all its entirety,” says M. Picot, “found itself, for the first time, represented; Flanders alone sent no deputies until the end of the session; but Provence, Roussillon, Burgundy, and Dauphiny were eager to join their commissioners to the delegates from the provinces united from the oldest times to the crown.” [Histoire des Etats Generaux from 1355 to 1614, by George Picot, t. i. p. 360.]
We have the journal of these states-general drawn up with precision and detail by one of the chief actors, John Masselin, canon of and deputy for Rouen, “an eminent speaker,” says a contemporary Norman chronicle, “who delivered on behalf of the common weal, in the presence of kings and princes, speeches full of elegance.” We may agree that, compared with the pompous pedantry of most speakers of his day, the oratorical style of John Masselin is not without a certain elegance, but that is not his great and his original distinction; what marks him out and gives him so high a place in the history of the fifteenth century, is the judicious and firm political spirit displayed in his conduct as deputy and in his narrative as historian. [The Journal, written by the author in Latin, was translated into French and published, original and translation, by M. A. Bernier, in 1835, in the Collection des Documents inedits relatifs d l’Histoire de France.] And it is not John Masselin only, but the very assembly itself in which he sat, that appears to us, at the end of five centuries, seriously moved by a desire for a free government, and not far from comprehending and following out the essential conditions of it. France had no lack of states-general, full of brilliancy and power, between 1356 and 1789, from the reign of Charles V. to that of Louis XVI.; but in the majority of these assemblies, for all the ambitious soarings of liberty, it was at one time religious party-spirit and at another the spirit of revolution that ruled and determined both acts and events. Nothing of that kind appeared in the states-general assembled at Tours in 1484; the assembly was profoundly monarchical, not only on general principles, but in respect of the reigning house and the young king seated on the throne. There was no fierce struggle, either, between the aristocracy and the democracy of the day, between the ecclesiastical body and the secular body; although widely differing and widely separated, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate were not at war, even in their hearts, between themselves. One and the same idea, one and the same desire, animated the three orders; to such a degree that, as has been well pointed out by M. Picot, “in the majority of the towns they proceeded in common to the choice of deputies: the clergy, nobles, and commons who arrived at Tours were not the representatives exclusively of the clergy, the nobles, or the third estate: they combined in their persons a triple commission;” and when, after having examined together their different memorials, by the agency of a committee of thirty-six members taken in equal numbers from the three orders, they came to a conclusion to bring their grievances and their wishes before the government of Charles VIII., they decided that a single spokesman should be commissioned to sum up, in a speech delivered in solemn session, the report of the committee of Thirty-six; and it was the canon, Master John Masselin,
Two men, one a Norman and the other a Burgundian, the canon John Masselin and Philip Pot, lord of la Roche, a former counsellor of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, were the exponents of this political spirit, at once bold and prudent, conservative and reformative. The nation’s sovereignty and the right of the estates not only to vote imposts but to exercise a real influence over the choice and conduct of the officers of the crown, this was what they affirmed in principle, and what, in fact, they labored to get established. “I should like,” said Philip de la Roche, “to see you quite convinced that the government of the state is the people’s affair; and by the people I mean not only the multitude of those who are simply subjects of this crown, but indeed all persons of each estate, including the princes also. Since you consider yourselves deputies from all the estates of the kingdom, why are you afraid to conclude that you have been especially summoned to direct by your counsels the commonwealth during its quasi-interregnum caused by the king’s minority? Far be it from me to say that the reigning, properly so called, the dominion, in fact, passes into any hands but those of the king; it is only the administration, the guardianship of the kingdom, which is conferred for a time upon the people or their elect. Why tremble at the idea of taking in hand the regulation, arrangement, and nomination of the council of the crown? You are here to say and to advise freely that which, by inspiration of God and your conscience, you believe to be useful for the realm. What is the obstacle that prevents you from accomplishing so excellent and meritorious a work? I can find none, unless it be your own weakness and the pusillanimity which causes fear in your minds. Come, then, most illustrious lords, have great confidence in yourselves, have great hopes, have great manly virtue, and let not this liberty of the estates, that your ancestors were so zealous in defending, be imperilled by reason of your soft-heartedness.” “This speech,” says Masselin, “was listened to by the whole assembly very attentively and very favorably.” Masselin, being called upon to give the king “in his privy chamber, before the Dukes of Orleans and Lorraine and a numerous company of nobles,” an exact account of the estates’ first deliberations, held in his turn language more reserved than, but similar to, that of Lord Philip de la Roche, whose views he shared and whose proud
This was providing at one and the same time for the wants of the present and the rights of the future. The impost of talliage was, indeed, voted just as it had stood under Charles VII., but it became a temporary aid granted for two years only; at the end of them the estates were to be convoked and the tax augmented or diminished according to the public wants. The great question appeared decided; by means of the vote, necessary and at the same time temporary, in the case of the impost, the states-general entered into real possession of a decisive influence in the government; but the behavior and language of the officers of the crown and of the great lords of the court rendered the situation as difficult as ever. In a long and confused harangue the chancellor, William de Rochefort, did not confine himself to declaring the sum voted, twelve hundred thousand livres, to be insufficient, and demanding three hundred thousand livres more; he passed over in complete silence the limitation
After having deliberated upon it, the states-general persisted in their vote of a tax of twelve hundred thousand livres, at which figure it had stood under King Charles VII., but for two years only, and as a gift or grant, not as a permanent talliage any more, and on condition that at the end of that time the states should be necessarily convoked. At the same time, however, “and over and above this, the said estates, who do desire the well-being, honor, prosperity, and augmentation of the lord king and of his kingdom, and in order to obey him and please him in all ways possible, do grant him the sum of three hundred thousand livres of Tours, for this once only, and without being a precedent, on account of his late joyful accession to the throne of France, and for to aid and support the outlay which it is suitable to make for his holy consecration, coronation, and entry into Paris.”
On this fresh vote, full of fidelity to the monarchy and at the same time of patriotic independence, negotiations began between the estates and the court; and they lasted from the 28th of February to the 12th of March, but without result. At bottom, the question lay between absolute power and free government, between arbitrariness and legality; and, on this field, both parties were determined not to accept a serious and final defeat. Unmoved by the loyal concessions
On the 12th of March, 1484, the deputies from Normandy, twenty-five in number, happened to hold a meeting at Montils-les-Tours. The Bishop of Coutances told them that there was no occasion for the estates to hold any more meetings; that it would be enough if each of the six sections appointed three or four delegates to follow the course of affairs; and that, moreover, the compensation granted to all the deputies of the estates would cease on the 14th of March, and after that would be granted only to their delegates. This compensation had already, amongst the estates, been the subject of a long discussion. The clergy
Neither Masselin nor his descendants for more than three centuries were destined to see the labors of the states-general of 1484 obtain substantial and durable results. The work they had conceived and attempted was premature. The establishment of a free government demands either spontaneous and simple virtues, such as may be found in a young and small community, or the lights, the scientific method, and the wisdom, painfully acquired and still so imperfect, of great and civilized nations. France of the fifteenth century was in neither of these conditions. But it is a crown of glory to have felt that honest and patriotic ambition which animated Masselin and his friends at their exodus from the corrupt and corrupting despotism of Louis XI. Who would dare to say that their attempt, vain as it was for them, was so also for generations separated from them by centuries? Time and space are as nothing in the mysterious development of God’s designs towards men, and it is the privilege of mankind to get instruction and example from far-off memories of their own history. It was a duty to render to the states-general of 1484 the homage to which they have a right by reason of their intentions and their efforts on behalf of the good cause and in spite of their unsuccess.
When the states-general had separated, Anne de Beaujeu, without difficulty or uproar, resumed, as she had assumed on her father’s death, the government of France; and she kept it yet for seven years, from 1484 to 1491. During all this time she had a rival and foe in Louis, Duke of Orleans, who was one day to be Louis XII. “I have heard tell,” says Brantome, “how that, at the first, she showed affection towards him, nay, even love; in such sort that, if M. d’Orleans had been minded to give heed thereto, he might have done well, as I know from a good source; but he could not bring himself to it; especially as he found her too ambitious, and he would that she should be dependent on him, as premier prince and nearest to the throne, and not he on her; whereas she desired the contrary, for she was minded to have the high place and rule everything. . . . They used to have,” adds Brantome, “prickings of jealousy, love, and ambition.” If Brantome’s anecdote is true, as one is inclined to believe, though several historians have cast doubts upon it, Anne de Beaujeu had, in their prickings of jealousy, love, and ambition, a great advantage over Louis of Orleans. They were both young, and exactly of the same age; but Louis had all the defects of youth, whilst Anne had all the qualities of mature age. He was handsome, volatile, inconsiderate, impudent, brave, and of a generous, open nature, combined with kindliness; she was thoughtful, judicious, persistent, and probably a little cold and hard, such, in fact, as she must needs have become in the school of her father, Louis XI. As soon as the struggle between them began, the diversity of their characters appeared and bore fruit. The Duke of Orleans plunged into all sorts of intrigues and ventures against the fair regent, exciting civil war, and, when he was too much compromised or too hard pressed, withdrawing to the court of Francis II., Duke of Brittany, an unruly vassal of the King of France. Louis of Orleans even made alliance, at need, with foreign princes, Henry VII., King of England, Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Arragon, and Maximilian, archduke of Austria, without much regard for the interests of his own kingly house and his own country. Anne, on the contrary, in possession of official and legal authority, wielded it and guarded it with prudence and moderation in the interests of France and of the crown, never taking the initiative in war, but having the wit to foresee, maintain, and, after victory, end it. She encountered from time to time, at her own court and in her own immediate circle, a serious difficulty: the young king, Charles, was charmed by the Duke of Orleans’s brilliant qualities, especially by the skill and bravery that Louis displayed at tournaments. One day, interrupting the Bishop of Montauban, George of Amboise, who was reading the breviary to him, “Send word to the Duke of Orleans,” said the king, “to go on with his enterprise, and that I would fain be
It was a great success for Anne de Beaujeu. She had beaten her united foes; and the most formidable of them all, the Duke of Orleans, was her prisoner. Two incidents that supervened, one a little before and the other a little after the battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier, occurred to both embarrass the position and at the same time call forth all the energy of Anne. Her brother-in-law, Duke John of Bourbon, the head of his house, died on the 1st of April, 1488, leaving to his younger brother, Peter, his title and domains. Having thus become Duchess of Bourbon, and being well content with this elevation in rank and fortune, Madame the Great (as Anne de Beaujeu was popularly called) was somewhat less eagerly occupied with the business of the realm, was less constant at the king’s council, and went occasionally with her husband to stay a while in their own territories. Charles VIII., moreover, having nearly arrived at man’s estate, made more frequent manifestations of his own personal will; and Anne, clear-sighted and discreet though ambitious, was little by little changing her dominion into influence. But some weeks after the battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier, on the 7th or 9th of September, 1488, the death of Francis II., Duke of Brittany, rendered the active intervention of the Duchess of Bourbon natural and necessary; for
Whether it had or had not been foreseen and meditated upon, so soon as the reunion of Brittany with France by the marriage of the young duchess, Anne, with King Charles VIII. appeared on the horizon as a possible, and, peradventure, probable fact, it became the common desire, aim, and labor of all the French politicians who up to that time had been opposed, persecuted, and proscribed. Since the battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier, Duke Louis of Orleans had been a prisoner in the Tower of Bourges, and so strictly guarded that he was confined at night in an iron cage like Cardinal Balue’s for fear he should escape. In vain had his wife, Joan of France, an unhappy and virtuous princess, ugly and deformed, who had never been able to gain her husband’s affections, implored her all-powerful sister, Anne of Bourbon, to set him at liberty: “As I am incessantly thinking,” she wrote
Pacific as it was, this conquest cost some pains, and gave some trouble. In person Charles VIII. was far from charming; he was short and badly built; he had an enormous head; great, blank-looking eyes; an aquiline nose, bigger and thicker than was becoming; thick lips, too, and everlastingly open; nervous twitchings, disagreeable to see; and slow speech. “In my judgment,” adds the ambassador from Venice, Zachary Contarini, who had come to Paris in May, 1492, “I should hold that, body and mind, he is not worth much; however, they all sing his praises in Paris as a right lusty gallant at playing of tennis, and at hunting, and at jousting, exercises to the which, in season and out of season, he doth devote a great deal of time.” The same ambassador says of Anne of Brittany, who had then been for four months Queen of France, “The queen is short also, thin, lame of one foot, and perceptibly so, though she does what she can for herself by means of boots with high heels, a brunette and very pretty in the face, and, for her age, very knowing; in such sort that what she has once taken into her head she will obtain somehow or other, whether it be smiles or tears that be needed for it.” —[La Diplomatic Venitienne au Seizieme Siecle, by M. Armand Baschet, p. 325 (Paris, 1862).] Knowing as she was, Anne was at the same time proud and headstrong; she had a cultivated mind; she was fond of the arts, of poetry, and of ancient literature; she knew Latin, and even a little Greek; and having been united, though by proxy and at a distance, to a prince whom she had never seen, but whom she knew to be tall, well made, and a friend to the sciences, she revolted at the idea of giving him up for a prince without beauty, and to such an extent without education, that, it is said, Charles VIII., when he ascended the throne, was unable to read. When he was spoken of to the young princess, “I am engaged in the bonds of matrimony to Archduke Maximilian,” said Anne: “and the King of France, on his side, is affianced to the Princess Marguerite of Austria; we are not free, either of us.” She went so far as to say that she would set out and go and join Maximilian. Her advisers, who had nearly all of them become advocates of the French
[Illustration: Meeting between Charles VIII, and Anne of Brittany——282]
Charles VIII. was pleased with and proud of himself. He had achieved a brilliant and a difficult marriage. In Europe, and within his own household, he had made a display of power and independence. In order to espouse Anne of Brittany, he had sent back Marguerite of Austria to her father. He had gone in person and withdrawn from prison his cousin Louis of Orleans, whom his sister, Anne de Beaujeu, had put there; and so far from having got embroiled with her, he saw all the royal family reconciled around him. This was no little success for a young prince of twenty-one. He thereupon devoted himself with ardor and confidence to his desire of winning back the kingdom of Naples, which Alphonso I., King of Arragon, had wrested from the house of France, and of thereby re-opening for himself in the East, and against Islamry, that career of Christian glory which had made a saint of his ancestor, Louis IX. Mediocre men are not safe from the great dreams which have more than once seduced and ruined the greatest men. The very mediocre son of Louis XI., on renouncing his father’s prudent and by no means chivalrous policy, had no chance of becoming a great warrior and a saint; but not the less did he take the initiative as to those wars in Italy which were to be so costly to his successors and to France. By two treaties concluded in 1493 [one at Barcelona on the 19th of January and the other at Senlis on the 23d of May], he gave up Roussillon and Cerdagne to Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Arragon, and Franche-Comte, Artois, and Charolais to the house of Austria, and, after having at such a lamentable price purchased freedom of movement, he went and took up his quarters at Lyons to prepare for his Neapolitan venture.
In his council he found loyal and able opponents. “On the undertaking of this trip,” says Philip de Commynes, one of those present, “there was many a discussion, for it seemed to all folks of wisdom and experience very dangerous . . . all things necessary for so great a purpose were wanting; the king was very young, a poor creature, wilful and with but a small attendance of wise folk and good leaders; no ready money; neither tents, nor pavilions for wintering in Lombardy. One thing good they had: a lusty company full of young men of family, but little under control.” The chiefest warrior of France at this time, Philip de Crevecoeur, Marshal d’Esquerdes, threw into the opposition the weight of his age and of his recognized ability. “The greatness and tranquillity of the realm,” said he, “depend on possession of the Low Countries; that is the direction in which we must use all our exertions rather than against a state, the possession of which, so far from being advantageous to us, could not but weaken us.” “Unhappily,” says the latest, learned historian of Charles VIII. [Histoire de Charles VIII., by the late M. de Cherrier, t. i. p. 393], “the veteran marshal died on the 22d of April, 1494, in a small town some few leagues from Lyons, and thenceforth all hope of checking the current became visionary. . . . On the 8th of September, 1494, Charles VIII. started from Grenoble, crossed Mount Genevre, and went and slept at Oulx, which was territory of Piedmont. In the evening a peasant who was accused of being a master of Vaudery [i.e. one of the Vaudois, a small population of reformers in the Alps, between Piedmont and Dauphiny] was brought before him; the king gave him audience, and then handed him over to the provost, who had him hanged on a tree.” By such an act of severity, perpetrated in a foreign country and on the person of one who was not his own subject, did Charles VIII. distinguish his first entry into Italy.
[Illustration: Charles VIII. crossing the Alps——285]
It were out of place to follow out here in all its details a war which belongs to the history of Italy far more than to that of France; it will suffice to point out with precision the positions of the principal Italian states at this period, and the different shares of influence they exercised on the fate of the French expedition.
Six principal states, Piedmont, the kingdom of the Dukes of Savoy; the duchy of Milan; the republic of Venice; the republic of Florence; Rome and the pope; and the kingdom of Naples, co-existed in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. In August, 1494, when Charles VIII. started from Lyons on his Italian expedition, Piedmout was governed by Blanche of Montferrat, widow of Charles the ‘Warrior,’ Duke of Savoy, in the name of her son Charles John Amadeo, a child only six years old. In the duchy of Milan the power was in the hands of Ludovic Sforza, called the Moor, who, being ambitious, faithless,
Rome had for pope Alexander VI. (Poderigo Borgia), a prince who was covetous, licentious, and brazen-facedly fickle and disloyal in his policy, and who would be regarded as one of the most utterly demoralized men of the fifteenth century, only that he had for son a Caesar Borgia. Finally, at Naples, in 1494, three months before the day on which Charles VIII, entered Italy, King Alphonso II. ascended the throne. “No man,” says Commynes, “was ever more cruel than he, or more wicked, or more vicious and tainted, or more gluttonous; less dangerous, however, than his father, King Ferdinand, the which did take in and betray folks whilst giving them good cheer (kindly welcome), as hath been told to me by his relatives and friends, and who did never have any pity or compassion for his poor people.” Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and ephemeral conquest.
The reception he met with at the outset of his enterprise could not but confirm him in his illusory hopes. Whilst he was at Lyons, engaged in preparations for his departure, Duke Charles of Savoy, whose territories were the first he would have to cross, came to see him on a personal matter. “Cousin, my good friend,” said the king to him, “I am delighted to see you at Lyons, for, if you had delayed your coming, I had intended to go myself to see you, with a very numerous company, in your own dominions, where it is likely such a visit could not but have caused you loss.” “My lord,” answered the duke, “my only regret at your arrival in my dominions would be, that I should be unable to give you such welcome there as is due to so great a prince. . . . However, whether here or elsewhere, I shall be always ready to beg that you will dispose of me and all that pertains to me just as of all that might belong to your own subjects.” Duke Charles of Savoy had scarcely exaggerated; he was no longer living in September, 1494, when Charles VIII, demanded of his widow Blanche, regent in the name of her infant son, a free passage for the French army over her territory, and she not only granted his
From this day the King of France might reckon him amongst his enemies. With the republic of Florence was henceforth to be Charles’s business. Its head, Peter de’ Medici, went to the camp at Sarzana, and Philip de Commynes started on an embassy to go and negotiate with the doge and senate of Venice, which was the chiefest of the Italian powers and the territory of which lay far out of the line of march of the King of France and his army. In the presence of the King of France and in the midst of his troops Peter de’ Medici grew embarrassed and confused. He had gone to meet the king without the knowledge of the Florentines and was already alarmed at the gravity of his situation; and he offered more concession and submission than was demanded of him. “Those who treated with him,” says Commynes, “told me, turning him to scorn and ridicule, that they were dumbfounded at his so readily granting so great a matter and what they were not prepared for.” Feelings were raised to the highest pitch at Florence when his weaknesses were known. There was a numerous and powerful party, consisting of the republicans and the envious, hostile to the Medicis; and they eagerly seized the opportunity of attacking them. A deputation, comprising the most considerable men of the city, was sent, on the 5th of November, to the King of France with a commission to obtain from him more favorable conditions. The Dominican, Jerome Savonarola, at that time the popular oracle of Florence, was one of them. With a pious hauteur that was natural and habitual to him, he adopted the same tone towards Charles as towards the people of Florence. “Hearken thou to my words,” said he, “and grave them upon thy heart. I warn thee, in God’s name, that thou must show thyself merciful and forbearing to the people of Florence, if thou wouldest that He should aid thee in thy enterprise.” Charles, who scarcely knew Savonarola by name, answered simply that he did not wish to do the Florentines any harm, but that he demanded a free passage, and all that had been promised him: “I wish to be received at Florence,” he added, “to sign there a definitive treaty which shall settle everything.” At these cold expressions the ambassadors withdrew in some
Having on the 7th of December, 1494, entered Acquapendente, and, on the 10th, Viterbo, he there received, on the following day, a message from Pope Alexander VI., who in his own name and that of Alphonso II., King of Naples, made him an offer of a million ducats to defray the expenses of the war, and a hundred thousand livres annually, on condition that he would abandon his enterprise against the kingdom of Naples. “I have no mind to make terms with the Arragonese usurper,” answered Charles: “I will treat directly with the pope when I am in Rome, which I reckon upon entering about Christmas. I have already made known to him my intentions; I will forthwith send him ambassadors commissioned to repeat them to him.” And he did send to him the most valiant of his warriors, Louis de la Tremoille, “the which was there,” says the contemporary chronicler, John Bouchet, “with certain speakers, who, after having pompously reminded the pope of the whole history of the French kingship in its relations with the papacy, ended up in the following strain: ’prayeth you, then, our sovereign lord the king not to give him occasion to be, to his great sorrow, the first of his lineage who ever had war and discord with the Roman Church, whereof he and the Christian Kings of France, his predecessors, have been protectors and augmenters.’ More briefly and with an affectation of sorrowful graciousness, the pope made answer to the ambassador: ’If it please King Charles, my eldest spiritual son, to enter into my city without arms in all humility, he will be most welcome; but much would it annoy me if the army of thy king should enter, because that, under shadow of it, which is said to be great and riotous, the factions and bands of Rome might rise up and cause uproar and scandal, wherefrom great discomforts might happen to the citizens.’” For three weeks the king and the pope offered the spectacle, only too common in history, of the hypocrisy of might pitted against the hypocrisy of religion. At last the pope saw the necessity of yielding; he sent for Prince Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples, and told him that he must no longer remain at Rome with the Neapolitan troops, for that the King of France was absolute about entering; and he at the same time handed him a safe-conduct under Charles’s own hand. Ferdinand refused the safe-conduct, and threw himself upon his knees before the pope, asking him for his blessing: “Rise, my dear son,” said the pope; “go, and have good hope; God will come to our aid.” The Neapolitans departed, and on the 1st of January, 1495, Charles VIII. entered Rome with his army, “saying gentlewise,” according to Brantome, “that a while agone he had made a vow to my lord St. Peter of Rome, and that of necessity he must accomplish it at the peril of his life. Behold him, then, entered into Rome,” continues Brantome, “in bravery and triumph, himself armed at all points, with lance on thigh, as if he would fain pick forward to the charge. Marching in this fine and furious
[Illustration: Charles VIII——293]
Ferdinand II., the new King of Naples, who had no lack of energy or courage, was looking everywhere, at home and abroad, for forces and allies to oppose the imminent invasion. To the Duke of Milan he wrote, “Remember that we two are of the same blood. It is much to be desired that a league should at once be formed between the pope, the kings of the Romans and Spain, you, and Venice. If these powers are united, Italy would have nought to fear from any. Give me your support; I have the greatest need of it. If you back me, I shall owe to you the preservation of my throne, and I will honor you as my father.” He ordered the Neapolitan envoy at Constantinople to remind Sultan Bajazet of the re-enforcements he had promised his father, King Alphonso: “Time presses; the King of France is advancing in person on Naples; be instant in solicitation; be importunate if necessary, so that the Turkish army cross the sea without delay. Be present yourself at the embarkation of the troops. Be active; run; fly.” He himself ran through all his kingdom, striving to resuscitate some little spark of affection and hope. He had no success anywhere; the memory of the king his father was hateful; he was himself young and without influence; his ardor caused fear instead of sympathy. Charles kept advancing along the kingdom through the midst of people that remained impassive when they did not give him a warm reception. The garrison of Monte San Giovanni, the strongest place on the frontier, determined to resist. The place was carried by assault in a few hours, and “the assailants,” says a French chronicler, “without pity or compassion, made short work of all those plunderers and malefactors, whose bodies they hurled down from the walls. The carnage lasted eight whole hours.” A few days afterwards Charles with his guard arrived in front of San Germano: “The clergy awaited him at the gate with cross and banner; men of note carried a dais under the which he took his place; behind him followed men, women, and children, chanting this versicle from the Psalms: ’Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini! Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!’” The town of Capua was supposed to be very much attached to the house of Arragon; John James Trivulzio, a valiant Milanese captain, who had found asylum and fortune in Naples, had the command there; and thither King Ferdinand hurried. “I am going to Naples for troops,” said he to the inhabitants; “wait for me confidently; and if by to-morrow evening you do not see me return, make your own terms with King Charles; you have my full authority.” On arriving at Naples, he said to the Neapolitans, “Hold out for a fortnight; I will not expose the capital of my kingdom to be stormed by barbarians; if, within a fort-night hence, I have not prevented the enemy from crossing the Volturno, you may ask him for terms of capitulation;” and back he went to Capua. When he was within sight of the ramparts he heard
At the news hereof the disquietude and vexation of the principal Italian powers were displayed at Venice as well as at Milan and at Rome. The Venetian senate, as prudent as it was vigilant, had hitherto maintained a demeanor of expectancy and almost of good will towards France; they hoped that Charles VIII. would be stopped or would stop of himself in his mad enterprise, without their being obliged to interfere. The doge, Augustin Barbarigo, lived on very good terms with Commynes, who was as desirous as he was that the king should recover his senses. Commynes was destined to learn how difficult and sorry a thing it is to have to promote a policy of which you disapprove. When he perceived that a league was near to being formed in Italy against the King of France, he at once informed his master of it, and attempted to dissuade the Venetians from it. They denied that they had any such design, and showed a disposition to form, in concert with the Kings of France, Spain, and the Romans, and with the whole of Italy, a league against the Turks, provided that Charles VIII. would consent to leave the King of Naples in possession of his kingdom, at the same time keeping for himself three places therein, and accepting a sum in ready money which Venice would advance. “Would to God,” says Commynes, “that the king had been pleased to listen then! Of all did I give him notice, and I got bare answer. . . . When the Venetians heard that the king was in Naples, and that the strong fort, which they had great hopes would hold out, was surrendered, they sent for me one morning, and I found them in great number, about fifty or sixty, in the apartment of the prince (the doge) who was ill. Some were sitting upon a staircase leading to the benches, and had their heads resting upon their hands, others otherwise, all showing that they had great sadness at heart. And I trow that, when news came to Rome of the battle lost at Cannae against Hannibal, the senators who had remained there were not more dumbfounded and dismayed than these were; for not a single one made sign of seeing me, or spoke to me one word, save the duke (the doge), who asked me if the king would keep to that of which he had constantly sent them word, and which I had said to them. I assured them stoutly that he would, and I opened up ways for to remain at sound peace, hoping to remove their suspicions, and then I did get me gone.”
The league was concluded on the 31st of March, 1495, between Pope Alexander VI., Emperor Maximilian I., as King of the Romans, the King of Spain, the Venetians, and the Duke of Milan: “To three ends,” says Commynes, “for to defend Christendom against the Turks, for the defence of Italy, and for the preservation of their Estates. There was nothing in it against the king, they told me, but it was to secure themselves from him; they did not like his so deluding the world with words by saying that all he wanted was the kingdom, and then to march against the Turk, and all the while he was showing quite the contrary. . . . I remained in the city about a month after that, being as well treated as before; and then I went my way, having been summoned by the king, and being conducted in perfect security, at their expense, to Ferrara, whence I went to Florence for to await the king.”
When Ferdinand II. took refuge in the island of Ischia, and Castel Nuovo and Castel dell’ Uovo had surrendered at Naples, Charles VIII., considering himself in possession of the kingdom, announced his intention, and, there is reason to believe, actually harbored the design, of returning to France, without asserting any further his pretensions as a conqueror. On the 20th of March, before the Italian league had been definitively concluded, Briconnet, Cardinal of St. Malo, who had attended the king throughout his expedition, wrote to the queen, Anne of Brittany, “His Majesty is using diligence as best he can to return over yonder, and has expressly charged me, for my part, to hasten his affairs. I hope he will be able to start hence about the 8th of April. He will leave over here, as lieutenant, my lord de Montpensier, with a thousand or twelve hundred lances, partly French and partly of this country, fifteen hundred Swiss, and a thousand French crossbow-men.” Charles himself wrote, on the 28th of March, to his brother-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon, that he would mount his horse immediately after Quasimodo [the first Sunday after Easter], to return to France without halting, or staying in any place. But Charles, whilst so speaking and projecting, was forgetful of his giddy indolence, his frivolous tastes, and his passion for theatrical display and licentious pleasure. The climate, the country, the customs of Naples charmed him. “You would never believe,” he wrote to the Duke of Bourbon, “what beautiful gardens I have in this city; on my faith, they seem to me to lack only Adam and Eve to make of them an earthly paradise, so beautiful are they, and full of nice and curious things, as I hope to tell you soon. To add to that, I have found in this country the best of painters; and I will send you some of them to make the most beautiful ceilings possible. The ceilings at Beauce, Lyons, and other places in France do not approach those of this place in beauty and richness. . . . Wherefore I shall provide myself with them, and bring them with me for to have some done at Arnboise.” Politics were forgotten in the presence of these royal fancies. Charles VIII. remained nearly two months at Naples after the Italian league had been concluded, and whilst it was making its preparations against him was solely concerned about enjoying, in his beautiful but precarious kingdom, “all sorts of mundane pleasaunces,” as his councillor, the Cardinal of St. Malo, says, and giving entertainments to his new subjects, as much disposed as himself to forget everything in amusement. On the 12th of May, 1495, all the population of Naples and of the neighboring country was afoot early to see their new king make his entry in state as King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, with his Neapolitan court and his French army. Charles was on horseback beneath a rich dais borne by great Neapolitan lords; he had a close crown on his head, the sceptre in his right hand, and a golden globe in his left; in front
When all these solemnities had been accomplished to the great satisfaction of the populace, bonfires were lighted up for three days; the city was illuminated; and only a week afterwards, on the 20th of May, 1495, Charles VIII. started from Naples to return to France, with an army, at the most, from twelve to fifteen thousand strong, leaving for guardian of his new kingdom his cousin, Gilbert of Bourbon, Count de Montpensier, a brave but indolent knight (who never rose, it was said, until noon), with eight or ten thousand men, scattered for the most part throughout the provinces.
During the months of April and May, thus wasted by Charles VIII., the Italian league, and especially the Venetians and the Duke of Milan, Ludovic the Moor, had vigorously pushed forward their preparations for war, and had already collected an army more numerous than that with which the King of France, in order to return home, would have to traverse the whole of Italy. He took more than six weeks to traverse it, passing three days at Rome, four at Siena, the same number at Pisa, and three at Lucca, though he had declared that he would not halt anywhere. He evaded entering Florence, where he had made promises which he could neither retract nor fulfil. The Dominican Savonarola, “who had always preached greatly in the king’s favor,” says Commynes, “and by his words had kept the Florentines from turning against us,” came to see him on his way at Poggibonsi. “I asked him,” said Commynes, “whether the king would be able to cross without danger to his person, seeing the great muster that was being made by the Venetians. He answered me that the king would have trouble on the road, but that the honor would remain his, though he had but a hundred men at his back; but, seeing that he had not done well for the reformation of the Church, as he ought, and had suffered his men to plunder and rob the people, God had given sentence against him, and in short he would have a touch of the scourge.”
Several contemporary historians affirm that if the Italian army, formed by the Venetians and the Duke of Milan, had opposed the march of the French army, they might have put it in great peril; but nothing of the kind was attempted. It was at the passage of the Appennines, so as to cross them and descend into the duchy of Parma, that Charles VIII. had for the first time to overcome resistance, not from men, but from nature. He had in his train a numerous and powerful artillery, from which he promised himself a great deal when the day of battle came; and he had to get it up and down by steep paths, “Here never,” says the chronicle of La Tremoille, “had car or carriage gone. . . .” The king, knowing that the lord of La Tremoille, such was his boldness and his strong will, thought nothing impossible, gave to him this duty, which he willingly undertook; and, to the end that the footmen, Swiss, German, and others, might labor thereat without fearing the heat, he addressed them as follows: ’The proper nature of us Gauls is strength, boldness, and ferocity. We triumphed at our coming; better would it be for us to die, than to lose by cowardice the delight of such praise; we are all in the flower of our age and the vigor of our years; let each lend a hand to the work of dragging the gun-carriages and carrying the cannon-balls; ten crowns to the first man that reaches the top of the mountain before me!’ Throwing off his armor, La Tremoille, in hose and shirt, himself lent a hand to the work; by dint of pulling and pushing, the artillery was got to the brow of the mountain; it was then harder still to get it down the other side, along a very narrow and rugged incline; and five whole days were spent on this rough work, which luckily the generals of the enemy did not attempt to molest. La Tremoille, “black as a Moor,” says the chronicle, “by reason of the murderous heat he had endured, made his report to the king, who said, ’By the light of this day, cousin, you have done more than ever could Annibal of Carthage or Caesar have done, to the peril of your person, whereof you have not been sparing to serve me, me and mine. I vow to God, that if I may only see you back in France, the recompense I hope to make you shall be so great, that others shall conceive fresh desire to serve me.’”
Charles VIII. was wise to treat his brave men well; for the day was at hand when he would need them and all their bravery. It was in the duchy of Parma, near the town of Fornovo, on the right bank of the Taro, an affluent of the Po, that the French and Italian armies met, on the 5th of July, 1495. The French army was nine or ten thousand strong, with five or six thousand camp followers, servants or drivers; the Italian army numbered at least thirty thousand men, well supplied and well rested, whereas the French were fatigued with their long march, and very badly off for supplies. During the night between the 5th and 6th of July, a violent storm burst over the
[Illustration: Battle of Fornovo——303]
It was very hotly contested, but did not last long, with alternations of success and reverse on both sides. The two principal commanders in the king’s army, Louis de la Tremoille and John James Trivulzio, sustained without recoiling the shock of troops far more numerous than their own. “At the throat! at the throat!!” shouted La Tremoille, after the first onset, and his three hundred men-at-arms burst upon the enemy and broke their line. In the midst of the melley, the French baggage was attacked by the Stradiots, a sort of light infantry composed of Greeks recruited and paid by the Venetians. “Let them be,” said Trivulzio to his men; “their zeal for plunder will make them forget all, and we shall give the better account of them.” At one moment, the king had advanced before the main body of his guard, without looking to see if they were close behind him, and was not more than a hundred paces from the Marquis of Mantua, who, seeing him scantily attended, bore down at the head of his cavalry. “Not possible is it,” says Commynes, “to do more doughtily than was done on both sides.” The king, being very hard pressed, defended himself fiercely against those who would have taken him; the bastard Matthew of Bourbon, his brother-in-arms and one of the bravest knights in the army, had thrown himself twenty paces in front of him to cover him, and had just been taken prisoner by the Marquis of Mantua in person, when a mass of the royal troops came to their aid, and released them from all peril. Here it was that Peter du Terrail, the Chevalier de Bayard, who was barely twenty years of age, and destined to so glorious a renown, made his first essay in arms; he had two horses killed under him, and took a standard, which he presented to the king, who after the battle made him a present of five hundred crowns.
Charles VIII. remained master of the battle-field. “There were still to be seen,” says Commynes, “outside their camp, a great number of men-at-arms, whose lances and heads only were visible, and likewise foot-soldiers. The king put it to the council whether he ought to give chase to them or not; some were for marching against them; but the French were not of this opinion; they said that enough had been done, that it was late, and that it was time to get lodged. Night was coming on; the host which had been in front of us withdrew into their camp, and we went to get lodged a quarter of a league from where the battle had been. The king put up at a poorly-built farm-house, but he found there an infinite quantity of corn in sheaves, whereby the whole army profited. Some other bits of houses there were hard by, which did for a few; and every one lodged as he could, without making any cantonment, I know well enough that I lay in a vineyard, at full length on the bare ground, without anything else and without cloak, for the king had borrowed mine in the morning. Whoever had the wherewith made a meal, but few had, save a hunch of bread from
Both armies might and did claim the victory, for they had, each of them, partly succeeded in their design. The Italians wished to unmistakably drive out of Italy Charles VIII., who was withdrawing voluntarily; but to make it an unmistakable retreat, he ought to have been defeated, his army beaten, and himself perhaps a prisoner. With that view they attempted to bar his passage and beat him on Italian ground: in that they failed; Charles, remaining master of the battle-field, went on his way in freedom, and covered with glory, he and his army. He certainly left Italy, but he left it with the feeling of superiority in arms, and with the intention of returning thither better informed and better supplied. The Italian allies were triumphant, but without any ground of security or any lustre; the expedition of Charles VIII. was plainly only the beginning of the foreigner’s ambitious projects, invasions and wars against their own beautiful land. The King of France and his men of war had not succeeded in conquering it, but they had been charmed with such an abode; they had displayed in their campaign knightly qualities more brilliant and more masterful than the studied duplicity and elegant effeminacy of the Italians of the fifteenth century, and, after the battle of Fornovo, they returned to France justly proud and foolishly confident, notwithstanding the incompleteness of their success.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF AMBOISE——308]
Charles VIII. reigned for nearly three years longer after his return to his kingdom; and for the first two of them he passed his time in indolently dreaming of his plans for a fresh invasion of Italy, and in frivolous abandonment to his pleasures and the entertainments at his court, which he moved about from Lyons to Moulins, to Paris, to Tours, and to Amboise. The news which came to him from Italy was worse and worse every day. The Count de Montpensier, whom he had left at Naples, could not hold his own there, and died a prisoner there on the 11th of November, 1496, after
Probably no king was ever thus praised for his goodness, and his goodness alone, by a man whom he had so maltreated, and who, as judicious and independent as he was just, said of this same king, “He was not better off for sense than for money, and he thought of nothing but pastime and his pleasures.”
On ascending the throne Louis XII. reduced the public taxes and confirmed in their posts his predecessor’s chief advisers, using to Louis de la Tremoille, who had been one of his most energetic foes, that celebrated expression, “The King of France avenges not the wrongs of the Duke of Orleans.” At the same time, on the day of his coronation at Rheims [May 27, 1492], he assumed, besides his title of King of France, the titles of King of Naples and of Jerusalem and Duke of Milan. This was as much as to say that he would pursue a pacific and conservative policy at home and a warlike and adventurous policy abroad. And, indeed, his government did present these two phases, so different and inharmonious. By his policy at home Louis XII. deserved and obtained the name of Father of the People; by his enterprises and wars abroad he involved France still more deeply than Charles VIII. had in that mad course of distant, reckless, and incoherent conquests for which his successor, Francis I., was destined to pay by capture at Pavia and by the lamentable treaty of Madrid, in 1526, as the price of his release. Let us follow these two portions of Louis XII.’s reign, each separately, without mixing up one with the other by reason of identity of dates. We shall thus get at a better understanding and better appreciation of their character and their results.
Outside of France, Milaness [the Milanese district] was Louis XII.’s first thought, at his accession, and the first object of his desire. He looked upon it as his patrimony. His grandmother, Valentine Visconti, widow of that Duke of Orleans who had been assassinated at Paris in 1407 by order of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, had been the last to inherit the duchy of Milan, which the Sforzas, in 1450, had seized. When Charles VIII. invaded Italy in 1494, “Now is the time,” said Louis, “to enforce the rights of Valentine Visconti, my grandmother, to Milaness.” And he, in fact, asserted them openly, and proclaimed his intention of vindicating them so soon as he found the moment propitious. When he became king, his chance of success was great. The Duke of Milan, Ludovic, the Moor, had by his sagacity and fertile mind, by his taste for arts and sciences and the intelligent patronage he bestowed upon them, by his ability in speaking, and by his facile character, obtained in Italy a position far beyond his real power. Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most eminent amongst the noble geniuses of the age, lived on intimate terms with him; but Ludovic was, nevertheless, a turbulent rascal and a greedy tyrant, of whom those who did not profit by his vices or the enjoyments of his court were desirous of being relieved. He had, moreover, embroiled himself with his neighbors the Venetians, who were watching for an opportunity of aggrandizing themselves at his expense. As early as the 20th of April, 1498, a fortnight after his accession, Louis XII. addressed to the Venetians a letter “most gracious,” says the contemporary chronicler Marino Sanuto, “and testifying great good-will;” and the special courier who brought it declared that the king had written to nobody in Italy except the pope, the Venetians, and the Florentines. The Venetians did not care to neglect such an opening; and they at once sent three ambassadors to Louis XII. Louis heard the news thereof with marked satisfaction. “I have never seen Zorzi,” said he, “but I know him well; as for Loredano, I like him much; he has been at this court before, some time ago.” He gave them a reception on the 12th of August, at Etampes, “not in a palace,” says one of the senate’s private correspondents, “but at the Fountain inn. You will tell me that so great a king ought not to put up at an inn; but I shall answer you that in this district of Etampes the best houses are as yet the inns. There is certainly a royal castle, in the which lives the queen, the wife of the deceased king; nevertheless his Majesty was pleased to give audience in this hostelry, all covered expressly with cloth of Alexandrine velvet, with lilies of gold at the spot where the king was placed. As soon as the speech was ended, his Majesty rose up and gave quite a brotherly welcome to the brilliant ambassadors. The king has a very good countenance, a smiling countenance; he is forty years of age, and appears very active in make. To-day, Monday, August 13, the ambassadors were received at a private audience.”
[Illustration: Louis XII——310]
A treaty concluded on the 9th of February, 1499, and published as signed at Blois no earlier than the 15th of April following, was the result of this negotiation. It provided for an alliance between the King of France and the Venetian government, for the purpose of making war in common upon the Duke of Milan, Ludovic Sforza, on and against every one, save the lord pope of Rome, and for the purpose of insuring to the Most Christian king restoration to the possession of the said duchy of Milan as his rightful and olden patrimony. And on account of the charges and expenses which would be incurred by the Venetian government whilst rendering assistance to the Most Christian king in the aforesaid war, the Most Christian king bound himself to approve and consent that the city of Cremona and certain forts or territories adjacent, specially indicated, should belong in freehold and perpetuity to the Venetian government. The treaty, at the same time, regulated the number of troops and the military details of the war on behalf of the two contracting powers, and it provided for divers political incidents which might be entailed, and to which the alliance thus concluded should or should not be applicable according to the special stipulations which were drawn up with a view to those very incidents.
In the month of August, 1499, the French army, with a strength of from twenty to five and twenty thousand men, of whom five thousand were Swiss, invaded Milaness. Duke Ludovic Sforza opposed to it a force pretty nearly equal in number, but far less full of confidence and of far less valor. In less than three weeks the duchy was conquered; in only two cases was any assault necessary; all the other places were given up by traitors or surrendered without a show of resistance. The Venetians had the same success on the eastern frontier of the duchy. Milan and Cremona alone remained to be occupied. Ludovic Sforza “appeared before his troops and his people like the very spirit of lethargy,” says a contemporary unpublished chronicle, “with his head bent down to the earth, and for a long while he remained thus pensive and without a single word to say. Howbeit he was not so discomfited but that on that very same day he could get his luggage packed, his transport-train under orders, his horses shod, his ducats, with which he had more than thirty mules laden, put by, and, in short, everything in readiness to decamp next morning as early as possible.” Just as he left Milan, he said to the Venetian ambassadors, “You have brought the King of France to dinner with me; I warn you that he will come to supper with you.”
“Unless necessity constrain him thereto,” says Machiavelli [treatise Du Prince, ch. xxi.], “a prince ought never to form alliance with one stronger than himself in order to attack others, for, the most powerful being victor, thou remainest, thyself, at his discretion, and princes ought to avoid, as much as ever they can, being at another’s discretion. The Venetians allied themselves with France against the Duke of Milan; and yet they might have avoided this alliance, which entailed their ruin.” For all his great and profound intellect, Machiavelli was wrong about this event and the actors in it. The Venetians did not deserve his censure. By allying themselves, in 1499, with Louis XII. against the Duke of Milan, they did not fall into Louis’s hands, for, between 1499 and 1515, and many times over, they sided alternately with and against him, always preserving their independence and displaying it as suited them at the moment. And these vicissitudes in their policy did not bring about their ruin, for at the death of Louis XII. their power and importance in Southern Europe had not declined. It was Louis XII. who deserved Machiavelli’s strictures for having engaged, by means of diplomatic alliances of the most contradictory kind, at one time with the Venetians’ support, and at another against them, in a policy of distant and incoherent conquests, without any connection with the national interests of France, and, in the long run, without any success.
[Illustration: Bayard——315]
Louis was at Lyons when he heard of his army’s victory in Milaness and of Ludovic Sforza’s flight. He was eager to go and take possession of his conquest, and, on the 6th of October, 1499, he made his triumphal entry into Milan amidst cries of “Hurrah! for France.” He reduced the heavy imposts established by the Sforzas, revoked the vexatious game-laws, instituted at Milan a court of justice analogous to the French parliaments, loaded with favors the scholars and artists who were the honor of Lombardy, and recrossed the Alps at the end of some weeks, leaving as governor of Milaness John James Trivulzio, the valiant Condottiere, who, four years before, had quitted the service of Ferdinand II., King of Naples, for that of Charles VIII. Unfortunately Trivulzio was himself a Milanese and of the faction of the Guelphs. He had the passions of a partisan and the habits of a man of war; and he soon became as tyrannical and as much detested in Milaness as Ludovic the Moor had but lately been. A plot was formed in favor of the fallen tyrant, who was in Germany expecting it, and was recruiting, during expectancy, amongst the Germans and Swiss in order to take advantage of it. On the 25th of January, 1500, the insurrection broke out; and two months later Ludovic Sforza had once more become master of Milaness, where the French possessed nothing but the castle of Milan. In one of the fights brought about by this sudden revolution the young Chevalier Bayard,
For Ludovic the Moor’s chance to be bad it was not necessary that the men-at-arms of France should all be like Chevalier Bayard. Louis XII., so soon as he heard of the Milanese insurrection, sent into Italy Louis de la Tremoille, the best of his captains, and the Cardinal d’Amboise, his privy councillor and his friend, the former to command the royal troops, French and Swiss, and the latter “for to treat about the reconciliation of the rebel towns, and to deal with everything as if it were the king in his own person.” The campaign did not last long. The Swiss who had been recruited by Ludovic and those who were in Louis XII.’s service had no mind to fight one another; and the former capitulated, surrendered the strong place of Novara, and promised to evacuate the country on condition of a safe-conduct for themselves and their booty. Ludovic, in extreme anxiety for his own safety, was on the point of giving himself up to the French; but, whether by his own free will or by the advice of the Swiss who were but lately in his pay, and who were now withdrawing; he concealed himself amongst them, putting on a disguise, “with his hair turned up under a coif, a collaret round his neck, a doublet of crimson satin, scarlet hose, and a halberd in his fist;” but, whether it were that he was betrayed or that he was recognized, he, on the 10th of April, 1500, fell into the hands of the French, and was conducted
Whilst matters were thus going on in the north of Italy, Louis XII. was preparing for his second great Italian venture, the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, in which his predecessor Charles VIII. had failed. He thought to render the enterprise easier by not bearing the whole burden by himself alone. On the 11th of November, 1500, he concluded at Grenada “with Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Castile and Arragon,” a treaty, by which the Kings of France and Spain divided, by anticipation, between them the kingdom of Naples, which they were making an engagement to conquer together. Terra di Lavoro and the province of the Abruzzi, with the cities of Naples and Gaeta, were to be the share of Louis XII., who would assume the title of King of Naples and of Jerusalem; Calabria and Puglia (Apulia), with the title of duchies, would belong to the King of Spain, to whom Louis XII., in order to obtain this chance of an accessary and precarious kingship, gave up entirely Roussillon and Cerdagne, that French frontier of the Pyrenees which Louis XI. had purchased, a golden bargain, from John II., King of Arragon. In this arrangement there was a blemish and a danger of which the superficial and reckless policy of Louis XII.
The outset of the campaign was attended with easy success. The French army, under the command of Stuart d’Aubigny, a valiant Scot, arrived on the 25th of June, 1501, before Rome, and there received a communication in the form of a bull of the pope which removed the crown of Naples from the head of Frederick III., and partitioned that fief of the Holy See between the Kings of France and Spain. Fortified with this authority, the army continued its march, and arrived before Capua on the 6th of July. Gonzalvo of Cordova was already upon Neapolitan territory with a Spanish army, which Ferdinand the Catholic had hastily sent thither at the request of Frederick III. himself, who had counted upon the assistance
On hearing of so prompt a success, Louis XII.’s satisfaction was great. He believed, and many others, no doubt, believed with him, that his conquest of Naples, of that portion at least which was assigned to him by his treaty with the King of Spain, was accomplished. The senate of Venice sent to him, in December, 1501, a solemn embassy to congratulate him. In giving the senate an account of his mission, one of the ambassadors, Dominic of Treviso, drew the following portrait of Louis XII.: “The king is in stature tall and thin, and temperate in eating, taking scarcely
But, before long, disputes arose between the two generals as to the meaning of certain clauses in the treaty of November 11, 1500, and as to the demarcation of the French and the Spanish territories. D’Aubigny fell ill; and Louis XII. sent to Naples, with the title of viceroy, Louis d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, a brave warrior, but a negotiator inclined to take umbrage and to give offence. The disputes soon took the form of hostilities. The French essayed to drive the Spaniards from the points they had occupied in the disputed territories; and at first they had the advantage. Gonzalvo of Cordova, from necessity or in prudence, concentrated his forces within Barletta, a little fortress with a little port on the Adriatic; but he there endured, from July, 1502, to April, 1503, a siege which did great honor to the patient firmness of the Spanish troops and the persistent vigor of their captain. Gonzalvo was getting ready to sally from Barletta and take the offensive against the French when he heard that a treaty signed at Lyons on the 5th of April, 1503, between the Kings of Spain and France, made a change in the position, reciprocally, of the two sovereigns, and must suspend the military operations of their generals within the kingdom of
Gaeta fell into the hands of the Spaniards on the 1st of January, 1504. The war was not ended, but the kingdom of Naples was lost to the King of France.
At the news of these reverses the grief and irritation of Louis XII. were extreme. Not only was he losing his Neapolitan conquests, but even his Milaness was also threatened. The ill-will of the Venetians became manifest. They had re-victualled by sea the fortress of Barletta, in which Gonzalvo of Cordova had shut himself up with his troops; “and when the king presented complaints of this succor afforded to his enemies, the senate replied that the matter had taken place without their cognizance, that Venice was a republic of traders, and that private persons might very likely have sold provisions to the Spaniards, with whom Venice was at peace, without there being any ground for concluding from it that she had failed in her engagements towards France. Some time afterwards, four French galleys, chased by a Spanish squadron of superior force, presented themselves before the port of Otranto, which was in the occupation of the Venetians, who pleaded their neutrality as a reason for refusing asylum to the French squadron, which the commander was obliged to set on fire that it might not fall into he enemy’s hands.” [Histoire de la Republique de L’enise, by Count Daru, t. iii. p. 245.] The determined prosecution of hostilities in the kingdom of Naples by Gonzalvo of Cordova, in spite of the treaty concluded at Lyons on the 5th of April, 1503, between the Kings of France and Spain, was so much the more offensive to Louis XII. in that this treaty was the consequence and the confirmation
The Venetian, Dominic of Treviso, was quite right; Louis XII. was “of unstable mind, saying yes and no.” On such characters discouragement tells rapidly. In order to put off the struggle which had succeeded so ill for him in the kingdom of Naples, Louis concluded, on the 31st of March, 1504, a truce for three years with the King of Spain; and on the 22d of September, in the same year, in order to satisfy his grudge on account of the Venetians’ demeanor towards him, he made an alliance against them with Emperor Maximilian I. and Pope Julius II., with the design, all three of them, of wresting certain provinces from them. With those political miscalculations was connected a more personal and more disinterested feeling. Louis repented of having in 1501 affianced his daughter Claude to Prince Charles of Austria, and of the enormous concessions he had made by two treaties, one of April 5, 1503, and the other of September 22, 1504, for the sake of this marriage. He had assigned as dowry to his daughter, first the duchy of Milan, then the kingdom of Naples, then Brittany, and then the duchy of Burgundy and the countship of Blois. The latter of these treaties contained even the following strange clause: “If, by default of the Most Christian king or of the queen his wife, or of the Princess Claude, the aforesaid marriage should not take place, the Most Christian king doth will and consent, from now, that the said duchies of Burgundy and Milan and the countship of Asti, do remain settled upon the said Prince Charles, Duke of Luxembourg, with all the rights therein possessed, or possibly to be possessed, by the Most Christian king.” [Corps Diplomatique du Droit des Gens, by J. Dumont, t. iv. part i. p. 57.] It was dismembering France, and at the same time settling on all her frontiers, to east, west, and south-west, as well as to north and south, a power which the approaching union of two crowns, the imperial and the Spanish, on the head of Prince Charles of Austria, rendered so preponderating and so formidable.
It was not only from considerations of external policy, and in order to conciliate to himself Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand, that Louis XII. had allowed himself to proceed to concessions so plainly contrary to the greatest interests of France: he had yielded also to domestic influences. The queen his wife, Anne of Brittany, detested Louise of Savoy, widow of Charles d’Orleans, Count of Angouleme, and mother of Francis d’Angouleme, heir presumptive to the throne, since Louis XII. had no son. Anne could not bear the idea that her daughter, Princess Claude, should marry the son of her personal enemy; and, being more Breton than French, say her contemporaries, she, in order to avoid this disagreeableness, had used with the king all her influence, which was great, in favor of the Austrian marriage, caring little, and, perhaps, even desiring, that Brittany should be again severed from France. Louis, in the midst of the reverses of his diplomacy, had thus to suffer from the hatreds of his wife, the observations of his advisers, and the reproaches of his conscience as a king. He fell so ill that he was supposed to be past recovery. “It were to do what would be incredible,” says his contemporary, John de St. Gelais, “to write or tell of the lamentations made throughout the whole realm of France, by reason of the sorrow felt by all for the illness of their good king. There were to be seen night and day, at Blois, at Amboise, at Tours, and everywhere else, men and women going all bare throughout the churches and to the holy places, in order to obtain from divine mercy grace of health and convalescence for one whom there was as great fear of losing as if he had been the father of each.” Louis was touched by this popular sympathy; and his wisest councillors, Cardinal d’Amboise the first of all, took advantage thereof to appeal to his conscience in respect of the engagements which “through weakness he had undertaken contrary to the interests of the realm and the coronation-promises.” Queen Anne herself, not without a struggle, however, at last gave up her opposition to this patriotic recoil; and on the 10th of May, 1505, Louis XII. put in his will a clause to the effect that his daughter, Princess Claude, should be married, so soon as she was old enough, to the heir to the throne, Francis, Count of Angouleme. Only it was agreed, in order to avoid diplomatic embarrassments, that this arrangement should be kept secret till further notice. [The will itself of Louis XII. has been inserted in the Recueil des Ordonnances des Bois des France, t. xxi. p. 323, dated 30th of May, 1505.]
When Louis had recovered, discreet measures were taken for arousing the feeling of the country as well as the king’s conscience as to this great question. In the course of the year 1505 there took place throughout the whole kingdom, amongst the nobility and in the principal towns, assemblies at which means were proposed for preventing this evil. Unpleasant consequences might have been apprehended from these meetings, in the case of a prince less beloved by his subjects than the king was; but nothing further was decided thereby than that a representation should with submission be made to him of the dangers likely to result from this treaty, that he should be entreated to prevent them by breaking it, and that a proposal should be made to him to assemble the estates to deliberate upon a subject so important. [Histoire de France, by Le Pere Daniel, t. viii. p. 427, edit. of 1755.] The states-general were accordingly convoked and met at Tours on the 10th of May, 1506; and on the 14th of May Louis XII. opened them in person at Plessis-les-Tours, seated in a great hall, in the royal seat, between Cardinal d’Amboise and Duke Francis of Valois, and surrounded by many archbishops and all the princes of the blood and other lords and barons of the said realm in great number, and he gave the order for admitting the deputies of the estates of the realm.
[Illustration: STATES GENERAL AT TOURS——329]
“Far from setting forth the grievances of the nation, as the spokesman of the estates had always done, Thomas Bricot, canon of Notre-Dame de Paris, delivered an address enumerating, in simple and touching terms, the benefits conferred by Louis XII., and describing to him the nation’s gratitude. To him they owed peace and the tranquillity of the realm, complete respect for private property, release from a quarter of the talliages, reform in the administration of justice, and the appointment of enlightened and incorruptible judges. For these causes, the speaker added, and for others which it would take too long to recount, he was destined to be known as Louis XII., father of the people.
“At these last words loud cheers rang out; emotion was general, and reached the king himself, who shed tears at hearing the title which posterity and history were forever to attach to his name.
“Then, the deputies having dropped on their knees, the speaker resumed his speech, saying that they were come to prefer a request for the general good of the realm, the king’s subjects entreating him to be pleased to give his only daughter in marriage to my lord Francis, here present, who is every whit French.
“When this declaration was ended, the king called Cardinal d’Amboise and the chancellor, with whom he conferred for some time; and then the chancellor, turning to the deputies, made answer that the king had given due ear and heed to their request and representation, . . . that if he had done well, he desired to do still better; and that, as to the request touching the marriage, he had never heard talk of it; but that as to that matter, he would communicate with the princes of the blood, so as to have their opinion.
“The day after this session the king received an embassy which could not but crown his joy: the estates of the duchy of Burgundy, more interested than any other province in the rupture of the (Austrian) marriage, had sent deputies to join their most urgent prayers to the entreaties of the estates of France.
“On Monday, May 18, the king assembled about him his chief councillors, to learn if the demand of the estates was profitable and reasonable for him and his kingdom. ‘Thereon,’ continues the report, ’the first to deliver an opinion was my lord the Bishop of Paris; after him the premier president of the parliament of Paris and of that of Bordeaux.’ Their speeches produced such effect that, ’quite with one voice and one mind, those present agreed that the request of the estates was sound, just, and reasonable, and with one consent entreated the king to agree to the said marriage.’
“The most enlightened councillors and the princes of the blood found themselves in agreement with the commons. There was no ambiguity about the reply. On the Tuesday, May 19, the king held a session in state for the purpose of announcing to the estates that their wishes should be fully gratified, and that the betrothal of his daughter to the heir to the throne should take place next day but one, May 21, in order that the deputies might report the news of it to their constituents.
“After that the estates had returned thanks, the chancellor gave notice that, as municipal affairs imperatively demanded the return of the deputies, the king gave them leave to go, retaining only one burgess from each town, to inform him of their wants and ’their business, if such there be in any case, wherein the king will give them good and short despatch.’
“The session was brought to a close by the festivities of the betrothal, and by the oath taken by the deputies, who, before their departure, swore to bring about with all their might, even to the risk of body and goods, the marriage which had just been decided upon by the common advice of all those who represented France.’” [Histoire des Etats Generaux from 1355 to 1614, by George Picot, t. i. pp. 352-354].
Francis d’Angouleme was at that time eleven years old, and Claude of France was nearly seven.
Whatever displeasure must have been caused to the Emperor of Germany and to the King of Spain by this resolution on the part of France and her king, it did not show itself, either in acts of hostility or even in complaints of a more or less threatening kind. Italy remained for some years longer the sole theatre of rivalry and strife between these three great powers; and, during this strife, the utter diversity of the combinations, whether in the way of alliance or of rupture, bore witness to the extreme changeability of the interests, passions, and designs of the actors. From 1506 to 1515, between Louis XII.’s will and his death, we find in the history of his career
Jealousy, ambition, secret resentment, and the prospect of despoiling them caused the formation of the League of Cambrai against the Venetians. Their far-reaching greatness on the seas, their steady progress on land, their riches, their cool assumption of independence towards the papacy, their renown for ability, and their profoundly selfish, but singularly prosperous policy, had excited in Italy, and even beyond the Alps, that feeling of envy and ill-will which is caused amongst men, whether kings or people, by the spectacle of strange, brilliant, and unexpected good fortune, though it be the fruits of rare merit. As the Venetians were as much dreaded as they were little beloved, great care was taken to conceal from them the projects that were being formed against them. According to their historian, Cardinal Bembo, they owed to chance the first notice they had. It happened one day that a Piedmontese at Milan, in presence of the Resident of Venice, allowed to escape from his lips the words, “I should have the pleasure, then, of seeing the crime punished of those who put to death the most illustrious man of my country.” He alluded to Carmagnola, a celebrated Piedmontese condottiere, who had been accused of treason and beheaded at Venice on the 3d of May, 1432. The Venetian ambassador at Louis XII.’s court, suspecting what had taken place at Cambrai, tried to dissuade the king. “Sir,” said he, “it were folly to attack them of Venice; their wisdom
[Illustration: Battle of Agnadello——334]
On the 14th of May, 1509, the French army and the Venetian army, of nearly equal strength, encountered near the village of Agnadello, in the province of Lodi, on the banks of the Adda. Louis XII. commanded his in person, with Louis de la Tremoille and James Trivulzio for his principal lieutenants; the Venetians were under the orders of two generals, the Count of Petigliano and Barthelemy d’Alviano, both members of the Roman family of the Orsini, but not on good terms with one another. The French had to cross the Adda to reach the enemy, who kept in his camp. Trivulzio, seeing that the Venetians did not dispute their passage, cried out to the king, “To-day, sir, the victory is ours!” The French advance-guard engaged with the troops of Alviano. When apprised of this fight, Louis, to whom word was at this same time brought that the enemy was already occupying the point towards which he was moving with the main body of the army, said briskly, “Forward, all the same; we will halt upon their bellies.” The action became general and hot. The king, sword in hand, hurried from one corps to another, under fire from the Venetian artillery, which struck several men near him. He was urged to place himself under cover a little, so as to give his orders thence; but, “It is no odds,” said he; “they who are afraid have only to put themselves behind me.” A body of Gascons showed signs of wavering: “Lads,” shouted La Tremoille, “the king sees you.” They dashed forward; and the Venetians were broken, in spite of the brave resistance of Alviano, who was taken and brought, all covered with blood, and with one eye out, into the presence of the king. Louis said to him, courteously, “You shall have fair treatment and fair captivity; have fair patience.” “So I will,” answered the condottiere; “if I had won the battle, I had been the most victorious man in the world; and, though I have lost it, still have I the great honor of having had against me a King of France in person.” Louis, who had often heard talk of the warrior’s intrepid presence of mind, had a fancy for putting it to further proof, and, all the time chatting with him, gave secret orders to have the alarm sounded not far from them. “What is this, pray, Sir Barthelemy?” asked the king: “your folks are very difficult to please; is it that they want to begin again?” “Sir,” said Alviano, “if there is fighting still, it must be that the French are fighting one another; as for my folks, I assure you, on my life, they will not pay you a visit this fortnight.” The Venetian army, in fact, withdrew with a precipitation which resembled a rout: for, to rally it, its general, the Count of Petigliano, appointed for its gathering-point the ground beneath the walls of Brescia, forty miles from the field of battle. “Few men-at-arms,” says Guicciardini, “were slain in this affair; the great loss fell upon the Venetians’ infantry, which lost, according to
Louis XII.’s victory at Agnadello had for him consequences very different from what he had no doubt expected. “The king,” says Guicciardini, “departed from Italy, carrying away with him to France great glory by reason of so complete and so rapidly won a victory over the Venetians; nevertheless, as in the case of things obtained after hope long deferred men scarcely ever feel such joy and happiness as they had at first imagined they would, the king took not back with him either greater peace of mind or greater security in respect of his affairs.” The
The people rose, pillaged the houses of those who had summoned the foreigner, and declared that it would not separate its lot from that of the republic. So Treviso remained Venetian. Two other small towns, Marano and Osopo, followed her example; and for several months this was all that the Venetians preserved of their continental possessions. But at the commencement of July, 1509, they heard that the important town of Padua, which had fallen to the share of Emperor Maximilian, was uttering passionate murmurs against its new master, and wished for nothing better than to come back beneath the old sway; and, in spite of the opposition shown by the doge, Loredano, the Venetians resolved to attempt the venture. During the night between the 16th and 17th of July, a small detachment, well armed and well led, arrived beneath the walls of Padua, which was rather carelessly guarded. In the morning, as soon as the gate was opened, a string of large wagons presented themselves for admittance. Behind one of these, and partially concealed by its bulk, advanced six Venetian men-at-arms, each carrying on his crupper a foot-soldier armed with an arquebuse; they fired on the guard; each killed his man; the Austrian garrison hurried up and fought bravely; but other Venetian troops arrived, and the garrison was beaten and surrendered. Padua became Venetian again. “This surprisal,” says M. Darn, “caused inexpressible joy in Venice; after so many disasters there was seen a gleans of hope.” The Venetians hastened to provision Padua well and to put it in a state of defence; and they at the same time published a decree promising
At the first rumor of such a force there was great emotion in Venice, but an emotion tempered by bravery and intelligence. The doge, Leonardo Loredano, the same who had but lately opposed the surprisal of Padua, rose up and delivered in the senate a long speech, of which only the essential and characteristic points can be quoted here:—
“Everybody knows, excellent gentlemen of the senate,” said he, “that on the preservation of Padua depends all hope, not only of recovering our empire, but of maintaining our own liberty. It must be confessed that, great and wonderful as they have been, the preparations made and the supplies provided hitherto are not sufficient either for the security of that town or for the dignity of our republic. Our ancient renown forbids us to leave the public safety, the lives and honor of our wives and our children, entirely to the tillers of our fields and to mercenary soldiers, without rushing ourselves to shelter them behind our own breasts and defend them with our own arms. For so great and so glorious a fatherland, which has for so many years been the bulwark of the faith and the glory of the Christian republic, will the personal service of its citizens and its sons be ever to seek? To save it who would refuse to risk his own life and that of his children? If the defence of Padua is the pledge for the salvation of Venice, who would hesitate to go and defend it? And, though the forces already there were sufficient, is not our honor also concerned therein? The
This generous advice was accepted by the fathers and carried out by the sons with that earnest, prompt, and effective ardor which accompanies the resolution of great souls. When the Paduans, before their city was as yet invested, saw the arrival within their walls of these chosen youths of the Venetian patriciate, with their numerous troop of friends and followers, they considered Padua as good as saved; and when the imperial army, posted before the place, commenced their attacks upon it, they soon perceived that they had formidable defenders to deal with. “Five hundred years it was since in prince’s camp had ever been seen such wealth as there was there; and never was a day but there filed off some three or four hundred lanzknechts who took away to Germany oxen and kine, beds, corn, silk for sewing, and other articles; in such sort that to the said country of Padua was damage done to the amount of two millions of crowns in movables and in houses and palaces burnt and destroyed.” For three days the imperial artillery fired upon the town and made in its walls
“The lord of La Palisse,” continues the chronicler, “thought this a somewhat strange manner of proceeding; howbeit he hid his thought, and said to the secretary, ’I am astounded that the emperor did not send for my comrades and me for to deliberate more fully of this matter; howbeit you will tell him that I will send to fetch them, and when they are come I will show them the letter. I do not think there will be many who will not be obedient to that which the emperor shall be pleased to command.’
“When the French captains had arrived at the quarters of the lord of La Palisse, he said to them, ’Gentlemen, we must now dine, for I have somewhat to say to you, and if I were to say it first, peradventure you would not make good cheer.’ During dinner they did nothing but make sport one of another. After dinner, everybody was sent out of the room, save the captains, to whom the lord of La Palisse made known the emperor’s letter, which was read twice, for the better understanding of it. They all looked at one another, laughing, for to see who would speak first. Then said the lord of Ymbercourt to the lord of La Palisse, ’It needs not so much thought, my lord; send word to the emperor that we are all ready; I am even now a-weary of the fields, for the nights are cold; and then the good wines are beginning to fail us;’ whereat every one burst out a-laughing. All agreed to what was said by the lord of Ymbercourt. The lord of La Palisse looked at the good knight (Bayard), and saw that he seemed to be picking his teeth, as if he had not heard what his comrades had proposed. ‘Well, and you,’ said he, ’what say you about it? It is no time for picking one’s teeth; we must at once send speedy reply to the emperor.’ Gayly the good knight answered, ’If we would all take my lord of Ymbercourt’s word, we have only to go straight to the breach. But it is a somewhat sorry pastime for men-at-arms to go afoot,
So Padua was saved, and Venice once more became a power. Louis XII., having returned victorious to France, did not trouble himself much about the check received in Italy by Emperor Maximilian, for whom he had no love and but little esteem. Maximilian was personally brave and free from depravity or premeditated perfidy, but he was coarse, volatile, inconsistent, and not very able. Louis XII. had amongst his allies of Cambrai and in Italy a more serious and more skilful foe, who was preparing for him much greater embarrassments.
Julian Bella Rovera had, before his elevation to the pontifical throne, but one object, which was, to mount it. When he became pope, he had three objects: to recover and extend the temporal possessions of the papacy, to exercise to the full his spiritual power, and to drive the foreigner from Italy. He was not incapable of doubling and artifice. In order to rise he had flattered Louis XII. and Cardinal d’Amboise with the hope that the king’s minister would become the head of Christendom. When once he was himself in possession of this puissant title he showed himself as he really was; ambitious, audacious, imperious, energetic, stubborn, and combining the egotism of the absolute sovereign with the patriotism of an Italian pope. When the League of Cambrai had attained success through the victory of Louis XII. over the Venetians, Cardinal d’Amboise, in course of conversation with the two envoys from Florence at the king’s court, let them have an inkling “that he was not without suspicion of some new design;” and when Louis XII. announced his approaching departure for France, the two Florentines wrote to their government that “this departure might have very evil results, for the power of Emperor Maximilian in Italy, the position of Ferdinand the Catholic, the despair of the Venetians, and the character and dissatisfaction of the pope, seemed to foreshadow some fresh understanding against the Most Christian king.” Louis XII. and his minister were very confident. “Take Spain, the king of the Romans, or whom you please,” said Cardinal d’Amboise to the two Florentines; “there is none who has observed and kept the alliance more faithfully than the king has; he has done everything at the moment he promised; he has borne upon his shoulders the whole weight of this affair; and I tell you,” he added, with a fixed look at those whom he was addressing, “that his army is a large one, which he will keep up and augment every day.” Louis, for his part, treated the Florentines with great good-will, as friends on whom he counted and who were concerned in his success. “You have become the first power in Italy,” he said to then one day before a crowd of people: “how are you addressed just now? Are you Most Serene or Most Illustrious?” And when he was notified that distinguished Venetians were going to meet Emperor Maximilian on his arrival in Italy, “No matter,” said Louis; “let them go whither they will.” The Florentines
Next year (1510) the mistrust of the Florentine envoys was justified. The Venetians sent a humble address to the pope, ceded to him the places they but lately possessed in the Romagna, and conjured him to relieve them from the excommunication he had pronounced against them. Julius II., after some little waiting, accorded the favor demanded of him. Louis XII. committed the mistake of embroiling himself with the Swiss by refusing to add twenty thousand livres to the pay of sixty thousand he was giving them already, and by styling them “wretched mountain-shepherds, who presumed to impose upon him a tax he was not disposed to submit to.” The pope conferred the investiture of the kingdom of Naples upon Ferdinand the Catholic, who at first promised only his neutrality, but could not fail to be drawn in still farther when war was rekindled in Italy. In all these negotiations with the Venetians, the Swiss, the Kings of Spain and England, and the Emperor Maximilian, Julius II. took a bold initiative. Maximilian alone remained for some time at peace with the King of France.
In October, 1511, a league was formally concluded between the pope, the Venetians, the Swiss, and King Ferdinand against Louis XII. A place was reserved in it for the King of England, Henry VIII., who, on ascending the throne, had sent word to the King of France that “he desired to abide in the same friendship that the king his father had kept up,” but who, at the bottom of his heart, burned to resume on the Continent an active and a prominent part. The coalition thus formed was called the League of Holy Union. “I,” said Louis XII., “am the Saracen against whom this league is directed.”
He had just lost, a few months previously, the intimate and faithful adviser and friend of his whole life: Cardinal George d’Amboise, seized at Milan with a fit of the gout, during which Louis tended him with the assiduity and care of an affectionate brother, died at Lyons on the 25th of May, 1510, at fifty years of age. He was one not of the greatest, but of the most honest ministers who ever enjoyed a powerful
[Illustration: Cardinal d’Amboise——347]
“At last, then, I am the only pope!” cried Julius II., when he heard that Cardinal d’Amboise was dead. But his joy was misplaced: the cardinal’s death was a great loss to him; between the king and the pope the cardinal had been an intelligent mediator, who understood the two positions and the two characters, and who, though most faithful and devoted to the king, had nevertheless a place in his heart for the papacy also, and labored earnestly on every occasion to bring about between the two rivals a policy of moderation and peace. “One thing you may be certain of,” said Louis’s finance-minister Robertet to the ambassador from Florence, “that the king’s character is not an easy one to deal with; he is not readily brought round to what is not his own opinion, which is not always a correct one; he is irritated against the pope; and the cardinal, to whom that causes great displeasure, does not always succeed, in spite of all influence, in getting him to do as he would like. If our Lord God were to remove the cardinal, either by death or in any other manner, from public life, there would arise in this court and in the fashion of conducting affairs such confusion that nothing equal to it would ever have been seen in our day.” [Negociations Diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, t. ii. pp. 428 and 460.] And the confusion did, in fact, arise; and war was rekindled, or, to speak more correctly, resumed its course after the cardinal’s death. Julius II. plunged into it in person, moving to every point where it was going on, living in the midst of camps, himself in military costume, besieging towns, having his guns pointed and assaults delivered under his own eyes. Men expressed astonishment, not unmixed with admiration, at the indomitable energy
[Illustration: Chaumont d’Amboise——350]
From 1510 to 1512 the war in Italy was thus proceeding, but with no great results, when Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, came to take the command of the French army. He was scarcely twenty-three, and had hitherto only served under Trivulzio and La Palisse; but he had already a character for bravery and intelligence in war. Louis XII. loved this son of his sister, Mary of Orleans, and gladly elevated him to the highest rank. Gaston, from the very first, justified this favor. Instead of seeking for glory in the field only, he began by shutting himself up in Milan, which the Swiss were besieging. They made him an offer to take the road back to Switzerland, if he would give them a month’s pay; the sum was discussed; Gaston considered that they asked too much for their withdrawal; the Swiss broke off the negotiation; but “to the great astonishment of everybody,” says Guicciardini, “they raised the siege and returned to their own country.” The pope was besieging Bologna; Gaston arrived there suddenly with a body of troops whom he had marched out at night through a tempest of wind and snow; and he was safe inside the place whilst the besiegers were still ignorant of his movement. The siege of Bologna was raised. Gaston left it immediately to march on Brescia, which the Venetians had taken possession of for the Holy League. He retook the town by a vigorous assault, gave it up to pillage, punished with death Count Louis Avogaro and his two sons, who had excited the inhabitants against France, and gave a beating to the Venetian army before its walls. All these successes had been gained in a fortnight. “According to universal opinion,” says Guicciardini, “Italy for several centuries had seen nothing like these military operations.”
We are not proof against the pleasure of giving a place in this history to a deed of virtue and chivalrous kindness on Bayard’s part, the story of which has been told and retold many times in various works. It is honorable to human kind, and especially to the middle ages, that such men and such deeds are met with here and there, amidst the violence of war and the general barbarity of manners.
Bayard had been grievously wounded at the assault of Brescia; so grievously that he said to his neighbor, the lord of Molart, “’Comrade, march your men forward; the town is ours; as for me, I cannot pull on farther, for I am a dead man.’ When the town was taken, two of his archers bare him to a house, the most conspicuous they saw thereabouts. It was the abode of a very rich gentleman; but he had fled away to a monastery, and his wife had remained at the abode under the care of Our Lord, together with two fair daughters she had, the which were hidden in a granary beneath some hay. When there came a knocking at her door, she saw the good knight who was being brought in thus wounded, the which had the door shut incontinently, and set at the entrance the two archers, to the which he said, ’Take heed for your lives, that none enter herein unless it be any of my own folk; I am certified that, when it is known to be my quarters, none will try to force a way in; and if, by your aiding me, I be the cause that ye lose a chance of gaining somewhat, never ye mind; ye shall lose nought thereby.’
“The archers did as they were bid, and he was borne into a mighty fine chamber, into the which the lady of the house herself conducted him; and, throwing herself upon her knees before him, she spoke after this fashion, being interpreted, ’Noble sir, I present unto you this house, and all that is therein, for well I know it is yours by right of war; but may it be your pleasure to spare me my honor and life, and those of two young daughters that I and my husband have, who are ready for marriage.’ The good knight, who never thought wickedness, replied to her, ’Madam, I know not whether I can escape from the wound that I have; but, so long as I live, you and your daughters shall be done no displeasure, any more than to my own person. Only keep them in your chambers; let them not be seen; and I assure you that there is no man in the house who would take upon himself to enter any place against your will.’
“When the good lady heard him so virtuously speak, she was all assured. Afterwards, he prayed her to give instructions to some good surgeon, who might quickly come to tend him; which she did, and herself went in quest of him with one of the archers. He, having arrived, did probe the good knight’s wound, which was great and deep; howbeit he certified him that there was no danger of death. At the second dressing came to see him the Duke of Nemours’ surgeon, called Master Claude, the which did thenceforward have the healing of him; and right well he did his devoir, in such sort that in less than a month he was ready to mount a-horseback. The good knight, when he was dressed, asked his hostess where her husband was; and the good lady, all in tears, said to him, ’By my faith, my lord, I know not whether he be dead or alive; but I have a shrewd idea that, if he be living, he will be in a large monastery, where be hath large acquaintance.’ ‘Lady,’
“The lady with whom he lodged, who held herself all the while his prisoner, together with her husband and her children, had many imaginings. Thinking to herself that, if her guest were minded to treat with rigor herself and her husband, he might get out of them ten or twelve thousand crowns, for they had two thousand a year, she made up her mind to make him some worthy present; and she had found him so good a man, and of so gentle a heart, that, to her thinking, he would be graciously content. On the morning of the day whereon the good knight was to dislodge after dinner, his hostess, with one of her servitors carrying a little box made of steel, entered his chamber, where she found that he was resting in a chair, after having walked about a great deal, so as continually, little by little, to try his leg. She threw herself upon both knees; but incontinently he raised her up,
“The good lady was much astounded at finding herself put off. ‘My lord,’ said she, ’I should feel myself forever the most wretched creature in the world, if you did not take away with you so small a present as I make you, which is nothing in comparison with the courtesy you have shown me heretofore, and still show me now by your great kindness.’ When the knight saw her so firm, he said to her, ’Well, then, madam, I will take it for love of you; but go and fetch me your two daughters, for I would fain bid them farewell.’ The poor soul, who thought herself in paradise, now that her present was at last accepted, went to fetch her daughters, the which were very fair, good, and well educated, and had afforded the good knight much pastime during his illness, for right well could they sing and play
[Illustration: Bayard’s Farewell——358]
Bayard had good reason for being in such a hurry to rejoin his comrades-in-arms, and not miss the battle he foresaw. All were as full of it as he was. After the capture of Brescia, Gaston de Foix passed seven or eight days more there, whilst Bayard was confined by his wound to his bed. “The prince went, once at least, every day to see the good knight, the which he comforted as best he might, and often said to him, ’Hey! Sir Bayard, my friend, think about getting cured, for well I know that we shall have to give the Spaniards battle between this and a month; and, if so it should be, I had rather have lost all I am worth than not have you there, so great confidence have I in you.’ ’Believe me, my lord,’ answered Bayard, ’that if so it is that there is to be a battle, I would, as well for the service of the king my master as for love of you and for mine own honor, which is before everything, rather have myself carried thither in a litter than not be there at all.’ The Duke of Nemours made him a load of presents according to his power, and one day sent him five hundred crowns, the which the good knight gave to the two archers who had staid with him when he was wounded.”
Louis XII. was as impatient to have the battle delivered as Bayard was to be in it. He wrote, time after time, to his nephew Gaston that the moment was critical, that Emperor Maximilian harbored a design of recalling the five thousand lanzknechts he had sent as auxiliaries to the French army, and that they must be made use of whilst they were still to be had; that, on the other hand, Henry VIII., King of England, was preparing for an invasion of France, and so was Ferdinand, King of Spain, in the south: a victory in the field was indispensable to baffle all these hostile plans. It was Louis XII.’s mania to direct, from Paris or from Lyons, the war which he was making at a distance, and to regulate its movements as well as its expenses. The Florentine ambassador, Pandolfini, was struck with the perilousness of this mania; and Cardinal d’Amboise was no longer by to oppose it. Gaston de Foix asked for nothing better than to act with vigor. He set out to march on Ravenna, in hopes that by laying siege to this important place he would force a battle upon the Spanish army, which sought to avoid it. There was a current rumor in Italy that this army, much reduced in numbers and cooled in ardor, would not hold its own against the French if it encountered them. Some weeks previously, after the siege of Bologna had been raised_ by the Spaniards, there were distributed about at Rome little bits of paper having on them, “If anybody knows where the Spanish army happens to be, let him inform the sacristan of peace; he shall receive as reward a lump of cheese.” Gaston de Foix arrived on the 8th of April, 1512, before Ravenna. He there learned that, on the 9th of March, the ambassador of France had been sent away from London by Henry VIII.
The battle took place on the next day but one, April 11. “The gentle Duke of Nemours set out pretty early from his quarters, armed at all points. As he went forth he looked at the sun, already risen, which was mighty red. ‘Look, my lords, how red the sun is,’ said he to the company about him. There was there a gentleman whom he loved exceedingly, a right gentle comrade, whose name was Haubourdin, the which replied, ’Know you, pray, what that means, my lord? To-day will die some prince or great captain: it must needs be you or the Spanish viceroy.’ The Duke of Nemours burst out a-laughing at this speech, and went on as far as the bridge to finish the passing-in-review of his army, which was showing marvellous diligence.” As he was conversing with Bayard, who had come in search of him, they noticed not far from them a troop of twenty or thirty Spanish gentlemen, all mounted, amongst whom was Captain Pedro de Paz, leader of all their jennettiers [light cavalry, mounted on Spanish horses called jennets]. “The good knight advanced twenty or thirty paces and saluted them, saying, ’Gentlemen, you are diverting your-selves, as we are, whilst waiting for the regular game to begin; I pray you let there be no firing of arquebuses on your side, and there shall be no firing at you on ours.’” The courtesy was reciprocated. “Sir Bayard,” asked Don Pedro de Paz, who is yon lord in such goodly array, and to whom your folks show so much honor?” “It is our chief, the Duke of Nemours,” answered Bayard; “nephew of our prince, and brother of your queen.” [Germaine de Foix, Gaston de Foix’s sister, had married, as his second wife, Ferdinand the Catholic.] Hardly had he finished speaking, when Captain Pedro de Paz and all those who were with him dismounted and addressed the noble prince in these words: “Sir, save the honor and service due to the king our master, we declare to you that we are, and wish forever to remain, your servants.” The Duke of Nemours thanked them gallantly for their gallant homage, and, after a short, chivalrous exchange of conversation, they went, respectively, to their own posts. The artillery began by causing great havoc on both sides. “’Od’s body,” said a Spanish captain shut up in a fort which the French were attacking, and which he had been charged to defend, “we are being killed here by bolts that fall from heaven; go we and fight with men;” and he sallied from the fort with all his people, to go and take part in the general battle. “Since God created heaven and earth,” says the Loyal Serviteur of Bayard, “was never seen a more cruel and rough assault than that which French and Spaniards made upon one another, and for more than a long half hour lasted this fight. They rested before one another’s eyes to recover their breath; then they let down their vizors and so began all over again, shouting, France! and Spain! the most imperiously in the world. At last the Spaniards were utterly broken, and constrained to abandon their camp, whereon,
When the fatal news was known, the consternation and grief were profound. At the age of twenty-three Gaston de Foix had in less than six months won the confidence and affection of the army, of the king, and of France. It was one of those sudden and undisputed reputations which seem to mark out men for the highest destinies. “I would fain,” said Louis XIL, when he heard of his death, “have no longer an inch of land in Italy, and be able at that price to bring back to life my nephew Gaston and all the gallants who perished with him. God keep us from often gaining such victories!” “In the battle of Ravenna,” says Guicciardini, “fell at least ten thousand men, a third of them French, and two thirds their enemies; but in respect of chosen men and men of renown the loss of the victors was by much the greater, and the loss of Gaston de Foix alone surpassed all the others put together; with him went all the vigor and furious onset of the French army.” La Palisse, a warrior valiant and honored, assumed the command of this victorious army; but under pressure of repeated attacks from the Spaniards, the Venetians, and the Swiss, he gave up first the Romagna, then Milanes, withdrew from place to place, and ended by falling back on Piedmont. Julius II. won back all he had won and lost. Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovic the Moor, after twelve years of exile in Germany, returned to Milan to resume possession of his father’s duchy. By the end of June, 1512, less than three months after the victory of Ravenna, the domination of the French had disappeared from Italy.
[Illustration: Gaston de Foix——364]
Louis XII. had, indeed, something else to do besides crossing the Alps to go to the protection of such precarious conquests. Into France itself war was about to make its way; it was his own kingdom and his own country that he had to defend. In vain, after the death of Isabella of Castile, had he married his niece, Germaine de Foix, to Ferdinand the Catholic, whilst giving up to him all pretensions to the kingdom of Naples. In 1512 Ferdinand invaded Navarre, took possession of the Spanish portion of that little kingdom, and thence threatened Gascony. Henry VIII., King of England, sent him a fleet, which did not withdraw until after it had appeared before Bayonne and thrown the south-west of France into a state of alarm. In the north, Henry VIII. continued his preparations for an expedition into France, obtained from his Parliament subsidies for that purpose, and concerted plans with Emperor Maximilian, who renounced his doubtful neutrality and engaged himself at last in the Holy League. Louis XII. had in Germany an enemy as zealous almost as Julius II. was in Italy: Maximilian’s daughter, Princess Marguerite of Austria, had never forgiven France or its king, whether he were called Charles VIII. or Louis XII., the treatment she had received from that court, when, after having been kept there and brought up for eight years to become
“Man proposes and God disposes.” Not a step can be made in history without meeting with some corroboration of that modest, pious, grand truth. On the 21st of February, 1513, ten months since Gaston de Foix, the victor of Ravenna, had perished in the hour of his victory, Pope Julius II. died at Rome at the very moment when he seemed invited to enjoy all the triumph of his policy. He died without bluster and without disquietude, disavowing nought of his past life, and relinquishing none of his designs as to the future. He had been impassioned and skilful in the employment of moral force, whereby alone he could become master of material forces; a rare order of genius, and one which never lacks grandeur, even when the man who possesses it abuses it. His constant thought was how he might free Italy from the barbarians; and he liked to hear himself called by the name of liberator, which was commonly given him. One day the outspoken Cardinal Grimani said to him that, nevertheless, the kingdom of Naples, one of the greatest and richest portions of Italy, was still under the foreign yoke; whereupon Julius II., brandishing the staff on which he was leaning, said, wrathfully, “Assuredly, if Heaven had not otherwise ordained, the Neapolitans too would have shaken off the yoke which lies heavy on them.” Guicciardini has summed up, with equal justice and sound judgment, the principal traits of his character: “He was a prince,” says the historian, “of incalculable courage and firmness; full of boundless imaginings which would have brought him headlong to ruin if the respect borne to the Church, the dissensions of princes and the conditions of the
The death of Julius II. seemed to Louis XII. a favorable opportunity for once more setting foot in Italy, and recovering at least that which he regarded as his hereditary right, the duchy of Milan. He commissioned Louis de la Tremoille to go and renew the conquest; and, whilst thus reopening the Italian war, he commenced negotiations with certain of the coalitionists of the Holy League, in the hope of causing division amongst them, or even of attracting some one of them to himself. He knew that the Venetians were dissatisfied and disquieted about their allies, especially Emperor Maximilian, the new Duke of Milan Maximilian Sforza, and the Swiss. He had little difficulty in coming to an understanding with the Venetian senate; and, on the 14th of May, 1513, a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was signed at Blois between the King of France and the republic of Venice. Louis hoped also to find at Rome in the new pope, Leo X. [Cardinal John de’ Medici, elected pope March 11, 1513], favorable inclinations; but they were at first very ambiguously and reservedly manifested. As a Florentine, Leo X. had a leaning towards France; but as pope, he was not disposed to relinquish or disavow the policy of Julius II. as to the independence of Italy in respect of any foreign sovereign, and as to the extension of the power of the Holy See; and he wanted time to make up his mind to infuse into his relations with Louis XII. good-will instead of his predecessor’s impassioned hostility. Louis had not, and could not have, any confidence in Ferdinand the Catholic; but he knew him to be as prudent as he was rascally, and he concluded with him at Orthez, on the 1st of April, 1513, a year’s truce, which Ferdinand took great care not to make known to his allies, Henry VIII., King of England, and the Emperor Maximilian, the former of whom was very hot-tempered, and the latter very deeply involved, through his daughter Marguerite of Austria, in the warlike league against France. “Madam” [the name given to
The sight of heroism and death has a powerful effect upon men, and sometimes suspends their quarrels. The English squadron went out again to sea, and the French went back to Brest. Next year the struggle recommenced, but on land, and with nothing so striking. An English army started from Calais, and went and blockaded, on the 17th of June, 1513, the fortress of Therouanne in Artois. It was a fortnight afterwards before Henry VIII. himself quitted Calais, where festivities and tournaments had detained him too long for what he had in hand, and set out on the march with twelve thousand foot to go and join his army before Therouanne. He met on his road, near Thournehem, a body of twelve hundred French men-at-arms with their followers a-horseback, and in the midst of them Bayard. Sire de Piennes, governor of Picardy, was in command of them. “My lord,” said Bayard to him, “let us charge them: no harm can come of it to us, or very little; if, at the first charge, we make an opening in them, they are broken; if they repulse us, we shall still get away; they are on foot and we a-horseback;” and “nearly all the French were of this opinion,” continues the chronicler; but Sire de Piennes said, Gentlemen, I have orders, on my life, from the king our master, to risk nothing, but only hold his country. Do as you please; for my part I shall not consent thereto.’ Thus was this matter stayed; and the King of England passed with his band under the noses of the French.” Henry VIII. arrived quietly with his army before Therouanne, the garrison of which defended itself valiantly, though short of provisions. Louis XII. sent orders to Sire de Piennes to revictual Therouanne “at any price.” The French men-at-arms, to the number of fourteen hundred lances, at whose head marched La Palisse, Bayard, the Duke de Longueville, grandson of the great Dunois, and Sire de Piennes himself, set out on the 16th of August to go and make, from the direction of Guinegate, a sham attack upon the English camp, whilst eight hundred Albanian light cavalry were to burst, from another direction, upon the enemies’ lines, cut their way through at a gallop, penetrate to the very fosses of the fortress, and throw into them munitions of war and of the stomach, hung to their horses’ necks. The Albanians carried out their orders successfully. The French men-at-arms, after having skirmished for some time with the cavalry of Henry VIII. and Maximilian, began to fall back a little carelessly and in some disorder towards their own camp, when they perceived two large masses of infantry and artillery, English and German, preparing to cut off their retreat. Surprise led to confusion; the confusion took the form of panic; the French men-at-arms broke into a gallop, and, dispersing in all directions, thought of nothing but regaining the main body and the camp at Blangy. This sudden rout of so many gallants received the sorry name of the affair of spurs, for spurs did more service than
On hearing these sad tidings, Louis XII., though suffering from an attack of gout, had himself moved in a litter from Paris to Amiens, and ordered Prince Francis of Angouleme, heir to the throne, to go and take command of the army, march it back to the defensive line of the Somme, and send a garrison to Tournai. It was one of that town’s privileges to have no garrison; and the inhabitants were unwilling to admit one, saying that Tournai never had turned and never would turn tail; and, if the English came, they would find some one to talk to them.” “Howbeit,” says Fleuranges, “not a single captain was there, nor, likewise, the said lord duke, but understood well how it was with people besieged, as indeed came to pass, for at the end of three days, during which the people of Tournai were besieged, they treated for appointment (terms) with the King of England.” Other bad news came to Amiens. The Swiss, puffed up with their victory at Novara and egged on by Emperor Maximilian, had to the number of thirty thousand entered Burgundy, and on the 7th of September laid siege to Dijon, which was rather badly fortified. La Tremoille, governor of Burgundy, shut himself up in the place and bravely repulsed a first assault, but “sent post-haste to warn the king to send him aid; whereto the king made no reply beyond that he could not send him aid, and that La Tremoille should do the best he could for the advantage and service of the kingdom.” La Tremoille applied to the Swiss for a safe-conduct, and “without arms and scantily attended” he went to them to try whether “in consideration of a certain sum of money for the expenses of their army they could be packed off to their own country without doing further displeasure or damage.” He found them proud and arrogant of heart, for they styled themselves chastisers of princes,” and all he could obtain from them was “that the king should give up the duchy of Milan and all the
Word was brought at the same time to Amiens that Tournai, invested on the 15th of September by the English, had capitulated, that Henry VIII. had entered it on the 21st, and that he had immediately treated it as a conquest of which he was taking possession, for he had confirmed it in all its privileges except that of having no garrison.
Such was the situation in which France, after a reign of fifteen years and in spite of so many brave and devoted servants, had been placed by Louis XII.’s foreign policy. Had he managed the home affairs of his kingdom as badly and with as little success as he had matters abroad, is it necessary to say what would have been his people’s feelings towards him, and what name he would have left in history? Happily for France and for the memory of Louis XII., his home-government was more sensible, more clear-sighted, more able, more moral, and more productive of good results than his foreign policy was.
When we consider this reign from this new point of view, we are at once struck by two facts: 1st, the great number of legislative and administrative acts that we meet with bearing upon the general interests of the country, interests political, judicial, financial, and commercial; the Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France contains forty-three important acts of this sort owing their origin to Louis XII.; it was clearly a government full of watchfulness, activity, and attention to good order and the public weal; 2d, the profound remembrance remaining in succeeding ages of this reign and its deserts—a remembrance which was manifested, in 1560, amongst the states-general of Orleans, in 1576 and 1588 amongst the states of Blois, in 1593 amongst the states of the League, and even down to 1614 amongst the states of Paris. During more than a hundred years France called to mind, and took pleasure in calling to mind, the administration of Louis XII. as the type of a wise, intelligent, and effective regimen. Confidence may be felt in a people’s memory when it inspires them for so long afterwards with sentiment of justice and gratitude.
If from the simple table of the acts of Louis XII.’s home-government we pass to an examination of their practical results it is plain that they were good and salutary. A contemporary historian, earnest and truthful though panegyrical, Claude do Seyssel, describes in the following terms the state of France at that time: “It is,” says he, “a patent fact that the revenue of benefices, lands, and lordships has generally much increased. And in like manner the proceeds of gabels, turnpikes, law-fees and other revenues have been augmented very greatly. The traffic, too, in merchandise, whether by sea or land, has multiplied exceedingly. For, by the blessing of peace, all folks (except the nobles, and even them I do not except altogether) engage in merchandise. For one trader that was in Louis XI.’s time to be found rich and portly at Paris, Rouen, Lyons, and other good towns of the kingdom, there are to be found in this reign more than fifty; and there are in the small towns greater number than the great and principal cities were wont to have. So much so that scarcely a house is made on any street without having a shop for merchandise or for mechanical art. And less difficulty is now made about going to Rome, Naples London, and elsewhere over-sea than was made formally about going to Lyons or to Geneva. So much so that there are some who have gone by sea to seek, and have found, new homes. The renown and authority of the king now reigning are so great that his subjects are honored and upheld in every country, as well at sea as on land.”
Foreigners were not less impressed than the French themselves with this advance in order, activity, and prosperity amongst the French community. Machiavelli admits it, and with the melancholy of an Italian politician acting in the midst of rivalries amongst the Italian republics, he attributes it above all to French unity, superior to that of any other state in Europe.
As to the question, to whom reverts the honor of the good government at home under Louis XII., and of so much progress in the social condition of France, M. George Picot, in his Histoire des Etats Generaux [t. i. pp. 532-536], attributes it especially to the influence of the states assembled at Tours, in 1484, at the beginning of the reign of Charles VIII.: “They employed,” he says, “the greatest efforts to reduce the figure of the impost; they claimed the voting of subsidies, and took care not to allow them, save by way of gift and grant. They did not hesitate to revise certain taxes, and when they were engaged upon the subject of collecting of them, they energetically stood out for the establishment of a unique, classified body of receivers-royal, and demanded the formation of all the provinces into districts of estates, voting and apportioning their imposts every year, as in the cases of Languedoc, Normandy, and Dauphiny. The dangers of want of discipline in an ill-organized standing army and the evils caused to agriculture by roving bands drove the states back to reminiscences of Charles VII.’s armies; and they called for a mixed organization, in which gratuitous service, commingled in just proportion with that of paid troops, would prevent absorption of the national element. To reform the abuses of the law, to suppress extraordinary commissions, to reduce to a powerful unity, with parliaments to crown all, that multitude of jurisdictions which were degenerate and corrupt products of the feudal system in its decay, such was the constant aim of the states-general of 1484. They saw that a judicial hierarchy would be vain without fixity of laws; and they demanded a summarization of customs and a consolidation of ordinances in a collection placed within reach of all. Lastly they made a claim, which they were as qualified to make as they were intelligent in making, for the removal of the commercial barriers which divided the provinces and prevented the free transport of merchandise. They pointed out the repairing of the roads and the placing of them in good condition as the first means of increasing the general prosperity. Not a single branch of the administration of the kingdom escaped their conscientious scrutiny: law, finance, and commerce by turns engaged their attention; and in all these different matters they sought to ameliorate institutions, but never to usurp power. They did not come forward like the shrievalty of the University of Paris in 1413, with a new system of administration; the reign of Louis XI. had left nothing that was important or possible, in that way, to conceive; there was nothing more to be done than to glean after him, to relax those appliances of government which he had stretched at all points, and to demand the accomplishment of such of his projects as were left in arrear and the cure of the evils he had caused by the frenzy and the aberrations of his absolute will.”
We do not care to question the merits of the states-general of 1484; we have but lately striven to bring them to light, and we doubt not but that the enduring influence of their example and their sufferings counted for much in the progress of good government during the reign of Louis XII. It is an honor to France to have always resumed and pursued from crisis to crisis, through a course of many sufferings, mistakes, and tedious gaps, the work of her political enfranchisement and the foundation of a regimen of freedom and legality in the midst of the sole monarchy which so powerfully contributed to her strength and her greatness. The states-general of 1484, in spite of their rebuffs and long years after their separation, held an honorable place in the history of this difficult and tardy work; but Louis XII.’s personal share in the good home-government of France during his reign was also great and meritorious. His chief merit, a rare one amongst the powerful of the earth, especially when there is a question of reforms and of liberty, was that he understood and entertained the requirements and wishes of his day; he was a mere young prince of the blood when the states of 1484 were sitting at Tours; but he did not forget them when he was king, and, far from repudiating their patriotic and modest work in the cause of reform and progress, he entered into it sincerely and earnestly with the aid of Cardinal d’Amboise, his honest, faithful, and ever influential councillor. The character and natural instincts of Louis XII. inclined him towards the same views as his intelligence and moderation in politics suggested. He was kind, sympathetic towards his people, and anxious to spare them every burden and every suffering that was unnecessary, and to have justice, real and independent justice, rendered to all. He reduced the talliages a tenth at first and a third at a later period. He refused to accept the dues usual on a joyful accession. When the wars in Italy caused him some extraordinary expense, he disposed of a portion of the royal possessions, strictly administered as they were, before imposing fresh burdens upon the people. His court was inexpensive, and he had no favorites to enrich. His economy became proverbial; it was sometimes made a reproach to him; and things were carried so far that he was represented, on the stage of a popular theatre, ill, pale, and surrounded by doctors, who were holding a consultation as to the nature of his malady: they at last agreed to give him a potion of gold to take; the sick man at once sat up, complaining of nothing more than a burning thirst. When informed of this scandalous piece of buffoonery, Louis contented himself with saying, “I had rather make courtiers laugh by my stinginess than my people weep by my extravagance.” He was pressed to punish some insolent comedians; but, “No,” said he, “amongst their ribaldries they may sometimes tell us useful truths let them amuse themselves, provided that they respect
Louis XII.’s private life also contributed to win for him, we will not say the respect and admiration, but the good will of the public. He was not, like Louis IX., a model of austerity and sanctity; but after the licentious court of Charles VII., the coarse habits of Louis XI., and the easy morals of Charles VIII., the French public was not exacting. Louis XII. was thrice married. His first wife, Joan, daughter of Louis XI., was an excellent and worthy princess, but ugly, ungraceful, and hump-backed. He had been almost forced to marry her, and he had no child by her. On ascending the throne, he begged Pope Alexander VI. to annul his marriage; the negotiation was anything but honorable, either to the king or to the pope; and the pope granted his bull in consideration of the favors shown to his unworthy son, Caesar Borgia, by the king. Joan alone behaved with a virtuous as well as modest pride, and ended her life in sanctity within a convent at Bourges, being wholly devoted to pious works, regarded by the people as a saint, spoken of by bold preachers as
Less than three months after this marriage, on the 1st of January, 1515, “the death-bell-men were traversing the streets of Paris, ringing their bells and crying, ‘The good King Louis, father of the people, is dead.’” Louis XII., in fact, had died that very day, at midnight, from an attack of gout and a rapid decline. “He had no great need to be married, for many reasons,” says the Loyal Serviteur of Bayard, “and he likewise had no great desire that way; but, because he found himself on every side at war, which he could not maintain without pressing very hard upon his people, he behaved like the pelican. After that Queen Mary had made her entry, which was mighty triumphant, into Paris, and that there had taken place many jousts and tourneys, which lasted more than six weeks, the good king, because of his wife, changed all his manner of living: he had been wont to dine at eight, and he now dined at midday; he had been wont to go to bed at six in the evening, and he often now went to bed at midnight. He fell ill at the end of December, from the which illness nought could save him. He was, whilst he lived, a good prince, wise and virtuous, who maintained his people in peace, without pressing hard upon them in any way, save by constraint. He had in his time much of good and of evil, whereby he got ample knowledge of the world. He obtained many victories over his enemies; but towards the end of his days Fortune gave him a little turn of her frowning face. He was borne to his grave at St. Denis amongst his good predecessors, with great weeping and wailing, and to the great regret of his subjects.”
“He was a gentle prince,” says Robert de la Marck, lord of Fleuranges, “both in war and otherwise, and in all matters wherein he was required to take part. It was pity when this malady of gout attacked him, for he was not an old man.”
To the last of his days Louis XII. was animated by earnest sympathy and active solicitude for his people. It cost him a great deal to make with the King of England the treaties of August 7, 1514, to cede Tournai to the English, and to agree to the payment to them of a hundred thousand crowns a year for ten years. He did it to restore peace to France, attacked on her own soil, and feeling her prosperity threatened. For the same reason he negotiated with Pope Leo X., Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic, and he had very nearly attained the same end by entering once more upon pacific relations with them, when death came and struck him down at the age of fifty-three. He died sorrowing over the concessions he had made from a patriotic sense of duty as much as from necessity, and full of disquietude about the future. He felt a sincere affection for Francis de Valois, Count of Angouleme, his son-law and successor; the marriage between his daughter Claude and that prince had been the chief and most difficult affair connected with his domestic life; and it was only after the death of the queen, Anne of Brittany, that he had it proclaimed and celebrated. The bravery, the brilliant parts, the amiable character, and the easy grace of Francis I. delighted him, but he dreaded his presumptuous inexperience, his reckless levity, and his ruinous extravagance; and in his anxiety as a king and father he said, “We are laboring in vain; this big boy will spoil everything for us.”
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.